“Yes?” he asked.
“Was he fond of cheese?”
He scanned her face for any sign of laughter; none was there: but then he scanned her eyes. “The Court will sentence you to six taps with a wet bullrush if—”
Again she begged mercy from the court: what patience, what relish of strange things and odd, what had those agate eyes seen? not but yesterday she had told him of having sailed round the farthest shores of Lybya (so far away that scarce the name of Africa still clung to it) in the farthest south[7], until one day the sun rose from a quite contrary corner of the sky. When he, after a moment of astonishment, “Then you have made the circumnavigation as Hanno of Carthage, and the Herodotus has been wrong to doubt it!” And she: “Yes.” No more. “Yes.”
Rather, he felt himself like some pedagogue, stuffy lecturer in the furred and hooded academic gown, droning on at great length about the need to refresh that heat-producing dung-heap with new-made dung: as though she had never observed such things for herself, as though there were no dung-heaps in the lands along and behind her coasts: as though, in fact, the milk served them twice and thrice daily had been milked from trees.
He hasted to the conclusion of his discourse — already, he feared, over-long delayed. The occymist was obliged, eventually, by necessity to teach his apprentice to follow his the master’s secret notes … but so very often the master could not bring himself to disclose his greatest secrets: and in such a case (it was the very common case) he taught him to read a special and simpler cypher in which the most simple notes disclosed only the most simple knowledge: boil this, thrice … let this cool … for such and such a space of time … place such and such a substance in the pelican and add such and such an amount of water … or whatever the liquid medium was …
And so on.
In which case, should the apprentice take it into his mind to run off to another occymist, he had not taken with him the knowledge the most valuable.
Very often, of course, the apprentice, made sullen by the fairly useless passing of the years and himself so very insufficiently instructed, did run off. And very often he ran off to yet another occymist (where else?) whose long-time apprentice had also run off … and for the same reason. Ignorance was thus exchanged. Imagine a twain conversations about that time.
“What is this?”
“Master. An Alembic.”
“What do you do with it?”
“Master. Whatever I am told to.”
A sound as of steam. “No….” the word fool unspoken, but hanging in the air; “No … what had he have you do with it?”
The man searching his mind and keeping wise his face. “Well … Master …”
And, at more or less the same time. “Tell me,” a wave of a hand much-stained with the acids of the elaboratory; “tell me what you recognize?”
“Master. — This is an athanor. And this … I had not seen before. It does look like a threble pelican.”
Master purses his lips, neither very favorably nor very unfavorably impressed. “At least you can adduce from minor to major. Well. And this?”
Time for a quick change of subject. While the new applicant searched his memory. “Master. I did see the Peacock in the Vase of Hermes —”
A look of pleasure, at once quelled. “Did, eh? Tell me about it.”
Time for frankness. “ ‘Tell’? I can tell nought. But, if I am allowed colors and a surface to limn upon, I could show you, my ser.”
“The colors are over here. And here is clean papyrus and a brush. So —”
Time for further frankness. “What terms does the master propose?”
See anger play with caution on the master’s face.
Time enough to divulge … later … that the new candidate had seen it … once … the day that he arrived.
Ignorance not merely exchanged, but compounded.
And did not many and many an adept die leaving many and many a privy greatbook behind, which no one was ever able to decipher? Many. And many.
“Here is a half a gold paleologue for thee. I made it —,” he said, with a look of sudden cunning upon his face which would not have long deceived the idiot boy who sloped about the streets and with a scoop dog-pure for the tanners; “myself. But have chosen to cast it in a mold, so. It does not pay to leave unminted gold around. Did he ever … project?”
“Oh, thank you, master! Well … master …”
Ah, the elaborations of Naples! There were those so dim and mirk that the invention of a new lamp would perhaps have been of more service than that of a new metal, cellars like crypts, not cleaned since the lustrations of the year that Junius Plato was emperor, lit chiefly by the glow of the small furnace; large and bright and airy rooms with fresh plaister fresh painted a creamy yellow, so different from the others where the gypsum fell off in flakes all grimed from the dirt of all the long dirty years … elaboratories whose masters were indeed haggard and gant with feverish eyes sunken from sickening hopes, still intent every minute with expectation that this time the pot would indeed be pregnant with a glory like a new-coined sun … elaboratories where the master briskly worked on stinking caustics designed to wash wool clean so as to weave welclass="underline" — actually places where pentangles were enscribed on floors rough-swept for the purpose … and little enough that did to the purpose … the purpose being to project, an intention much the same as to transmute, the step just before the step transmuted … masters of an age to be still hearty and hail and in good thrift, but swaying and sick from the inhalations of the sophic sulphur and the sophic mercury intended to liberate gold from (as they thought) the frowsy atoms which concealed it …
“And you, madam,” he said, without preamble, “how did you know that I would be coming, that you called me by name? Names?”
“Oh,” she said, “Huldah told me.”
He thought she had not understood, and disdained to press the matter. But it was not she who had misunderstood. Therefore changed he the subject; “Keep you always the estuary of your river veiled, and indeed all your coast?”
“By no means. Only against those undesired. Sometimes even from Babylone people come,” what a great ellision! were none desired from less far away than Babylone? “— come, have come, and some came lately. And we trade. The speech of Babylone is near to the Punic speech in substance and in essence; have you seen how they keep records?” She took down a few small wooden boxes from a shelf and opened them, one by one. In each was something wrapped in scarlet tow, a slab of sun-baked mud with very odd markings incised upon them. He had seen such things before, but he did not tell her so. At least not directly. “This one is from Charyx Spasini,” she said, scanning the tag.
“… ‘of the long water walls?”
“That very same. And this is from Dura-Europos … or is it Duros-Europa?”
“Let us look and see.”
“Oh no. They don’t use the Latin or Greek names, though they must all know them; for that matter, really, they all know Latin or Greek. Latin and Greek. But there you are — clerks! clerks! — always maintaining their mysteries; o pópoi — phu upon them — and this one is from Babylone itself. Think of that.”