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

VI The Region Called Huldah

We should sight it, then, after that headland there,” Plauto had said, meaning The Region Called Huldah. And Vergil had nodded.

But when they rounded “that headland, there,” they did not sight it … or anything else. Whatever lay beyond was shrouded from them, from sea to sky, as if by a series of pleated white gauze screens and curtains, seemingly one behind another, such as often veiled the throne and person of some exotic Berbar queen in her native court. Vergil looked quizzically at Plauto. And that one rubbed the bridge of his sun-scorched nose, and then slowly shook his puzzled head. Said, “I don’t know what to make of this. Never seen anything exactly like it. Smoke? It don’t look like smoke. And neither can we smell it. Mist? It don’t look like mist, either. It’s not the weather for fog. Nor it’s not the time of year for haze … besides which, it’s not the color as haze would be. But one thing about it as I can tell you —”

And Vergil waited, and then gave some slight questioning sound.

“— I can tell you, my ser, that we are not going to try to hug a shore which we can’t see. Rocks, reefs, shoals, shallows … who can know what might lie there? Eh? Doctor? What do you say?”

Vergil said that he thought he’d like to make a fire. “Right here where I now stand.” Plauto called something. As a crewman appeared with the thin skin of hammered-flat iron and the box of sand on which the few cook-fires were built (lest the direct heats of the fire should infect the wooden surface of the ship), Vergil busied himself with items from his old doe-skin budget. He accepted the few pieces of charcoal which the crewmen next offered him, and to this he added some black shards of his own; bringing samples which he had taken with him when in Naples: not that he had much needed them just then or expected to need them on this or any voyage, but merely that in his haste he had not taken them out of the pack again. Miraculously and somehow, a living coal had been saved afire throughout all the commotions of the storm; Vergil declined it with great politeness. Neither did he accept the offer of Plauto’s tinder-box, its scorched linen, and its flint and steel. Carefully he arranged the charcoal, as though might some grave bird engaged in nidification as the time of the laying of the eggs drew nigh. He bowed his head. The men, assuming he was engaged in prayer, grew silent. In his innermost mind he bethought himself once again in the Sunken School abaft the Fuel Market in Sidon.

And gradually a piece of charcoal reddened.

He had no hollow tube, but, placing his head quite near, himself his own “blower of fire,” he let his warm breath play about the heap. And then all the charcoal was alight.

Next he added a few leaves of sage, and some shaved root of zinziber, the “ginger” of his uneasy recent dream, and one drop only of Olor of Benjamin (benjoin, some called it). Atop this all he placed a sole feather of the swallow, which, released from the wicker cage never so far at sea, would always — wise bird! inerrably head for land, so that a keen-eyed master of a ship might follow o’er the white-waved seas, as the sweet singer of Anglia had put it. And then he fanned with the fan which Plauto had waiting; woven, it was of palm leaves: be there even so much as a single tree upon this hidden shore, likely it would be a palm. And like called, even silently, to like.

The winds blew slowly as before, there was no gust, the sails did not crack, did not luff, neither did there appear (as it might be) an eagle of the mountains with a white goose in its talons as it (the eagle) cried aloud its defiance to the world and air: but steadily as they concentrated all their gaze, those upon the ship saw gradually the gauzy curtains as though one by one drawn back. And the exotic queen — did she stand there before them? Was this indeed “the Veil of Isis”?

What stood there before them was a stretch of coast, like any stretch of coast. Nothing was different. In which case … why had all been so oddly veiled? … why veiled at all?

But suppose something was a little different. A sea bird, wide of wing, wheeled near the ship, then — with a cry — for whom, in that empty sky, to hear? — wheeled away. “Master Plauto,” said Vergil, “hold up your hand, so,” he demonstrated; “and look through the spaces between your fingers. And there, at about the fifth finger, do you think … what? … there is a creek mouthing into the sea?”

“I … do … think … so …” the master of the craft breathed, half intent only upon the accidents of the scene, and half in wonder of its incidents. Then he dropped all this as he might drop a garment, and uttered orders, curt and crisp. The helm turned. The oars were set into the tholes. The sail dropped down. The ship moved now upon its own motion. And Vergil, with a gesture, handed over the fire — just … now … a common fire … to the crewman in charge of such. And closed his old, soft, doe-skin budget. And strode up to the bow and looked.

There she disembogues…. Since, perhaps, the day the waters of Deucalion’s Flood drained off the face of earth, this quiet little river had loosed its waters into the slaunting bay, itself of no great eye-catching quality, and so shy, that river’s nymph, that scarce she revealed herself at all: why, therefor, that shielding white veil? One would see. Perhaps. Limpid, and, seemingly, pure, the creek did not even hint of any nearby settlement of the sons and daughters of Deucalion: and perhaps there was none. Even the sounds of the oars striking the waters were small, birds sang and, some of them, white and crimson, rose-red-and-green, were revealed in flight. More and more and thicker and thicker the trees grew, till some of the branches on one side (Plauto, be sure, his keen eyes had not failed to note the currents stealing down to the left, and so he had gestured that the ship keep the right) lightly struck the spars. The river slowly swerved, slowly the ship swerved with it, till, stealing round one more curve, entered upon yet another bay, large enough (thought Vergil) for all the ships of Tartis, plus all those of Rome as well, to ride at anchor; or to execute — all! all! — maneouvres there. A sound of mixed astonishment and delight rose from their throats, to see this hidden treasure; for, evidently, though Plauto … and perhaps all of them … had heard … of the region called Huldah, evidently they had not heard — or none of them had much believed — of this great hidden bay therein. And at the opposite end lay the cultivated lands, the fields of grazing cattle, the orchards neatly set out, the planted gardens, and the settlement of houses.

Houses … there was not much remarkable about most of them … even at this distance he perceived that the relation of thatched roofs to tiled had increased … it had been doing so as they began to pass out of the region of the flat-roofed buildings: clearly there was more than enough vegetation here to supply thatch, which meant that there was either more rain, or more irrigation. Even the existence of so large a river (though very large, compared to the Po, or even the Tiber, it was not) came as a surprise. And there, atop of a small hill — perhaps only distance made it small — was an entirely different structure. Details still were sparse. But instinctively he knew that this was a house. The house. The great house of Huldah. However unusual, however ignorant he was of who might live in it.

The house …

And behind, how far behind he had yet to learn, was, almost a low mountain, an escarpment, like some crouching half-familiar beast. A weasel. A genet. Or … a cat. And did not the word mean … was not any of the words … in what language? he knew, he knew —

Huldah.

“Shall we set ashore on the side?” asked Plauto, quietly. “Or … there seems to be … there is a mole — Eh?”

“There,” equally quietly: Vergil. “I shall walk up.” Implicit: to The House. “I apprehend no danger. I shall go alone.”

“Ser. Yes, my ser. There.”

A woman’s face was looking at him from out a parting in the scented bushes (“The entire wilderness is one vast pharmacon”; of what were these bushes making him think? what soothing draught had long ago his mother (scarcely remembered) made for him to drink, and for what childhood illness? what matter, some tisane, some herbal, fragrant, strong intinction; was he now ill? he felt not ill.). Outward and a bit upward her dark face with its ruddy traces looked at him; she was half-bent over a pair of dogs of the old Ægyptian race, tails a-curl, thick chests, thin loins, thin legs. She wore a close-fitted cap of rust-colored leather, edges coming down almost to her magic, mantic face; her age? neither old nor young: what a richness was in her half-slight half-smile! Silver armil, a silvern bracelet, a thin silver bangle on her thin dark wrist. She saw him, she knew him; though he felt he knew her, yet he knew he knew her not. She let her hands loosen at the dogs’ collars (of scarlet-dyed leather, they surely came from the Lands of the Catalands) and the dogs moved towards him saunce menace and they sniffed at his hands. All the whimsy and all the wit of all the world was in her look; pretty? she was not pretty, that infant charm and grace was not here, was not hers; neither was she handsome, that more adult comeliness: no. “See,” said she, said to her dogs; “See, Paulo, see Narcisso, Vergil is here. He is here.”

Her look was of another world and race; a queen to queens she’d mayhap been, in long-far-sunk Atlantis. “A sign to eat and drink, Marius, a sop,” she said, she made a slight movement and the bangles sang like good sound coins upon the counter. “A sop of poppy-cake in wine,” it was no question she meant no ill, he felt no fear. He felt that he could linger near her fay face and its faint dry smile, though flotillas foundered. And “the region called Agysimbai, where the monocorns assemble,” perhaps she was from there, or near? Her slightly sere cheek. He would stoop to kiss it …

“A broth of hens’ flesh and of hares’, for you are surely weary; say: what of those who num the honey-sweet and scarlet fig, are they well? or do they waste away from doing nought?” A slight smile, her bangles clinked … one kiss … he knew her not … one …

He had commenced to sense the outlines of a very rich country, very dry, very sere; very rich in hidden riches. Wealth between the wind-basted huge sand-smoothed boulders the size of houses, wealth of hidden streams of water surfacing for a measure here and there, and in such place were trees of bearing jujube fruit, in taste half-date, half-fig. Land of secret webs of ways to mines of moonstones and porphyry. Sounds faintly at first of music in the night, tambours, seekers, lutes plucked with silver plectrum; the great red-brown castle way about her, way dry and not quite sly about her. Dry and slow. In Ostia an eating-place of three or four or five tables kept by an old eunuch who called himself King Pouf. “How will my lord be served?” the hermaphrodites would murmur to the transvestites and they to the aunties. Oracles, jewelers, gemsters, silver snakes on the anklets, bodies writhing hard to drape about some other. Was it clear she was endowed and physically possessed of these scenes and seeings and of others, say the dim great red room in that blackstone city in Asia Minore?

But in the language of metaphor she was not a locked city, no mere city was she: hints, flashes of wit, here a question, there a geste; now and then their eyes met and much passed in such moments, though he was not at all sure of all which passed. Her love was not that of youth, to pass away like the sands in the swift winds …

He had been shown to his room that first night by someone who understood no language which he did, but pointed out very civilly the jar of plain cool water for drinking and the jar of warmed and lightly scented water for washing; and who left two lamps, both alight, and a vessel of oil. Vergil took off his tunic and took up the book called Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne; how had she known his name? his names, well two to them … This book opened at a touch, almost. Would there be anything in it which would shed any light, more than the two lamps? Evidently a page, at least, was missing. Abruptly the succedant one began:

gion called Huldah. Below this Region is a haven of sufficient depth for most ships, and also sufficient water to sustain till the next. In this haven, called Maldacos, is procured for its own weight in Steel of Toledo or of Damasheque, the substance called Cake of Maldacos, translucent as wax, yielding an unction with the bitter and fragrant female scent simil to Mother-of Myrrh in its season, which so enciteth the Stallions. Tis well-known, and to the just and great discomfort of captains in cavalry: nought will suffice but to convey it by camel, packed in rhinoceros scrotum, the natural olor of quich doth render the fragrance of the other neutral and null, if it be not opened; and when it yer be opened, swiftly smear it where thou wishest: on tress, on rocks, or thorny pricket-shrubs, having behind you the right quarter of the wind: then wae! ye captains of horse! farewell to the good order of your ranks! But one must have the mastery of this Art; a mere prentice may be trampled, and or worse. But now weigh anchor and enough of this and take the tide at spring of day

Various thoughts molested his mind, then one thought said, enough of this; he blew out one of the lamps and washed his hands and face and feet and got into bed. And then he blew out the other lamp.

He woke but once in the night; very distantly he heard the hunting cry of the yænas, Flesh-flesh! Flesh-flesh! Merely to hear that frightful cry was to make attempt to flee: attempt usually more fatal than to stay. But it was far off and by soft sounds he perceived it was the hour when the ox lows in its stall: if the oxen were not sore afraid, no more, then, was he. He gave a slight tug to his sheet and let his limbs go loose.

“Ah,” she said, by and by, “you note the armils. Silver and gold are fairly cheap, but craftsmanship is costlier … unless, of course, one is a Barbar chieftess,” her hands made gesture of immense and rolling fat, and for a moment her face assumed a look of cowlike imbecility mingled with a haughtiness not learned in any school of high manners; he laughed. “… and who counts wealth only by weight and mass, and to whom the niceness of work well-done is nothing. Shall you see my armils more closely?” He made as if to lean over and examine them; for a second she pulled her hands away, she hid one behind her back, one she rested on her chest just below the collar-bone as though it might relieve some silly feigned insult. And in another second, Vergil almost helpless with laughter, she brought them both forth and down. “To get them off there requires a certain trick of moving my wrists and hands,” she moved them, not with instant effect —

“Do not bother,” he said: impulsively.

Lightly, “Tut,” she said: in another second had them off, held them in her palms, the armils, then forth to him.

“These are very curious and odd,” he murmured, for indeed they made any polite sham and perfunctory praise out of the question … if, indeed, it had ever been in the question.

“Yes, very curious …”

“They are very old, I think.”

“Yes, very old, I think …”

“And not made from entirely pure silver.”

Almost eagerly she moved even closer to him and nodded her head entirely eagerly. “I think so, too. But I don’t know what else for sure may have been molten in with the silver … or even if it came from the dark matrix already mixed with, well, whatever it is mixed with: if only one single other metal, and perhaps there are several. It doesn’t tarnish quickly, as other silvers do …”

He lay his fingers here and there upon them. “And perhaps if we learned how to refine and part them, it might be that we would find them to be not just impurities to be discarded, but purities to be discovered; not alone different names, but different uses as well …” His fingers ceased to move. “The signs,” he said.

“Yes, the signs.” She chuckled. “I gave them all names, you see, when I was young, still so young that these would slip off my wrists unless they were padded — and of course I didn’t want them to be padded, so I walked around like this —” then Vergil laughed — “as though my hands had been painted with henna and were still wet, and —”

“And what did you name the signs, then?”

In a beam of silvered sunlight he observed the motes dancing.

“Oh, childish nonsense!”

“A boon! Tell me!”

She made no more demur. “I think that this one is the white ewe for the sun and this one the black ram for the earth, see with what pains it is stippled there? — and these others, I am not sure what they are, or even if they were made at the same time or by the same artist; sometimes one sees strange creatures pictured, are they real creatures from so far ago far that one does not know them? or did someone dream them, perhaps after gluttoning too much thick food too soon before sleep? These others, they are odd. As though one might picture a crayfish or a scorpion who had never really seen a —”

The fragrance as of some fragrant wood fairly freshly sawn, was most pervasive; did he know that wood? he did: what was its name or nature? he did not know. He feigned a scowl. “Their names! The Court insists to know their names!”

She feigned fright. “Mercy, the Court! Oh, well, if I must (I Must!), well, the ewe, I suppose it is a ewe, I called ‘Pony-lamb’ and the ram, if it’s not meant to be a black ram, what then, O Court? But these, these others … I don’t really think that I entirely … what? oh, I called the ram, simply, ‘Spots’ … I hadn’t yet reasoned that it was meant to be black …”

He lifted his eyes and looked at her. “And the others? whom you are not entirely sure you like?”

She gave him a swift look, not astonished, but indeed surprised, for she had not finished that phrase, and he had guessed how she meant to, and he was right. “Well … there is no simply to these others. This one I called Arristamurrista. And this one I called Arretagoretta. And this one I called Arrantoparanto. But I never told their names to anyone after the first time, when they laughed at me. My Father said, ‘This is neither Punic nor Latin.’ And my Mother said, ‘Nor Berbar nor Etruscan.’ They were laughing fondly, of course, but I — So now you know all, O Court.”

Musingly, he said, “That is certainly a singular sort of ‘childish nonsense’. Where —”

Without emphasis she said, “I heard their names inside, how shall I explain it? no: I felt their names … inside of me … as though in a rhythm … Well!” She laughed, gave her head a certain shake, adjusted her head-cloth: already he had come to delight even in the way she would sometimes laugh, sometimes give her head a certain shake, even in the way she adjusted her head-cloth or cap afterwards.

Vergil said, “The Court now has you in its power.”

“Ishtar and Melitta! It has?” In a less-pretended tone, she said, “You did sound just like an advocate, you know. Have you spent much time hanging around them? In Apollo’s Court, perhaps? Or —”

Now he gave his head a shake (but he wore no kerchief, no attorney’s robe or cap). “Enough time. As much as I could stand. I’ve been a litigant —”

“Oh, that’s bad!”

“ ‘Bad’? Even worse. I was an advocate once, myself.” He made a face.

She made one back. “Were you a good one? Is there a good one?”

By now he had left off wearing robes, trews, tunic; adjusting to the climate, he had on only a short kilt, rather like the Ægyptians wore, but simpler. “A very bad one. And I lost my case. Well, both my cases, including the only one I ever pleaded. My client made quite a thing of paying me the copperkin,” referring to the minimal sum paid even to the losing lawyer; the smallest of small coins, however much debased since original coinage, still it retained its olden name of copperkin. Huldah laughed a slow, rich laugh. “And he said, ‘Take an old scoundrel’s advice and go plant the white spelt and millet in the mountains.’ ” He imitated the client’s imitation of a supposed rustic accent, “ ‘and never come back here no more.’ ”

“And did you? Never go back, I mean?”

He had been gazing at the motes in the beam of sunlight once again, not idly: he had been wondering if this would help him identify whatever kind of tree had made the floor; it was certainly not of cedar … and yet, like cedar, it gave off a characteristic scent. In the concentrated light he could see the grain, like the grain in ivory: it told him nothing. All this in a second, then he answered her question, “Never if I could help it, I assure you. But I still retain the Single Privilege, of course.”

“Oh, of course!” and now she laughed lustily; it was a matter of common knowledge (and, Vergil thought, common was a very proper adjective for it), more or less, that being a qualified advocate entitled one to a single privilege outside the court, to wit, “to break wind in the presence of the cooling-room slave in the Bath at Huta Hippodopolis:” that remote and almost certainly mythical town in which tales of absurdities were commonly set. Huldah lifted her head as she laughed.

He might, of course, simply have asked about the floor.

Scarcely much of a thought he gave more to the ship that brought him. He was aware of shapes on the shore: the vessel itself careened and being scraped, then caulked, perhaps … even … painted. Slow groups lading things aboard once it was righted and floated once again; once or twice vaguely he saw the forms of men carrying burthens ashore from it. A slow trade of sorts was being done; he did not care. One time as an afterthought he’d been aware he’d seen a caffile of men and beasts preparing to be off — off where, he knew he did not know; it was too much to consider, even, that neither did he care; as shadowy as a scarce-remembered dream the thought later flitted through his mind that he’d heard them talk of the need to carry water: so he supposed a journey to or through a dry land was entailed; he passed on …

Huldah … Huldah herself a dry land, no facile lushness there, path-trails thin as filigree; yet a rich land, with many a concealed spring and many an occulted deep, deep well. A rich land, she, lying alone. Her eyes … at first he’d thought them ever so slightly, ever so skillfully painted: but soon he saw that none artifice had done this work. And faint her half-shy, half-sly smile. Never raised, her voice. She: richer than the ransom of a richer city. Sometimes she wore the two silver armils on the one same arm, though not always the self-same arm each time. Hear their tinkling, hear them now and then ringing.

Huldah and he together in her atrium one day, plants in half-buried jars and pots roundabout. She, after drawing lines in the sands in the atrium, straight, curved, wavering: shores, she said. Coasts: she said, slopes; rivers which once had flowed and flowed no more, rivers which flowed yet and always, and rivers which flowed only sometimes. Huldah at length drew another line, and this (she said) was “the long road to the Pass of Gold …” After silence, said she, “It runs through the heartland of Five-Limbed Uluvendas, the Great Bull of the Woods and Plains.” And, after another silence, said she, “Now none know this way save me and thee. Well,” she said, “of course all my people here know it, but, for one thing, scarcely they know that they know it. And what they know, know it or not, they would not betray. Not while three sticks of this house stand together.”

Not while three sticks of this house stand together: surely a figure of speech: Diomedes, good at the war-cry and no mention of Diomedes (who had fought Greeks and Trojans, goddesses and gods) teaching his horses to feed on human flesh in peace or war. Diomedes —

Suddenly he said it aloud, “Diomedes, good at the war-cry.”

She looked at him, slightly she moved the slight lines at the corners of her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. “Here!” said Huldah. “He’d need be!”

No word said, a while. Then Vergil: “Come ships seldom here?” he asked. “Black ships, galleys, galleons, carracks made brave with paint of red?”

A gesture (hear her silver bangles sing!). “As thee see. Seldom come ships here…. That is well,” she said. Said she, “Well that it is so.”

Again they were speaking of silver, silver … the pale and shining … there were priestesses who called it The Tears of Diana; clearly they had known it only as droplets to set like so many beads upon the bottom border of a necklace; had never set gaze upon the black or the dark brown matrix, the mother of ore itself from which silver was refined. It was, though, perhaps possible, that they spoke in a slaunting way (safer in Thessalia than in the Thebaid) of the tears of those hundred myriad slaves which toiled in the silver mines of Ægypt to make yet richer the already immensely rich House of Ptolemy. Yet Claud was King of that nation now; if not altogether a philosopher, yet an astronomer and geographer; had he need for the serfdom? or worse than serfdom — for serfs slaved in the sunlight — in the rain, too: yes: but there was no rain in Ægypt nor in the great Garth of Tambuqtoun, where the very houses, seemingly built of slabs and pillars of many-colored marble, were actually wrought of the mines of many-colored salt — was it for crude, rude wish for further wealth that women and men moiled in the mines for salt and silver? Was there no truth in the soft-told tales that this was the common fate of all thought disaffected to the King and Court of this great House of Ptolemy? Surely no one who had measured the earth as with measuring-rods and had seen overhead the clear and glittering stars and counted them all and given them names which had had no names before — Surely King Claud, author of that great book Almageste, might see fit to break the bands binding those bound to toil in darkness. One must hope … and one must hope, as well, some day to learn what any of this had to do with Diana … though to be sure if tears were silver, tears were salt as well. The Fair White Maiden, or Matron occymists often called the moon. Back to the scene before him. “These twain armils or bracelets,” he said, “that is, their silver, may contain some traces of copper as well?” Copper. The Rudy Man. That was the sun. And therefore: Therefore: The Fair White Matron Wedded to the Ruddy Man … Therefore?

He had, by grammar, made a sentence. A statement. But by tone, it was a question. Vitruvius and his architectural jars which swallowed sound, as the vatic chauldrons of Dordona produced it: Vitruvius would clean comprehend this. But an antic notion: produced it? released it? consider if the words of some drama, swallowed up in some theater, should echo forth from the sacred soup kettles in the oaken-wooded holy hills of Aelian Dodona? — or the words of an emperor thus absorbed from an audience chamber? what might pilgrim worshipers make of it? … antic indeed …

“Or some metal not quite known,” she said. “ — or no longer known —”

“Like that missing wind no longer found in the Rose of All the Winds?”

Her face and its considering, sometimes almost brooding, look: her face, the lightest shade of dark … for dark had as many shades as light … her face, on either side of which now grew a richer tint with a slight flush reminiscent of the second bloom of the twice-blooming roses of Paestum, her face. “Or some metal not quite known?” here she it was who asked a question. Yet there was in it a sentence, a declaration of fact — me Herc! here he was, a thousand miles or more from the black navel-stone of all the world, upon the marshes of the Maurs and of the Troglodytes, and he bethought him now of rhetoric!

“But one?” he asked. “Only one? One such not-quite-known-metal alone?”

Reflectively: “Well … I speak now of silver. Certainly I believe that with silver, that behind silver, or within silver, there sometimes lies secluded a severalty of metals otherwise —

“— not quite known,” he finished. He repeated. “And what —”

“Of one I know nothing more, save that it is of a silvery sheen, and yet coarser … and yet stronger, baser, harsher. Of another, I only know that it is somehow finer than silver. Neither of these tarnish; does the moon-Diana tarnish? And of course one knows of silver and lead, of silver in lead, as one does of copper … and perhaps bronze.” Thus she said, speaking to him easily enough. The motes of dust suddenly danced again in the sunlit air. He turned his eyes to see if she had noticed. And, as he did, heard a voice, a man’s voice: Speak to me never of bronze: low, intense, quick. Astonished, he recognized it. It was his own voice. And yet he knew that his mouth was closed, and that he had, actually, said nothing. She heard the voice clearly, clearly she had understood him, she showed no change of countenance, she lifted not her eyes nor made no sign. The vatic voice … After a moment she went on, “But I am also thinking of something called antimony …”

But, then and thereafter, forever more, she never spoke to him of bronze.

In his ordinary voice and manner, asked, “You believe that there is antimony?”

Emphatically: “I know that there is antimony And that it is not a fantasy, not a legend nor a myth. It is nothing like, oh, the tears of the daughters of Meleager turning into amber. And I believe that it is quite true it has a melting point below that of lead. I know it so.” How she knew it, he asked her not.

They were sitting facing one another then, and she had leaned slightly forward and placed her light hand atop of his own right hand, so much heavier. She knew many things, this one, this woman whom Vergil was coming to know. “Had you this silver from your Father?” he asked, on the impulse. “Or was your Mother privy to the secrets of those secret ores, as are you?” He did not ask if mother or father had been privy to or had given her the way of those secret airs, those gauze-like veils of mist or what were they, by means of which she concealed her coasts from the knowledge of alien ships, vessels not expected. She had her own motives and her own mantic arts. Her own means and methods. He asked himself, had he a hidden harbor, the key to a rich coast and an even-richer hinterland — and: suddenly: he wished he had — would he want to make it known to hordes and hosts of interlopers, stinking ships laded with cheap pots made hideous with “decorations” of Gorgons’ heads, and cheap cloth dyed bright and gaudy with colors certain to fade at the first washing or, at most, the second? merchandise certainly not sold cheaply? — he remembered the broken trash in the market at Loriana of Corsica — ships which might unlade those who would break and tear and wound the earth for its ores and enslave the people to work it, and set up fires and furnaces which would poison and would taint the air and sully the soil with the sweet venomous fumes of mercury? cut down such trees as did not turn black and useless? Would he — No. He would not. And neither would she, and neither did she.

Huldah, perhaps kenning nothing of these thoughts … perhaps … Huldah told him of her father, he the son of a Carthagan mother and a Roman sire: but she never said if he were of that illustrious bastard race for whom Scipion had builded a whole city of settlement in Aspamia; nor did Vergil ask. She did not move to remove his other hand upon her right one. She told him, too, of her mother, daughter of Cyrenia. “They Lybyans are not all of the Barbarians’ race,” said she. “Not all of them are Barberi.” Mother, daughter of a Lybyan woman and an Etruscan father. At every level in Yellow Rome and amongst the Romans, one encountered Etruscans. The very religion of the Romans was tightly knotted in with that of the augurs and haruspeces of Etruscany: wherever the omens were taken, whenever the auspices were sought, one heard the language of the Etruscans. And yet no Roman spoke nor understood the language of the Etruscans.

Save Vergil.

He had spoken in it to her once, without emphasis or any sidelong or upward look which might say, Observe and hearken now to this rare thing which I am doing, and be astonished, thou … And she had responded to him in that tongue, herself showing nothing extraordinary. And so they had spoken in it, oft. There was more and more to her each time he was with her, and each time he spoke to her; and now, their hands adjoined, he was looking into her eyes, eyes the color of a certain agate-stone, and in the darker part of them he looked: and he saw within them (in her phrase) Far ago far. Within the darkness of her eyes, so different from his own grey-green ones, he saw within the darkness of her eyes the embers of ancient watchfires upon distant coasts, strange and distant but in no way fearful, and he saw also that sometimes those embers glowed in travelers’ fires in many remote interiors. He was realizing, had come to realize, that Huldah was a continent, one of and unto herself; and that knowing Huldah was to know, gradually, and with certainty, as it were the certain roads of such a continent, its paths and peaks and climates, its stars seen from different angles in the night-time skies. In himself, he was, as it might be, saying: I have known Asia the Less and Asia the More, I have known all of Europe, I have known Africa. And now I am knowing Huldah.

“Of silver and its sorts,” she said now, “I have learned much. And from them, and not alone from them.”

He told her now of some of the simpler signs of the occymists. “Sometimes they too mean silver when they say Diana —”

Nearby an aeolian harp sang its sweet and unconstrained music, played only by the winds; from somewhat farther away, a dull repetitive sound told that someone was pounding grain in a wooden mortar with a wooden pestle; he would have found the task monotonous, but whoever was husking now might not: there was, to be sure, a pleasure in even the most simple accomplishment, and, as the old country-folk had it, Many a little makes a lot. And, besides, those who tilled the earth for bread required that the grain be husked and ground before it might be baked. Baking might indeed be thought of as the first occymy. “And how,” she asked, as always, keen to learn of new things; “and how do they draw Diana —?”

Suddenly the thought came to him that the astrological sigil for she, often called The Mirror of Venus, might not be for Venus at all; might be for Diana, that the cross-piece supposedly the mirror’s handle, might be nothing of the sort: that Diana was by truth not alone goddess of the supernal moon, but ruled here below as patroness of the cross-road. This required more thought before he speak of it. Instead, he smiled a slight smile. “They do not ‘draw Diana …’ For they have another name for that symbol, they call it Luna, and they draw it as the crescent moon. When they do, that is.”

Out the door he could see a few several trees swaying a bit in the afternoon trade-wind; a few of them were palms, he could not yet identify the others. Did the spice called grains of paradise grow hereabout? And, if so, upon a tree, like the true pepper of India extra Indium? He would soon ask … and if no one answered, he would ask the trees: this, too, he had learned when learning “in the wood,” not as far from home as he was now. And now, seeing that she was puzzled, on he went to explain. Amongst almost all alchemists there obtained a jealousy very great. “You would be sad, I think, to see them with their prentices. For years they keep them at low tasks … and by that I don’t mean feeding the fire under this alembic, or following orders and directions about that pelican — which, when one is a high occymist, seems fairly low — no, I mean that they employ them at tasks such as sweeping and cleaning, things which any even half intelligent child may do. Oh, I suppose they save the hire or the price of an even half-intelligent child, but after a while it becomes evident that the apprentice must be allowed to work at some higher task, or what is he apprenticed to? And a full-scale occymist, if he has a full-scale elaboratory, really needs the assistance of something more than an even half-intelligent child, besides the fact that prentices tend to outgrow their childhoods. The master alchymist, needs, I say, something like a compeer. So then he begins to teach his man — true, Mary of Ægypt was a woman, but perhaps she needed no one to teach her — teach the man the symbols and sigils of the craft, so that while he is working in one corner of the elaboratory, his aid can be working in another; if he is on the second floor, the assistant can be working on the third. And, too, the master must needs sometimes go away.”

He, Vergil, himself, had must have need gone away: he’d had no apprentice and was perhaps very fortunate to have had Cosmo Nungo; perhaps not. He would see, when he would go back; when would he go back? Already he had begun to think of it: but only to think of it. “… sometimes go away. Will the works-in-progress wait for his return? Suppose something requiring a steady heat … how much steady? … and for how long? when and how to change it … or, if … and what next? and after that? If the work is something which requires a steady heat and nothing more, sometimes he may seal the vessel and place it about halfway down into the smoking warmth of a dungpile. And go off with his doors locked and his gates closed for such and such a time … the dungpile is rather like an horlogue, and it may go on long unattended: but then it is to be readjusted, you know, wound up,’ if it is that kind of horlogue, or water poured into the tank, if it is that kind of horlogue: just so, a steady heat as the dungheap gives, so that the very peasants —”

Here she spoke into his slight pause for breath. “Peasants, yes,” she said. “We were all after all descended from peasants, all of us. Salt of the earth, as we well know. Who feeds us all? Peasants. Even the pets and the philosophers and the city matrons in their saffron veils, know of the intense association of peasants with food. With plowing. And with cattle. With what do the peasants plow? with cattle,” she answered herself: “And what do cattle supply?” Instantly she said, “Dung.”

“Yes, dung. One can only get leather from the ox once. Milk? A time comes when cows no longer yield milk. Older bullocks may be converted into meat; who would kill younger ones for it? But all cattle … oxen, cows, calves, bullocks … all yield dung: Sometimes called nature; of which it is said, Though you expel nature with a pitchfork yet she will always return. Lands which yield no wood still yield a fuel in the form of dung. And another form of heat-from-dung — the very peasants to whom occymy isn’t even a name, wrap their raw green cheeses well and thrust them into the dungpile to ripen in that steady heat —”

She said, even-toned and sober of face, that one must hope that they were very well wrapped. “Especially if one were fond of cheese;” and before he could take formal notice, at once said, “But nature … ‘even kings must live by nature;’ what do the very kings do about occymy?” And then it was that he began to speak of that; and he spoke of that for long.