by Talbot Mundy
Her exquisitely shapely feet, touched with henna, in gold-leafed sandals, rested on a footstool of carved ivory. On the table beside her were pen and ink and a number of parchment scrolls that fluttered in the slight breeze; and on a long table against the wall were a number of objects obviously rifled from an ancient tomb. In her hands was a golden bracelet.
Tros caught his breath. He bowed low, with his eyes on the bracelet. It was not Egyptian. It was not Greek, Indian, Chinese, Arabian, nor Persian. It was heavy, solid, hammered, and indented with an unfinished pattern that bore no resemblance to any known Egyptian design; barbaric, and yet masterfully conceived and done.
He had hard work to show no emotion when he had finished bowing and stood upright. It almost never paid to betray emotion in Cleopatra’s presence; it was vastly safer to simulate emotion that one did not feel.
She appeared annoyed that he had seen the bracelet.
“Can you imagine,” she asked, “a craftsman competent to do such skillful work, who would nevertheless be such a savage as to take a wrought gold vase from an ancient tomb, and smash it, and then desecrate it into such an ornament as this? Who could wear such a thing? It weighs two pounds.”
Tros glanced at the priceless objects on the table—necklaces, vases, glassware, bracelets, a golden tablet a yard square covered with hieroglyphics.
“He might have smashed those, too,” he answered.
He knew who had done it. There was only one man south of the Baltic who would even have thought of making such a bracelet as lay on Cleopatra’s knee. She laid the bracelet aside.
“Well?” she asked after a moment. “Why don’t you reproach me?”
“Royal Egypt, I reproach myself,” he answered.
“For having failed me?”
“For having trusted you.”
Her answering smile was dangerous. She fingered one of the scrolls on the table beside her. It was a list of about a dozen names.
“These are dead,” she remarked. She picked up another, shorter list. “These are, at the moment, dying. They betray one another like true Greeks at the first touch of torture. It is not that they are cowards, or I think not. Pain makes them angry. They resent that their accomplices should escape such torment. So they tell.”
Tros almost shrugged his shoulders. “It is your throne, Egypt! Keep it if you care to!”
“If I can!” She looked battle-angry. Tros grinned then. It was the first confession he had ever heard from Cleopatra’s lips that there might be an easier seat than a throne.
She resented his grin. Her mood changed to the snake-like anger that made her terrible. She spoke with the vibrance in her voice that aroused men’s superstition— the voice that had made her name a byword— astonishing from such a small woman, not in the least loud, but vigorous with a sort of absoluteness.
“I sent for you,” she said, “to receive from your lips an explanation of your conduct in Cyprus.”
But she was threatening the wrong man, and she knew it. Her eyes changed even before Tros answered.
“You have a strange way, Royal Egypt, of inviting a friend to an audience! It would have been simpler to have written my name on that list, to explain to the executioner— or not to explain, as the case might be.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. I have a reason for seeing you secretly.”
“Doubtless a royal reason! I would have spared you the intrusion, unless I also had reasons, Egypt. As for what I have done, at my own cost—”
“On your own responsibility! You refused my commission, remember!”
“It was the best I could do. I defeated and slew the pirate Anchises, and destroyed his entire fleet.”
“Yes, and you sank two Roman biremes, in Salamis harbor, for which the Roman proconsul Cassius is blaming me!”
“To which your answer has been, to permit your minister to denounce me as a pirate!”
“That was necessary. It was a sop to his Roman indignation.”
“As I already said, it is your throne,’ he retorted. “Having no throne, and not willing to have one, I have never found it necessary to denounce a loyal friend, for the sake of such a cur as Cassius, who stabbed his benefactor! If you choose between me and Cassius, as to which is your friend, I withdraw from the competition! Deadly though it may be. I prefer your enmity to the stench of being less than Cassius’ enemy to the last breath he or I shall ever breathe!”
She laughed. “The same Tros! Friend? You? You speak to me as if I were your mistress, or a servant caught stealing the food from the table! Is my sister Arsinoe not my enemy? My treacherous, envious enemy? Didn’t you befriend her in Cyprus? Do you call that being my friend?”
“What would you have had me do?”
“You should have drowned her! She was on your ship. She was present, in the sea-fight off Salamis—where I would give almost my eyes to have been! She was present in your cabin when you brow-beat that old Roman wolf Ahenobarbus. I would give almost my ears to have heard that! You gave her money. It was tribute money looted from the temple. You gave her men. They were pirates, whom you took prisoner, and Roman legionaries, for whom Ahenobarbus had no ship-room. You set her free from Serapion’s clutches— Serapion. whom I appointed to be her viceroy because I knew he would hold her powerless, whatever treachery he might invent!”
“I perceive that your spy Etruscan Tarquinius has saved me the necessity of making a report,” Tros answered.
“I have a letter from him. Written on the very day that you returned to Salamis after the sea-fight. It came in sections, by eighteen pigeons to the Syrian coast, and thence by runner.”
"Surely you show great wisdom in taking that jackal’s word against mine,” Tros answered. “Did he write it to you, or to Charmion?”
She ignored the question. Suddenly, in a voice that suggested an archer’s tautened bow-string, she loosed her secret news:
“My dear sister Arsinoe is gone from Cyprus!”
Tros stared at her, trying to read her eyes, but he could only judge that she was studying him as alertly as he was studying her. If she was telling the truth, he was in as deadly danger as he ever had been in, in the whole of his dangerous life. Did she suspect him of conspiracy? He did the opposite of what any other man in Egypt would have dared to do. He told her the truth: “I had been in Alexandria not three hours, Egypt1, before several men, of whom one was your spy—I knew him—told me that tale. Your spy—he spoke with me near the municipal building— said she is in Egypt1. I wouldn’t have believed that rogue if he had told me the day of the week! He invited me to go to her, to command her army. Did he tell you my answer?”
She smiled. "He said you spoke with Aristobolus, and with two others. The two others are in custody. Where is Aristobolus?”
Tros grinned. "I can answer for four of his freedmen. They attacked me, lest I should betray Aristobolus.”
“Bloodshed again—in the city? I am told you have freed some slaves, that they may bear arms. Are you planning to send them broiling in the Royal Arena, as did your Northmen?”
He was glad to change the subject.
“I came here,” he answered, “to claim my Northmen. Of your magnaminity, release them. The only crime they committed was to break the heads of some Romans for speaking about you loosely.”
“Do you remember my terms?” she retorted. “You may have them when you have kept your own promise.”
“I HAVE kept it, Egypt. Your war-fleet captains had abandoned the corn fleet to its fate. I found it and protected it from Romans and from pirates also. I sold the corn to Brutus, because he and Cassius are at the moment the greatest potential danger to you unless they can feed their armies.”
“And you have loosed against me a more dangerous, a more treacherous enemy than any Roman! Arsinoe, I tell you, is in Egypt! Do you call that doing me a service? Well for you, Lord Tros, that I mistrust Tarquinius! He has written a letter to you, in care of the Jew Esias, to await your coming; and it fell into my hands, as I don
’t doubt he intended it should.
“He informs you, in that letter, that the Princess Arsinoe, acting on your advice, mind you, has taken those pirates that you gave her, and some men that my loving cousin Herod offered, and some of the Gaulish legionaires that Ahenobarbus left behind in Cyprus, and has crossed to Syria.
“At the time of writing, she expected Cassius to help her to reach Egypt, because Cassius would prefer a queen on the throne of Egypt1 who is more subservient to Roman arrogance.”
“I should have slain that rat Tarquinius when you put him aboard my ship to spy on me,” Tros answered. “You know him as well as I do. And he knows me as well as you do. I will wager that he wrote that letter to persuade you to mistrust both me and Esias, who are the two men in Egypt who can’t be bribed to betray you. May I see the letter?”
“Yes. No—no, I haven’t it here.” She studied him for at least a minute. Then, suddenly: “You are a sentimentalist. Could you be coaxed to betray me?”
“I have been coaxed with hard blows and soft speech, Egypt. But here I am.”
“I am sending you to deal with Arsinoe.”
“Me?”
“You—secretly—finally—once and for all! She has several hundred men. She moves on Memphis, the ancient capital, where she expects to be able to raise an army. But I have my grip on Memphis. I hold hostages; I have the sons and daughters of most of the important men of Memphis who might otherwise go to her aid. She has raided the quarterly caravan from the emerald mines, and she is robbing the tomb-robbers, for gold with which to lavish bribes. I have caught the ringleaders in Alexandria, but all the Romans in the city, and many others would take her part if she should begin to succeed. She must be dealt with swiftly.”
“I am useless without my Northmen!”
“You? Useless?”
Will against will. It was almost like a physical clash of weapons.
“Royal Egypt, you are too fond of clipping the wings of the hawk that shall fly your errands! You obliged me to go to sea without my Northmen. I fought a battle that I came near losing for lack of their good fighting arms!”
“A few barbarians—a mere handful of brutes with battle-axes?”
“Thirty-eight comrades in arms! Thirty-eight veterans! Egypt, have you their equal?”
She eyed him darkly, resting her chin on her hand. “It is not soldiers or sailors, but generals that I need,” she said after a moment. “I can supply you with plenty of men.”
“Aye,” he answered, “But you haven’t one commander whom you dare to trust out of reach of the executioner! So you propose to flatter me by—
“Yes,” she interrupted, “I fear I flatter you. But there is no one else I can trust at the moment. I want her killed, not captured. Tros, incredible though this may sound to you. I love Arsinoe. I saved her from execution after Caesars triumph when she should have been slain in the Tullianum, if the Roman mob had had its way. It was I who had to beg Caesar to make her Queen of Cyprus. But the girl is my ceaseless enemy. There is nothing to do but to kill her.”
“Therefore you degrade me to the rank of butcher?”
“I wish her to be killed—not shamed— not put to torture—not cruelly ill-used, as she would ill-use me if she could seize my throne. She must die. And you, of all men, understand that.”
It was useless to fence with Cleopatra when she talked in that vein. She lied, and Tros knew it. She neither loved nor pitied Arsinoe, although it was no doubt true that she would take no delight in Arsinoe’s shame or torture. She merely wanted her killed, and to avoid the blame for having killed her.
“Pitying the girl,” said Tros, “in the fight off Salamis I gave her a chance to die as you or I would choose to if the world should have no honorable room for you or me. But she fought too well, in one of my men’s armor. She came out unscathed, with her dagger dripping and a laugh on her lips.”
“Tros— I believe you love her!”
“Egypt, I love man or woman who is brave.”
“It is more than rumored that she loves you!”
“So. Am I indictable by rumor?”
“If you love her—if she loves you— need I explain that loving-kindness should grant her a swift death, rather than the ignominy of, for instance, such a punishment as your elder sister, Berenice underwent? It is as an act of mercy, that I send you.”
“Have you mercy for my Northmen?”
“I depend on your love for your Northmen to outweigh any emotions that a girl might arouse, who is nothing if not capable of seducing such a sentimentalist as you are!”
Tros strode to the window, turned away from her, turned again and strode back. He was thinking of the two-pound hammered bracelet.
“Egypt—”
“Think!” she warned him. She could see the wrath on his face, and the deadlier integrity behind it — the iron resolution.
“I have done my thinking, Egypt. I am no queen’s catspaw.”
She had her hand on the padded hammer of a golden gong shaped like a lion’s face.
“You refuse?”
The threat of death had never made Tros less than obstinate—but craftily obstinate, lightning quick to guess the weakness that lingered on threat instead of striking first in order to compel. Not for one fraction of a moment did he forget his duty to his Northmen. As long as they lived, he would do his best to be their dependable lord captain.
“Aye. I will not go unless on my own terms.”
“Name them.”
“My own discretion! If you trust me to go, you shall trust me to do as I see fit.”
“Oh well,” she answered. “Indiscretion would be bad for your Northmen. You appreciate that?”
He nodded. She had laid that heavy bracelet on the table. He glanced at it, then looked straight into her eyes.
“And I demand Cleopatra’s promise. Not Royal Egypt’s but the promise of the Cleopatra whom I snatched away from Rome before Caesar’s murderers could plunge their knives into you also— do you understand what I mean? I have been your good friend, Egypt.”
There was no warm emotion expressed in her eyes. She looked even slightly contemptuous of his claim on her gratitude. But she seemed to be reappraising him, perhaps wondering whether to tell him more, and to trust him less; because the more a man knows, the less easy he is to compel. And as yet she was only learning statecraft. She had not yet reached the ripeness of judgment that, a few years later, almost made her mistress of the world.
“How can I make any other that what you are pleased to call a royal promise?” she asked after a moment’s pause. “We were friends, you and I, when I was a homeless exile. True. But who serves whom for nothing? Has a queen friends? What request can Cleopatra grant, that Egypt may not forbid? It must be something strange—something new in the way of demands on a reigning queen!”
“Not new in your ears, Egypt! If I go to Memphis—if I solve this riddle for you—if I quell rebellion before it rocks your throne—thereafter will you set my Northmen free, and rather than hinder will you aid me to set forth on my voyage?”
She smiled. “Around the world? You will desert me for that chimera? Very well then. You have Egypt’s promise that she shall not interfere with Cleopatra’s farewell! How will you find Arsinoe? What guides—what forces will you need? This is secret, remember.”
“I have my own means and my own men.”
She stared. His quickness of decision never failed to bring that frown to her forehead.
“How will you explain my absence from the city?” he demanded.
“They shall say you have been sent into exile.”
“Memphis? There will be a north wind. I can swoop on Memphis. I will be off before daybreak, Egypt, with my own men. Tell me what you know of Arsinoe’s movements.”
“I will summon Alexis. He has all the information. He is to go with you.” Tros scowled. He hated her cynical courtier friend Alexis, a man who had not been long enough at court to pay his debts.
THERE were two
gongs near her. She struck one that clanged like the clash of cymbals. Instantly the curtains on the rear wall parted. It was the wrong gong. Two huge Nubians rushed in, cloaked with leopard-skin, armed with brass scimitars. Trained to be swift to protect their royal mistress, they rushed Tros, one from either side, too swiftly for Cleopatra to stop them.
They never even saw her raised band. Her voice froze in her throat as a scimitar slit the air. It missed—went spinning— struck the other negro’s neck and embedded itself in the door panel. Tros’ fist, quicker than the weapon, had clubbed his assailant’s arm—struck it numb.
His right foot tripped the man; his left fist sent him staggering into the other Nubian, and they fell in a mess of blood at Cleopatra’s feet. She looked angry, contemptuous, disgusted, but not afraid for a moment. Tros pitched both men through the open window.
Then he picked up a Damascus mat. covered the blood with it, strode to the door, pulled the scimitar out from the panel and tossed that, too, through the window.
“If I am under arrest,” he said, “no more than your word is needed.”
She laughed, looking suddenly pleased. “It was a mistake!”
“Are they sufficiently rebuked?”
“I am! What an expensive guest you are, Lord Captain Tros! Those slaves cost me more than the rug you have used for a mop! I bought that rug in Rome from the spoils of Mithridates* palace. Now the Nubians are useless. You may have them. You may have the rug, too.”
She struck the other gong, and then walked to the window with Tros while a eunuch brought in slaves to clean the tiled floor. The rug was rolled and tossed through the window to the Nubians, one of whom was bandaging his neck with a rag from his chiton. The other lay stunned on the terrace. At a gesture from the queen the wounded man unrolled the rug, hove the stunned man on to it and dragged him out of sight.
Cleopatra’s mood had changed as utterly as a landscape changes when the clouds let through the sun. She laid her hand on Tros’ arm.
“You, who are fitter to be a king than any warrior on earth—for you have brains as well as courage—is Egypt too little?”
She was almost, not quite, tall enough for the crown of her head to reach his shoulder. Not answering, he stared through the window, southward, toward the fabled land of Khem.