Now he heard a hoot and a whistle and a yammer of words which, for the most part, were really no words at all; he recognized the voice of Bruno. Bruno he had not seen often, lately, but once in recent months: he saw him peeling a scab off some portion of his unsweet person, deeply intent upon the matter, as one examining a leaf from some sibyl. But now the fellow was at another occupation: as often, he was jeering at someone. And of a sudden, no longer hidden from Vergil’s view by trees, there went along and alone, who but the nigromant, Numa, of whom Bruno had sneered that he had no more power, that he was grown too old: none the younger just now. What had brought him forth from his feculent den? the young Vergil wondered … asked himself, did he want to be like Numa? No. Was that the price one paid for wisdom; some said the price was one eye: No. No more than he wanted to be like Bruno. At all. Still …
What had brought Numa forth? For sure, only an errand which he could never even trust his thrall Caca to do … fetch a small jug or gourd of water (was he not holding something like that in his farther hand?), say, from the live waters of a running brook; not to wash with, God knows … perhaps for a certain ceremony or spell requiring a certain hour … if indeed he was on a quest and if indeed his quest sought water … Or perhaps “the thing” had since died (in which case it had been no dream). And now the flutist and the drummer suddenly broke off their music; certain men appeared upon the side of the vessel, voices called, voices answered, gestures made, gestures returned; and now it seemed evident that Numa, stooped and slow, was the “one sole passenger more” for which the ship was waiting? And then where was he going? Likely enough, where the ship was going … if not beyond. He seemed indeed very, very old. And he did not hasten him.
Half-loping behind Numa at a half-safe pace (willing to wound, but half afraid to strike), came the lout Bruno, ever enjoying to harass someone for nought … or ought. “Quack! Quack! Duck-foot!” he gabbled, only meaning but to mock; “quack-quack, duck-foot! Numa! Foh! Pfew!” he held his snout between his fingers. Old Numa turned and looked: no word he said, then; he only turned to look. The louse-bub chuckled his booby pleasure at seeing another either vexed or (better yet!) in pain. “Pfew! Numa! Foh! Clout-rag! Suck!”
And Numa, old Numa? He, as he turned away, spoke only the brief words said to those without pride or shame; Vergil meanwhile (suddenly, in fact, he could not have said why) bethought him of what he’d seen a-hanging and a-stinking before Numa’s door; and of the vatic voice. And of the vatic voice, what?
And Numa, old Numa (tattered, dirty, old evil Numa: but still …)? He, as he turned away, spoke only the brief words said to those without pride or shame. “You have no face,” he said. “You have no face.”
And, in a moment, even before the Bruno began his shrill and terrified and endless scream, Vergil perceived that this was now quite true. And was utterly sure that he knew where that face now was: it was hanging by the door of Caca’s cave.
V
Interlude At Sea
From Corsica’s Loriano (its trade, though limited, had even so a somewhat antic tone to it: henna, senna, leeches, peaches, chamois hides, and musk) he had taken water on a tramp trader crawling longside the littoral of the Ligurians … coming from Naples, Zenos had swung north towards Elba in order to take advantage of the wind, and to avoid the Gulf of Dread; now there was another wind to catch, and another course to take. It did seem to him, though, that this, naturally, other course was not taking them at all past Liguria, where in ancient days … so men said … the piddle of lynxes had solidified to form amber: always a great article of trade — Liguria, and the lands of the Franks, and then of the Catalands: where were they? He would soon enough see places not those at all; and, by and by, seeing the vast Herculean Columns and scenting the wild cold wind off the Sea of Atlantis — seeing the gryphons wheeling, gyring overhead …
“What shore?” he asked the helmsman, captain, and crew, “what shore? what coast of people?” But they answered him not, were shifty and silent, not with any great insolence, but with the evasion of those who do not answer because they merely do not choose to and because they do not have to. He soon saw that strict truth did not form any part of the philosophy of the masters, mates, and crewmen of a tramp trader. And why should it? when it did not suit them? They were merchant-men and merchants do not invariably deliver the merchandise as ordered and paid for. There was, after all, nothing in particular for Vergil in the lands of the Catalands, any more than there had been in Frankland or Liguria. He had wanted an escape? Very well, he had gotten one. He shrugged. And he made himself easy. He would see. From the moment of his final shrug he relaxed. The shipmen relaxed, too. Then ho! for the lands of the Troglodytes and of the Estridge-Eaters and those who sold the shaggy skins of wild men (such as Punes hanged up in their Temples to Bel, Melcarth, and Juno … particularly to Juno), also, the great plume feathers of great birds which could not fly, and those who traded the horns of strange wild goats (scraped translucent thin) full of sand of gold; traded them for cloth of scarlet and crimson, small bronze bridle bells and copper cauldrons (in series of ever-diminishing size so they fitted one inside the other) and cloaks of softest finest wool dyed the color of russet leaves such as lie so thickly of autumns in the Shadowed Valley And now and then, for boot, these dwellers on the western shores past the dragon-guarded Garden, handsful of beryl and of moonstones they gave, and tourmalines, agates, jasper, jade, and jet. What was strict truth on such a voyage? Oliphaunts baying on the beaches, and Black men in hooded cloaks who sold salt in slices of many colors which the Empery knew not salt to be: rose-red slices, yellow, blue, and green.
And in the night came a play of light atop the mast. “The corposants, the corposants,” cried one, and crew and captain alike covered their faces. Vergil however observed the blue-green green-blue shimmer, a single source or twinned he could not tell; then recalled that the corposants are Castor and Pollux come down again from the sky.
They had of course some time since passed Tingitana, a name not without memory or meaning to Vergil. To the larboard lay the city Tingitana, Tengis or Tingitayne, its once-great port now drowsing in the sun; crowned with its acropolis or cássaba set off by crumbling walls. Vergil, who had been in more than one such neighborhood, watched with more indifference than interest; a once-royal palace and its precincts to be sure, decorated in a sort of non-style, and stinking with old stale. There would be a so-called snake-charmer lurking there for chance visitors, nose bloody from the bites of a serpent which was perhaps far from being charmed by it all. Should he go ashore when the master went, who was shortly going there on ship’s business? Besides the shabby mountebank there would be, but outdoors, harlots in the local style, grossly fat, eyes painted widely in many colors, and almost certain to pass on the itch, if not more. Or, if tired of the ship’s fare, he might dine at some place upon the foreshore: rough tough ram-lamb grilled upon a spit over a fire of embers of vine cuttings. Bad wine, gussied up with gods-know-what. Go look at the Hall of the Suffetes, where no one suffeted nowadays. The walled small enclosure of the Roman proconsul and viceroy. Such a place surely did not rate a king. Tingitana. Bah. It did not smell as ill as filthy-stinking Zeyla-Zayla: and let that suffice for it.