Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  And all of that Tros understood so well that he could almost read the thoughts passing in the old man’s mind. Almost, but not quite. Hiram-bin-Ahab was fifty years older than Tros and could see four sides to everything, plus a fifth that included unpredictable contingencies.

  “I see what you intend, Tros,” he said, at last, after another long bout of coughing. “You will take that galley and keep far enough to sea to escape detection. But that will not help me if I should run in close to Caritia. They would ask for documents.”

  “Easy. You shall have them!” Tros exploded. Hiram-bin-Ahab stared.

  “I will give you an order in Latin with Caesar’s seal on it.”

  Tros’s ribs began to shake with silent laughter, for the idea was growing in his mind.

  “Silly! A child’s notion,” said the Phoenician. “Talk sensibly. Skell would tell the Romans all about the bireme in the offing. What then?”

  “He will not,” Tros answered, “for he will not know.” And he laughed again, because his humor reveled in far-seeing subtleties.

  “We have a perfect instrument in Skell. If I say one thing to Skell, and you say another — wait! Your ship is loaded? Water and stores aboard? The crew drunk half the time?”

  “Aye, forever drunk, and I can’t prevent. They earn money caulking boats and mending cordage for the Britons, and they spend it like madmen along the waterside. They will be fit for nothing until we have been a week at sea.”

  “Why spend that week at sea?” Tros answered. “The ship can lie at anchor down Thames, with the crew all snug aboard and sobering up. Have you a good mate, or shall I lend you my man Conops? We can trust Conops to keep Skell safe aboard, even if the ship lies at anchor a month.

  “Moreover, maybe I can frighten Skell so that he’ll be willing enough to hide down Thames on shipboard. Then, when I have made the galley ready, you row down to your ship and wait one more day, making the tide the excuse, or the wind, or whatever you please.

  “And I will take the galley on the tide, being careful to pass you in the night-time, so that Skell shall not see the galley, but I will make a signal in passing that you will recognize.”

  “Madness! Madness!” said the old Phoenician.

  But his eyes were brighter than they had been, and his thin lips twitched with the beginnings of a smile.

  “And at sea,” said Tros, “when you have left the cliffs of Britain on your starboard quarter and are headed toward Gaul, I will put about, discover you, and hoist a challenge in the name of the Senate and the Roman People.

  “You douse your sail. You lower a boat and send Conops to me, with two other men. I do as any Roman commander would and keep Conops on my ship as hostage for your obedience; but I send the other two men back with permission to you to land Skell in Caritia.

  “Thus Skell will not know I am not a Roman, and you will have a good excuse for landing him in a small boat as swiftly as possible.”

  “But suppose, then, that the Romans put out from Caritia and search me?” the Phoenician objected. “And they will,” he added. “And they will. I know the Romans.”

  “The officers who put out in liburnians to search ships are not important people who will dare to question Caesar’s seal or act high-handedly with the commander of a bireme looking on,” Tros answered. “And now I have thought of a better idea.

  “You will wait, tacking to and fro outside the bar until the liburnians do come out, since that will look more regular, and one of the documents that I shall give you will be an authority to proceed to Ostia with tin, under my escort.

  “They will see my bireme waiting for you in the offing. And we will take care to persuade Skell thoroughly in advance that you really are sailing for the Roman port, not Alexandria. Thus, if they should ask Skell anything, he is likely to confirm what you say.”

  “Maybe, and maybe not,” said the Phoenician. “Skell would be more likely to tell the truth by accident, if one should depend on him for a lie. He has an evil spirit.”

  “I can cover that point, too,” said Tros. “The man is vain. I can suggest to him that, since you are on your way to Ostia, he should write a letter to the Roman Senate, for you to deliver, recounting his own services to Caesar. Let him ask for a minor appointment of some sort. He will be so full of that notion, once the thought is in his head, that he will never suspect you of not intending to sail to Ostia.”

  Hiram-bin-Ahab folded and unfolded his hands in sudden jerks, sucked his yellow teeth and shook his head.

  “It is a grave risk. It is a foolish risk, as if the sea and the storms were not enough.”

  “I have gold,” said Tros, and for a moment the old man’s eyes looked brighter, but he shook his head again.

  “I would not take gold or any payment for a service to a Prince of Samothrace,” he answered. “Nay, nay! I am no Roman to put a price on such things.”

  “But if you should lose your cargo at the Romans’ hands, would it be unseemly of me to reimburse you for it with Caesar’s gold?” asked Tros. “I guarantee your cargo, as far as the corner of Gaul, subject to your service in this matter. Moreover, the letter I shall give you bearing Caesar’s seal should pass you through the Gates of Hercules, if there are any triremes thereabout, and should make you free of any port you happen to put into for supplies and water, or repairs. I will forge it skillfully, using good sheep’s parchment, of which there is plenty in Caesar’s chest.”

  “Well, I will have to see those documents before I strike a bargain with you.”

  Hiram-bin-Ahab frowned pessimistically, but without effect on Tros, who understood Phoenicians as well as he knew Greeks. If the Phoenician had smiled, he might have been in doubt as to the outcome. As it was, he was sure the old man was considering the proposal in all its bearings.

  Craftily then, he struck his master stroke, judging his man, giving him full scope without the prejudice of bargaining. “Hiram-bin-Ahab,” he said, “you are old, and you say this is your last voyage. I will forge that document and give it to you, whether you see fit to help me or not. You shall have it freely to help you pass the Roman ports. Now feel free to say yes or no concerning Skell, because I will do what I can for you in any case.”

  CHAPTER 19. A Sitting of the Court of Admiralty: 55 B.C.

  There is nothing beautiful or valuable under heaven but that some one wishes to destroy it in the name of virtue. Sons of darkness! Ye believe triumph is a virtue. Ye believe revenge is a virtue. Ye believe it proves your prowess if ye burn the product of another’s labor. Ye believe ye burn up evil. Ye are like the dogs — I say the dogs, who bite the stick that smites them. And why are ye smitten? Because ye are blind, who need not be; because ye are proud without reason; because ye forget ye are sons of Light and dig into the darkness lest the Light should burn the shadows that ye love.

  — from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan

  AT NOON, when as many as had slept away the fumes of mead had eaten, and Fflur had set some women in making a new purple cloak for Tros after the pattern of the torn one he was wearing when he came. Tros asked for the box containing Caesar’s memoranda and went through the documents carefully, whistling to himself.

  Now and then he laughed. Now and then he rolled a parchment thoughtfully and stowed it in a small, square wicker basket he had begged from Fflur, and when he had finished he entrusted that basket to her to keep for him.

  “There is better in that than a mint,” he said darkly.

  But as Fflur could not read the Roman script, and especially not the shorthand notes of Caesar’s secretary, she had to take his word for it.

  Then Caswallon came, in a great good humor because he had been to the stables, where the sight of new horses had pleased him mightily.

  As Fflur had prophesied, he had changed his mind already. He sat on the porch rail, where Tros was listening to Conops’ account of how Skell slept at last after whispering with a man who afterward went away toward the riverside.

  “Sleeps with one
eye open, I wager,” Caswallon in interrupted, scratching on the porch with the point of a throwing spear. Then, as if the news were unimportant:

  “They have rowed that galley of yours to the pool below the ford. They ask my leave to burn it when night comes. They say there are Caesar’s clothes on board; they want to make a new effigy of Caesar wrapped in his own scarlet cloak and burn it, galley and all, in mid-Thames. They love a bonfire. What say you?”

  “I say what Fflur said, that the ship is mine,” Tros answered, trying not to betray alarm.

  But Caswallon detected and enjoyed it thoroughly. His blue stained white skin, his trousers and the spear almost suggested a barbarian, but his easy manner and the quiet smile under the long moustache belonged to a man of many parts, and he could play them all well.

  “But you wagered the galley with Skell. Why not dress up Skell in Caesar’s clothes and burn the lot?” he suggested. He looked deadly serious. “Skell would fancy himself in Caesar’s second-best scarlet cloak. We could trick him aboard with the promise of that, and the rest could be recorded as an accident.”

  “Skell must not even see that galley,” Tros exclaimed excitedly. “God of fogs and foolishness! Can you think of no better use for a well-found ship than to burn her for fools to shout at?”

  Caswallon pulled at his moustache and did not let his hand drop until his face was fixed in an expression of boiled stupidity. He was enjoying himself thoroughly, and so was Orwic, who had got down off a squealing horse to discover what his chief’s and Tros’s talk was about.

  “Use for a galley?” said Caswallon. “If she lay here in the Thames my men would never rest until they had put to sea in her and drowned themselves. They would all be captains and the ship would have to go a dozen ways at once to suit them!

  “As for my using her, I crossed to Gaul once in a fair-sized ship, and I suppose I returned, since here I am. I remember I lay on my back to stop the vomiting, but the sea went on pitching victuals out of me.

  “When I stood, clinging to the mast, I acted like an eel up-ended, so weak-kneed I was, with the world going round and round and the ship spinning in the opposite direction. It was a rotten waste of good food, Tros, to make no other argument about it. The sea was intended for fish, but I am no fish. For me, not one foot farther than I can ride a horse into the surf. What say you, Orwic?”

  “She would make a fine sight burning with her sail set. There hasn’t been such a sight since the Northmen burned Cair Lunden,” Orwic drawled.

  “Well, come and let’s look at her, before they burn her anyhow,” Caswallon suggested, adding, as Orwic whistled to the grooms to bring a chariot:

  “Wake Skell. Tell him the word he sent that they should burn the galley has reached my ears. Warn him I am angry that he should try to creep out of a wager made at my board by causing the stake at issue to be burned! Bid him keep out of my sight. And then set men to watch him, or he will run before Tros is ready, for Lud knows what.

  “Tell the men to mock him for a shirk-bet if he shows his face outdoors. Tell the girls to mock him. Tell the grooms he is not to have chariot or horse and let them steal his own two horses from the stable behind his house. Tell him his only chance of being reckoned a man is to take ship very soon for Gaul.”

  He jumped into the chariot and drove away almost before Tros could swing up beside him, sending the horses headlong over the rear of the hill toward the river, watching their forefeet, taking more delight in them, apparently, than in all the other details of a kingdom.

  “For a horse is a horse and you know where his feet will land,” he said presently, continuing his thoughts aloud. “But Skell is neither horse nor herring. None knows what Skell will do, except that he will do a mean thing and in some way filch men’s praise for it.

  “I spoke with Fflur, and she said let him go to Gaul, where if Caesar whips him none can blame me. Fflur is always right, although I know Skell will offer himself to Caesar, because there is nothing else left for him to do. I hope Caesar flogs him and flays him!”

  He double-cracked the driving whip over the horses’ heads until they galloped madly.

  “I hate to own that I dare not throw Skell’s carcass to the crows, but that is truth, Tros. He has few friends, if any, but he has bought the loyalty of men who look for more at his hands, and it is not wise just now to stir their anger.”

  It was no road they took, but a track deep-rutted in the clay where ten- horse teams had dragged sledloads of cord wood and charcoal, and it ended at a ford.

  “Where I will some day build a bridge,” Caswallon said.

  The galley lay in midpool, made fast to an oaken pile that bent like a bow under the weight of ship and tide, and she was in worse shape than when Tros left her, because the twenty men in charge had seen fit to carry all the loot on deck, and there had been some fighting with the crew, who claimed sole right to all of it.

  Caswallon drove into the ford until the horses were almost swimming, then roared at the top of his lungs to know whether Lunden had no boats, that a king must get his feet wet. So they brought him a boat and rowed him and Tros to the galley, where the twenty men in charge were all sulky because they had missed the feasting of the night before.

  “And not drunk yet,” as one of them complained, “although the men who did the towing are ashore and drunker than bees already.”

  Liquor they had, however. There was an earthen jar of curmi on the poop and they were dipping it out with their little peaked helmets. They pledged Caswallon in the stuff, and then Tros, after which they staged a dance in all the Roman costumes they had found aboard, putting Caesar’s scarlet cloak and a golden laurel wreath on Caswallon and dressing Orwic in the bed sheets to represent the King of Bithynia, of whom even Britain had heard. There were some very improper interludes at that stage of the game, of which the druids and Fflur, for instance, would have disapproved.

  Caswallon did a very excellent imitation of the falling sickness, much more realistic than the real thing, because he had never seen an actual case of it and only knew Caesar’s reputation, which had naturally been exaggerated.

  They pretended to bleed him in the silver bowl, using curmi for the blood, and the ceremony following would almost have shocked Caesar himself, because they had only heard vague stories about Roman Gods, and the Venus Genetrix had been represented to them as a most improper lady.

  They had fired away all the arrows from the two poop arrow-engines at ducks on their way up Thames and, having hit nothing, were of opinion that mechanical contrivances were no good, having already forgotten the dreadful work those engines did in the fighting off the Kentish beach.

  And they thought the iron dolphin swinging from the yardarm was some kind of Roman deity hung there to pacify the waves, until one of them cut the halyard— “to introduce the foreign godlet to the good god Lud who keeps the Thames” — and it crashed through the bottom of a boat alongside, sinking it instantly.

  Tros did not recover the dolphin until next day, when Conops dived and found the halyard, after which it took a dozen men two hours to haul the murderous contrivance from the mud.

  It was only little by little that Caswallon, at Tros’s urging, persuaded them to lay all the loot in heaps on the main deck, after which he announced that Tros had promised full and fair division among such seamen as remained of the sixty who had first set out with him.

  But Tros and Caswallon had done some whispering, and Caswallon claimed the ship as lawful prize by right of capture, Fflur and his own men having saved it from the river pirates. He declared that was the law of Britain and, since there was no higher court than himself, it did not do the seamen any good to grumble, albeit they did grumble noisily, until some of the gentlemen in peaked iron caps struck them for improper language to their betters.

  Then Caswallon held an auction, Orwic acting auctioneer, and Tros did all the bidding, naming what he considered fair prices in view of the state of the market.

  The Britons had spent
all their money on horse flesh and, except the seamen, who, of course, never had any money, were mostly in debt to the Iceni in the bargain. It was distinctly a falling market, but Tros was generous. The total came to a bigger sum than those seamen had ever dreamed of owning.

  Caswallon, after eight or nine attempts, succeeded in dividing the total equally and — what was much more difficult — in persuading them that the calculation was correct. Then he ordered Tros to pay them in gold pieces out of Caesar’s treasure, undertaking himself to change the money into honest British coin from his own mint at Verulam, whereby the seamen learned for the first time what they had missed by failing to kill Tros and throw him overboard at Thames-mouth. And being seamen, they changed their opinion of Tros and began to consider him a right good captain.

  By that time it was dusk, and women and children had flocked aboard to laugh at everything, especially at Caesar’s underwear. The women were set to carrying everything that could be carried to Caswallon’s house, shields, armor and swords included, and when a new guard had been set over the ship they sent for chariots and all drove home to supper.

  But first Tros went alone to the house where Skell lay sulking, a small house, very well built and thatched with wheat straw, two hundred yards away from Caswallon’s paling. Some said that he owned the house, and some that he did not, but he lived in it, which was the main thing.

  And the seamen, who had followed Tros to get their money, joined with the children and grooms outside, who were pointing fingers at the house and singing a sort of nursery-rhyme about a man who boasted and ran away. It seemed to delight them hugely that Skell’s name fitted in the rhyme, and to Tros’s ears it sounded something like:

  Skell, Skell the Northman’s son

  Told a lie and away he run!

  The sailors would have burned the thatch and pelted Skell as he ran from cover if Tros had let them, not that they knew anything about the facts, but they made common cause with the children on general principles.