And so, of course, in effect, he had now gone to Rome.
“Well, your Honor, as I understand it — merely, I have heard, this happened before my arrival — the man was elected as a King of Fools at the local Feast of Unreason. As such he was crowned. Surely a greater fool, in the old and real sense of the word, could scarce be found. And so he wore his crown, why not, and so he danced. I must say he dances uncommonly well.”
The Legate stared at him, gray and wasted face unmoving. “The Feast of Unreason was over some while since. Yet, still he dances. And still, he wears his crown.” Vergil said nothing. A silence fell between them. Neither was trying to stare the other down. Then, again: “What can you tell me?”
Vergil cleared his throat. “Have the taxes been collected, paid?”
“If you mean the Imperial tributes, they have all been collected and paid. If you mean the municipal taxes, they are no official concern of mine, but I assume that if they had not been gathered all as usual, I should certainly have heard. No, no. In this you are of course correct: a place on the verge of rebellion — ”
“Rebellion!” Vergil made to rise; the Legate gestured him down.
“ — does not bother to pay its tributes and its taxes promptly. No. . again you are right. Rebellion, no. O Apollo! this is a perfidious place! I have served in every corner of the Empire, even have been beyond the farthest realms of the oeconomia. What haven’t I seen! Villages, two of them each claiming to worship the evil god and each full of hatred because each had a different evil god; when a man from one town was rash and ventured near to the other, they would catch him and eat him alive: fact! Travelers’ tales about ‘the blessed Ottocoronae,’ you’ve heard about the ‘Blessed’ — indeed, fellows are so filthy and crawling with lice a civilized man daren’t go near them. The Melanchlanae, do you know what they do, those supposedly oh-so-sage fellows in their long black robes? Eat their own dead is what they do! Fact! Filial piety, they call it. Ha!
“I’ve been in places where one might perish with the cold if one stepped outside between autumn and spring, and I’ve been in places where the very houses are built of salt, and skin sloughed off and left a man looking and feeling raw and flayed. And one place, you know, near the Great Zeugma, richest toll bridge in the world, men are so pretty you’d think they were girls, and the women, O Apollo! the women are ugly as sows and have beards as black as yours: Facts! Facts, Master Vergil!”
He paused and drew thirstily at his wine. He began to wave his hand while his mouth was still full. Then, having swallowed, said, “But this place may be worst of all. How near it is to the sunlight and the beauty of the Parthenopean Bay. . how ugly it is, how it stinks, what a moiling mob of brutes the people are, one can scarcely breathe…. Well, well, I know they do needed work. And though they are savages and swine, they know well enough I’ve only to send one signal, and” — he blew an imaginary trumpet — ”down comes the legion. And that’s the end of that. — What do you have to tell me?”
Slowly some thought had been working its way up through Vergil’s mind, came, at last, into clear compass. It both troubled and comforted him. “But surely, Legate,” he said, “even if this man Cadmus should be charged with lese-majeste, he would draw the Fool’s Pardon?” But Casca was not concerned with that. He was thinking of beginnings, not of ends.
A silence fell for long enough for Vergil to become aware once again of the din caused by the clashing of hammers at factory and forge and the thumping of mallets as the fullers expressed from the coarse wool cloth the urine in which it had been steeped to dissolve the suint. At length the legate said, “Tell me then. . yourself. . here. . what …?”
Vergil told him as much of his task as he felt he could without much wearying the man. Casca nodded, but it was a slow, fatigued, nod.
“Not my sort of thing. I don’t know about such …” He failed to find his word, simply surrendered the attempt. “I know you are the — what do they call you in my signals here” — he rummaged among the documents on his desk — “ ‘Immensely Honorable’ — where is it? Ah, but I remember: Master, Mage, Leader, Lord.. . What?”
His guest had shaken his head, face confused between amusement, amazement, confusion, respect. “ ‘Master’ alone, Ser Legate. Nothing more. Ah, no.”
But the half-dead face was obstinate. “Yes, I say. ‘Immensely Honorable …’ And Magister, Magus, Dux et Dominus. Where is it? Here is it.” He picked it up, read in a mutter, put it down with a shake of his head. “No. Wrong one. No. Right one. Here’s my monogram, just where I scribbled to show I’d read it. Master, Magus, Leader, Lord, can’t find it, tell you it was there; going out of my mind. Averno. Averno.”
A moment he sat, blank, sick, silent. A servant appeared, poured more wine, more water, mixed it, poured the water into cups, removed the used ones.
Vergil spoke — so he hoped — soothingly. “A mere flux in the light, Ser Legate. The light here, my ser, is very changeable. It no doubt affected the perception of the words so as to remind you of something you had read at another time. Pray dismiss it from your mind. This has happened to me too.” But this thought, once spoken, did not soothe himself. He repeated, nonetheless, “Dismiss it from your mind.”
But there was that which did not dismiss so easily. Said the old proconsul, “There is something wrong of now, Messer Vergil. It is in the air, I smell it. The air is too thick and murk, I cannot see the matter clear. The hammers beat and beat and beat — somehow even so I almost hear it…. Whatever it is. It is not good. Not for Averno, not for Rome. And not for you, ser, and least of all for me. What can you tell me? Eh? What can you tell me?”
But Vergil, though he felt more troubled, Vergil could tell him nothing more.
Though Vergil had already observed exceptions, he had observed the general usage in that the magnates of Averno usually found the cheap woven stuffs of their own manufacture good enough to wear themselves. He had learned that sometimes, though certainly not all times, they liked to swathe their wives and women in apparel the most gorgeous the world could afford; and for such times and purposes they bought such stuffs by the bolt. In one foreign-owned shop in Averno, where cloth of foreign weave was sold in shorter lengths than the magnates deigned to buy it, Vergil fell into idle talk with another outsider, one waiting for his doxy to make her choice of brightly colored kerchief-stuffs. The fellow was a sailing man, come thither to Averno to make purchase for his own private trade-adventure, one who had made many navigations into the farthest reaches of the Erythraean Sea; teeth whitely agleam in a darkly colored beard, he spoke of Tambralinga and the Golden Chersonese and an island at the end of that peninsula where lions come down to the beach-shore and roar at passing ships; and he spoke of M’Amba the daughter of the Serpent-King, and of all the rich merchantry of those vasty Indoo Seas and all their circumjacent coasts: spicery, perfumery, gems and pearls and golds; he was about to speak of more (and Vergil to ask of the honey-reed, the thought having sudden-come to him), but then the sailor’s wench had made her choice and he paid up and got them gone, leaving with no farewell; leaving Vergil to reflect a moment more on those bright images — and to make the transition, for a moment difficult — to the present place outside the shop: dim, dull, hot, stinking, cruel. And in a moment the merchant had queried him, and all else faded as he described his need for cloth that was at one and the same time translucent, pale, and strong. He left with it done up in a roll of unsized papyrus fit for wrapping though not writing; faint glimmering reflection of enchanted seas. . then all was gone.