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 —”