Cleopatra's Promise

by Talbot Mundy

  Tros swore. He set his teeth. He burned the letter in the flame of the whale-oil lamp and trod the ashes of the parchment into powder. Two revolutions? Arsinoe in Egypt? Boidion in Egypt? As like as twins—as desperate as hunted felons—as determined as the Queen herself to possess the throne, and as careless of others’ danger! There was no time now to think about it. More important at the moment were the Northmen’s battle-axes and their armor; he went and watched them wrapped up, ready. And then action.

  He marched away into the night, in armor because dark Rhakotis was as full of daggers as mongrel dogs. His ten-Jew bodyguard trudged at his back. Conops strode beside him, wise in all the by-ways, familiar with every bawdy-house and tavern from wharf-side to city wall, and from the wall to the slums beyond it, amid the slaughter-yards, slave-barracks, native Egyptian mud-brick huts and factories, along the road to the Necropolis.

  First, they entered a tavern called the House of Carousal, that twanged with zither-music and swished with the exciting hiss of shaken sistra, in a reek of wine-fumes. Brown, black, white, ivory-hued bodies wove in and out in the reddened smoke of unglazed lamps and torches set in sconces on painted walls. Bare feet thumped on the tiled floor. Song— it was a sentimental, stupid, new-fangled chorus about the blue-eyed girls of Gaul— shrilled from the throats of wenches who sat on the customers' knees and kept them plied with wine.

  It was a deep-sea sailor’s heaven, rigidly exclusive; no one of less than quarter-deck rank might enter and be robbed in that place. The proprietor and four half-naked bullies hurried to the door to protest against the presence of the Jews, who were obviously of inferior rank, and moreover armed, which was against law and custom.

  Conops hit one of the bullies on his spare-rib with the hilt of his knife— sent him spinning—howling—doubled with pain. There was an instant uproar. The musicians tried to out-din the tumult.

  Tros spied Ahiram. The Phoenician, in gold ear-rings, with a silken scarf tied on his head and a girl on each knee, looked frightened. He moved like a man in a dream. But he showed his teeth when Tros shook off a dozen dancing-girls who tried to cling to his arms, and to pull off his armor and persuade him to stay and be entertained. Tros came and stood in front of him. Ahiram forgot his manners:

  “Teeth of a yellow cur! Am I your watch-dog—day in, day out—a-sea and ashore? Did I come alive out of gale and battle to be robbed of a bit of wenching?”

  “You have until midnight, Ahiram, to go and stand by the ship. If Esias reports you absent at midnight, I will order him to pay you off.”

  Ahiram came to his senses, a bit gradually. He pushed the women off his knees.

  “What’s in the wind, Lord Captain?”

  “Treason! If they fire the trireme in my absence, I will blame you, Ahiram!”

  “You are going somewhere?”

  “Aye. Which are you—lieutenant or louse? Do I leave a man behind me?”

  “Aye. aye. Lord Captain.”

  GRUMBLING, Ahiram began there and then the tedious business of disputing the amount of his bill; two or three hours’ carousing would only have made the return to duty all the harder to face, so he smote the protesting wenches. Tros left him arguing how much he owed. He flung a coin to the proprietor, who cursed him as he went out.

  The next place was a stews where lesser notables foregathered; decurions, stewards, master-archers, helmsmen, boatswains, armorers, ship-carpenters and oar-bank overseers could count on revelry uncriticized by the lords of the quarterdeck. The prices were slightly lower, the pace was faster for that reason. The wine stank worse; the musicians were fewer and made more noise; the women were older, less comely and more artless, except for a big black Galla woman, who was doing a dance in midroom.

  She recognized Conops, instantly ceased dancing, shouted like an Amazon and rushed straight at him. He sent her sprawling, and she lay beneath a service table screaming that he owed her money.

  But Tros had come there for decurions. He set his ten Jews at the door and stared through the lamp-smoke, conning faces, selecting the men who had stood best to their battle stations, and whose squads had shown best discipline in filthy weather against almost overwhelming odds. Some of the best men were already too drunk to bother with, and some were sufficiently drunk to be dangerous. But one man came and asked what it was the lord captain needed.

  “You!” Tros answered. “You and Conops go and roust out these nine.” He named the nine he had selected. “Line them in front of me.”

  It took priceless time. They had to be wrenched away from screaming harpies, who were egged on by the owner of the place to drag their customers by force into a labyrinth of cells out of sight in the rear of the building.

  But there were presently ten disheveled revelers standing bewildered in midroom and even the proprietor ceased his protests as Tros looked them over. The music ceased.

  “Are you men loyal?”

  “Aye, aye, Lord Captain.”

  They were hiccoughing. Some of them swayed, and one was bleeding from a torn ear where a woman had tried to wrench him loose from Conops’ grip. “Are you seeking a new captain?” “No!” They were clear on that point. “Are you men or monkeys? Are you comrades in arms? Or are you toss-pots fit for nothing?”

  “Men, Lord Captain!” They were indignant. They had earned that title. “Blood and bread! You know us! But—”

  “You ‘but’ me? Those of you who love your comfort more than duty, fall out! Fall out, I say! The remainder— those of you who like the right to call me captain—”

  Conops gave tongue. He could bark like the crack of breaking timbers:

  “ ’Ten-shun! Right turn! Quick march! Left! Left! Left! Left wheel! To the street now. Try to march like fighting men, you dock-side drunkards! Fall in, my squad! Snap to it! Two deep! Guard our backs! You Jews haven’t had your pay yet. I can trust you. Left, there! Left! Left! Cloak, eh? Leave it! Buy yourself another with the loot of Egypt!”

  The proprietor stormed, cursed, tore his hair, threw his garland at Tros and cited the law. He threatened to summon the city guards and have Tros punished for infraction of privilege; no one in Alexandria, except the queen’s police, had the right to interfere with any one’s pleasures provided he paid his score, and even the police were on the side of the keepers of stews. But Tros was at war with time; each squandered minute was a notch in the score against him.

  “Take your bill to Esias! If it’s fair, I will bid him pay it!”

  He strode out, filling his lungs with cleaner air, halted his men in the street, formed them in solid squad and gave his orders:

  “Each of you decurions is to pick ten men from your own squad or another decurion’s, no matter which, but strong and willing, fit to pull on an oar, march and fight with sword or bow and arrow. There’ll be rough work, now and later, but double pay for all hands on this expedition. There’s no time to go and get your weapons, but you’ll each have one armed man to protect you, so let me see you wade in and line up a hundred men in short order. Help yourselves to clubs if you can find them—break some furniture—don’t be afraid to break the heads of the brothel bullies.”

  “Expedition, Lord Captain? We’ll need—”

  “Forward, by the right, quick march!”

  He led them, sobering up in the night air, through the torch-lit dimness of the shadowy Rhakotis slums, to the Western Gate, where the Queen’s guards made no difficulty. The gate was not closed; Alexandria was an open port of refuge, day or night, for almost any one—even for runaway slaves who were willing to sell themselves to new masters or to enlist in the riffraff army. That was one of the thousand excuses that Rome had for picking a quarrel.

  Tros in armor, with a squad of twenty behind him, looked too much like a queen’s man to be questioned, even if he was not recognized, which he possibly was, he was not sure. Alexis was somewhere, spreading rumors, giving secret orders. There was no guessing what Alexis had said or done since he went and fetched Esias.

  Tros
marched through the gate and said nothing, saluted no one, was saluted by none. The gate clanged at his back but recoiled ajar and the cumbrous beam used as a lock was left leaning against the wall.

  Then a raid. Such a raid as Alexandria had seen a thousand times, when crews were needed for the royal ships, or porters for the army’s baggage loads, on the road to Pelusium. Swift, drastic, unexplained, merciless—knives in the dark, like hornets’ stings—a panic-savage raided mud-nest—torch-lit riot— smashed doors—drunken seamen hauled out of stinking dives and clubbed into dazed obedience—roared at, deep-sea fashion—their anger, adroitly exploited, turned against the brothel-keepers— against yelping hags—against slaughterhouse butchers and riffraff Roman destitutes who ran to the brothel-proprietors’ aid—until they roared at last, half-con-sciously, their old familiar war-cry:

  “Tros! Tros!”

  Oarsmen — archers — swordsmen — spearmen—bruised and bleeding, but beginning to be conscious of the deep-sea brotherhood that owned them in one discipline—unarmed, but beginning to feel again like fighting men—were hurled, kicked, clubbed, driven into the street, where Tros stood with his armor crimsoned by a torch that Conops had snatched from some one. And then, suddenly, Tros’ battle-voice:

  “Stand by for trouble! Fall in, all hands! Line up! Four deep! Line along the road, there! Fall in!”

  Conops, barking, nagging, prodding. Ten Jews, armed, and freed that day as a reward for discipline and valor, standing off the snarling dog-fight rushes of dealers in human depravity. Conops, brass-lunged:

  “One hundred, one score and eleven, fit to stand up, master.”

  Tros, bull-lunged:

  “Ship’s company! Fours—right! By the right, quick march!”

  Staggering, reeling, cursing fours; the Jews in the rear to deal with stragglers; the decurions, full of their lawful pride now, bullying the dragooning; Conops everywhere, up and down the line: “Left! Left! Zeus and Leda! Can’t a seaman take a drink or two and march? Pick that man up! Carry him! Left! Left! Your lord captain’s showing you his wake, you lubbers! Step lively! Left! Left! Your head hurts, does it? Wait till morning and you’ll know what pain is! Left! Left!”

  And then, suddenly, song—one voice, hoarse and drunken—two—ten—twenty —then the whole line roaring, out of tune but in time to the steadier thud of feet, the indecorous, boisterous song about how the seamen taught directness to the lord of gods and men—salty seamen, loving Leda, ’longshore Leda.

  Western Gate flung wide to admit the procession—no questions asked, but a glimpse of Alexis, junior court chamber-lain, in conversation with the captain of the gate guard. Riotous streets. There was always a riot in Rhakotis, day or night, when anything dynamic happened.

  Curious, excited, credulous of any rumor, torch-lit streams of men and women flowed down the shadowy streets to Esias’ wharf and fought there for the right to be next to the palings—blocked the way and fought the gangs of slaves and sailors who carried the loads to the boats at the canal wharf—yelled questions—lied—and at last jeered Tros, because somebody said he was under arrest and being sent by the queen into Southern Egypt, or perhaps to Berenice on the Red Sea.

  Full loads at last, and a roll-call. Angry protests from seamen too badly bruised or broken-headed to be useful. Weapons. Armor. Inspection. Two or three more thrown out for looking slack in the ranks and unfit for duty. Quick work by the doctor—there was hardly a man without a bandage. Assignment of places in the boats, each boat and each thwart numbered and each man numbered to a thwart.

  Aristobolus, with his hands tied and his head in a wheat-sack, lowered into the second boat in charge of Conops. Alexis, looking like a lost exquisite, sweating and rather soiled but philosophically cheerful, jumping into Tros’ place in the leading boat—rebuked for it by three Jews and three seamen, who came near throwing him overboard. A last word with Esias and sleepy Ahiram.

  A fierce last word with Conops—and away, two hours after midnight.

  Conops’ golden trumpet blew the “cast off” and the oars shoved the boats into mid-canal. Then Tros’ voice, over-roar-ing all the tumult of the dinning crowd: “Flotilla—in line ahead—ready! Dip!” Silent, except for the thump of oars, the boats stole southward, threading a torch-lit marble city, toward Mareotis, and the Nile, and the mysterious Land of Khem.

  Chapter VII

  "NEVER AGAIN SPEAK OF BOIDION"

  AT FIRST, the only hardship was the flies. A sailor’s skin is toughened to resist such cleanly and natural elements as ropes’ ends, hail, the twist of tight-caught oars. There are no flies at sea, and a hoarse-tail fly-switch is a unseamanly device with which to comfort the lips and eyes of honest oarsmen.

  But there was not much rowing. They lay flicking themselves and wondering what monstrous dangers lay to southward. Lions they had seen, in the park cages in Alexandria, and on ship-board on the way to Rome; and crocodiles; and even one hippopotamus.

  But there were stories of serpents, a half-mile long, that swallowed ships at a gulp; of a land of perpetual night, inhabited by bats that sucked men’s lifeblood; of ogres that lived in sepulchres; and of two-headed women with one breast apiece, who could drive an arrow through the stoutest armor, and who ate men’s entrails.

  True, Lord Captain Tros had been right as usual; there was a north wind. The canal from Maretois to the Nile had been dug by a Ptolemy’s engineers so oriented as to make a soldier’s breeze, eight or nine months in the year, for the laden barges. The lord captain had promised the wind would blow them up the river, and he might be right again. But they had heard stories of whirlpools, rapids, cataracts, and of many a ship that sailed up-Nile but had never come home again.

  It made no difference to men recovering from drink, and totally ignorant of their destination or the purpose of the expedition, that they kept continually passing laden barges, all from the south.

  The south was an ominous mystery. Their heads ached. They made very little conversation, and kept the flotilla closely enough spaced to satisfy even the lord captain’s demands.

  It was nearly low-Nile and the current was sluggish. When the wind failed, at bends of the river or in the lee of cultivated islands, the rowing was not particularly hard work. But it was mostly sailing; and at night-fall, when Tros called a halt at the site of a very ruinous temple, there was less than fifteen minutes between the leading and the last boat, and every one was cheerful except Aristobolus, whose hands were no longer bound, but who had spent nearly sixteen hours in Conops’ company.

  He looked, by that time, as if he might prefer to be talked to by sepulchral ghouls or devils from the world beyond the sources of the Nile.

  The Nile was Main Street. They were passing through the richest and most densely populated cultivated zone on earth, where there were villages every few miles and even the reeds were harvested for fuel. There was a continual stream of north-bound traffic. The only reason why they had that reedy bivouac to themselves was because the spirits of the ancient dead were said to haunt the place.

  The evening wind in the reeds, the rustling of the night-fowl and the eerie darkness of Egyptian night combined to create terror. There were hermits, like huge owls, in the ruins. Two of them were bald, scrawny old females— speechlessly, piously lousy.

  The men refused to sleep ashore; they ate their meal in a hurry, in silence, and piled back into the boats. They implored Tros not to risk his life in the ruined temple precincts. But he ordered Conops and a squad to sweep the fleas and bat-filth from a stone-paved chamber, and there he lit a fire and invited Aristobolus and Alexis.

  The two Alexandrines eyed each other with alert suspicion. They ate in silence, except when Alexis complained of his lack of a servant to wash him and bring him a change of linen; if he had no other reason, he had been too lazy to unpack his enormous roll of bedding and belongings. They omitted to drink to each other, even when Tros poured the wine and made a hospitable gesture to them both.

  However, Alexis h
ad been in the leading boat. Tros had talked to him. He was well primed— knew what was expected of him. So, as soon as the meal was finished, Tros went out to wash himself and to post sentries and make sure that the boats were well moored. He took plenty of time about it, and when he returned the two men appeared to be not exactly friendly but to have reached some sort of understanding.

  “Look here,” said Aristobolus, “your man Conops has been telling me all day long that you’re at logger-heads with the queen— that you only escaped death by jumping off the royal barge and swimming. That confirms what I told him to tell you— that you are on the proscription list. Am I right?”

  “I had a narrower escape from four of your freedmen!” Tros answered.

  “So? What happened?”

  “What will happen to you also, unless you obey me—in thought, speech, action, and in the very manner of your gestures! I will presently say what I wish you to do. And I will split you like a fish if you refuse to do it. That is not a threat. It is a statement of fact.”

  Aristobolus digested the information, then continued:

  “Your man Conops told me— he said it twenty times, or oftener—that you intend to throw in your lot with those of us who look for a change on the throne.”

  “Conops is in my confidence,” Tros answered.

  “Alexis says he has the same intention.”

  “And you?” Tros asked him. “Sacrament of Isis! I ran a thousand risks, yesterday morning, didn’t I, to warn you of the danger you were in, and to implore you to join Boidion?”

  “You said Arsinoe.”

  “I know it. Was there time, in the street, with the queen’s spies everywhere, to tell you all the details of a plot that has taken us weeks to contrive, after months of study? Man, be reasonable! And consider now how you have treated me!”

  “I saved you from the queen’s men,” Tros answered. “I was asked where you are. I could only reply that I had slain your freedmen, who attacked me.”