Vergil in Averno

“Where did you work?”

“How do you remember?”

“How do you know what year it might have been?”

Clear and crisp the questions might have been, but clear and crisp the answers could not be; not, considering, who was being asked. Much watered wine — cheap, bad, the worst, nonetheless welcome, nonetheless essential — was supplied, gulp by gulp; and much broken bits of bread — also cheap, and, as sometimes, if it was too stale, into the watered wine it went to soften — was supplied, before minds could bethink them and mouths mumble answers.

“What other events happened in such and such a year?”

“Do you recall having heard the number of the year of the Reign?”

“You are quite sure that was the Emperor then?”

“Who was consul?”

“When your master’s works was moved because the flames ‘went sick,’ was there news of war? With whom, war?”

“Heard you anyone speak, those years, you do not remember exactly which years, of prices rising or falling? Which prices?”

Understanding of what he intended there was probably none, it was to none of their immediate advantage to figure what it might be or to guess at it; likely beyond capacity, for that matter. Interest? At first, none. . save for the wine and the small coin and the bread. How did Vergil, how could Vergil know, that they were not merely inventing, filling a vacant mouth with lies in order to fill a vacant belly? Had he begun with them, those, the castoffs, he could not have known. By having begun with those whose interest it was he should know the truth — the magnates — he had therefore somewhat of a list to check against. And. . among those at the bottom. . or as near to the bottom as they could get without getting to the top of the bone-pit. . it was curious to see how indifference of one would sometimes, often, increasingly often, change to interest when hearing what some other outthrown had to say -

“Nuh! Nuh, master! Julius was Emp’ro’ when they move them work to South Gorge. Him’s wrong” — gesturing to another.

And: “War! I say, was war!” was the other’s reaction, he having said nothing at all about war till then, and who ignored his possible error in re the name of the then-emperor. “War in Parth’a, was, ‘en they move them Magnate Muso work, South Gorge!” And his vehemence died off into a cough, a trickle of some inclement ichor oozing from his protruding and pendulous lip, down upon his trembling chin; nor was it wiped away.

Whilst Vergil rapidly scrawled all this, yet a third, who till now had but stared vacantly, moving slowly round and round and gazing only at the refreshments, as though he knew not what substances they might be or what purpose to serve, this yet-a-third would crick back his head and look down his nose from wide-rolled red thick- rimmed eyes in order to add emphasis to what he had just recalled from the fragments of hell that made up his past — ”Feast! ‘Ey gived a feast! T’Big Slave ‘e comed out an’ ‘e gived us each a piece o’ meat!” (He repeated this memory of a phenomenon.) “A why?. . piece o’ meat. . big as. . big as my hand! A why?. . T’Big, ‘e say, master gived a feast wit’ Consul Livio, come from Rome. As we ‘feated t’Parth’ans! Oh, whudda ‘feat we gived ‘em! By ‘Cbatan’! So, yeah, uh. . uh …” The light of his recollection dimming fast, he turned to the stranger who had quickened it. Something else seemed now about to emerge. Vergil waited, marveling much that after — how long? twenty years? twenty-five? — the memory of a dusty battle on a distant frontier should remain in the mind of this human ruin because he had received, of the leftovers from a feast in joy of it, a piece of meat as large as his hand.

And as he waited to hear what else be forthcoming, the remembrancer said, “Master. . ‘as y’ got a nub o’ garlic witcha?”

This modest relish Vergil was obliged to disavow, but gave the yet-a-third his dole, and then scribbled a line or two more in the fragrant wax. Eventually this might emerge as Fires at Magnate Muso’s works diminished, requiring said works to remove to South Gorge; Julius was Emperor: check year of Livio’s consulate with defeat of the Parthians at Ecbatana; and, Fires in South Gorge; and, Muso’s Works — where previously?. . And so on. And so on. And as for those who might not remember the names of monarchs, consuls, wars, defeats, of foes in Asia Magna — or who, as likely, had never known — it was useful to have learned, from some scrap picked up by the dripping waterbridge, some incident that had burned like fire into even the most eroded mind; to be able, thus, to inquire, “Was this before or after Vitolio murdered his wife, his daughter, his steward, and his son?”

Presently Vergil was to take out the carefully prepared translucent sheets and to draw grids great and small upon them, to make his designations, and to make them in the heaviest and darkest of inks, that prepared from scuttlefish, fashioned after the manner of India. And when one sheet was placed upon another, what lay beneath would be (when desired to be) visible even through what lay on top. And so eventually he would have his master map prepared, and painted in sundry colors.

And he would point.

And he would show.

But before that time.

Vergil was pleased to see Iohan return well before the end of the time he had been prepared to wait without worrying. The mare (Vergil was pleased to see her, too, and she returned his pat with a nuzzling that seemed to show that she was pleased as well, had not forgotten him, and — But before he could quite recall what else it had seemed to him that she seemed, he observed her quite laden down with close-woven basketry; even they were stacked upon the saddle; and Iohan had arrived on foot, with a story as well.

“Now, master, certain you suggested that the matter might best be tooken care of by such as hunt truffies, and so it might. Might be tooken care of, that is. But I have learned wisdom from you, and — ”

They were in the yard behind their lodgings; Iohan had swept it clean even before Vergil arrived to look. Who now said, “Flattery is not always wisdom, and I hope you have not learned it from me — ”

The boy merely patted his own curly pate, and said on. “It came to me mind, ser, as truffles are rare, which same reason is one why’m they costly. Truffles are rare, and rarer are the swine as hunts ‘em. And it do follow as rarer yet, the ones as leads such swine on leash. Whereas common swineherds of common swine be. . well. . common. Numerous, as you might say. Therefore.”

Once again, that therefore! But the fellow had reasoned well.

The fellow now carefully spread out a clean and wide cloth of coarse weave on the ground of the yard, opened one of the baskets tied with wisps of straw-grass he must have braided himself and, reaching in a hand, brought out a quantity of loam and leaf mold and broken twigs and shells, which he loosely but carefully emptied. “You have been in the beechwoods, then!” — Vergil.

“Aye, ser master. And” — he gestured to a bale of baskets of a different weave — ”in the chestnut woods as well. And on t’other side of the she-beast be evidence I were in the oaks, too: Where there was mast, I went on master’s business. I hasn’t sense enough to know as there mayn’t be them small creatures in a numerouser quantity, even, in other woods and groves. All as me mind say to me was, if no swine-food on the forest floor, no swineherds, either; and so what sense nor profit for me alone to stoop and squat and pick the fallen twigs up, and leaves and such, in hopes of plucking here a salmandel and there a salmandel…. Hark!” Vergil looked up, listened — nothing unusual. Was Iohan’s hark! like Iohan’s therefore: a usage peculiar to himself? Not quite. “Hark, ser, as what a Sar’cen merchant says to me as I rides upon me way. ‘What has thee there in them baskets, oh son?’ I says, ‘Salmandels, but same is not for sale.’ — He laughs a-scorn, says he, what he wants with sammandal chicks? ‘Sammandal.’ Iohan chuckled at the Saracen’s accent. “And ‘chicks’! He says, what you mayn’t believe, ser, save I tells it you, he says the sammandal (as he calls they) be birds! A four-leg’d bird? So he claim. But he haven’t time to raise they from, as he figure, chicks, the baskets being so small; they need be bigger or their hides ben’t worth the taking for to make sandals as will cross fire. What’s he call such a skin? A bestos. Well. Iohan twisted his face and his brows into an expression of more than mere incredulity, of — almost — concern; reverted to the immense oddity of the Saracen’s