Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Suddenly, under the pressure of personal interest, his brain cleared.

  “Yes, yes, the tax!” he said, gesturing with his left hand to the secretary. “Hold that order on the treasury until Pkauchios pays the twenty thousand sesterces in coin. Otherwise the tax farmers will accuse me of irregularities.”

  He remained standing until Pkauchios had returned the parchment to the secretary, then sat down and drank from the silver wine cup that Chloe held for him.

  “Divine Chloe, now you are a freed woman, but I have offended Pkauchios,” he said, and kissed her. “No more will he read the omens for me.”

  Most of the guests were growing very drunk, and the girls who had been dancing on the stage came down to sprawl on the couches beside them. One of the two military tribunes noisily demanded that Pkauchios should deliver an augury. The Egyptian glared at him with concentrated scorn, but Balbus heard the repeated demand for an augury and approved it.

  “Pkauchios!” he shouted. “Prove to us you are a true seer and no caviller at fortune!”

  Pkauchios rose, glaring balefully at the drunken men and nearly naked women sprawling on the couches. It was nearly a minute before his eyes sought Balbus’ face.

  “I see fire!” he said then in a harsh voice. “I see a whole town burning and a thousand men fighting the flames!”

  “Thank the gods, not Gades!” Balbus muttered. “If it were Gades it would be twenty thousand men!”

  “I will read the stars!” said Pkauchios and with a bow of angry dignity began to stride toward the dais in order to leave the room by the big door behind Balbus.

  It was Chloe who intercepted him. She broke away from Balbus’ arms and ran to meet him midway of the room, putting both hands on his shoulders. Pkauchios stepped back from her.

  “Ingrate!” he growled between set teeth. The coiled asp on his forehead was a perfect complement to the hatred in his eyes. Chloe began whispering to him rapidly, but Pkauchios’ face was like a wall against her words.

  There began a noise of shouting in the court. The door behind Balbus swung open and a centurion entered breathless. Balbus jerked back the curtains.

  “Well? What?” he demanded.

  “Fire!” said the centurion. “A town is burning about twenty miles away. We think it is Porta Vallecula. The tribune Publius Columella has marched all available men to extinguish the flames. He requests you to make arrangements in behalf of those whose homes are burned.”

  “They shall have work in the quarries!” Balbus answered. “Bid him bring the destitute to Gades!”

  The centurion saluted and withdrew. Balbus closed the curtains with a shudder at the draft, then stared at Pkauchios, who was still scowling at Chloe; but it was now Pkauchios who was whispering. His lips moved slowly, as if he were measuring threats between his teeth.

  “A marvel of a man!” said Balbus. “Did you hear him just now say he could see fire? Fire and a thousand men?”

  Chloe had moved so that she could catch Tros’s eyes; it seemed to him that she was trying to signal to him almost imperceptibly. He touched Balbus’ elbow.

  “It is too early yet to read the stars. He should read them nearer midnight.”

  Balbus glanced at Tros impatiently.

  “It was he,” he said, “who prophesied your coming and Caesar’s death.”

  “Near midnight is the time,” Tros answered. “I am a seaman. I know.”

  Suddenly Chloe screamed so shrilly that she startled all the amorously drunken guests and brought them sitting upright, staring at her. She clapped both hands to her eyes and ran toward the dais, stumbling up the steps and flinging herself on her knees by Tros’s couch, sobbing.

  “Stop him!” she whispered. “Stop him!”

  Then, as if realizing she had come to the wrong couch, still sobbing with her hands before her eyes, she rose again and staggered into Balbus’ arms.

  “He cursed me!” she moaned. “He cursed me!”

  Balbus began to try to comfort her, patting her between the shoulders, burying his own face in her hair, which gave her an opportunity to catch Tros’s eye again. She made a grimace at him and jerked her head in the direction of the stage, then resumed her sobbing. Pkauchios strode solemnly toward the door. Balbus, distracted by Chloe’s grief, took no notice of him.

  “Music!” Tros suggested, nudging Balbus’ elbow. “Who is in charge of the entertainers? It is music that—”

  Balbus laid Chloe sobbing on the couch. She was crying, “He cursed me! Oh, he cursed me!”

  “Pkauchios!” he thundered and the Egyptian turned to face him. “Never was such a miserable farce in my house as this night’s entertainment! Where are the singers? Why has the music ceased? You promised me such song and dancing for tonight as should—”

  “You bade me read the stars,” Pkauchios retorted angrily.

  “No insolence!” said Balbus. “To your duty! Read me the stars at midnight.”

  Pkauchios turned back toward the stage and gave his orders to a wizened man with painted cheeks, who disappeared behind the stage. The orchestra began a brilliant, eccentric tune; the kitchen slaves came hurrying with a dozen dishes heaped with steaming food, and the wine-bearers went the rounds. Laughter and conversation began again as a dozen girls writhed on to the stage to perform one of the dances that had made Gades infamous. Chloe ceased her sobbing. Balbus drank deep. Chloe begged leave from him to go and wash her face before she danced again. The slaves filled up the wine cups and Balbus, refusing food, leaned over toward Tros, his drunken brain leaping from one passionate emotion to another.

  “We were speaking of Caesar. I must have no official knowledge. Do what you will suddenly, at the first chance that presents itself. Then go to Rome and I will send letters overland recommending you to the favor of Pompeius, who will be absolute master of Rome as soon as Caesar is out of the way.”

  “Do you wish me to kill him in your house?” Tros asked. “Kill him anywhere, so be you do it!”

  The women on the stage danced in a delirium of orgy, parodying nature, blaspheming art, ideals, decency. Red light and incense smoke distorted the infernal scene; low drum-beats throbbed through it. One of the military tribunes stood and began singing drunkenly a song that had been outlawed by the Roman aediles. Balbus lay chin on hands, staring at the stage. Tros felt a hand on his back, heard a whisper. Chloe had crept back between the curtains.

  “Simon sends word there are soldiers coming through the city gate!”

  She slipped away and knelt beside Balbus, who threw an arm around her, but went on staring at the stage. Tros did not move. He was watching Pkauchios, who was listening to the whisperings of a slave. The Egyptian’s face was a picture of emotions stirring beneath a mask worn very thin.

  There began to be a creeping up Tros’s spine. He felt the crisis had arrived too soon. Something, he could not guess what, was happening to upset calculations. He glanced at Balbus, who was almost sleeping; Chloe with subtly caressing fingers was stroking the back of his head and his temples. She smiled and nodded, her eyes shining with excitement. Plainly she knew what was happening. Tros drew out a little bag of pearls, poured them into the palm of his hand, showed them to her and put them away again. She nodded, but he knew her delight in intrigue had run away with her. She would let the pearls go for the thrill of a dramatic climax.

  The girls on the stage writhed naked in infernal symbolism. The stringed instruments and muted drums tortured imagination. Pkauchios got up and left the room by a door close to the stage and Balbus, staring at the dancers, did not notice him. Tros felt for the bugle underneath his cloak, wondering whether Orwic and the Eskualdenak were ready. It was not yet nearly midnight. Possibly some spy had seen them in the quarry; perhaps the soldiers coming through the city gate were on their way to surround them in the dark. But if so, why had nobody warned Balbus?

  The suspense became intolerable. He made up his mind to wind a signal on the golden bugle. Better to summon his men and run for it t
han to run the risk of having them made prisoners. But as he clutched at the bugle Pkauchios returned and stood with his back to the stage, both hands raised, eyes ablaze, his body trembling with excitement.

  “Balbus!” he shouted. “Caesar is dead! The news has come from Gaul!”

  Balbus sat up suddenly and stared. The music stopped. Chloe slipped away from him and stood at the edge of the dais. The dancers ceased their writhing. Pkauchios signaled to Tros with a gesture like a dagger thrust, then threw up his right hand and shouted:

  “Let the trumpets peal the verdict of the sky!”

  Tros clutched his sword. He thought he heard the tramp of armed men, but it was drowned by a flourish of trumpets. There was a clang of shields on armor. He leaped to his feet as the door behind the curtain opened suddenly. A hand wrenched back the curtains of the dais and revealed Julius Caesar with an armored Roman veteran on either side of him!

  Caesar was in white, unhelmeted, a wreath of laurel on his brow, his scarlet cloak thrown back over his shoulder and his lean face smiling like a god’s, inscrutable, alert, amused, as calm as marble. The centurion at his right hand raised a richly decorated shield and shouted:

  “Callus Julius Caesar, imperator, proconsul and commander of the Roman troops in Gaul!”

  CHAPTER 81. Caesar — Imperator!

  Aye, measure. Milestones; beacons — distance from a headland to a headland; time; the price of onions and sailcloth; speed; angle of heel of a ship in a gale of wind. A ship is built by measure. But the measure by which one man is greater than another, show it to me! I have seen a pox slay thousands. Is a pox, then, greater than the wisely gentle whom it slew with its foulness? Blow ye your boasts! I have a sail and the sun and stars to steer by toward open sea.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  THE DANCERS vanished. The women sprawling on the couches fled. Balbus and his guests staggered to their feet.

  “Caesar!” said Balbus.

  Caesar smiled genially. If he had noticed Tros yet, he gave no sign of it.

  “No, no, Balbus! Pray be seated. Pray don’t disturb yourself.”

  His voice, a shade ironical, was reassuring. There was no hint in it of violence. But behind him were more armed men than Tros could count from where he stood. They were formed up in a solid phalanx in the hall.

  “Don’t let me interrupt your gaiety,” said Caesar. “I have already had my supper.”

  “There came news of your death!” Balbus stammered.

  “I overheard it.”

  “Does it seem true to you?” asked Caesar, smiling again.

  His eyes began to scrutinize the guests, who saluted as he noticed them, but he ignored Tros at the corner of the dais. He appeared to Tros to be deliberately giving Balbus time to recover his wits. Tros, the golden bugle in his left, kept his right hand on his sword-hilt, listening, trying to discover how many armed men Caesar had with him. None noticed Pkauchios, until suddenly Chloe screamed as the Egyptian sprang at the dais from behind Tros — mad, foaming at the mouth.

  “Slay!” he screamed, striking at Tros with his left hand, trying to push him forward toward Balbus, then rushing at Caesar.

  Tros tripped him. He fell on his back on the dais, striking with a wave- edged dagger at the air.

  “Dog of a Samothracian!” he yelled. Frenzied, he leaped to his feet with the energy of an old ape at bay and sprang at Tros, who knocked him down again. A legionary stepped out of the ranks at Caesar’s back and calmly drew a sword across his throat.

  “Now I am no longer a freed woman. I am free!” said Chloe. “And Balbus, you need never pay that debt!”

  Caesar looked bored by the interruption. Slaves came and dragged away Pkauchios’ body, Balbus’ steward superintending, making himself very inconspicuous. A wine-bearer poured choice Falernian over the blood on the dais carpet, and another slave mopped it up with his own long loin-cloth, running naked from the room. The steward threw salt on the carpet and covered the spot with a service napkin of blue linen.

  Chloe stepped straight up to Caesar and knelt smiling up at him with all the charm she could contrive.

  “Imperator,” she said, “I am Chloe, who danced for you in Gaul — she whom Horatius Verres trusted.”

  Horatius Verres stepped out from behind the ranks of legionaries and stood between Tros and Caesar, watching with a quiet smile on his handsome face. He was dressed as a slave in a drab-colored tunic of coarse cloth.

  “Tut-tut!” said Caesar. “Go and clothe yourself!”

  Horatius Verres made a humorous, helpless gesture. Balbus’ steward touched him from behind and beckoned. He shrugged his shoulders and went with the steward to be rearrayed in borrowed finery. Tros made up his mind there were not so many men at Caesar’s back; he raised the bugle to his lips and Caesar noticed him at last.

  “Your men are here already,” he said. “They are behind me!”

  As if in answer to his words there began a roar of fighting. A centurion barked an order. About half of Caesar’s own men faced about and vanished toward the front of the house, but Caesar took no notice whatever of the disturbance.

  “Balbus,” he said, “a noble enemy is preferable to any faithless friend. The story goes you sent men into Gaul to murder me.”

  Chloe was still kneeling. She caught her breath and glanced sharply at Balbus’ face. Balbus, deathly white, threw up his right hand.

  “Caesar, by the immortal gods I swear—”

  Something choked Balbus. He coughed. He had become aware that Tros was staring at him. He drew three breaths before he found his voice again:

  “ — that sorcerer, now dead, that Egyptian Pkauchios — and—”

  He turned and looked straight at Tros, began to raise his arm to point at him. Tros drew his sword.

  “Balbus,” said Caesar, “you have been well served! Well for you that Tros of Samothrace put into Gades!”

  Balbus gasped. Tros stood with drawn sword watching Caesar’s face. A centurion came pushing past the legionaries and whispered to Caesar from behind him. Horatius Verres reentered the room, handsome, smiling, splendid in a Roman tunic with a broad blue border, and stood close to Tros again, glancing at the drawn sword with a humorous expression.

  Balbus’ brain was wavering between surrender to the fumes of wine and a sort of half hysterical recovery. Tros’s mind was on Orwic and his men, but he could not fight his way past Caesar’s legionaries. Caesar fascinated him. The man’s cool self-command, his manners, daring and superb contempt for any genius less comprehensive that his own stirred grudging admiration.

  Chloe broke the silence —

  “Imperator—”

  But Caesar checked her with a gesture of his left hand. He was listening. Tros, too, caught the sound of footsteps surging over the porch into the house.

  “Orwic!” he shouted.

  There came an answering yell, and half the legionaries behind Caesar faced about.

  “Orwic, hold your men!” Tros roared in Gaulish. Then, watching Caesar’s face, “Let none escape! Let a hundred of your men surround the house and guard all exits!”

  He laughed. He heard Orwic’s boyish voice repeating the order to the Eskualdenak.

  “Caesar,” he said, “I have more than five men to your one! The camp is empty, the Roman legion went to a burning village—”

  “Yes,” said Caesar, “but that was not your doing, Tros, so you must not boast of it.”

  “Caesar!” said Balbus suddenly, recovering his wits, “this is not your province!”

  He glanced at Tros, a fever of excitement in his eyes. The legionaries behind Caesar moved alertly to protect him.

  “The illustrious Tros and I are enemies,” said Caesar, “whose activities are not confined to provinces or marred by malice. We use common sense. I have not interfered with your government, Balbus. You must pardon me if I have interrupted even your—” he glanced at the stage— “amusement.”

  Tros’s brain was speculating f
uriously. There were only two things Caesar could be doing. Either he had surprises up his sleeve and was talking to gain time, or else he was deliberately trying to bring Balbus to his senses with a view of getting his gratitude and making use of him. In either event, time was all-important.

  “Caesar,” he said, “why did you come to Gades? What do you want?”

  “Yes, Caesar, what do you want?” demanded Balbus. Caesar smiled.

  “For one thing, courtesy!” he answered. “Balbus, I consider you a churlish host! You offer me no seat; no welcome. You oppose me guiltily, as if I caught you in the act of treachery. Whereas I came for your sake.”

  But Balbus was too drunk to take a hint.

  “You came uninvited!” he said, sneering. Caesar smiled again and glanced at Tros:

  “I think we both did! Tros, for what reason did you come to Gades?”

  “To prevent you from invading Britain, Caesar!”

  “Imperator, that is the truth!” said Chloe, and she would have said more, but Caesar silenced her with a frown.

  “Are you a slave?” he asked. “No, Caesar, I am free!”

  “Then go to Horatius Verres and keep still.”

  Chloe sprang gaily to Verres’ side and threw her arms around him, kissed him, or else whispered in his ear. Tros suspected the latter. Orwic was having trouble with the Eskualdenak, who were anxious to begin looting Balbus’ treasures. In the outer hall his voice kept rising sharply. There were hot answers in almost incomprehensible Gaulish, and every once in a while a Roman centurion added his staccato warning to the noise. Horatius Verres spoke at last.

  “Imperator,” he said quietly, “I had the honor to report to you that Tros refused to murder Balbus, and you saw that when Pkauchios rushed at you, it was Tros who prevented. Now Chloe tells me that while Tros and Balbus supped together they discussed—”

  “Silence!” snapped Balbus angrily. “Caesar, will you take the word of a dancing girl against me?”

  Caesar eyed him with amused contempt.

  “If she should testify for you, should I accept her evidence then?” he asked. Then after a pause, “Let Horatius Verres speak.”