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

XI Sea-Scene; or, Vergil and the Ox-Thrall

Swiftly they passed a rock off-shore (mentioned in The Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne) which stood into the water above the reaches of the common waves: there crouched a row of harpy-birds, eaters of men; anent whom opinions differ: do they attack, destroy, devour living men? or do they make their meals of dead-men’s-meat alone, as though it were mere sulliage or carrion? They crouched with their folded wings hunched high, their faces glaring out below: so that they looked like so many men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. Fearful thought! and fearful sight!

They glowered and somewhat hoist first one foot, then atother, and their wings did twitch a bit: but nay more move they made. Vergil gave them but a glance. Overhead, high, high: the griffins gyred and circled.

In haste, afore they in haste put out to sea, finding after frantic search and enquiry, an aged copy of the Oracles of Maro; dice he easy gat. Tossed for the number of the page, tossed for the number of the line: seven came the first, fourteen came the second. Duplication of felicity? In anguished haste he turned the pages of the coverless codex, pages sullied and filthy with food and wine and with the drippings of the oily lamp; and withal what found he? This: much-loved of Juno, antient Carthage, stained with purple and heavy with gold. Thence, thence it was, that too-much-quoted gravid line? He had never thought of the Maro much; now he was moved to curse it: moved to … did not … And then the cry was, All aboard or left ahind, you magus there, move your narrow marrow-bones!

He moved.

The discus, Vergil could not throw; no race-horse would suffer to bear his untrained weight; and nor could he, limbs oiled and dusted with powder of alabaster, of mica, and of yellow marblestone, neither wrestle nor run the course, but he had one gift which they who waited beneath the echoing portico for the sound of the trumpet had not: he could think two clean different thoughts at once. The boat’s cracked boom sang a sort of woeful keening croon within the hollow; he thought of how he must now swiftly work with his fingers; and he thought as well of the 10th and 12th lines of— not of the Maro! not! — of the vIIth book of Concerning Things Seen in the Summer, the provenance of which is all unknow (some say that the Cumæan Sybil idly threw it in for boot when she finally sold her own prophetic, vatic book of leaves to Tarquin King, the Proud: this is mere legend), videlixet:

Against all Cities of the World may Cartha hope to triumph, save that against Graund Baby lone may Cartha lift no Thing of Bronze nor Iron. And doth Cartha ken this well…. Anent that Soldane of Graund Babylone which did eat grass like ane Ox, a further accompt is given …

That accompt must wait another occasion.

And Babylone was far away.

By some traditional estimate it was the green seas which were the most dangerous. But the sea today was grey, and much it liked him not.

Babylone was as far away as Agamemnon’s purple cloak, but Carthage (wherever Carthage was, nowadays) was not so far. And Carthage still claimed and Carthage still kept, the secret of the purple-yielding sea-shell which had made Carthage rich.

Ships, not indeed ships of war which this Carthage would scarcely dare attack … as yet … as yet … so-called “free” ships, free from the brazen yoke which Juno’s City would impose, might sail ever so far (not of course to the western source of the precious shell, so far kept full-secret) and never so far for dyes like that of the orchil-plant, to supply a mock-purple dye — not so good: but good enough: cheap … better than Averno’s, if not that cheap … besides, as Vergil had good reason for to know, Averno was no more; that “Very Rich City” was now sunk deep deep below the fuming, stinking lake which bore its name … yet ever the swift ships of “the New City” sailed ever so far to intercept. The monopole of Purple she claimed by the favor of Juno as of by natural right. She called this The Compact, and she and her ships enforced this by the cold grey iron and by the pitiless bronze. Byzantinople protected her own vessels with the so-called Greek Fire, but this was in her own home waters and in the Black Sea where neither Carthage nor the Sea Huns anyway had any desire to venture; but Rome, it would seem, once the master of all the Midland Sea and of wide sweeps of its adjacent waters, was now barely the mistress of the wide middle of it. For there was no sign of any Roman fleet nor even ship where he was now, in the western most waters of the wide though not unbounded Inner Sea.

SQPR, indeed!

The winds blew, the spray flew — penny poetry all to the side, it was certainly not, political issue to the side, not one of the best days to be at sea; and the larger vessel was assuredly gaining on the smaller … not because it was larger, because it carried more sail. Its men would not try archery, although the ships were likely within shot, for the winds made the use of either arrows or cross-bolts altogether too chancy and wasteful: and although Carthage would chance, Carthage hated waste. The Punes would wait till they were near enow to grapple; and then, the small ship as it were entrapt in iron claws, hanging helpless in the large one’s grip: then they would board. The large ship acting as an immense sea-drag upon the lesser, then the Punes would board. If death were their decision, then: sword, spear, daggar, harb, club: it made no difference, superior numbers would tell, and tell in short time.

Vergil, peering through the spray, felt a sudden great shock: he was of an instant certain that he saw, among the hateful faces at the pursuer’s rail, the especially hateful countenance of Hemdibal.

Alias, Josaias, King of Carthage!

“In short time?” In perhaps less than one run of the smallest sandglass.

Did Josaias of a sudden, stop and peer and shade his eyes? Did Josaias, darkly-rosey face instantly red with furious blood, recognize him, too? It was too late for Vergil to shield his face, else he might have done so: though of what use? there was no hiding here.

And the man whom he was now sure was Josaias, shook his fist; turned, and —

“Juno!” the Carthagans cried, shouted. “Juno! Juno!”

… much-loved by Juno, antient Carthage … how did it go? what did it matter?

So near were the ships one to tother, that Vergil might well clearly see the mast and flaxen sails of the pursuer straining on their leather lines, the braided leather shroud-ropes which held fast the masts and controlled the sails … the sails and masts of the pursuing ship, that is. That was it. His smaller ship might have hoped to out-run the chaser; the larger ship meant a larger surface to drag against the sea, and even its larger sails might not have sufficed to come within grappling distance … except that the smaller craft had dared to hoist only its own smaller sail: even before the hostile vessel had come charging out of the mist — had there been but a small patch of it, a wind strong enough to fill the sail would have been strong enough to blow the mist away: but it lay thick and lowering and heavy upon the whole face of the sea — there had not been time then, and there surely was not time now, to lower said smaller sail and then bend on the larger; even if they wished to risk (and a risk it certainly would have been, and a deadly risk, too) the braided ropes of rushes: papyrus and iris: which were all they had now (their old leathers worn out and cast away — such had been their haste to leave Isle Mazequa) to hold mast and sail in check. In haste from the report of a Carthagan ship in the cold current between the Columns of Atlas[12] (Pillars of Hercules, some called them: Melcarth’s Fingers), today’s wind would soon have frayed and snapped the rushy ropes, which were not new, but merely newer.

By all the laws of Rome and of the sea and by several treaties, the western part of the Inland, the Mediterranean Sea, was Imperial Roman water: Carthage no longer had the right to have a ship of such a size there; besides, Carthage had been destroyed, and its very site sowed with salt … hadn’t it? But, City destroyed or not, sown with salt or not, set up, secretly, somewhere new or not, this was a Carthage ship upon the salt, salt sea. And that was the kernel in the nut; the best way that Carthage could hope keep secret and occulted the presence of its larger ships in these waters, or in the circumfluent waters of the grey great green Atlantic, was by the most relentless pursuit of any other ships which they might encounter, or by which they might be espied. Smaller Carthagan ships might turn aside, larger ones dared not but pursue such Roman craft which had espied them: they must capture and destroy them and their people. This was a large ship of Carthage, and if it caught them, it meant their death. The Punes would not even tarry to torture, if any Rumani survived the flight they would be drowned instanta.

And Vergil, who had begged this passage out of Lotophagea aboard of the small “free” ship in search of purple-plant … there was no purple-plant on the Lotus Coast, but there was water; also moonstone and tourmaline … Vergil had neither caul nor umbil-cord with him (such are sold in that so-small shop tucked away aneath the Steps of Lamentation in Rome, where traitors’ heads are shown: sometimes the bodies, if not too badly battered for display, propped sitting upright, with their heads upon their laps) as save from drowning either in the circumambient fluid of the womb or in rivers or in the Inland Seas and the vast stream of Ocean … assuming that he lived long enough to leap overboard, that is. Leander had often swum the Hellespont, but no one had ever swum between the Gates of Hercules, never the Bath of Melcarth.

The hostile vessel’s master, mates, and crew had not paused to take up their oars and set them in the tholes and could not take the time now; they had been proceeding under sail, purely, and under sail they must continue. But Vergil’s smaller craft had had its oars out, helped by the skimpy small sail, and at their oars the men continued to strain.

Oft was I wearied when I worked with thee: oft carven on a ship’s oar.

Indeed.

As Vergil watched the half-naked rowers, thinking that the best he could would be to stay out of the way, he observed the men at the oars … or several of them: there were not many at the most, and the captain and the helmsman did not row … he observed some of the men, tunics girded up above the waist, pissing and skiting as they plied and strained. Probably much of this was the effect of fright or sheer terror and not a coincidentally simultaneous working of their bowels and bladders; and because such a situation was always possible, and had been ere Ajax burned the Argive ships, only to be himself spitted on the spikey rock, the rowers always rowed either naked or naked from the hips down. It was not a pleasant sight, and certainly not a pleasant thought: his own thoughts began to turn from it and away from the present: avoidance: but why were his thoughts now turned to a far away and long ago scene in a smokey hut on a distant island in the far-off Sea of Greece? An old man was dying in the hut … had been dying, ignored by almost all … there; and from his own scant store Vergil knowing well that “Against death there grows no simple,” had for no simple sought: some drops of a soothing medicament he had found, one of those which diminished sorrow and alleviated pain: a few turbid drops … ah, but like the rivers called Hermus and Tagus, was it not turbid with gold? … drops of the potent fluid talequale of poppy. The old man had been an ox-thrall: a thrall came with every ten yoke of oxen: such was the custom which had almost the force of law … perhaps was law … what was law? Utmost antiquity is the first principle of the law. Or so the lawyers said; he himself had been a lawyer. Briefly. Very briefly; and had never held a brief since, although, just for the form of it he paid his … how many ducats a year? … forgotten. The old man himself was certainly himself an antiquity, with his tangled white brows and gnarled hands, and feet like the roots of a much-suffering tree: what winds had beat upon him? and what rains? scorched by how many brutal suns? stumbled bruised, upon what number of brutal stones? Mere rhetoric to ask. A lifetime he had toiled with the oxen-kind.

The sounds and sights of the present … the blustering of the present wind, the scraping … creaking … knocking … of the oars, the shouted threats (of his own men there came little sound, of an inner knowledge they knew better than to waste their breath), the splashings of the spume and spray — all had dimmed off along with the sights.

There was not much vision in the island hut, some light from the part-open door a-splay on its worn and broken leather hinges and some broken slats and patches of it through the broken walls, from a few quick embers in the fire where the bitter roots of an ancient olive tree smouldered with a bitter reek. The man muttered broken words Vergil did not ask him to repeat, why bother, what did it matter, the old ox-thrall had but a few breaths left. Vergil gave him the drops in the simple small wooden spoon which, seemingly, he had always carried; but, feeling that he should say something, for the mastery of the balance demanded it, said, ambiguously — even in the face of duty-bound death we children of the bloody womb (squalling from the inst of birth) must bumble and mumble — said, “I am doing what I can for you.” A soft grunt from the dying serf, breath not so labored now, a slight sound as the cracked lips slightly smacked upon the small liquid thick, breath not as labored now, a long moment came and went; then the old ox-thrall’s voice, much less unclear and troubled now, quite coherent and clear, saying (a trifle husky, though: what else?), “And I shall do what I can for the Messer Doctor, my Ser, my thanks …”. Another breath, another pause. “I shall give thee what I can. It may have some vally some day, once, Tis a good strong curse —”

“A curse!” Odd-favored gift indeed!

“Aye, a good ‘un, tis, which I had of my good gaffer on the gret Isle Negroponty. A very good strong curse upon the red oxen, me ser. As it work only on red oxen, no one know why, Nature have gret sport with we, may’ap she provide other good curse and strong on white, black, brindle, spotted …” Well, red oxen were a bit favored, thought to be a somewhat heartier, so: blood-oxen, they were called.

A sudden shift of tone apprised Vergil that the curse-chant had begun: it was no hard task to listen. Nor to remember.

The old slave’s breath wavered, waited, halted, resumed. Chanted:

The old man’s voice moved back to the level of simple talk. He said, “This strong, good curse, as I got of my good gaffer, back there in the gret Isle of Negroponty — a shame he perished of the painful flux — so I used it to get me revenge on more nor one cruel master, and they knew it not. Aa-heh!” — even as his death hovered impatiently, still he found breath for one moment’s sound of triumph and contempt: welladay! was he not entitled? And yet, on the old voice ran, heedless, now, of the lowing of the cattle and the other like sounds, of the heedless voices of the peons hastening by on the farm. “And all you needs to work it with is a scarp of red ox-hide, a —” His breath rattled, a look of slight surprise came onto his face, and then impatient death closed his eyes. A line of ichor oozed from the still-open mouth. Suddenly his nostrils, thatched with clotted hairs, seemed grown very wide. And his nose very sharp.

But there was not such portal of escape now, at sea.

Had the ancient been going to add something? was that last syllable not and? In which case “and” what? One would never know, now. Nor did it matter. Vergil had work to do; scarce had he reached the mid-point of gathering herbs on that far distant isle of Greece and comparing them with the illustrations in the Theophrast on Plants; the text he had of the illustrated manuscript, he strongly suspected of being a mere copy of a copy, and as filled with errors as a pomegranate with pips. Enough time —

He rose, there in the hut, and absently brushed his knees, his hose; chaff and straw had clung there, spiders’ webs and eggs, flecks of dried dung had clung there, husks of barley, and one blade of grass. There was no need for the familiar tests of mirror or feather; no one cared in the least. Tomorrow would do for burial, and if the old man were not now indeed dead (which, indeed, he was), certes he would be by then.

An old ox-thrall.

Then the scene vanished as mist dissolved by wind — though the wind had not quite dissolved this mist — he was back on the small “free” craft flying from the Carthagan corsair … though true corsairs sometimes only plundered and took what they fancied of the cargo and whom they fancied of passengers (if any) or crew … comely women … girls … handsome men … boys … sometimes even ugly old sea-scabs, did the corsair be short of hands. Even if this were merely a Carthagan corsair and not patrol-ship, even if intent chiefly on plunder: was the orchil-paste (shades of purple!) found in the hold: dead men were they all. Vergil heard the terribly laboring breath of the rowers, smelled their bitter stale and stinking scat; the captain had breath to spare, and all he said as he paced, Polycarpu, was, “Row! … Row!” and “Row!” The helmsman also had breath to spare, and he spoke but one sentence: “Holy King Poseidon who rules the Realm Sea save us from death!” and he spoke it again and again. And the ship’s master, Polycarpu, walked up and down, to and fro, back and forth, uttering his single, single word.

A sting of spray near-blinded Vergil in one eye. The pursuer was nearer now, one could hear the Cry of Carthage — war-cry, supplication, cry of triumph — Fire burns, water drowns, Carthage hates Rome — the Cry of, “Juno! Juno! Juno!”

All at once he was on his knees, in his hand the leather square from his old, soft, doe-skin budget, miracle! still with him! the leather square with the SQPR (death to counterfeit), Senatusque Populesque Romanum, stamped upon it (long ago) in gilt. For what? to prove to the Punes he was a citizen of Rome? This was no recommendation in the happiest of circumstances, and certainly it would be worse than none to Josaias, who would certainly not fail to remember the meeting with Vergil in the fields on Corsica where and when he had encountered Vergil at the very moment that he was robbed of his intended prey: the “stealer of the teeth” (did Vergil recall what teeth meant? vaguely he thought he might, but the recollection eluded him now, and besides there was no time). So —

He was on his knees, then, in his hands the leather square, initials SQPR still faintly visible although the gilt was long since worn away from the letters. It was all faded now, faded, worn, and, really: greasy; but there was a by-word about what color it had been — “He hath the hide of the red ox, he hath!” — in other words the he was a citizen, and not a mere denizen and subject, of Rome; not alone of Yellow Rome, the City, but of the very entire Empery of Rome … and Rome had chosen the blood-red color of Mars, godly Father of Father Romulus, father-founder of Rome; chosen it for this especial usage. Vergil was on his knees (Mamers, as Quint’s rich friend called the goddus in his native Etruscan tongue: and what matter now? either Quint or …), he, Vergil was chanting the curse upon the red ox — upon? against! why? well … they would soon see. His thumb prickled. The sybils, where are they? and your mothers, do they live forever?

He would soon see.

And why, in the name of any goddus or goddess or spirit or genii, was he, in the midst of the wild wide sea, cursing an ox? — not to stop, not to pause, his right thumb prickled, was that not enough? was that not the gift (besides the gift of her body, a good gift in itself) of the priestess of “those who make plans in the night,” back there beneath the odorous walnut-tree: that his right thumb should prickle as a warning and a guidance? aware of woe —

Spindle made, it was said, of a dead man’s rib boiled in vinegar to make it supple and limber and easy for its shape to change: a thing well-fit for the Norns, those Northish ones whose name was brought south by the Varangian guards to Micklegarth, “Great City,” as they called Byzantinople; Byzance-town; and why should the Norns not spin the fate-threads for the oxen of the isles or wherever their attention was called? … summoned thereto …?

The toiling crew peered at him out of the corners of their eyes; their arm-, leg-, and back-muscles looking like cables strained so that they might crack and snap any moment now; but out of their eyes’ corners shown now some faint lust of hope, to see the magus on his knees; hope, despite the loudening clamor of Juno! Juno! Juno!: and, intrusively, there was coming again the line from the Oracles of Maro … eh? … ah … yes … much loved by Juno, antient Carthage, stained with purple, and heavy with gold …

Not to stop nor to pause. Onward.

Now! There would happen —

Nothing happened. Except of course —

“Juno! Juno!”

And that huge, it seemed very huge now, Carthage ship grew steadily nigher.

Either the Curse was, for whatever reason (including, possibly, a lie: even dying men sometimes lie, alas; sometimes even dead men lie … alas …), futile — or, somewhere, an hundred parasangs away, a blood-red ox with pendulous dew-laps and shambling gait, lurching and straining in the furrow of the loamy earth, had of a sudden stumbled: an ox-horn, grass-tied or not, plowing of a sudden, a furrow of its own — and, if so, what good? On the ship’s sodden deck lay a blade of grass, a leaf of common green grass, as to which the Theophrast said nothing: from Abana Balm to Zenobian Zinziber the Theophrast had much to say: about the common bladed grass: nothing. On Vergil’s knee, where it had knelt beside the dying ox-thrall, a leaf of greeny grass. Of … nothing. Grass was nothing.

Vergil thought again of the tenth and twelfth lines (the eleventh was blotted and rubbed) of the viith book of Concerning Things Seen in the Summer, the provenience of which remains unknow, videlixet:

Against all Cities of the World may Cartha hope to triumph, save that against Graund Babylone may Cartha lift no Thing of Bronze nor Iron. And doth Cartha ken this well … Anent that Soldane of Graund Babylone which did eat Grass like ane Ox, a further accompt is given …[13]

The blade of green and common grass which now lay upon the deck, scanty deckling that there was in all that hollow ship, idly that morning before leaving in haste the land, he had carelessly plucked the leaf and into his hat had thrust it; forgotten, it had fallen from the hat, here it was. He imagined just such a thing falling from an ox’s wet muzzle … why had the Babylone soldane eaten grass like an ox? … someday he hoped to know … and he conjectured a vision that the ox was red. And simultaneously he concentrated on the words of the Emperor Julius II, festina (he’d said) lente. Slowly hasten. Lentor inexorable. Very careful feeling indeed, Vergil clove the leaf of grass in two, let fall the half with the rib, placed the other half sideways in the hollow formed by the apposition of his thumbs, carefully brought the arrangement to his lips: and blew. A squeak, a squawk, the leather badge dissolved to dust, there came a sharp sound, then a quite different noise — as loud a crash as the arm of a ballista or some other catapult, suddenly free from tension and striking its bar the instant before the missile was flung forth.

Every braided-leather rope holding the vast sail and heavy mast of the vasty massy Punic ship broke, flew frazzled and writhing, dissolved, vanished. Hair and horn was far now from Vergil’s ken, but Hide had Ceased to abide. The mast, unsupported by the braided-leather shrouds, the mast was down, cracking planks and timbers. The great linen sail flopped flapping every which way, uncontrolled, uncontrollable, useless: down.

The aghast and furious face of Josaias seen in the immense confusion, Vergil saw that himself was seen; seen, observed, identified: what face — Josaias — frightful in hate …!

The great Carthage ship, so suddenly fractured, floundered in the trough between two huge waves; and the tiny galley, with its tiny sail intact (intact, too, the weakling rushy ropes: papyrus, iris) crawled up the inner surface of the greater wave like an insect; climbed and clambered over its top, flowed down the other side. The winds fell and the mists closed in again, as cold and impartial as when they had opened, and from within the mists came an echo of ever-dwindling cries: “Juno! Juno!”

But it was not now the voice of them that triumph, the sound of them that feast.

The rowers rolled their eyes to their captain, he gestured. The oars on one side went up and for the next stroke did not come down, the oars on the other side went row! the small ship swerved on an angle; then both banks of oars played again, but (another gesture of Polycarpu’s) more slowly. The speed was somedel reduced, but so was the sound of the oars: an important consideration when the heavier atoms of the fog carried sound more weightily. Right now the ship of Carthage, assuming it did not sink: a mere assumption: it could not now follow, but no need was there at all to give them even a hint that the smaller craft was changing course nor hint to what direction that course might be. “I had hoped to make for Aspamia or the Baleares or even, ahap, the coasts of Frankland: but twold be belike too far,” the captain said, almost as aside to Vergil. “Right along the rhumb-lines,” is what Vergil at first thought he heard the captain directing the helmsman as he showed him the cartolan, unrolled in his hands. But in a moment he realized that — for what meant obliquities to the meridean for a seaman on such a barco as this? nought. — what Polycarpu must have said was, “Right along the wind-lines,” showing him on the cartolan how the winds … Boreas, Sirocco, Zephyro, Levanto, Septentrio, and all the others (“the Twelve Petals of the Compass-Rose”) … went from here to yon: as though any wind might be directed to follow a line, like a pullet in a spell: they were lines of probability, and no more. But it gave a mighty strong hint to the helmsman, and he might now observe which way the waves were ruffled, and snuff the breezes for the smells of land, with greater confidence. And after no more than a blink or two, the helmsman nodded. No ship might follow a map in a mist, but the mere sight of the cartolan gave him that confidence: in his mind he followed, and he turned his helm. Polycarpu bore away the chart, and … with a deep bow and a most respectful gesture to Vergil (pulling over his head an imaginary toga, like a priest in a temple facing the king of the sacrifice) … resumed his sempiternal striding up and down the deck, up and down, again and again, back and forth.

The man at the helm may … say, rather, should … have been returning his thanks to Holy King Poseidon who rules the Realm Sea. But if so, he was not doing it aloud. To vow a fine fat freemartin, as had the skipper of the Zenos, was hardly within his means: a pigeon, perhaps. At least, a squab. Perhaps in mind he was doing so, if he had room in his mind.

Between the rudder and the mast, Vergil, excused from every duty on the rota of duties (Rota. Rato. Arot. Otar. Ator. Taro … and all the rest of it), had now time to think of the duty which he had of late performed, and which was on no roster at all. As a woman, a matron, likely, who wishes to summon a servant in the time of night when all are at slumber, save she herself; does so with a sound both low yet sharp, by clicking her finger-nails; so Vergil stood, feet spread apart and braced and facing the grom grey sea, reviewed the elements of the equation of the spell: and did it not seem as though each element appeared as though summoned? click after click? spume in his face, click.

First, Click! there was the need that the Carthage sail-ropes and mast-shrouds all be of leather, and not of any grass. Click! Then … what were the odds that the leather be made from the hide of a red ox? (… as a dream, somewhere the report of a great pool so vasty as to be termed a sea and contained in a container of bronze or brass, the same being supported by the figures of oxen: supposing these to be made as well of tombac bronze, the oxen … until a patina formed … would indeed be red…) for be sure they’d not be made of cow-hide, though this be stern and stanch enough for any pair of boots or any whip of thongs, yet no hide fit merely for whip or boots — however punished or punishing — would be staunch and stern enough for a ship’s shrouds or sheets: its cables or its ropes, in landsmen’s talk — And the Curse itself must be remembered and recited: recited accurately, too. Click! Click! Click! Next, the memory of Babylone and a blade of grass … absent from the instructions; the old ox-thrall, it was now clear, had died before divulging this about the blade of grass; yet, sure, it had been his intention to divulge it, and therefore it hung in the air and Vergil had breathed it in (else, it had passed into the Universal Æther, and thence had slipped into Vergil’s mind, and, thence, unto his lips and fingers: Click!) Once had Vergil pronounced the Curse and nothing had happened. It had also been needful that, Click! he should have with him a piece of the hide of a red ox. Click! and would he have had this, for certain, had he not been a citizen of Rome Yellow Rome! Yellow Rome! but for all that, the stamp of the citizenship was on red) …? Click! And what of the blade of grass, so common a thing as a leaf of grass, yet a thing extending, as it were, the protection of distant, far-distant Babylone (where kings ate grass and books were built of the muddy earth, upon which grass grew … had not Huldah shown him?) over not-so-distant Carthage — had Carthage been destroyed? Cartha Gedasha, New City, springing up ever anew … How had he, Vergil, merely “chanced” to put a blade of common grass into his hat, just e’er they’d left land that morning? Had not the Curse known it was to be required that day, and had it not required Vergil to take and pluck, take and pluck? Click!

Click!

Pluck!

Click!

Next, what was the sounding of the shrill note upon the broken blade of grass, but what the occymists called The Dissolution, the vanishing — or the appearance — of one substance in another, or the creation therein of a third? — the katalysein, as the Ægyptian occymists called it in their fluent but to tell the truth untinctured, rather sloppy Greek, though this was not the place nor time to parse or purify it. — had he not blown his shrill and grassy note, shrill as ever any wind, would all the elements of the equation have come together, and fulfilled the Curse upon the Red Ox, hair, horn, and hide … hide …?

Click!

Never before in his life had he had more instant and more emphatic evidence of the truth and proof of Illyriodorus’s principle: “In verbis et in herbis … therein lies power.”

He felt as someone who had been long preparing for a certain journey, and who suddenly found himself on the road itself with nothing which had been in the catalogue of things needed for it … indeed, with not even the list itself: But if he had only the memory of the catalogue or list — was this nothing for the journey? far from it. It was, indeed, “something for the journey,” indeed. “Such and such an herb, sure against elf-shot,” thunder-thistle, perhaps, he perhaps had it not — but if the awareness of not having it kept him cautiously away from “blasted oaks” (what brought now to his mind the bidens, the lightning-blasted lamb?) “and all such sites of baleful omen and of elf-shot,” why, wasn’t this as though he had had it? And better than though he had, and had not sense to use it?

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