Gladly would the young Vergil have drowned in it; “I have soiled myself.”
Something not even faintly like compassion, something faintly like impatience, tinged the beadle’s voice. “Another good reason, then, to wash. Wash.” And, when Vergil had done so, he was shown a certain door, one of several. “Go through that one. That one. Mark it well. It won’t be pointed out again. Now. . go …”
That young aspirant also had a question, but he asked it as he went.
“What of my baggage?”
“It will follow,” said the beadle.
And so it did; whenever the lad’s feet lingered, lagging along that long corridor, longer than any he had ever walked before, he could hear it following; once he looked behind. Only once.
But as to how it had been made to follow, this was not the third lesson. It was not even the thirty-third.
It was twelve months and several before he saw the beadle once again.
The Apulian boy, though whenever (seldom) Vergil went to the arena he looked for him, he never saw more.
• • •
Armin had come to visit Vergil again. He seemed tired, had little to say as they sat by the slatted window-shutters, though Vergil tried to play the casually cheerful host. “Hecatombs,” the host repeated, taking up the note on which, more or less, the meeting with the magnates had closed. “Hecatombs can only help, for, after all — ” He paused to pour drink. “This is called beer,” he said. “Curious. It is much drunk in Egypt, so far south and east of here; and it is much drunk past the Alps, so far north of here. But it is not drunk much here. Is it that our grapes are better? Our barley not as good? What is that dreadful noise?”
They peered through the slats. Some throng had turned a corner. “It is nothing,” Armin said, dispiritedly. “A coiner. A false-coiner.” Below, a man was being dragged along behind a cart to which he was bound. At every fourth step, the local beadle gave his whip a flourish and lashed the malefactor across his naked back. Someone, perhaps a friend, had stepped forward and thrust a piece of wood between the condemned man’s teeth. It could only have been a last gesture of friendship, pity would not be encountered at such a scene. For one single stroke more the counterfeiter bit deep into the wood to muffle his own cry. But the effort was not to be made more. The gag dropped at the next stroke of the whip, the lashed flesh bled, the criminal shrieked. He did not wish to be brave. The Spartan virtues did not flourish here. And at every shriek the mob howled, mocked, imitated, flung stones, pelted with mud. Why not? He had made false coin; had any one of them found such a one in his purse or till, he must need either have borne the loss himself, or else risked the same fate, for the penalty for passing was the same as that of forging. The grim procession passed slowly out of sight and, somewhat later, out of sound. Fairly soon enough the forger would be burned beside the same dung heap where his ashes would be scattered. Burned to death, the sentence was uttered.
But before that time the man would already be dead.
Stern and meritorious law.
Host and guest sipped beer in silence.
Vergil did not resume his comments on hecatombs, but his thoughts continued. A hundred magnates (at the most, a hundred) and their wives and households could hardly eat a hundred oxen, even after the prescribed parts of the sacrifices had been burned upon the altars; victims offered in such profusion would inevitably yield up festive meats for slaves, and slaves seldom got to eat flesh-meat. Usually they must count themselves lucky when they had wheaten bread to eat, instead of spelt; often enough their diet must have been heavy in spoiled spelt, at that.
“I confess I miss the views of the Bay,” Vergil said, by and by. “The Isle of Goats. . and others. The gardens. . I confess I have a passion for islands, gardens, trees — I see you wonder at that.”
Armin said, “Not in particular, no. Merely I wonder that anyone should have a passion for anything.”
Vergil raised his eyebrows. “But that dance you danced. . surely, a passion?”
Armin shook his head. “Ah no. Merely a sudden lust.” Equally sudden now, his tired eyes changed. “You wonder. Such excitement for a madman. But you can’t know how different his madness and gaiety is from the madness which is daily life in Averno.” His gesture took in the scene that had just passed. “Day after day: heat, fire, sound, stench, coarseness, cruelty, picking pennies with one’s teeth from dung heaps; no gardens, not a tree, not a blade of grass — the fumes would kill them off — all but those painted, and painted badly, on some walls. . and them the stinking airs, the sweet breezes soon discolor, and mostly no one bothers to paint them fresh.
“Life in Averno — a contradiction in terms! This is a hell, death is our daily fare, we moil in the muck for money, and try to forget it by gorging instead of seemly dining, and sousing instead of decent drinking! One speaks with respect, with awe, of the Senate and the People of Rome, but never, ever, of the Magnates and the People of Averno! Ha, ‘the people of Averno’ —!” And suddenly, he wept, and his weeping spilled over on his cheeks.
Vergil murmured, moved, “Ah, ‘the tearfulness of things …’ ”
Armin, checking his tears with his sleeve, asked, “What?”
“Oh, only a phrase from somewhere. I forget. No — I don’t. From the Oracles of Maro.”
With a laugh still half a sob, Armin said, “You have seen their wives, the magnates’ — is that not tearful enough?”
Victory over pride? Victory over arrogance. The Nine Muses the matrons of Averno, as he had seen them, certainly were not. Need they have been? He thought for some tactful comment, but even as he sought, he found one question had now formed itself: “Only one, I did notice, spun. The classical duty of a Roman matron.” Vergil did not look at his visitor, he poured him drink, wondered about his own work here, and how he would next get on with it. His visitor spoke.
Spoke in a tone that indicated he wished his emotions, immediately past, to be not spoken of. “Ah, that was Rano’s wife. The Matron Poppaea. Of her some stories are told.”
Vergil said merely, flatly, “Ah.”
“Some stories are told that Rano for a while maintained her in another city, some say Potuoli, some say Naples, others say it was in a villa in the country. Some say he had reason to doubt her fidelity. It is said that he had no other reason to doubt except his own ugliness, however. It is said otherwise. And also, it is said, that, as he sent her there to live, so he brought her here to die….”
“Many things, in short, ‘it is said.’ ”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Putuoli made me, Averno unmade me. He who — ”
“It has not unmade her. Anyway, not yet. What? ‘Potuoli — ’? Another citation from those Oracles? I don’t know them well.”
“No. Another source. Not cited; rather, paraphrased. So — ”
But Armin would not wait on So. He got up. “Master Vergil, as I was one of the means of bringing you here, I hope that neither you nor I will regret it. I am not always clear in speech; forgive me. Neither am I always clear in mind. May I bid you civilly good night? And feel as free as ever to call on you again? Whenever …”
“Whenever. Yes. Certainly. I share that hope. Are there lights still?”
Armin, brushing his face again with his sleeve, brushing his scant beard, murmured that there were lights enough. A formal word or two more, and he had gone.
At once upon the man’s departure, Vergil’s boy appeared, rather as though he had but been waiting. Master looked at him, looked him over quickly. Well fed enough, well clad and well clean enough he seemed. Well content he did not seem. “Iohan. Time enough to bid you, too, good night. I’ll have some hard work for you, soon enough. Therefore don’t wear yourself down with trivial things in the meanwhile. Avoid provocation, fights, and all the like.”