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

X Isle Mazequa

Far out at sea, the thin vertical line which was a ship’s mast slowly, slowly turned, became broader by the width of a sail. Slowly grew broader, larger, nearer.

When he once again gained the beach, it was to see something like a sort of trade going on. These seamen were Sards, he was sure of it: those curious and deliberately lop-sided hats — bonnets, one might almost call them; the wrapped-twice-around-yet-still-loose neckerchiefs of faded red, the yellowish-brown trews — slanders of other seamen traditionally had it that these garments, coming only three-quarters of the way down the legs, had always been originally white but were never washed; Vergil knew their hue came from rough and home-made dye: and then, too, a certain look, undescribable as it was unmistakable: all proclaimed them Sards. There was, to be sure, a certain class of Sard freebooters, but they were not numerous. And certainly the look of these was merely rough, as was the everyday look of poor folk on every day not a festival day; rough, yes … but not ruffianly. Certain things were being passed from hand to hand; he recognized the pearly, opalescent sheen of moonstones, and the fine striking colors of as yet un-cut tourmalines. These one saw fairly often in Lotusland and the island-folk themselves sometimes picked them up and carried them away as idly as children with any unusual rocks or stones. Likely the Lotophages played some simple game with them … and then simply dropped them: there were always more … somewhere …

The Sards, in exchange, were passing over all sorts of rubble: mirrors shattered past hope of sale or trade in any ordinary mart in the whole Œconomium, cups saunce handles though clearly handles they had once had, boxes with broken lids or nay lids at all, scraps of cloth more brightly colored than any of the crewmen’s trews or neckcloths, hats outmoded and much battered: all sorts of rubbish.

When the supply of tourmaline and moonstone showed sign of running low, the Sards produced something as an inducement for more; more was forthcoming. The islanders had not been holding out, merely it had been a trouble to try and seek. Now here was something well-worth the trouble.

The Lotophagi received the sweet wine with soft soft sounds of pleasure. They would not plant the vines nor trench them nor wed them to the poplar and the elm to hold up the grape-heavy branches; and certainly neither would they make them presses nor tred the wine-fruit out with their feet … though possibly if this had been made into a game for them, with music and with song, they might have done so. Briefly. Certainly they had no sophisticated tastes; they did not require hippocras, that vile mixture of very bad wines, itself sophisticate with many bad spices; neither had they developed the corrupt palate which fancies the taste of pitch in wine, and which actually prefers the wine of that sort of grape which was said to have naturally the taste of pine-sap. Wine, sweet wine, did not have to be very, very sweet for them to like it. With soft sounds of pleasure they received and drank of it.

But by and by they did not trouble themselves to go in search of any more moonstone or tourmaline. There was no ivy mingled with the cheap, douce wine. It did not make the Lotophagi run mad, let alone turn anthropophagi like followers of certain drunken cults. Merely they layed them down to sleep.

Of course to the inhabitants they were, for the moments that the novelty lasted, not rubbish at all. And if the hotchpotch and galimaufry was of no actual benefit to them … why, neither were the moonstones or the tourmalines for which they sold them. (Not that it was likely that they considered the matter in any other light than an exchange of presents: baubles for baubles, play-pretties for others of the same.) For that much, of what actual, intrinsic use were the tourmalines, the moonstones, or any other gems or jewels? none whatsoever: they could not be eaten, drunk, nor used as tools. Well … diamonds were sometimes so worked as to be able to cut glass … and an old word which Vergil seldom forgot was that in verbis et herbis et lapides — but here he suddenly dropped all thought of science or art or philosophy; one of the island folk taking notice of his presence with a slight word and slight gesture, see every man jack of the Sard shipmen turn as one. And of that sudden second, freeze.

After a very long moment, one of them (later he learned it was Polycarpu the captain of the craft — it was a small-enough craft, too —) spoke, not without a moving up and down of the apple in his thick neck. His words were in a tone clearly meant to be conciliatory, but Vergil noted well how the seamen, the shipmen, slowly gan to fan out as though to encircle him. “As you may see, me Lord Ser, we are only small folk,” he said … in Punic! surely no folk he had ever encountered, the same being of the “old sea,” the Mediterranean, ever looked less like Punes! … “— small folk, a-trying to do a small deal in what’s they called, ‘semi-precious stones,’ such a trade, we believes, being entirely licit undern the rules of Great Cartage,” and the light burst upon Vergil: it was not that they were Pune, it was that they thought that he was! And, despite his own better nature, he reckoned to have a little sport with them.

“Such being the case,” he endeavored to make his own Sidonian sound as much like Carthagan as he might: no great hard thing, for constant commerce between the old Phoenician cities and the new had kept them from shifting and changing much; “… being the case, how is’t that you have endeavored also to deal in … purple …?”

In a moment he regretted having tried the jape, for the man turned absolutely yellow; had he been of ruddy color, he would have turned white. At once Vergil swift began in Latin, “Nay, but take no notice of my very bad manners, I am a Latin man, the same as you, a citizen of Rome,” briefly he thought of groping in his budget for the old badge of bull’s hide, SQPR, Senatusque Populusque Romanum estamped upon it; but forbore. “— and no Pune at all,” see the natural tan of sea and sun return to the shipman’s face; “and as for whatsoever kind of trade is yours, I care not, for —”

“But you be a mage! else how could you know —?”

Vergil gestured. “I see that some leaves of orchil-flowers have been near enough t’ your wristband to have been crushed upon it … added but a few drops of water, likely when you took a drink, added but a bit of lime, perhaps from a cargo of it: and the result? a smear or smudge of violet color … well … violet color once. And if indeed you propose to make navigations in waters where Carthage, old or new …” He did not finish the sentence. “Violet is not indeed true purple, but … another shirt is what I should suggest.”

The man stretched his arm to see the stain plain, swore, made as if to remove it on the spot, somewhat relaxed.

“ ‘Not indeed true purple,’ no, but near enough to run this sark red, be any Carthagan ships about. Lord Ser, me thanks for a-pointing of it out, I never gave thought … Well, I shall cut and burn this damned wristband in another minute. I say, nay: but only a mage could have discerned of it, and coupled twain and twain thegether.”

His men whispered, muttered, growled. But there were no more movements hinting at encirclement. Said one, in a speaking-tone at last, “If that be clare from just a spackle on a wristband, best we’d best wash and scrape the deck, and check they tayckle for some other tell-tale taint.”

And another urged, “And afore doing of that, be better best to hug up all the orchil and give it to offering for nap tewm —”

“Nap tewm?” asked Vergil.

“Th’owd king. Owd King Naptewm, a whose beard is green, they’m say, and smell’s o’ fish. E nows the dipth of every sea. Better ‘e gets all o’ it than the Cartage men take owt o’ it, and ang us on a tree, such is they manner and wont —”

And yet another shipman uttered his own caution. “After cutting of our hentrials out and grilling same as a relish for they savage dogs.”

But the thick-necked man, and it seemed his neck grew thicker, all but roared his scorn. “You knew what barber we might be trimmed by when you came aboard this adventured navigation! Stay here, then, if you like, and give surrender to your lay of the cargo as lies hid beneath the jars of limekilned and burnded oyster-shells! Stay here, and drink yourselves sotty until you’ve forgotten use of tongue and tool and wander naked as any —”

Very suddenly he stopped and turned a deeper shade and attempted to pretend that, suddenly, no one was aware that Vergil was naked as any islander: that is, as the days they all were born — save only that no natal-cord dangled a-peep from out a belly-band. And, for that matter, neither did they (or he) have even upon them so much as else a belly-band.

Quietly he said, “You will do as you will do. Only but I caution you to taste no drop of this sweet ruddy nectar of the lotus, for I drank of it, I was marooned because of it, and I am naked, now, because of it. I dwell at Naples; is it possible that you can give me a passage in that way?”

One by one they all nodded. Some nodded more soonly, some more slowly, some more deeply.

But they all nodded.

Yes.

The secret of the Castor and Pollux … (“A small ship for so long a name?” “Them be’s the famous Gemini Twins, My Sir. As we only calls they Castor and Pollux for short. Beseeing as how they’d shared the one hegg shell for their gemination, and which it had hample room for they both, we think they’ll take it as a hint so we’ll hall have a suffice of room in this small craft, no much larger has a small hegg shell, ye might say” “I quite see.” “We thought, too, we’d gain a double blessing by such a nime. Has they not seldom is beseen a riding of the wives in tide of storm.” “I quite see.” And Polycarpu, much gratified by his passenger’s grasp of mythology and method, smiled a wide and pleasant smile.)

The secret of the Castor and Pollux … its real purpose was no longer a secret, then. In Rome, debarred by the depredations of the Sea Huns from an easy trade with Tyre, the immemorial source of purple dye in the east; and by the clandestine but none the less effectual blockade by Carthage of its own special sources in the Trans-Herculean west; in Rome, the price of purple, so essential for the best class of clothing dye, had gone nowhere but up. Just as the high price of Indian pepper had had as its result a trade in the pseudo-pepper (called grains of paradise) from Farther Africa — it was by no means the equal of the Indoo or proper pepper, but did well enough as an adulterant thereof — much better than poppy seed, for instance — so there had grown a pressing need for a sort of pseudo-purple (since the unsatisfactory surrogate provided by Averno was in any case no longer currentlyavailable) … a dye-stuff which would stain a robe well enough for it to pass for purple by, anyway, lamp or torch-light. With, anyway, that is, at least a little of the pure purple admixed. Many stratagems were tried, perhaps the best of which was to unravel a robe or a length of cloth estained with pure purple and use the thread so obtained as warp and the impure purple for the woof (or vice versa, if one follows). There was, as with all such tricks, the unwillingness of such a garment to stay fast-colored. But not everyone who wished a purple robe wished to use it often. The secret, or true purpose of the Castor and Pollux, therefore, was to lade aboard a cargo of a paste made from the flowers of the orchil plant, which paste, made quick with lime, oyster-lime or marble-lime (some said with one, some said with both) and water, was declared by anyway some dyers to produce a shade of violet which, mixed subtly … so they hoped … with purple to pass as pourpre, the res itself … by lamplight.

And so it might. For some. And for those absolutely exacting in the matter, and who wished to display their exacting exactitude in the sunlight: why, they might always obtain their desire for enormous, some said for extortionate, prices. And while the mysterious power of Carthage, so oft destroyed, might be growing rich and yet richer by their self-declared monopole of pourpre or porphyro; this mysterious authority called Carthage, wherever Carthage now was, was well-aware of the existence of a trade in orchil-flower, a “purple” both counterfeit and contraband. And so Carthage had declared an utter ban on alien ships in the western-most waters during and largely before and largely after, the season in which the orchil plant was in flower.

Which left not very much season at all.

The Carthage-men would have termed even so small a craft as Castor and Pollux, which had been seeking in the Atlantis islands for a plant-dye substitute for the genuine sea-purple made from a certain shellfish — they would have called the little ship an interloper, perhaps in an even fiercer justification for discountenancing such a venture, they might have called the craft a pirate. For any infringement of any monopole of Carthage the Carthagans regarded not only as a crime against themselves, but as a crime against Nature and against all moral laws soever.

Had not Nature, as exemplified by Juno, preferred Carthage — the “New City” in terms of the old cities of the Levant, but (so twas claimed) an Old City … anyway older … in terms of Rome? queen Dido’s heirs had long offered on the Altar of Juno when King Romulus still played with the nurse-wolf’s paps …

Argument, Vergil well-knew, was useless.

Ishtar of Tarshish[11]! Twas vain!

Talking over this matter with the Captain Polycarpu not so long after coming aboard, the small ship having left the Land of Lotus-Eaters well behind, idly Vergil asked, “Well, Messer Capitan, and have you ever heard of one Hemdibal, a Pune, who calls himself or is sometimes called —”

“Josaias, King of Carthage? Aye, that. Heard too much more nor we like. Crawls up and down the lands and seas, that one, like some gret sarpint-snake. Ben’t no place safe fro him. Or his.” He was a moment silent. Then he shuddered. The notion came to Vergil, not the first coming nor the second, that he might better have taken his passage on some other craft … and, as always, that calm, cool voice, which took not much notice of, were the Dioscuri hatched from one egg or two, said voice had asked him, like a goodlier version of that daemon which the habitants of Araby Felicitous say sits upon the shoulder and whispers in the ear: What “other craft”? it asked. Lotophagea lay on no shipping lane such as connected, say, Ostia and Napoly: which, had it been a lane on land, so frequent usage must have graved grooves into the way.

Thinking best to change the matter, yet, like every man aboard, never once leaving off gazing roundabout the sea for any sign of any ship; Vergil said, “Your sails and shrouds seem much the worse for their wear, Ser Capitan.”

“Stone me with stones if we all don’t know that well! If we hadn’t espeared your smokes, which, by their well-known signal advised of us that a castaway did habit there and twas no mere smoke as they wittold eaterds and drinkards of that Scarlet Fig kape a-burning to toast their foolish feet, we’d perhap be by now at Isle Mazequa, which it lie as due west of Mauretayne as a man may rightly rackon: a renewing of sails and shrouds and sheets and lines alike …”

Vergil murmured something apologete and exculpatory, but Polycarpu waved it away. “Twas meant to be, depend upon it, Ser, if you was to castivate my nativity upon un a they ephermeris, you’d find it so designate.” Vergil expressed his thanks, regretting that, alas, he had no ephemeris along with him. And if Polycarpu had known his natal day, let alone the hour of naissance, (instead of, say, twas the hour our old ewe-crone Mima drapped her last lamb, I heard me grandam say … two days and a full week after that gret storm o wind that bruck the fishing fleet a fierce: the year? Plauto was consul then … or was it Glauto? Marcu was empery … I b’lieve) — why: that would have been a greater marvel than any marvel yet descried by any caster of nativities and drawer of horoscopes since Nabucodonosorus, famed for his herbal diet, had first devised that cleanly and exactive science.

It was a day and half a day before the welcome cry of, “A land I spy! I spy a land!” As was only customary and polite, Vergil had responded with, “What shore? What coast of people?”

The answer came, “Isle Mazequa, as any fool might ken … what shore or coast wast expecting of? Candia, Gret Asia More? or Felick Arabia?” But an older seaman gave the lad a kick and a cuff, explaining, as he turned to Vergil, “ ‘A stripling, a mat, and an oliver tree/ The more ye beat ‘em, the better they be.’ ”

The landfall on that small and rather barren island was late in the day, and so worn were the ropes and cables that they made the tiny harbor under oars, the winds being a bit gusty, so that the captain was fearful and fretful of any strain at all. Hasten round the port-town as they might, they found nothing in the way of already-made sail, or ready-to-use leathern shrouds or cable-ropes. They found a good deal of such as this:

“You are Catus the hide-flenser?”

“For sure I be, and for to sarve ye.”

“Then who is Joquimo the tanner?”

“Hm, well, I am Joquimo the tanner, Catus the hide-flenser he was my lawful brother, these seis months his foot is no more on arth, but I has compacted with his widdy to overtake his trade for sure I can flense an hide ever as good as he could, a peace upon his bones; how may I sarve ye?”

Not the least good, any show of impatience.

“Have you got some good lengths of well-braided leathern shrouds to stay the mast of my little craft as you may see rides at mooring there.”

See Joquimo, a.k.a. the Estate of Catus, peer a careful look to port, at once then say, “I has, Messer; that I has. A-made of jerauph’s hide, be called cameleopard by the general, fit to —”

Polycarpu, the least use or not, burst forth, “Neither sight nor smell has this lone rock of yours ever had of any jerauph or cameleopard! Asides: plain old pizzle-bull his hide be good enow for me; have you —”

“Indeed, indeed, my Messer Capitan sweet; the toughest hide of a plain old pizzle-bull as ever croppit grass or hunched a cow: it be flensed and scraped and cut and tanned and braided and hangit two weeks with weights to stretch it fair, and wants but ane more week for to —”

Which Polycarpu interpreted at its full worth, that is, that the man had nothing of the sort; mayhap he had an old ass’s hide in the stinking tannin-vat, and, given an advance of money and enough time, would endeavor to make treaty with the local butcher to haggle the god knew how long with any farmer who chanced to have a worn-out ox or bull he’d maybe sell; and at every chance Joquimo would swear upon his goodwife’s withered vulva that he simply must have another advance of money or the whole schema would go to waste: for thus it almost ever was in any small civitas: and the months might well (or ill) pass before any set of braided-leathers would the stranger get. And as for getting any of his money back for any reason beneath the ever-conq’ring and undying sun: such a thing had never been known in the history of the world and of the wheeling, glittering stars.

Visits to the man who made leathern buckets and bottles were just as bootless, and, speaking of boots, so was the trip to the isle’s sole and only cordwainer.

Whilst these useless trips and tours continued, gradually one became aware of a work-worn and decent-looking man following at a distance in their train. The distance gradually grew less and less, at length when he and Polycarpu were side-by-side the latter gave the stranger at last a long look which he took as chance to speak. “I am the rope-weaver of this place,” said he. “Mine is the rope-walk, and —”

“’Rope-weaver’! Have you got a new —”

The man shook his dusty head. “Nothing new, ser. I work to order only, and the orders come few, and it takes me time; first I must find the grass.” And he stopped. Waited.

What he did have to offer was soon described. A while ago he had prepared some rope on order for a shipman whose vessel plied between the island and the main of Mauretayne, payment to be made at the semi-annual settling of all debts, according to the custom. “He come home about that time,” said the rope-maker. “Before he ever unladed a jar or bale, he come to the wine-shop … for he never dranked at sea … and sate him down, he did. And then he died: no more years, he had. Nor had he heirs, howesoe’er remote. His boat was sold, and the cargo, and his wee house, and such. His debits were paid. And I? I got me back my ropes. I am not a one,” he concluded, simply, “to dun the dead.”

The ropes were not new, nor were they especially good. But they were better than the ones the Sard ship had.

And so they were good enough.

A larger sail was also offered, and that they took, too. Nor did the crew refrain from grumbling when Polycarpu roused them up at a time when the stars still blazed; “For,” said he, “It belikes me not to wastrel hours, and I feel not safe ontil we be in familiar waters; to work, there! To work!” The mast was stepped down, the old and fraying leather shrouds removed and cast aside for the cordwainer to fetch when he liked and cut them up and boil them down to add to his store of pigs’ pizzles and asses’ hooves and suchlike rubble, to make him glue. The “new” shrouds were but barely fitted in with the re-stepped mast, when a hue ran through the small throng gathered to watch the free show and to offer all their unsolicit advice: that a ship had been seen in the far distance by the watcher on the hill.

“What ship? Of what sort, a ship?” a hundred throats cried out the question. The answer, between gasps (the watcher’s boy had run the way): “A Carthage ship! A Pune! A ship of Carthage! Carthage! Pune!”