by Talbot Mundy
The physician answered in a voice so free from emphasis that it was wonderful it should be audible at all; and yet each syllable he spoke was heard distinctly just as far away as he intended. It was a reassuring voice, devoid of any of the arrogance of erudition. “I came by sea. My boat is on the beach. Using the roof as I have often done, I overheard the three in conference: Theodotus, Achillas and Potheinos, busy seizing opportunity to re-enmesh themselves in old mistakes, their poison having failed.”
“Violence next! Was I right? Now violence?” Cleopatra asked.
Olympus went on calmly:
“Potheinos’ spies have reported to him that your baggage had been sent on board Tros’ ship. So they have ordered war-ships to the harbor mouth to block the entrance, and they have sent archers along the Heptastadium to the Pharos lighthouse. As soon as they saw your barge leave they tempted the crews of your few remaining ships ashore and sunk the hulls in shallow water. They expect to catch your barge when you return on it tonight and to crush it between two war-ships. Failing that, and if you succeed in reaching Tros, they expect to sink his ship a little after midnight when he passes through the narrows.”
“And does Tros know this?”
“Not unless he has guessed it,” Olympus answered.
“Good!” she answered. “Good! You are wise, Olympus. If you had warned him, Tros might have—”
“No,” Olympus interrupted. “Tros’ father was a Prince of Samothrace. I did not stay to warn Tros because of lack of time and because I have no doubt of him. Tros is ready, and his provisions are on board, but to reach him by sea is impossible, because they lie in wait for you, to sink your barge. And if you should reach the palace, and linger there, they will storm your apartment to-night, having trebled the number of Ptolemy’s guards, with that intention. But if you can reach Tros’ ship—”
He paused because she stood up and confronted him. She stared into his eyes, attempting to probe the very soul behind the solemn mask. Some woman in the shadow, near where the slaves stood with the fans, uttered a stifled scream, and was rebuked by Charmian. Then Cleopatra turned away from Olympus and went to stand by the balustrade, to gaze in the direction of the city, where the Lochias Palace lights were a dim golden blur on the horizon.
Two stewards entered with a dozen slaves and all the furniture for a meal. They began to lay the table in the midst of the pavilion.
“Turn them out!” commanded Cleopatra.
Lollianè gestured to Apollodorus, who dismissed the stewards and Diomedes groaned aloud at the sight of supper vanishing.
The revelry outside, in the pavilions near by and on the beach, was growing riotous, as strong wine and the equally intoxicating beauty of the night stirred sensuous emotions. Men and women joined hands, dancing in the moonlight. Harps thrummed lustily, and hired, irreverent comedians sang the topical song of the moment, mocking a recent decision of the highest court. Two fat, accounted reputable citizens were dancing in the rôle of Dionysus, out of breath and shouting to their friends to judge which did it best.
Cleopatra freed herself from Charmian’s embracing arm and began to pace the floor of the pavilion. She looked, one moment, like the genius of the scene, and the next, like someone utterly apart from it. A spirit in her rose and waned like the glow of a firefly — a mastery, that alternated with a sullen look of murder as the Ptolemy inheritance came uppermost. One moment she was young — unconquerably young; then ageless — an enigma.
Presently she stood again before Olympus.
“What say the stars?” she demanded.
“I have read the stars, O Egypt. But the stars have vast relation in an infinite design. We mortals are as particles in an immensity, and he who tells you he can read in starlight the unfolding of the next hour — or the next day, is as a trained ape jabbering for praise. I only know this is a period of deeds on which a world’s fate hinges. And I saw a vision.”
“Tell me!”
“I have seen the Nile outpouring floods into the sea, wind and sea striving against it, so that there was turbulence of waters surcharged with a golden mud. But in the end the sea prevailed. It swallowed up the Nile. But from the sea arose new corn land.”
“Where was I? What has this vision to do with me?”
“You were at the meeting of the waters — a strong swimmer — now yielding to the current and now breasting waves — not always swimming wisely, but forever brave.”
“And the end?”
“I did not see,” Olympus answered. “Except that I saw corn land rising from the sea.”
She turned away and stared toward Alexandria.
“Wait! Watch!” Apollodorus whispered, motioning for silence. There was something leopard-like about him now. His lazy, lithe, athletic figure was alert, for all his careless attitude, and there was one strong sinew on his neck that stood forth like a tightened bowstring.
Cleopatra faced them suddenly.
“Diomedes! Take Olympus’ boat there on the beach and get word to the captain of my barge to row up the Canopic mouth of the Nile and anchor in hiding until I send for him. Go yourself! Explain nothing! Say he is to hide the barge and await my orders. Bid him put the lights out. Go, sir! Hasten back and gather up your guards. Then march to Pelusium hotfoot!”
“To Pelusium?” he wondered.
“Seize the fortress at Pelusium, and bide my coming!”
Diomedes made as if to answer her, but changed his mind. He laid a bronzed hand on the balustrade and vaulted over.
“Where is the boat?” he called back. “Which way?”
Olympus went to the balustrade and pointed.
“Apollodorus! Go and see what chariots are here. Pick out the best ones with the fastest horses. Never mind whose they are. Have them ready at the entrance before Diomedes comes!”
Apollodorus strode out like a young god, humming to himself. Olympus, standing close to Cleopatra, whispered to her while her women arranged a cloak over her shoulders. Cleopatra’s eyes were on her royal barge, whose row of lights swung lazily offshore.
None spoke again until the barge swung suddenly in a maelstrom wake of phosphorescent fire and headed eastward, churning the dark purple water into silver streaks. There came a chorus of excited comment then, from the pavilions near by, and for a moment even the wanton music ceased. But the lights of the barge were extinguished one by one and curiosity gave place to revelry.
Then Diomedes came, Olympus helping him to climb the marble balustrade.
“Do you think I am old?” he grumbled. “Take your hands off me! What next?” he asked.
“Pelusium!” said Cleopatra.
Suddenly the curtains parted at the rear. Apollodorus entered.
“Art,” he said, “has triumphed. There await nine chariots, one matter-of-fact vehicle for each immortal Muse.”
Cleopatra almost ran from the pavilion. Apollodorus, seemingly more casual than ever, plucked Olympus’ sleeve.
“No hurry!” he remarked. “Don’t flatter destiny by breathing through your nose! Your stars are superstition and your high morality is pride, Olympus! Your visions are due to indigestion; I can tell by looking at your pale face that you eat too many onions and beans. But you know how to make life amusing, and of death a thing worth living for. What do you think is the next act in this drama?”
“Ask the gods,” Olympus answered, smiling, as they strode together, following the women.
“But I don’t know the gentlemen. I never met them.”
“Are you sure?” asked Olympus.
“I am sure of nothing, except that it will amuse me to die when the time comes, and that I wish we had had supper!”
There was little conversation out there in the dark, but a deal of noise and movement. Guardsmen, blacker than the night, had formed themselves into a living screen that kept the curious at bay. A torch blazed by the chariot in which Cleopatra was already seated. Charmian stepped in beside her, and her other women scrambled into the chariots behind. A eunu
ch and a dozen other personal attendants tried to justify existence by getting into everybody’s way, but that, as customary as the flies at noon, was only one more stimulating bustle added to the stamping of impatient hooves and the shouts from the darkness beyond the screen of guards. There were indignant Alexandrians out there in the night, demanding to know who had stolen their chariots and why.
Cleopatra beckoned to Apollodorus, who jumped into her chariot, turning out the charioteer, who wailed to the gods that his honor was gone, until the eunuch smote him on the mouth.
“Go now!” said Cleopatra.
Apollodorus shook the reins, and they were off, three milk-white horses recognizing mastery in the bit-feel of the bands that guided them. He laughed as he leaned his weight against the reins to swing the team around the sharp turn where the grove ceased and the moonlit road began.
“I approve — I commend — I endorse!” he cried gaily. “As Connoisseur of Arts I only ask you, is this comedy or tragedy? But who cares? Hi! Hi! Hi!”
He cracked the whip and sent the horses thundering full-pelt along the moonlit road toward the city, that was like a somber, flash-lit thunder-cloud on the horizon.
CHAPTER VI. “Romans! The Romans are coming!”
Men speak to one another of protection, but what do they mean by it? For the strongest armor sometimes is an added disadvantage. I myself have treated many a wound that might have been a mere scratch had its victim not worn armor. And the medicines of many a physician are a deadlier preventive of recovery than a disease itself. If a man’s own soul protect him not, where shall he look for safety from the multitudes of dangers that beset him on every side? But if he hide within the glory of his own soul, how shall any dark destroyer find him?
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
THE Canopic Gate was closed at sunset, but its guards grew rich admitting belated travelers, runaway slaves and criminals in search of sanctuary in the army’s ranks.
It was the fashion, too, for those who had drunk gaily at Eleusis to come racing homeward for prodigious wagers, and it was the profitable business of the guards to throw the gate wide open to them, to identify contestants, if they could, as they negotiated the exciting sharp turn at the masonry curtain just inside, and to collect at their homes next day a fee that varied with the individual’s social standing or extravagance.
So, when nine chariots, enveloped in a cloud of dust, came clattering and swaying down the moonlit road, past desert and oasis, where the night alternately was sleepy, silent and awake with a din of frogs — where there was now no smell, then suddenly the reek of onions, cows, camels, rotting vegetables and manure — there was no time lost before a yellow lantern was set swinging to announce that the gate was open.
Outside the wall, the gate was clustered around with wine-shops, brothels, swarming Egyptian tenements and mud-walled rows of shops. There was a yelping of scavenger dogs and a chorus of shrill yells from women to their gutter children to come indoors out of danger. Then a clatter of hoofs and sparks: Apollodorus, far in advance of the other chariots, wrought a marvel, turning his team on the cobblestones between the gate and curtain. There was hardly time for the captain of the guard to recognize Apollodorus shouting over-shoulder to pass the eight following chariots through at his expense. Charmian and Cleopatra, wrapped in shawls and huddled on the rear seats, might have been ladies of easy virtue or the wives of drunken citizens; no guard was fool enough to risk his lucrative position by inquiring into that.
And then the street throng. There was a night life such as Rome had never witnessed in her mean streets by the Tiber, and the marble of the Street of Canopus was glorious with torch-light, lights from upper windows pouring golden radiance on motley crowds and casting a myriad enchanting shadows. It was a dream of opulence — a roar of countless tongues — a din upswelling into tumult and a dream that scattered as the chariot drove headlong into it.
Not drawing rein, but watching opportunity, Apollodorus recognized a public speaker on a flight of marble steps. He had just drunk from a gourd, and was wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He laughed and threw his right hand up in greeting.
“News!” Apollodorus shouted. “True news! She — Cleopatra — has fled — overland toward Pelusium! Spread it!”
He was gone, with a clatter of hooves before the fellow on the steps could fling a question back. That news would be all up and down the street within five minutes.
Then Apollodorus turned south, toward wharves and slums that fringed Lake Mareotis, where the riffraff of the city dwelt in tenements and all the thoughtless sinews of the constantly recurring riots lay in squalor, eager for excuse to wreak rough vengeance on whoever had less hardship to endure or more resource with which to meet it.
“Romans! The Romans are coming!” Apollodorus shouted. “Potheinos and Achillas have sold Egypt to the Romans! Cleopatra has fled to Pelusium to resist the Romans! Who hates Romans? — Who loves Alexandria? Go hotfoot to Pelusium! Join Cleopatra!”
No chance to question him. They only saw a milk-white team, wild-eyed and heaving, burst out of the night. They heard Apollodorus’ voice. They saw him gesture, with his golden cloak outflowing in the wind that blew across the Mareotis Lake — caught fragments of his stirring news — and he was gone again into a trough of smelly darkness between sheds and wharves where other sleepers lay.
Tumult awoke behind him, as the long sheds, where the poor-free labor slept in fretful peonage not much removed from slavery, disgorged their yelling occupants, each shedful clamoring its guess at what the news might be.
“Egypt, we make history to-night!” Apollodorus laughed.
He threaded his way slowly now, because the team was weary and the dark streets of that section of the city were ill-paved — dangerous.
“Achillas and his soldiers have enough on hand to keep them busy for a while! Can you hear the looting?”
There was a battering-ram at work — a big beam being swung against a warehouse door. Half a dozen blocks away a roof burst into flame. Apollodorus laughed delightedly as he tooled the frightened team along an alley where the wheel-hubs scraped the walls.
“Don’t you love your fellow-men?” he chuckled. “Oh, who wouldn’t be a queen! Yet — take the queen away and look! What happens? Riot, arson, pillage! And they’ll blame you for it — don’t forget that! They will blame you, Cleopatra!”
Charmian was frightened by the meanness of those back streets, where an underworld of misery was lurking and an unguessed knife might slither out of shadow without anyone the wiser as to who had thrown it.
“Are you mad, Apollodorus?” she demanded.
“Aye, as mad as a god!” he answered gaily.
“Aren’t you ashamed, driving your queen through filthy slums? And the other eight chariots — where are they?”
“If Achillas hunts them, he will lose us, won’t he? That is the principal thing.”
“Oh, what timid stuff chastity is!” said Cleopatra. She put an arm around Charmian and began soothing her in a low voice, using the tone that Apollodorus called the lion-tamer because its vibrance had a magic that seemed able to impose calm. He began to whistle, to himself and to the team, his eyes alert for accident, his merry mind awander for a phrase or two with which to decorate the danger they were in.
“A pearl,” he cried to Charmian, “a pearl, though taken from its setting, is a pearl. So is a queen a queen! If she must have a throne, then she is no queen.”
There was no reply. Cleopatra went on murmuring, recalling Charmian from somewhere near that borderland where courage leaves off and hysteria begins. Apollodorus toyed on with his fancy:
“Plunge a light into the darkness — lo, it burns the brighter! I am a philosopher — a greater one than the Shadow Olympus! With a poet’s vision I discern our Sister of the Moon and Stars about to prove her moonliness — her starriness! O horses — milk-white horses — ignorantly ill-trained geldings that you are, belonging to some fat contractor’s wife, who
thinks an invitation to the palace is Olympian bliss, you draw the wheels of destiny toward a royal goal! So wake up!”
He applied the whip.
“And speaking of Olympus, it is time we found out how he manages a mob of women!”
He could hear the troops emerging from the Lochias main gate, and presently their trumpet-blare began to send a warning on ahead of them.
“And now — if Achillas had brains — but he hasn’t — he would invade your wing of the palace swiftly, so as to be able to blame it on the mob! Zeus! How can even you shine, Cleopatra, in a world of fools? I praise your genius — I praise it — but even I have to be satisfied with my own assurance. You need real enemies to prove your mettle!”
Now he began to work his way toward the Lochias, approaching from the western end, where Cleopatra’s guards kept one gate safe for her. The streets were empty — windows shuttered — doors locked — lights out; to be caught between the soldiers and the mob was a risk that the inhabitants of that part of the city were too middle-class respectable to care for. But a dozen blocks away, to the south and eastward, there was fighting — clatter of charging cavalry — the thump of slung stones against wooden shutters — shrieks — yells of execration and a crimson glare against the sky.
CHAPTER VII. “I take only Destiny for granted.”
Strength is of these two kinds: power to apply force, power to resist it. But intelligence is able to command both; and intelligence contains this attribute: that he who has it recognizes instantly a greater than his own, and so applies his own to the advantage of them both instead of (as a fool would do) opposing lesser against greater. Were it not so, nothing great could ever come to pass nor any greatness flourish.
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
THE shadowy shapes of women gathered around Cleopatra, but she turned to the somber, black-robed figure of the man who was fastening the gate-chain after driving home the bolts.
“What news, Olympus?”
“Little. We came by side-streets unmolested. Your guards along the water-front are loyal, but their officer, Thucydides, has been boasting. He seems to think your favors are not too high a price for his protection.”