Vergil in Averno: Book Two of the Vergil Magus Series (5 page)

• • •

Averno lay beneath them, so near that they could identify individual houses, yet so far by reason of the wandering way through the craggy hills that it might be near sundown before they arrived. And some such thought evidently being in the mind of Iohan, he muttered, “Smell thee in the dark …” and broke off to break off a piece of his bread and scatter a crumble, and mumble, “Hither for this offering, ye genius loci.” He who has cautioned us that art is long and life is brief has also reminded us that airs, waters, and places have powers of their own.

The genius loci did not at once visibly smile, and it would have been difficult to say how such a sign of favor would be manifest in that region, but at least at no time as they wound round and round and sometimes, briefly, up, but mostly always down — at any rate, at no time did any rock fall upon them, nor any lip nor barm of a tight trail give way beneath them. For a while yet there stayed some trace in their nostrils of what the poet Andersius has called “the sweet salt air;” scarcely were they aware of this when the wind went tepid and dull, and then a warm sullen slap of stale breeze in their faces gave notice of what was to come . . . and, fortunately, it came slowly and in stages. The heat and stench were Averno’s curse, yes, but they were the inevitable results of Averno’s blessing, too, for the hot places of the earth, elsewhere buried deeply, were here very near the surface. Here waters bubbled boiling up with no fuel placed beneath them, and here mounds rose anvil-high and anvil-iron-red and hot-white-hot without the need for charcoal, wood, or bellows —

Often.

To be sure there were places, manywhere, whither flame and fire came not and whither firewood or charcoal was brought, places where the bellows plied and puffed; if the city were one vast hot spring or fumarole or one immense blacksmith-fire, there would have been no place, no inch nor ell, for the foot of man or woman safely to tread. But it was the presence of the other places — there, below, in that smoky bowl below, the places where flames either broke the sullen surface of the soil or lay so close thereto that the soil itself steamed and smoked — this was the reason for the existence of Averno as a city. Endlessly, no doubt, before the appearance of man thereby, these phenomena had been displayed therein: uselessly, as it were; wastefully, as it seemed. But now in all this valley-bowl “the arts of fire and metal” might be practiced without much real need to bring much fuel for fire. The artisans of Averno were not better artisans than those elsewhere, indeed, often, they were not as good; few swords or shares or scythes or axes or other tools of iron were made there: but many and many were the such-shaped blanks of iron formed to be exported, elsewhere to be sharpened for keen use. And these were invariably cheaper than those exported from elsewhere. The dyed garments of Averno were not so brightly colored, so fastly, nor so subtly as those of Tyre; not even as well done as those of Naples. But, though coarser, they were cheaper. Coarse metal, coarse cloth, coarse leather, coarse wool, these were the products of Averno. Or, reading from the other end of the line: cheap wool, cheap leather, cheap cloth, cheap metal. Had there been birds in Averno — which, save here and there a one or two or few sickening in cages, there were not; the very hens and cocks and capons were slaughtered on arrival — but had there been birds in Averno, this might have been their song: cheap-cheap, cheap-cheap, cheap-cheap.

The slow destruction and retreat of the forests of the Empire (indeed, of the whole oeconomia), with the resultant slow rise in the prices of firewood and charcoal, might work ill with the commerce of the arts of fire and metal elsewhere, but in Averno where one, so to speak, lived ill anyway, this was a blessing, a blessing and not a curse. A blessing, that is, for the magnates of Averno. They needed no skill in sales, were obliged to transport their wares to no distant shores, nor offer discounts nor sell on credit nor break themselves on racks to deal with competitors. Where they worked, there they sold. Others came to them, or did not come at all.

The magnates of Averno did not care.

They were cheap, cheap, cheap.

And so of course they had become rich, rich, rich.

Averno took no toll on private bag and baggage coming in, and it had long ago secured (and maintained) an exemption from the Imperial Imposts usually, elsewhere, levied (and collected) at city gates . . . another reason for its being Very Rich. As Vergil wore no sword, there was no discussion over that; as for knives, every man, everywhere, carried at least one knife: how else would he cut his food?

“Write the book,” directed the gateskeeper, with a bored belch. He had already sized up Vergil as one who could do his own writing and so the services of a scribe were not required and there would be no fee to split. Vergil signed for himself and servant. The titles, in their abbreviations, did not impress the custos, nor would they have if indited in full; the man did not read. “Where you go?” he asked. He did not really care, but he had his reasons for asking.

Two of them.

The deeper shadow of the Great Gate encompassed them; shadow always lay deep on part of Averno. Set so deep as it was, the sun coming late and departing early, it was more shadowy there in the Great Gate, and pho! how it stank. “The house of Haddadius the dye-master,” said Vergil. The keeper looked at him and looked past him and held up two fingers. A trace of a grimace lifted one corner of his great grim mouth; the ghost of a rictus; hardly even that, of a smile. And he clicked his mouth, twice.

“Two birdies,” he said. The tiny coins being produced, he stuffed one into the purse deep in his grimy bosom, sent another one spinning across the tunnel-mouth of the gateway. It rang against the dripping wall, fell on the wet ground where a number of figures crouched. Most of them raised their heads, but only one . . . the nearest . . . raised his body. He got to his feet, after he had picked up the miserable money-bit, came over in a shuffle and a shudder. The gatesman said,
“Addadi.”
The man gave neither beckon nor nod, started off in a lurching stumble and stagger, pausing and doubling over in a cough that seemed to churn his lungs and cripple his limbs. As Vergil, and Iohan holding the mare, started to follow, the keeper called to the shambling guide, “An when y’pass the bones-pit, drop in. — You, too,” he added, to man and manservant. Hawked and spat. Returned to his stand.

Such was charity in Averno.

And welcome, as well.

Would Haddadius the dye-master be more welcoming? Vergil considered, as they passed through the filthy streets, as different from the cleanly thoroughfares of the small port town as the glowing sunsets there were from this filthy dusk, if it might not be better to seek an inn first. But some thought that Haddadius, having in effect sent for him by such devious ways, might have something else in mind for his accommodations, kept him from doing so. And so he followed after the lurching wreck of what had once been a fine large man; and when this one paused and leaned against a wall, though Vergil thought it was from weakness, on coming along up he saw there was a gate set into the wall. And on this the guide placed his hand. He did not even knock. He patted it once. He stroked it, once. Then he merely stayed there. And looked at Vergil from running, sunken eyes. Even when the man took the coin, and a bigger one it was than a “birdy,” Vergil was not sure if he was nodding thanks, or if it was merely the trembling movements of his diseased condition. By and by, he was gone.

If Haddadius had something at all in mind for Vergil’s accommodations it was not evident, nor was anything else that might have been on Haddadius’s mind. The magnate was hardly more welcoming than the gateskeeper, but he did not engage in open insult, possibly because this might have required him to rise from his bath, where Vergil found him after having been (dilatorily, sullenly) led thither by a slave with a cast in one eye. Massive, mute, and shaggy, Haddadius listened in silence to Vergil’s polite words. Though the words were polite, yet Vergil felt they were mere forms, for he did not care to state exactly his reasons for having come to Averno; surely they must be and had been known? If so, Haddadius gave no sign of it. What Haddadius gave, eventually, was a grunt, and the sign which he next gave was to a secretary who appeared so suddenly from the shadows that one less disciplined than Vergil might have started; to himself he said that shadows seemed appropriate to a secretary, by definition, even, the one who kept the secret things. The magnate muttered, the scribe scribbled, the mutter ceased.

The secretary handed over the set of tablets on whose wax-inlaid inner surfaces he had made his notations. They were well-made tablets, of precious wood and inset in mother-of-pearl with a rather beautiful picture of Ganymede bearing the cup. Where had this been crafted? Not in Averno. How came it there? Avernians were not known to fancy beauty. He opened the small wooden sheets; inside, on the scented wax (did it serve to refresh the sense of smell, in Averno so much-abused?) were written a number of names.

“One of these may have use for you,” was what the secretary said. And that was all the secretary said. Was it for merely this that Vergil had come here? — Had so (he thought) smoothly and with polite intimation made mention of the fact that “from Sevilla to Averno was a rather far journey and that many things have been learned on such journeys”? And . . . for that matter . . . was it for such curt congees, dismissals, even from an audience consisting of a barbarian in a bath, that he had himself made those long journeys? From Brundusium to Athens, Athens to Brundusium, Brundusium to Naples, Naples to this place, to that place and thence to Sevilla, and so, eventually
here?
In Averno? No, but then, for what purpose
had
he made them? In order to attain mastery over many things, and the first of these had been his own self and soul and pride and patience; and over them, well. And then, too, to what purpose all those dreams? Things were seldom simple; this was no exception.

Vergil expressed his thanks, neither magnate nor man made a reply, and he was left with nothing to do but follow the same slave who had led him in . . . still dilatory, still sullen, and still with the cast in one eye. The door in the gate closed swiftly behind the parting guest. For all Vergil’s pains, what were his gains? The tablets. “And I am lucky the fellow did not snatch them back,” he said ruefully. He had felt his cloak catch in the gate, so swiftly closed it shut; now he turned to tug it loose, hoping it was neither so fast-snared that he must needs either knock once more to be released or else cut it loose and spoil the cloak and perhaps also make him a figure of mockery to the mob; but it had in fact been caught so slightly that the mere movement as he turned had got it free.

The tablets, worth no small sum even had the wax been smooth and blank, the tablets had yet some message graved upon them doubtless more worth than the precious covers. Vergil had indeed begun to extract his own set (of sturdy, worn-smoothed boxwood bearing no other design than monogram or rune-sign formed by the
V
and
M
woven each through the other) and stylus to copy the notations, but the magnate’s secretary, with a gesture of hand and an expression of mouth had indicated he was to keep the ones handed him, a gesture so curt and an expression so scornful as to make the recipient of the gift wish to throw it back in the giver’s face.

And now he stood with it in hand, and with nought else in hand, outside the giver’s gate, and in the street again.

“Thankful to see you safe, sir,” said Iohan, and indeed he did look thankful; and even the mare nuzzled him briefly, as though thankful herself.

A sort of heavier twilight had settled over everything. Westward, a delayed and brighter light, dull-red glowering through dull gray haze, showed what to the rest of the world was still the undying and unconquerable sun. Sulfurous smell, mixed with the stink of rotting indigo and the thick reek of tanyards and the fetor of putrescent fat and flesh clinging to the blue-green undersides of sheep fells at the wool-pulleries, all mingled in the haze and fume; this, then, was the “sweet breeze of Averno,” a phrase muttered elsewhere when a public urinal or cloaca gave evidence of badly needing cleaning. But the thump-thud of hammers and mallets beating all about did not slow down in the slightest, nor did traffic slacken in the street; only the torch-lighter passed by, bundle of tarry sticks under one arm and lighted link in one hand. He set in a stick wherever a holder hung on a wall, set it afire, and passed on — all this in a half-trot. As he showed no sign of swerving, the two newcomers drew back. “He might have run us down, else,” said Iohan, half in anger, half in wonder.

“Yes . . . they all might . . . may…. We must find an inn.”

But something else happened to intervene before they found one.

Somewhat (
some
what?) belatedly, the City’s Official Orator and a very youthful assistant — like a great-nephew learning the trade (if not, by present tokens, learning it well) — appeared, to offer the only semblance of a civic welcome which, Vergil felt, he was likely to get: the Orator, in a fusty purple robe, local weave and local dye for sure, doing his best to read an official welcome and amend it ad-lib . . . as it had never been intended for sage or mage . . . and the lad at his side shifting from hand to hand, whenever he desired to scratch his pubescent crotch, the hand-brazier indeed full (well, partly full) of glowing charcoal on which it was intended someone should from time to time strew incense. But no one performed the role of “someone,” the lad gaped when he was not scratching, the Orator waved his free hand as he skipped not too smoothly over words intended to be laudatory of Vergil’s (nonexistent) military conquests and waved his free hand (not always the same hand, as sometimes he endeavored to pound the stripling on the pate, perhaps to discourage open and notorious crotch-scratching) to indicate he would delineate more particularly the details of “the most learned and honored visitor,” his learning and his honor, if only he had more than a hasty toehold on the matter. Suddenly Vergil to his vast, and then his less than vast, surprise, heard the words “
Master in Philosophy, Master in Arts Magical, Adept of the First Three Grades at Grammarie, Passed Master on the Astrolabe; Astrologue, West of Corinth
and
Astrologue, East of Corinth
” — at which time he perceived, firstly, that someone had slipped, not a spoon of olibanum onto the charcoal, but a piece of papyrus into the Orator’s hand, which the Orator did not entirely successfully succeed in concealing behind the tattered and greasy official scroll of welcome; and, secondly, exactly
who
it was who had done so: a man with a light sparse beard and with rather prominent front teeth.