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

Suddenly the thought came to him that the astrological sigil for she , often called The Mirror of Venus, might not be for Venus at all; might be for Diana, that the cross-piece supposedly the mirror’s handle, might be nothing of the sort: that Diana was by truth not alone goddess of the supernal moon, but ruled here below as patroness of the cross-road. This required more thought before he speak of it. Instead, he smiled a slight smile. “They do not ‘draw Diana …’ For they have another name for that symbol, they call it Luna , and they draw it as the crescent moon. When they do, that is.”

Out the door he could see a few several trees swaying a bit in the afternoon trade-wind; a few of them were palms, he could not yet identify the others. Did the spice called grains of paradise grow hereabout? And, if so, upon a tree, like the true pepper of India extra Indium? He would soon ask … and if no one answered, he would ask the trees: this, too, he had learned when learning “in the wood,” not as far from home as he was now. And now, seeing that she was puzzled, on he went to explain. Amongst almost all alchemists there obtained a jealousy very great. “You would be sad, I think, to see them with their prentices. For years they keep them at low tasks … and by that I don’t mean feeding the fire under this alembic, or following orders and directions about that pelican — which, when one is a high occymist, seems fairly low — no, I mean that they employ them at tasks such as sweeping and cleaning, things which any even half intelligent child may do. Oh, I suppose they save the hire or the price of an even half-intelligent child, but after a while it becomes evident that the apprentice must be allowed to work at some higher task, or what is he apprenticed to? And a full-scale occymist, if he has a full-scale elaboratory, really needs the assistance of something more than an even half-intelligent child, besides the fact that prentices tend to outgrow their childhoods. The master alchymist, needs, I say, something like a compeer. So then he begins to teach his man — true, Mary of Ægypt was a woman, but perhaps she needed no one to teach her — teach the man the symbols and sigils of the craft, so that while he is working in one corner of the elaboratory, his aid can be working in another; if he is on the second floor, the assistant can be working on the third. And, too, the master must needs sometimes go away.”

He, Vergil, himself, had must have need gone away: he’d had no apprentice and was perhaps very fortunate to have had Cosmo Nungo; perhaps not. He would see, when he would go back; when would he go back? Already he had begun to think of it: but only to think of it. “… sometimes go away. Will the works-in-progress wait for his return? Suppose something requiring a steady heat … how much steady? … and for how long? when and how to change it … or, if … and what next? and after that? If the work is something which requires a steady heat and nothing more, sometimes he may seal the vessel and place it about halfway down into the smoking warmth of a dungpile. And go off with his doors locked and his gates closed for such and such a time … the dungpile is rather like an horlogue, and it may go on long unattended: but then it is to be readjusted, you know, wound up,’ if it is that kind of horlogue, or water poured into the tank, if it is that kind of horlogue: just so, a steady heat as the dungheap gives, so that the very peasants —”

Here she spoke into his slight pause for breath. “Peasants, yes,” she said. “We were all after all descended from peasants, all of us. Salt of the earth, as we well know. Who feeds us all? Peasants. Even the pets and the philosophers and the city matrons in their saffron veils, know of the intense association of peasants with food. With plowing. And with cattle. With what do the peasants plow? with cattle,” she answered herself: “And what do cattle supply?” Instantly she said, “ Dung. ”

“Yes, dung . One can only get leather from the ox once. Milk? A time comes when cows no longer yield milk. Older bullocks may be converted into meat; who would kill younger ones for it? But all cattle … oxen, cows, calves, bullocks … all yield dung: Sometimes called nature; of which it is said, Though you expel nature with a pitchfork yet she will always return . Lands which yield no wood still yield a fuel in the form of dung. And another form of heat-from-dung — the very peasants to whom occymy isn’t even a name, wrap their raw green cheeses well and thrust them into the dungpile to ripen in that steady heat —”

She said, even-toned and sober of face, that one must hope that they were very well wrapped. “Especially if one were fond of cheese;” and before he could take formal notice, at once said, “But nature … ‘even kings must live by nature;’ what do the very kings do about occymy?” And then it was that he began to speak of that; and he spoke of that for long.

The work of which we speak, Serenity,” I told the Doge of Naples after meat in the presence of his courtiers, their masks of obsequity barely concealing sneers of contempt; “is incomparably the greatest work of occymy the world has ever known; there are some lemon-pips caught in your beard, Doge. Allow me.” I adjusted my court robe of blue damasseck weave with the gold-embroidered stars, and leaned over. Of course, although my manner was quite greatly respectful, I maintained no silence as I preened his ducal beard. We all know, I must suppose, the story of the two Ebrew men observing the wagoner, “A sorry fellow as to piety,” said one. “Look: even while he is praying, he greases his axles.”

And said the other: “Lo, a lovely man and truly one of piety: even while he greases his axles, he prays! ”

The depths, the extents, the metaphors and allegories and symbols thereof, the realization that occymy contains and embraces everything and that everything is contained in and embraced by occymy, As above, so below: as below, so above , macrocosm and microcosm — of all this the mass of men know nothing; doges, sometimes kings, know nothing. Three things of it alone engage their minds: the Philosophers’ Stone, whereby base metal may be transmuted into gold; the Elixir of Life, by means of which one may … barring violence … live (so they say) forever; and the Universal Solvent, which term is self-descriptive, and in which the mass of men (including even doges, kings) have no interest. Nor do they have much interest in how raw substances may be taken from the rough matrix of the earth and, having been passed through the furnace, the athenor, the alembic, the instrument called the pelican, and the other devices used in the elaboratory — become things clean different and pure: salt, sulfur, realgar, orpimentum, sand-dragon, antimony, copper, brass, or bronze — the list is endless. And little do they reck of the teachings of the metaphysical alchemists wandering the roads heedless of the rulings of the Wardens of the Ways, each philosopher with his staff and his pet goose (that most faithful and most wise of birds): that wisdom is the Philosophers’ Stone, that love is the Elixir of Life and contentment the Universal Solvent.

The Doge allowed me; my collions creep to consider what other things he might well have allowed me, so long as he could have hoped to gain knowledge of alchemy His impatience was not due to my fingers fidgeting about his chin. Courtiers would say that Duke Tauro of Naples could not even drink sweetened water and lemon-juice without some slop and mess, and of course they would be right. “The work who you say!” he boomed, like the sound of the estridge in the wilderness at night-time, haunting down its enemy and shooting forth blue-green flames to light the way; a sound which only added to my task. Really! plucking pulp pips from the beard of an imbecile doge not much cannier than any estridge, boom and all.