Husband and wife stood there, their faces carved out of dark marble, they heard nothing, they saw nothing: she with her huge dugs and haunches; he with his head as hairless as a snake’s. Then, almost as though on signal, each, both, they opened their mouths.
“Hogsmeat, fresh, fresh!” he called. And she —
“Cheap, cheap! A stiver off!”
“There are persons and places where one with the wit may learn more,” Numa had said. “Of course, ‘In the woods,’ of course, of course.” His large hands, broken with age, moved, then, as though rather dismissing what everyone knew … knew, in this case, what was meant by “In the woods.”
“There are certain schools, ‘secret schools,’ some call them; they are as secret as the smoke from Etna, from Mongibel’s dark stithy; and of these, likely the best is in Sevilla. You would laugh, were I to tell you the price, now you would laugh, but afterwards you would not laugh; besides … you might never have to pay it. And in Athens there are sundry schools, sundry seigniories of learningship, as it were,” he spoke on, he spoke lower than before, almost as though he were talking … not to the boy, there … not to the thrall creeping along the wall with — was that a rat in one hand, which he was holding by the tail? “the thing” slouched away into the shadows, the curtain-hanging moved and then moved no more: the slight sounds of the stick stirring in the tub began again. “… Illyriodorus,” the warlock was saying, “though he and I were never fellow, sour wine would turn sweet in that one’s mouth. Nevertheless.” What that nevertheless might bode, Vergil was not, then and there, to know.
And by and by the old sorcerer, if that was what Numa was, said, Go.
He had gone. So. His thoughts had much occupied him in the going. Suddenly he realized, not exactly that he did not know where he was, for well he seemed to know the way, but that had he known in his everyday mind it was likely he would have gone another way. Though, as he clearly realized in a moment, he should have come this precise way through the woods. It was still somedel light.
“My child! My boy! Mar! My Mar!”
“Emma!” They embraced. She was grown rather smaller and lighter, he thought. She still kept her old, usual place: a section of a log with one end hewn and sunken in the ground, the upper one long ago adzed shorter and then smoothed for a seat. Her ankles, her feet, he saw, were vastly swollen. Scarce, he supposed, might she totter from her bed to her seat in the dooryard. She kissed him yet again, then murmured something which he could not at first catch; then he knew he had, after all, caught it, for it was repeated by a voice now raised within the house, where the light of one (he saw it could be no more) tiny lamp yellowed, slightly, the shadows by the partly-opened door. The voice had been going on, going on, but in his happiness to have again the dearly-loved old woman to hug, and in his guilt at not having wished enough to have come before this long time despite the possibility of a scene with Bruno, he had not picked up what that voice had been droning; it suddenly seemed that people had been murmuring, muttering, whispering, droning at him all the afternoon and evening …
“… sits all day and does no work and yet wants water,” the voice burst out into a higher note, “let her drink her own,” and the voice droned down again.
The dim sweet face turned to him and her age-softened hand held out a broken cup to him. He nodded, took it. He knew where the spring was. In a moment he was back; she did not even nod her thanks, but drank at once. And drank. He went softly once again and filled the cup. This time, as she finished, she signalled something to him. Suddenly he found an egg in his hand. Poor old woman, she had no pet, somehow she had always a hen about, pecking and dipping its head at the bits she fed it from her own bread. An egg: that was always a treat she had for him. He nodded gratefully, bent over, ready to throw back his head and drink it so soon as he had cracked the shell; suddenly of a sudden some huge shape had swum swiftly out of the darkness, and had deftly snatched the very egg from his hand: the woman Euphronia it was: and she made some ugly scornful sound in her thick throat, and swiftly she was gone. She did not even bother to shout at him, for well she knew that she had wounded not alone one but two people; and that her sudden swooping-down had startled more than a shout; moreover, she now had the egg.
Sudden tears flowed on old Emma’s cheek. And much I would, he felt the words, it was more than thought and it was other than speech; the dame Euphronia had snatched off Emma’s egg? And much I would that she would find scald Cacas rat inside of it; what noise now issued from the house? No mere scream, but full-voiced ullulations of terror, welling forth, and louder and louder — He blew a kiss to the old one, Emma, and, light-footed, soft-footed, so hurried away into the gathering darkness. He knew that for now, at least, no one would follow him.
And not long afterwards he thought of a sort of equation.
Numa: Power without goodness.
Emma: Goodness without power.
And for long afterwards he thought of that equation. And when he learned well how to write letters, he wrote that down. But there were things, he was learning, and things he was to go on learning, questions without answers and answers without questions, and statements beyond orderings; things and thoughts which could not be written down: not written down as simply as an equation: things not writable, things not to be written. At all.
Some time had passed. It was another day.
You require to be a mage; we have none such about here. About, where, then, did they have one such? Or more than one …? Was there an order of them? Numa had spoken of a man in Athens, and of schools in Sevilla. Clearly, he, Numa, had met and known the man; it was not clear if he had gone to such a school or schools, or even if he had been in Sevilla at all. Of course one might ask. Suppose, though, that asking such a question and receiving an answer to it were but part of a sequence, and of a limited sequence, too. Would it be well to begin, so to speak, using it up? It was far from being thrice three years, at which time he would be under some sort of command to return to Numa. But not yet.
What yet?
Seeing, he fell asleep again. He had been mistaken. It was not a dream and he was not at sea. He was in a forest, there ahead of him was Numa’s house: but what a change! It lay fallen in, in ruins, and the grass, the creeper, and the vine had grown over it. Moss lay upon the shattered boards. Someone or something was panting heavily nearby.
How near? He turned his head. Caca was there, the fouled clothes sloughing and in tatters. Caca was there, on all fours, with offals in the mouth. Observed, the creature dropped them between the forepaws, and snarled, like any dog. There were sounds from behind, swifter than thought something sounded, whirling, whistling, past Vergil’s ears, and Caca leaped, writhed, fell back twisting, lay dead with a crossbowman’s bolt in the side.
Overhead, the glittering — It was a dream. He was awake and on the deck of a ship. He recognized the tawny shores of land, needed no cry of, “What land? what coast of people?” which was the traditional question asked of the pilot. Brundisium lay near ahead, and there he had been born; thence the Appian Way led whither all roads led: to Yellow Rome. He had much to do, it was some weeks before, even, he bethought him of the port; then one day he heard the fluter and the middle drum which signalled that a ship was in preparation for a voyage, and that all who would go with her had better hasten to be on board. In fact, as he walked towards the water he heard one man ask another, “What keeps her here? I thought she’d gone by now?” He asked as one might ask an idle question. And, as easily, the one he’d asked made answer. “It seems they await one sole passenger more,” and they strolled away, easy of mind as it appeared, as well they may be, whose way is not with water.