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

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.