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

Vergil could not say. His steps were not constrained, he was surely not bewitched, nothing, really, prevented him from turning round and going back. By and by he became aware that he was trying to analyze a scent, a strong pervasive odor, and when, once, he came to a fork in the footpath, he shrugged and idly chose one; in a moment or so it became clear that his choice was a wrong one, for the smell grew dim and thin: he turned and retraced.

The odor, the scent, waxed strong. It grew overwhelming. In the last light of the death of the day he saw them sitting, as though waiting for him, at the base of a tree. It was a large tree, but that was not it; he knew what was it, and he knew who they were, they were all of them women: were they meeting in the dark to plot? they were certainly readied for a ceremony, he could see the elements of it carefully set out upon something very much like an altar. Their dresses were white and loose; their hair was loose and dark: there were wreaths upon their hair. The scent of the walnut tree now seemed to fill the air. One of them arose, and, coming forward presented him the ceremonial vessels. With a well-practised manner she said to him (he knew her, they had spoke before), she said to him as she held out the goblet and the bowl, “Soldier. Drink the sweet water of Corsica, and taste its fragrant acorn-meal.”

The fire had died down. But now, as the women slowly undid their robes, someone stopped and gently blew upon it.

Coming or (as now) going, one had to be fairly close to Loriano to see its lights of nights, the foreshore was that low, and besides: what lights? respectable men and women had no business out of doors after the cover-fire was sounded by the beat of drums — most of the ruder sort of people had neither sand-glass nor water-clock to tell them the time — and other sorts of men and women used no lights. But even far out at sea one could smell the presence of Loriano, smell its inextinguishable odor of cooking oil and excrement and wood-smoke and urine. It was better than a light-house and it cost far less. Here the Pharos at Alexandria, that wonder of the ages, was deprecated by a ridiculous local legend which had jack-ass loads of wood toiling up a ramp by day and night to fuel a perpetual fire for the benefit of ships at sea — the Lorianos all thought this a great joke: idiocy! Let the ships keep at sea till break the day and then find their own way to port … or, would they and did they not, let them flounder, founder and sink. Think of the salvage and the booty! The Lorianos would rather pluck waterlogged cargo off the shore for nothing than buy it dry for even a pittance. Loriano and its people were useful.

But they were not nice.

Loriano! Hail; and farewell!

As he was staring at the bottoms of the weathered planks of the moss-encrusted, ragged-eaten door, a foot or so beneath the level of the turfy ground, the door sank as it were backwards: what dread feet he saw, then! At once his eyes flew upwards. Swift, his thought-mind told him, “This is a particularly hideous old man dressed up as a particularly hideous old woman!” In a second, he changed his opinion at once. Later, some, he was to conclude that he had at first been right. More than this, or other than this, he did not for a much longer time suspect.

Getting up his courage to proceed, perceiving certain several things a-hang beside the door, he was in an instant both startled and afeared. But for an instant only: then he relaxed, recognizing them for the masks, simulate faces, which some clever hands were wont to make for this festival, this play, or that; sometimes out of painted cloth, sometimes out of cloth and scraps of trash-parchment glued together, sometimes out of untanned leather, sometimes out of leather, tanned. They were dreadfully like.

They stank dreadfully, too.

Down to the door. As in some long-familiar tale, told whilst peeling chestnuts round the winter fire, had “he rapped on the warlock’s door and the door opened instantly —” “— as though someone were standing right behind it?” — “— as though someone were standing right behind it!” “— and a voice spoke, saying? ” “— and a voice, spoke, saying —” But he had instantly forgotten those kitchen congregations and their well-familiar stories. The door had not so much as creaked even a little on its leathern hinges; he was canny enough to test by the easiest method some sticky traces found afterwards adhering to his clothing; for with taste and scent, no argument , and taste and scent reported them to have been made by neat’s-foot oil. No magic, no sorcery; next to the pressings of the olive itself, or bread or wine, or milk or cheese, could there be a more common domestic substance? What witchery was here? none; what suspicion of alien herbs or of leaves or fruits of trees growing by Rivers Lethe, Abana, Oxus, or what-so-far-off sites and streams? None, not one.

The creature glared at him.

Vergil’s father had once been servant to a wandering astrologer, and had a habit of repeating under his breath, scraps of what he had learned; always winding up with the same word of advice, indicative that he, his son, was not to be expected to spend all his days at the plow, the harrow, the ox-goad, and the pruning or the trenching tool. “ Taurus upon the Cusps of the Ram, ” the boy would hear him repeating; “ Taurus upon the Cusps of the Ram … Lord Saturn, ever a malign stellation … Lord Saturn … a malign stellation … avert the omen … Orion’s Dog is barking let not our fields all burn …” the boy would always remember that deep rumble-mutter; “Study, Mariu. Go thou and learn. Find thy book and mind it … Orions Dog … Sagittary on the Cusps of … Sagittary …”

Coming down to the main road from the home foot-path, narrow by definition, its berm bright with the yellow oxalis and the lacy-white membranes of the wild carrot, you saw ahead of you the stone obelisk with the blackish near-globe on top, whose words marked the boundary of the limits of the city (“Great City” it still called itself, but that was the mere after-glow of glory, for City -State it was no more). Always, even then, there was a mythic air of ill-being about that spot; “Don’t touch it, get away!” was sure to meet any surge of small boys towards the monument — surely a sentiment more than purely political; and although brats of the beggar-class, themselves outcasts, wearing the duck’s-foot sign on their rags — “oliphaunt-boys,” they were called in scorn, some said in connection with an hereditary disease, others saw in it a reference to their being descendants of Hannibal’s mahouts, still living out and living under the immemorial invasion and defeat — although such brats, snouts crested with unwiped snot, clambered and sat upon the plinth of the obelisk oft enough: firstly, this just proved its unseemliness; secondly, one did not play with such, one ignored them like the fly-worms in the horse-nuggets plashed across the road.

UNDER PENALTY OF STRANGULATION,

LAPIDATION, OR DECAPITATION.

By decree. S&PB

But — more: had a recusant rebel or exile returned sans permission been judicially slain at its base, or what were those stains? A clump of pines whose crowns were like rounded spread-out sunshades grew and shed needles, else only the cypress, the ilex, and the poplar met the eyes. Eventually the Spartans, as they lumbered by, were not only to fell every single tree for timber, but to destroy the obelisk itself by using it as a target for their ballistas; and the round, dark, red-streaked lump, once fallen, Herk Duk had had his helots smash it into bits and the fragments he distributed as talismans. For Herk Duk knew nothing of cast-out Brindusian malcontents, but Herk Duk knew much about cold iron. A trickle of water seeped from the berm even in the month of drouth, and there one might find the violet, unwoven by Sappho for all the poetic epithet, and the simple shallow chalice of the wild rose, its pale pink and white a copy of the flesh-tints where the sun had not much stroked the skin. A boy might kneel and gladly press his nose to both wildflowers, making feint to drink there rather than from the deeper, common spring and pool.