Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “For what purpose?”

  “To stir Caesar’s enemies against him; or, it may be, to persuade his friends of the unwisdom of his course. I hope to keep him from invading Britain.”

  “Who is this friend whom you propose to find in Gades?”

  “Yourself, for all I know,” said Tros, spreading his shoulders and smiling. “I offer quid pro quo. A friend of mine may count on me for friendship.”

  Balbus was silent for a long time, appearing to be studying Tros’s face, but there was a look behind his eyes as if he were revolving a dozen issues in his mind.

  “You took a hostage from me!” he said suddenly.

  “Aye, and a good looking one!” Tros answered. “I was fortunate. You shall have him back when I leave Gades. I am told he knows your secrets.”

  “What if I hold you against him?” Balbus sneered; but he could not keep his eyes from glancing at Tros’s sword.

  Tros smiled at him.

  “Why, in that case, my lieutenant would take my ship to Ostia. And I wonder whether that hostage, whom he will there surrender to the Romans, will keep your secrets as stoutly as the woman in the court just now kept hers!”

  Balbus glared angrily, but Tros smiled back at him, his hand remaining on his sword-hilt.

  “However, why do we talk of reprisals?” Tros went on after an awkward pause. “Balbus, son of Balbus, is it wisdom to reject a friendship that the gods have brought you on a western wind?”

  Balbus looked startled, but tried to conceal it. Chloe, her back to the door, took courage in her teeth and interrupted in a strained voice:

  “What said Pkauchios? A red ship with a purple sail? A bold man in a purple cloak?”

  “Peace, thou!” commanded Balbus, but in another second he was smiling at her. “Chloe,” he said, “you dance for me tonight?”

  She nodded.

  “As long as Pkauchios owns me.”

  Balbus stared at her, frowning:

  “Pkauchios will never manumit you!” he said. “You know too many secrets.”

  Chloe bit her lip, as if she regretted having spoken, but her eyes were on Tros’s face and appeared to be urging him to follow the cue she had given.

  “Balbus, what if I should save your life?” Tros asked. “What then? Or shall I sail away and leave you?”

  Again Chloe interrupted:

  “Balbus! What said Pkauchios? What said the auguries? ‘Death stalks you in the streets of Gades unless Fortune intervenes!’”

  Balbus stared at Tros again.

  “How come you to know about conspiracies in Gades?” he demanded.

  “I, too, consult the auguries,” said Tros. “For my ship’s sake I read the stars as some men read a woman’s eyes. The stars have blinked me into Gades. The very whales have beckoned me! My dreams for nine nights past in storms at sea have been of Gades and a man’s life I shall save.”

  Balbus’ lips opened a little and his lower jaw came slowly forward. He used his left hand for a shield against the sunlight streaming through the window and, leaning sidewise, peered at Tros again.

  “You look like a blunt, honest seaman,” he remarked, “save that you are dressed too handsomely and overbold!”

  “My father was a prince of Samothrace,” Tros answered; whereat Balbus shrugged his shoulders. It was no part of the policy of Roman governors to appear much thrilled by foreign titles of nobility.

  Now Tros was utterly perplexed what course to take, for which reason he was careful to look confident. He knew the information he had from Chloe might be a net-work of lies. There might be no truth whatever, for instance, in her statement that Caesar was on his way to Gades; on the other hand it might be true, and Balbus might be perfectly aware of it. Examining Balbus’ eyes, he became sure of one thing — Balbus was no idealist; a mere suggestion of an altruistic aim would merely stir the man’s suspicion.

  “I come to fish in troubled waters,” Tros remarked. “I seek advantage in your disadvantage.”

  Suddenly, as if some friendly god had whispered in his ear, he thought of the Balearic slingers on the beach and how readily their officer had yielded to Chloe’s arrogant support of Simon. He remembered that shrug of the shoulders when she promised to praise him to Balbus.

  “Are your troops dependable?” he asked, knowing that mutiny was as perennial as the seasons wherever Roman troops were kept too long in idleness. He began to wonder whether, perhaps, Balbus had not sent for Caesar to help him out of an emergency. Secretaries, slaves might have spread such a rumor. Chloe might have magnified it and distorted it for reasons of her own; the Gades dancing girls, he knew, were capable of any intrigue. For that matter Horatius Verres might be Balbus’ spy, not Caesar’s.

  But Balbus’ startled stare was more or less convincing. And it dawned on Tros that a Roman governor who felt entirely sure of his own authority would not yield so complacently to that hostage trick; a man with his nerve unshaken would have countered promptly by arresting Tros himself. Balbus was worried, nervous, trying to conceal the fact. Subduing irritation, he ignored Tros’s question and retorted with another:

  “You used Caesar’s seal! What do you know of Caesar’s movements?”

  “None except Caesar can guess what he will do next,” Tros said, trying to suggest by his expression that he knew more than he proposed to tell.

  “Word came,” said Balbus, “that you fought a battle with his biremes. I have heard that the druids of Gaul report to you all Caesar’s moves in advance. Can you tell me where he is now? If you tell the truth, I will do you any favor within my power.”

  The pupils of Tros’s amber eyes contracted suddenly. His head jerked slightly in Chloe’s direction and Balbus took the hint.

  “Chloe,” he said, “go you to that woman who was tortured. Help to bandage her. Condole with her. Try to persuade her to confess to you the names of the conspirators who are plotting against my life. Tell her that if she confesses she shall not be tortured any more, and she may save others from the rack.”

  Chloe left the room, and Tros did not care to turn his head to see what effect the dismissal had on her.

  “Now, what do you know of Caesar?” Balbus asked.

  Tros smiled. He was determined not to answer, until sure of where the forks of Balbus’ own dilemma pricked. And the longer Tros hesitated the more confident Balbus grew that Tros knew more than he would tell without persuasion.

  “You are Caesar’s enemy?” he asked.

  Tros nodded.

  “I am of the party of Pompeius Magnus,” Balbus remarked, narrowing his eyes.

  Tros nodded again.

  “It would not offend Pompeius Magnus if — ah — if death should overtake Caesar,” Balbus remarked, and looked the other way.

  “So I should imagine,” Tros said, watching him.

  Balbus stroked his chin. It had been beautifully shaven. Tros kept silence. Balbus had to resume the conversation:

  “If Caesar should visit Gades and should die, all Rome would sigh with relief; but the Senate would assert its own dignity by crucifying any Roman who had killed him. You understand me?”

  Again Tros nodded. He was having hard work to suppress excitement, but his breath came regularly, slowly. Even his hand on the jeweled sword-hilt rested easily. Balbus appeared irritated at his calmness. He spoke sharply —

  “But if an enemy of Caesar slew him” — Tros passed his hand over his mouth to hide a smile— “that man would have a thousand friends in Rome!” Balbus went on. Then, after a moment’s pause, his eyes on Tros, “Caesar’s corpse could harm no friends of yours in Britain!”

  For as long as thirty breaths Tros and Balbus eyed each other. Then:

  “Spies have informed me,” said Balbus, “of a rumor that Caesar intends to come here. What else than that news brought you into Gades? Did you not come to waylay and kill him?”

  Tros assumed the sliest possible expression.

  “I should need such guarantees of safety and immunity as ev
en Balbus might find it hard to give,” he remarked.

  “We can discuss that later on,” said Balbus. “Caesar moves swiftly, and secretly, but I know where he was three days ago. He can not be here for four or five days yet. We have time.”

  However, Tros remembered his friend Simon — probably already home by now and in abject terror awaiting news of the interview. Also he thought of Chloe. Those were two whose loyalty he needed to bind to himself, by all means and as soon as possible.

  “I will make a first condition now,” he said abruptly. “Simon, the Jew, owes money but can not pay. He says you owe him money and will not pay. Will you settle with Simon?”

  Balbus looked exasperated.

  “Bacchus!” he swore under his breath.

  It needed small imagination to explain what situation he was in. Like any other Roman governor, he had been forced to send enormous sums to Rome to defray his own debts and to bribe the professional blackmailers who lived by accusing absentees before the Senate. He had not been long enough in Gades to accumulate reserves of extorted coin.

  Tros understood the situation perfectly. He also knew how men in debt snatch eagerly at temporary respite.

  “There is no haste for the money,” he remarked. “Let Simon write an order on your treasury which you accept for payment, say, in six months’ time.”

  Balbus nodded.

  “That would be an unusual concession,” he said, “from a man in my position. But I see no serious objection.”

  “Would any one in Gades dare to refuse to accept such a document in payment of a debt?” Tros asked him.

  Balbus stiffened, instantly assertive of his dignity.

  “Some men will dare almost anything — once!” he remarked. “It would be a dangerous indiscretion!”

  “Even if it were the price of the manumission of a slave?”

  “Even so.”

  “Very well,” said Tros. “There is a female slave in Gades whom I covet. Can you order the sale of that slave to me?”

  “Not so,” said Balbus. “But I can order the slave manumitted at the price at which the owner has declared that slave for taxation purposes, and provided the slave pays the manumission tax of ten percent on her market value.”

  “I am at the age when a woman means more to me than money,” Tros remarked.

  Balbus nodded. That was no new thing. The dry smile on his face revealed that he thought he had Tros in the hollow of his hand.

  “But how did you make the acquaintance of this slave in Gades?” he asked curiously.

  Tros could lie on the spur of a moment as adroitly as he could change the ship’s helm to defeat the freaks of an Atlantic wind. “She was sold under my eyes in Greece, two years ago. I was outbidden,” he answered promptly. “I learned she was brought to Gades and, if you must know, that is why I risked coming here. She is extremely beautiful. I saw her just now in the street.”

  “Do you know who owns her?”

  “I will find out.”

  “Well,” said Balbus, “make your inquiries cautiously, or her owner may grow suspicious and spirit her out of sight. You would better get her name and legal description, her owner’s name and her taxable value, have the document drawn and bring it to me to sign before the owner learns anything about it.”

  “When? Where?” Tros asked him.

  Balbus turned in his chair suddenly and looked straight into Tros’s face, staring long and keenly at him.

  “At my house. Tonight,” he said deliberately, using the word with emphasis, as a man might who was naming an enormous stake in a game of chance. “I bid you to my house to supper at one hour after sunset. There is an Egyptian named Pkauchios in Gades, an astrologer of great ability in the prediction of events. For two months he has predicted daily that Caesar will die very soon by violence. Last night, between midnight and the dawn, he came to me predicting your arrival after sunrise. He prophesied that you shall serve me in a matter of life and death. I am thinking, if it should be my life and the death of Caesar—”

  “I must consult this Pkauchios!” said Tros, and Balbus nodded.

  “I will send you to him.”

  “No,” said Tros, “for then he will know I come from you. And if he has lied to you, he will lie to me. But if I go alone I may get the truth from him. I will not slay Caesar unless I know the elements are all propitious.”

  “Go to him then,” Balbus answered. “Make yourself as inconspicuous in Gades as you can. Bring me an exact account tonight of all that Pkauchios has said to you. I will sign the order for Simon’s money and for the manumission of that slave girl just to let you feel my generosity. Thereafter, we will discuss the terms on which you shall — ah — shall — ah — act as the instrument of fate.”

  CHAPTER 77. Conspiracy

  Money? Aye, I need it. But has money brains, heart, virtue, intelligence, courage, faith, hope, vision? He who sets his course by money sees a false star. He who measures by it is deceived, and his measure is false wherewith he measures all else.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  THE LITTER Tros had hired had vanished when he left the courtroom. In its place was a sumptuous thing with gilded pomegranates at the corners of the curtained awning, borne by eight slaves in clean white uniform. An Alexandrian eunuch, who seemed to have enough authority to keep the crowd at bay, came forward, staff in hand, to greet Tros at the courthouse steps.

  “My master the noble Pkauchios invites you,” he said, bowing, gesturing toward the litter.

  “Where is my own litter?” Tros demanded.

  The eunuch smiled, bowing even more profoundly.

  “My master would be ashamed that you should ride in such a hired thing to his house. I took the liberty in his name of dismissing it and paying the trifling charges.”

  Tros hesitated. He would have preferred to go first to Simon’s house, supposing that the Jew had hurried home to wait for him, but as he glanced to left and right in search of Simon’s litter the eunuch interpreted that thought.

  “Simon the Jew is also my master’s guest,” he announced.

  Tros disbelieved that. It was incredible that Simon should accept hospitality from a man whom he had so recently described as a vile magician. But the decurion in charge of the soldiers at the courthouse entrance nodded confirmation:

  “Simon went to have his fatness charmed away,” he suggested with a grin. “Pkauchios has a name for working miracles.”

  Reflecting that in any event he had better see Orwic as soon as possible, Tros rolled into the splendid litter. There was no sign of Chloe and he did not care to arouse comment by asking for her. He was borne away in haste, the soldiers shouting to the crowd to make way for the litter and, after a long ride through well-swept but fetid smelling streets, he was set down at Pkauchios’ front gate, where the eunuch ushered him into the marble house, not announcing him, not entering the incense-smelling room with him, but drawing back the clashing curtains, motioning him through and closing them behind him.

  He was greeted by Orwic’s boyish laugh and by a gasp from Simon. The two were seated face to face on couches near the window, unable to converse since Simon knew hardly any Gaulish and both of them as pleased to see Tros as if he were a meal produced by a miracle for hungry men. Orwic ran to greet him, threw an arm around him, trying to say everything at once in an excited whisper.

  “A great wizard. This must be the man our Lord Druid might have sent you to if you had only listened — made me a proposal — slip the Eskualdenak ashore — he says he knows how to manage that — hide them in a place he’ll show me — kill Balbus tonight — lead an uprising against the Romans — carry the rebellion into Gaul — no need then to go to Rome — we’ll keep the Romans’ hands too full to invade Britain!”

  Tros snorted. One sniff was enough. There was a woman smell on Orwic’s clothes.

  “Magic works many ways,” he remarked, and then thought of the curtains behind him. “We will consider the proposal,” he add
ed in a somewhat louder voice.

  He approached Simon, who appeared too exhausted to rise from the couch and, glimpsing through the open window his great ship at anchor in the distance, he paused a moment, thrilled by the sight, before he spoke in Aramaic, his lips hardly moving, in an under tone that Orwic hardly caught:

  “Out of the teeth of danger we will snatch success, but you must trust me. We speak now for an unseen audience.”

  He could feel the espionage, although there was no sign of it. He leaned through the open window, but no eavesdroppers lurked within earshot. He strode back to the curtains through which he had entered, jerked them back suddenly, and found the hall empty. There was another door a few feet from the throne with the arms of gilded ivory. He jerked back its curtains, too, and found the next room vacant, silent, beautifully furnished but affording no hiding place. There was a lute left lying by a gilded chair and the same smell of scented women that he had noticed on Orwic’s clothes, but the wearers of the scent had vanished.

  Nevertheless, he was convinced he was being spied on. He could feel the nervous tension that an unseen eye produces, and he suspected the wall at the back of the ivory throne might be hollow; the corner behind the throne was not square but built out, forming two angles and a short, flat wall. The canopy over the throne cast shadow, and there was a deal of decoration there that might conceal a peep-hole. He signed to Orwic to sit down by the window and, standing so that his voice might carry straight toward that corner wall, himself full in the sunlight, stroking his chin with an air of great deliberation, he spoke in Gaulish:

  “It is good we may speak among ourselves before the Egyptian comes. What kind of man is he?”

  “A nobleman!” said Orwic. “A good hater of the Romans! It was his slaves who rescued me from some ruffians in a mean street. He is not a false magician but a true one. He had prophesied the coming of your ship, and my landing by night and being lost in Gades. He has read our destiny in the stars and he refused, like a true magician, to say a word about it until I almost forced it out of him.”