It was because of the dishonor of, one might say, the ravage, worked on Leda, king’s daughter though she was: not that it wasn’t an honor for a mortal to serve the god, any mortal, any god; if a goddess wanted pleasure of a man, might she take it, too, as Aurora did of Tithonius. But why hadn’t immortal Jove (“Zeus” many call him) assumed, or, if it weren’t assumed, why hadn’t he appeared to Leda in his shape as a man, and courted her as any suitor? or if she needed be tooken saunce consent: again: why not as a man, why! ser! it must have been a shocking thing! forced by a swan! though folk talk of swans as lovely, graceful things, still, they be main powerful brutes, ‘tis said swan can break a man’s leg with the force of its wing! and no more to be beat off, swan, than avoid Nemesis — some say it were Nemesis, not Jove; some say, Jove be Nemesis. Eh! and so therefore thus the reason why one of all man-twins born here syne then had to go and be a leper …
… and still, all through the telling of this dire tale, the sweet scent of the cooping-wood, newly cut, newly sawn, freshly shaved, was fragrant on the air: no slow sad clamor of the leper’s bell and no noisome feculence of the leper’s olor defiled the dry still air …
… Was it not now clear? It was not … well … did the stranger from a far-off land not see how merciful a thing it was that both twins did not always suffer the curse? and, above all things, wasn’t it a most majestic way for one brother to show his love for the other and go away and take all the woe and affliction unto himself? for, sure, twasn’t always that was the way of it; sometimes each refused and the curse took both of them; among very common folk they usually tossed a coin to decide the matter; in far-off times (so one heard, but one heard it often), the child’s father decided: let him decide howas he might, hadn’t the father life and death over his own childer? but that wasn’t the way it was done nowaday.
“How is it done nowaday?” for Vergil could think of no way that such a thing should be done. Could be done. So, … therefore: he asked.
“Nowaday … nowaday?” The man was almost maddingly slow. “Ah, my sire, nowaday. When the brother decide. Whichever one decide. When he conceive to himself in his own mind. And he thinks and he saith unto his own heart, ‘Let me be the one to go and do it, an I shall spare my brother, whom I love, even he.’ Then he go off whatever the time of night or day, go he off unto the Temple of the Dioscuri, of them twain Castor and Pollux, whom Jove hath blessed and set them as stars in the starry sky, and yet of a wonder sometime they come down to yearth again, or, exactly, down to sea; and folk at sea may observe them and several have report it to me, that Castor and Pollux do be seen at play about the mast and spar of a sailing vessel as blazing lights —”
Cried Vergil, “The corposants!”
“The corposants. As some call them. And whichever twin o’ this twain hath first decided, off he go to the Temple of the Dioscuri, the twin sons of Zeus under his other name of Dios; well, and he pray his prayer and he take off his knife-belt and his knife and he place knife and belt atween them twain statues. And so it be so, my sire and me ser …”
Vergil was silent. By and by the cooper, Bodmi the barrel-maker ended the silence. “Them couple pair kags shall be ready this day week and one. In ane octave they shall be ready. Aye,” he said, almost without a pause, “a tragical thing for a man to be the father of man-twins,” and all the while his hands worked on and on, nor had they ever ceased to do so whilst Vergil watched. And when the splints, the staves, had all been shaved, then must they be bent, and then must the rigid hoops engirdle them.
Nemesis.
There was no other way.
Very much later that same day, Vergil was speaking with a local elder man of much repute, called Sapient Longinus; that is to say, he himself was having little to say, for he had wanted to talk about twins, not alone of the lad Rustus, but of all well-known twins: of Castor and of Pollux; of the Cabiri Sancti, Axierus and Axiocersus; of Neleus and Peleus exposed at birth to die yet lived to be Co-Kings of Jolcos; Laogonus and Dardanus alike slain by Achilles beside the reedy river of the Trojan shore; and Valdebron and Heldobran in Aspamia; but Longinus was a Master of Leechcraft, and on this he had much to say Perhaps a few people ever sought him out for conversational purposes, and either for this cause or from this effect, Longinus talked long and much. “And as for the yearb called snapdragon or mandragon,” said Longinus, “the yearb y-called snapdragon, Ser Vergil, when you take your plant called snapdragon and moileth it in a mortar or other vessel made from unbeaten gold, nay, what am I a-saying? ah hah hum, in your vessel of unfired gold, as your Theophrast beareth witness, your yearb, ah ah …”
“— called Snapdragon,” Vergil thought he must interrupt or go mad.
Longinus looked at him benignly. “Jest so, Ser Vergil, your —”
“Doctor Longinus …?”
“Ser Vergil …?”
The drawn-out ululations of a passing pedlar of dried fish caused a pause; then: “Doctor Longinus … have you ever heard … you have perhaps heard … if there are twin brothers … is it so, Messer Doctor Longinus, that unless one of them lays down his knife and knife-belt between the statues of Castor and Pollux, both of such man-twins must contract leprosy …?”
Longinus gazed at him without dismay. He tugged at the tuft of long white hair growing from his right ear. “No,” he said.
“ ‘No’? Then no such dire and baneful usage obtains in this land?”
“No, no, Ser Doctor Vergil. Certain not.”
“But … then …” Was the whole story some mad illusion and delusion —
Longinus pulled at the tuft of long white hair growing from his left ear. “Unless, of course,” he said, “they be both born under the sign of the Gemini. In which case, certainly.” And he looked at Vergil with an untroubled look.
Heads down and muffled against the sun and sand; heads down, all day long, a day in no wise different from all other days without any detail save the incessant repetitions of caravan life … with, now that he came to consider it: somewhat less sand, somewhat less gravel, even; only the dust which moved languidly about the animal’s feet as they made their way, step after every step over the land of stone: suddenly from the caravaneers some sound scarcely articulate enough to be called a murmur, some movements too slight even for gestures: a brief inclination of their heads (muffled, their heads, as their voices; they spoke but seldom with their mouths, reluctant to open them and admit heat, sand, dry air, and dust), they moved themselves a bittle in their saddles … even the bells of the beasts sounded, for a moment, a sound just a slight mite different from the usual discordant clatter. Those bells were never meant to be musical; were one to ask another man of the caffile why did their beasts wear bells, be sure they would have answered, To give notice of where the beasts were: did they wander, unsaddled and unbridled and unladen, out of sight: into some declivity, perhaps, not easily visible in this land of stone.
This land of stone! stone white, stone black, stone grey; very rarely now and then some well of water, some tree, some blades of grass. And might not one of the less cheerful philosophers … likely more nor only one … liken this to a long slow journey through life itself?
He put away from him such thoughts. Mayhap the chief purpose of the bells was to break the limitless monotony of the moments, hours, and days. Even if the men did not say so, and even if they did not recognize that it was so …