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

I Yellow Rome; or, Vergil and the Vestal Virgin

In Rome Yellow Rome! Yellow Rome! — a man was being led to public execution. Aristocrats might be quietly and secretly slain, but this was no aristocrat. Some common thug, a street-robber by night, or a house-breaker, thick and shambling, ill-made and ill-looking, he had killed a cobbler’s apprentice for a stiver — the smallest coin. The lictor went first, carrying the bundle of rods which might be used to flog the criminal (but wouldn’t) wrapped around the single-edged axe which might be used to cut off his head (but wouldn’t). It was a symbol only, and the lictor looked bored and disdainful. Next, arms bound behind him at the elbows, legs hobbled with ropes, the felon stumbled, followed, between two files of soldiers. Grasping him fast by a noose round his neck came the common hangman: one might have had them change clothes and places and scarcely told them apart.

“Well, ‘one Vergil, a natural of Rome, and no mere denizen,’ do they have anything to do with this in Naples … I say nothing of the Bail of Brundisy …?” The wauling was Quint’s, to be heard above the clamor of the throng. There was in his voice some light and affectionate taunt that Vergil had not been born in the City itself but nearer to where he now lived by the great Voe of Naples than to Yellow Rome itself. The so-well-paved Appian Way went straight and strait between Yellow Rome and Brundisy, but there branched off a branch of it for Naples. A young mage, not yet very well-established in his profession (or in public fame) did well to travel now and then to the Imperial capital, and gently press the thought that there was one (himself) useful to be friend of a friend (Quint) with a friend (the rich Etruscan) to the court Imperial, to the Oliphaunt Throne … not to be lightly named: whomsoever sate upon it.

Vergil pressed his bearded lips to Quint’s smooth ear-hole, said loud and sharp, throngs and thugs, all right: but neither one was anything to this particular display.

The throng howled, as the throng always would.

“Chin up, cock! Brave it out!”

“They’ll stretch that short neck!”

“Hang the hangman! A louse for the hangman!”

“You’ll scrag no more widdies nor prentices!”

“Up tails all!”

“Die! For a lousy stiver? Die! Die with a hard club, die!”

The wretch’s face changed expression, but it changed slowly: now he had the sly look of a pig who had broken into a pea-patch, now he was pleased at the attention, now he scowled as some thick and gross insult struck home, now he looked desperately from side to side; always the hangy forced him on, as close to him as the butcher to the ox. All this passed before Vergil and before Quint, and they stood and looked on; Vergil was Quint’s guest, and Quint was the guest of Someone Important in Yellow Rome. Even a wizard, even if he did not want wealth, was willing to draw near to wealth, if he were young and new and scarcely known. And near to power, even if that sort of power he did not much want. Soon enough this procession would pass by, and then they would cross, cross safely on foot, for in Rome (and in Rome alone) no wheeled vehicle might pass through the streets in the day time.

In that case, in a sudden silence, what hooves were those, and what wheels? Quint, that Roman of Romans, knew at once: and would tell Vergil soon enough … if he did not ask. The mob broke into noise again, its inalienable right, and though it was still shouting, it seemed to be shouting the same something, though not all at the same time. Half the yammering throng faced the nice little wagonette and its nice little mule, and the woman, half-veiled, who was in it. Her small slave-girl holding the sea-silk sunshade or ombello was beginning to be inattentive a bit and a bit the sunshade slipped.

And half the vulgus faced the procession and shouted and gestured, pointing, pointing —

The lictor had strode on, eyes down; and in fact by then he had gotten ahead of the procession and seemed rather to have forgotten it: lictors, too, have their secret private thoughts.

The soldiery slogged along in its fixed rhythms, paying no attention at all to the thing its ranks confined; probably thinking of the evening’s rations: bread, salt, garlic, parsley (growing in ruins and waste places, rank as weeds), wine, perhaps a bit of dried meat or a bit of dried fish — tunny harpooned in the bloody trapping pens, for instance, “from the rise of the rainy Pleiades[1] to the setting of bright Arcturus” — and the anticipated meal with its perhaps, treat, meant far more to them than any execution of a sentence of death. Death, to an old soldier, was more boring than exciting.

The hangman, whose attention was so suddenly besought by many cries and movements, pressed on. Vergil noticed that the hangman pressed on.

What Quint, with his blood shot eyes, pale thin face and dark thin hair, noticed, was not known to Vergil.

Who made up the mob rabbling and howling? The meanest class of citizenry, whose leather badges and SQPR[2] stamped in gilt served to prove citizenship, made up the largest part. They had no money to buy anything and no mind to read anything, so a procession to the gibbet was an absolute gift for them.

Men, too, from all the peoples of the Empery were there: fair Franks with long hair and Celts with short and Egyptians with none; pale Berbars from the Solitudes of Syrtica and of As’hara, sand as high as mountains and hills of solid stone pierced with holes where the Troglodytes live; dark Numidians who had seen the Sphynges flying in their thousands to drink of the waters at the sources of the Nile — of all other waters drink they not, of all the waters of Ægypt drink they not — and Gauls with bearded chops, the wailing of whose dead fills the islands and the highlands of the misty great green darkling Sea of Atlantis between shore to shore of whose vasty waters might no bird fly; and Æthiops with emeraulds in their ears. Many indeed could be seen (though not so many) to be aliens from outside the Empery, and even the Œconomium.

Vergil was indifferent at seeing or smelling the so-called Foul or Infamous Crafts such as the knackers and the carriers of dogs’ dung for the tanneries, for he still had the muck of the farmyards and the fernbrooks on his legs and feet, and the odors of dead beasts and dung-heaps were fresher to his nose-holes than those of ambergrise and nard.

And here and there, as so often of late (and some said, more and more often, and they darkly mumbled their gums about laws graven on the twelve Iron Tablets about the artificial production of monsters and other omens … no one of course was ever able to find such laws) here and there through the mass went wandering a satyr or a centaur of, say, the size of a goat-kid. There were no weanling Lapiths to be seen, however; and who would know one, had there been? memory of one Ciuco, a night-soil-man little wittier than a wittold, in Vergil’s home-hamlet in the Bail of Brundusy, who used to stop any one too purblind to avoid him, and confide, “My granddam, now, she seen a Laypith, she seen ‘un ‘ith a horn in the muddle o’ his forrid: which be the reason, she bein’ then six months gorn wi’ child, that I has six finger on my left ‘and.” What the logical, or even the illogical connection between the two things was, no one was ever able to conjecture; certainly all local priests denied that ever there had been stories — “myths”, you might call them — of monoceroid Lapiths; and neither was anyone, lay or cleric, able to credit Cluco’s being able to invent such a story. But, however invented, tell it he did, lustrum after lustrum, decade after decade, to whomever could not trot faster than he could, and who — usually was glad or let us say willing enough to avoid the presence of Ciuco, polydactylous or not (for rhododactylos assuredly he wasn’t, and neither was he rosy-scented) by the dole of a very small coin or a not-quite-so-small chunk of bread: at which see Ciuco become unseen; this may or may not have been more profitable than the night-soil business, but was certainly much easier.

When one mentions the size of a goat-kid one refers to the centaurs, for the satyrs were man-sized, and very near each creature was someone (invariably a shill) mentioning confidentially the name of the thaumaturge who’d made it, in some such words as, “That ‘un’s the work of that same Septimus as keeps his crib atween Apollo’s Court and the Steps of Woe.” — why would anyone want a confected satyr or centaur? perhaps one of those newly-rich who kept a baby oliphaunt in his atrium might want one, and for the same reason: show.

Thieves were there in the vulgus; as they could not steal the golden spikes from the ridge-poles of the temples and the other public buildings, they cut the thongs of purses with their knives so much sharper than mere razors; sellers of snacks were there, for many a man had neither cook nor kitchen to dress a meal of victuals, and if he turned aside into a cheap eating-place he might miss something: but whether a rabbleman stewed hog-palates in vinegar or cut the thongs of purses or did, as was the right of citizens, nothing at all, something there had now changed and perhaps everything had changed. But the hangman wished to behave as though nothing had happened. The lictor, whose attention was now besought by many cries and movements, strode on, eyes down, and in fact by now he had gotten away ahead of the procession. The hangman pressed on. A bit the woman’s sunshade slipped and a bit the veil, revealing to Vergil a face of such extraordinary loveliness and purity that his breath was stopped.

The word coming up from the populus now was pardon: the hangman would not stop for it; why should he? He received the deadman’s clothes as a perquisite even if they were rags (and they were not always rags) they had their value and their price as ingredients of the Black Rite; he got to receive everything which was, or at the time of imprisonment had been, on the body of the dead-man-to-be; and he also received his fee for making the liveman’s body dead by pushing it off the ladder at the gibbet and at once leaping onto his shoulders and jumping up and down on them — thus assuring that the caitiff’s neck must break if it had not already broken by the drop. Of these benefits the hangman would receive none at all in case of pardon, so why should he stop for it? and lastly, it would deprive him of all the pleasure of the death scene: the hangman, howl the mob as it would, would not stop. And who might stop him?

(The lictor, fasces bundled into his arms, was by now very far ahead, stooped, aloof, deep in thought: of what, who could say, perhaps that time there was, ere Roma’s woes began … perhaps not.)

Who else? Himself, the August Caesar? where was he? not here. From what other place, then, did the musty multitude seem to think that help might arrive. The woman in the wagonette commenced to rise, in a slow and flowing motion like an hieratical dancer: though, perhaps actually not: only … somehow … it seemed so. The brute would not see her. Vergil caught her eye, and, again, that ambiguous impression, that impression deep yet perhaps false. Had he caught her eye at all? Erect, like a statue of the golden age, she seemed.

The lictor, perhaps grown somewhat aware of the hideous shriek and hum from that mass of men — here and there some women: not trulls alone: vendors of fragrant citrons, of pickled samphire for relish, of sieves and baskets in many sizes, fishwives going down to the river to renew supplies of mullet and sardines and dogfish with double-lobed livers; others — the lictor turned: at once saw all. Quint, keenly enjoying everything, was telling Vergil nothing; scarcely he raised a thin and hairy hand to brush the ever-deliquescent ointment from his bleary eyes — his physicians were generally agreed twas from an excess of some humor, but they never yet agreed on which humor, though there were not many, but prescribed this salve or that; they might as well, Vergil thought, have told him to graze grass like an ox … whoever saw a blear-eyes ox? And, Ow! shouted the throng, and Yow! shouted the throng. “Pardon! Pardon!” it howled. And, ever and again, “Up-tails, all!” and “A louse for the hangman!”

The hangman may or may not have gotten a louse (close-pressed in that stinking swarm, it would have been no surprise if he had) but what he very quickly got was the lictor at his side; and the lictor said to him, more in astonishment than anger, “where are you going, turd of a toad? Don’t you see the high-born Virgin lady? Stop! — Or I’ll let the populus have you, and may they eat your arse sans salt.”

The Vestal meanwhile remained standing in her wagon all but motionless, the very image of aristocratic calm and grace. Silence took a while. When things were almost silent, the felon seemed to emerge from his daze. One could almost read — no, one could read — the play of thoughts coursing over across his sword-slashed and much-confused face. Where was he? What was happening? Why had they stopped? Why was everything quiet? Answer: they were arrived and halted at the killing place; any minute now he might have a small and ill-tasting coin thrust into his mouth and feel nothing beneath his feet, and a sharp brief pain in his neck. With a sound like the lowing of a yearling ox he spread his hobbled legs, and pissed.

The swarm went wild with laughter. Only the lictor’s leather and legal face, the vestal’s marmoreal countenance, did not change, for all that her little maid, hand hiding mouth, seemed to whisper in her ear. At length silence was again achieved, and in that silence — though the punks and pogues still rolled their painted eyes and smirked at potential clients — the Vestal rose completely to attention, put out her white arm and hand and in a lovely ringing tone declared, “I pardon that man.” No one word more. And sat down. It had been a completely legal formula, sans emotion. “I divorce you; herewith your dower-fund.” “Slave, thou art henceforth free.” “Bear witness: I sell this horse-stud to Lucas for six solids.” I pardon that man. Not one word more. And sat down.

The crowd went wild again. A soldier in a swift second slashed the bonds about the elbows; another slightly stooped and severed those around the ankles, For a second more the thug gaped. Then he started to run at a stumbling trot. Many hands caught at him: he fought against them. Many cries of, “Not yet, man!”

“Not yet! Thank the holy lady! Go and kiss the Virgin’s foot! Thank her for your life!”

But one might as well have spoken to a pig escaped from the shambles; loose, was he? Then he meant to stay loose. And this meant to flee. For a full minute (so Vergil guessed) the absurd scene continued, the pardoned man butting furiously against the arms and bodies which would have had him first do his duty by giving thanks for that pardon; the crowd all of one mind now (the whores most of all: could it have been they fancied a slight upon that one quality which they universally lacked, and lacked, one might say, almost by definition?), the crowd’s sense of amour propre was seriously offended; while the lictor covered his grim face with his free hand and gazed through his spread and ringless features as though he could not believe his eyes — And then herself the Vestal: something which might have been a mere flicker of rueful amusement passed over her fine face and was in an instant gone (more than Caesar’s wife must a Vestal Virgin be above suspicion, she must be above suspicion even of vulgar emotion). She raised her hand at an angle to her wrist, slightly pushed it away from her; the other hand fluttered the colored leathers on the mule’s neck. The crowd released the fool felon and laughed to hear his running feet; at once made way for the Vestal’s wee carriage, and saluted her with the utmost respect. Did the little maid murmur something, something, anything, with well-practiced and almost motionless lips? did the sea-silk sunshade dip for a second a fraction of an inch in a particular direction? this was not certain.

A mule was not a horse, all horses were hysterical more or less, the most placid old cob was likely to behave like a northish bear-shirt if — if, whatever; this could differ from cob to cob — horse to horse. But mules were mysterious creatures, that this one was a small mule did not make its potential mystery any less small; probably it had been bred for the sevice it now performed out of a pony-mare by one of the jack-donkeys of the northern lands, lighter in build and in size than the asses of the south, and brought to Rome or its countryside for just this purpose. And in view of what was about to happen it was necessary to consider also the probable history of the street-bed. Quint might know just when the street had last been paved, Vergil not. But in some short moment he envisioned the scene — a man engaged in ramming the gravel turning aside for a moment to go piss or to get a drink of water, another workman not waiting for his return or not even considering the matter of had the gravel been rammed sufficiently — and it had not — the second workman perhaps, then, mechanically setting down the pave-stone; the first workman returning and, likely even without so much as a shrug, picking up his implement and moving a few feet to commence the work of ramming a bit further on. And then the passing of the years, the rains, many years of rains, the not-fully-packed gravel shifting, moving; then perhaps the fall of a heavier stone from an improperly-laden wagon passing by in the torchlight: the paving stone sustaining a crack not observed in the night, more years passing, the incessant traffic at last splitting the pave-stone. Somehow the inspectors had missed it … or, their reports ignored … the night traffic cared nothing for any bad spot which their heavy wagons could lurch across … had, anyway, the drivers and teamsters, no time to spend on complaints: into the city by nightfall, in-cargo laded off, out-cargo laded on, out of the city by nightrise: so.

A horse, had it felt a sunken spot behind it … if it felt it … would either have strained forward or strained backward. An ass would have stopped. And stayed. Time to put something under the wheel. But the mule, even the small, supposedly sophisticated mule, reacted entirely differently. The mule was, after all, the Symbol of Unbridled Lust — though why this should be so when the mule was sterile, was hard to say; the mule (this particular one) had somehow missed the sunken spot. Now it somehow backed up a trifle. Now it felt it. The wheel not right! The wheel sinking! The entire universe of a sudden gone awry! The mule at once went insane: the mule screamed, rolled back its eyes, laid down its ears, made as if to stand on its hind legs — on its forelegs — to lie down and roll over — it was at once evident that there was nothing the mule might not do.

In a second the little slave girl had jumped out of the car to safety, held up her wrists, thin as carrots, at an absolutely useless angle for the Vestal to lean upon. The crowd gave a great groan. It was no slight thing to witness the fall of a Vestal Virgin. Should she be killed, for a space of time at least there would be only five “sisters” to hold safe the hearths of Rome … who knew what might happen during such an interregnum. Many in the crowd believed that seeing such a sight obliged one to fast; many even believed that whoso saw such would — must! — within the year surely die. From the crowd a great groan. Many rushed forward … Vergil amongst them … some seized the mule … some seized the car … some seized hold of their knives, such as each man wore at his belt, or was no man: to cut reins, traces … one man alone seized the Vestal by the arm … by the upper and the lower arm … It lasted a second. The mule was suddenly calm and collected: panic? what panic? The car was suddenly steady and safe. The knives were all suddenly back in their belts, absit omen lest any delator or informer should occasion to ask, How didst thou come to bare thy knife unto the high-born Virgin Lady? a man might well be well-dead before an explanation were forthcoming. A man might receive a most pressing intimation to slip the short sword between any twain ribs he preferred, thus to prevent his family from attainder and his property from escheatal. Might. Might not. A man might receive a silver pottle or an ember-scuttle enchased with gold, as reward. Might. Might not.

It was all so very suddenly done. So very suddenly her arm was free from Vergil’s steadying hands. In a second’s time; less than it took a drop of water to fall from the clock — And in that second, while a flame of fire seemed to run up both his hands and arms and through his heart and thence into his manly parts (Touched a Vestal! Touched the Virgin’s naked arm!); in that second their eyes chanced to meet. Certain it was (this time) that for another fraction of a second the Vestal’s eyes really met Vergil’s eyes — then they were gone — then she was gone herself — and three thoughts like three bolts of lightning, so swift that before one fades away the other flashes, passed across his mind.

What color are her eyes?

It is death by the Tarpæan Rock to have carnal congress with a Vestal

Her virgin’s vows expire in her thirty-fifth year.

The woman’s age then, he did not know How old was he then, we will not say.

She was gone at once, long enough had she tarried at the sordid scene beneath the walls of saffron-colored stone, sallow where long suns had beat upon them; not swiftly yet very steadily the small carriage departed, the mule’s ears aprick, heading back towards the temple of Vesta up there beneath the Palantine. It might be that her watch hours approached, of guarding and tending the sacred fire. Or it might be that she sought rest and refreshment after the noise and dust and glare. Where had she been? Secluded though they generally were, the Vestals were allowed to take the air at intervals: perhaps to worship at another temple, perhaps to pray before two-faced Janus, he with red mouth straining and with face all grim, as the Oracles of Maro had it. Scraps of thought flitted through Vergil’s mind. Only a Vestal Virgin might drive a wheeled vehicle through day-time Rome (but ah gods! the hideous rumbling noisy nights!). Should she be accused of inchastity, two defenses were open to her: she might draw off a ship foundered on some shoal in the Tiber … using only a single thread. The Tiber at Rome was full of shoals, but as this knowledge was elementary and universal, ships (as distinct from bumboats) very seldom came as high as Rome, Or … she might instead carry water in a sieve. A brave option; small wonder they were seldom accused. Only a Vestal might pardon a man on the way to execution. No one might pardon a vestal caught in flagrant delight, or convicted after trial — Meherc! that a priestess of fire, should be tried by water! — she was buried alive in a tomb at once sealed shut, and a grim byword pointed out her last and only choice: starve while the lamp burned, or drink the oil and live a while longer in the dark, whichever, the glory of the world would soon enough pass, and with it, too: the beauty, the damps, the chills, the plots, the pests, the fevers, and the fleas, of eternal Rome. Of Yellow Rome, Yellow Rome.

“Good fortune to that man,” Vergil said, shaking his head as though to dispel the flimsies of bad dreams.

Quint made a scoffing sound, such as only the tutelage of the costliest of rhetors could have produced. “Did you see that animal face? He will be caught for another dirty crime and condemned again and this time surely hanged for it within the year — if not, indeed, the week — and should he encounter another Vestal?”

Vergil asked if the Vestals always set the felon free. Quint considered. “First you must meet your felon face to face,” he said, shrugging. Quint was a great shrugger. “Then — of the current Six, you mean?” Instantly it occurred to him that Vergil would scarcely have meant the Six current in the reign of King Tarquin the Proud or Judah King of the Jews, and he went on to capitulate them. “Clothilda pardons everyone. Volumnia pardons no one. Honoria, would you believe it, gravely casts dice to decide. Carries them with her in a monopede’s shoe — a monopede’s shoe! Don’t know who made it or where. Makes a game of going around to the cordwainers and asking each one if he could make up a pair from it. Don’t know which to be most afraid of, the Grand Uniped, or such, a million parasangs away in Unipedia, so to speak — I don’t know what hide it is made of, lovely grain it has. Has the most exquisite tiny stitches, triple-looped — or of the Vestal right in front of them. Don’t know whether to turn green or shit a roof-tile! Usually mutter something about not having the right thread, or the right wax.”

Vergil did not ask how Quint had ascertained it was the shoe of a monopede, for he might have given some such answer as, “Everybody know it,” or, “Because there is only one” — in which case respect for him would be diminished.

“Aurelia pardons now and then. — the dice? They are the most ordinary dice; sort of spoils the story, doesn’t it? Stories are often spoiled like that: tiresome.” Respect for him increased. “Lenora, they say, never drives that way, so as not to have to choose. He quirked his mouth, hunched his shoulders, flung out his hand and fluttered his fingers, with what might just be perceived as a very slight emphasis of the digit of infamy. “Soft-hearted Lenora, eh? — but they are all brutes, these fellows. Kindness to them is cruelty to others.”

And Quint told a recent report, not even to be designated as a rumor, that the man just freed had once been a provincial gladiator of the lowest sort, probably expelled for incompetence. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said. “You saw that sword-scarred face. No brow. No chin. Some ancestral taint, I’d venture.” A gesture; then, “They sell very good bread with opium seed over there.”

Vergil’s question almost burst forth. “But which one was she?” She was only one of six sacred women in the service of the goddess of the hearth, without which there could really be no home, and hence, no Rome: but which one was she? The bread did smell good: they say there was at least one bake-shop in the capital for every province in the Empire. One does not doubt.

Quint turned to Vergil, immediately (he, Quint) a man of the most scornful urban world. “But my dear fellow, you know nothing! — mage though you are — Well … how could you, down there in Naples? She is Claudia.”

“And does she often spare?”

Quint started again his rigamarole, stopped. Sincerely he seemed in doubt. Then, somewhat surprised, said that he did not know. That the matter had never — in his presence — come up before. Then he fell silent, merely gestured to his important friend’s litters (only two of many, of course) which were waiting for them: quite in the Roman fashion: not too very far from the appointed place. He certainly did not ask, “Handsome woman, is she not?” or, “What did you think of her?” or “Do you fancy her?” One simply never asked such questions about a Vestal Virgin. It was a long way up to the Tarpæan Rock when you had to climb.

But it was only a short way down when you were pushed.

There were nights when Vergil slept like a farmer, and nights when he could not sleep, or slept but ill. That night he fell soon into slumber, for thank the gods, in that very quiet — and very, very rich — quarter of Rome, where Lucas, Quint’s Etruscan friend, had one of his villas, there was neither wagon traffic nor roistering. Whence, then, came that noise, a mere murmur at first, then tumult and clamor? Vergil must have left his bed the better to observe and to hearken — what, then, a horrid shock, to realize that his arms were bound behind him at the elbows and his feet confined by straps or ropes so that he might take no very long steps and certainly could not run. He turned to ask a terrified question of the man nearest to him, an intent and stinking fellow in a dirty tunicle; but this one held, looped around his hands and arms, a rope; and the rope was noosed round Vergil’s neck. It did not choke him, not so long as he kept up with his keeper. “But what then?” he begged the fellow. “But what then?” The shunsoap made no answer, but steadily lead him along, as a knacker leads the nag before stopping him, stunning him, stabbing him, skinning him, and then cutting him up: hooves, hide, and pizzle to the glue-maker, and the other parts, too — Suddenly the sound of the vulgus ceased, then resumed in another note and another register.

Then ceased again.

A woman’s voice, strong and level and chill. “I pardon that man.” Their gazes met. She showed her shock. Her eyes were blue and clear.

It was yet dark when he awoke, but Rome generally awoke in the yet dark; a few lamps had already been kindled in the corridor; he noticed this abstractedly as he rushed to Quint: but Quint was already rushing to him. They met in the lesser atrium with the dull red walls where a few servants passed hither and thither like wraiths, thin vapors rising from the vessels in their hands. The heavy master of the household had either not yet aroused, or was occupied elsewhere; had he been present their own respective business, however much it agitated them, must need wait: but present he was not. At first their confrontation was in silence, there were sighs and moanings inarticulate, but not words. Then Quint said, and his voice trembled, “I have had such a dream!”

“And I —”

“Dreams are best kept silent, except to a qualified interpreter — or to a closemost friend —”

“Yes….”

“I am older, let me speak first,” said Quint. Vergil staying silent, he went on to speak his words, clutching the other’s his arms, as though he would draw him to himself. “Did you notice?” Quint asked. “Did you notice that old pedlar-dame in yesterday’s mob? selling baskets and sieves? She passed through my dream at an angle and then I saw the woman, I mean the woman … the real woman … I saw the woman holding the sieve … Claudia it was … it was Claudia … she held the sieve — you know what that means — and my heart went chill and swollen and I peered to see if the sieve did indeed hold the water, or if it had merely let it slip through and the mesh still wet. But she held it upside-down, she held it upside-down! What does that mean? And she looked at me and I saw that her eyes were very blue and very clear,” Quint’s own eyes, Vergil saw in the increasing light of early day, were very red, and quite without salve or ointment; “and she looked past me and she looked at you and her eyes went wide and I remarked her voice, I shall always remember her voice: it was level and strong and clear, and she pointed her hand at you and she said, ‘Thou art the man!’ And what that means, I dare not think: but I would that you would leave our Yellow Rome at once.”

After Vergil had spoken in turn, Quint leaned closer, and almost, somehow, he expected to see a thin cold breath from Quint’s mouth, like that from the basins of hot water for a quick early morning wash even now hurried past them by a few diligent slaves: but slavery makes for diligence … and makes it, much. Quint asked, “What is the meaning of this two-part dream? Does one part come from the Gate of Ivory and is false? does one part issue from the Gate of Horn and is it true? Is the whole dream one of evil omen? or of good? If we say, Good, in that she pardons you? of some sentence of death, it is sure, for if it were merely a matter of a fine … prison … the dungeon … or the scourge —” here Vergil shuddered, Quint went on — “how many men yearly die beneath the lash, merely, the lash? how many in the dungeon, where even a reflection of the light of the sun or the moon never shines? … let alone in the mere prison? where sometimes a gleam of sunlight creeps as it were uncertainly amongst the filthy littered rushes or the trampled straw … or now and then a beam of moonlight is reflected by a burnished mazer or a pewter plate polished like a mirror? For that matter,” he babbled, as they stood, crouched, in the atrium, close together; “for that matter,” he went on, “when a mere fine, merely the matter of a fine has broke a man’s bench, his bancus become ruptus, his lands his fields his house his yards his loft his laboratory all his goods his gear his tools his attire and even the very dead embers of his hearth for potash, and even the broken pisspot in the corner of his house of office: all, all, sold to pay the fine — eh? — how many, sinking beneath shame and broken spirit, the fine like blazing fire, consumes all means of earning food?”

Quint, beside himself, was now unwittingly imitating the gestures, the very vocal tricks, of any advocate seen and heard in Apollo’s Court. He swept the air with his hands, he bulged his eyes, he stood on his tip-toes, he touched his ear-lobe with a finger. “But all of these minor penalties,” this was a new Quint to Vergil and no longer the sophisticate, the man-about-Rome, the cynical; “and if the enemy of the enemies of mine enemy does not die of the stinking pox, then let him live … let him live under these minor penalties; and these allegedly the lesser of evils, the Vestal Virgin may not pardon: not a farthing, not a fig: not the theft of enough crushed walnut paste to cover the toenail of an infant child: none!”

To sum up: he, Vergil, once with brief (an advocate: ‘twas very brief: eh?) … if the Vestal Virgin in this probably vatic dream — and every dream in one way or another must be vatic, must be prophetic, else why is a dream dreamed? if he, Vergil, is the one whom the Vestal pardons, she can be pardoning him only from sentence of death. Not from charge of a crime meriting death, no, from sentence of death. And what can he, Vergil, have done or what would he do, to merit?

Dared he, would Vergil dare? to love her? —

And as for the other dream, and her cry of “Thou art the man!” if this was not accusative, then what was it? Could it be exculpatory? all things were, some barely, possible: but … he would believe that this Virgin’s exclamation was exculpatory? then he would believe anything … let him, if he would, believe —

But let him first flee. And if not to the end of the Empery, then at least from Yellow Rome. To be, at least, a while more safe.

Where would he safest be? from the accusations of the vatic voice in a state of dream —? whither flees the frightened child? he flees to home.

And now and for a long time: Naples was home.

… whence he might, if he would, if he need, having taken stock, flee again…

But why at once …? Why, because there was no set time indicated in these dreams. Who knows but what even now delators and informants were bespeaking those who bespoke the soldiery, He laid his hands upon the Virgin’s naked flesh, and, Act quickly, he may soon escape and flee …

Also, did he wait, tarry … opportunity … temptation … lust …

Thus: at once.

It is tiresome to say what everyone knows, in this case that some things are more easily said than done. There was no ship at a wharf behind a signboard reading Home, At Once. They had to wait until Quint’s friend, their host, was readily willing to see them, then it was needful (Quint thought) that Vergil should leave the City by a round-about way and not by means of the broader streets, and essential (Vergil thought) that Quint should not be seen with him; and was a long time persuading him of this, and even Vergil had a chore preventing him that he might not even, as he put it, “put bread in your wallet” for the journey, in Vergil’s old doe-skin budget, bread: had Vergil yielded at all, they would likely have wandered half over Rome to find some particular bake-shop. With or without opium-seed. Even, yes indeed! Quint might bethink him, bread is not enough! and insist they obtain cheese and salame-sausage! — at which, by sod and staff! might Vergil give himself up for lost —

Vergil was therefore long in leaving, and he neither drew reign of his borrowed horse, a gentle stalwart grey with dappled haunches (the Etruscan … a bit mysterious, like most his kind; and like most his kind: rich … had many horses, asked no questions) nor looked back till he had reached the rise by the third mile-stone. Then he halted, and turned. No pursuit? None … though he was uneasy in recalling that a dream, like a curse, might sometimes wait as much as seven years for fulfillment. No sign of pursuit, nor yet he was not easy. Ease is not always to the wise; was he wise? Some knowledge had he gained, but had he gained wisdom?

And lifting his eyes from the Appian Road he saw in the setting sun the cloud of dust raised by the hooves of the beasts being driven into the city to be slaughtered early next morning for sale in the markets, and the dust was faintly yellow. He saw in the suddenly visible middle distance the gold-spiked roofs, and stonework in marble the color of the hair of a fair-haired woman, brickwork the shade of straw, tiles a tint between that of the lemon of Sicily and a bright marigold blowing in the wind. He saw the glittering roofs and glowing golden buildings of Rome by the Tawny Tiber. In the yellow dust of the yellow dusk he saw the city of Yellow Rome … of Yellow Rome …

Yellow Rome.

He turned and urged on his horse. It was a long way to Naples.