Vergil in Averno

by his heavy breathing — Grobi was dressed in the lightest of silks, the lightest and the costliest, but his hard and heavy hands continually rubbed his marked and marred wrists and ankles, and perhaps that was why Grobi always did move so slow: Grobi still felt the shackles and the chains. Lars Melanchthus was silent and sober-faced this time, but his eyes still full-red, perhaps from years of peering into the smoke of forges. Perhaps his eyes would never be clear again, perhaps his vision neither.

Boso went on scratching and speaking; gradually Vergil put a picture together, as the mosaic-maker does from fragments of colored glass.

The fire and steam and smoke engirdled the city round like a fiery zone, irregular in shape, and sometimes varying: now a circle; and now extending and also narrowing: an oval. From a fumarole whence last year spouted flame, this year perhaps came nothing but a hot and sulfurous stink; sometimes areas larger than an urban “island” of tenements might be affected; then there would be a laborious moving of forges, vats, workshops, and bloomeries to areas where the fires and fiery gasses freshly escaped the rents and fissures of the tortured earth.

“… and some. . here. …” Boso grunted. He finished his scrabbling and sketching and stared a moment. Then he sighed. “This day,” he said. “This year. They don’t stay still,” he said. “And that is the kernel in the nut and the nut in the hull, Master Vergil. Them fires wander a-roundabout, and this cause us the worst kind of troubles. And of lately years they wander roundabout all more than before. Fewer. And weaker. Which is why we have had you here. We’ve put you to test. You’ve passed test. You’ve read certain, like, secret message. Given right answer. All so. Now, Ser. Master. What’s to be done about all this?”

And he sat back on his haunches, evidently convinced that he had made everything as clear as it could possibly be, and gazed at Vergil with his bull-like eyes.

But before Vergil could speak, someone else spoke.

“Hecatombs,” said someone, in a thick, slow, heavy, halting voice. Repeated it.

“Hec. . a. . tombs …”

Paradox.

Illyriodorus, once, when asked, “Master, what is it that you seek?” had answered, stroking his classical beard, “I do not seek. I find.” A moment’s silence, in some measure awed, in all measure respectful, followed this epigram.

And the moment was followed by Vergil’s (audacious youth!) — by Vergil’s asking, nonetheless, “And. . Our Sage. . When you do not find?”

The silence this time was a shocked one. Illyriodorus, however, seemed not shocked. One more stroke he gave his beard. “Ah, then,” he said, quite calmly, “then I seek.”

But that was in Athens. And Vergil was now in Averno. They were nothing like. Nor was either the least like Sevilla. Sevilla. Why did he think of Sevilla now, the Very Ancient and Very Wise City?

Sevilla. Often it was hot there, though never of course was the heat of such a quality as here, here, in the fire-fields of Averno. Oft, when then wearied, had he walked with slow steps to a certain space round the ramparts of Sevilla, where once he had watched a cafila of strange beasts: they were called camels. Awkward and splay-footed their walk, and their upper lips, split like those of giant hares, writhed, groaning, perhaps in pain. And each beast bore upon its back a great hunch. Now, as he passed the fire-fields of Averno and saw among the fumes and fumaroles a line of slaves, staggering and lurching through smoke and steam, each with just such a hunch or puckel on his back — though these were leather sacks filled with, as it might be, lumps of ore — he was reminded of those camel-beasts. The necks of these men who bore the burdens here were of course not longer than other men’s, but like camels they twisted them from side to side, like camels their upper lips were split, and like camels they writhed their lips; indeed, like camels, too, they groaned. Too clearly why: Some canny Avernian had gathered for himself a stable of hare-lipped slaves, for such sold always cheaper. Of course here and for such labor it mattered not the slightest that they could not, their palates being cleft, speak distinctly. No one needed them to speak. Damn their speak. Let them slave.

And when any of them staggered too much, imperiling his load, or slowed as if to pause, the whipper-in, who in fact carried no whip, merely a stick, merely swiftly thrust his stick into one of the glowing holes all round about and between which the cafila struggled. At once the stick burst into flame, see then the driver swing the stick sufficient to reduce the flame to a mere glowing coal-end, and press it against the slave’s heaving side. Swiftly. Slightly. Only slightly. One would not wish the man-camel to drop his humpy burden. . of course. Although sometimes, if the sides of the slave were greatly scarred and toughened from other burns or galls or floggings, then the warder would press the stick a bit harder.

In Sevilla, called though it was by some a sewer of a thousand different devils, Vergil had seen no such sight.

Sevilla. In Sevilla, young Vergil and an Apulian of the same short age (what was his name? how could he have forgotten it? he had forgotten it because although the young Apulian was of great importance, his name was of none) had after no small wait been admitted to the lodge of the beadle of the school, a slender man with a small head. “What have you learned?” asked he. The Apulian, before Vergil could more than wet his lips in preparation, had said that he had studied trivium and quadrivium.

“And here are my certificates,” he added, making to display them, but the beadle waved them off.

“The boys without a hair on their bollix, who play with themselves when the proctors are not looking, have studied trivium and quadrivium. What have you learned?”

There was a pause. Then, a shade sullenly, the Apulian said, “I have been in the woods” — an elliptical reference to the Wild Schools.

Beadle said softly, “Ahh …”He seemed impressed. The Apulian took a breath, caught it, stood straighter. Then and without any warning the figure of the beadle swelled, changed beyond recognition, became that of something worse than any demon; and it opened its hideous mouth and it screamed with a noise that Vergil had never heard before, producing sounds alien to a human ear. The sound echoed forever, the sight went swirling in a great concentric circle, the air was instantly cold, something struck the side of Vergil’s face, and he did not even know it was the floor, for before he could feel pain he had from feeling terror fainted quite away.

However, not for long. Vaguely he was ware of his young fellow-aspirant tossing him over his shoulder and carrying him. . the prickle of straw. . he made to get up. . he fell back….

“One of you has failed the first test.” The beadle’s voice.

“Silly kid. Couldn’t take it, huh, Ser Beadle.” The Apulian’s.

“And the second test too. Where is your gear and baggage, boy?”

“At the door. Where do I bring it?”

“Wherever you like. Back the way you came. Or any other way as pleases you. But not in. Out. Now. So, go.” Soft the voice. But firm.

A pause. Eyes clearer now, Vergil saw his fellow stare bepuzzled, then grow angry as well. “Say, Ser Beadle. What you mean? He was the coward. I stuck brave. Didn’t I? So — ”

With, it seemed, no more than one finger, the beadle turned the boy around. “When you reach the exit gate you will find a caravan about to start. Say to its master, ‘There is a beast reserved for me,’ and he will point it out. Your charge and victuals are paid at no cost to you. And when you reach the port, there you will hear the drummers announcing the departure of a ship for Africa. Its voyage purpose is to find, capture, and bring back wild beasts for the arena. You need not join, though I expect you will. Do not tarry. Go.” The finger prodded, the Apulian moved. He moved unwillingly, still he questioned.

“You say ‘one of us failed the first and second test’ — how come it’s me?”

By this time they had passed from Vergil’s sight, he lying on the straw, sick with shame. The beadle’s voice drifted back.

“The first lesson is to know fear. The second lesson is to feel humility. It may be that you will learn them both. Not, I believe, very soonly. Meanwhile my finger grows weary, so I adjure: Begone.”

When the beadle returned, Vergil was on his knees, watching the vapor arising from a tub of water that had certainly not been there a moment before. Said the beadle, “Wash.”

Gladly would the young Vergil have drowned in it; “I have soiled myself.”

Something not even faintly like compassion, something faintly like impatience, tinged the beadle’s voice. “Another good reason, then, to wash. Wash.” And, when Vergil had done so, he was