Read Online The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series by Avram Davidson - Free Book Online

Someone had gone to a bit of trouble in binding this … it fit easily into his pouch … he slipped it out again for a better look….
Periplus of the Coast of Mauretayne
… if he did not care for it, he need merely chuck it away; it had cost him nought.
    And at least it made no pretence about any loss of vigor in the night.

    Alexander Magnus, it was well-known, always carried with him and had under his pillow in the night but two items, neither what one might regard as a talisman: though perhaps he so regarded them. One was a knife, or dagger. And the other was a book written on the skin of an entire huge serpent or (some said) dragon.
    But what that book was, no one surely knew, though many would wish to know.
    And many guessed.

    As Vergil passed the table where he had had the (faintly) fragrant bowl of acorn-meal, the food-wife called to him. “As you didn’t find my water sweet enough,” she said, with some show of apology, “I wish to make it up to you —” “No need, no need to —” “But I
wish
to,” she said, with some emphasis. “Here is new-baked bread of fine-sifted flour,” and surely useless to explain that he much preferred it to be, always, of unsifted; as like as possible to that of his childhood? He never could make it clear to anyone else not raised on the farms; even to them, not always.
    “And here,” she said, as he drew near, willing, merely, to oblige her and leave no ill-will to abound; “here is
honey
, fresh and gold and sweet.”
    He seemed suddenly aware of traces of that morning’s sour water, tasting of the god knows what minerals, still in his mouth; would be glad enough to thrust it away with fresh honey; seemingly by the way she emphasized the word, she felt aware of that. He sat down willingly enough on the rude bench by the rough table, and watched her slice the bread and pour the honey over it, which she did with an unstinting hand. A word of his old master, Illyriodorus, well-known for art and philosophy throughout the Attic lands, came into his mind as she re-arranged the slices and folded a napkin for him. “To be generous, what is that? To one,
bread and honey,
” by-words for generosity, “means a thick slice of fresh bread well-spread with all the richness of the hive; to another it means a thin slice from a stale loaf, sprinkled with a thin measure of honeyed water. Yet each may regard himself as generous. And if one be rich and one be poor, each
is
… generous …” The old man smoothed his vast white beard, only faintly yellowed here and there, and they waited for him to go on. But he did not go on. In the expectant silence they realized (at least Vergil did) that a poor man could certes be deemed
generous
if he could afford no more than a thin slice with thin hydromel, to give it forth to others: but suppose it were the rich man who did so? And. And all the while he was thinking this, and thinking of the bees humming around the violets and other flowers as they prepared to make the sweet honey of Mount Hymettus, known where even the name of Illyriodorus was not, although his School was located at its foot; all this while Vergil, without thinking, was sitting down, was spreading the napkin to save his tunic; even as he lifted the first piece to his mouth and was nodding his thanks to her, he was thinking: but surely the venerable did not mean merely to give a lesson in commonplace morality? surely he meant a metaphor? and what did the metaphor mean —
    A taste of such bitterness burst from the sweetness of the honey as made him almost want to retch, it spread with incredible rapidity to his throat, and further down, even before he had more than swallowed a morsel of it — “His
face!
Look at
his face!
” And the woman burst into a peaen of laughter, loud and mocking and filled with great glee, laughter echoed by the small crowd which had (unnoticed by him) gathered to watch: hoots, shouts, even from one old woman, cackles: and the man who only a little