by Gene Wolfe
Astyanax swore under his breath: “Nethuns, god of the deep, feed him to sharks and cuttlefish!” But he wisely restrained his utterances when the captain threw us a rope.
Hand over hand, he followed me onto the deck. Silent, inscrutable, the white dolphin watched us from the water.
The captain bound our hands. He removed his signet ring, a gold shark with gaping jaws. “Heat it in the torch,” he said to the one-eared sailor, “It will serve as a brand.”
II: THE HALCYON FINDS A CREW
To the north lay Elba, the island of iron and copper; to the east, the port of Graviscae, with quays and canals and red-tile houses laid in terraced rows. Behind the port the twin ridges of Tarquinia jutted against the sky: one a necropolis; one the capital city of Etruria, with walls of mortarless stone and battlemented towers, arched entrances and basalt thoroughfares. Olive groves flanked the ridges, and cypress trees, like bronze inverted cones, shaded the highways which joined Tarquinia to her port.
We moored near the mouth of a canal roofed by a massive barrel vault. Preceded and followed by Black Rats, I descended the ship’s ladder and received Astyanax from the arms of the one-eared sailor. Like the other male slaves in Etruscan cities, I was stripped and barefoot. Nakedness in itself did not embarrass me; Etruscans, used to a climate which discourages excessive clothing, are not a modest people. But nakedness, as now, in the heart of a town, signified shame and the loss of liberty. What was more, I carried on my forearm a brand in the shape of a shark. If I called for help, the entire crew of the Turan would point to the scar and insist that I belonged to Vel, who had the right to sell me. Astyanax, fortunately, had not been branded. Vel did net want to mar him as a curiosity.
Beyond the vault a midday sun blazed on a forest of sails. There was no real harbor, but a network of moles and jetties buttressed the small indentations of the coast, and a multitude of ships lay moored or anchored: Sardinian cargo boats in the shape of plowshares; Tyrian traders redolent of cedar; Greek penteconters, ironically berthed beside the same Etruscan merchantmen which, on the high seas, sometimes fell prey to their speed and their vicious beaked prows. The Etruscan ships, both merchant and war, were broader and taller than the Greek, slower but far more seaworthy in rough waters. Some looked battered, with rent sails and crusted hulls, and I guessed that they must have returned from the stream of Ocean, where the waves were as tall as palaces. I looked frantically for someone I knew—a captain with whom I had sailed, a visitor from Caere. I looked in vain.
Away from the ships, the highways rumbled with chariots hammered from bronze and wooden carts on ponderous wheels of stone. Pedestrians walked the footpaths beside the highways and, bright as coquina shells, paraded their colored robes—Tyrian purple, red of cinnabar, yellow of saffron crocuses—or their silken loin cloths, trimmed with gilt and artfully tapered to flatter the wearer’s hips. I had walked with such crowds in most Etruscan cities; I had worn robes whose color rivaled the halcyon, and I had carried a sword at my side. Women had stared at me, and I had returned their stares indifferently, sleepily, if at all, confident that she whom I sought did not inhabit the city, but waited, patient and dreaming at the end of my furthest voyage. Today I walked as a slave, and the women looked over or through me or at the Triton I carried in my arms. I heard them whisper:
“A Triton!”
“A boy with a tail!”
“And hair to match!”
But no one said, “Look at the man who carries him!”
The Mart of the Slaves was a square in the middle of that larger square, the town marketplace: a small paved island surrounded by the canvas-roofed stalls of farmers selling their grapes and fishermen their tunnies and herring. A low platform, set against a wooden backdrop, rose like the stage of a theater and allowed the slaves to parade or be prodded like actors. We had to wait our turn. Vel, the three Black Rats, and the one-eared sailor shoved me into a circle beside the platform.
A young woman with cinnamon hair, probably a Greek, stood on the block. Nude, she turned at her owner’s prompting to display her full, perfect breasts and the bold flare of her thighs. She looked supremely bored and her eyes seemed to say, “You needn’t expect me to cringe like a pale little virgin. I have been sold before.” Several young gallants were bidding against each other in excited voices. Finally she went for five hundred asses to a youth who stepped forward to claim her with great eagerness and promptly lost his tongue. Embarrassed and diffident, he covered her shoulders with a fine embroidered cloak and led her down from the block. She shook her head, rippling the cinnamon hair, and allowed the cloak to reveal her handsome breasts.
Astyanax, however, did not have eyes for the Greek. He pointed to a lady of fashion whose small leather moccasins tilted up at the toes like the bow of a boat. “Does she grow that way or is it just her shoes?”
Before I could answer his question, a Black Rat jerked him out of my arms and onto the block. I saw with dismay that Astyanax planned to bite him. But he seemed to change his mind, hesitant, no doubt, to risk a fall on his tail. Flanked by two Black Rats, I had to keep my place. Restless daggers jiggled in their hands.
Etruscan aristocrats, both men and women, dominated the audience; poor men could not afford to bid for slaves. Sandwiched among the Etruscans, a party of visiting Romans, in spite of their solemnity and their dignified white togas, ogled Astyanax like red-faced farmers. Rome, after all, is an overgrown village, and villagers gape when they come to the city. Astyanax did not let their rudeness disconcert him. He rocked his tail rhythmically, as a walker swings his arms, and met their stares. In addition to Etruscans and Romans there were two boys, fifteen and sixteen, I judged, whose wheat-colored hair marked them as Gauls or Scandians and probably also as brothers. Their loincloths were gray and tattered; they wore neither rings nor bracelets and their hair, far from the flowing elegance of the wealthy, was short and wind-blown. It was clear that they could not bid, but they looked at Astyanax eagerly, as if they hoped to make friends. He returned their smiles. In spite of his predicament, he had not lost his sense of adventure.
At last Vel himself ascended the block, his pointed beard glittering in the sun, his signet ring flashing sinister fires, and accepted Astyanax from the Black Rat. He turned to face the audience.
“As you see,” he began, “I offer more than a slave to till the fields or carry a lady’s lifter. I offer a Triton fresh from the sea!”
“You make me sound like a mullet,” Astyanax snapped. Vel ignored him. “Fresh from the sea, and free of barnacles.”
“But what does he do?” cried one of the Romans. “He can’t even walk. Could he help me on my farm?”
A practical people, the Romans. They demand that everything have a specific purpose.
Vel stammered. “He—he—“
Astyanax could not contain himself. Glaring at Vel, he took command of the sale. “Do?” he cried. “I fish, swim, boat, and dive for sponges. I mend nets, caulk hulls, and milk sea-cows. I can narrate stories to make a sailor blush. And what is more,” he added with emphasis, “I supply—and provoke—sparkling conversation.”
The Romans craned their necks, arguing among themselves in the ponderous tongue called Latin. The lady with the curved slippers stepped forward demurely and bid in an ear-splitting voice:
“Two hundred asses!”
She explained to the friend beside her, a lady with large bosoms and orange curls, “I want him for the pool in my atrium. Think of the sensation when I have guests! They can make him dive for coins. Besides, he’s so decorative. The green tail, don’t you know. At banquets, I can drape him over a platter to garnish the oysters.”
“Nude?” asked her friend with ill-concealed shock.
“What should he wear, a tunic?” the tilt-toed lady snapped.
“Nude,” muttered her friend. “And telling those salty stories.”
“Three hundred asses,” cried one of the Romans, the one who had asked for the Triton’s accomplishments. When h
is friends looked at him in consternation, he growled, “You heard him. Says he can milk.”
“Four hundred,” said the lady, stamping her up-turned toes.
“Four hundred and fifty,” said the Roman, bunching his shoulders as if he were about to be charged by the Calydonian boars.
Astyanax looked indignant. “But the wench brought five hundred.”
“Five hundred, then!” cried the lady. Victory shone in her eyes and flushed her cheeks, as if, I thought, she had tippled unmixed wine. With relentless steps she mounted the stairs onto the block. “Baby,” she simpered and held out her braceleted arms. Astyanax, for the first time, looked frankly terrified.
But the lady was not, after all, to have him. One of the yellow-haired boys emerged from the crowd, mounted the block in a single muscular leap, and snatched Astyanax from the threatening jeweled embrace. Tossing him into the crowd where his blond brother waited with outstretched hands, he spun from the block and both brothers, Astyanax between them, vanished as if through the conjurations of Circe. The Black Rats forgot to watch me. Like everyone else, they were dazed by the sudden daring of the theft. Easing rather than springing, I too made my escape.
My first problem was to find a robe, even before I could find Astyanax. The mere fact of my being nude and branded like a slave did not in itself endanger me. On the business of their masters, slaves moved freely throughout the town. But if Vel sent his men to search for me, they would look for a slave and not a man in a cloak. I passed a stall where cloaks were hung on hooks and shoes were laid beneath them—moccasins of kid, sandals with wooden soles, high yellow boots. The shopkeeper was fastening a sword to the side of an elderly aristocrat. The old gentleman threw back his shoulders and attempted to swagger like a conquering general. No one was watching me. Without compunction, almost without fear, in one continuous motion, I lifted a cloak from a hook—red, with a border of yellow griffins poised for flight—and stepped in a pair of moccasins. To tell the truth, I rather enjoyed the theft. I was tired of behaving. I must have caught Astyanax’ sense of adventure.
The moccasins were nondescript, but the cloak identified me as a gentleman and also concealed my brand. Now I could look for Astyanax. Though the town was both large and strange, I could make inquiries. The passage of two boys and a Triton could not have gone unnoticed. The fact remained, however, that Vel and his men could also inquire; that they, too, were searching and sooner or later were sure to cross my path.
I found Astyanax sooner than I had dared to hope. The brothers, one of them holding the Triton, stood on a pier and stared at a round-built ship between two galleys of war. A new ship. Blue of hull, sleek as a dolphin, freshly painted, and fragrant with cedar and cypress, she loomed like a cabin boy’s dream. A ship for wandering; for uncharted seas and fabulous monsters; for finding Circe. But now was hardly the time to admire a ship. Bounding onto the pier, I snatched Astyanax from the arms of the taller brother.
“Bear!” he cried, delighted. “Where have you been?”
“Ve didn’t vant him to be sold,” said the taller brother with a slight Scandian accent. His name, I learned, was Balder; his brother was Frey. Their father had come from frozen Scandia, the land of Odin and Thor, the Thunderer. “That lady might have stuffed him.”
“Ve vanted him for ourselves,” confessed the lesser brother.
I looked nervously down the pier. “Explanations can wait. Now we must take cover.”
But the brothers had more to say. “Vanted him for our animal,” Frey explained. “The Woodpeckers have a goat and the Griffins a Molossian hound.” He seemed to refer to rival street gangs. “I don’t suppose you vould lend him.”
Astyanax brightened with pleasure, like a discus thrower coveted by rival teams. It suddenly occurred to me that he might prefer the company of boys to that of a wanderer like myself.
“Do you want to be their animal?” I asked with a catch in my throat.
He shook his head and turned to the boys. “I’m traveling with Bear.”
“But he’s so elderly,” cried Frey. “He must be—twenty-six!”
“Yes, but he has experience.”
“Twenty-five,” I muttered.
The boys looked at him and then at me. “Be good to him, sir,” said Balder.
“First we must hide him—and us,” I said. Already it was too late. The Black Rats charged us from the street. Quick as a snake, I flicked out a foot and tripped the first of them. He spun toward the ground, recovered himself like a cat, and kicked me in the shin. I swayed on a single leg and balanced Astyanax in front of me. All this time the Triton was swearing and waving his arms. I had not suspected the eloquence of his oaths—I should have, sailors had helped to educate him.
“Zeus, Hera, Ares, Artemis, and Hades,” he swore at the hapless Rat, “blast you with thunderbolts, drown you in whirlpools, feed you to Scylla and Charybdis.” Then, remembering that he was in Etruscan territory, he added Tinia, Uni, Mantus, Vanth, and even a Roman god, Janus. “And may Charon roast your liver in burning asphalt.”
When the Rat charged us again, Astyanax swung from my arms and swatted him with his tail. The Rat reeled to the edge of the pier and, helped on his way by the sudden thrust of my foot, fell into the water. Together, it seemed, Astyanax and I made a formidable combination, a self-propelled battering ram. Flushed with victory, we rolled to help the brothers.
We found that they did not need us. Four young heads, two blond, two black, their hues as opposite as salt and pepper, bobbed in a tempest of limbs. Balder and Frey, at first, fought back to back, but soon they took the offensive and surged like catapults sweeping to storm a battlement. When Frey tottered beneath the blows of a Rat, the resourceful Balder, hurling his own assailant into a heap of overcurious spectators, leaped to succor him, and seconds later the brothers stood in monumental grandeur, crossing their arms like victorious gladiators. Meanwhile, the Rat I had kicked from the pier had clambered out of the water and, looking for a change like a well-washed turnip, slunk into the crowd, where he joined his battered brothers.
“They will go for Vel,” I said. “Now we must really hide.” I looked at the ship and thought, Why not buy her? At the moment I had no money, but a few days’ sailing would bring us to Agylla, the port of Caere, my home. If I could convince the owner of my credit, Astyanax and I could sail on our voyage for Circe, and while we bargained, the ship would hide us from Vel.
Followed by the brothers and still carrying Astyanax, I climbed onto the deck, which sparkled with fresh-hewn timbers of cypress wood.
“Look,” said Astyanax, pointing to the figurehead. “He is just my age!” The figure of a boy, cunningly carved from wood, strained from the prow with his arms outstretched to the wind. “Come,” he seemed to say. “I will lead you to Circe.” I recognized Tages, the boy with an old man’s wisdom, who had stepped from a clod of earth and given Tarchon, our national hero, the sacred books of Etruria.
A young man emerged from the cabin and looked at us with more sadness than surprise, though we must have appeared disreputable, a Triton, two young ruffians with bloodied faces, and a doubtful gentleman with a rich cloak but no other sign of status.
“Is she for sale?” I asked.
“Yes,” he sighed, as if he were putting his wife on the auction block.
A good trader conceals his eagerness—shows himself interested but not avid—and Etruscans, with merchant ships in every sea, are the best of traders. But I had no time in which to dissimulate.
“Your ship has bewitched me,” I said. “I would like to buy her.”
“She is right out of the shipyards at Cosa—built to my own design. But I can’t afford to keep her.” He wore a domed hat and trim red boots which gave him, from a distance, an air of jauntiness. But his large black eyes were mournful even for an Etruscan.
Just then I spied the one-eared sailor, the three Black Rats, and Vel himself advancing down the street. They paused to question a sailor.
“Wil
l you show us the cabin?” I asked quickly. We followed the owner into the cabin. The entire vessel, he told me, was fifty feet long and twelve in width. The cabin, though cramped into eight square feet, held a couch with the legs of a bear, a three-legged brazier, a bronze mirror with a curving handle, and a cabinet of citrus wood from Carthage. Above my head a small clay lamp, owl-shaped and painted black, hung from the wicker ceiling.
I sat on the couch and the young man, whose name was Aruns, sat beside me, or rather slumped, for he seemed on the verge of tears. Lovingly he caressed a cushion.
“Goose feathers sewn in silk,” he said. “You will sleep like a lotus-eater. As you may have guessed, I’m rather fond of my ship—everything about her. But Greek pirates have preyed on my other ships, and now I must sell the queen.”
I touched his shoulder. “If you sell your queen to me, I will treat her royally.” Now came the awkward moment to discuss the terms of payment. “I can’t pay you at once.” I explained, and told him my story without evasion. Finally I threw back my cloak and exposed the brand on my forearm. “If you sail me to Agylla, I can pay you in gold and silver—generously.”
“Of course I believe you,” he said. “Your story is much too preposterous to be invented, and no swindler would travel about with a Triton and two ragamuffins. Besides, I know an Etruscan aristocrat when I see one, brand or no brand. It’s something about the eyes. Their hunger is not for possessions—silks and gems, gardens and tall stone houses. They are used to such things. But what will you do for a crew? I have let mine go, and as for myself, I’ve never been more than a passenger on my ships, though I might help out with a captain to give me orders.”
“I think I can settle that now,” I said. I whispered to Astyanax. Jubilantly he turned to Frey and Balder. “Bear would like you to join our crew.”
“On this ship?” cried Balder. “It has been our dream!” They both hugged me at once, and the four of us, Astyanax in the middle, spun dizzily over the floor.