Things Will Never Be the Same Page 20

  In his hand he held a thin tapered pole to which was attached a light line, gossamer in the sun, probably of plaited horsehair. At the end of the line was a hook with a tuft of red and white yarn tied to it. He waved the pole back and forth a few times and flipped the line into the water.

  There was a splash as something rose to the lure. The line tightened, the pole bent, and the old man heaved up and back.

  A two-pound grayling, blue and purple-spotted in the sunlight, its dorsal fin like a battle flag, flew out of the water at the end of the line and landed flapping back in the reeds.

  The old man bent out of sight to pick it up.

  “Well done, sir,” said Vegetius. The old man looked up. “I’d be careful, though. There’s supposed to be a lion about!”

  The old man looked at them, his face breaking out into a smile. He flipped the line back out; soon he was fast to another grayling, this one larger, and pulled it in.

  “I said, there’s a lion about!” yelled Vegetius, cupping his hands.

  “Nonchalant bastard,” said Muccinus. “Or maybe deaf as a post.”

  The old man shouldered the pole and the brace of grayling and went through the reeds on his way upstream.

  “I saw no houses about,” said Muccinus. “Wonder where he came from?”

  “Who knows?” said Vegetius.

  The sun was still hot, so they followed the shady side of the brook upstream for a mile or so.

  They came upon the cave around a bend. Outside were hung drying wild onions, radishes, garlics. There was a rack out in the sun on which split fish curled. Fungi and mushrooms grew in the shady spots.

  “Quite homey,” said Muccinus. “Hello the cave!”

  There was no answer.

  “He has frequent visitors,” said Renatus Vegetius, pointing to the ground outside the cave opening. It was churned with innumerable hoofprints. “Either he’s a companionable old man, or he’s popular because those aren’t regular mushrooms.”

  “Hello,” Renatus continued, dismounting. He tied his horse’s reins to a root which grew from the cliff all. The horse was nervous again.

  Inside, the cave was cluttered with thousands and thousands of scrolls, book boxes, clay tablets and slates.

  “Muccinus,” he said. “Look at this!”

  They walked in. Amid the clutter was a chest-high table; at one corner of the room a pile of mashed-down straw. There were no chairs, only piles and piles of scrolls and books in a dozen languages.

  Decius Muccinus poked around in the stacks. “Greek. The curved writing of Ind. Latin. The old triangle writing. Who could read this stuff? What’s it doing here?”

  Renatus Vegetius went to the high table. There were several closed scroll tubes there. One was open. On the table, by itself, was a single page, cut evidently from a lengthy work, headed, as it was, Book 19 in Greek, and at the top, the title . . .

  If Iupiter Ammon had pulled P. Renatus Vegetius up to the top of Mount Olympus and said to him: Go anywhere, mortal, and get your heart’s content; anywhere in time and anywhere in the world: it is yours, Vegetius would have in the next instant been back in this cave with his hand on this piece of paper.

  It was the Hippiatrika, the lost book of veterinary medicine. It was as old as time, older than Homer. When he had read Pelagonius’ Ars Veterinaria, Vegetius remembered the author’s railing at the fates which had lost the book to the ken of man since the Trojan War. Pelagonius wailed for the lost knowledge it was supposed to contain.

  And here Vegetius had in his hand a page of it. He read the first paragraph and knew, with all his mind and heart, that this was it.

  Their horses whickered outside. Then their hooves clattered. The horses ran by, blurs. Vegetius had only his short sword with him—the javelin had been in the saddle boot. Muccinus once again drew the dagger forbidden to slaves.

  They heard another clatter of hooves. At least it wasn’t the lion. “Hello! Hello!” they both shouted.

  “I know you’re in there. No need to yell,” said a voice, an old man’s voice, older even than that of Phœbus Siccus.

  Then the old man came into the cave followed by the horse.

  No.

  The old man and the horse came in together.

  No.

  The old man was the horse.

  “Finding anything interesting to read?” he asked, looking from one to the other, then settling his gaze on Vegetius.

  Somewhere down his back his hair turned into a brittle white mane. He was white and grey from the top of his head to his hooves. A back leg lifted, clacked to the floor.

  It was easier, thought Vegetius, if you only looked at the front half.

  “The Hippiatrika?” he asked. “Where did you get it?”

  The centaur looked toward the table. A mixture of warm animal and human body odor came to Vegetius’ nose, like sweaty men on a wet horsehide triclinium. More than anything it convinced him that the encounter he was having was real.

  “I wrote it,” said the centaur.

  Vegetius nearly fainted.

  “I think your master needs some water,” said the centaur to Muccinus. “There’s a cup outside. And please don’t run away.”

  “He’s . . . he’s not . . . my master,” said Muccinus. “And I need some too.”

  Vegetius held onto a table leg until the slave returned with the cup. As he stood woozily, he noticed that the hooves of the centaur were in bad shape. One leg, the right front, was thinner than the others, with a knot in it as if it had been broken once. What chest Renatus could see through the drapery of white hair looked thin and mottled. Vegetius took the cup and drank.

  “Chiron,” he said to the centaur. Chiron, the teacher of Hercules and Asclepius, the only centaur able to read and write. The only one ever to be married to a human woman; the only centaur able to drink wine without becoming a raging animal. Chiron, author of the Hippiatrika.

  “You must be P. Renatus Vegetius,” said the horse-man.

  “How did you know my name?”

  The centaur laughed, his long hair flying.

  “How goes the lion hunt?”

  “The letter was your doing?”

  “Somewhat. I wanted to meet you. I read a copy of your Histories.”

  “And you knew I would come to hunt a lion?”

  “After your rhapsody on lion-hunting in the chapter on Egypt? And in your argument, you said you would someday write a treatise on warfare, and a book amplifying Pelagonius’ Ars Veterinaria? To read a man is sometimes to know all you need,” said Chiron.

  “Vegetius,” said Decius Muccinus. “You’re . . . talking literature . . . with . . . a . . . centaur.”

  “One with a purpose,” said Chiron.

  “What’s that?” asked Vegetius.

  “I have something you desire. The Hippiatrika. The whole manuscript.” Vegetius looked wildly around. “It’s in a safe place. Don’t worry. Help me, and it, and all these other works, are yours.”

  “What do you wish?”

  “I’m old. I want to return to my homeland to die. You can help me.”

  “Your homeland? Scythia? Ind? Africa?” asked Vegetius, following the best authorities as to the homeland of the centaurs.

  “Take me to the Pillars of Hercules,” said Chiron. “Then I can be home in a few days.”

  “The Pillars of Hercules! That’s at the western edge of the Empire! That’s where the Greeks once sent an expedition to see if the sun hissed as it went down in the ocean! We’re in the East! How am I supposed to get a centaur from one end of the civilized world to the other?”

  “You’re an intelligent man,” said Chiron. “If you can’t conceive of getting me across the empire, think what it would be like for me, alone. When I was young and
strong, I might have done it. I could outrun any horse when I had to. But no longer. I wouldn’t be gone fifty miles before some rich man would have me hunted down for his menagerie. The fact that I’m a rational being, and can think and speak, would appeal to him not at all. I’d end my days in a cage, in Thracia.”

  He looked at Vegetius.

  “I can’t believe this,” said Decius Muccinus.

  “I’m the last one,” said Chiron. “And you get the Hippiatrika. It is all you think it to be. Just get me home, Renatus Vegetius. I ask no more.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to begin,” said Vegetius.

  “Nemo Prorsus,” said Muccinus.

  “What?”

  “Nemo Prorsus. A very clever man in Cyzicus. If you want to go through with this, I mean,” said Muccinus. “He’s done everything, been everywhere. All it takes is money. Vast amounts.”

  Chiron turned his eyes to Vegetius. “Please?”

  “Done,” said Vegetius, crossing his wrists three times and spitting, “and done!”

  In the week following, after he had sent for Prorsus, Vegetius went to Aurem Præbens. He found him dictating to Muccinus.

  “I’d like to buy Decius from you,” said Vegetius.

  “What!?” screamed Muccinus. “After what I’ve gone through! I’m to be freed in—”

  “Quiet, slave,” said Aurem.

  “I—”

  “Just what did you have in mind?” asked Præbens.

  “You’re to free him in six months. Sell him to me, now. I’ll free him when I return from my—researches in Alexandria.” (This was the cover story.) “You know everyone in this one-horse town, anyway. I’ll need someone quick with me, a nomenclator, one who can read and write. And I trust no one more than your Decius Muccinus.”

  Decius was glowering at him.

  “Besides,” said Vegetius, “sell him to me, and it won’t be you who has to pay the five per cent manumission tax!”

  “Decius, you’ve been like a son to me, but business is business,” said Præbens to the slave. Then to Vegetius. “3000 sesterces.”

  “3000? I’m going to have him read to me, not sleep with me!”

  “I’m worth 4000 if I’m worth a talent,” said Decius, his feelings hurt.

  “3500,” said Præbens.

  “35? Can he fly, too?”

  “3800 and not a denarius less!”

  “What, does a whole family come with him, eight strong boys?” asked Vegetius.

  “4000,” said Præbens.

  “Done!”

  “Done,” said Præbens, crossing his wrists three times and spitting, “and done!”

  Decius was smiling as they had him write up his own bill of sale.

  They decided to move Chiron nearer town as they received word Nemo Prorsus was on his way across the Hellespont. Vegetius and Muccinus went out to help him close up his cave, stacking stones across the entrance all one afternoon.

  He was to stay in one of the outbuildings in an olive grove owned by Vegetius’ uncle, Verbius Mellarius the rhetorician.

  “Excuse me,” said Chiron. He backed up, lifting his tail, and dropped a pile of road apples on the path. “I usually don’t do that so close to home, but I’m leaving. And my stomach’s not what it used to be.”

  After they sealed the cavern off fairly well, they began to ride downstream as the sun went down. Chiron took a long last look back.

  “If these were the olden days,” he said, “I’d ask one of the Cyclops to keep an eye on the place for me.”

  A few minutes later, Decius Muccinus looked at Chiron and began to laugh.

  “So this is the famous Mr. Chiron, eh?” said Nemo Prorsus, a squat thick man with a Greek beard. He wore trousers in the eastern fashion and a leather tunic covered with brass spikes. He was bald as a melon. “Glad to meet a real centaur. I once fixed up a mermaid and sold it to the Prince of Parsi, but this is the closest I ever come to a real mythical creature.”

  “I’m no myth,” said Chiron.

  “Think you can do it, Nemo?” asked Decius.

  “That’s Mister Nemo to you, slave boy!” He studied a moment. “Yeah. But it’s gonna take all your master’s money. Have him give it all to me.”

  “Why are you talking about me in the third person?” asked Vegetius.

  “I didn’t start this,” said Nemo Prorsus. “Yeah, gov, I can do it, but you’ll have to give me near all your money and go along with everything I say. Whatever’s left over we can split. Bargain?”

  “Done,” said Vegetius, sighing.

  “Done,” said Prorsus, crossing his wrists three times and spitting, “and done!”

  “It’ll take about three days to get everything cooking. I suggest we all lay pretty low,” said Prorsus.

  “There’s one thing I’d like to do before we leave. If Vegetius is paying,” said Chiron.

  “I suppose I am,” said Vegetius, sighing again.

  “I’d like to visit a lupercalia.”

  “Sonofabitch!” said Prorsus. “You’re what, a million years old or somethin’? A lupercalia, no less!”

  “I used to go all five ways when I was young,” said Chiron. “But that was long, long ago. I’d like to go, just once, again.”

  “Sonofabitch!” said Nemo Prorsus. “Come on, Mr. Vegetius! Let’s give the old guy a real treat. I know a place, way out in the sticks, where nobody cares what comes and goes. No offense, Mr. Chiron!”

  “None taken.”

  So in the early morning hours they took him to a brothel by the back ways, and then into a stable by the front door, then back to the brothel again. Several of the women had several rides. Everyone became drunk and agreeable, the night became a warm blur. The women covered Chiron with flowers and sequins; one, a Greek girl name Chiote, poured libations of wine and perfumed oils on his hair and mane.

  The next day no one at the lupercalia remembered much of what had happened, or whether it had or that they had only dreamed it; some illusion caused by the edicts of the new emperor, perhaps some psychic slippage to an earlier, simpler time.

  “Well,” said Prorsus, when he woke up with matted eyebrows and a dry mouth in the olive grove the next evening. “Time to get to work. Shell out the loot.”

  First he bought sixteen horses.

  Then he found eight old men, solitary worshippers of Bacchus, and asked them if they could ride a horse in a straight line. Then he made them prove it. He promised them all the wine they could drink each night as long as they could ride the next morning, and free passage back to Byzantium, if they chose it, or could remember where they were from, or why they should go back whenever they got wherever it was.

  “But . . . but . . .” said Vegetius. “The money!”

  “An empty purse contains nothing but the seeds of failure,” said Prorsus. “We made a bargain. Your centaur wants home. He’s giving you something in return. You’re giving me something—your complete trust and your cash. True?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Then let me do my job,” said Prorsus, and pulled more sesterces out of the bag.

  Then he went out and bought an elephant with one tusk.

  He had draped two white blankets over the pachyderm’s sides, tied on with rope. Prorsus took a paint brush, and in a fairly good hand painted:

  VIDE ELEPHANTOS HANNIBALENSIS

  on each side with an arrow pointing backwards.

  “Not very good Latin,” said Vegetius.

  “Good enough for these garlic-eating yahoos!” said Prorsus. “The first rule is, when you’re hiding a marvel, give them something else to gawk at!” He put down the paintbrush.

  “Besides,” he said. “Anyone who thinks he’s going to see some 600-year-old elephants deserv
es to miss a centaur or two.”

  He winked and left to see about the Imperial Post Road permits.

  “Here goes nothing,” said Muccinus, naked and sitting on the elephant’s head. It was the first morning of the westward trip. They were nearing the first village on the road toward Phillipi and Dyrrhachium.

  “Put your lungs in it, you old farts!” yelled Prorsus from his bluepainted horse up ahead.

  The eight old men sat up as straight as they could on their horses. Two of them had bagpipes, two had trumpets, two serpentines which curved around them to rest on the backs of their saddles, and the other two flailed away at drums.

  It wasn’t music, it was an atrocious noise. The elephant almost ran off the road. Muccinus steered it back by kicking it behind its right ear.

  Vegetius, wincing, could imagine Apollo, Orpheus, Harmonia throwing themselves off Olympus in suicide at what was being done in their names.

  All the people ran out of their houses, stood in the road, made way for them.

  They began to cheer and yell as the blatting entourage came even with them. Prorsus, wearing a headdress of purple ostrich feathers, gave them a sweeping blessing with his arms.

  All eyes were on the elephant. It trumpeted, drowning out the cacophony ahead of it for a second or two. It drew even with the middle of the village. Heads turned back toward Byzantium, peering. Most of the villagers were still looking that way when the noisy column drew out of sight around a curve in the post road.

  None had noticed that in the middle of the eight old mounted men was another old man, his hair and beard now cut short, his hair combed to hide his pointed ears, who played no instrument and looked neither left nor right.

  At one town, Vegetius saw Prorsus proved right. It happened on the edge of a large crowd where he rode. As they drew even with the applause, a child pointed to the mounted musicians.