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

V Interlude At Sea

From Corsica’s Loriano (its trade, though limited, had even so a somewhat antic tone to it: henna, senna, leeches, peaches, chamois hides, and musk) he had taken water on a tramp trader crawling longside the littoral of the Ligurians … coming from Naples, Zenos had swung north towards Elba in order to take advantage of the wind, and to avoid the Gulf of Dread; now there was another wind to catch, and another course to take. It did seem to him, though, that this, naturally, other course was not taking them at all past Liguria, where in ancient days … so men said … the piddle of lynxes had solidified to form amber: always a great article of trade — Liguria, and the lands of the Franks, and then of the Catalands: where were they? He would soon enough see places not those at all; and, by and by, seeing the vast Herculean Columns and scenting the wild cold wind off the Sea of Atlantis — seeing the gryphons wheeling, gyring overhead …

“What shore?” he asked the helmsman, captain, and crew, “what shore? what coast of people?” But they answered him not, were shifty and silent, not with any great insolence, but with the evasion of those who do not answer because they merely do not choose to and because they do not have to. He soon saw that strict truth did not form any part of the philosophy of the masters, mates, and crewmen of a tramp trader. And why should it? when it did not suit them? They were merchant-men and merchants do not invariably deliver the merchandise as ordered and paid for. There was, after all, nothing in particular for Vergil in the lands of the Catalands, any more than there had been in Frankland or Liguria. He had wanted an escape? Very well, he had gotten one. He shrugged. And he made himself easy. He would see. From the moment of his final shrug he relaxed. The shipmen relaxed, too. Then ho! for the lands of the Troglodytes and of the Estridge-Eaters and those who sold the shaggy skins of wild men (such as Punes hanged up in their Temples to Bel, Melcarth, and Juno … particularly to Juno), also, the great plume feathers of great birds which could not fly, and those who traded the horns of strange wild goats (scraped translucent thin) full of sand of gold; traded them for cloth of scarlet and crimson, small bronze bridle bells and copper cauldrons (in series of ever-diminishing size so they fitted one inside the other) and cloaks of softest finest wool dyed the color of russet leaves such as lie so thickly of autumns in the Shadowed Valley And now and then, for boot, these dwellers on the western shores past the dragon-guarded Garden, handsful of beryl and of moonstones they gave, and tourmalines, agates, jasper, jade, and jet. What was strict truth on such a voyage? Oliphaunts baying on the beaches, and Black men in hooded cloaks who sold salt in slices of many colors which the Empery knew not salt to be: rose-red slices, yellow, blue, and green.

And in the night came a play of light atop the mast. “The corposants, the corposants,” cried one, and crew and captain alike covered their faces. Vergil however observed the blue-green green-blue shimmer, a single source or twinned he could not tell; then recalled that the corposants are Castor and Pollux come down again from the sky.

They had of course some time since passed Tingitana, a name not without memory or meaning to Vergil. To the larboard lay the city Tingitana, Tengis or Tingitayne, its once-great port now drowsing in the sun; crowned with its acropolis or cássaba set off by crumbling walls. Vergil, who had been in more than one such neighborhood, watched with more indifference than interest; a once-royal palace and its precincts to be sure, decorated in a sort of non-style, and stinking with old stale. There would be a so-called snake-charmer lurking there for chance visitors, nose bloody from the bites of a serpent which was perhaps far from being charmed by it all. Should he go ashore when the master went, who was shortly going there on ship’s business? Besides the shabby mountebank there would be, but outdoors, harlots in the local style, grossly fat, eyes painted widely in many colors, and almost certain to pass on the itch, if not more. Or, if tired of the ship’s fare, he might dine at some place upon the foreshore: rough tough ram-lamb grilled upon a spit over a fire of embers of vine cuttings. Bad wine, gussied up with gods-know-what. Go look at the Hall of the Suffetes, where no one suffeted nowadays. The walled small enclosure of the Roman proconsul and viceroy. Such a place surely did not rate a king. Tingitana. Bah. It did not smell as ill as filthy-stinking Zeyla-Zayla: and let that suffice for it.

“You did not leave Corsica in haste by account of some sacrilege or manslaying, I suppose, my ser?” — the captain. A-smiling.

“Not I.” — Vergil. With much effort, suppressing a shudder. “Why?”

The man pointed with a hand like the claw of one of the ganter striding birds. “Yonder wee vessel is what we calls the justice-boat. What do I mean? Soon be seen. And heard.”

The wee vessel, ends turned up like some fanciful slipper, came alongside and disgorged an official of the port, assisted by two serjants-at-mace. “Ho, Plauto! take any good prizes?” he greeted.

A thin grin was all that skinny skipper allowed this sally. “None I’d share with you,” he said. Adding, “Festus.”

Festus at first made great show of mimicking a man unrolling a scroll of great import, but dropped it almost at once. Dropped the show, that is, not the scroll. He cast a swift, reckoning glance round the shabby ship (fit to vye with the Zenos, as sister-vessel in this regard), “You haven’t got the right hand of the Colossus of Rhodes,” he said, with feigned disdain.

“Ha! How do you know that I hadn’t had it, and sold it in Marsala?”

“Because it wouldn’t fit in this meager holk,” said Festus, promptly. “Matter of fact, I’ve been in women that had more room.”

Plauto was momentarily torn between an obvious desire to slap his thigh, and the need to make a show of injured pride; contented himself with, “What! You don’t mean to say it’s been stolen again? Who now?”

Festus shrugged. “Tiridates, King of Ermony the More … so men say … get to it … all right, then: have you got aboard of you, concealed or not concealed, one Polycarpo of Ecbatan, black-a-vized chap with very broad shoulders, wanted for spittin in the Sacred Fire a-kindled by the Magus Zoroaster himself? Swear it by Apollo and Juno and by all the other gods and goddesses whose names end in o —”

“Haven’t got it. I swear it by Apollo and Juno, and so on.”

“Have you a father and son called Fat Procopio and Thin Procopio, both marked with the shackles and the scourge, and wanted for murdering the widow Pessaleya of Apuleia and running with her treasure, to wit —”

“Not got. Swear it — and a wicked widow, I’ll lay she was, too —”

The inspector or procurator or whatever his title was, glanced once or twice at Vergil, who was already nervous enough, and said nothing; meanwhile, as the official read his Wanted list, the two serjants were prowling up and down, peering under sails and poking coils of rope with their maces, clambering below decks and glancing all around. Technically, Tingitayne was a port of the Empery like any other port of the Empery. Gaza. Naples. Marsella. Palermo. In the matter of geography, however, Tingitana (for why should a place have only one name? a human being has at least three! eh?) Tingitana was the port at the western end of the Midland Sea. It was well to know who did enter and who did leave. Even the Arabian Recess had its guards, although thither swam all the cargo-ships laded full of wealth of the Indoo Ocean and the Erythræan Sea; there passed not by Tingitane a tithe of such wealth: elephant and emerauld … pepper, pearls, and gold.

“In the olden days, Doctor,” said the official, “a very rich and busy commerce swarmed here. But now we almost slumber and sleep.”

It was as though the man had been reading his mind. A certain coldness suffused his heart. Here it was. “Ah, you know me, then,” said Vergil.

A bow, small but respectful. “At first I knew you not, ser. And then I reckoned that I knew you, yea. But not more. You were a-wearing of your green robe trimmed with fur when I had seen you at the Ceremonial, with the great gold ring upon your thumb. And later, I am sure, at the Straw Market.” Vergil had not the slightest memory of ever having seen the man in Rome, but the man’s memories provided the clues as to when the man had seen him. Along with the doctorate and the doctoral ring Vergil had, as was customary, received a small purse of gold: three golden solids and a golden paleólogus (this last of a paler cast, it was perhaps slightly flushed with silver: he had made no assay). Most of the gratuity had gone to pay his debts: board and lodging, of course, and the final purchase of the robe and ring as well, and his share of the costs of the Ceremonial. And out of what remained he had — true enough — gone to the Straw Market and, after much cheapening, bought a straw chair to send to Illyriodorus in Athens; with it he had sent the softest, thickest, most supple of sheep-fells, hoping that straw chair and sheepskin seat cushion would be easier on his old teacher’s aged bones than the plain hard benches. Any philosopher might tell you that the simple life was the most proper one, and (rolling up his eyes) that the superior man not merely ought to be, but was, satisfied with bread for all his meat and a clean scallop shell to dip his water for all his drink, a hollow bone to hold all his clean salt, and a wooden bench for all his seat and selle and seige. To be sure that Illyriodorus, if you were to give him (say) a flask of oil of nard, would never rub it in his aged oxters or dress his senatorial beard — he would make haste to have some student sell it quietly and then give the money to a worthy fund — for the relief and sustentation (say) of widows of philosophers slain at the capture of Corinth. But Vergil had observed the old man wince when sitting down and heard him say, “If my old goose had not died, gladly would she yield me some breast-feathers to stuff a small pillow, for when the rump dwindles, then the bones grow sore.” Illyriodorus would not be one for ostentatious suffering, he would fold the thicky sheep-fell and fit it in the chair to sit upon. Gladly …

“And how now, Doctor,” asked official Festus, “did you find our Yellow Rome?” Vergil answered, lightly, quickly, “Very easily.” Communications from those of higher rank to those of lower might be considered privileged communications, in that the former are privileged to communicate things of a very slightly humorous nature and are also privileged to hear in return sounds of amusement at least somewhat more than the same remarks would engender from one of equal rank; not that the laughter would need to be obsequious but that whatever was said would indeed seem funnier than if from an equal, or an inferior.

When the chuckles had not quite died away, Vergil then asked, equally lightly, equally quickly, “And what news do you hear from ‘our Yellow Rome’? — We have just come from Corsica, where we don’t hear much …” — No, said Festus, he supposed that in Corsica they didn’t hear much … more chuckles … “What we hears? We hears,” Festus considered the matter, brightened a bit, said, “Well. We hears that Himself the August Caesar continues in good health,” Vergil made a murmur of gratification. And this was no mere obsequiousness, either: for unless Himself the August Caesar were some very great tyrant — which he sometimes was — one would naturally wish him to continue in good health: for, whilst he did so, it was not very likely that hard-faced men with newly-sharpened swords would be dispatched hither and yon with instructions to return with newly-severed heads. And who knew, in such an event, whose? — or wished to? Still … as for the Slaves of the Immortal Gods …

Festus continued to ponder, index finger pressed against the wart upon his chin; his face moved. “Ah, we hears, also, that Old Scipio that great gaffer-oliphaunt, who’d been there in Caesar’s Park since, some say, since King Hanibal’s time, anyway was there when I was a boy;” generations of Romans had known Old Scipio, had fed him leafy twigs and oranges and cakes, and gone for rides upon his rugous back: “has died.” Vergil raised his brows and made a murmur of regret; what else? “And — ah, yes! What a tale of news! As some criminal dog attemptimated to seize ahold of them holy Vestal Virgins, but pious citizens drove him off — who? a rogue, they say, with no neck and a low brow and uge sword-slashes across of his ugly face — why? we’ve no idea —” Vergil, who had stopped breathing, breathed again.

Now see and hear Captain Plauto stoop and stare up into the face of Festus. “Well, that let’s you off — nary sword-slash do I see!”

Loud laughter.

The serjants-at-mace returned from below decks, from the way they furtively wiped their beards and from the sad, sour smell of them, one assumed that the ship’s wine had been broached and hospitality (one would not wish to say: gratuity) given; Festus tugged at his belt, half-turned to go, turned back. “Come ashore with us, Doctor, and taste our victuals. Meet the Viceroy. See the Trogs … we don’t oft have any here to see …”

Plauto said, “Go, Doctor, do. We’ll see you ashore and bring you back with us, no fear we’ll leave you for the Troglodytes to eat!”

He had not thought to go ashore, but it hardly seemed tactful to refuse; the Viceroy was, after all, in the place of the roy, the king, the Emperor, and one did not want to cause a question to arise.

The victuals were much as Vergil had thought that they would be, and so was almost everything else. One thing only he had not expected. Now to visit the Viceroy, Festus had said. He must have had an influence with his superior for which rank alone would not suffice, that he had merely walked into the man’s office, taking Vergil with him by the arm. Influence, however, or not, he (and his visitor) stood stock-still once they were a pace or two inside the door; for someone else was there before them. Standing with one hand on the viceregal chair almost as though posing for a sculptor was the viceroy himself, and he had the stiff look of one who has learned very successfully to control his passions but not to like doing so. Someone was facing him, and Vergil knew this one at once, was almost paralyzed to see him now and here … not with fear but with astonishment; protocol forbade that he should at the moment move or speak, but he doubted he could in any event have moved or spoken.

Even the most intense of confrontations produces its moment of silence, its moments, and this one was almost at once broken — not by the entrance of Festus and Vergil, but by its own weight and measure: silence could not bear the emotion of the one who next spoke. “We are against Rome,” the man said, “because Rome is against Nature! Three times it is that you have destroyed our city and from even before that you have tried to bar the whole world from us; how have you dared? Juno designed that our city, and not yours,” what hatred and contempt and barely-controlled rage lay in that one word, yours, “be the center of the world, and she gave us tokens that this should be so, she gave us her armor and her chariot: to no other city in the world did she do this, only to Carthage she did this.” He was a huge man with a huge chest and as he spoke the word Carthage he seemed to grow huger and as he took in deeper breaths the vastness of his chest became even more apparent, and his color went deeper and took on more and more of that red color which was the meaning of the word Punic, his eyes were bledshotten, almost he trembled and in another moment he would tremble. “Where is her armor and where is her chariot? If not for certain Carthagans abroad who bought — and for no small sums, I inform you — one wheel of her chariot and one heel-piece of her armor,” here he did tremble, his deep voice trembled, his arms and his legs twitched: thus might a man behave in the presence of his enemy and adversaries: not that he feared of them, but that he was so in rage of them — “if not for that, we should have nought relish and nought taste of our lady Ishterah, Juno as she is also called: Juno! But I tell you, though you have expelled Nature as with a pitchfork, yet she shall always return. This sole wheel shall have a mate, and those twain wheels shall bear a holy chariot and this chariot shall bear the lady’s image, clad in mail, the length of every street in Rome through which a chariot may pass, and this heel-piece of her armor shall trample every snake in Rome — now go!” Great must have been the self-control of him, that his voice neither trembled nor broke when he flung out the words, Now go!

And he himself went.

Much loved of Juno, ancient Carthage, stained with purple, and heavy with gold. Thrice indeed had Rome destroyed that city; and now, it seemed, a fourth time, again it was rising and again it spoke defiance. Was it so that Juno still hated Mars, the father of Romulus? What boded this for the pax Romana, and all who dwelt within the Empery of Rome? Much loved of Juno….

And after the polite recital of, if you are well then I am well and it is well, the viceroy asked, still formal, “Is there anything which I can do for you, Doctor Vergil?”

“Lord Viceroy … the Lord Viceroy can tell me if that man just now here … is he not called Hemdibal? Might I not have seen him in Corsica?”

By the calm tone of the viceroy they might have been speaking of some superannuated senator; “I am sure that he has many names and is seen in many places. I sent for someone to explain to me the presence of certain ships in the circumjacent sea, and there came this one. ‘Hemdibal’? No such name it was he said. He said he is Josaias, King of Carthage.”

More for the sake of having something to do in order to distract his mind from the discomfort of the ship’s motion (do what he might, he could not rid himself of the very deep feeling that it was an irrational motion, that the sea ought to be as firm as the land: this was the common Roman notion, more-or-less, for the Romans did not love the sea), he began seeking and searching if there were things in his pouch which he might shift to his budget — that staunch old doe-skin budget — or things in his budget which he might shift to his pouch — poke, they had called it at home, Some thief slit the thongs and made off with the poke, may curs devour his collions! And in so doing he, Vergil, came upon a small piece of sheepskin with the fleece-side inside. Instantly he was again in Verona, where he had gone to speak with Sparga, the great Sparga, the only man of whom it was said, by name, that he had made a homuncule; Sparga illa, that one.

Sparga had not much wanted to talk about the homuncule. “The experiment was, philosophically speaking, a success. But the experience was a shock. Endeavor thee not to make homuncules, Messer Vergil, thou philosophe, thee.”

“It must have been a great wonder,” said that philosophe, he, reluctant to leave the subject.

Sparga, his face like some low range of mountains seen from a higher peak in the dry season when all is sere and stark, said, “Here is a wonder.” And placed a patch of cloth in his hand, tumbling out the contents. “Do you take especial interest in gold, ser? Most men do.”

There were the two rings, of the palest yellow metal, scarcely might he believe that they were gold. Sparga the alchemist was reading his doubts upon his face. “This is not true gold, Messer Vergil, this is electrum, and electrum of a very special kind. Short of scraping somewhat of the metal itself, which I am loath to do as it would damage, and putting the scrape to the assay by fire and crucible, a precise analysis is not possible. Neither would it yield to the touchstone. But there is very good reason otherwise to say the substance of the rings consists in 67 parts of gold to 31 parts of silver; some say that the other two parts are of simple copper-bronze — as though bronze itself is so simple and there were not a muckle formulas for bronze. However, others say,” and here a smile as thin as a ray of winter sunlight passed swift over the craggy countenance of the occamyst; Vergil had a sudden insight, a sudden insight: knew that others was a modest obliquity for the name of Sparga himself; “… others say that the two lesser parts are orichalchion, that mysterious ore of copper itself tinctured somehow with gold, there in the distant mountain matrix of Eva, the lands of Greece. Wizard’s Electrum, it is called, this semplum of which the twain rings are wrought. You may examine them. Do.” And Vergil picked up one, and then the other. The first was wrought in a design of great extension and complexity, as it were some serpentine thing coiling in and out and roundabout and just as the eye thought it had discerned an end and a beginning, lo! the eye was fain admit itself wrong: yet ever the seeking mind was convinced that an end there was, and a beginning, eke.

“This is either the Worm Ouroborus,” Vergil said, referring to the device of a serpent swallowing its own tail, the symbol of eternal wisdom; “or the Gordian Knot…. Anent which,” his mind was not contented to stay even with the marvel before him but hurried swiftly aside to another one. “… anent which I have ever questioned that Magnus Alexander in truth fulfilled the prophecy told of ‘whoso would untie that great knotted cable of cormel-bark would rule Asia’; he did but take his sword and slash it!”

“Yet he did rule Asia,” murmured Sparga.

“‘He did rule Asia,’ but he ruled Asia by virtue of some other marvel, that marvel which was Magnus Alexander,” insisted Vergil.

Still murmuring, Sparga, “Even so. Oft one reads and one hears that the Philosopher’s Egg may be sliced open with a single stroke of a sword, its wonders to expose. But never does one hear or read an explanation which is satisfactory, as to what.” Sparga used more vessels of crystal and glass than Vergil was accustomed to seeing in an elaboratory: how they all sparkled there in the summer sunshine of Verona! “… as to what is the Philosopher’s Egg and as to which sword or what sword.”

The subject was fascinating, but Vergil with a sigh unvoiced set that one ring adown and took up the other. And this was ornamented and enchased with a design of many small flowers; his eyes were keen enough to make out, to his great enchantment and pleasure that every petal of every flower was itself a smaller flower; and he felt certain that, were his eyes keen enough, he might find that these tiny flowers were composed of flowers tinier yet. “Each ring, Master Sparga,” he said, murmuring low, “is a marvel. Why have I never heard of them?”

“Why be so sure that you have never heard of them?”

Of a sudden Vergil felt a shock as they lay in his palm or was it in his mind? he ne’er knew. “What, ser? Messer Sparga! Can it be that one is the ring called Senex, which makes young men old? and that this other is the ring called Juvens which makes old men young?”

The occamyst slightly oppressed his lips, edges so fine and sharp that might they have been carven by a crisping-tool. “A marvel it would be indeed, were a young man to wish to be old! To wisdom, a hard road!”

Vergil, with a slight gesture and a questioning look, requested that he might have water from the nearby jug; Sparga did not allow him leave by speech or motion, but he poured him water with his own hand. The jug was very curiously wrought, with sylvan scenes drawn upon it, such as a spring emptying into a rocky pool overhung with trees. The water was as cool and fresh as though it had just now run purling from such a source indeed. “Thank you. — perhaps old in wisdom is the proper meaning of it. Eh?”

“And is the other geste to become young in wisdom? Eh, indeed.” To this Vergil had no answer. “Unless,” Sparga, “that herewith Natura hath prepared an almighty jest of the other sort: that the rings be tried on unwittingly, a gamble very great, and the outcome not surely known; be not tempted, ser. Swiftly I forfend such temptation!” In an instant Sparga had taken up the two rings and twisted them with a motion for which deft was insufficient, lo! one ring was fixed curled inside the other. And … hold: “Curled inside the other?” there was something almost shockingly odd about the angle there … “Pentalepto of Scythia,” Vergil said, slowly (and the chymist soft said Ahhh), “accounted how he slipped, one day as he was walking the walk of the mazes and calculating his steps as he stepped, miscalculated, and slipped sideways and downways, as the Magna Homero has it, ananta katanta paranta, upalong, sidealong, downalong; and so fell he into that otherworld and universe in which even the geometry is clean different. There were the dragons feeding Anthony in the fattening pen. Anthony cried to him for help, but Pentalepto suffered so much as he stood there sickened by the strangest strangeness of it all in the harsh prismatic light, that it was with an almighty effort he broke back amongst us. And as for Anthony —”

Vergil threw a sharp glance at Sparga, who merely took out from anywhere a small box carved in great detail showing the lyngworme coiled about the legs of Frotho Dragonslayer the suitor of that Thora (so the Northish annals told), and he with his sword couched high and ready to slash down; there was no egg present; and from the box the Sparga plucked a patch of some gloriously yellow sheepfell, and wrapped the twined twain rings up in it, and, opening his guest’s clenched fingers, slipped the tiny pacquet inside onto his palm. “This and these be thine,” he said. “These and this be thine.” It was, the guest Vergil felt, perhaps almost a formula as from a rescript. Of one thing and alone one thing was Vergil sure. To make a great matter of this great matter would be a mistake: “Thank you, Master Sparga,” said Vergil.

“Sadly do I note that the day wanes shorter and that you will never tarry, nor I press you never so much.”

And as he was saying this, he was moving along, Vergil perforce moving that pace ahead of him, and almost it seemed that guest was escorting host to the hole of the door; so deftly did Sparga give the congée. And the posts by the sides and the lintel up above were carven in strange carvings of designs, and one was that of an incoiling coiling without end, and the other was a continual wreath of flowers of whose petals were other flowers made, and so on so. “When next we meet, Ser Juvens,” Sparga (Sparga illa) said, “you are to riddle Ser Senex the riddle of this riddling,” and as he was so saying he was closing him the door. Vergil went alone to the inn with his head full of many thoughts. Always he kept with him in his pouchet or poke that scrap-piece of the (he was sure, quite sure) the Golden Fleece which contained the twain two rings so strangely flexed together. The sun was going down, down over Verona, as it was downgoing everywhere in that Zone of the Climates, but he saw it as it were going down upon the great Voe of Naples in an immense crowd of clouds of rosy-colored flame. And within it was a cloud of gold. To the Southwest lay the Isle of Inarime or Isehia and to the Southwest the Isle of Goats, or Capria. And within his heart lay much wonder at the wonders endless of the world.

He said nothing as he went.

Vergil was not used to the house-high waves of the Great Green Sea of Atlantis (what sensible man ever was?) … and no ordinary house of a man’s height plus half of a man’s height, but of those towering tenements called islands … might not waves so high sweep clear over actual islands? With such thoughts one ought not to entertain oneself in such rough weather on such rough sea; the Romans had a saying, Only Greeks and fools go much to sea. Odd that to the Romans, Greece was the epitome of sea-faring, while the Greeks themselves said Ship-shape as a Punicman: what said the Punes? perhaps they praised the ships of Tartis. Although the Carthagans, still rough-mannered colonials compared to the mellow Punic folk of Tyre and Sidon, the Carthagans were not at all likely to praise any place but Carthage … though, as any schoolboy knew, Carthage had been destroyed.

Destroyed, too: Vergil’s hope that he might in unvexed security return from Tingitayne.

Groping his hand into his budget for a clean cloth to wipe his mouth, he encountered a small bouguin, what was it but that Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne which Nephew-to-Sergius had given him to boot in Corsica. Seldom could Vergil resist the seduction of a new book and however old chronologically or corporally this one was, twas new to him: he read in it till the seas seemed monstrous rough, then slipped it back away. Every atom in his body seemed now at war with every other atom, he covered his body from the spume and spray and fell into a dull state in which he half-dreamed he was in the bough of a tree, the while drinking an infusion of sage and ginger for his stomach: there seemed a conversation going on between two men whose voices he could not then identify, familiar though they seemed. Ginger is cheap this season, one was saying; ginger is cheap, a pound of ginger now costs no more than a sheep. Cheerful and jocular was his voice. And another, graver and somedel pettish: Why should any wise man sicken or die who has sage growing in his garden-herbs?

Vergil dozed, slumbered, awoke, tossed as the ship, tossed, slumbered, awoke, and finally fell into a state in which wakefulness and doze and daze and sleep and fretful confusion were all alike mixed. All jests about sea-sickness fell into the abyss. He was wounded with a mortal wound and the first sickening shock thereof continued, shocking and sickening, without abatement. Whither did the vessel go? This was no offshore sea, rolling merely restlessly between Negroponte and the Grecian main, or between Italy and Corsica, or off the lands of the Ligurians. Something was deeply different and deeply wrong: this sea had neither bottom nor shores! He strove to leave his body and go soaring aloft to spy out where they might be and then inform and guide the sea-men of the ship; but the waves, the winds, the spume and spray, beat him back, beat him back, beat him down: and thus he continued and abode long a while.

He awoke into a different world. To his starboard spread a quiet sea; quiet but not at all sluggish like the waters of the Putrid Sea adjacent to the Paleus Maeotis and whose size — their sizes — remained a mystery: a light wind stirred the waters as it stirred his hair.

The noises of the ship — the creaking of the planks and timbers, the rattling of the ropes, the luffing of the sails — all still continued, but not loudly nor frantically. To his larboard stretched the land: now tawny, now green, trees dotted the coast and hills, and along the edge of it were white and yellow sands. The sunlight there was different: the sunlight, fractured, shattered, was reflected from a million shattered crystals (themselves not seen); the sunlight was reflected by the facets of a spadai æon of atoms; and these reflections sparkled without dazzling: unstinted … untainted … and untorn. The captain, Plauto, greeted him, in rather an abstract manner.

“What shore?” asked Vergil. “What coast of people?”

Plauto opened his mouth, closed it, shrugged. “Well, ser. It is the old story. We have been carried off our course by storm. We had intended to make for the Islands,” a slight emphasis here, “… our usual way … then to come back into the Mainland by a southwest route,” his arms and hands described a rough triangle — from the Mainland to the Islands (whichever islands they were), from the Islands to the Mainland — it was a large enough triangle, and, had it been completed, would have saved the ship from hugging quite a section of the coast. As for trading opportunities missed along that section, this, as it occurred to Vergil, must have occurred to Plauto as well. However. There was perhaps therewith those Islands which had so much made visiting them worth the while that Plauto had never ceased to do so, even though it meant that, season after season, venture after venture, never once in his life did he forbear to do so; recking nothing of the neglected possibilities of the mute commerce and the trading post, into which that curious marketing so oft developed.

“… and to speak the truth —”

“As is your invariable way of speaking,” Vergil said, gravely. He could hardly overlook this opportunity of sticking the long needle in, of reminding Plauto, now more-or-less his friend, of that trick and decept by which he had lured Vergil aboard his scummy bark in the first place; easily lying about his course and destination in order to get the stranger’s passage-fee. But Plauto, either expecting no sarcasm or accepting this description of himself — certainly the way in which he would wish to be seen — as accurate, Plauto nodded. “— to speak the truth, Ser Doctor, I don’t know this coast and shore at all. And though we shall soon need water …” Plauto did not continue the sentence. He did not need to; its implications were obvious. And — head for a green section, as likely to have water (else why and how was it green?), why … bless you … the water was as likely to flow underground as not. And Plauto and his men were not tap-roots.

Vergil scanned the coast. Then he nodded. Gestured. “That blink of white? That will be the rock called The Skull. Just past it will be a small cove, and at the head of the cove a small trickle of water. Very small. And very slow. Not enough to fill the butts. But enough to give us a drink. All of us. And then …” He paused to intensify the effect. “And then … after half a day’s sail, we come to the region called Huldah.”

Plauto’s face quickened. His face showed more nor one emotion. “Ah, ser! And here I thought that you were an entire stranger to these lands! The Skull! The region called Huldah! I have heard of them! My thanks, Ser Doctor! My thanks —” Here he seemed just a bit troubled, literally swept the look off his face with his hand, called out something to the crew. Vergil saw the helmsman’s arms and shoulders move. Presently the ship was seen to stand down the vast bay and proceed more closely along the shore.