The Augur

A tale of terror across the aeons, carved in the stones and inked in the land's life-blood...

[copy of letter from patrician Marcus Alfius of the Baebii to his brother Sextus regarding his relocation to the province of Sicilia; archives of the Archaeological Society of Catania, dated ca. 200 BCE]

My dear and much-honored Sextus,

I have arrived well at the villa. Sicilia is all the beautiful and bounteous dullness I was both promised and forewarned of. Golden fields of grain and lemon orchards delight eye and nostril alike. The servants of the latifundium know their place and toil well. Mater Roma shall have her tribute easily enough.

Worry not, frater – some alleviation of my boredom is apparent already. Taormina houses a well-frequented theater, which performs the occasional Aeschylus or Sophocles in between the farces for commoners. Fortuna blessed us with the education we received as youngsters from old Andros – these Sicilians are half-Greek to a man! The other half I would describe as an admixture of Phoenician, African, and whatever mountain tribes are native to this island.

I say they toil well, but they do require a constant eye. A Sicilian will loaf and prattle with his compatriots, or engage in debate as spirited as if he was a senator of the curia – to bloodshed if his passions are so enflamed. If day laborers choose to send each other to Elysium over discussions of fried fish, I will not stand in the way of such foolishness. I must, however, intervene if this idiocy endangers my slaves. I have put many a hard-earned sestertius towards them, and I aim to get every single one of them back. A scarlet rod for anyone who is caught damaging my investments!

To this end, I am glad to be able to call upon a steady supply of informants from the proletariat, whether they are dockside beggars from Siracusa or simply vagrants of the hills. One such I have actually taken quite a liking to, a stooped little fellow who walks with a stick and mutters to himself about the birds in the air, the fish in the sea, and lusty dancing women. Besides being very well-informed of the goings-on in the country, he also does auguries for very little coin. Marcia likes him not, as his odor is most akin to that of a long-haired goat whose backside has remnants of having done its business not long ago. She believes I should keep my auguries confined to the gods of the house altar, or pay tribute to Janus or Hermes at a decent temple in the city. What can I say, my friend? A woman’s mind runs ever to the domestic. It simply cannot fathom the necessity of the political, and the occasional diplomacy with some unsavory characters for the sake of economic expedience.

I hope you will come visit us soon, Sextus. I long for some proper Roman virility and virtue. We may hunt together in the sun-dappled hills, feast on dates and almonds, and see the stone circles.

Your frater,

Marcus Alfius Baebius

***

[copy of personal missive of Muhammad ibn Rayyan, magistrate of the Kalbid emirate stationed on the Ionian coast of Sicily, to his wife; library archives of the University of Messina, dated ca. 1039]

As-salamu alaikum my darling,

Would that I could bear you tidings of undivided felicity, alas we do not live in such times. The Byzantines have landed in Messina, led by the infidel general Yorgos Maniakes. Seven hundred knights he has, eager to shed faithful blood, and yet the provincial governors bicker over internal border disputes and cannot keep the populace quelled.

Most-beloved, I would not speak beyond generalities on this matter, as I do not wish to sully your thoughts with the impieties I must sometimes commit with great reluctance in the service of our emir; yet I must unburden myself, and it shames me to ask you bear this burden with me. Let it be a solace that I would only do this in the knowledge that I speak to my equal.

My ambitions as a young man, before the wolves were at our door, did not go beyond the accumulation of wealth. My ascension in my lord’s ranks has been rapid, and our household has profited greatly, alhamdulillah. As a tax collector, I was known to be efficient in rooting out hoards of wealth hidden by commoners unwilling to contribute their lawful share. This admission is not a confession of my own inability as an investigator, as I believe a good servant of the ummah utilizes all the tools at their disposal.

One such was a local vagrant. I cannot say he was a Christian or a Jew, though I must admit to a lack of familiarity with the finer points of the religion of the former. The fervor with which they worship saints at their altars doesn’t seem to me a great deal different from the pagan altars they claim to abhor. For all I know, this man was perfectly average in his heathen ways.

While at first I took him for a babbling fool mendicant, and my first use of his services was more in the spirit of charity than anything else, I soon realized the error of my judgment. I need not elaborate how accurate and consistent his information was; my standing at the emir’s court and the emeralds and rubies on your wrists surely speak to it.

But now, my love, I am torn – for this man speaks of great doom upon the faithful, and it is not difficult to see its truth. He says to avert this fate, I must abandon our emir, and declare for the Zirids of Iffriqiya. In the face of the onslaught of Maniakes and his Teutonic mercenaries, my heart tells me the faithful must stand together united, but how can I ignore this pagan’s soothsaying which has granted us so much already?

Sensing my doubt, he has pledged to show me greater truth than is available to him through the palmistry and bone-throwing he consults during our clandestine meetings. I am to meet him at a place in the hills beyond Noto.

This letter to you is the first admission to any living soul of the blasphemies I have tolerated, and the likely ones I will endure shortly. Understand well the weariness of my soul, and the shame I bear for not having the strength to make this decision by myself. The one consolation I grant myself is that, perhaps this is simply God working through means as-yet unrecorded by His scholars.

May Allah guide me to wisdom, my love.

***

[marginalia in monk’s chronicle depicting a row of ethnic caricatures stabbing each other in the back standing upon a spiral pattern as their entrails spill out; Santa Maria di Messina church archives ca. 1250]

german kill moor kill italian kill god kill

***

[report of German engineer Carlos de Grunenbergh to the Spanish viceroy of Sicily after the 7.2 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Siracuse; Archivo General de Simancas, 1693]

Your honor,

The situation is worse than anticipated. Whole cities are reduced to ash and rubble, with the corpses piling up in the streets. Noto is gone. Ragusa is gone. The fortifications I added to Siracuse after the eruption a decade prior endure, thank Christ in Heaven. By God, it brings to mind nothing so much as the Triumph of Death in your palace at Palermo, reminding us all of the insignificance of our brief lives.

I am coordinating with surviving church fathers and commanders of our outposts (newly risen to their ranks as they may be) to get a proper assessment of both the populace as well as the public works. Most importantly, I believe the extinguishing of the fires that still rage throughout many of the cities on the eastern coast to be our primary objective.

Of secondary import, though in the long term perhaps no less so, is the restructuring of the south-east in accordance with modern building techniques and protocols. It is my belief that Rome will allow us a generous grab in her coffers if we allow them to send a contingent of architects trained in their new maximalist ways. I battle the paroxysms of the earth itself, and the Holy Father fears nothing more than the ghost of Luther come to steal away his good parishioners. I will leave him to his delusions, as papal gold will be a welcome addition to our Spanish funds.

I jest, yet upon reflection, it is perhaps not entirely foolhardy to believe a calamity such as this would drive the Sicilians into the arms of a new faith, as distant as the grey preachers of my own home country might be. Apologies for this melancholy aside, the toll of the day’s inspections weighs upon me.

Your servant,

C. d. G.

Addendum: A queer little man presented himself as the speaker for the stonemasons. (He said “stones,” but my familiarity with the dialect leaves something to be desired.) Perhaps Rome isn’t the only co-sponsor of our rebuilding efforts?

***

[correspondence between members of the Shropshire Hermetic Society; archives of the British Museum, 1899]

Dearest and most highly esteemed Sister in Truth,

As I already surmised from our communal research, Sicily is an absolute treasure trove of mysteries and legendaria. I would fain tell you to join me at your earliest convenience! I am sure you can cajole Edmund into temporarily releasing a footman and a maid to accompany you on the trip. Your brother surely can’t be such a bore as to deny you that. I would think he’d welcome the chance to be free of his spinster sibling for a few months (as your confirmed and beloved fellow-spinster I feel like I may take the liberty of referring to you as such)!

Oh Amelia, I cannot tell you the joy I feel upon exploring the ruins – sometimes in the very center of a town – of this island and annotating all my findings. Yes, the papacy indeed planted its roots down firmly here, but there is something there, something beyond what one might find in a chiesa in Naples or Rome or Milan. One needn’t look far to see grinning devils, masks of madness, or strange chimaeras depicted in the margins of pious depictions of saints and martyrs. And I do not just speak of monk’s scribblings in some dusty old tome, moldering away in an archive – I speak of the very stonework, sometimes facing the very street!

I know what you will say: what difference here with a depiction of, say, the dragon being vanquished by St. George in your average Kentish vicarage? The answer is easy: they are not vanquished. These Dionysian forms, these mad things, exist right alongside the dominant signifiers (as our friend De Saussure would put it). Where the Virgin Mary and her child might be the centerpiece of a richly carven niche, from some distant angle a horned and feathered figure might grin ghoulishly at them, shaped from the black stone of mount Aetna itself. Not in opposition or terror, as you would expect in an English church, but in amused contempt for these temporary idols humanity clings to in a vain attempt to dissemble the true nature of reality so well-known to the ancients.

Indeed, in the open streets of Taormina, Noto, Syracuse, I see posters advertising for practitioners of the chiromantic arts in between death notices. Can you imagine such folk plying their trade outside of the seediest London boroughs, but in the very city center? I must admit, as a dilettante in all things esoteric, to a pang of jealousy – would but our own home country throw the masks off in such a manner.

I am inclined to visit one of them, a self-described “mago” by the name of Giusa. He has no equal, the yellowed poster says! In the animal kingdom, perhaps – the artist’s rendition suggests nothing so much as a stooped and gnarled half-caste between a human dwarf and a cypress tree!

Perhaps he can read in his leaves that you will join me soon?

Yours in ever-searching,

Penelope

P.S. I will admit to a modicum of trepidation should he be one of that old guard of soothsayers who use some kind of entrails – eager as I am for the old truths, there are simply some thresholds my modern sensibilities would rather not cross.

***

[transcript of WhatsApp conversation; European CyberCrime Centre, 2019]

Steelersfan2003: bro where u at we lost u outside da club, u with that baddie???

[04:23] ~italianxstallion~ : yuppppppp

[04:23] Steelersfan2003: lmao awrightttt my man get it

[04:23] Steelersfan2003: yo we probably gonna try and stretch it out until the bars open for coffee, scott is a fkn zombie rn

[04:24] ~italianxstallion~: lol ya I mite join later actlually

[04:24] ~italianxstallion~: sicilian chicks say I know a spot n take u to their grampa

[04:24] Steelersfan2003: lolwut?

[04:25] ~italianxstallion~:  I dunno man lol she was grindin on me in the club said you wanna get your future told I was like sure I thought she was just saying shit to take it private now I’m here sittin in this creepy ass office or wtever

[04:26] Steelersfan2003: lmaooooo did you get fuckin scammed??? You the one laughing at those posters and you end up falling for it cuz ur dick got hard lmaooooo fuckkkkk

[04:26] ~italianxstallion~: fu

[04:27] Steelersfan2003: tell me what ur fortune is later cuz it sure as shit is not gonna be getting ur dick wet lmaoo

[05:01] ~italianxstallion~: help

[05:01] Steelersfan2003: dude??????

[05:01] ~italianxstallion~: where u

[05:02] ~italianxstallion~: help

[05:02] Steelersfan2003: dude not funny where r u???

[05:02] ~italianxstallion~: bleedNG HE TOok

[05:03] Steelersfan2003: put ur fucking google location on

[05:03] ~italianxstallion~: dfvbnhdgv fb< hepsv x

***

[Header on a report of a Facebook ad marked as spam, 2024]

Il mago Giusa – non ha confronti. // The mage Giusa – he has no equal.