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

“Leave thee nothing! Thee’ll shit tomorrow … do thee eat tonight … the which I doubt: no cabbage-money? no cabbage!”

Cosmo Nungo was incredulous. What! surely his old ally Valerian was no Longobard, and — But the taunt, worked once, did not work twice. Cosmo, cursing, wished the parasol of Hercules — never mind where. Then he walked home. Cursing, barefoot, in the snow.

Barefoot in the snow!

Next day he got a small advance from an unusually tolerant guild-master, bought a pair of shoes. Not a new pair, you may be sure.

Much did Vergil wish to pause, then flee. But to Vergil, pause , by definition meant brief. Whereas to Cosmo Nungo, pause meant talk. And this day he wanted to talk of Vergil’s lesser loadstone, Great Adamanth, and, perhaps of even greater loadstones, Negedbarzel, it might be, and the legendary lapis ferrum attrahens, Exhaurio Antepotentis.

To Vergil, now, entering in haste, the older man said, “ Ars requiret totum hominem , Master, and so we term —” His master said, hurriedly, casting a swift sad look round the lower elaboratory with its ranks of instruments, “Yes, I know that art requires the presence of the entire man, but I must now —” useless. Cosmo Nungo had the bit between his broken teeth, and was galloping down the track.

“The loadstone, ser, we term the heraclion, that is to say, the Lion of Hercules. And it is our function, ser, as alchymists, to slay that lion. To annul the adamanth, ser, and make naught the magnet. ‘Transmutation,’ ser? To be sure. There is more than one transmutation. For ensample,” he took hold of the border of Vergil’s robe, not yet was his master to be awarded the right to wear the Golden Garment; this was a shabby raveling travel robe, tucked in at the waist, with not a shred of gold about it. “For ensample, to transmute orpiment,” continued the inexorable Nungo; “orpiment — that is, auripigmentum — to make from it what we calls realgar, King’s Yellow, that is, or sand-áraca, sand-áraca, sanddraco, ‘the dragon in the sand,’ we call it, too. And this transmutation is one of your basic excersizes in occamy —”

Thoughts of haste, even fear, diminished; “Five hours’ fire in the sealed crucible should do it, I think. Eh?”

“Yes, sir. It should, But sometimes the perentice doesn’t know how to find the fire, or how to fix it, nor even how to set his crucible, let alone how to make the proper lute to seal it. Nor sometimes he doesn’t even know about the five hours …” Vergil suddenly considered that he might have to break the man’s fingers, but Cosmo loosed the robe of his own motion. Vergil strode on. Adamanths! Realgar! Anon!

The Nungo trotted after him, still babbling. “Though some say, ser, that sandáraca is a resin, ser, and not a mineral. Sandrake, sand-dragon,” he intoned, “dragon-sand … as it sopped up the shed.”

Vergil, about to call aloud the name of Polydore, his house-servant; at this last word from the Nungo he had to repeat, “The, ah, shed ?”

“Ser. Yes. The blood that was shed by the dragon in the combat, ser. In the great combat. The Combat on the Sand.” For one sole moment Vergil had a vision, quick and filled with red: a typical scene in the Arena, its floor all sand; the usual scene in the Arena: a gladiator had received his death-wounds, and the lepers licensed to do so rushed forward to drink his life’s blood in hopes of a cure. May it do them much good , he thought. One wound was nigh the navel and one between the collar-bone and the left pap. For the sake of decency, wounds in either groin were not licensed; nor were those above the torc; one does not know why not. It was sometimes very sad to see the lepers, who had run so fast, walk off with hanging hands and lagging legs, for the blood of a dead gladiator was, of course, not licensed to be drunk at all. Though only necrophiles would want to. But … hold! a dragon had no pap, no navel! and who had ever seen a dragon in the Arena? Nungo must have been speaking an alchemical metaphor, like The lion of Hercules or The shining golden vessels and the sullen bronze or — Enough! “Polydore!” he cried. The house-servant’s deep and drawling voice answered him from aloft.

“Your portfolio’s freshly packed, my Ser,” he called.

So that was done … Next: to his work, left aside for the trip north. He wanted to essay the fabrication of a salamander; first he checked the athenor to see it was in order: no controlled heat? — no salamander. It checked well. After that there were supplies to be gotten, for example naphtha, charcoal and sulfur. At no distant date he meant to make a grand trial of all types of charcoal and to see how they compared; perhaps he should do that now? No … he was suddenly too eager to wait for that. He would see what the suppliers’ had on hand now . Tests of the wood of all charable trees was far too slow a task; he would for now content himself with considering holm-oak; many decried its wood as being afflicted always with a hostile dryad, so that its fire was too hot, greasy, smoky, sappy. What would this mean in terms of charcoal? Well, one would see … Wouldn’t one?

Sulfur, too. And napth.

“Oliver is a well-tried wood for charcoal,” said Arland, his regular supplier. “Your olive gives a slow, true fire, me ser. Nothing so steady as oliver, me think.” To be sure that the appearance of olive-wood in commerce was almost a guarantee of its being old wood; the Jews, it was said, would neither eat nor tithe the fruit of a tree less than three years old, considering it too young: but many times three years must pass before the olive would bear, indeed, a generation must pass before the olive would bear. No one would cut down an olive tree for its wood, it taking so long to replace. Time alone should assure that its gross and fatty humors would have been outgrown … the common faith agreed that if one paused by a grove of silver-leaved olive trees at noon and paused in the heat and silence, one would hear the softly hissing sound of the trees “drying out” … to say nothing of the results of the charring process, the ricks of wood burning in the carefully-stacked kilns almost without air.

“A sack of olive, then,” Vergil said. “And a sack of holm-oak. To be —”

“To be delivered. Yes, me ser.” The man was almost as black as a charcoal burner in the hills himself, but just as pecunia non olet — money does not stink — said of the public sale to the wool-fullers, of the stale and rotting contents of the public urinals — so perhaps it might be said that money does not smudge. Might.

Now for sulphur, punk, and all the other ingredients.

There was no trade, likely, that lacked premises which attracted a number of loafers. A charcoal warehouse, though, would not, of course shelter as many as a vintner’s. A vintner might sometimes turn to an experienced old nose and gorgel and say, “See what you think of this” — this being usually a taste from either a very new barrel or a very old one — and the experienced old nose or gorgel would sample it, rolling it round on his tongue after sniffing, swallow; and say, judiciously, something like, lacks body … too thick … smells faint, doctor it up … too thin … too raw … too old: make tolerable vinegar, though…. Now and then the old nose (advertizing its age and experience with assorted red swellings and pumples and streaks of pseudo-Tyrian purple) would put on a performance which a veteran thespian might relish, before pronouncing the test-liquor to be first rate: champion! But although a master charcoal dealer might indeed sometimes turn to an old dustbag retired from the trade and having never washed since, might hand over a black nugget with a “See what you think of this,” what could the old veteran do? crack the black bit, smell of it, taste of it, smear it on his grimey paw; and mutter that it was too dry … to moist … to old … fit to shoe an ass … or perhaps sometime, Not up to thy reg’lar standard but the cheap trade will take it … one would be moved only by respect for the standards of the trade, not a stimulus equal to bibbing wine; therefore loafers in this particular warehouse were thin upon the ground; nevertheless there were a few: just before turning away Vergil heard one saying to another something which made him suddenly pause and feign an adjustment of tunic and hose and belt-band.