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

fate, absit omen.” He spat three times and thrice he rapped upon a balk of timber.
    “Absit omen,” Vergil repeated. It was a bad thing to boast or vaunt, it would attract the envy of others . . . other people . . . others who and which were not people; it was a risk, but, being a risk which it was inevitable sooner or later at one time and another anyone would take, there was a remedy provided: one invoked the protection of the spirits of the trees, which resided, residually, at least, in any piece of wood; one spat, for spittle was deemed potent surrogate for potent semen. “Avert the omen . . . Yes. Such be your fate. It is written in your palm, the lines outlined in madder. Yes, it
will
be a good house that we are building for you. So you do not go to Averno, then, for your dye-work?”
    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
have
n’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