Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Lord Tros,” said Glendwyr, speaking manfully, for new-won freedom sat like a god between his shoulder-blades, “I have a thought that would do you no injury if you should listen to it.”

  “Speak your mind,” said Tros, “and if you change mine you shall have the credit.”

  But he went on swinging the lantern, poking into corners with a long stick, not suggesting much alacrity of vacillation.

  Glendwyr hesitated. It is not so easy to talk confidences to a man whose back is turned, bent forward, hunting danger in the drafty darkness. It was not until a gust of east wind blew the lantern out and Tros had to find the fire-pot and relight it, that Glendwyr’s thought took form in words.

  “Lord Tros, you have a great ship here, but a crew too small, that will never serve you well unless—”

  “Unless I know how to make them, eh? That shall be my task,” said Tros, and the lantern light shone yellow on his stubborn face as he stooped to replace the horn cylinder around the flaxen wick.

  “Unless, Lord Tros, their numbers should be increased and they should have work that they understand.”

  “Do they understand full bellies, the whip for laziness, freedom for good behavior?” Tros asked, and he went on poking into corners.

  “Lord Tros, they have been told you will sail first to Rome, and they have heard that the Romans will put them into an arena for sport and watch them being torn by wild beasts. It is not easy to encourage men who have that fear in them.”

  “I notice you try to discourage me,” Tros answered, but his back was turned. He was noticing the rain, remembering whether all deck openings were covered. “You have a project of your own. What is it?”

  He walked away, and Glendwyr had to follow. “No project, but a word of advice, Lord Tros.”

  Tros climbed the ladder up the ship’s side, and stood on the long, wet deck observing that the watchmen had sought shelter from the rain. He ordered Glendwyr to go and rout them out from under the hatch coverings.

  “Warn them that if I should catch them skulking there will be whippings! Cuff them about the head, and tell them they are lucky it was you, not I, who walked the rounds!”

  He returned down the ladder and examined the magazine where he had stored his chemical. There presently young Glendwyr joined him.

  “Now, if there were a raid in view, Lord Tros — some chance to prove themselves against a weaker adversary, with the hope of plunder—”

  He stopped, because at last Tros turned and faced him, holding up the lantern. Its rays showed slanting rain that blew in squalls between them, dripping from their tarred hoods. Glendwyr’s expression began to suggest nervousness, which made him look older than Tros, although he was several years the younger.

  “You seek to prove your value,” Tros remarked, moving the lantern the better to see Glendwyr’s face. “But if you know my crew is undependable, be you the stouter-hearted against the day when we must depend on them.”

  “Lord Tros, I only sought—”

  “To make a pirate of me! To make of me a rogue like Caesar! To persuade me to attack some harmless folk against whom I have neither grudge nor ground, except my own ability to hit and run! Mark this, now. When I need advice, I open up my thought and let the gods pour wisdom in. From you I ask such loyalty as a ship yields to the helm. And mark this, too. Remember it. When a pinch comes, as it will, if the Britons in my crew act shamefully, you will not go blameless, since you are one of them, and yet a free man and my officer.”

  Tros strode away, swinging the lantern, toward his own snug quarters that had been lonelier than a hermit’s cave since Helma died. He had set the slave-girl free who used to wait on his young wife, and the girl had vanished, none knew whither. Conops had resumed old ways, enacting all parts, cook, bed-chamber valet, serving-man, sword-sharpener, factotum, confidant. The but was all ship-shape and neat, where Helma had kept house with satisfying woman touches that a man does not notice much until he has to live again without them.

  As Tros entered, standing like a great bear in the doorway, rain dripping from his bearskin coat and from his tarred hood, Conops viewed the wooden floor with pride, for he had scrubbed and sanded it. The heavy woolen carpet Helma laid had been removed. Benches, stools, chests and the armchair made from an oaken cask, stood in rigidly straight lines against the walls and even the sticks on the clay hearth were laid with parallel precision.

  The expression on Conops’ one-eyed face was pertly loyal, asserting what even his privileged lips hardly dared to frame in words. “You and I, master, are men who need no women to make life soft for us!”

  And it was true. Tros knew it. In his heart there was an empty place that he had never known of until Helma filled it, and he had hardly realized it even so until a Roman arrow robbed him of her. Now he understood that she had filled it all too well, and the recluse in him, inherited from his austere old sire, closed such a wall around her memory as not another woman in the world should ever penetrate. He had made his mind up finally on that score.

  He threw his bearskin off and sat down in the cask-armchair more resolute than ever, devoid of appetite, although Conops tempted him with beans and venison, not more than sipping at the mug of warm mead, conscious that the memory of Helma fretted him — he could almost feel her presence in the room — and so more careful to control himself. Emotions such as thoughts of Helma carried in their wake, he shunned. He must find hard stuff to bite on, and quite suddenly he thought of it.

  “Lives Skell?” he asked. He had forgotten Skell.

  “Aye, the red rascal lives,” said Conops. “His eyes are as red as his beard now, from peeping through the drafty chinks, and because for pity’s sake we let him have a fire and there is no hole in the prison roof, so the smoke can’t escape any better than he can. He eats as much as ever, and though I don’t doubt he has stiffened in his fetters, there are no sores. We let him have fish-oil for wrists and ankles, and he thrives like a fat toad in a hole.”

  “Strike off his fetters. Bring him here,” Tros ordered. And then, to please Conops, fell to at the food.

  A half-hour later, for they had to find a blacksmith to cut through the fetter rivets, Conops and a guard of Britons brought Skell to the door.

  “Bring him in. Dismiss the guard,” Tros ordered, and Skell stood before him, red-eyed, with his red beard tangled into knots, holding his wrists as if a weight still hung from them and reeking of the fish-oil. Skell said nothing, which might or might not prove that he had learned a little wisdom in the solitary darkness of the prison hut.

  “You poor trickster, you puzzle me!” Tros remarked when he had stared at him a long time. “I can understand a whole rogue, who acts generously on occasion for the sake of some one else. You, when the gods provide you opportunity to play a man’s part, play it with one hand only, using the other against yourself. If you should save my life, I could not trust you not to try to kill me the next minute! Speak.”

  “What shall I say?” Skell answered.

  “Oho! So is it! We have learned a little shame, have we! Have fetters done to you what liberality could not? Do you feel like a leper at last, and would like to like yourself?”

  “Whatever I say, you will not believe,” Skell retorted, and his chin was, it may be, a trifle higher than he used to hold it when a bold man looked him in the face.

  Tros crashed his fist down on the table with force enough to drive a nail into the oak.

  “Pluto! Who are you to say what I believe or disbelieve! You poor fool! If you knew your own mind half as well as you think you can read another’s, I might feel some respect for you!”

  “I know my own mind,” Skell said, and his lips closed tight over his teeth. His red-rimmed eyes looked straight at Tros. “Well, well! Reveal yourself! I listen.”

  Tros threw his weight back in the chair and drummed with the fingers of his left hand on a heavy, jeweled sword-hilt.

  “I would rather be killed,” said Skell, “than to continue living, un
less my future holds more than the past. I didn’t ask to come into the world. Or, if I did, I don’t remember it. My mother was a British slave, but my father a free Northman, so, though I was not born free, I was set free before I was old enough to know the difference. You would think a freed man would have equal rights with others. But not so. I was known as Skell, the bastard. And I tell you, Lord Tros, I have had to use my wits to come by such small standing as I did have when you first knew me, until I was caught in the Glendwyr rebellion and enslaved and turned over to you like one of the steers men pay to the king in lieu of taxes. Such training as mine was, such self-defense against the Britons’ clannishness and such expedients to gain riches as the only way to recognition — birth having been denied me — make a liar of a man. Lord Tros, I daresay you would be a liar if you had had half my difficulties.

  “You don’t know what it means, Lord Tros, to feel that free men hate or despise you, and slaves regard you as one of themselves by right, only a bit more fortunate! Your equals claim a superiority that carks and galls, and you can’t break through the wall they raise. So you turn false, as much from hopelessness as from any other reason. I know I did.

  “I lent money, deprived men of their land. I played spy for the Romans long before Caesar ever thought of trying his invasion. I made men fear me whenever I could and however I could, and I betrayed them when it suited me. I would have betrayed those rebels whom I persuaded to rise against Caswallon if I had had time. But I was caught too soon, lost everything, and since then I have been your slave. Slavery did not sweeten my disposition. But of late I have been thinking in the dark.

  “Lord Tros, it takes time for a man to change himself. I have a habit, like a fox, of having always one hole in reserve, one back way out of everything. If I see a profit to myself and to another, instinct makes me keep another secret course clear, to which I can turn at a moment’s notice in order to wreck that other man. I have learned to trust nobody, because I knew none trusted me.

  “But now I have done with all that, and if it is too late, I am sorry. But I have done with it. I can’t change in a minute or a month. I can’t make you believe me, and I won’t try. But I have told the truth.”

  “By Zeus, I think you have! Is it the first time?” Tros asked.

  “No. I told the truth to your wife — who they tell me is dead — here in this house.”

  Tros leaned forward, chin on hand, elbow on the table.

  “Careful!” he warned. “If you lie now, your last chance is gone! What said my wife Helma?”

  “That if I would prove my good faith, she would be my friend.”

  “And you, she having said that, knowing of the Roman’s plot to carry her to Gaul, said nothing?”

  “Yes. I tell you a man can not change in a moment.”

  “And now you ask me—”

  “I ask nothing!” Skell interrupted. “You sent for me. You said to me, ‘Speak.’ I have spoken.”

  Tros leaned back again, the lids half-lowered over his amber eyes.

  “I think you have spoken truth,” he said at last. “And yet one swallow makes no summer. You have been a crafty liar in your day, Skell, and it may be now that you tell truth craftily, with hidden purposes behind that mask of yours. You and I — we are master and slave. What is your thought about that?”

  They breathed a dozen breaths before Skell answered:

  “It is the law. You own me. But as to the right and wrong of it, though I have owned slaves, I confess I don’t know.”

  “Then I will tell you,” said Tros. “The past is like a stream that turned the mill, and there are men who live in the past who float downstream and drown. Such men are slaves. The way to keep from drowning is to swim ashore. The shore is duty. And you are fortunate in that you have but one duty, whereas I have many. There are many men dependent on me, and you have one master to serve. I never sell slaves. I give them freedom when they earn it, but I make them prove to me their right to enjoy freedom, knowing that unless they have it in them to serve me faithfully they will never know enough to serve themselves. I do not bestow freedom as a reward. That is not my province.

  “I have not sufficient impudence to try to usurp God’s prerogative. But when I see a man, my slave by law, responsible to me, by acts, not mouthing of mock-loyalty, revealing manhood in himself, I know at once that man is fit for freedom. Skell, may my right hand betray me if I rob a man of anything I know is his! When you are fit for freedom you shall go free on the instant.”

  He was watching Skell’s face, scanning it as, on a poop at sea, he scanned the weather, leaving intuition to interpret what the eye observed. Skell spoke again:

  “Lord Tros, it is not easy for a proud man to accept slavery.”

  “I know nothing in life worth doing that is easy!” Tros retorted. “I think when we are dead we rest a while. Until then — work, with spells of sleep, in which our friends the gods pour into us such wisdom as our work has made us fit to hold!”

  “I am persuaded,” Skell said quietly.

  “Fool! I seek not to persuade you!” Tros sat up again and laid his great fist on the table. “You asked the way, like a man who is lost in the dark. I told it. Take or leave it! But as long as you are my slave, I will do my duty and demand obedience. I own your body. Nothing less than your own soul can unlock that barrier to freedom.”

  “I am persuaded, nevertheless,” Skell answered.

  It annoyed Tros to be told he had persuaded anybody. Adept at persuasion, by the very force of his own passion to decide all issues for himself, he liked to think that other men could judge as definitely as himself, and when they yielded he preferred to think they had seen eye to eye with him unaided.

  “Well, take warning. Try not to persuade me!” he retorted. “It is I who will decide whether you are fit for freedom, if ever that time comes. You are released from prison. Take care lest I have to lock you in again. Conops, give Skell the key of the hut he used to occupy, restore his name to the muster-roll, class him among the Northmen, and put him to work at dawn on rigging the main shrouds. Fall away. Shut the door after you.”

  CHAPTER 54. Fflur Pays a Debt

  Believing as I do that Dignity is the noblest attainment in this life, I refused a kingdom. I am free to obey my vision and to die pursuing it, in treaty with none, aiding and abetting whom I will. That purple cloak I wear, that angers kings, serves not unhandsomely to keep in mind my vow. And I have sworn no other vow than this, that no king could observe though a thousand priests should anoint him with all the holy oil on earth: I will fight for the weak against the strong, and for the lesser tyranny against the greater, until my Soul shall show me wiser wisdom. Without wisdom, dignity is a lying mask. Without courage, wisdom is the solemn vaporing of clowns. I saw not fit to cozen me a kingdom and be catspaw for the rogues. I see a war worth winning.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  THERE was not much Caswallon dared to do to relieve the boycott on the shipyard. Tros was forced to send small boats up-river, two and even three days’ journey, to trade for provisions. His hired blacksmiths deserted, and he, with his own hand, had to teach selected slaves the anvil work and such odds and ends of casting as remained to do.

  Then there were the huge and complicated catapults to set in place, with double uprights rising thirty feet above the deck, from the top of which ton- weights of lead fell on to basketwork cushions below the waterline, providing force for the projection of the hot stinkballs along a trough that could be moved for elevation and direction.

  Last, but not least, there were provisions for a voyage to be accumulated. He would have to start shorthanded, but even so he had a crew of two hundred and fifty men to provide for. There was deer meat to be smoked, and fish; wheat by the ton; turnips, carrots and dried apples that Fflur showed him how to prepare and that the druids said would help to prevent scurvy; mutton, beef and hog meat to be salted down; tallow by the hogshead, for a ship needs grease as fire needs fuel; charcoal
for the cooking; medicines begged from the druids, who according to their law might not refuse, but who stipulated, nevertheless, that Tros should be gone before midsummer day.

  He held out for more than medicines before he struck that bargain with them. As any looker-on with half an eye could see, the druids were fallen from their high estate since the great Lord Druid Taliesan departed to another world. Ambition had developed. There were rival factions for the leadership, some seeking to increase their influence by cautiously intriguing with the kings, some on the other hand plotting to weaken the kings that their own authority might be greater, but all agreed on one point — Tros was dangerous, because he knew too much.

  He went to interview their spokesmen in a sun-warmed clearing where great stones stood in a circle far within an oak forest. That interview seemed barren of results, but later they came to see him in the shipyard, secretly at night, lest men should say they were condoning sorcery. They offered medicines and some instructions how to use them, and they smiled when Tros made heavier demands, because they knew he intended to leave Britain in any event.

  But Caswallon had advised Tros, and Fflur had seconded, with her usual gray-eyed insight into how to manage men.

  “You are going to Rome to seek peace for us Britons,” said Fflur. “It is fair we should pay for it, but it is not fair that this corner of Britain should pay all the price, or nearly all. The other tribes are just as much concerned as we are.”

  “Aye, but whoever can make them pay has genius!” Caswallon snorted.

  “The druids have already made them pay,” Fflur answered. “They, we, all of us have paid the druids ten times over for much more than they will ever do. It was all right when Taliesan lived. He was a true Lord Druid and none grudged the tithe of gold and pearls. Whoever had pearls, gave of his own free will the greatest. Whoever had gold, gave a tenth. So the druids are rich.”