Vergil in Averno: Book Two of the Vergil Magus Series (7 page)

The question, rhetorical or not, brought the link-man not merely to a halt, but, in a moment, brought him, slowly, back. He hadn’t heard master clearly. Them forges had fair foxed his ears this lustrum past. He hoped master wouldn’t — “Stop right there,” said master. “Don’t move, even if the fire burns your filthy fingers. Till I say so.” Then he turned to Vergil. Gestured. “Behind those doors there is the shop of our famous blind jeweler. Have you heard of our famous blind jeweler? Have not heard. I’ll tell. He comes from Agysimba or Golconda or some such damnably distant place with
a-g
in its name. And he can tell by smell what jewels are what.
Which
. Tomorrow, if you like, we will call upon him. Make him show. — But some say he tells by touch, really, and his talk of scent is but a play.
Morrow?”

A thought struck Vergil like a soft, swift blow. “But let us pause a moment
now
and see this marvel . . . if we may.”

The Avernian teetered back and forth as though either he had not heard, or was considering the matter. Suddenly started, said at once, “ ‘May.’ To be sure. If you wish it, it is not
may
but
must.”
So saying, he began to beat upon the door; at once to see the (momentarily) servile-stooping thrall commence to kick it and to hullow.

Vergil, in wine, and deeper in than he fully realized, burst forth of a sudden, “Am I to continue thus civil and elliptical and all but uninformed? You who first moved to move me here? Can you say nothing? Am I forever to go on creeping from door to door, like a beggar seeking boon and dole?”

At the exact moment his outburst ceased, one half of the upper half of the door (they were not notably trusting in Averno) was opened; there stood a man with a lamp in his hand and in the other he held a polished plate to magnify and reflect the light. “Come now, Messer Armin,” said this one, “is all this clamor and commotion needed? Will not morning — ”

Armin (at last! the man’s
name!
Vergil had had a sort of shyness in asking to begin with, and then the longer the time had passed without his being told it . . . ah well: “Armin.” So.), if he did not at once become sober, at once became the image of sobriety. “We are honored by a learned visitor,” he began. Hardly had he begun when the man at the door, giving the learned and distinguished visitor one keen look, made a certain sign; Vergil returned it; the door at once was unbolted even whilst Armin went on saying, “… who wishes to see your famous uncle at his mysterious work …” Armin suddenly stopped, said quite soberly, “If he
is
at work now, that is. I wouldn’t wish to disturb — ”

Nephew, dark and wrapped in white, replied, “He is at work. Day or dark or dim, it is all the same to him. Come.” The door bolted behind them. A several few more doors were unlocked and locked before they came at last to a chamber, unlighted till they entered it, wherein an old, very old man, also wrapped in white, with sunken sightless eyes, sat upon a stool, fingers moving from one to another of a series of boxes…. The light and reflector coming a bit nearer, the contents of the boxes began to sparkle and to glow. Some rainbow had emptied itself.

Without much moving his head, the old man said, “These are none of them of quite first-chop quality.” An odd and singsong style of speech had he. Continually he moved his fingers to his nose. And while the nephew was saying “They were not paid for at first-chop prices, Uncle,” Vergil moved forward and placed his hands, open-palmed, before the blind man’s face. Who, ceasing the movements of his fingers a moment, murmured, “Beryls, emeralds, a star ruby large . . . and . . . three diamonds, small ones, I should say, though good, quite good….”

Armin, all eyes at the work of sorting the jewel-stones, and at the show of the sparkles themselves, seemed to have heard nor seen nothing of this brief scene. Visitor learned and distinguished, and nephew, exchanged glances. Nephew gestured a diadem round about his head. Visitor gestured yes. Nephew gestured silence. Visitor gestured assent.

After a moment more, visitor said, “I am quite convinced.”

Armin blinked, tugged his glance away and over. “You see. Wonderful. Well. Thank you, merchants, we would stay longer, save it is quite late.”

“How regrettable; still, I must yield,” the nephew murmured. In a few moments the doors and their lockings and unlockings lay behind them; and before, the street.

Often Vergil was to ponder, does a true king of fools wear a crown of true jewels? He could find not one reason to say
yes;
when he said
no,
upon the heels of that answer came yet another question, equally brief:
why?

It was long and long till answer came to him.

• • •

Vergil paced up and down his private room, charts here and lists there. He had no need of globes, and had he, there were (back in his place in the port) only small ones. Automatically, as this thought recurred, came the dream. Someday I shall have one as large, quite as large, as that of Crates of Miletus . . .
if not larger!
. . . But this, as other dreams, went fading away. It was preposterous — was it not? Was it not absurd? — it was! It had been so simple, though he had not then considered it so simple: Aurelio had come to him and said, “Master Vergil, if so be your rules and practice don’t forbid you should work for a freedman, I should like to ask you, Master Vergil: Will you build me a house?”

Here he seemed under the control of a severalty of freedmen. Nothing was simple, no one condescended to him, few were even barely civil, he scarcely knew what it was that was wanted, or what the chances were of accomplishing even what he thought might be wanted . . . or, at any rate, what might be done. Could be done. Might be.
Might. If …

He might build for them an aqueduct, an eighth wonder of the world, through which might run hot water instead of cold.
Might.
Did, really, the magnates want him to study such things as the flow, the times, the force, of the up-gush of the steamy jets and gusts? Or did they want, and only want, some way to bribe . . . or did they, even, think:
trick?
. . . “The good gods of hell” . . . Were they as scholars who truly wanted to learn
how
a thing be done, that they might do it
(might)?
or were they as those who desired only that others do a thing, that they themselves receive a benefit? Regardless of
how
. . . could . . . would . . . might.
Might.

• • •

That night the king could not sleep.
These words Vergil clearly recalled having read somewhere, in a text whose Greek was a bit different from the usual; he recalled, too, having had reason to believe it to have been a translation, but no more did he remember.

That night the madman whom populace and magnates alike together had declared to be their king danced and chanted as he danced in the mud and muck of the mule market, and danced with golden armils; and danced as never had Vergil seen man dance before. And the harlots of the place and the (supposedly) chastest matrons did not hold back from dancing with him when he mimed and beckoned them to do so.

“This is life, Master Vergil!” A voice, Armin’s voice, spoke, so near his neck he could feel the warmth of the breath. White slaves and black held links and torches to enlighten the scene, magnates black and magnates white shook the sistrum, and the shrill chittering of the instrument, elsewhere sounded only for some sacred ceremony, and the shriller piping of the rude reed flutes seemed to send shocks through Vergil’s limbs and joints, urging him on to join the insane dance. But he felt he somehow must not, he thought of Ulysses bound to the mast whilst the sirens sang (and what song had the sirens sung? was it beyond conjecture? was it not, must it not have been, much like this? who knew but what the sirens might have danced as well . . . as well as sung …): no, no: he must not dance.

Shut his eyes, he might, shut his ears he could not do; he did what he might and therefore shut his eyes, conjectured vision of things other. Clouds floated past mountains, and the dark trees raked them as the spikes of teasels combing fleeces of white wool, and —

“Life! Life!” the voice in his ear. “The Emperor may tax, and build ships and roads and wage war and make peace and mint coins and be carried in a litter from one palace or one temple to another; can he dance like this? Eh?”

“No.”

The answer gave, evidently, great satisfaction. “Then we need him not! For what? Not! Away with him, and off with his — ” The last word was not heard, perhaps was not uttered; Armin with a great shout tore off his outer robe (it was crimson, and woven with a pattern of stars and flowers in gold and white and in an off-white), which fell at once into the thick mire and stench of the market ground, and Armin leapt forward, and snapping his fingers and prancing high, he advanced before the king and took a hand of the woman dancing with the king and took the hand of the king and they danced, and they all danced and the tambours beat. The sistrum chittered and the reed flute shrilled and the tambours beat. And the tambours beat.

But Vergil very slowly withdrew. He had tried to think of other things, and, in much measure, he had. Consider the powers of the winds. What were winds but airs in motions, might not the very airs be harnessed? What was sailing, else? Molded? Might one not make a mill empowered by air? Might one not make a bridge of air? A wall? He cast his thoughts abroad into the fetid nightlike sounds; echo answered:
might.
Vergil very slowly withdrew and clum a flight of stairs and went along an upper colonnade away. This
(these,
for they proceeded quite a ways) system of walkways was not deserted, late though was the hour, but all who were there were leaning over the balustrade and looking, singing, shouting, clapping with their hands a distinctive rhythm; no one noticed one who walked slowly along and away.

In his room. “This is madness. To assume a royal title without Imperial permission, this is treason. Cadmus is mad, this is no thing new; but now half the city seems mad as well.”

“Yes.”

Vergil turned; he saw Armin stepping through the low window that he had just now opened for a last breath of (what locally passed for) air — he saw the same man who had not a half a sandglass ago gone leaping out to dance insanely. Armin looked nothing as he said one syllable, that
yes,
then he grinned, and it was neither a madman’s grin nor was it nothing. Vergil could not really bring himself to grin, nor even smile, but somewhat he relaxed. And, almost, he smiled.

“Well, my guest, how may I serve?”

His guest muttered, “I should have sate upon the sill, and not . . . How serve? With water to wash my filthy feet. You need not — I hasten — think I mean you to wash them yourself, neither ought you, really, to call a servant, for they are surely by now all a-dancing in the mule market; may I take your consent for me to pour myself water? — this time I
shall
sit upon the sill!” He stooped, ladled, poured. His face puckered. “Hercules! Me Here, how it stinks! No mud and no stench like the mud of our mule market . . . and then . . . I do presume, but . . . and then I should be grateful for something to toss over my tunicle, for my garment I did not truly care to retrieve.”

Vergil tossed him a robe of local cut (a gift, one among many), and Armin caught it and threw it on. “Why did you dance there, then?” asked Vergil.

The two men gazed calmly at each other. They were of an age, about, and of a weight, about; save that Vergil was thick in the chest and slender in the legs and narrow in the loins. The other’s form was more of a symmetry, more equal in proportions. Outside in the colonnade a cresset flared, then dwindled. No one was there to replace it, but a few lamps burned in the room, and the room was not much dimmer now than in the daylight once the shutters were closed, for no thin-pared panels of horn, none of lucent shell nor of oiled cloth pierced their solid panels. Vergil: “Why?”

Armin scarce shrugged one shoulder, scarce twisted one side of his mouth. “Because it amused me. Ah, me Here! How it amused me! That is why I, too, hallooed loud
Long Live King Cadmus!
when they set the crown upon his curls. Nor did he disappoint me, that one. He has put bright tappeties — ‘tapestries,’ you call them — hanging on our black walls, and flung bright garlands round the necks of our black horses. And — you saw, you heard! — there in the open place where the black mules spilled their black piss and passed their black dung, he danced! Me Here, me Hercules! how he danced! What will you tell them when you go to Rome?”

The swift transition did not catch Vergil unprepared. He stroked his short beard, and, as it, too, was black, he wondered (passing-swift and wry the thought!) how it would look offset with flowers. “I? I do not go to Rome,” he said.

Armin looked at him, head a-cant, eye a-slant. “Ah? No? But, you know, you know . . . Rome may come to you,” said he.

• • •

But though long later men were to speak both of what they called, fearfully and darkly,
The Death of Rome
(some said, one man; some said, three men; none could agree on the names of any), and to speak, brightly and cheerfully
(some
men, at any rate) of what they called
The Salvation of Rome
, describing this as a series of mirrors in or through which the Emperor might see, and in good time, the advance of any army of rebels or of alien invaders — that morning, that is, the morning next, Vergil for one saw in no mirror any sign or signs of Rome advancing toward him.

So he looked into his tablets to see what names the secretary of Haddadius had at his master’s whisper engraved therein.

The first name on the list was that of M. Cnaeus Grobi, and at that magnate’s gate the door was not even opened for Vergil at all, merely a slat slid back to disclose a peephole behind it (Grobi, it seemed, was even less trusting than the nephew of the blind jeweler!), and through this an eye looked at him. Vergil stated his purpose, the eye did not blink and the door did not move; he showed his tablets with their inscribed list, the eye moved a bit, and then the eye went away. Dignity be damned! Thus thinking, Vergil applied his own eye to the peephole’s other side: naught he saw but some screen or buffer standing or hanging back a way . . . not much farther back, he thought, than to allow a man to stand between it and the gate. No more he saw; did he hear more? . . . more than the usual clamor from the nasty street at the lane’s end? He heard something like a growl from deep within what might be the chest of a rather large dog. Sign,
Cave canem,
there was none; who came upon the canine came without having been forewarned, such warning being evidently here at least regarded as an indulgence not the least necessary. But, by and by, Vergil, having withdrawn his eye (he had applied it very briefly), by and by there came the sound of slow and heavy steps, and the sound of slow and heavy breathing.
… I should like, at least for a moment, to listen closely to those lungs
(thought Vergil)
and to inform their owner what said Hippocrates and what said Galen and what said such a one and such a one: and to advise him …
and then an eye again looked out at him through the chink in the door.