The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series

XIII The Terrapetra

The black lane. Every walled city had its black lane, some going under the wall by tunnelled work of sappery. The black lane! used by such traveling on official business whose departure was not desired by public way in public sight to go … The Emperor wanted him? This was to be the first sign that the Emperor, Lupus, “that Wolf,” had ever heard of him. A sudden tremor: was it the matter of, How didst thou dare to touch the Virgin’s flesh? — No No: it could not be. Else they had either thrown him in fetter and gyve and … Well. If he had now to cross the Land of Stone; time to make a start was best at Night. Onward.

The “black lane” was of course not black, it was of a variety of colors, depending on the colors of the brick or stone of which the backs of buildings were made, through which the lane … winding, winding … passed; and none of them were made of that black, deadly, deathly black stone of which had been builded (so he had heard: much care had he taken to go there never) the capital city of Cappadoce. The principal hue here was of the same tawny lion-color, really quite different from that of Yellow Rome, as were the fronts of most of the buildings of Tingitayne, Tingis, Tingitana: and now, even as the small group of horsemen cantered along, the colors in the setting sun changed the stones to rose, then to a deeper red, then began to take on a purple tone. One might only guess at the nature and function of those buildings: warehouses, whorehouses, temples, homes? Some had never had windows, in some the windows had been carefully blocked up either with brick or with stone, no attempts made to match the tints of the buildings themselves. That a lane should be winding, away from the formal center of the city, was no surprise; but in this winding lane were no shop-fronts, no crowds of buyers or sellers, no loungers or loafers, no odors of edibles, no smoke or smell of combustibles; here was not even one single toddling child, half-naked and half about to cry, such as one encountered so very, very often elsewhere in such a wynd. No one sat hunched, fanning a charcoal brazier on which the evening meal cooked; no one begged with various tales of beggary or even merely whined and held out a dirty palm or showed a possibly interesting sore or a perhaps intriguing deformity.

The sound of the clopping of horse-hooves. Else —

Silence.

And in that silence there came thought a-visiting, a thought of a thing which he had somewhere read — and only some invisible and incorporeal recorder with no other task entrusted could know how much, how very much he himself had read, read, concerning which often had he heard and still he did betimes hear, He seems to read, and yet he neither reads aloud nor moves his mouth!

Briefly the guides had been named to him: the Berbar guides Sylvestro and Amulo, and Caniacus who was one of the Masked Men and wore a dark blue-black domino, far larger than common (common, though, among the Masked Men), which covered what they called the tharg, that part of the face from the bridge of the nose to the chin: and had no name at all, this part of the body, among any other of the peoples of the world. Folk who wished them well said twas because they had an unseemly facial blemish running in their blood and did merely wish to cover it and do others no fright; folk who wished them ill declared them a criminous caste who desired to pass unknown amongst others and espy out what they might steal: and, when they came to steal, first off-stripped the mask, that they be not recognized nor open to identity. They themselves said only this, Thus did my Father and my Mother and their Sires and Dams, so thus do I. Well-known it was, not to venture to ask a twice.

Well: and as Festus, Sylvestro, Amulo, and Caniacus cantered with him down this uncovered lane, this chasym through the city (from which arose but a smothered murmur like some half-distant throng of bees), so this thought visited Vergil: Swiftly darteth the mind of a man who hath travelled over far seas and lands and thinketh in wistfulness of heart ‘I wish that I were here, or there,’ and many are the wishes he wisheth. And yet he too is fated to lie down in blood and dust amongst the dead … well, and what was this but a perhaps more complex statement than this in the Theophrast on Plants, that “Against death there grows no simple”?

Often at evening lightfail there was a cooling-off of the air, but in this black lane perhap even at noon meridian it had not been full hot: and certes it grew no cooler even now: but the same stagnant warmth stayed on. And next for sure the lane was covered over, and Vergil, riding with Sylvestro and Amulo afore him and with Festus and Caniacus ahind him, was sure that now they were indeed riding through cavern or tunnel; he saw nothing looking up, recalled the old word that to a man imprisoned at the bottom of a dry well, heaven was but one ell wide: could not see even that ell. Could hear the echoes of the hooves clatter. Felt all at once a breeze of wind upon his face, still some wet from the sea: looked up and saw above him the glittering stars.

One of the guides said something brief, the two others grunted, perhaps in agreement. Vergil had not known that they had voices. Many a court of kings and sub-kings, so to speak, favored the services of mutes: they could hear no secrets and, did they see of any, of them they could not tell.

Festus, suddenly beside and not behind him, said, “Did you see, me Doctor sage, them twain tall slabs at th’end of lane before went under the ground?”

“I did not take a notice.”

“We who take this lane some often, it’s an old jest of our’n to call they ‘The Pillars of Hercules,’ ” and he made a chuckle but a thin one as if well aware that the jest was very thin, too. Vergil’s reply was an uninflected, “Ah,” there was still the faintest line of blue against one part of the world, with darkness above it and darkness below: then it turned fainter, and green; then it was gone. He let his horse keep canter and company with the others.

But Festus, having made his introduction to the subject, now proceeded with it. “Them real Pillars, as you know of, Ser Lord …” (“Ah.”) “They say … tis said … One day shall come when a gigant shall put hands against them Herculean Columns, you know? and push, you know?… and bring down the sky … you know?”

“Ah. ‘They say.’ And which giant may be, if one may ask?”

“They don’t say.”

“Ah. I rather thought not. Just so. A giant.’ Easy to say. Which giant? Not so easy.”

Festus was a moment silent. Then he said, also. “Ah.” And added, “You be a rare skip tic, Ser.” Vergil was not sure if the man sounded shocked. Or relieved.

They rode on, with occasional stops, to pass round a water-skin, some dates or figs, to dismount very briefly for bodily reliefs. At no time did they gallop; twould have been folly to do so on so dim, and oft-times unseen, paths. At first light they got down for long enough to build a small fire and make some gruel. After this was done, and the fire pissed out, Festus bowed, and said, “Here I must leave you, Doctor, Ser. And return. Have no fear they guides might rob ye: they do not durst. Farewell.” Vergil thanked him, returned the bow; all remounted and went their different ways.

One thing now, as he and the not very talkative Sylvestro and Amulo and the quite silent Masked Man Caniacus cantered on through the thorny wastes, often the bushes covered with what at first he had thought were small white flowers, but soon enough had realized were the shells of snails (if quick, if dead, he did not discover): one comment of the man Festus ran through his mind; there was little in the sameness of the passing scene to divert his thoughts, and for the time being he did not much wish to think of the immediate and ungentle future.

Festus had said, as they sate their last moments warming their hands by the embers, “Ane thing I took notice of, Me Ser Lord Doctor Mage.”

Vergil was glad the fellow had not crammed in every possible title which had come along with the green robe and the thumb-ring; Titular Baron of Brabantia, for one thing; Authorized to Plumb the Depths of the Cloaca Maxima, for another. Well. Magehood obliges. “And what is that one thing, Festus, man?”

“Grey of poll ye departed from our Tingitayne, whenas headed south. Black as tar that poll when ye return.”

Again the vatic voice, like a blow aside the head. Had he? He had!. Hardly pausing to bethink an answer, yet he gave him one; “It was the Fig,” he said. “The Scarlet Fig: makes rough men subtle and old ones young.”

Festus just a moment considered this. Then he gave a deep nod. And handed back the empty bowl to Sylvestro. And asked no further. Of Juvens and Senex? Asked no further.

By and by the waste lands and their thorns and snails gave way to a place of tilled and walled-in green garths of farming folk. No one fled as the four men came riding by on the narrow path between the tilths: a small sign but a certain one that the Pax Romana still obtained, no matter which king or sub-king here held rule. A certain russet in the far-off hills affirmed something which he had for some time now suspected, namely that they had passed from White Mauretayne to Red.

White Mauretayne, its cities of alabaster and elephant-colored marble (actually, many of their buildings did have, anyway, fronts of such stones, however thin-cut) dazzling the coastland in the sun; White Mauretayne was under the nominal suzereignty of Spestibanu, “Chief of Kings” — these were of course petty and not Electoral Kings — and it traded with Aspamia, Lusitayne, Ægypt, Greece, Lybya, and Rome. Red Mauretayne had no coast, save that which, rolled over and over and beat upon by many dry and heavy winds, constantly cast up stones and sands.

Red Mauretayne had neither chiefs nor kings.

It had, however, a wealth of rocks.

And it was Vergil’s devoir to cross it all until coming to Tripolitayne, thence by any northard way to Leptismayna at the end of the Terrapetra, and thence take water to Italy … to any of the Three Italies over which the Emperor was ex officio King. Vergil would have wished to continue on into Ægypt, if only to see those great pyramidal structures which the enslaved Children of the Isræls had builded for King Pharoah, so long and long ago: Treasure Cities, they were called, because of the wealths which the Ægyptim rulers had stored therein: and indeed, each one with its many policies or out-buildings, might rightly be called a city, entire of itself: rather like those palaces in Frankland, each so large as to be counted as an urbs, and had its own mayor.

This Terrapetra, then, was widely-known to be the same length as the entirety of all three parts of Italy; almost he might quail at the prospect: and yet he did not. Some men, in Quint’s phrase, suffered from the itch to write; Vergil, he now acknowledged, suffered from an itch to wander. Suffered from? It was indeed not a suffering, not even a sufferance; it was a joy, as joyful as any experienced in the elaboratory, waiting in an expectation of even greater joy for the joyful release and relief. Even in a land of stone might not many new and strange and quitely unexpected happenings occur?

Such a thing happened even sooner than could have been anticipated.

For, whilst yet the habitations of the sons of men and women, of the blowers of fire, were still thin upon the ground, the four of them had made a usual stop in a fairly secluded spot just a bit off the path; it was an indentation in a ridge of rock, protecting them from the gaze of strangers (peaceful, true, the habitants had seemed: but there be times when even public men would be a while in secret: even kings must live by nature; Vergil’s own Father had a saying for such occasions, did a small boy ask, “where are you going?” hear his sire say, simple, “Where th’ Emp’ror goes on foot” … even Himself the August Caesar did not go everywhere in the carriage of state.) And each had sought a niche or cleft of his own, when hear arise a scream of terror from Amulo and Sylvestro of, The basilisk! The basilisk! whilst, heads hastily covered with their cloaks, they made quick, clumsily, to leap each upon his horse, and flee away (for the first time on this journey) at full gallop. Caniacus alone did not move to do so; almost wedged in his own niche in the stoney clift, he needs could not. Merely he, too, covered his eyes, that they might not meet those of the deadly thing which now crept up along towards him, hissing with its spittley tongue and rattling with its dull red and dull black scales, whipping its thicky blunt tail so as to make a sound … all this, chiefly to affright the intended victim to ope his eyes: then would the basilisk fix him with his pop-eyes and all-penetrating gaze and lo! what once had been a living man of blood and flesh were now a man-like figure, all of stone!

Terrapetra!

Vergil, it had not seen; he, remembering the wise old saw of the Second Emperor, festina lente, slowly hasten, with lentorous stealth picked up a large flat rock (not knowing, even, what he might encover underneath: the creature’s whelp? an alacrand, or scorpio, an asp?), and moving with deliberate haste on tipty-toes, dashed it flat down upon the monster and at once jumped upon the rock and trad with all his might and e’en daunced upon it. “It is safe to look now,” then said he.

Caniacus uncovered his eyes, saw the ugly taloned claws and stumpty tail give their last quiver. Bracing himself with hands prest flat upon the rocky walls of the clift, he rose him up, he stepped forward, he with one sweeping geste removed his mask! his face was pale, unblemished but was pale, he embraced Vergil with both his arms, and pressing close to him, kissed him on the mouth. A second’s work it was, he stepped the half-pace back, drew down his mask, and went forward into the open and gat upon his horse. A light-bodied steed it was, with slender and smooth legs; quite some different from the heavier, shag-footed horses of Europe. Vergil followed suit.

The path was almost wide enough now to be called a road, there were cart-tracks upon it, and so, somehow, they were riding side by side. Vergil turned his head: no one else. Ahead, too, all was empty. Caniacus, reading his movements and perhaps his mind, said, “We shall not see them again. That’s well.” Pressing with a swift and slight movement some fingers against the thin slit in his mask, he leaned a bit to one side, and spat. His voice somedel bit husky; Vergil had not heard him say so many words the whole journey long, so far. Wondered (Vergil), was his voice by nature husky? was it some emotion of the moment? and, for that matter, was his skin naturally pale? was it so by absence of the sun alone? was it pale because his natal color had fled from fear of the basilisk? One might think very much of these matters, but to what end? to what end?

There was a certain sort of person, he or she (more often she, but perhaps not very much more), who, not content to ask a question which was no concern of their’s to ask, would, getting no answer, ask it yet again. Again. Himself, he thought the red-hot bridle and the red-hot bit not too harsh for the mouth of such a one.

Himself, he would not even ask once.

Coming to a rise in the road: before them lay a small city, with a castellated wall. Pointing to it with the light stick with which he only sometimes lightly touched his horse, “The journey,” said Caniacus, “begins here.” Only here? thought Vergil. Up to here, then, he thought, was nil.

Vergil had paused to answer a townsman’s light comment about the clemency of the weather, and took advantage of having the man’s ear to ask the way to the yard of Bodmi the cooper. “Bodmi the cooper,” the man repeated, had begun to gesture with mouth open to say more, had stopped with the next word unsaid, and slightly enclined his head to a young man who had slowed his step. “Bodmi the cooper?” the young man repeated the words, this was (Vergil noted) the third repetition of the name in almost as many seconds. Well, three was, according to the mathematicians, an especially auspicious number: containing, or consisting of, as it did, the first odd plus the first even number.

“Please to come with me, me ser,” and with that the fellow started off, but still he gazed at Vergil, as one perhaps slightly hopeful of a question being answered which had, however, not been asked. This look almost at once faded away. The stripling was well set-up, and dark-eyed with emphatic dark brows and clear skin; however he did not return Vergil’s polite smile. There had been something abstracted, so it seemed, in his expression; almost intent upon waiting for something, expectant the expression as (the phrase came again to Vergil) that of an athlete waiting under the echoing portico for the sound of the trumpet. But, in a moment, seeing that Vergil was indeed coming along with him, the lad turned his face full forward. The trumpet had not sounded. There did not seem to be anything about Vergil in particular which was displeasing to him, and he had, after all, volunteered to be his guide, so there was likely nothing bothersome about his destination either. Of what had the youngling’s look reminded him? Memory for once was instantly obliged to reply: it was the look of a prisoner, who, hearing the sounds of footfall, turns his head, for one brief moment looks through the bars with well-controlled hope on him who walks along, free; and with that short glimpse sees that the one who walks has no message of freedom for him, and — still controlled — turns away his face, and looks at him no more.

Once only Vergil spoke, saying, “It is kind of you to show me the way.” And the young fellow made sole answer in a level sound which was either yea or nay, or neither nay nor yea. Forward they went, the two of them, making their tread upon the uneven paving stones with here and there a spur of grass atween them, and neither spoke more word.

Presently they came to a door in a wall, rather larger than most such, and (Vergil thought) a cooper would need a larger door or gateway than might be required by someone making articles smaller or at any rate narrower than the largest vat or barrel; in they went. A pleasant smell of fresh-cut seasoned wood there was in the yard directly open to the gate, where a man somedel beyond the middle-years of life sat shaving a splint. “Uncle Bodmi, this gentleman wanted you,” the boy said, and, even as the cooper answered with a “Good for you, Rustus,” directly Rustus took his leave. As, plainly, no thanks were desired from Vergil, he offered none.

Bodmi the cooper had, clearly, been shaving splints for many years, one did not take up such a craft in middle life, and his hands continued working on, on, as he gave Vergil a look of polite enquiry. “Master Bodmi, the man Benninaly,” the cooper nodded fairly rapidly, it was clear that no explanation about “the man Benninaly,” introduced by Caniacus, was at all needed; “sent me to see you about getting ‘a couple pair barrels’ for —”

“— for a caravan, yes, me ser: they would be like those setting over there in yan corner, as I’ve yet to repair, with one side concave somewhat so as to set more conveniently again the side of a caravan-beast; but them as I indicate are for the asses to carry the wine-must from the pressing-vat to the vintner’s cellar; and you would be wanting them some size larger, of course.” Vergil nodded his agreement, and for a while they discussed the size somewhat larger, and the kind of wood, and the price to be paid, and when it was to be paid; and … and then they became silent. In such a moment, in one’s boyhood, the custom was to say Zeus Prime, and so, not having said it in years, one said it now. Bodmi repeated the words under his breathy looked at his work with the splint (stave, some called it), seemed satisfied, set it down on a pile, took up another and began to shave it. Without looking up at Vergil, he said, “That lad is one of my brother’s boys, Rustus you see, me ser …”

Vergil nodded, and some comment seeming indicated, said, “An obliging and a comely lad.”

The cooper gave a sound between a gasp and a sigh, and a spasm seemed to take his face for a moment. “That’s the dreaded part of it all,” said he. Almost at once he added, “It is a terrible thing, me ser, to be the Father of man-twins!” His ser said nothing, he knew not what to say; so after a few seconds wait, said he, in a murmur, “Tell me …”

“Ah, ser! what is there to tell? By your way of speech I observe you to be a man of much schooling, and therefore you must know, that such is the doing of immortal Jove … ‘Zeus’ you may call him, Ser … and all of it comes about a cause of that lass Leda … ”

Light, after a fashion, came to Vergil. “Castor and Pollux!” he exclaimed.

“ ‘Castor and Pollux’, just so, Ser. Different ways is the story told by unlearned people, but we here in this long land and wide, we have the right telling of it. Leda, she was taken by Jove in the form of a swan, for the gods and goddesses may semble what forms they will. Aye, and out of one egg came Elen, twice a princess and twice a queen —” There were most certainly more than merely several forms of the story, but Vergil forebore to mention that: for one he did not desire particularly that Bodmi should think him unlearned, and for another he did not wish to distract the man in his telling of his own story — and one which Vergil had never heard before — “— twice a queen,” Bodmi went on; “and from out the other egg came the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, twin brothers they were born, clasping one another in their arms; such was their affection from the moment of birth, a rare sort of birth it was: and the shells, I means the broken-open halves of them one shell, they lies a treasure somewhere in the adyt of a temple, I believes. But I doesn’t of right know where.”

Vergil believed that the man believed, and Vergil was willing enough to know (or, at any rate, to believe) that halves of some huge eggs indeed were lying as treasures in the inner shrine of a temple somewhere, it might be anywhere, one could not be sure: but one could for sure be sure that the huge eggs had never come from within the body of any human woman: many names had that great island where lived the great bird whence issued such great egg, greater by far than any mere estridge egg: one had to make a navigation far down “the bluffs and courses of Azania,” fragrant with frankincense, past solitary stinking Zelya-Zayla, past the courting-places of the oliphaunt, and the Region called Agysimbia where the monoceroses assemble for their balloting; and farther down and farther south than that, almost an inhuman distance for an ordinary vessel to make its way — and perhaps no ordinary vessel indeed ever had made it — Hanno’s, yes … Huldah’s, yes — several names that great red island had, such as Camaracada, Phebolia, Cernea, Meruthias and Maddergaunt, Menuthia, Ophir, and the Great Red Island of the Moon: perhaps others yet to him unknow: and Marius the Tyrian had claimed it was no mere island but a continent, and a note to the Aristotle reported that it roamed with huge wild dogs striped like the Horses of the Sun … which all added together might make testimony that the place existed: testimony … certainly it was not proof … great names aside: perhaps it was not even evidence …

While he had been yet thinking of this aspect of the matter, and allowing his mind a bit to wander, as one gathering off of thorn-bushes the wool of wild muttons not beherded for the fleecing; the cooper, Bodmi, had been speaking again; and so Vergil, off gathering his wool at the ends of the world, had missed something of what had been said, so was brought up short, and quite in much confusion, by what the man Bodmi was saying now: “ … and so one of the twain must go and be a leper … ” What! What!

Bodmi, as much, perhaps, surprised by his customer’s surprise, broke off what he had been saying, almost droning; sate slightly leaning forward on his banc, one end of the splint he was holding atween his feet, and yet his hands went on with their work, went on, went on, the thin shavings falling upon his shoes: man must do his work though the heavens gin fall: perhaps after all the heavens will not continue falling, but man must continue working, all the same.

“Bodmi,” Vergil began.

“Bodmi: You must have patience with me, now, you won’t forget that I am a foreigner for all that we are both under the rule of Rome: I come from a far-off land …” — Bodmi nodded — “… and though you are kind enough to call me learned, still no man can have learned everything.” — Bodmi nodded — “Tell me then, though I don’t wish to cause you pain: why is it that ‘one of the twins must go and be a leper,’ why, Bodmi, why?”

And so the man began again, though this time, the current of his mind and thoughts having been interrupted, and it being necessary to accept that Vergil did not know everything about the matter, he went on without his previous fluency: broken, halting, slowly, as one who endeavors to explain to a child something which the grown man has known so long he has been without the habit of having to explain it.

It was because of the dishonor of, one might say, the ravage, worked on Leda, king’s daughter though she was: not that it wasn’t an honor for a mortal to serve the god, any mortal, any god; if a goddess wanted pleasure of a man, might she take it, too, as Aurora did of Tithonius. But why hadn’t immortal Jove (“Zeus” many call him) assumed, or, if it weren’t assumed, why hadn’t he appeared to Leda in his shape as a man, and courted her as any suitor? or if she needed be tooken saunce consent: again: why not as a man, why! ser! it must have been a shocking thing! forced by a swan! though folk talk of swans as lovely, graceful things, still, they be main powerful brutes, ‘tis said swan can break a man’s leg with the force of its wing! and no more to be beat off, swan, than avoid Nemesis — some say it were Nemesis, not Jove; some say, Jove be Nemesis. Eh! and so therefore thus the reason why one of all man-twins born here syne then had to go and be a leper …

… and still, all through the telling of this dire tale, the sweet scent of the cooping-wood, newly cut, newly sawn, freshly shaved, was fragrant on the air: no slow sad clamor of the leper’s bell and no noisome feculence of the leper’s olor defiled the dry still air …

… Was it not now clear? It was not … well … did the stranger from a far-off land not see how merciful a thing it was that both twins did not always suffer the curse? and, above all things, wasn’t it a most majestic way for one brother to show his love for the other and go away and take all the woe and affliction unto himself? for, sure, twasn’t always that was the way of it; sometimes each refused and the curse took both of them; among very common folk they usually tossed a coin to decide the matter; in far-off times (so one heard, but one heard it often), the child’s father decided: let him decide howas he might, hadn’t the father life and death over his own childer? but that wasn’t the way it was done nowaday.

“How is it done nowaday?” for Vergil could think of no way that such a thing should be done. Could be done. So, … therefore: he asked.

“Nowaday … nowaday?” The man was almost maddingly slow. “Ah, my sire, nowaday. When the brother decide. Whichever one decide. When he conceive to himself in his own mind. And he thinks and he saith unto his own heart, ‘Let me be the one to go and do it, an I shall spare my brother, whom I love, even he.’ Then he go off whatever the time of night or day, go he off unto the Temple of the Dioscuri, of them twain Castor and Pollux, whom Jove hath blessed and set them as stars in the starry sky, and yet of a wonder sometime they come down to yearth again, or, exactly, down to sea; and folk at sea may observe them and several have report it to me, that Castor and Pollux do be seen at play about the mast and spar of a sailing vessel as blazing lights —”

Cried Vergil, “The corposants!”

“The corposants. As some call them. And whichever twin o’ this twain hath first decided, off he go to the Temple of the Dioscuri, the twin sons of Zeus under his other name of Dios; well, and he pray his prayer and he take off his knife-belt and his knife and he place knife and belt atween them twain statues. And so it be so, my sire and me ser …”

Vergil was silent. By and by the cooper, Bodmi the barrel-maker ended the silence. “Them couple pair kags shall be ready this day week and one. In ane octave they shall be ready. Aye,” he said, almost without a pause, “a tragical thing for a man to be the father of man-twins,” and all the while his hands worked on and on, nor had they ever ceased to do so whilst Vergil watched. And when the splints, the staves, had all been shaved, then must they be bent, and then must the rigid hoops engirdle them.

Nemesis.

There was no other way.

Very much later that same day, Vergil was speaking with a local elder man of much repute, called Sapient Longinus; that is to say, he himself was having little to say, for he had wanted to talk about twins, not alone of the lad Rustus, but of all well-known twins: of Castor and of Pollux; of the Cabiri Sancti, Axierus and Axiocersus; of Neleus and Peleus exposed at birth to die yet lived to be Co-Kings of Jolcos; Laogonus and Dardanus alike slain by Achilles beside the reedy river of the Trojan shore; and Valdebron and Heldobran in Aspamia; but Longinus was a Master of Leechcraft, and on this he had much to say Perhaps a few people ever sought him out for conversational purposes, and either for this cause or from this effect, Longinus talked long and much. “And as for the yearb called snapdragon or mandragon,” said Longinus, “the yearb y-called snapdragon, Ser Vergil, when you take your plant called snapdragon and moileth it in a mortar or other vessel made from unbeaten gold, nay, what am I a-saying? ah hah hum, in your vessel of unfired gold, as your Theophrast beareth witness, your yearb, ah ah …”

“— called Snapdragon,” Vergil thought he must interrupt or go mad.

Longinus looked at him benignly. “Jest so, Ser Vergil, your —”

“Doctor Longinus …?”

“Ser Vergil …?”

The drawn-out ululations of a passing pedlar of dried fish caused a pause; then: “Doctor Longinus … have you ever heard … you have perhaps heard … if there are twin brothers … is it so, Messer Doctor Longinus, that unless one of them lays down his knife and knife-belt between the statues of Castor and Pollux, both of such man-twins must contract leprosy …?”

Longinus gazed at him without dismay. He tugged at the tuft of long white hair growing from his right ear. “No,” he said.

“ ‘No’? Then no such dire and baneful usage obtains in this land?”

“No, no, Ser Doctor Vergil. Certain not.”

“But … then …” Was the whole story some mad illusion and delusion —

Longinus pulled at the tuft of long white hair growing from his left ear. “Unless, of course,” he said, “they be both born under the sign of the Gemini. In which case, certainly.” And he looked at Vergil with an untroubled look.

Heads down and muffled against the sun and sand; heads down, all day long, a day in no wise different from all other days without any detail save the incessant repetitions of caravan life … with, now that he came to consider it: somewhat less sand, somewhat less gravel, even; only the dust which moved languidly about the animal’s feet as they made their way, step after every step over the land of stone: suddenly from the caravaneers some sound scarcely articulate enough to be called a murmur, some movements too slight even for gestures: a brief inclination of their heads (muffled, their heads, as their voices; they spoke but seldom with their mouths, reluctant to open them and admit heat, sand, dry air, and dust), they moved themselves a bittle in their saddles … even the bells of the beasts sounded, for a moment, a sound just a slight mite different from the usual discordant clatter. Those bells were never meant to be musical; were one to ask another man of the caffile why did their beasts wear bells, be sure they would have answered, To give notice of where the beasts were: did they wander, unsaddled and unbridled and unladen, out of sight: into some declivity, perhaps, not easily visible in this land of stone.

This land of stone! stone white, stone black, stone grey; very rarely now and then some well of water, some tree, some blades of grass. And might not one of the less cheerful philosophers … likely more nor only one … liken this to a long slow journey through life itself?

He put away from him such thoughts. Mayhap the chief purpose of the bells was to break the limitless monotony of the moments, hours, and days. Even if the men did not say so, and even if they did not recognize that it was so …

And, of course, to warn away the daemons. And the jinn.

Notoriously, they hated the sounds of bells. One did not know why.

His head having raised of its own motion (he had hardly even begun to form the thought, I shall now raise my head to see what this may be); his head being raised, then, he moved his eyes along the near and middle distance: nothing. He peered, he scouted, then, across the long horizon line: something. There, faraway (faraway far! who used to say that? Huldah!), faraway something, as it were the peak of a mountain though he knew of no mountain, peak or col, hereabout or thereabout; and there was a something about it which impressed his vision without informing it. Whatsoever … the … the place … must be the reason of … of what?

He had ceased often to ask questions of Beninally or of Caniacus, for Caniacus had the way of answering low in his husky voice, “I know it not;” and Benninaly (recommended by both Caniacus and the elderly Maur who represented Rome in that inland town — Volubilia Caesariensis, it was termed by Roman fiat: the people called Volb — as the best of the caravaneers then about or likely to be about), Benninaly had his own way with questions … usually … he did not answer them.

However. Caniacus was just then not just there; there was a two or a three of the Masked Men in the caffile, and he preferred much to ride with them, exchanging soft syllables … or, likelier: subtle gestures … of their own kenning only. So.

“What place is that, Benninaly?”

A silence.

A surprise.

An answer. “That is the rough place;” rather it seemed a name by the way spoken rather than merely a description. So …

“What is ‘The Rough Place’, Benninaly?”

“We take to the left by the next great rock” was in no way an obvious answer to his question, but he knew that the man Benninaly would not take bother and make effort to speak, who was commonly silent (not that by now they were not all commonly silent and had been so for the endurance of many days), if it were not a thing of some importance, and the hump or peak rising somewhat to the left of the center of the horizon — probably the reason for their taking the next turn left by the great rock — was abound to be connected in some way with The Rough Place.

And neither did Vergil plague his companions with other questions, as, they might be so: “Do we go presently thither?” or, “Do we go past there?” or “Is it, then, a landmark?” And certainly he never, did silence follow the spare questions which he did ask, rankle with such sharp and nudging words, such as, “I asked you a question, do you not desire to answer it?” or, even worse, “Why do you not desire to answer?” Courtesy forevented, and for that matter, so did common sense; for he rather thought that a man or woman of such a cast of mind and behavior was not destined by Fate to live long enough to transverse the desert. And he desired to live that long.

And longer.

Vergil would save his further questions, if he had further questions, for night-tide round the small fire: and if he were to feel too tired to ask them, it was likely that the other would feel too tired to be asked.

If the answer were important, he would be bound to find it out.

“The Rough Place!” As though these journies o’er the land of stone could be smooth!

The order of the caravan. First came the leaders of the caffile, mounted on the best of horses, then came the merchants riding on the best of mules (best in either case referring to capacity for the journey and not for sleek of looks), and then came the sumpter-mules and the shabby pack-horses fated never to plod across another desert but to be sold for slaughter by the knacker’s men; horse-flesh was not bad (the Northishfolk had a disdain again the eating of horses’ flesh but then Northishfolk worshipped horses, or so it was said; however the Hyperboreans — who lived very far north indeed: beyond the very upwell of the North Wind — sacrificed asses to Apollo … did they then farce them into sausages, like the Alpenese?) Thereafter came the camels (there were no cameleopards) and if there were women in the caravan they rode the camels upon a sort of platform enclosed in a small tent; and if there were no women, then let the camels carry less and if a horse foundered, then might the camels carry what the horse had been carrying (be sure, many a silent squabble with signs and gestures, depending on whose horse — or whose camel; but there was precedent and custom in such matters, and the dispute never came to blows: furthermore, who had excess energy for blows?). After that came the soldiers of the rear-guard, mounted as they might be mounted, for each was hired along with his mount. And after them, the folk afoot, too poor to have or to hire any beast, thankful just for the safety of the caravan and knowing that it would never stop nor stay for any illness or weariness of theirs.

And after that, a space, and after that the dog … a dog who seemingly lived on little more than nothing, for few were the scraps which came his way at fooding times … brought along largely because he would sometimes start up a quail lost from its flock-of-passage: at what time see how swift the slings and stones appeared. Or sometimes he might bark or bell and give notice of strangers.

And after the dog, although sometimes alongside the dog, was a man with an ass — not to be sacrificed to Apollo — panniers on the ass, and in the man’s hands a sort of shovel or spade or scoop: to gather up such dried dung as he might find. And did the dung of this caravan, in this intense and fearful heat (though at night: frightful cold), dry fast enow to be used for the same day’s fire? no it did not, what the man chiefly gathered up was the dung of the caravan which had passed last before … did the cur eat of it first, e’en the hungriest cur might not eat it all: how plentifully the camel-beast, with ever-arrogant face lifting up his tail, might plash the place with its abundant scat and skiting; also the horses and the mules. The experienced carvaneer could easily read these droppings, moist or sere: and the tale of the apt Athenian who had deduced that “there had passed by a caravan of such and such a number of beasts and of such and such a sort … as follows … inclusive a gravid she-camel laded with barley and oil of sinsamin, et cœtera, et cœtera” … lo, this tale was known even to the very boys not yet old enough to pay the wee fee of two stivers at the baths.

But even so, passing by and through these pits and piles and mounds of stone as bright (as dull) as so much molten wax coagulated into odd, grotesque, and phantastic shape, the man with the, as it might be, spade, was at some pains to gather up some, at least, fresh droppings: for dried dung made a smokeless fire, fairly smokeless, and, although one might not have thought so, this was not always desired. Sometimes, as of these times, what was wanted was a smoke and a bitter smoke, and a rank one, curling low. It kept the flies away (flies? in the stony desert? Oh yes! large and small and black or greeny-gold); and, it was believed (so why should it be doubted?), also it kept off and away things which might come a-prowl, at least until the time of the glimmering false dawn, who knows and who might count or reckon the ephrits or ghouls or the larvæ of the unsettled and indignant dead, such as shadows of those who might have died in the desert, and no caffile stopped for to aid them, or even to cast a few handsful of dust upon their corses as a sort of pro forma or pseudo-burial.

Not enough smoke. Benninaly commonly signed and gestured at the nighttime halt. “This is the land of the basilisk and the cockatrisk; more smoke, there, you. More smoke.” Even though the dog growled not (save, a-times, a grumble and a mumble in his sleep) and the capon they had brought along with them to smell out such things seemed to notice nought: More smoke there, you. More smoke.

Life had taught Vergil many things, some of them of easy acquisition, some recondite or arcane, even occulted, occluded; some of them scarcely to be capable of description. Some, however, were plain enough so that when Vergil asked a second time, What is ‘The Rough Place,’ Benninaly, his lips did not move, nor his throat, merely he had asked it in his heart. And, after a long pause, Benninaly, nothing showing of his face but his unmuffled eyes, reddled with the dust, had said, “We take to the left by the next great rock.” He did not add the word road, for it was mostly only a road by rhetorical device, as the Parthians saying robber of wheat-straw when they meant amber, or as the Northismen said orme-path for the muckle sea in which, twas said, the great sea-orme splashed and spouted, ere it crushed the coracles atween its fangs. Yet twas not in its entirety a device rhetorical to call it a road. Though underneath the thin dust seemed to lie now one immensity of solid stone, yet upon that stony surface lay a sort of a faint line, not quite a track: but certainly a trace. And though he could not perceive it now beneath, as he was riding over it, yet, given a rise for them to pass across, he could see it both before and behind, though very faint; reminding him faintly of a stretch-mark upon the body of a woman who has born child.

One day in the Principality of Poyle (some called it Apulia) an older man had taken him upon a certain mountain and pointed out to him far-off lines, faint to be sure, and only to be seen when the light was at the proper angle. “Them be the rows where the Oldern People cultivetted their crop, young scholard,” said he.

“The lines of their plowing?”

And the older man had repeated, “… plowing …” in a certain tone a bit sardonic; then said he, “The yearth be like a woman, for once man have had she, she be never the same again no more.” Adding, after a moment, that he wasn’t sure that “the Oldern People” had had plows. And afterwards, the slow trip down, he had told Vergil to take abundance of thistle for a sign that men had once builded there. And he showed him the fairly rare plant called virginsbreath as sign that men had never builded there, nor so much as delved the ground with digging-tool. And a few things more had he told him about plants and about stones — addlewort, a sure cure for scattered wits, and bloodstone, which would stanch a bleeding wound; and of trees never to be strick by lightning, and weather-signs and things safe to do and things not safe to do, and how to do them and how to do them not. And when, as regards times and seasons and hours. Almost, Vergil had expected to hear him mutter, that Lord Saturn was e’er a malign stellation.

But he did not.

There was, however, save for that sole and faintly suggestive line, no sign that man had ever digged, delved, or builded here; or that even it had ever been a place of verdant virgin loveliness.

By and by, pace never slowing, never quickening, they came to a great grey rock a-sticking up above the desert floor like the standing-stone to mark a grant’s grave: a Titan or a Cyclops, perhaps: and here the line turned left. Here the line turned left, but, save for the gant grey rock behind them now and the was it a low mountain rather nearer or a high mountain yet very far away? — save for these two extrusions from the surface of this world of stone, there was no other difference that Vergil could see. A huge large lump of rock as limp and yellow as a pudding was twin to the one he had seen yesterday, and the heap of rock the size of a house like some great coagulated mass of mulberry juice was twin to the one he had seen the day before yesterday. — was it the day before yesterday? or the day before that? He was no longer sure … of that, of anything else … then the way began to sink slowly into some vast declivity, and the great grey rock behind and the hill (was it a hill?) before them in the distance shimmering with heat alike went out of sight. Vergil adjusted the length of blue and white checked cloth so that it enclosed most of his face, and slumped yet once more into his saddle. Tingitayne slumbering in the sun, Volu-whatever it was, the thick forests of Corsica, even teeming Naples and the once ever-present in his mind and eagerly longed for elaboratory, Yellow Rome straddling the yellow Tiber, the Land of the Lotus-eaters, and even, even “the Region called Huldah” and the battle on the sea, all seemed to subside into a formless and not so much dull as dulled confusion like some dream in which he was dim aware yet uninvolved; of two things alone was he as well aware as if he were wide awake: one was the clear blue eyes of the Vestal Virgin and the lightening stroke touch of her as he held briefly, so briefly — her arm; and the other was of Huldah herself as he looked down into her face and heard her voice, I shall build for you a fire (as though she had not already availed for him a fire from which he got a joyful heat).

I pardon that man! what? what?

“I pardon that man,” someone was saying next to him, and it was no dream, no dream alone, nor was it either a waking dream: Caniacus was riding alongside of him, and — “I pardon that man,” was saying — “had one man slain my Mother and ravished my sister, and had he later, my rage and my desire to flay him slowly still unachieved, still, had he had to come and live here … here … in this one such place … yet: I pardon that man.”

More than half dazed, the immense fatigue and pain accumulating during this journey having subdued his mind, and that aching sleep or drowse into which he had fallen, still bemusing it, Vergil looked up, but the face of Caniacus was masked as usual so he turned his head and looked whither Caniacus was looking. A vast red eroded rock lay before them, how long had he sat lolling and dozing in his saddle-seat? many cracks and caves were in that hill of solid yet eroded stone: they had come up from that sunken place, that declivity, and a high and wide red rock half as large as some small city, as though its virons had been walled and yet its walls thrown down, as though it were a castello of wide extent slumping from age and from immemorial decay, this lay before him now to see: no dream.

And from the cracks and flaws and fissure and ravines, from the caves and from the holes, down from the shelves and cliphts, streamed slowly a muckle many men; each, as he walked slowly … limped … crawled … hobbled … hopped … climbed … each slowly unwinding from round his head and face a concealing head-cloth: how slow, how reluctant, how without (it seemed) will to object, but yielding to the necessity of their condition, like so many men before the block or platform for auction in a slave market, in some mart of slaves, those who submitted to whatever fate had made them property were stripping off their clothes, surrendering a last pretense to privacy and private status and private will: that the prospective buyers, even the pretensive and pretending public, might see their nakedness, their shame, their once proud forms reduced to something not entirely human … not entirely at all did these strip and expose themselves, only they revealed their faces.

Merely from this heap, this red and eroded rock a habitation, the habitants descended and exposed their red, eroded faces: pitted, cracked, falling and fallen down the features of what must be their faces, for what else could they be? Hoarse his voice and strained with effort to control its trembling, Vergil whispered, “My body and my god! Caniacus! what men are these? what place is this?”

And the Masked Man who needed never unmask and never (never but once) did reveal his own unblemished face, he, Caniacus made answer: “You who saved my life: save it never not from such a destiny and fate as this. These are the men who in order to save their own brother-twins from the preordination that one of each pair must accept leprosy else must each and both contract it: these are the brothers who chose to accept in order to save everyone of them his twin, they have come here to endure their lives as lepers, and their brothers of the salvation send them clothes and victuals and all needed needful things, and sometimes things unneedful; it is we the caravans and cafflemen who bring all such to them. This is called The Rough Place …”

It was not until the next day that he was able to follow Benninaly up a winding flight of steps, each step deeply worn in the center from passing feet and some sort of laithly line a-pressed upon the wall nighest each step, worn place in the step and uncleany line upon the wall of the great rough rock where the habitants pressed with their hands (or what was left of them) to steady them as they clumb and clambered, doubtless often pausing to gasp a breath: the vatic voice it seemed to murmur aside his ear-holes something of what dread hands and what dread feet. Benninaly he had seen lately often times carrying packs and bails and articles padded and wrapped in sacking; it must have been hither, out of sight from the shelf of solid rock and shifting scree, that Benninaly had continued to hump them up, stooping forward but stopping not. And now he had gestured Vergil to follow him on one last such trip, and Vergil followed after him. He did not, his feet being shod, disdain to step into the hollows of the steps, but sooner he should have fallen to his death with raw head and bloodied bones than clutch support from the wallside where appeared unctuous line and smear.

At length Benninaly brought him to a large cave not yet occupied, in fact never occupied but prepared for occupancy, with rugs upon the rock floor and tappetties of broider-work upon the rock walls, and furniture-backs of embossed leather: all of the quality as used by the well-to-do. Even, in niches and on shelves, there were books as well, and images of animals. The main several rooms were built about and ventilated by an air-shaft fashioned by largening a natural and deep fissure. Even there was a kitchen with its own air “pipe”: and behind them all, rooms of larder. The caffile had brought stores of dried foodstuffs, with oil and wine and charcoal… “It seems a good place to live,” Vergil said, reluctantly, “— if one must live here, that is. If this is life.”

“Ah, the vanity and uselessness!” cried Benninaly, laying aside his silence as a garment for the nonce not needed. “And besides,” in a lower and unemotional tone, “they soon enough tires of it and ventually they finds an old and greasy hole to slink into and be snug enough … usually.” And added that somewhere in this rocky warren was the dwelling place of one who had been a paramount prince, said still to keep a kind of court and was waited on by some whose kin-family had all died out and no one to send them victuals or ought, or not enough. “But he never show himself … at anyway, never to us. There!” He finished setting up a bronze stand holding many lamps. “Tis fit for — for him who’ll come here. By the caffila in ane year’s time, I ‘xpect … if not before. When his woe can be no more concealed. Eh? Nay. No wives allowed here, unless they be also leprous stricken by such a fate as strikes without the twinly curse, absit omen.” Spet a thrice time, beckoned, left. Vergil followed after.

One day more unlading, then they mounted each man his animal and left that rusty hell.

The congregants had made but not much sound, the travel-company being there, but as the caffila turned long-around to go, there rose from behind them at the foot of the Rough Place, thin at first and scarce to be told from the scree and cry of some haunting bird, then louder and more deep, such a sound and wail of despair and lamentace as he had never heard at any funeral nor any place of pestilence or death judicial. Perhaps some dim thought from his brief day as an advocate at law came now into his mind, that it was the sentence of death which was executed — the man himself was killed.

And it was to this place, life-in-death or death-in-life, that one day must come one nephew of Bodmi the cooper.

One … depending on which loved the other more … or, if not such love?

Both.

Lamentace.