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

Not the least good, any show of impatience.

“Have you got some good lengths of well-braided leathern shrouds to stay the mast of my little craft as you may see rides at mooring there.”

See Joquimo, a.k.a. the Estate of Catus, peer a careful look to port, at once then say, “I has, Messer; that I has. A-made of jerauph’s hide, be called cameleopard by the general, fit to —”

Polycarpu, the least use or not, burst forth, “Neither sight nor smell has this lone rock of yours ever had of any jerauph or cameleopard! Asides: plain old pizzle-bull his hide be good enow for me; have you —”

“Indeed, indeed, my Messer Capitan sweet; the toughest hide of a plain old pizzle-bull as ever croppit grass or hunched a cow: it be flensed and scraped and cut and tanned and braided and hangit two weeks with weights to stretch it fair, and wants but ane more week for to —”

Which Polycarpu interpreted at its full worth, that is, that the man had nothing of the sort; mayhap he had an old ass’s hide in the stinking tannin-vat, and, given an advance of money and enough time, would endeavor to make treaty with the local butcher to haggle the god knew how long with any farmer who chanced to have a worn-out ox or bull he’d maybe sell; and at every chance Joquimo would swear upon his goodwife’s withered vulva that he simply must have another advance of money or the whole schema would go to waste: for thus it almost ever was in any small civitas: and the months might well (or ill) pass before any set of braided-leathers would the stranger get. And as for getting any of his money back for any reason beneath the ever-conq’ring and undying sun: such a thing had never been known in the history of the world and of the wheeling, glittering stars.

Visits to the man who made leathern buckets and bottles were just as bootless, and, speaking of boots, so was the trip to the isle’s sole and only cordwainer.

Whilst these useless trips and tours continued, gradually one became aware of a work-worn and decent-looking man following at a distance in their train. The distance gradually grew less and less, at length when he and Polycarpu were side-by-side the latter gave the stranger at last a long look which he took as chance to speak. “I am the rope-weaver of this place,” said he. “Mine is the rope-walk, and —”

“’ Rope -weaver’! Have you got a new —”

The man shook his dusty head. “Nothing new, ser. I work to order only, and the orders come few, and it takes me time; first I must find the grass.” And he stopped. Waited.

What he did have to offer was soon described. A while ago he had prepared some rope on order for a shipman whose vessel plied between the island and the main of Mauretayne, payment to be made at the semi-annual settling of all debts, according to the custom. “He come home about that time,” said the rope-maker. “Before he ever unladed a jar or bale, he come to the wine-shop … for he never dranked at sea … and sate him down, he did. And then he died: no more years, he had. Nor had he heirs, howesoe’er remote. His boat was sold, and the cargo, and his wee house, and such. His debits were paid. And I? I got me back my ropes. I am not a one,” he concluded, simply, “to dun the dead.”

The ropes were not new, nor were they especially good. But they were better than the ones the Sard ship had.

And so they were good enough.

A larger sail was also offered, and that they took, too. Nor did the crew refrain from grumbling when Polycarpu roused them up at a time when the stars still blazed; “For,” said he, “It belikes me not to wastrel hours, and I feel not safe ontil we be in familiar waters; to work, there! To work!” The mast was stepped down, the old and fraying leather shrouds removed and cast aside for the cordwainer to fetch when he liked and cut them up and boil them down to add to his store of pigs’ pizzles and asses’ hooves and suchlike rubble, to make him glue. The “new” shrouds were but barely fitted in with the re-stepped mast, when a hue ran through the small throng gathered to watch the free show and to offer all their unsolicit advice: that a ship had been seen in the far distance by the watcher on the hill.

“What ship? Of what sort, a ship?” a hundred throats cried out the question. The answer, between gasps (the watcher’s boy had run the way): “A Carthage ship! A Pune! A ship of Carthage! Carthage! Pune!”

Swiftly they passed a rock off-shore (mentioned in The Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne ) which stood into the water above the reaches of the common waves: there crouched a row of harpy-birds, eaters of men; anent whom opinions differ: do they attack, destroy, devour living men? or do they make their meals of dead-men’s-meat alone, as though it were mere sulliage or carrion? They crouched with their folded wings hunched high, their faces glaring out below: so that they looked like so many men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. Fearful thought! and fearful sight!

They glowered and somewhat hoist first one foot, then atother, and their wings did twitch a bit: but nay more move they made. Vergil gave them but a glance. Overhead, high, high: the griffins gyred and circled.

In haste, afore they in haste put out to sea, finding after frantic search and enquiry, an aged copy of the Oracles of Maro; dice he easy gat. Tossed for the number of the page, tossed for the number of the line: seven came the first, fourteen came the second. Duplication of felicity? In anguished haste he turned the pages of the coverless codex, pages sullied and filthy with food and wine and with the drippings of the oily lamp; and withal what found he? This: much-loved of Juno, antient Carthage, stained with purple and heavy with gold. Thence, thence it was, that too-much-quoted gravid line? He had never thought of the Maro much; now he was moved to curse it: moved to … did not … And then the cry was, All aboard or left ahind, you magus there, move your narrow marrow-bones!

He moved.

The discus, Vergil could not throw; no race-horse would suffer to bear his untrained weight; and nor could he, limbs oiled and dusted with powder of alabaster, of mica, and of yellow marblestone, neither wrestle nor run the course, but he had one gift which they who waited beneath the echoing portico for the sound of the trumpet had not: he could think two clean different thoughts at once. The boat’s cracked boom sang a sort of woeful keening croon within the hollow; he thought of how he must now swiftly work with his fingers; and he thought as well of the 10th and 12th lines of— not of the Maro! not! — of the vIIth book of Concerning Things Seen in the Summer , the provenance of which is all unknow (some say that the Cumæan Sybil idly threw it in for boot when she finally sold her own prophetic, vatic book of leaves to Tarquin King, the Proud: this is mere legend), videlixet :

Against all Cities of the World may Cartha hope to triumph, save that against Graund Baby lone may Cartha lift no Thing of Bronze nor Iron. And doth Cartha ken this well…. Anent that Soldane of Graund Babylone which did eat grass like ane Ox, a further accompt is given …

That accompt must wait another occasion.

And Babylone was far away.

By some traditional estimate it was the green seas which were the most dangerous. But the sea today was grey, and much it liked him not.

Babylone was as far away as Agamemnon’s purple cloak, but Carthage (wherever Carthage was, nowadays) was not so far. And Carthage still claimed and Carthage still kept, the secret of the purple-yielding sea-shell which had made Carthage rich.