The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (3 page)

The woman’s age then, he did not know How old was he then, we will not say.

She was gone at once, long enough had she tarried at the sordid scene beneath the walls of saffron-colored stone, sallow where long suns had beat upon them; not swiftly yet very steadily the small carriage departed, the mule’s ears aprick, heading back towards the temple of Vesta up there beneath the Palantine. It might be that her watch hours approached, of guarding and tending the sacred fire. Or it might be that she sought rest and refreshment after the noise and dust and glare. Where had she been? Secluded though they generally were, the Vestals were allowed to take the air at intervals: perhaps to worship at another temple, perhaps to pray before two-faced Janus, he
with red mouth straining and with face all grim
, as the Oracles of Maro had it. Scraps of thought flitted through Vergil’s mind. Only a Vestal Virgin might drive a wheeled vehicle through day-time Rome (but ah gods! the hideous rumbling noisy nights!). Should she be accused of inchastity, two defenses were open to her: she might draw off a ship foundered on some shoal in the Tiber … using only a single thread. The Tiber at Rome was full of shoals, but as this knowledge was elementary and universal, ships (as distinct from bumboats) very seldom came as high as Rome,
Or
… she might instead carry water in a sieve. A brave option; small wonder they were seldom accused. Only a Vestal might pardon a man on the way to execution. No one might pardon a vestal caught in flagrant delight, or convicted after trial — Meherc! that a priestess of fire, should be tried by water! — she was buried alive in a tomb at once sealed shut, and a grim byword pointed out her last and only choice: starve while the lamp burned, or drink the oil and live a while longer in the dark, whichever, the glory of the world would soon enough pass, and with it, too: the beauty, the damps, the chills, the plots, the pests, the fevers, and the fleas, of eternal Rome. Of Yellow Rome, Yellow Rome.

“Good fortune to that man,” Vergil said, shaking his head as though to dispel the flimsies of bad dreams.

Quint made a scoffing sound, such as only the tutelage of the costliest of rhetors could have produced. “Did you
see
that animal face? He will be caught for another dirty crime and condemned again and this time surely hanged for it within the year — if not, indeed, the week — and should he encounter another Vestal?”

Vergil asked if the Vestals always set the felon free. Quint considered. “First you must meet your felon face to face,” he said, shrugging. Quint was a great shrugger. “Then — of the current Six, you mean?” Instantly it occurred to him that Vergil would scarcely have meant the Six current in the reign of King Tarquin the Proud or Judah King of the Jews, and he went on to capitulate them. “Clothilda pardons everyone. Volumnia pardons no one. Honoria, would you believe it, gravely casts dice to decide. Carries them with her in a monopede’s shoe — a
monopede’s
shoe! Don’t know who made it or where. Makes a game of going around to the cordwainers and asking each one if he could make up a pair from it. Don’t know which to be most afraid of, the Grand Uniped, or such, a million parasangs away in Unipedia, so to speak — I don’t know
what
hide it is made of, lovely grain it has. Has the most exquisite tiny stitches, triple-looped — or of the Vestal right in front of them. Don’t know whether to turn green or shit a roof-tile! Usually mutter something about not having the right thread, or the right wax.”

Vergil did not ask how Quint had ascertained it was the shoe of a monopede, for he might have given some such answer as, “Everybody know it,” or, “Because there is only one” — in which case respect for him would be diminished.

“Aurelia pardons now and then. — the dice? They are the most ordinary dice; sort of spoils the story, doesn’t it? Stories are often spoiled like that: tiresome.” Respect for him increased. “Lenora, they say, never drives that way, so as not to have to choose. He quirked his mouth, hunched his shoulders, flung out his hand and fluttered his fingers, with what might just be perceived as a very slight emphasis of the digit of infamy. “Soft-hearted Lenora, eh? — but they are all brutes, these fellows. Kindness to them is cruelty to others.”

And Quint told a recent report, not even to be designated as a rumor, that the man just freed had once been a provincial gladiator of the lowest sort, probably expelled for incompetence. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said. “You saw that sword-scarred face. No brow. No chin. Some ancestral taint, I’d venture.” A gesture; then, “They sell very good bread with opium seed over there.”

Vergil’s question almost burst forth. “But which one was
she
?” She was only one of six sacred women in the service of the goddess of the hearth, without which there could really be no home, and hence, no Rome: but which one
was
she? The bread
did
smell good: they say there was at least one bake-shop in the capital for every province in the Empire. One does not doubt.

Quint turned to Vergil, immediately (he, Quint) a man of the most scornful urban world. “But my dear fellow, you know
nothing!
— mage though you are — Well … how could you, down there in Naples? She is Claudia.”

“And does she often spare?”

Quint started again his rigamarole, stopped. Sincerely he seemed in doubt. Then, somewhat surprised, said that he did not know. That the matter had never — in his presence — come up before. Then he fell silent, merely gestured to his important friend’s litters (only two of many, of course) which were waiting for them: quite in the Roman fashion: not too very far from the appointed place. He certainly did not ask, “Handsome woman, is she not?” or, “What did you think of her?” or “Do you fancy her?” One simply never asked such questions about a Vestal Virgin. It was a long way up to the Tarpæan Rock when you had to climb.

But it was only a short way down when you were pushed.

There were nights when Vergil slept like a farmer, and nights when he could not sleep, or slept but ill. That night he fell soon into slumber, for thank the gods, in that very quiet — and very, very rich — quarter of Rome, where Lucas, Quint’s Etruscan friend, had one of his villas, there was neither wagon traffic nor roistering. Whence, then, came that noise, a mere murmur at first, then tumult and clamor? Vergil must have left his bed the better to observe and to hearken — what, then, a horrid shock, to realize that his arms were bound behind him at the elbows and his feet confined by straps or ropes so that he might take no very long steps and certainly could not run. He turned to ask a terrified question of the man nearest to him, an intent and stinking fellow in a dirty tunicle; but this one held, looped around his hands and arms, a rope; and the rope was noosed round Vergil’s neck. It did not choke him, not so long as he kept up with his keeper. “But what then?” he begged the fellow. “But what then?” The shunsoap made no answer, but steadily lead him along, as a knacker leads the nag before stopping him, stunning him, stabbing him, skinning him, and then cutting him up: hooves, hide, and pizzle to the glue-maker, and the other parts, too — Suddenly the sound of the vulgus ceased, then resumed in another note and another register.

Then ceased again.

A woman’s voice, strong and level and chill. “
I pardon that man.
” Their gazes met. She showed her shock. Her eyes were blue and clear.

It was yet dark when he awoke, but Rome generally awoke in the yet dark; a few lamps had already been kindled in the corridor; he noticed this abstractedly as he rushed to Quint: but Quint was already rushing to him. They met in the lesser atrium with the dull red walls where a few servants passed hither and thither like wraiths, thin vapors rising from the vessels in their hands. The heavy master of the household had either not yet aroused, or was occupied elsewhere; had he been present their own respective business, however much it agitated them, must need wait: but present he was not. At first their confrontation was in silence, there were sighs and moanings inarticulate, but not words. Then Quint said, and his voice trembled, “I have had such a dream!”

“And I —”

“Dreams are best kept silent, except to a qualified interpreter — or to a closemost friend —”

“Yes….”

“I am older, let me speak first,” said Quint. Vergil staying silent, he went on to speak his words, clutching the other’s his arms, as though he would draw him to himself. “Did you notice?” Quint asked. “Did you notice that old pedlar-dame in yesterday’s mob? selling baskets and sieves? She passed through my dream at an angle and then I saw the woman, I mean
the
woman … the real woman … I saw the woman holding the sieve … Claudia it was … it was Claudia … she held the sieve —
you know what that means
— and my heart went chill and swollen and I peered to see if the sieve did indeed hold the water, or if it had merely let it slip through and the mesh still wet. But she held it upside-down, she held it upside-
down
! What does
that
mean? And she looked at me and I saw that her eyes were very blue and very clear,” Quint’s own eyes, Vergil saw in the increasing light of early day, were very red, and quite without salve or ointment; “and she looked past
me
and she looked at
you
and her eyes went wide and I remarked her voice, I shall always remember her voice: it was level and strong and clear, and she pointed her hand at you and she said,
‘Thou art the man!’
And what
that
means, I dare not think: but I would that you would leave our Yellow Rome at once.”

After Vergil had spoken in turn, Quint leaned closer, and almost, somehow, he expected to see a thin cold breath from Quint’s mouth, like that from the basins of hot water for a quick early morning wash even now hurried past them by a few diligent slaves: but slavery makes for diligence … and makes it, much. Quint asked, “What is the meaning of this two-part dream? Does one part come from the Gate of Ivory and is false? does one part issue from the Gate of Horn and is it true? Is the whole dream one of evil omen? or of good? If we say,
Good
, in that she pardons you? of some sentence of death, it is sure, for if it were merely a matter of a fine … prison … the dungeon … or the scourge —” here Vergil shuddered, Quint went on — “how many men yearly die beneath the lash, merely, the lash? how many in the dungeon, where even a reflection of the light of the sun or the moon never shines? … let alone in the mere prison? where sometimes a gleam of sunlight creeps as it were uncertainly amongst the filthy littered rushes or the trampled straw … or now and then a beam of moonlight is reflected by a burnished mazer or a pewter plate polished like a mirror? For that matter,” he babbled, as they stood, crouched, in the atrium, close together; “for that matter,” he went on, “when a mere fine, merely the matter of a fine has broke a man’s bench, his
bancus
become
ruptus
, his lands his fields his house his yards his loft his laboratory all his goods his gear his tools his attire and even the very dead embers of his hearth for potash, and even the broken pisspot in the corner of his house of office: all, all, sold to pay the fine — eh? — how many, sinking beneath shame and broken spirit, the fine like blazing fire, consumes all means of earning food?”