But Nephew-to-Sergius had more than the scribble in mind; the finger had pointed to a line half-way down the page, For Vengence upon Enemys Take Ye and the rest was bare. “What’s this on the blank of the page?” he asked, the finger hovering above a brownish stain.
“I fear it is blood,” Vergil said, reluctantly.
“I fear it is blood!” No fear showed upon the face with the half-lidded eyes; instead a fearful joy showed there. “Oh, how valued, this page! How they shall pay us for it! Not with coppers, not with silvers, but with golds!”
“Who shall pay you, man?”
“They!” cried Nephew, clasping the half-page of papyrus to his bosom. “The very They! The same They as meet in the dark to play things —”
Vergil, with a shrug, left him still rejoicing, and making no more offer of a special price; but hardly had he left the shop when he heard the fellow hurrying behind him, then alongside him, and a hand swart with hair thrust into his own hand a small bouquin which very vaguely he recollected having seen, all by itself on a lower shelf. “Really, I fear that I can hardly afford —” he began.
But Nephew, still holding the loose page (and it showed no sign that it had ever been bound into a book) a-clutch, shook his head and grinned. “No charge! Reward! Finder’s fee! You shall have a good voyage! Hail and —”
The farewell floated over his shoulder as he ran back to his shop. Vergil briefly glanced at the bouquin; the cover had the machiolated look of serpent’s skin, but, badly worn at one corner, showed a very thin piece of board between two split-shaven sheetlets of calf’s-hide. Someone had gone to a bit of trouble in binding this … it fit easily into his pouch … he slipped it out again for a better look…. Periplus of the Coast of Mauretayne … if he did not care for it, he need merely chuck it away; it had cost him nought.
And at least it made no pretence about any loss of vigor in the night.
Alexander Magnus, it was well-known, always carried with him and had under his pillow in the night but two items, neither what one might regard as a talisman: though perhaps he so regarded them. One was a knife, or dagger. And the other was a book written on the skin of an entire huge serpent or (some said) dragon.
But what that book was, no one surely knew, though many would wish to know.
And many guessed.
As Vergil passed the table where he had had the (faintly) fragrant bowl of acorn-meal, the food-wife called to him. “As you didn’t find my water sweet enough,” she said, with some show of apology, “I wish to make it up to you —” “No need, no need to —” “But I wish to,” she said, with some emphasis. “Here is new-baked bread of fine-sifted flour,” and surely useless to explain that he much preferred it to be, always, of unsifted; as like as possible to that of his childhood? He never could make it clear to anyone else not raised on the farms; even to them, not always.
“And here,” she said, as he drew near, willing, merely, to oblige her and leave no ill-will to abound; “here is honey, fresh and gold and sweet.”
He seemed suddenly aware of traces of that morning’s sour water, tasting of the god knows what minerals, still in his mouth; would be glad enough to thrust it away with fresh honey; seemingly by the way she emphasized the word, she felt aware of that. He sat down willingly enough on the rude bench by the rough table, and watched her slice the bread and pour the honey over it, which she did with an unstinting hand. A word of his old master, Illyriodorus, well-known for art and philosophy throughout the Attic lands, came into his mind as she re-arranged the slices and folded a napkin for him. “To be generous, what is that? To one, bread and honey,” by-words for generosity, “means a thick slice of fresh bread well-spread with all the richness of the hive; to another it means a thin slice from a stale loaf, sprinkled with a thin measure of honeyed water. Yet each may regard himself as generous. And if one be rich and one be poor, each is … generous …” The old man smoothed his vast white beard, only faintly yellowed here and there, and they waited for him to go on. But he did not go on. In the expectant silence they realized (at least Vergil did) that a poor man could certes be deemed generous if he could afford no more than a thin slice with thin hydromel, to give it forth to others: but suppose it were the rich man who did so? And. And all the while he was thinking this, and thinking of the bees humming around the violets and other flowers as they prepared to make the sweet honey of Mount Hymettus, known where even the name of Illyriodorus was not, although his School was located at its foot; all this while Vergil, without thinking, was sitting down, was spreading the napkin to save his tunic; even as he lifted the first piece to his mouth and was nodding his thanks to her, he was thinking: but surely the venerable did not mean merely to give a lesson in commonplace morality? surely he meant a metaphor? and what did the metaphor mean —
A taste of such bitterness burst from the sweetness of the honey as made him almost want to retch, it spread with incredible rapidity to his throat, and further down, even before he had more than swallowed a morsel of it — “His face! Look at his face!” And the woman burst into a peaen of laughter, loud and mocking and filled with great glee, laughter echoed by the small crowd which had (unnoticed by him) gathered to watch: hoots, shouts, even from one old woman, cackles: and the man who only a little bit earlier had addressed the food-wife as Abundiata and remarked that it didn’t take much to make them angry, there in Corsica — even this one was taking no care to restrain his swollen face from laughing, face split so wide that Vergil could plainly see the chewed dough to which he had reduced his food lying thick upon the tongue and teeth. “O crown and staff! look at his face!” A phrase from the Natura of that learned admiral came to him, that honey wine made with poisonous honey is, after maturing, quite harmless, and that there is nothing better than this honey, mixed with costum, for improving the skin of women, or, mixed with aloes, for the treatment of bruises[3]. It tasted as though it had already been mixed with aloes; he felt as though he had already been bruised.
“Oh, holy Hercules, how he don’t like it!”
“Mercury, rex rhabdon, he can’t take the bitter boxwood with the sweet!”
And the queæn Abundiata shrieked, half-helpless with laughter, “The water was too bitter for him! — how the honey, then, foreign fine-taster?”
A sick rage rose up in him like bile, such gross abuse of the laws of hospitality would scarcely have been expected of a Barbar-pack abusing a prisoner of war, rage seemed fair to undo him, he clutched the knife at his belt: still they hooted, and still they jeered: a small boy, who by the mere fact his nose was clean showed he was of good family, peered up into Vergil’s face to seek out the show of shame and pain; finding, laughed aloud with great delight; the knife meant nothing to them, probably even the gossoon had a sharp tickler of his own, and could pierce the femoral artery whilst a grown man lunged —
— and laugh while he pierced it —
No, the knife meant nothing to them, but something else did. A sound of fierce barking and loud baying in an instant drove off the pack of starveling dogs, eaters of dung (if the swine did not beat them to it), that had snarled and snapped even though they knew nothing of what was going on, save that they might with license snarl and snap, turned ragged tails and scabby rumps and fled, squealing as though they’d been kicked by heavy boots: they had not. Women leaped on tables, men rapidly threw their cloaks round their left arms and wrapped them against sharp teeth, the while drawing their own knives with their right ones; all, all looked swiftly round to check where the huge sounds might be (saw them not). And even then they did not understand. It did not take much to make them angry. But it took much to make them grasp … well … not very much, after all.
3
from Pliny /