Vergil in Averno

The decurion was inclined to be brusque. “Don’t dally and stand about, citizen,” he said. “You are required to assist the Imperial Officer — to assist any Imperial Officer when called upon.”

“Decurion,” said Vergil. “I am more than mere willing. I am indeed eager. But his Honor has yet to say, though he’s asked my help, what help is it he asks of me. Ser Legate,” he addressed the man who sat, sick-faced, crouched and quivering, before him in the guardroom, “what is it, ser, which — ”

Casca said, “I am perplexed. I am confused. Badly, very badly confused. What is the date?” Vergil answered, now being able to answer a given question, though little he saw why it should be a matter of either confusion or perplexity: They were not, after all, some foraging party lost in woods for weeks. He named the month, named the number of the day, declared the relation to the ides and calends, he named the Consuls-in-Office, the Imperial reign-year, and the number of the indiction, that fifteen-year tax-cycle being just about to turn. There was a small smell of small wine and of old leather in the small room. . doubtless the leather was that of the decurion’s harness. There was also a small smell of the decurion as well.

“… confused …” said Casca. “I wish that you would not confuse me, master. . whatever your name is. Now tell me. Tell me ever so simply. The date. What the date?”

This time and before Vergil could answer, the decurion, a classically rugged-looking old legionary, face as leathery as harness, and with callouses under his chin from the helmet-straps of years; this time the decurion gestured Vergil, not to speech but silence, said, halfway between Attention and At Ease, “Ser. Beg to report. Eleventh day of September. Ser.”

At this brief answer, couched in the military report terms familiar from years, old Casca seemed to gain control. To be. . anyway. . less confused. “The eleventh day.”

“Ser. Eleventh.”

Casca limply inclined his hand. Vergil, eyes following the movement, saw that there appeared to be an entire strongbox of documents next to the folding chair in which Casca sat. Sat, and trembled. The Imperial Eagle was embossed in the upper right-hand corner; in the center was the single letter A and an insigne and under that the initials for Latin: “the Very Rich City.” In size it was something between a dispatch box and a chest for treasure; it was made of cedar wood bound in bull’s-hide; and it seemed to be not alone old but to have had a long, hard life. Though the box had been corded, tied, knotted, sealed, all this lay around it, with several clean and fresh cuts in the cordage. (Though the cordage had not been new, either: Averno had grown rich not alone from what it earned but from what it had not spent.) And toward all this gestured the Legate’s wasted, quivering hand.

“Open it, Dec,” he said. The decurion at once obeyed. A mass of documents lay within, some on parchment and some on papyrus. Some were certainly palimpsests, from which older writing had been thriftily soaked or scraped so that new texts might be inscribed thereon. Some of the number (Vergil could not guess what the number might be) had had their own seals broken; others, visibly, had remained unopened. Again Casca gestured, again the decurion obeyed an order; obeyed it correctly, though no words had passed. He picked up the first item, presented it to his superior. Who gestured that Vergil take it, that Vergil should open it; commanded, “Read …”

Not more than a few words of the commencement of a formal (and a lengthy) salutation had Vergil read when he was interrupted. “The date, man. The date? What date?”

“Ser Legate.” He scanned it swiftly. “The thirteenth of September.”

“The thirteenth? The thirteenth? How comes this to be dated the thirteenth? — when you both assure me that today is the eleventh?”

Vergil. “Merely at a hazard. . a guess. . documents are sometimes dated in advance in preparation for them to be signed subsequently. . on the date designated, for — ”

Said Casca, “These are already signed.”

Vergil’s eyes went at once to the bottom of the document in his hands. Whose signature was there he could not at once make out, he had a swift impression it had been signed in stencil, that great invention to aid those who could not write even their own names; but signed it had been. Perhaps Casca had made another gesture, for the decurion, not skilled in the subtle movements of the accomplished secretary, had attempted to remove the sheet from Vergil’s hands. Vergil did not yield it over, there was a silent struggle (Iohan said later that the lictor declared the decurion had actually put his other hand to his sword), then the thing passed from the one man to the other. And Vergil cried, “O the gods, Casca!”

He had seen one line, inscribed in ink as black as black ever was, but it burned as though written in fire. — the sentence of death having been thus executed upon the traitor Cadmus, it — It had been signed, it had been sealed, it had not been as intended delivered, it spoke in the past tense as of a thing accomplished, it was dated two days hence — “ ‘O the gods,’ indeed,” said Casca.

Casca, at their first meeting (over the good wine mingled with fresh clean spring water), had said of those in power in Averno, “… though they are savages and swine, they know well enough I’ve only to send one signal, and,” he blew an imaginary trumpet, “down comes the legion. And that’s the end of that.” But now he was saying something else, in a voice that was only intermittently firm.

“It is not the life of one lunatic that concerns me, that is not of any concern to me in the least. Those who are insane are sacred?” The question, purely rhetorical, was followed by no pause. Casca swept on, quavering voice or not. “Sacred because they have been touched by the sacred gods? ‘Let the gods avenge offenses against themselves.’ I was looking, I had been looking in the wrong place. Gazing altogether in the wrong direction — as they intended I should dol Intelligence they have none, but cunning, craft, slyness and guile — of this they have enough, enough, more than enough, they — ”

“By they your Honor means the magnates of Averno?”

A gesture. “Whom else could I mean? Look, look at those damnable documents.” Another gesture. “The magnates? Yes! But not all the magnates. I haven’t even scanned all those decrees, sentences, documents, declarations. I can’t tell you every name that is on them, because be sure that not every name has a sheet all to itself — there are lists! Ah, what lists! Listen, Master Vergil. There is a faction of the magnates that intends to make a clean sweep of every other faction. Much of what they mean, and what the reasons for meaning it, is unclear to me, it is too murk, too thick. But I can tell you that they don’t mean merely to put one man, mad or not, to death. They have down there the names of hundreds, Messer Vergil! I say hundreds. I say hundreds. Whom they mean to kill.

“Hundreds …”

And so Vergil came to know, knowledge swift and heavy and as sickening as a blow, what that dull, recurrent, and deep demand for “… Hecatombs …” had really meant. Hundreds were to be sacrificed indeed. But it was not hundreds of oxen that were meant. Hundreds of men.

“Your Honor had spoken once to me of blowing one blast of the trumpets and bringing down the legion. Has — ”

“ ‘Send one signal,’ is what I said,” Casca corrected him, almost absently. True: the trumpet-blowing had been mimed. “I was about to inform you that there must actually be three: one to the Commander of the Legion, one to the Viceroy, and one. . for one last chance we must give them to shrink back from this series of — obviously — false trials of so many Roman citizens. . and one to Averno. I — ” A new and sudden thought struck him. “Would you bear this last one? We would give you an armed escort. You are already known there, so — ”

Vergil had begun to consider the manner in which he might do this, when he was of a sudden overwhelmed by memories of why it was perhaps not the best thing in the world — for himself, for Cadmus, for Armin. He forced himself to stop thinking thus, useless catalogue of names, useless waste of time — “Ser Legate, here is what happened,” he began. Got no farther.

“You would not wish to. Very well. Tell me later why not. One moment later.” He pointed to an open set of tablets. “Take up the style, if you please, me ser, and write these words: S. Apponal Casca, Legate Imperial, to the Very Rich City of Averno, Greetings. This is the decree. All trials and all other judicial processes are to be estopped and to stay estopped and in abeyance till further notice. Utterly forbidden that You execute any sentences of capital nature. At once acknowledge obedience. Now seal it. — Decurion!”

“Ser!”

“Send this.”

“Ser!”