by Talbot Mundy
CHAPTER IV. “I will make you admiral of all my fleet.”
How hardly we remember, on this nether millstone, which is earth, and with that upper millstone, which is circumstances, grinding all our grosser nature into dust that is to clothe oncoming souls — how hardly we remember that these tragedies are but a brief dream, and these little purposes what nothingness they are!
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
TROS stood and gazed until Cleopatra spoke at last: “I saw your wonder-ship at dawn.”
“Royal Egypt, greeting!”
“Whence are you?” she demanded.
“From many seas. I touched at Sicily and Cyprus, after coming through the Gates of Heracles, from India, by way of Africa, having put forth first from a land called Britain, where I built my ship by the leave of Caswallon the king.”
“That was a bold voyage. Have you news of the Roman armies?”
“I learned that Caius Julius Caesar has defeated Pompey.”
Tros watched her keenly, but he could detect no sign of emotion other than immediate interest, although Apollodorus caught his breath and Charmian and Lollianè looked frightened.
“I have heard the opposite,” said Cleopatra.
“I, too, heard many tales,” said Tros. “But I came on Pompey’s fleet, whose admiral knew the outcome and besought me to get word to Pompey that his fleet is at large and loyal to him. Having heard that Egypt had loaned Pompey corn and ships and men — there were twenty Egyptian ships with that fleet — I thought that in defeat he might seek friendship here, and so I came. I am an enemy of Caesar.”
“And you live? Then Caesar is not omnipotent! For what cause are you Caesar’s enemy?”
“I upheld a weaker cause,” said Tros, “because it was the less unrighteous of the two.”
Cleopatra’s eyes changed and for a moment she seemed to lose her interest. She glanced at Charmian and at Olympus.
“I mistrust men who prate of righteousness,” she said. “My brother’s minister, the eunuch Potheinos, always boasts of his. Theodotus, Ptolemy’s tutor, is a worse rogue if that were possible, but you would think, to hear him talk, that the gods learned virtue from him. My brother’s general, Achillas, stabs men in the name of Mithras the Redeemer. But Apollodorus doesn’t believe there are any gods or such a thing as righteousness. He seeks ease in the easiest way. I trust him—”
“You are not invited to trust me,” said Tros, so bluntly that again she liked him on the instant.
“Yet there are very few,” she answered, “whom I dare to trust. If you are telling me the truth, that Caesar has defeated Pompey—”
“If I should lie to you, I would lie more cleverly,” Tros interrupted. “Caesar defeated Pompey near Pharsalia. I heard few details, beyond that Pompey’s army is a scattered rabble and Pompey himself a fugitive.”
Cleopatra pondered that a moment, resting her chin on her hand.
“Caesar,” she said presently, “will hardly consider himself beholden to them who lent ships and men and corn and money to his adversary. Tell me: what is Caesar like? I have heard he is a base-born demagogue. Is he less evil than his reputation?”
“Many men are,” Tros answered. “Aye, and some women,” he added pointedly. “Base-born Caesar is not. He claims to trace his pedigree direct to Venus. He is Pontifex Maximus of Rome, but he believes no more in gods than he does in chastity. He is a lean sarcastic cynic with a handsome face, who understands men’s weaknesses; and he is cunning, but he masks that, so that his soldiers think he is as simple as themselves. He poses as the champion of the common people. He is an autocrat — a despot. He will know no rest until—”
“I know,” said Cleopatra. “He has won the world if he has beaten Pompey. What gods looked on, I wonder, when a prince such as Pompey ever has been, went down to defeat!”
“He who steps into the shade, shall he summon the sun?” asked Olympus, but nobody appeared to notice him. He stood in shadow — one of those learned freedmen, such as all the Ptolemies had kept at court to make appropriate remarks. He wore the robes of a physician.
“Lord Tros, to whom else have you told this news of Caesar?” Cleopatra asked.
“To none, Royal Egypt. News is worth more than money.”
“Why then did you tell me?” she asked, suddenly again suspicious of him.
“I have found my market,” he retorted. “There is no safe port for me this side of the Gates of Heracles, as long as Caesar rules the Roman world.”
“What of it?”
“I never understood a woman,” Tros said awkwardly. “But you will soon discover that you, too, have Caesar to deal with. It needs fathomless resources to defeat him. If you have courage, and the resolution to defy Rome, I will give aid gladly.”
“You a Greek,” she said, “and you will give? Nay, you spoke of a market. Name your price.”
“I said, give! I am of Samothrace,” Tros answered.
“Yes,” she said, nodding, “I have heard of that oath. How does it run? To uphold justice — give without price — trusting to the gods for recompense, not stipulating what the recompense shall be — is that it?”
“The great gods keep the record of the oath I took,” Tros answered sullenly.
“Where are your wife and children, and where is your home?” she asked him.
“I am a lone man, Royal Egypt, and I have no home on land. The sea is home and wife and enemy in one. And as for children, I have left a deed or two, and here and there a little good-will. That sort propagate their kind to better advantage than the squabbling brats that men get by surrendering their dignity to women.”
Cleopatra went and sat where she could stare at him.
He seemed incredible — too good to believe. She was beyond laughter. She enjoyed him with a sort of ecstasy, with which she always wondered at a hero — on the very rare occasions when a hero crossed her line of vision. Blunt speech invariably thrilled her, as no mock-heroics ever did. The one wholly unforgivable, contemptible and loathsome sin, in her eyes, was hypocrisy. The most refreshing thing on earth was lack of it.
“I will make you admiral of all my fleet,” she said at last.
“You have a fleet?” Tros asked her.
“There is your ship. I believe in my destiny. I appoint you admiral.”
Tros bowed to her, perhaps to hide the smile that he could not keep from betraying itself around the corners of his eyes. She was as frank with him as he had been with her:
“I also have no home on land,” she went on. “Like you, I must win mine; for this Lochias is a nest of spies and murderers; and Egypt lies like a naked woman ready for Rome to violate. But I will win, though I die for it.”
“Death is no serious matter,” said Tros.
She stared at him again, delighting in him.
“But you can take no oath to me,” she said at last. “You have sworn the oath of Samothrace, and I know that excludes all others — even as the oath that I took forbids me to swear any lesser allegiance. So I demand a pledge.”
With his hand on his sword-hilt Tros bowed his head as if gathering thought from an unseen realm of inspiration. Then he groped into his belt and drew forth the little golden box.
“I had these from the Druids, for a service that I did them,” he remarked. He went down on a stubborn knee, like one of his own great oaken catapults obeying the strain of the tautening winch. “You may have them, as a token that I hold you to your promise to resist Rome — by force of arms — by trickery — with courage — and not yielding to death, or the fear of death, or to any power less than Destiny.”
She was wondering at Tros, and she only glanced at the pearls before she gave the box to Charmian to hold. Tros stood up.
“The Druids said of those,” he went on, “that they are the tears the gods shed over the infidelities of men. Be you faithful, and remember: I will hold you to it!”
“Faithful!” she answered. “Is it likely that the gods would send me such a
man as you if I were capable of unfaith?”
CHAPTER V. “Brave Words, Royal Egypt! But the Romans have a god named Mars.”
Strength of purpose has no part in obstinacy. Obstinacy clings to what it sees, denying what it sees not. Strength of purpose, daughter of imagination, can deny what seems to be, because it knows what is.
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
“IF THE gods had anything more satisfying than this, and I had assurance of it, then I might believe in gods and break my only other rule,” remarked Apollodorus. “As it is, I envy nobody and nothing. Do you feel the breeze?”
He was lying chin on elbow on a cushioned divan, in the place that Bopulos, the Greek purveyor, called the Royal Pavilion because royalty came there now and then. It looked like a temple in miniature, with its classic Corinthian columns; but instead of a wide flight of steps descending to the beach there was a marble balustrade to provide privacy.
Nothing had been spared to make of the Grove of Eleusis the most extravagantly luxurious summer resort in the world. Everything that had ever been seen or heard of, had been imitated or surpassed, and the fact that war was raging over half a world, with its consequences of extremes of wealth and poverty, of sudden fortunes and exorbitant high prices, had increased rather than diminished its popularity.
Colored lanterns were hung in the trees, with that irregularity that governs the arrangement of the stars and satisfies so much more subtly than an obvious design. Along the road that led past the cemetery and the Grove of Nemesis from Alexandria there came a scattered stream of torch-and-lantern-light that marked the chariots bringing the city’s wealthy crowd to amuse itself for an evening.
In front of that Royal Pavilion, less than a bow-shot distant, Cleopatra’s royal barge idled to and fro, dipping gilded oars that dripped silvery phosphorus into a dark purple sea. Its cabin lights, as seen through the yellow parchment covering the oval ports, were a sensuous, slowly moving mystery.
A widening path of moonlight danced away along the ripples to a dream horizon, and over on the left the Pharos beacon glowed like a great red jewel on the throat of night. Nightingales were singing passionately in the somber grove near by, and harps and flutes were stilled that men might listen to the birds.
Apollodorus looked magnificent, as he was scornfully aware.
“The stupidest things in the universe are men or women — I am not sure which,” he went on. “Did you see that porpoise plunging in the moonlight? Which of you women can move with one ten thousandth of the same grace? People sing — shade of inglorious frogs and ravens, how they sing! But listen to the birds. The birds don’t have to try; they simply do it. We are not even perfect in our stupidity. Consider the verses that our poets mix — a gluey mass of words! — like scullions who stir slaves’ supper in an unclean pot, and add the onions and garlic to conceal the mawkiness! And as for statuary — look at that! O Cleopatra, — you who might be a mere woman if you had enough ambition, — look — look — and forswear art forever.”
“Art!” snarled Diomedes’ harsh voice. “What has art to do with this emergency? Art, jewelry, money, women — plunder, all of them — mere evils that bring foreign armies down on us!”
None commented. All eyes were watching an Egyptian slave, naked except for a cloth around his loins and an immeasurable dignity, who passed between pavilion and sea, carrying a great amphora filled with wine. Not far beyond him, to the right, at the beginning of the path of moonlight, men and women — Greeks — threw off their clothes and stood to let the ripples touch their toes a moment, before plunging, naked, ivory in purple, stirring liquid flames of phosphorus as they swam.
“Two things should never be attempted,” said Apollodorus. “To be an artist or a queen. One is bound to fall short of either impertinence.”
“Impertinence appears to be the air you breathe, although your sex may save you from the fate of Clytemnestra,” remarked Diomedes.
Several women laughed, and one laugh rang among the rest so quietly musical as to make all others sound off key. The words that followed, spoken in a low voice, were melodiously freighted with the magic of the laugh:
“Then at least there is one man in Egypt whom I need not fear.”
“Have no fear,” said Diomedes’ voice. “I posted the guards. There is not a Roman nor an Alexandrian among them — charcoal-black to a man — none from nearer than Tapé [Thebes].”
“We must make her afraid if we hope to see her fortunate,” Apollodorus remarked, turning on his elbow. “Father Ptolemy the Piper showed us how to live long. He was afraid of everything except the wine-bowl. So the wine-bowl killed him. She should flatter papa’s said-to-be-immortal shade by growing a stomach and dying drunk, after borrowing enormous sums of money from the Roman money-lenders with which to bribe the Roman senate. The honest Roman senators would spend all the money making hogs of themselves, and would grow too gouty and fat to have any ambition. Meanwhile, much water will have flowed down the Nile, and much else will have happened. We might all be dead, for instance. According to the shadowy Olympus the dead don’t worry. Let us emulate the dead. I think that statesmanship. As official Connoisseur of Arts to Royal Egypt I advise artistic bribery of Rome instead of highfalutin guesswork. We know Romans will do anything for money.”
“If I must buy Rome, I will not buy as my father did,” said Cleopatra.
“Women’s favors bring no premium in Rome,” said Diomedes. “Any Roman can have all the women he wants for the mere impudence of asking. Money and corn and onions and armor — those are what Romans value.”
“Rome is not worth the buying,” Apollodorus objected. “Which of you has seen the place? Smells — narrow streets — malaria from the marshes — bricks, forever bricks and ugly temples wedged between despicable hovels — a nobility of bribe-fat parvenus, taught how to amuse themselves by Asian slaves — usurers who prate morality and practice twenty-five per cent. — bought votes — imported vice — the statuary that Pompey ravished out of Greece and set up beside the most awful Italian atrocities in wood that even this world ever saw — high-flying oratory (like our own, but even more inane) to distract attention from corrupt misgovernment — and a mob, smelling of imported onions, unwashed, and consisting of the riffraff of the earth and ruined legionaries, whose farms were stolen while they fought the money-lenders’ wars! Rome? It would need a Heracles to clean it. It is no marvel that the Romans leave it to rob other people and find comfortable homes abroad!”
“The Romans are a race of soldiers, and only a soldier can understand them,” said Diomedes. “They have great virtues, of which the first is discipline while under arms.”
“I have slaves of my own who are better disciplined,” remarked Apollodorus.
“Nevertheless, to mock them is not to conquer them,” said Diomedes. “Whether Pompey or Caius Julius Caesar has been victorious, the fact remains that we have Ptolemy and his triumvirate to deal with. They have chosen Pompey. We should send a messenger to Caesar, who, if he has won the war, is master of the world.”
“If I had ten men who were loyal to the Land of Khem, Caesar might have all the rest and I would defeat him nevertheless,” said Cleopatra, with a strong thrill in her voice.
“Brave words, Royal Egypt! But the gods of the Land of Khem died long ago and the Romans have a god named Mars,” Diomedes retorted. “He is a god who favors fighting men — a god who has seen many young queens walk on foot, in chains, behind a Roman general’s chariot!”
For a moment Cleopatra did not answer. Then her low voice, carrying conviction, broke on the stillness — as calm as the night, and as sure as the sea that came leisurely laving the sand.
“I was born a Ptolemy and named the Sister of the Moon and Stars. Did I will that? Or are the Powers answerable? Do you think me thankless for a royal birth and for a great reign to accomplish? I believe the gods who sent me forth will never bring me down to such indignity as walking in a Roman’s triumph. As I trust in proper ti
me to feel a son’s life swelling in my womb, I now feel greatness of another sort — not me, nor mine — a greatness charged upon me. I should be a traitress to avoid it. I accept the name Royal Egypt. I will not surrender it, though Rome send all her might to Alexandria and though I have no friend left.”
She returned to the couch beneath the canopy, where Charmian and Lollianè sat in shadow and a pair of tall fans oscillated slowly in the hands of slaves. Then Diomedes took her place against the balustrade, his back toward it and his bronzed hands pressing on the marble. He extended both his sinewy arms in an heroic gesture of despair.
“If you were only a man!” he exploded, and then grinned apologetically.
“Diomedes is not easily ruled by women,” remarked Apollodorus. “Three of his wives have died in the attempt. He has taken a fourth, who begins to look weary. But perhaps, if he lives long enough, the fifth or sixth—”
“Silence, fool!”
“No murder,” said Cleopatra quietly. “I need all my friends. You are old-fashioned, Diomedes, and you have only one idea. Apollodorus is lazy. Olympus is a sort of bright oasis in the desert of his own gloom. But I am not afraid that one of you may poison me or sell me to the Romans—”
“Royal Egypt, you are sold already — and twice over!” exclaimed Diomedes. “Your father had sold you before you were born. He put a mortgage on you when he borrowed money from the Romans. And now Potheinos and Theodotus, Achillas and the rest of that crew who rule your brother, sit and count the profit they will gain by selling you dead or alive.”
Apollodorus pointed to the curtains at the rear. They moved.
“Now news! Behold the shadowy Olympus!” he remarked cheerfully. “Good, bad or indifferent, he will make it interesting. Silence for the apologetic Sphinx!”
Olympus strode out from behind the curtains, bowing almost imperceptibly to right and left, and then stood motionless by Cleopatra’s couch. She hardly moved her head to notice him.
“Tell me your news, Olympus.”