Pleasure in this prophecy, confirmant of his own chief hopes, made the freedman almost speechless for a moment, and he was slow to take the last question into his mind. It was with a sudden movement, almost a convulsive one, that he reacted to it in a moment; and his face twisted. “That black pit? That stinking hole? No, master! Oh, I’ve been, more often than I’ve wanted to, for every time I’ve been there I haven’t wanted to, but business sometimes obliged me — why else? — for as for them hot baths supposedly good for the health, why, rather sicken at home than go there for a cure! However, beg the master’s pardon, whilst it is true that they do dye-work and iron-work and in fact all such work as involves heats and fires, which is what keeps ‘em all alive and makes ‘em rich (besides from thievery and murder or worse) — why, no sir! ‘Averno-Inferno’ is what we calls it. If so it be as I can possibly help it, I prefer to pay higher price and breathe cleaner air….” Some sudden thought interrupted this not-quite-tirade. “They say there is a king there now, King Kakka I suppose it must be, a king of shit.” Contempt and disgust, and something more, struggled a moment more upon the fat face with its clear, if faded, blue eyes. Then: “Begging the master’s pardon for my rough words.”
Next, with no more than a twitch, this all was gone. “So my palmlines say I’m to live here in peace as I’ve desired, master, you say …?”
Vergil reached for his lute, to take it up again; made of wood, it was, and inlaid with that mother-of-pearl fetched up from the rich ocean-mines of the Erythraean Sea. “As far as the lines say me, yes. And as for further information, why. . one would not wish to go to Averno for it, would one?” He ran his fingers over the lute-strings, and then, seeing that the older man was troubled at this last remark, which (he thought) it would have been better not to have made, Vergil asked, “And how did you meet this young girl whom you plan to adopt?”
Aurelio’s face cleared once more. “How? Why, let me think. Ah. It was a hot day and I was toting a sack of good wheat to miller’s, to save the cart, it being but the one sack. And I pause to wipe my sweaty face, and she come over and offered me a cup of water, you see, sir …”
“Yes, I see. Well. . ‘Water and the wheat plant,’ eh?”
He began to stroke the lute; and the men arose again and the work went on again. And went on well.
• • •
The last to leave, of those who left the building site, Vergil bade good evening to the watchman (by special permission of the municipium, armed: not all knew about spells and such safeguards, nor did Vergil wish to make his own knowledge of them a subject for public clamor), and — some small devil entering into him — with a gesture indicated the signs deeply scored in the sand and dirt with his staff. “Don’t disturb my circles.”
But the man did not catch a reference one would have thought well known even to schoolboys; exclaimed, “The gods forbid, sir!”
Times had changed. For the better. For the worse.
Night. He had of course the standing invitation to dine with Claudio Murcio, but the thought of having to hear once more the standard bill of fare deprecated by the inveterate modesty of the host seemed just that much too much. Another time, then, Claudio Murcio. And there was the invariable reading from Homer at the salon the Matron Gundesilla, followed, invariably, by refreshments of high quality; again, no. Plutarco had, not two days since, suggested that Vergil might find his collection of charts interesting, and Vergil very well might. On the other hand, he would probably not find very interesting the long walk thither in the fast-fading light; and, even less, the long walk back, accompanied by a servant with a torch yawning for his bed. So, so much for that.
Home.
Someday he would be able to afford to keep his own horse or mule. Someday he would have his own litter and litter-bearers. Someday he would give his own entertainments and have other people come to him. Someday home would be so well furnished, so well supplied with books and devices, that the thought of home would never seem even faintly disappointing. Someday. . home would be. . somewhere else.
Until then, and meanwhile, then, at any rate: home.
Supper, supplied by the cookshop-tavern two doors down, was no surprise. Barley and cheese. Almost he regretted after all the table of Claudio Murcio, where, in between the eggs at the beginning and the apples at the end, there would be lettuce and snails and roast kid and — And also: The lettuce is not very crisp, I fear, Master Vergil. The oil is not, alas, the best oil; it is merely local oil, I fear, Master Vergil. The eggs are not. . I fear the kid. . I wish the apples could have been. . Ah no. Better the barley and cheese, which the cookhouse crone had not waited to deprecate, but had simply put down on the table and taken her leave. There was wine, his own wine; there was no old moss on the amphora, there was not even new moss on the amphora, it was a small amphora of what wine-snobs would call a small wine; the wine would never travel, and who the hell cared. It was not bad wine. He ate, drank, washed his hands, dried them. Considered: What next?
A woman? No wife, no concubine, no mistress kept elsewhere any more than here, and — currently — no loves, no intrigues. But there was Luvia, a few doors past the tavern, her person clean, her fee affordable, her purple gown (Averno-dyed) would look bright enough by lamplight. And then, the gown removed, a half hour in dalliance, the gown put on again; then Luvia would rattle and chatter and laugh. . and sulk if he did not laugh and chatter and rattle as well. Well, no matter if he did or did not, and tonight he did not wish to, then she would be off. And then what? Many men would then, simply, sleep. Vergil would not. At least, not after Luvia. Although old Tiresias had suffered much for frankly answering Juno’s question with Women, nine times as much as men, it was doubtful if, really, Luvia enjoyed their strokings and his delvings in any such proportion; as for the arithmetical reverse. . Enough that, though it left him in much measure satisfied in one respect, in another it left him restless. So. Then he would look to his books. . and so, all things reflected on and considered, he might as well look to them now.
Instead.
Someday he would have all the books he wanted. Theophrastus’ On Herbs, illustrated in good colors. The Pharmacon of Pseudo-Theophrastus. The Cookbook of Apicius, full of ghastly recipes for nightingales’ tongues in garum, elephant’s trunk farced with truffles, scuttlefish, and mustard sauce made with hippocras: he would need the entire Pharmacon to physic himself after such a supper. Someday he would have the complete Astronomica of Manilius, mistakes and all; Firmicus’s Liber Mathesus; the Parthian Mansions of Isidore of Charyx Spasini; Marsi’s Arts Magical (he had only the digest now); Vitruvius De Vitriae /?/. He would have the Catalogue of Ptolemy, with golden clasps and a silken cover, and a new Almagest in bright black letters (his own was faded, and half-illegible with interlineations and erasures); the Similitudes of Aristotle and the On the Formulae of Zoroaster — no! His mind had wandered: it was of course the other way around!