Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Rome!” Fflur said again. She sat up straight and stared at him.

  “Aye, Rome! Where Caesar’s masters are and Caesar’s enemies. Where the moneylenders live, Crassus, greatest of them all. Where Pompey, Caesar’s friend in name, broods jealousy against him. Rome, where Cato lives, who hates usurpers, and would rather break a spoke of Caesar’s wheel than eat his dinner. I will sail through the Gates of Hercules, drop anchor in the port of Ostia, proceed to Rome and do there what I can to ruin Caesar’s prospect of invading Britain. If I were you—”

  Tros leaned forward, elbow on the table, pointing with the parchment at Caswallon— “I would tell those kings’ ambassadors to go home. I would bid them say to their masters that you prefer to try to save all Britain without their aid, since they ask to be paid to save themselves. That should set them thinking. It should make them more ashamed than if you plead. Then, if my mission fails and Caesar invades Britain later in the year in spite of me, you will be no worse off than you are now, and perhaps they will offer assistance instead of asking to be bought.”

  Caswallon shook his head.

  “They would plan to weaken me,” he said, “by waiting until I take the brunt of the invasion. Later, if Caesar should have too much the best of it, they would probably send men. But those same men would force me to pay the bill when they had driven Caesar out of Britain. I would very likely have to abdicate.”

  “Cross that river when you reach it,” Tros suggested. “You gain nothing by promising payment now. You will only whet the edge of their cupidity. The high hand in a bargain is the hand that wins, and the gods love him who plays the man. Be daring!”

  Fflur leaned back again, her eyes half closed, her fingers again drumming on the table.

  “You — you would dare anything.”

  “Except to take me with him!” Orwic interrupted. “But he shall! I enjoy Tros. He reminds me of the northeast wind.”

  “But we,” Fflur went on, “we have two whole tribes to think of. Caswallon is king of the Trinobantes, and the Cantii pay him tribute. It is they who will suffer unless we can form an alliance with other tribes against Caesar.”

  “Suffer!” Tros struck the table with his fist. “Show me freedom that must not be fought for! Make you ready for the fight and let those kings’ ambassadors go home with good proud answers for their kings, who then may find some manhood in themselves before the war begins! They come here to eat and drink your provender, designing tribute from your purse, when they ought to be offering money and men. If they go home and raise no regiments, and if you raise all you can, and if I throw a stick in Caesar’s wheel so that he can’t invade you, then, I think those cousin kings of yours may have to learn who kings it over them in Britain!

  “If Caesar were to beat you he would trample on them, too, wouldn’t he? If Caesar were only to weaken you, you say they would rub it in by taxing you for whatever scraps of aid they might have brought in the nick of time. Well and good. If Caesar doesn’t come, but if you have made ready for him, you will be strong. I am no advocate of conquests. I abominate them. But I believe in making my debtor pay whatever bill he owes. If I were in your shoes when that day comes, I would make those cousin kings pay through the nose for having saved them all from Caesar! There would be no taxes for a while in my domain, but such heavy ones in theirs as should keep them from growing bumptious!”

  Fflur smiled and shook her head.

  “Caswallon is too easy going. He is more likely to send them help in famine-time than to remember grudges.”

  She was not looking at her husband, and when he crashed his great fist on the table she turned her head away to hide a smile.

  “Mother of my sons!” he exploded. “How often must I tell you that a king of Britain has to steer his course with two-score councillors pulling him this and that way! The only man of all my council whom I can trust always to vote with me is Orwic. And now Orwic says he sails with Tros! Can’t you, won’t you see, that if I give these ambassadors a manly answer, my own council will accuse me of hot-headedness and will oppose whatever next I want to do?”

  “I see that Tros is right,” Fflur answered. “And you can get along very well without Orwic.”

  Orwic came out of his ostentatious boredom long enough to look surprised.

  “Orwic only irritates the council by supporting you whether you are right or wrong, and by being too young to have any right to your confidence. If Orwic goes, there will be rivalry to win your favor and you can swing the council any way you please.”

  “I see my end! I surely go with Tros,” said Orwic, hiding chagrin beneath a mask of mannerly good humor. “No more sitting all day long between fat landholders and listening to speeches that would send a weasel to sleep! No more all-night sittings to decide whether girls without doweries are lawful seizin, or who shall pay for the bridge on Durwhern road! I visit Rome with Tros. Then what will happen, Tros, if you’re wrong and the world turns out to be triangular? When we reach one of the corners, and suppose it sticks up in the air, like that, will the ship go tumbling down the other side, or, suppose there isn’t any water, what then?”

  Caswallon interrupted gloomily: “I must summon the council—”

  “To hear my resignation?” Orwic asked, amused at his own conceit.

  “ — before I can safely answer these ambassadors. Tros, brother Tros, I think you had better speak before the council. They will resent the intrusion, but it is just possible you might convince them. I know I can’t. They wouldn’t even vote me an army when Caesar’s men stole Fflur. They offered money for Fflur’s ransom. They will offer money now, with which to buy protection against Caesar from a company of kings, who will make the weather an excuse for breaking bargains when the time comes! Will you speak to them?”

  Tros nodded. Fflur drew in her breath.

  “I will be there!” remarked Orwic. “You could no more sleep through a speech by Tros than you could after a dose of druids’ physic! Why not let Tros talk, too, to those ambassadors in the big hall? I would love to listen!”

  “If we are not careful,” said Fflur, “the council will want to inquire into Tros’s ship-building. There has been trouble already because he has used so many blacksmiths, and has raised the price of food in Lunden by employing so many men in one place. They will want to tax his ship, and they will ask what is to become of all the blacksmiths when the ship is finished. Moreover, when you and Tros came to rescue me in Gaul, you brought nearly two hundred charcoal-burners with you, and they never returned.

  “The council blame Tros for the charcoal shortage. They are afraid to go to Tros’s shipyard and make trouble there, because of the burning stinkballs that Eough the sorcerer taught him how to make. But if Tros appears before the council, with too much strong advice, some one is sure to accuse him of sorcery and of trouble making and intrigue and what-not else.”

  “They accuse him already!” Caswallon laughed. “But they can’t get away from the fact that Taliesan favored him, and that it was Tros who wrecked Caesar’s fleet when Caesar invaded Kent.”

  “The druids have lost influence since Taliesan died,” Fflur answered. “Men are saying Taliesan was the last who knew the Mysteries, and that now the whole company of druids is like sheep without a shepherd. As for Caesar’s fleet, there are plenty who say it was not Tros at all but the wind that destroyed it. Several women have told me that their husbands are saying Tros lied.”

  Caswallon sat bolt upright.

  “Which women? Whose husbands?” he demanded. “I will deal with those husbands! I will wager they are men who skulked in bed while the rest of us were fighting Romans on the beach! Let me think now. Was one of them—”

  “No names!” said Fflur. “The women will tell me nothing more if I betray their confidences. But I think it will be best if Tros keeps away from the council. Let him finish his ship and sail away and do what he can for us in Rome, leaving us to manage this corner of Britain.”

  Tros offered no demur
rer. He had faith in Fflur’s intuition, even though she had not foreseen that Caesar’s messengers would take her prisoner; even though she had not prevented Helma from trying to escape and so being shot by the Roman guards. He knew intuition works by fits and starts. And besides, she proposed what he wanted to do, which was argument enough.

  “I will finish my ship,” he answered. “Fflur is right. I will attend to my own business. Purge you those ambassadors and manage your council how you can. Is supper late, or is my belly out of time from too much talking?”

  Fflur leaned back again and studied him from under lowered eyelids.

  “Out of time, I think,” she said at last. “Taliesan used to say, the proper time at which to do things is as important as the things we do. I think you will not see Rome until—”

  “Until I have a crew!” Tros interrupted. “Men! I need men!”

  “Patience! You need patience, until the right time,” Fflur said quietly.

  CHAPTER 53. Gathering Clouds

  Captains need men’s obedience. He is no captain whose commands men disobey. Nor is he fit to be a captain whose heart loveth not rebellion and rebels. For of what is he captain, if not first of his own self? Can he captain himself without rebellion against ten thousand laws, traditions, superstitions, tyrannies, lacks, stupidities, sloth, cravings, ignorance and ten times ten thousand efforts to compel him to obey whatever terror hath a following of fools? He is a rebel, or no captain. In rebellion he learns. His knowledge commands obedience of men in whom growth stirs, but who know not yet what stirs them. It is not obedience they hate, but the indignity of aimless living. Their rebellion is evidence of fitness to be led. Let him look to it whither he leads.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  SOON — Tros had promised himself. But it was early spring. Britons had a thousand activities that they preferred to hauling choice lumber for him or to letting their wives weave sail-cloth and twist cordage. While winter lasted they were satisfied to have a ready market for almost anything they cared to sell in the way of labor, material or provender. But as soon as the snow melted and the warm wind brought rain that made the tree-buds swell, they began to think of farms, the breeding of cattle and horses and, not least, the surging in their own veins that made any kind of steady work for some one else unthinkable. So difficulties dogged the heels of unforeseen delay.

  Tros’s ship, with the ribs of Caesar’s broken and dismantled bireme on the mud beside her, still rested in her cradle on the ways, her underbody gleaming like a mirror when the sun shone. Tros had coated her with tin, an innovation daring as it was original, and an extravagance that irritated Britons almost as much as his capture of a whole shipload of the expensive metal had exasperated Caesar. True, the British owners of the tin received their purchase price, because Caesar had had to pay it against a document that bore his signature; but if Tros had plated the whole ship with gold he could hardly have created more jealousy and adverse comment. Tin was wealth, the one sure article of commerce that the Britons always could exchange for foreign goods, the stuff in which ransoms were paid. Ingots of it, shaped like knuckle-bones, were easier to trade than minted money.

  It was no use Tros explaining that a smooth, unweeded surface would increase the ship’s speed, and that speed meant safety. They bade him stay on land and use the tin for making bronze shields, wheels and weapons; or to buy a farm with half of it and store the rest against an evil day. In vain he showed them pier-piles that had been exposed to tide-water. They retorted that if his ship grew rotten he could build a new one, whereas tin was almost priceless and much harder to obtain than lumber.

  Caswallon’s council, angry with the king because on Tros’s advice he had returned a stiff-necked answer to those other kings’ ambassadors, now fanned the flame of irritation by questioning the advisability of permitting Tros to finish a ship that he would certainly use against Caesar, thus providing the Romans with additional excuse for an invasion. Had they not lost enough young men already on the Kentish beach? Was it respectful to the gods, or sane men’s policy, to increase the already serious risk of war?

  Some said that the gods, and Lud particularly, on the bosom of whose River Thames the great ship would be launched, would certainly resent the barbarous impiety of wasting honest tin below the water level. Floods might follow. Usually pestilence came in the wake of flood. A prevalence of northeast winds might bring successive raids of Northmen. There were a hundred likely ways in which the gods might wreak a vengeance; and there was no longer any Taliesan to whom to go for spiritual succor.

  In the end they appealed to the druids, on whom the majority still felt they might depend for light on their perplexity. But the druids had lost their own faith in themselves with astonishing suddenness since Taliesan’s great soul departed for another world. They returned evasive answers, of which any man might make his own interpretation, thus increasing doubt without condemning Tros nor yet supporting him.

  They hinted that he had cut down far too many oak trees, on which grew the sacred mistletoe, and they made guarded remarks about his misuse of the sacred yew to form springs for his long-range arrow-engines, but they declined to interfere in matters that concerned king and council rather than themselves, since, said they, no emergency existed.

  The usual gossipers grew busy. The men who, in all ages and in any land, seek always to destroy and to prevent by innuendo without risking their own skins, stirred indignation in the minds of ignorant men who knew nothing of church or state but were easily flattered and easily persuaded that the fate of Britain rested in their hands. There were riots outside the shipyard. Men came by night to set fire to his ship, to the lumber piles, the forge and workshops. Tros had to disperse the mob three times in one week by burning quantities of his stenching chemical. The spluttering stench saved ship and buildings, and after the third demonstration of the stuff’s effectiveness there was no more open violence; but the charge of sorcery against Tros became as easy to lay as it was difficult to disprove.

  Sorcery meant excommunication by the druids first, and then impeachment before king and council if any one could be found with courage to take the first step along with the responsibility. Conviction would be tantamount to outlawry, since any man might slay such an offender without risk of punishment.

  None did come forward to insist on an impeachment, because of the law that allowed revenge to the accused in the event that he should win a favorable verdict, and because it was known that Caswallon befriended Tros, but mere suspicion of sorcery was enough to cause a boycott of the shipyard; and even Tros’s own slaves began to shirk their work as something never destined to be finished.

  The Northmen were a superstitious lot, all forty-eight of them. They could gloom like the gray of a Baltic twilight. It had leaked out that Tros had told Sigurdsen the world was round and that he meant to sail around it. Sigurdsen was drunk at Helma’s funeral and revealed the secret. They were seamen, who did not mind drunkenness, raiding and looting and the usual concomitants of war. Nor did they pray too often or admire the character of men who did.

  But to talk, even in secret, of sailing around the world was altogether too much like blasphemy, even for their strong stomachs. If they could have believed the theory it would have been, in their opinion, irreligious and indecent to discuss it. But to spiritual blasphemy was added temporal danger, since they knew, as everybody always had known, that the world was flat and over its distant rim the sea poured into eternal darkness.

  So they spoke of Tros’s obsession in gloomy undertones and at night, when they gathered around the fire in their own snug quarters, they conjectured what would happen when they should reach the world’s rim and be caught in the undertow of the eternal waterfall. Could men approach Valhalla by that route? Or would their souls go tumbling forever downward into dark oblivion? The problem interfered with work and let to grosser superstition.

  Some of them had seen the havoc wrought in Caesar’s camp by the hot stinkballs.
They knew Eough had taught Tros. Eough was a sorcerer. They had seen the mixture burn with its appalling stench when Tros dispersed the rioters. True, they had seen the yellow crystals brought from under the horse-manure below Caswallon’s stable, and they knew the rest was sulphur, charcoal, resin and plain sawdust. But it stood to reason no such mixture had any right to explode unless the devils of the underworld had been involved in it. So far the infernal stuff had only harmed their enemies, but it might just as easily reverse its energy and suffocate themselves.

  “With a stink from the caverns of hell he loads the ship, and into hell he proposes to plunge us, ship and all, when we reach the world’s edge,” Sigurdsen confided, staring at the embers on the hearth. “No luck can come of such dark business. Tros had the best of it against the Romans that time, but look you what happened. Was his own wife Helma not the first one to be slain, and she expecting child?”

  The Britons — rebels, criminals, homeless vagabonds, slaves, hated the sea and everything in or on it, except the fish. Homeless, except for Tros’s long labor sheds; hopeless, except for Tros’s good-will; inevitably outlawed, should they dare to run away, and with nothing but Tros between them and a far worse servitude, they dreaded nonetheless to leave their little corner of the earth and were already homesick at the thought of it.

  Glendwyr had changed his mind about serving Tros as a free man, but he had not been taken into confidence. However, he had overheard the Northmen talking, and the secrets that a man learns that way are a lot more mentally disturbing than the facts he truly knows.

  He approached Tros, down under the ship one night when Tros was searching with a lantern to make sure no undetected visitor had set some heap of shavings smoldering. There had been a dozen attempts to sneak into the yard at twilight and destroy the wooden ways.