At his house in the Alley of the Hornscrapers — the Alley was full of the strong, rich olor of neats’-horn, which none who ever smelled of it ever forget; to which added sundry stenks from the Ox Shambles: let the Fisc term cattle-butchering one of the Infamous Trades and tax it as such, that made it smell no sweeter. Not that Fortunatus showed any sign of noticing. He fumbled now in his own ratty purse, so different from the one which held the ducal bounty; gave the torchbearer sundry copper coins, received his thanks. Somewhat hesitantly he said, “I do not usually invite people to my chamber, but if the Messer Vergil would care to climb aloft —?”
The sage Messer Vergil would feel honored. There was merely a slight problem. The torchbearer, saying, “If Messer Magus would care to go aloft a bit, I shall be pleased to wait below, and I haves a spare torch to enlight him home,” Vergil nodded his assent. The Master Philosopher suddenly pointed into the shadows, “Did you drop a coin?” asked he; and whilst the torchbearer peered and gaped, Fortunatus swiftly, deftly, furtively, found the end of a rope concealed somewhere, and hauled upon it, then as swiftly hid it away again. Down slid a ladder. Up went Fortunatus, Vergil following after. Below they heard the torchman mutter, as he clinked his coins and counted them, that he saw nowt missing, but thanked Messer Fortunatu none the less.
“Please to step carefully as you enters,” said Messer Fortunatus. He let the ladder stay where it was, and tied the rope fast. “Down there in the street be dangers,” he muttered. “Did you see the way some of yon rabble looked upon me? They would have rabbled me and stole away my quartern hen-chicken, if they could. — but here be safety.”
By dim light (and no doubt even without it) as easily as if it were level daylight, Fortunatus moved about. He unsmoored the fire, blew the sleeping coals a-bright, added a few more, lit a spill, by it lit his lamp, swiftly, carefully, blew out the spill. He took the quarter a hen-chicken in its wrapping of clean cabbage-leaf, dropped it, cabbage-leaf and all, along with an onion, a parsnip, a cluft of garlic, a juniper berry, a single peppercorn, and the two small pippins whose selection from the sideboard of the Doge had made so much merriment (Did he know it was customary to take both hands full of the gilded sweetmeats — including the rosy marchipanes — when the Doge gestured, saying, Have what you will, and …? No, he did not.); dropped all into his sole black chauldron, covered all with a fiasco of rain water deftly drained from the cistern-on-the roof, and put his meal (supper? it would be supper, dawn-dish, noon-mess and all to him, with his scanty and disciplined diet) to cook upon the embers. From the one lamp lit, he lit others, all the others … that is, all both of the others …
Vergil looked round the room, the his, Fortunatus’s room, crazy and cranky (but his!), at the top of the house, with no way thither into it now from inside or outside the building. He saw the books, scrolls, the massive folios (oliphaunt folios, some called them, either because elephant was part of the bindings or because they were the size, so to speak, of oliphaunts), instruments, plans, charts whereby one could instantly tell the hour and half-the-hour (even on rainy or cloudy days), pictures (of the Great Gnomon at Syene, for ensample), the tiny plants which he maintained, in his cranky way, purified the air (Mercules! it did need such, in this neighborhood!); globes celestial and terrestrial and crowded cabinets; and that odd, odd bird of unknown provenance, silent bird, sitting silent on its perch (the whisper in the lane had it that Fortunatus had frequent converse with it in a foreign tongue). It would munch the remnants of his meal, whatever his meal might be; no meal at all? then the bird, too, would make do with no meal at all; at such times the neighbors said that they could tell it was Hunger Day, for all day long the bird plucked the strings of an ancient lute a-hanging by its perch: every note from umma to summa, one after the other, all day long, all the long, long, day.
If any one was untactly enough to sound such series of notes on his own lute: “Leave off!” (at once), “Leave off! Tis Fortunatus’s bird, gone gant!”
But little cared Fortunatus for any of this. Here he might be (even if, by his own choice, he was not now) alone. Here no one could (unless he himself chose) disturb him. Here he, and not others, put his own value on things. The whisper, indeed, the loud and raucous rumble in the lane, said nothing about Fortunatus’s life concerning women, … or, for that matter, boys or girls or men … But a statue of a beautiful she, half life-size, stood int the corner. Many a Patrician of the Kingdom of Naples (the Kingdom was extinct: not the title) would have given many a golden solid or golden pæleólogus for to have it: Haro the sculptor had groaned it up himself by ropes and pullies, and selected a choice-most nook for it in the best light, purely out of respect for a fellow-artificer; Fortunatus used it to dry his breeches on in the hot weather, the while he went bare … though in the cold he set the brazier of heated ashes by it, (the while himself he shivered), lest it freeze and crack.
Having attended to the matter of food (it would remind him by savory smell when it was ready, he was not one of your hour-glass or water-clock cooks), he prepared to sit him down — and suddenly bethought himself that he had a guest; “Is the sage, Vergil, interested in the mathematics?” he asked.
“It would be a further favor,” the sage Vergil began, but one word attended the ear of the Master Philosopher.
“ ‘A favor’ yes. A favor. One may ask a favor? ah?. By the boon and bounty of the learned Doge …” (many had called Tauro many things, referring to his habits, his parents, his coarseness, and his size: no one before, under the Consulate of Heaven, had, surely, ever called him learned!)
“… Doge, I now have enough for parchment, pens, ink, pounce … one thing Doge’s boon and bounty cannot bring me … If I might come to the house of the sage Vergil and copy but one passage out of the great book Almagest …?”
“Come whenso you will and copy what you please. I shall advise them at the door and inform them in the library. Might the hour of noon be to the Master Philosopher’s convenience? The light —”
It would not. “At the hour of — at the hour mentioned, according to my own calculation mathmatical, the most-favorable spirits would not be in the ascendant …”
So, thought Vergil; even Fortunatus feared the hour of noon, when, since men cast no shadows, one could not tell real men from false: the Demon, the Dukos, the Simulacre and the Sand-Jack shed no shade. Well, so be it. The sage Vergil, with a murmur and a gesture, made the Master Fortunatus free of whatso hour ever he might desire. The sage Vergil wore a civil face, yet, beneath the civil face, did he not smile a bittle? Beneath the civil face, he did smile … a bittle.
Making nought of his host’s thanks, swift he pressed him that he had a favor of his own to ask: see the philosopher startle in surprise. “Can the Master tell me ought of, how shall I call it, hath it yet a name? device and art whereby to depict things a-dwindle in the distance, yet all in proper ratio?”
Fortunatus understood instantly; “Proportion, this we call proportion and perspective, what would see perspectively?”
A bit amazed as, it seemed, being instantly understood. Vergil said, “Whatever you please … a man beyond houses, a house in between trees yet a farther away from them somewhat … a doorway in a building on a pier and beyond it the end of a pier and moored thereto a boat … whatever —”
Before Vergil had finished the words, Fortunatus had quickly taken up a much-used piece of papyrus (a more than-once-palimpsest it seemed), turned it over to its back on which the lineaments of whatever had been there were now but so many — or so few — grey ghosts, slapped it flat on the table and gave it another slap as it were he feared it would flee, else; took up a very small piece of charcoal, drew a single stroke with it, evidently discovered, suddenly, that it was blunt — as any boy too small to be trusted yet in breeches might have told him at a glance — gave it a sudden snap, as a hungry dog might give a morsel; and commenced, swiftly, almost savagely, to draw lines.