Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  TROS wished now he had come to Rome without his men — even without Orwic. He would have been safer without them. He could easily have hired two dozen Romans to act as bodyguard; he might even have bought gladiators; there were second-hand ones, maimed, that could be bought cheap. But all those possibilities had occurred to him before he left his ship, outside Tarentum Harbor, and his real reason for bringing both Northmen and Britons remained as important as ever; they were hostages.

  However much he trusted Sigurdsen, he knew he could better trust him not to sail away and turn to piracy so long as eight of his nearest relatives and a dozen other countrymen were ashore and counting on him to keep tryst. The Britons on the ship were not particularly loyal to Orwic; they might not hesitate to leave him languishing on foreign soil; but the Northmen were as loyal to one another as even Tros himself could be to any man who served him honestly.

  But that consideration made it all the more essential to save the men he had with him. If they should lose their lives in a fair fight, that might strengthen the bond between him and their relatives on board the ship, it being Northman aspiration to die fighting; but to lose them like a dunder-headed yokel choused out of his wares would be an insult and a breach of trust for which no Northman would forgive him any more than he, Tros, could forgive himself.

  He could see through Zeuxis’ subtlety. He suspected the Greek had all along known that the praetor’s men were nowhere near his house. Zeuxis might have staged that panic in order to introduce Nepos, who, he probably felt sure, would try to get Tros’s Northmen for the school of gladiators. Should Tros’s men be seized on some pretext, it would be a typical Greek trick to ask for pearls with which to purchase their release. And no bag of pearls would be deep enough. He saw through Zeuxis.

  That being so, he surprised him. He preferred, if destiny intended he should lose his men, to do the thing himself, and blame himself, rather than enrich a treacherous acquaintance — and the more so when suspicion was corroborated by the Northmen after he reached Zeuxis’ house.

  He went straight to the Northmen’s quarters. There were lodged in a barn between the cow-byre and the long, low, crowded sheds in which the Greek’s slaves lived. When he aroused them from sleep they reported there had been no difficulties such as Zeuxis’ slave had spoken of. They had not feared for Tros. They hardly knew he was away. Some slave-women who knew Gaulish had made love to them and tried to persuade them to get drunk. But they had kept their promise and behaved themselves, suspecting trickery. Besides, they had not known when Tros might need their services, so they had slept whenever visitors would let them. Between times they had mended foot-gear, persuading the Britons to do the same thing, to keep the Britons out of mischief.

  There was nothing to be done with the weapons or baggage but to leave them all in Zeuxis’ charge. Tros did not dare to enter Rome with armed men at his back. Not even Pompey would have let his followers wear more than daggers openly, when they were once inside the city walls, unless the senate should expressly grant permission — not that Pompey cared a copper as for what the senate thought, but to have done so would have been tantamount to a declaration that he had assumed the sole dictatorship — which would have brought Caesar hurrying from Gaul to wrest it from him.

  So Tros told the Northmen to hide daggers in their tunics and make bundles of their other weapons to be left wherever Zeuxis cared to stow them. He disarmed the Britons altogether, since he could not depend on them to keep their heads in an emergency. Then, telling each man to equip himself with a flask and haversack, he bribed Zeuxis’ steward heavily to serve out rations for a day or two. Experience had taught him that the Northmen’s zeal depended on their stomachs much more than was the case with men from southern lands. Well fed, he would have dared to lead them against twice their tale of Roman legionaries; hungry, they would run away from ghosts.

  Then he went to his room and dressed himself in his gorgeous oriental cloak and Grecian tunic, presently joining Zeuxis at the supper-table, where they were waited on by girls — descendants of the decadents who ruined Greece. It was the steward, whispering, who broke the news to Zeuxis that Tros’s men were ready for a night-march.

  “You desert me?” Zeuxis asked, with viperish resentment in his voice. But he was not so startled that he did not gesture to a slave girl to pay Tros more intimate attention. “Surely you will sleep here? You can leave at dawn and be at the shrine of Vesta before Pompey reaches it.”

  “If I should wait, I would have more to beg of Pompey than I care to crave from any man,” Tros answered. “Guard my baggage, Zeuxis, and remember — I have promised you nine pearls on a condition. If I fail, or if you fail me, though I had to throw a thousand pearls into the Tiber I would take care you should get none! I perceive your friendship is a purchasable merchandise. I bid high, and I paid you half down when we struck the bargain.”

  Zeuxis’ lustrously immoral eyes were looking at Tros’s cloak. As plainly as if speech had said it, he was wondering where so great a weight of pearls was hidden. The lust that jewels have the power to arouse in some men, and some women, burned behind the Greek’s eyes. The smile that stole over his face was like a mask deliberately chosen — thoughtfully adjusted — changed a time or two until he thought it fitted.

  “Drink, noble guest!” he said, and signed to a Syrian slave to fill the cups. “This night has gone to both our heads. We talk like madmen rather than two sons of Hellas. Samothrace is stepson to Eleusis — drink! I pledge you brotherhood. May wise Athene’s owls bear midnight wisdom to you. Drink!”

  But Tros set down the silver cup untasted. Though he doubted that his host would poison him, he knew the Syrian slaves’ infernal skill and read the greed in Zeuxis’ eyes.

  “Pallas Athene, judge then! I will drink with you again, friend Zeuxis, when I have accomplished my purpose. Though the goddess deserted Hellas, may her wisdom govern us! And now your drooping eyelids welcome sleep, so I will act the good guest and not stand in Morpheus’ way. Sleep soundly, and may all Olympus bless you for your hospitality.”

  He took his leave magnificently, as if Zeuxis were a king, bestowing largesse on the servants and avoiding any conversation that could give the Greek a hint of his intentions. He refused the offer of a guide; such a man would merely be a spy for Zeuxis. He laughed as he strode toward Rome at the head of his men, for a slave went by on horseback, full pelt; and although he did not recognize the man, he was as sure as that the moon was rising on his right hand, that the Greek had sent a messenger to Pompey, or else Nepos, which amounted to the same thing. Pompey would learn of the pearls before dawn or, if not Pompey, one of Pompey’s personal lieutenants, which might be even more dangerous.

  He had one advantage. Wind and sea observe no hour-glass; he who has stood watch, and reefed, and gone aloft in midnight gales has lost the greater part of that inertia that dulls the wits of superstitious men in darkness. Tros could take advantage of the night and steal a march on treachery; and he thought he could count on his men to obey him though the shadows seemed to hint at unseen horror — though the Via Appia was lined with tombs and gloomy cypresses all haunted by the specters of the dead, and wind sighed through the trees like ghost-worlds whispering.

  “I am afraid,” said Orwic, striding beside Tros. “We Britons have an extra sense that warns us of things we can’t see. My grandmother had the gift remarkably, and I inherit it. I wish I had a sword. This dagger isn’t much use.”

  “Play the prince!” Tros answered gruffly. “Any fool can be afraid at night.”

  Himself, he had only one dread, one pertinent regret. He feared for Conops, who could hide himself in Ostia and watch for the arrival of the ship without the least risk of detection, if only Zeuxis had not known about it. He gritted his teeth as he condemned himself for not having sent Conops straight to Ostia before he ever entered Zeuxis’ house. More to encourage himself than for Orwic’s benefit, he broke out in explo
sive sentences:

  “A man can’t think of everything. The gods must do their part. We should be gods, not men, if we could foresee all. It would be impudence to take the full responsibility for what will happen. Are the gods dead — dumb — ignorant? And shall a god not recognize emergency?”

  “Suppose we pray,” suggested Orwic.

  “Like a lot of lousy beggars. Rot me any gods who listen to such whining! Shall the gods descend and smirch themselves amid our swinery, or shall we rise and breathe their wisdom?”

  Orwic shuddered. Celt-like, it disturbed him to assume familiarity with unseen agencies. Drunk or sober, he could swear with any lover of swift action, taking half the names of Britain’s gods in vain, but when it came to thinking of the gods as powers to be reckoned with he thrilled with reverence. He could, and he invariably did, scorn druids in the abstract. In the presence of a druid he was insolent to hide his feelings. And when — as Tros invariably did — he felt himself within the orbit of the gods he was more fearful of them than encouraged — whereas Tros regarded gods as friends, who laughed at men’s absurdities, despised their cowardice and took delight only in bravery, honesty, willingness, zeal.

  “I think I hear the gods,” said Orwic; for the trees were whispering. An owl swooped by on noiseless wings. The shadows moved in moonlight. “What if the gods are warning us to turn back? What can thirty of us do in Rome to hinder Caesar? We have been having bad luck since the boat upset us in Tarentum Harbor. We were robbed in the inns on the road, and we were cheated by stage-contractors — eaten by the bedbugs — sickened by the bad food and the worse wine. Then Zeuxis’ house, and treachery if ever I sensed it with every nerve of my skin! Cato — and what good did that do? He simply arrested that woman, which will turn her into our malignant enemy! Now we march into Rome without weapons, to see Pompey, who—”

  Tros silenced him with an oath.

  “Take all my men then! Go to Ostia! Wait there! I will do better alone, without such croaking in my ears!”

  “No,” Orwic answered. “By the blood of Lud of Lunden, I will not desert you. You are a man, Tros. I would rather die with you than run away and live. But I am not confident, nevertheless. I think this is a desperate affair.”

  “It is the gods’ affair,” Tros answered. “Nothing that the gods approve is desperate.”

  The Northmen, meanwhile, swung along the road with the determined step of well-fed venturers whose faith was in their leader. Two circumstances gave them confidence — that Tros was wearing his embroidered cloak implied that he anticipated welcome from important personages; and that they had left their weapons in Zeuxis’ barn convinced them trouble was unlikely. They were thrilled by the thought of exploring Rome — the fabulous city of which they had heard tales by the winter firelight in their northern homes; and they began to sing a marching song, the Britons taking courage of example, humming the tune with them. And when men sing on the march their leader grows aware of spiritual thrills not easy to explain, but comforting. That singing did more to restore Orwic’s nerve than all Tros’s argument, and Tros grew silent because pride in his men smothered lesser emotions.

  By the great stone gate, the Porta Capena, the guards of the municipium stared sleepily, but they were no more than police. The city was defended on her frontiers — far-flung. Mistress of all Italy and half the world, Rome recognized no need to shut her gates; they stood wide, rusting on their hinges like the Gates of Janus at the Forum that were never closed unless the whole Republic was at peace, as had happened in no man’s memory. Tros led in through the gate unchallenged and at that hour of the night there were no parties of young gallants and their gladiators to dispute the right of way. Rare guards, patrolling two by two, raised lanterns as they passed, by way of a salute. More rarely, a belated pair of citizens, escorting each other homeward from a rich man’s table, hurried down a side-street to avoid them. Now and then a voice cried from a roof or from an upper window in praise of Pompey; coming in the wake of the ovation Pompey had received. Tros benefitted by it; men supposed he was bringing in the rearguard of Pompey’s followers. Notoriously Pompey never entered Rome with any show of military power; it was like him to divide his following and bring the last lot in at midnight. There were even some who caught sight of the gold embroidery on Tros’s cloak as he passed a lantern flickering before a rich man’s house and mistook him for Pompey himself; but, since it was to no man’s profit to inquire too closely into Pompey’s doings in the night, those flurries of excitement died as suddenly as they were born.

  But in the Forum there were guards who dared not sleep, since they protected jewelers and money-changers and the officers of bankers who bought and sold drafts on the ends of the earth. Nine-tenths of Rome’s own business was done by draft, men trading in each other’s debts until the interwoven maze of liabilities became too complicated to unravel and the slave was lucky who could say who rightly owned him. Where the round shrine of the Flame of Vesta stood — Rome’s serenest building, in which the Vestal Virgins tended the undying fire and no unhallowed eye; beheld the seven symbols hidden there, on which Rome’s destiny depended — there were lictors and a lictor’s guard.

  Another lictor and his guard stood over by the Atrium, where the Vestals lived in splendid dignity; and yet another lictor stood watch by the Regia, headquarters of the one man in the world who had authority to choose and to appoint, and even to condemn to living burial, if they should break their vow of chastity, the six most sacred personages whom Rome the more revered the more her own unchastity increased.

  By daylight, when the Forum roared under a roasting sun, there was no understanding Rome’s invincibility. But in the night below the frowning shadow of great Jupiter’s Etruscan fane that loomed over the Capitol, when only lanterns and the lonely guards disturbed the solitude, and moonlight shone on rows of statues of the men who had drenched Rome in blood, or had defended her against Epirus, against Carthage, against Spartacus — of men who had returned from laying Rome’s heel on the necks of Hispania and Greece and Asia — of stern men who had made her laws and stalwarts who had broken them but never dreamed of Rome as less than their triumphant mother — understanding swept over a man, and even Tros stood still in admiration, hating while he wondered.

  Orwic stood spellbound. The Northmen gazed and hardly breathed. Awe stirred imagination and they thought they saw the images of gods who governed Rome. To them the stillness was alive with awful entities.

  A bell rang — one note, silver and serene, in harmony with moonlight and the marble. Silently, as if a grave gave up its dead, the shrouded figure of a woman came out of the Vestals’ palace. Instantly, as if he stepped out of another world, a lictor took his place in front of her and led toward the shrine of Vesta. Slaves, more dignified and gentle looking than free women, followed. Every guard within the Forum precincts came to statuesque attention and Tros raised his right hand, bowing.

  The procession passed and vanished into shadow in the porch of Vesta’s shrine. Tros signaled to his men to form up; silently they lined the route between the palace and the shrine, ten paces back from it. Tros growled in Orwic’s ear:

  “I told you the gods guided us! I did not know the hour the Vestals changed the watch.”

  He stood alone in front of all his men, a fine, heroic figure with the leaner, lither looking Briton half a pace behind him. On his right, in line with Orwic, the grim, bearded giant who served as deputy lieutenant of the Northmen, in place of Sigurdsen who had to bring the ship to Ostia, stood breathing like a grampus.

  Then again, the one note on the silver bell. The lictor strode out of the shadow and the same procession wended its way back toward the palace, only that the Vestal Virgin this time was an older woman, statelier, who walked more heavily. Folds of her pallium, ample and studiedly hung, the arrangement of pallium over her head to resemble a hood, the repose of her shoulders and rhythm of movement united to make her resemble an image of womanly dignity conjured to life. Not the lic
tor himself, with his consciousness of centuries-old symbolism, more than echoed her expression of sublime, accepted and unquestionable honor. She was majesty itself — aloof, alone, so higher than the law that she looked neither to the right nor left, lest some one in the law’s toils should be able to claim recognition and be set free. None, even on the way to execution, could behold a Vestal Virgin’s face and be denied his liberty.

  As she approached, Tros bent his right knee, raising his right hand, his head bowed. Orwic, uninstructed, copied him. The Northmen and the Britons knelt like shadows thrown by moonlight on the paving-stones, as Tros’s voice broke the silence.

  “Virgo vestalis maxima!”

  Lover of all pageantry, and scornful of all life that was not drama, he omitted no vibration from his voice that might add to the scene’s solemnity. It rang with reverence, but was a challenge, none the less. No less obsequious, more dignity-conceding summons to attention ever reached a Vestal Virgin’s ears! It was the voice of strength adjuring strength — of purpose that evoked authority!

  The Vestal faced him, pausing, and the lictor seemed in doubt exactly what to do; he lowered his fasces, the edge of the ax toward Tros, who made a gesture, raising both hands upward and then, standing upright, spoke exactly seven syllables in a language neither Orwic, nor the lictor, nor the Vestal’s servants understood. But the Vestal drew aside the pallium that half-concealed her face — not speaking — pale and as severe as chastity, her middle-aged patrician features hard as marble in the moon’s rays.

  “In the Name I may not utter, audience!”

  She nodded, saying something to the lictor, and passed on. The lictor signed to Tros to follow at a decent distance and three women, hooded like the three Fates, arm-in-arm, lingered a little to make certain of the interval, their glances over-shoulder not suggesting any invitation to draw nearer. Tros signed to his men to follow. Not a sanctuary in the sense that criminals might find a refuge there, the portico before the Vestal’s palace was a place where waiting, unarmed men were hardly likely to be challenged.