Vergil in Averno

could afford better now, but old tastes have a way of returning. Though you expel Nature with a pitchfork, she will always return. And now out of nowhere, as he drank the rough and raffish wine, was a stranger murmuring degrees and titles as though reading them off a tablet or a scroll. As though they had been gained as easily as they were being recited. As easily as a child gains names.

Vergil blew and sipped and sipped and swallowed. Spicy, it was not very spicy, some infusion of something much-infused had tinctured it, no more; probably the other’s chosen dram was not more than the very least sweet, had been mixed with the water washed through a much-washed honey-pot.

The pleasures of the poor.

But. . two groats. Price of admission to the bath, any bath, a mere token, of course, public baths being supported by public funds. The drink was worth what one paid for it. Somewhat it warmed him, somewhat it refreshed him, somewhat it brought back memories of times when there had been an adventure in buying a dram in a wineshop. The voice next to him now: “From Sevilla to Averno” — still the same casual mutter — “is a rather far journey. The dyer Haddadius might be pleased to learn of some of the many things discovered on such a journey. He might be prepared to.” The man set down the cup, belched politely, walked out. Vergil did not look up. The dramster took the empty cup, sloshed it in a wide basin of the coarse-painted pottery used for the purpose, set it back on the shelf.

“Another, boss?”

Boss shook his head. After a moment took his own leave. Sevilla. Sometimes called city of the sundry secret schools. Sometimes called sewer of a thousand different devils. Vergil did not constantly think of Sevilla, but to have heard it mentioned in the way he had, there in that dirty concrete cell with its pots of half-vinegar cooking at the counter (on the walls, rough-scratched graffitti: Polonio for President of the Lousepickers’ Guild. . Julia pisses better stuff than what they sell here …) — well, it was rather a surprise. And as to what it meant, who knew? Everything meant something, still, some meanings were revealed sooner than others. And that some were seemingly never revealed in no way disproved the fact.

Averno. And the dyer Haddadius.

“… might be prepared to …”. . to what? If the last word had not been “pay,” and it was not entirely clear what it had been, then what had it been? He did not bother to note down in his tablets, but he toyed with some half-formed fancy about the dyer’s hand, which, proverbially, proclaimed its owner’s trade.

And then, having other things to remember, this one he very easily forgot.

That night he could not sleep.

There is a certain book that is of hard-seeking, and, it is said, if found and opened by one who does not deserve to know what it contains, the book does not allow itself to be read. Evidently Vergil had, without wanting to, found it, here in his small library in this small port, the book disguised in the binding of some other and well- familiar work, for as often as he blinked, and trimmed the wick of the lamp once more, and examined the half- eggshell suspended above it and filled with oil to see if the hole was clear and the oil still dripping drop by drop by slow slow drop into the well of the lamp below and as often as he returned his gaze to the page, as often the letters melted and flowed. He would never get his lesson this way. Indeed, when his preceptor, old Vlaho, that good man, said to him, “Recite the syllogism which I set for you to learn,” he had to confess that, sir, he had not learned it. Old Vlaho shook his bald head, rimmed with soft short gray hairs, and raised his hand to hit him a reproving slap: the hand, from nails to wrist, was blue as woad.

A cock crew. It was near to dawn. He had fallen asleep anyway, and so, with a sigh, he turned over in his bed in the wall-niche. It was some while before he remembered that night’s dream.

Away, away, the Isle of Goats in the hazy distance, it thrust upward like any mountain, save in being surrounded by waves instead of clouds. Aurelio the freedman arose and bowed as Vergil came up. Aurelio did not point, but he moved his hand to where Naples glittered on its hills, also far off, but not near so far as the Isle of Goats. “Well, sir, we have the horsehair, as you ordered. Apollo! how they wanted to charge me for it, there in the city!” He wagged his head in wonder, but it was a contented wag. And a contented wonder. They may have wanted to charge. . whatever it was they had wanted. . but it was clear that the price Aurelio had paid was not the one asked. “All because I insisted it should be white horsehair only. But any excuse will do them. ‘Why does it need be pure white?’ the man said. ‘Dark horsehair is stronger, anyway.’ Well, I dunno it is or not, but I say, ‘In that case, all the more why the white should be cheaper.’ ” He chuckled. “And so, Master Vergil, sir, we are ready to begin mixing the plaster; there is the lime, and over here is the sand, sir.”

Vergil thrust his hand into the opened bales of hair, lifted, sifted, let it drop. Then he stooped and did the same with the sand, but this time he put some on his tongue; and this he did several times. “Yes, this will do,” he said. “We won’t want more than this much horsehair, just enough to give a certain roughness so it will grip and hold the coating.”

Aurelio had evidently been about to ask the question to which Vergil, unrequested, had supplied the answer; and now seemed satisfied, pleased. But now another question came into the freedman’s mind, and, thence, across his face. And this time too, Vergil answered it first.

“I tasted it to be sure it had not been mixed with sea-sand, because the salt would, for one thing, attract and hold the moisture and you would have damp and dripping walls at times. . at times when you would least want them, too: in wet weather. . and, also, the plaster would be less likely to hold firm upon the walls. And then, too. . salt. . the principal savor of mankind, though some things it preserves, yet, some things it destroys….” Vergil waved his hands a bit and raised his brows a bit, and made. . a bit. . a certain gesture that Aurelio understood; repeated. Salt. Sorcery.

Aurelio’s face, which had for just a moment clouded, cleared, and he grunted with gratification. “One has to have learned many things in philosophy, sir, in order to build a house correctly, sir.”

Vergil was undoing the strings of a dark bag of rich, soft samite. He nodded. The knots were not simple, but he had tied them himself. As the last one fell slack, he said, “Yes. Principles. Proportions. Mathematics. Materials. And more. Much more. Even” — he lifted out an instrument — “how to space and set and tune the five chords of this lute.” And he ran his fingers over them all five: yellow the first, for bile; red for blood, and twice as thick the chord, white for sperm, and thrice as thick the chord; the black chord, for the black bile, was the fourth, and was one-fourth the thickness of the first and the highest in pitch. These four had long been traditional; to them Vergil had ventured to add a fifth: This was of a color between rose and purple, and it represented that aspect of man higher than any humor, and this, though his own idea, had been suggested to him by some word or other in the Great Antiphonal of the Saracen, Syryabus, which nicked and clicked — as it had so seemed at the time — with some lines, a few, not more, from the nameless books of the music played at the courts of Asoka and Chandragupta, the Great High Kings of Ind. Then there was Vitruvius, and before him, Amphion; excellent exempla. And again he now ran his fingers over the strings. The workmen began to rise and to look at him more closely, even, than before. He tightened pegs a trifle, here and there; considered loosening them a trifle, there and here; decided not to. The day was clean, the air was clear, he lifted his eyes, gathered the gaze of all, gave a nod of his head, and began to play.

The name of his song was “The Walls of Thebes.”

The work of building went on, as it had begun, to the sounds of, and the rhythms of, music.

After a while the music began to enter a slower phase, and, the movements of the workmen, slowly, in time with it, gradually ceased. And, after some pause, Vergil said, “Ser Aurelio — ”

“Aurelio, Aurelio. It is kind of you and I am not of a rank to gainsay what a learned master such as yourself is pleased to utter, but if you please, sir: plain Aurelio. There are others who have not your gracious nature and much they would resent hearing I suffered meself to be called Ser Aurelio. Me. A freedman.”

The haze had burned away from off all the water. The Isle of Goats stood proud and high and blue and distant, like the haunt of a peri or of many a faun. Naples glittered brightlier than ever. “Your former master, Aurelio, then — ”

“The late and honored Aurelio Favio, Master Vergil. Whose name he was good enough to bestow when he manumitted me. And what of him, sir?”