Vergil in Averno

But this was quite wrong, this was all quite wrong, it was much wronger than, merely, an armed man clearly not a soldier and within the city’s walls; it was wronger by far than a gladiator in full trappings walking in broad daylight down an open street. It was the trappings themselves were wrong, even though Vergil could still not determine the nature of the weapon, if sword, if trident.

The retiarius would not be wearing a Thracian helmet. The Thracian would not be carrying the weighted net of the retiarius. What. What?

Suddenly it became of immense, intense, of the utmost importance to know what time of day it was. If noon, all might yet be well; perhaps the man was another lunatic. Cadmus? No. Familiar. . now Vergil realized the man had, at this last crossing of the street he stood in, seemed familiar. But Cadmus, no. What time was it? What hour of morning had he, Vergil, started out? How long had he been out? He cast his eyes all round about. His heart swelled, he felt cold. It might be before noon, it might be after, noon it could not be: There were shadows in the street, short ones, but that was of no matter.

The man, armed, purposeful, seeking his intended prey, he in the Thracian helm, had of an utter certainty cast no shadow.

Thracian! Thrax!

Vergil had turned and loped away. Where he found a corner, he turned, down that way he fled. When he found another corner, he turned therein and fled down whatever street he fled. . and fled…. Much time he did not think, but he was, in some other way, engaged in something much resembling thought: he was counting. He was not at first aware that he was counting. But he had not even stopped counting when by chance he bethought him of something someone had said, someone else, who? it mattered not who, had said, “… here in the web …”

Here in the web!

Was it the name of this odd, odd area, section of the city? What else might it be? What had Thrax in hand, on arm, to cast over to entrap, before thrusting home the sword or trident (and it could not at all matter which)? A net. What was a net? A web. Those who spun, did they not often, also, weave? Weft and woof: what was weave but web? And all the while, in the back of his mind, at the bottom of his mind, he heard a thrumbling, a buzzing, a buzzing as of some gigant fly: and he saw the huge spider spinning, spinning, spinning, to entrap the fly: a web.

And all the while, above, beneath, beyond these dread, dread thoughts, he heard a voice, slow and calm and steady, saying, Third right, back one, two left, left four, back thrice…. He stopped. He did not stop the thinking voice, he did not stop — even — moving: running it was he stopped. He kept on walking, but now he walked crab-style, sidewise, so as to keep in sight both right and left. What weapons had he with him, to counter, if encountered, the Thrax face-to-face, armed with either sword or trident? He had his knife in its sheath: much good might this do him, save of course the Thrax slipped; the Thrax, the retiarius, as all and every gladiator, was trained to walk so as not to slip. It must be some other weapon, different, quite different indeed, on which he must depend. And he depended now upon his memory. And he drew it forth, as knife from sheath, as sword from scabbard. Third right, back one, two left, left four, back thrice…. There was more, of course more: but this was the key. He knew that now. It remained but to be for one full moment quite, quite calm, to act as though no one pursued him, and to reflect. And the one full moment he needed not, it became clear in less than that: Third right, back one, two left, left four, back thrice. The key opened the lock, the lock moved the door. He was in the one hundred and twelfth labyrinth, or maze, set down in the book called the Patterns of Parthenopius. He had studied them for years and years, had he not studied them a decade? Had he not, having learned them, every night gone through them all for one full passage of the larger sandglass, every single one of the labyrinthine mazes there delineated. . gone through them in his mind, of course; merely he’d checked them with those in the book when he had done.

Well. He had no book to check with now but he needed none. He followed the proper turnings. He did not run. He felt, by and by, safe enough to turn his back.

But by that time he was out of the maze. Maze, labyrinth, web. Whatever Thrax had been designated to cast over him, Vergil was now beyond such casting. He was out of the web.

As for what he was now in, why, that, though perhaps safer, was certainly something else indeed.

• • •

If he had indeed been, this last time, time just past, indeed been in Averno, he was not certain. . in a way he thought he could not have been; though if not there, where? — this he could not say. But he was, of a sudden, in Averno now, and in such a quarter of it where even the populace itself, to say nothing of strangers, was always in danger — a glance told him that — immediately it was not violent, but certainly it was criminous, and stinking of evil and rot. What was there here in this low quarter to occupy the sullen folk who filled and swarmed in it? Why, here lay the thieves’ kitchens and the thieves’ markets and the thieves’ dens. Be sure (Vergil thought) that more than not the stolen items had been stolen from the strangers who came to the Very Rich City, whether they were themselves very rich or not, to trade. Or from their servants. Here, too, were the lairs of the poorest prostitutes, though it was too early for all but one or two of them to be stirring about for custom. . if cupping a pair of sagging, withered dugs and leering from a window, as some wretched she was even now doing, could be called “stirring” — the one look at her face which he could not avoid convinced him that she was either imbecile or mad. “Syra!” she called out, crack-voiced. “Syra! Gypa! Hey!”

And then as well in the winding ways he saw often man or woman squeezing lengths of goats’ guts in wash- buckets and basins full of liquids too murk and miry to term the process “cleaning”; and as often, and often right next to this, perhaps parted only by some chopping block, were pots of rank and rancid oil where shorter chunks of this delicacy were trying and frying, yielding smells as evil as the looks he had from those who flung their heads upward, their jaws outward, a gesture ugly in intent as aspect; the very offer to sell, an insult: “Sarsa! Hot tripa, cheap enough f’you!”

Who in the names of all the gods of hell would want to buy any of the rubbish displayed. . knives with broken blades, unmatched spurs and scraps of furs, wax-caustic portraits on boards cracked along the middle, shirts ripped down the back and stained with stains not only those of mud. . and who mad enough to be tempted by hints of “Better stuff inside, boss”? Hints which, not taken, transformed themselves into filthy gestures, hoots of “Nabba! Nabba! Bugger-die!”

Surely they did not any of them, with their Syra! Gypa! Sarsa! Nabba! imply that any of them particularly thought this stranger Vergil was a Syrian, an Egyptian, a Saracen, a Neapolitan; merely cant words for outsiders, were these. And, for parting gift, the sneak-slung stone.

Vergil trod his way. Not that he was certain what it was. But there was a slight but quite discernible slant to the lane, and he believed that this, could he keep to it, would bring him eventually to the canal, whence he might surely find a way he knew, one back to a safer section of this city where little, indeed, perhaps nothing, was quite safe.

As no man’s or woman’s eye may trace the lightning whence it cometh, whither it goeth, but that the pattern of it once flashed remains before the eyes, slowly changing and slowly fading, so Vergil retained something of certain looks flashed upon him, certain glances flashed past him by sudden lifting-up of low-cast-down gazes, of certain words he not-quite heard and certain gestures near covert — he knew that there were here in these outcast wards some who meant to seize or slay him. . perhaps one first and then the other. . and he perceived the humor of the close-packed populace toward him beginning to grow worse. Some scuffle between a two or three of them of a sudden breaking out and attention drawn away from him, Vergil slipped between half-hovels into an alley scarcely wide enough for dogs to couple in; the space-way led to a rubbly courtyard with broken walls, and there on the slimy ground he saw a part of his salvation. He seized up a cloak of rags so foul and fetid that not even a common beggar would have touched it save to thrust it aside with a stick; might, nonetheless, someone — anyone — lay claim to it? if only to make trouble? He, recalling the adage festina lente, made haste to remove his own robe slowly, and left it alongside of where the other had lain crumpled. A mute trade of sorts? So be it. Who knew who even now peered at him from this worse-than-jungle? — he got him into the thousand-times-worse-than-merely-wretched garb and made to muffle his face in its filthy folds. Some silent words spoke to him; under his under-tunic, invisible, still he had his purse, from it now he took the small rough-cast bell which Iohan had given him. He did not mean to summon a servant now — yes! he did! his servant was the fear his bell would summon by its sound; this, too, would serve