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

Rapted in talk about the Latitudes and Zones (seldom he gat a chance for such talk … with Vergil or with anyone else), almost he forgot to make his single stop, by Poultry Court. Vergil observed with light surprise that the flemincoe or Flemengoe birds were wading in the puddle where live ducks were sometimes set to paddle and freshen before becoming dead ducks. The tall pink birds seemed quite at home, though Vergil had no thought that ever he had seen them in Naples before at all. Strange sights, well, some said these were strange times: likely they were right.

“Who in the bloody little hell knocks at such an hour?”

“Poulterer, the Doge’s Torchbearer; open, open, ope!”

“May his Grace’s torch be set to my house and out-sheds if me taxes be not already fully paid and tallies isshied — What, Messer Fortunatu? What?” The man startled at the sight of Vergil, but gave him a deep nod as good as any bow; it was difficult to bow at a tiny window which showed little but one’s face and neck.

“My man, at once, at once, one quarter of a hen-chicken, at once! Yes, yes, yes, yes.” Fortunatus at once resumed talk of the Zone in which lay Great Zeugma, known as the richest toll-bridge in the world, as it crosseth River Eupherate; but soon the thunk! thunk! of the cleaver on the block distracted him.

“Fo! the thick chickeny stenk o’ the place,” the torchman said, staring down the family, and the neighbors, and perhaps a score or so of onlookers who seemed to have appeared from nowhere to speculate and point … until eyed down, for the torchman wore a livery which all knew, and by the proud stance and glance of him he might have been the Master of the Doge’s guard. (Did he pose, thus, there, of course, they would have cuffed him).

At his house in the Alley of the Hornscrapers — the Alley was full of the strong, rich olor of neats’-horn, which none who ever smelled of it ever forget; to which added sundry stenks from the Ox Shambles: let the Fisc term cattle-butchering one of the Infamous Trades and tax it as such, that made it smell no sweeter. Not that Fortunatus showed any sign of noticing. He fumbled now in his own ratty purse, so different from the one which held the ducal bounty; gave the torchbearer sundry copper coins, received his thanks. Somewhat hesitantly he said, “I do not usually invite people to my chamber, but if the Messer Vergil would care to climb aloft —?”

The sage Messer Vergil would feel honored. There was merely a slight problem. The torchbearer, saying, “If Messer Magus would care to go aloft a bit, I shall be pleased to wait below, and I haves a spare torch to enlight him home,” Vergil nodded his assent. The Master Philosopher suddenly pointed into the shadows, “Did you drop a coin?” asked he; and whilst the torchbearer peered and gaped, Fortunatus swiftly, deftly, furtively, found the end of a rope concealed somewhere, and hauled upon it, then as swiftly hid it away again. Down slid a ladder. Up went Fortunatus, Vergil following after. Below they heard the torchman mutter, as he clinked his coins and counted them, that he saw nowt missing, but thanked Messer Fortunatu none the less.

“Please to step carefully as you enters,” said Messer Fortunatus. He let the ladder stay where it was, and tied the rope fast. “Down there in the street be dangers,” he muttered. “Did you see the way some of yon rabble looked upon me? They would have rabbled me and stole away my quartern hen-chicken, if they could. — but here be safety.”

By dim light (and no doubt even without it) as easily as if it were level daylight, Fortunatus moved about. He unsmoored the fire, blew the sleeping coals a-bright, added a few more, lit a spill, by it lit his lamp, swiftly, carefully, blew out the spill. He took the quarter a hen-chicken in its wrapping of clean cabbage-leaf, dropped it, cabbage-leaf and all, along with an onion, a parsnip, a cluft of garlic, a juniper berry, a single peppercorn, and the two small pippins whose selection from the sideboard of the Doge had made so much merriment (Did he know it was customary to take both hands full of the gilded sweetmeats — including the rosy marchipanes — when the Doge gestured, saying, Have what you will , and …? No, he did not.); dropped all into his sole black chauldron, covered all with a fiasco of rain water deftly drained from the cistern-on-the roof, and put his meal (supper? it would be supper, dawn-dish, noon-mess and all to him, with his scanty and disciplined diet) to cook upon the embers. From the one lamp lit, he lit others, all the others … that is, all both of the others …

Vergil looked round the room, the his , Fortunatus’s room, crazy and cranky (but his !), at the top of the house, with no way thither into it now from inside or outside the building. He saw the books, scrolls, the massive folios (oliphaunt folios, some called them, either because elephant was part of the bindings or because they were the size, so to speak, of oliphaunts), instruments, plans, charts whereby one could instantly tell the hour and half-the-hour (even on rainy or cloudy days), pictures (of the Great Gnomon at Syene, for ensample), the tiny plants which he maintained, in his cranky way, purified the air (Mercules! it did need such, in this neighborhood!); globes celestial and terrestrial and crowded cabinets; and that odd, odd bird of unknown provenance, silent bird, sitting silent on its perch (the whisper in the lane had it that Fortunatus had frequent converse with it in a foreign tongue). It would munch the remnants of his meal, whatever his meal might be; no meal at all? then the bird, too, would make do with no meal at all; at such times the neighbors said that they could tell it was Hunger Day, for all day long the bird plucked the strings of an ancient lute a-hanging by its perch: every note from umma to summa, one after the other, all day long, all the long, long, day.

If any one was untactly enough to sound such series of notes on his own lute: “Leave off!” (at once), “Leave off! Tis Fortunatus’s bird, gone gant!”

But little cared Fortunatus for any of this. Here he might be (even if, by his own choice, he was not now) alone. Here no one could (unless he himself chose) disturb him. Here he, and not others, put his own value on things. The whisper, indeed, the loud and raucous rumble in the lane, said nothing about Fortunatus’s life concerning women, … or, for that matter, boys or girls or men … But a statue of a beautiful she, half life-size, stood int the corner. Many a Patrician of the Kingdom of Naples (the Kingdom was extinct: not the title) would have given many a golden solid or golden pæleólogus for to have it: Haro the sculptor had groaned it up himself by ropes and pullies, and selected a choice-most nook for it in the best light, purely out of respect for a fellow-artificer; Fortunatus used it to dry his breeches on in the hot weather, the while he went bare … though in the cold he set the brazier of heated ashes by it, (the while himself he shivered), lest it freeze and crack.

Having attended to the matter of food (it would remind him by savory smell when it was ready, he was not one of your hour-glass or water-clock cooks), he prepared to sit him down — and suddenly bethought himself that he had a guest; “Is the sage, Vergil, interested in the mathematics?” he asked.

“It would be a further favor,” the sage Vergil began, but one word attended the ear of the Master Philosopher.

“ ‘A favor’ yes. A favor. One may ask a favor? ah?. By the boon and bounty of the learned Doge …” (many had called Tauro many things, referring to his habits, his parents, his coarseness, and his size: no one before, under the Consulate of Heaven, had, surely, ever called him learned !)