“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 stalclass="underline" 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 …”