After a very long moment, one of them (later he learned it was Polycarpu the captain of the craft — it was a small-enough craft, too —) spoke, not without a moving up and down of the apple in his thick neck. His words were in a tone clearly meant to be conciliatory, but Vergil noted well how the seamen, the shipmen, slowly gan to fan out as though to encircle him. “As you may see, me Lord Ser, we are only small folk,” he said … in Punic! surely no folk he had ever encountered, the same being of the “old sea,” the Mediterranean, ever looked less like Punes! … “— small folk, a-trying to do a small deal in what’s they called, ‘semi-precious stones,’ such a trade, we believes, being entirely licit undern the rules of Great Cartage,” and the light burst upon Vergiclass="underline" it was not that they were Pune, it was that they thought that he was! And, despite his own better nature, he reckoned to have a little sport with them.
“Such being the case,” he endeavored to make his own Sidonian sound as much like Carthagan as he might: no great hard thing, for constant commerce between the old Phoenician cities and the new had kept them from shifting and changing much; “… being the case, how is’t that you have endeavored also to deal in … purple …?”
In a moment he regretted having tried the jape, for the man turned absolutely yellow; had he been of ruddy color, he would have turned white. At once Vergil swift began in Latin, “Nay, but take no notice of my very bad manners, I am a Latin man, the same as you, a citizen of Rome,” briefly he thought of groping in his budget for the old badge of bull’s hide, SQPR, Senatusque Populusque Romanum estamped upon it; but forbore. “— and no Pune at all,” see the natural tan of sea and sun return to the shipman’s face; “and as for whatsoever kind of trade is yours, I care not, for —”
“But you be a mage! else how could you know —?”
Vergil gestured. “I see that some leaves of orchil-flowers have been near enough t’ your wristband to have been crushed upon it … added but a few drops of water, likely when you took a drink, added but a bit of lime, perhaps from a cargo of it: and the result? a smear or smudge of violet color … well … violet color once. And if indeed you propose to make navigations in waters where Carthage, old or new …” He did not finish the sentence. “Violet is not indeed true purple, but … another shirt is what I should suggest.”
The man stretched his arm to see the stain plain, swore, made as if to remove it on the spot, somewhat relaxed.
“ ‘Not indeed true purple,’ no, but near enough to run this sark red, be any Carthagan ships about. Lord Ser, me thanks for a-pointing of it out, I never gave thought … Well, I shall cut and burn this damned wristband in another minute. I say, nay: but only a mage could have discerned of it, and coupled twain and twain thegether.”
His men whispered, muttered, growled. But there were no more movements hinting at encirclement. Said one, in a speaking-tone at last, “If that be clare from just a spackle on a wristband, best we’d best wash and scrape the deck, and check they tayckle for some other tell-tale taint.”
And another urged, “And afore doing of that, be better best to hug up all the orchil and give it to offering for nap tewm —”
“Nap tewm?” asked Vergil.
“Th’owd king. Owd King Naptewm, a whose beard is green, they’m say, and smell’s o’ fish. E nows the dipth of every sea. Better ‘e gets all o’ it than the Cartage men take owt o’ it, and ang us on a tree, such is they manner and wont —”
And yet another shipman uttered his own caution. “After cutting of our hentrials out and grilling same as a relish for they savage dogs.”
But the thick-necked man, and it seemed his neck grew thicker, all but roared his scorn. “You knew what barber we might be trimmed by when you came aboard this adventured navigation! Stay here, then, if you like, and give surrender to your lay of the cargo as lies hid beneath the jars of limekilned and burnded oyster-shells! Stay here, and drink yourselves sotty until you’ve forgotten use of tongue and tool and wander naked as any —”
Very suddenly he stopped and turned a deeper shade and attempted to pretend that, suddenly, no one was aware that Vergil was naked as any islander: that is, as the days they all were born — save only that no natal-cord dangled a-peep from out a belly-band. And, for that matter, neither did they (or he) have even upon them so much as else a belly-band.
Quietly he said, “You will do as you will do. Only but I caution you to taste no drop of this sweet ruddy nectar of the lotus, for I drank of it, I was marooned because of it, and I am naked, now, because of it. I dwell at Naples; is it possible that you can give me a passage in that way?”
One by one they all nodded. Some nodded more soonly, some more slowly, some more deeply.
But they all nodded.
Yes.
The secret of the Castor and Pollux … (“A small ship for so long a name?” “Them be’s the famous Gemini Twins, My Sir. As we only calls they Castor and Pollux for short. Beseeing as how they’d shared the one hegg shell for their gemination, and which it had hample room for they both, we think they’ll take it as a hint so we’ll hall have a suffice of room in this small craft, no much larger has a small hegg shell, ye might say” “I quite see.” “We thought, too, we’d gain a double blessing by such a nime. Has they not seldom is beseen a riding of the wives in tide of storm.” “I quite see.” And Polycarpu, much gratified by his passenger’s grasp of mythology and method, smiled a wide and pleasant smile.)
The secret of the Castor and Pollux … its real purpose was no longer a secret, then. In Rome, debarred by the depredations of the Sea Huns from an easy trade with Tyre, the immemorial source of purple dye in the east; and by the clandestine but none the less effectual blockade by Carthage of its own special sources in the Trans-Herculean west; in Rome, the price of purple, so essential for the best class of clothing dye, had gone nowhere but up. Just as the high price of Indian pepper had had as its result a trade in the pseudo-pepper (called grains of paradise) from Farther Africa — it was by no means the equal of the Indoo or proper pepper, but did well enough as an adulterant thereof — much better than poppy seed, for instance — so there had grown a pressing need for a sort of pseudo-purple (since the unsatisfactory surrogate provided by Averno was in any case no longer currentlyavailable) … a dye-stuff which would stain a robe well enough for it to pass for purple by, anyway, lamp or torch-light. With, anyway, that is, at least a little of the pure purple admixed. Many stratagems were tried, perhaps the best of which was to unravel a robe or a length of cloth estained with pure purple and use the thread so obtained as warp and the impure purple for the woof (or vice versa, if one follows). There was, as with all such tricks, the unwillingness of such a garment to stay fast-colored. But not everyone who wished a purple robe wished to use it often. The secret, or true purpose of the Castor and Pollux, therefore, was to lade aboard a cargo of a paste made from the flowers of the orchil plant, which paste, made quick with lime, oyster-lime or marble-lime (some said with one, some said with both) and water, was declared by anyway some dyers to produce a shade of violet which, mixed subtly … so they hoped … with purple to pass as pourpre, the res itself … by lamplight.