Vergil in Averno

The decurion saluted, left the room, could be heard barking his orders. Send this! Not, take your decade and bring this, this — and, if so, Vergil tried to imagine the entire ten men on their mounts riding calmly and confidently up to the gated walls of the Very Rich (very filthy, very decadent, very bad) City: he could imagine it. He could, even, imagine a one or at most a two of the cavalrymen thus matter-of-factly delivering these orders; what he could not, in this case, imagine, was the reaction thereto. “Would the Legate Imperial not consider assigning the entire force of the soldiery here encamped to this task?”

“And leave this post unmanned? Messages must pass, must be exchanged, you know. If I were well, if you were willing — However. What. A thought. Just now. An obvious one. What, what, what …”

But someone else had had that thought, someone from whose mind it had not escaped; from nowhere, there he stood before them.

The lictor.

“Your Honor. Permission to draw a third ration.”

“Granted.”

“Your Honor. Permission to depart on duty.”

“Go.”

“Ser. Hail and farewell.”

“Hail and farewell.”

In a moment Vergil saw through the tiny window three men on horseback: two soldiers, armed as usual, one with the sealed tablets and the tablets’ purple badges, and the lictor, bearing the fasces. Naught else. Place there might be and time there might come, that so-far august emblem of order and of cogent rule and of well-tempered strictness sink, as all emblems might, and be degraded: not here and not yet. Vergil heard the hooves depart at a slow and steady pace, now almost soft upon the enclosed ground of the guard-station post, now hollow upon the bridge, then (with a single, threefold whoop of human voice) at the gallop along the stone-paved, the Imperial road.

Twice more did he, at command, indite the burthen of that message on other tablets. To the Commandant, the Legion: One cohort at once to Averno, in danger of sedition, misprision, and misrule. CASCA. (No need to add, “Have all in ready if more be needed”; it would be done. Automatically.) The Commandant would of course notify the Viceroy and this did not of course excuse the Legate from doing the same; the Legate did the same. At rather greater length, but not at much greater. One man sufficed for each message. The decurion departed, reappeared, departed; once Casca murmured something to him, the decurion responded with an official-sounding syllable; later Vergil was to learn that this ensured Iohan would receive a soldier’s meal: bread, garlic, salt, parsley, and the rough-and-ready wine of the ration; next the Legate put his hands before his face, at once removed them.

“Now there is time for you to tell me why you did not wish to return. I do not wish to return, think not this is any sort of reproach; speak on.”

Had it been only that “one moment later”? And not, say, an hour? He began to, indeed, “speak on.” Told the listening Legate how he had felt himself all but hustled off from and out of the stinking Rich City; some gifts, few, perfunctory, and an order for a money payment — and no extremely extraordinarily munificent one — cashable in either Puteoli or Naples, within a distinctly limited period of time. How, when he would further discuss his work there, came once more, at once, the familiar congee against which one felt there was no appeal: All right to go now, Wizard. How he had protested having heard no decision, no word, even, of refusal, denial, in regard to his plans for the fire-fields and how inflammable airs might be piped, and boiling water from the springs. Responsum: Master Vergil need give himself no further immediate concern in the matter. The Council of Magnates of the Very Rich City has even now already commenced giving Master Vergil’s plans the attention they so much merit, attention the most profound…. Master Vergil will wish to mount, his horse and boy even now are waiting for him….

… and so they were. . though he had given no order.

An idea had flashed and shimmered while Vergil, aware of hands poised to press as he walked toward his servant and his horse, several of the magnates walking alongside him — seeming not so much anxious to see the last of him as preoccupied with other, deeper matters. This idea formed itself into a word he had not, dared not speak. Poppaea. He had and dared speak another name, though. “I will wish to pay my respects to King Cadmus before I — ”

And one man’s emphatic “Nuh!” was not quite overspoken by another’s. “King Cadmus is at present engaged in fasting, meditation, and prayer, and — ”

And, “Therefore!” said Iohan.

Stooped, folded hands.

Vergil hesitated. Shrugged. Mounted.

“Clearly they wanted me gone directly and wanted me not to return,” he concluded his recapitulation to Casca.

Casca’s haggard face twitched. “ ‘Clearly’? Not to me, ‘clearly.’ ”

Nor, in one second, was it “clearly” to Vergil either. This, all this, which he had just described — had it happened? It had not happened! What had happened was much simpler. — Simpler? Well. . briefer. He and Iohan had decided to leave, and the mare -

Why had the mare so suddenly gone antic, gone into one of her moods, her “little ways,” taken them would they or would they not by way of the least likely exit, the straight-topped Dung Gate, whence no man of social stature entered or left? — instead of via the arched way of the Great Gate? No answer came in words, but as though in some vision, a scene of mist contained within a crystal, he saw something. . someone. . waiting beneath an arch…. His name is Borbo.

His name is — what?

Over a table hung a rose, and deep within that table’s surface a man stood beneath an arch, outlined by light, though else was dim: a figure brutal, strong, and coarse, watching the approach of a runner, of one running in a race, watching with a steady eye. This former’s broad, blunt face had something of the look of an experienced gladiator, but there was in it no element of that caution akin to fear. And in his huge hands (huger, yet, his arms! his shoulders!) a hammer, huge. Who? What?

“Borbo is his name. A butcher is what he is. With his hammer he stuns the oxen. And when they stumble, then he plunges in the knife.”

And then Vergil heard the voice — another and a different voice, not the voice that had just spoken — this voice never came from that butcher beneath the arch (where, the arch?); it was toneless and dry and — he now realized, a trifle tired — it was as though some clerk was reading something, one who reads a document read sundry times before, yet need be read once more, before the signet is affixed. . one Vergil, a wizard, sorcerer, nigromant and necromant. From him the protection of the Laws and the Magnates of the Very Rich City is withdrawn, and he is proclaimed Outlaw. He may be duped, drugged, drawn, stabbed, strangled, stoned; he may be poniarded, poisoned, bludgeoned, thrust through, or cast down. It be licit that he be burned or bled or hamstrung or hanged….

The arch, beneath which the butcher stood: where?

The arch of the Great Gate, whence, it had been thought Vergil and his servant would emerge upon their leaving the Very Rich City. . was where. They had been hurried, huddled, headed thither; and thither they would certainly have gone, had it not been for the sudden madness of the mare. It was a minor madness, but it was enough to have saved their lives; thus:

The scene of he and his servant having been hastened forth by sundry magnates to his, Vergil’s, and his, Iohan’s, doom and death — this, which one moment ago he had imagined had happened — this had indeed not happened. But it had been intended to have happened. The decree of outlawry had covered many contingencies, but it had not covered the contingency of a runaway horse. Idly, Vergil looked at his palm, thinking, I must give her some handfuls of best white barley. His hand was empty. His mouth, fallen silent, was empty, too; he fumbled for his cup, his cup was also empty; his cup, his mouth were equal dry.

To Casca: “Is there among these damnable documents one which proclaims my own outlawry?”

From Casca: “You may look. But does it matter. Averno shall not come to us, for all its documents. We shall go to Averno. Despite them.”