Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

And he 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. They sell very good bread with opium seed over there.”

My question almost burst forth. “But which one was she? ” She was only one of six sacred women in the service of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, without whom there could really be no home, and hence, no Rome: but which one was she? The bread did smell good; they say there is at least one bakeshop in the capital for every province in the Empery. One does not doubt.

Quint turned to me, immediately (he) a man of the most scornful urban world. “But my dear fellow, you know nothing! — mage though you are — Well…how could you, there in Naples? She is Claudia.”

“And does she often spare?”

Quint started again his rigmarole, 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 us: 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 Tarpaean Rock when you had to climb.

But it was only a short way down when you were pushed.

There were nights when I slept like a farmer, and nights when I could not sleep, or slept but ill. That night I fell soon into slumber, for thank the gods, in that very quiet — and very, very rich — quarter of Rome, where 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? I must have left my bed the better to observe and to hearken — what, then, a horrid shock, to realize that my arms were bound behind me at the elbows and my feet confined by straps or ropes so that I might take no very long steps and certainly could not run. I turned to ask my terrified question of the man nearest to me, 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 my neck! It did not choke me, not so long as I kept up with my keeper. “But what then?” I begged the fellow. “But what then?” The shun-soap made no answer, but steadily led me along, as a nacker 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 to — Suddenly the sound of the vulgus ceased, then resumed in another note and another register.

Then ceased again.

A woman’s voice, strong and level and chill. “I pardon that man.” Our gazes met. She showed her shock. Her eyes were blue and clear.

It was yet dark when I woke, but Rome generally awoke in the yet dark; a few lamps had already been kindled in the corridor; I noticed this abstractedly as I rushed to Quint: but Quint was already rushing to me. We met in the lesser atrium with the dull red walls where a few servants passed hither and thither like wraiths, thin vapors rising from the vessels in their hands. The heavy master of the household had either not yet aroused, or was occupied elsewhere; had he been present, our own respective business, however much it agitated us, must needs wait: but present he was not. At first our confrontation was in silence, there were sighs and moanings inarticulate, but not words. Then Quint said, and his voice trembled, “I have had such a dream!”

“And I—”

“Dreams are best kept silent, except to a qualified interpreter — or to a closemost friend—”

“Yes…”

“I am older, let me speak first,” said Quint. I staying silent, he went on to speak his words, clutching my arm, my arms, as though he would draw me to him. “Did you notice?” he asked. “Did you notice that old pedlar-dame in yesterday’s mob? selling baskets and sieves? She passed through my dream at an angle and then I saw the woman, I mean the woman…the real woman… I saw the woman holding the sieve… Claudia it was…it was Claudia…she held the sieve— you know what that means —and my heart went chill and swollen and I peered to see if the sieve did indeed hold the water, or if it had merely let it slip through and the mesh still wet. But she held it upside-down, she held it upside- down! What does that mean? And she looked at me and I saw that her eyes were very blue and very clear,” his own eyes, I saw in the increasing light of early day, were very red, and quite without salve or ointment; “and she looked past me and she looked at you and her eyes went wide and I remarked her voice, I shall always remember her voice: it was level and strong and clear, and she pointed her hand at you and she said, ‘Thou art the man!’ And what that means, I dare not think: but I would that you would leave our Yellow Rome at once.”

After I had spoken in turn, Quint leaned closer to me, and almost, somehow, I expected to see a thin cold breath from his mouth, like that from the basins of hot water for a quick early morning wash even now hurried past us by a few diligent slaves: but slavery makes for diligence…and makes it, much. Quint asked, “What is the meaning of this two-part dream? Does one part come from the Gate of Ivory and is false? does one part issue from the Gate of Horn and is it true? Is the whole dream one of evil omen? or of good? If we say, Good, in that she pardons you? of some sentence of death, it is sure, for if it were merely a matter of a fine…prison…the dungeon…or the scourge—” here I shuddered, he went on—“how many men yearly die beneath the lash, merely, the lash? how many in the dungeon, where even a reflection of a reflection of the light of the sun or the moon never shines?…let alone in the mere prison? where sometimes a gleam of sunlight creeps as it were uncertainly amongst the filthy littered rushes or the trampled straw…or now and then a beam of moonlight is reflected by a burnished mazer or a pewter plate polished like a mirror? For that matter,” he babbled, as we stood, crouched, in the atrium, close together; “for that matter,” he went on, “when a mere fine, merely the matter of a fine has broke a man’s bench, his bancus become ruptus, his lands his fields his house his yards his loft his laboratory all his goods his gear his tools his attire and even the very dead embers of his hearth for potash, and even the broken pisspot in the corner of his house of office: all, all, sold to pay the fine — eh? — how many, sinking beneath shame and broken spirit, the fine like blazing fire consumes all means of earning food?”

Quint, beside himself, was now unwittingly imitating the gestures, the very vocal tricks, of any advocate seen and heard in Apollo’s Court. He swept the air with his hands, he bulged his eyes, he stood on his tip-toes, he touched his ear-lobe with a finger. “But all of these minor penalties, ” this was a new Quint to me and no longer the sophisticate, the man-about-Rome, the cynical; “and if the enemy of the enemies of mine enemy does not die of the stinking-pox, then let him live…let him live under these minor penalties; And these, allegedly the lesser of evils, the Vestal Virgin may not pardon: not a farthing, not a fig: not the theft of enough crushed walnut paste to cover the toenail of an infant child: none! ”