The man at the helm may … say, rather, should … have been returning his thanks to Holy King Poseidon who rules the Realm Sea. But if so, he was not doing it aloud. To vow a fine fat freemartin, as had the skipper of the Zenos, was hardly within his means: a pigeon, perhaps. At least, a squab. Perhaps in mind he was doing so, if he had room in his mind.
Between the rudder and the mast, Vergil, excused from every duty on the rota of duties (Rota. Rato. Arot. Otar. Ator. Taro … and all the rest of it), had now time to think of the duty which he had of late performed, and which was on no roster at all. As a woman, a matron, likely, who wishes to summon a servant in the time of night when all are at slumber, save she herself; does so with a sound both low yet sharp, by clicking her finger-nails; so Vergil stood, feet spread apart and braced and facing the grom grey sea, reviewed the elements of the equation of the spelclass="underline" and did it not seem as though each element appeared as though summoned? click after click? spume in his face, click.
First, Click! there was the need that the Carthage sail-ropes and mast-shrouds all be of leather, and not of any grass. Click! Then … what were the odds that the leather be made from the hide of a red ox? (… as a dream, somewhere the report of a great pool so vasty as to be termed a sea and contained in a container of bronze or brass, the same being supported by the figures of oxen: supposing these to be made as well of tombac bronze, the oxen … until a patina formed … would indeed be red…) for be sure they’d not be made of cow-hide, though this be stern and stanch enough for any pair of boots or any whip of thongs, yet no hide fit merely for whip or boots — however punished or punishing — would be staunch and stern enough for a ship’s shrouds or sheets: its cables or its ropes, in landsmen’s talk — And the Curse itself must be remembered and recited: recited accurately, too. Click! Click! Click! Next, the memory of Babylone and a blade of grass … absent from the instructions; the old ox-thrall, it was now clear, had died before divulging this about the blade of grass; yet, sure, it had been his intention to divulge it, and therefore it hung in the air and Vergil had breathed it in (else, it had passed into the Universal Æther, and thence had slipped into Vergil’s mind, and, thence, unto his lips and fingers: Click!) Once had Vergil pronounced the Curse and nothing had happened. It had also been needful that, Click! he should have with him a piece of the hide of a red ox. Click! and would he have had this, for certain, had he not been a citizen of Rome Yellow Rome! Yellow Rome! but for all that, the stamp of the citizenship was on red) …? Click! And what of the blade of grass, so common a thing as a leaf of grass, yet a thing extending, as it were, the protection of distant, far-distant Babylone (where kings ate grass and books were built of the muddy earth, upon which grass grew … had not Huldah shown him?) over not-so-distant Carthage — had Carthage been destroyed? Cartha Gedasha, New City, springing up ever anew … How had he, Vergil, merely “chanced” to put a blade of common grass into his hat, just e’er they’d left land that morning? Had not the Curse known it was to be required that day, and had it not required Vergil to take and pluck, take and pluck? Click!
Click!
Pluck!
Click!
Next, what was the sounding of the shrill note upon the broken blade of grass, but what the occymists called The Dissolution, the vanishing — or the appearance — of one substance in another, or the creation therein of a third? — the katalysein, as the Ægyptian occymists called it in their fluent but to tell the truth untinctured, rather sloppy Greek, though this was not the place nor time to parse or purify it. — had he not blown his shrill and grassy note, shrill as ever any wind, would all the elements of the equation have come together, and fulfilled the Curse upon the Red Ox, hair, horn, and hide … hide …?
Click!
Never before in his life had he had more instant and more emphatic evidence of the truth and proof of Illyriodorus’s principle: “In verbis et in herbis … therein lies power.”
He felt as someone who had been long preparing for a certain journey, and who suddenly found himself on the road itself with nothing which had been in the catalogue of things needed for it … indeed, with not even the list itself: But if he had only the memory of the catalogue or list — was this nothing for the journey? far from it. It was, indeed, “something for the journey,” indeed. “Such and such an herb, sure against elf-shot,” thunder-thistle, perhaps, he perhaps had it not — but if the awareness of not having it kept him cautiously away from “blasted oaks” (what brought now to his mind the bidens, the lightning-blasted lamb?) “and all such sites of baleful omen and of elf-shot,” why, wasn’t this as though he had had it? And better than though he had, and had not sense to use it?
Click!
XII
Tingitayne
As it were idly, but mainly to calm his still leaping heart and throbbing thoughts, he brought forth from his pocket the battered thin old copy of The Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne, and riffled through it, pausing here and there to read …
Ictoon, a haven with no port or town, but containing three flowing streams of good water. Deep-drawing ships, it is said, may enter either from the right or left, but the careful will ever prefer the left, except in the season of myriad heavy rains, when the river … The Harbor-town where is the siege of the Chief of the Kings of White Mauretayne, has a myriad of peoples, and exporteth reeds and rushes, such as those of the sweet flag or iris, which sometimes be of the best quality; you may know this by the scent or olor. Myriads of papyrus plants are here to be found springing up by the rivers and swamps, but they are too coarse to be used for writing or even for wrapping, so they are not prepared in the usual way, but are kept sodden and may be scutched for rope as needed. From this the Chief of Kings derives it is said a myriad of ducats in export duties …
Vergil sighed. The anonymous author or compiler was fond of the word myriad. The pages turned and turned.
… the waters are not sweet which proceed from the brooks of Bubastine, site of a temple to Cybele or Venus who is worshipped here as the genetrix of Genets, valued for their incessant hunting-down of mice and rats. Hither came Algibronius, Geber, or Gibber, whose alchemical texts are by the vulgus called gibberish. The Gebber here examined for minerals useful for his Art, and found, tis said, an excellent unctuous earth for preparing fluxes. But no mines are now worked. Here Gibber commenced to edifix an altar, but did not complete it, preferring … Sarsten by the Sea hath for sale without stint very good wheats and millet and spelt; also a scarlet dye sold in grain. Sarsten above the Sea prepares several special sorts of garlands which retain their scent above a lustrum …