Vergil stroked his short black beard, and then, as though stretching his fingers from their long stint at the lute, gave a stroke to each side of the short black hair that fitted his head like a cap. “Yes, just what I was going to ask. What of him? What sort of man?”
“The best sort. Worked hard, dealt honest, and I worked hard and honest with him, down there in the old wharf where we had the first warehouse.” Gestured. “He lived in a simple, frugal way, my master, and a chaste one; no boys, sir, and just the one woman, Julia by name she was, as kind as he was, and even quieter. Then she died, then he freed me, then he went to join her, sir, as they do say. And as we must hope. And left me his heir.”
Heir to no small property, or, from a small one Aurelio had by the same diligence and thrift made a large one; else he would not be building him a house of this size and on a piece of land of this value.
“And his business was —?”
“Everything at first, you know, though in a small way. As for, we did used to go along the wharf and buy seamen’s private trade adventures, such as they was allowed to carry free aboard — not much: a sack or a box or a bale of this-and-that at a time. Then one year he chartered the fruit harvest at one of the orchards. That was good, I liked that; hard we worked in the open sun and air all day, but the fruit was sweet to smell and eat; hard we worked, the day, but at night, sir, ah, how we young people used to dance on the threshing-floor, the grain harvest not being on at the same time. Folk playing music, like as you’ve done, sir. . the bright moon. . A look of quiet came across the freedman’s broad and sallow face. “And the next year the people made him an offer to charter the wheat harvest, and we did so well that after that it was mostly wheat we dealt in. . oh, yes, sometimes oil, yes, sometimes oil. But mostly wheat.”
It was almost as though Aurelio were acting the role of chanter for some mimetic play; even as he said these words the workmen were breaking into pieces the bread they had for the day’s first meal, and dipped the pieces of it into the dish of oil carefully propped on a heap of sand. Vergil was prompted to quote the old proverb of the Aegypts, “Water and the wheat plant are equal to the throne of God,” and Aurelio said, indeed. Indeed, indeed, sir, indeed. His old master, Aurelio Favio, then, he was not. . and his freedman Aurelio was not, then. . a dyer?
“No, sir, never. A dyer, Master Vergil? Why — ”
“But isn’t that madder, Aurelio, in the lines of your right hand?”
The freedman’s mouth opened. He turned his hand over, stared hard. Those lines of which the chiromancers make much were indeed a deeper red than anything but madder could supply. Aurelio looked. Puzzlement. Then a jerk of his head, a click of his teeth. Recollection. He nodded. “It was the other day sir, as I went indeed to the dye-house to see about the curtains for my bed. And the master workman poked his stick into the vat to show me how it was going and he hauled the cloth up and it began to slip and I, like a fool — as though he didn’t know his own craft! — I grabbed ahold of it. Well! And so the dye still stays there yet, in the lines of my palm. Sharp eyes you have, as well, Master Vergil, sir.” Respect, and perhaps just a touch of something more.
Not wanting it to be given the chance, just then, to become too much more, Vergil said, “We are making you a good house here, Aurelio. Will you live alone, just you and your servants?” No more encouragement was needed, the freedman opened his heart and spoke of his plans. He was, he felt, too old to marry. “If I need a woman for a night, I know where to find one. But what’s meet for a night is not meet for a lustrum,” he said. The vine might well be wedded to the elm, as anyone could see for himself who walked out into the countryside and saw the one, trained, draped round the other, so to speak: but old age and maidenhood, not so well. And to marry an older woman meant to marry all her family, “… some of which I might like and might like me, and some of which, well …” And had she no family, none, then to marry all her sorrow and bitterness as well.
But.
There was something else on the man’s mind and Vergil felt some sense of what it was, and a stronger sense of not wishing to show anything of what he sensed. He nodded. Waited. “There’s a young girl, oh, maybe eleven, twelve, or so, in the new wharf part of town, whom I been looking on for a while, you see, sir. And I see she’s a good girl and as clean as they leave her be, where she was before with some family, not a slave, no, just a servant-drudge. So I spoke a word here and there and I put a few pieces of silver into a few hands and I got her in with a better family where she can do more than scrub and carry — where she can learn the ways of a good family house and a good family housewoman: buying, spinning and weaving, cooking good food as she has bought, managing servants, and to read and write and keep accounts, and all such things as I needn’t enumerate. And in a while, Master Vergil, I shall adopt her and dower her. And then, without no haste, sir, then I’ll go cautiously inquiring around in the workshops of the good crafts, of the best of the crafts, sir, of promising young men who’ve about finished their journeyman time: and then I am going to pick the best of them as don’t have family to set them up well in trade and then I’ll marry the two of them off, if so be they’ll have each other, for I don’t believe in forcing such a match if they won’t. With the dowry, then, the young man, my son-in-law as he’ll be, he’ll be able to open a good shop and we’ll all be a-living here together in this good house which you’re a-building for me, and I shall have children then, you see, and grandchildren, and I shan’t be alone no more, then, nor in my ancient age …”
Quiet joyful anticipation for a moment, then, hastily: “If such be my fate, absit omen.” He spat three times and thrice he rapped upon a balk of timber.
“Absit omen,” Vergil repeated. It was a bad thing to boast or vaunt, it would attract the envy of others. . other people. . others who and which were not people; it was a risk, but, being a risk which it was inevitable sooner or later at one time and another anyone would take, there was a remedy provided: one invoked the protection of the spirits of the trees, which resided, residually, at least, in any piece of wood; one spat, for spittle was deemed potent surrogate for potent semen. “Avert the omen. . Yes. Such be your fate. It is written in your palm, the lines outlined in madder. Yes, it
Pleasure in this prophecy, confirmant of his own chief hopes, made the freedman almost speechless for a moment, and he was slow to take the last question into his mind. It was with a sudden movement, almost a convulsive one, that he reacted to it in a moment; and his face twisted. “That black pit? That stinking hole?
Next, with no more than a twitch, this all was gone. “So my palmlines say I’m to live here in peace as I’ve desired, master, you say …?”
Vergil reached for his lute, to take it up again; made of wood, it was, and inlaid with that mother-of-pearl fetched up from the rich ocean-mines of the Erythraean Sea. “As far as the lines say
Aurelio’s face cleared once more. “How? Why, let me think. Ah. It was a hot day and I was toting a sack of good wheat to miller’s, to save the cart, it being but the one sack. And I pause to wipe my sweaty face, and she come over and offered me a cup of water, you see, sir …”
“Yes, I see. Well. . ‘Water and the wheat plant,’ eh?”
He began to stroke the lute; and the men arose again and the work went on again. And went on well.
• • •
The last to leave, of those who left the building site, Vergil bade good evening to the watchman (by special permission of the municipium, armed: not all knew about spells and such safeguards, nor did Vergil wish to make his own knowledge of them a subject for public clamor), and — some small devil entering into him — with a gesture indicated the signs deeply scored in the sand and dirt with his staff. “Don’t disturb my circles.”
