Vergil in Averno: Book Two of the Vergil Magus Series Read Free

rose and purple, and it represented that aspect of man higher than any humor, and this, though his own idea, had been suggested to him by some word or other in the
Great Antiphonal
of the Saracen, Syryabus, which nicked and clicked — as it had so seemed at the time — with some lines, a few, not more, from the nameless books of the music played at the courts of Asoka and Chandragupta, the Great High Kings of Ind. Then there was Vitruvius, and before him, Amphion; excellent exempla. And again he now ran his fingers over the strings. The workmen began to rise and to look at him more closely, even, than before. He tightened pegs a trifle, here and there; considered loosening them a trifle, there and here; decided not to. The day was clean, the air was clear, he lifted his eyes, gathered the gaze of all, gave a nod of his head, and began to play.
    The name of his song was “The Walls of Thebes.”
    The work of building went on, as it had begun, to the sounds of, and the rhythms of, music.
    After a while the music began to enter a slower phase, and, the movements of the workmen, slowly, in time with it, gradually ceased. And, after some pause, Vergil said, “Ser Aurelio — ”
    “
Aurelio, Aurelio.
It is kind of you and I am not of a rank to gainsay what a learned master such as yourself is pleased to utter, but if you please, sir: plain
Aurelio.
There are others who have not your gracious nature and much they would resent hearing I suffered meself to be called
Ser
Aurelio. Me. A freedman.”
    The haze had burned away from off all the water. The Isle of Goats stood proud and high and blue and distant, like the haunt of a peri or of many a faun. Naples glittered brightlier than ever. “Your former master, Aurelio, then — ”
    “The late and honored Aurelio Favio, Master Vergil. Whose name he was good enough to bestow when he manumitted me. And what of him, sir?”
    Vergil stroked his short black beard, and then, as though stretching his fingers from their long stint at the lute, gave a stroke to each side of the short black hair that fitted his head like a cap. “Yes, just what I was going to ask. What of him? What sort of man?”
    “The best sort. Worked hard, dealt honest, and I worked hard and honest with him, down there in the old wharf where we had the first warehouse.” Gestured. “He lived in a simple, frugal way, my master, and a chaste one; no boys, sir, and just the one woman, Julia by name she was, as kind as he was, and even quieter. Then she died, then he freed me, then he went to join her, sir, as they do say. And as we must hope. And left me his heir.”
    Heir to no small property, or, from a small one Aurelio had by the same diligence and thrift made a large one; else he would not be building him a house of this size and on a piece of land of this value.
    “And his business was — ?”
    “Everything at first, you know, though in a small way. As for, we did used to go along the wharf and buy seamen’s private trade adventures, such as they was allowed to carry free aboard — not much: a sack or a box or a bale of this-and-that at a time. Then one year he chartered the fruit harvest at one of the orchards. That was good, I liked that; hard we worked in the open sun and air all day, but the fruit was sweet to smell and eat; hard we worked, the day, but at night, sir, ah, how we young people used to dance on the threshing-floor, the grain harvest not being on at the same time. Folk playing music, like as you’ve done, sir . . . the bright moon . . . A look of quiet came across the freedman’s broad and sallow face. “And the next year the people made him an offer to charter the wheat harvest, and we did so well that after that it was mostly wheat we dealt in . . . oh, yes, sometimes oil, yes, sometimes oil. But mostly wheat.”
    It was almost as though Aurelio were acting the role of chanter for some mimetic play; even as he said these words the workmen were breaking into pieces the bread they had