Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  An Arab chief rode up and, hardly pausing to salute, demanded:

  “We were promised a thousand men. Where are they?”

  Two hundred Arabs clustered around him and Apollodorus waited breathless for the answer. When it came, in Herod’s good time, it was like hot kettle-water, scalding what it touched:

  “Son of a hundred thousand stinking dogs! You dare to breathe on me! Do I need to answer you what I have done with one man — or a thousand — or ten thousand?”

  “Nevertheless, Prince Herod, this is a defeated army unless reenforcements come!”

  Prince Herod laid a finger on his shapely nose and showed his teeth, whiter than ivory beneath the black mustache.

  “Scatter, you dogs, to your gutters! See what I will come and do to you!”

  The Arab rode back to his friends and passed the word among them:

  “Herod has a thousand at his back, or he would never dare to speak thus.”

  Presently a scout came galloping to say he had seen dust again along the eastward sky-line.

  “Dust of many horsemen!”

  Herod turned toward Apollodorus, ignoring servants, who had poured out of the other chariots to wipe his slippers, brush dust from his cloak and sprinkle him with Persian scent of myrrh-and-rose-leaves.

  “Where is she?” he asked — as he might have asked where dinner waited.

  Apollodorus did not answer. He was noticing how strangely empty was the camp, and how discouragingly shabby it all looked. His eye then for a moment resting on the fort beyond the river he detected archers gazing seaward.

  Diomedes came in sight, from the direction of the ford, apparently in haste to reach the seashore, angry with a horse that trod the soft sand balkily and followed by a group of officers. Apollodorus started off on foot. Herod chose a chariot whose horses were less foundered than his own, but Apollodorus, overtaken, would not ride, so Herod drove on, his attendants trailing as first one man’s wind gave out, and then another’s.

  So when Apollodorus came in sight of the beach after passing behind smelly lines of breastworks and reed-thatched shelters, from which spearmen and archers of a dozen seaport towns observed him sulkily, Herod was already standing apart from a group of men and women, Cleopatra facing him at spear-length’s distance. Herod looked irritably nervous, angry that a woman should oppose his will. The crowd had stood back. Even Cleopatra’s women had withdrawn to thirty paces.

  The first words that Apollodorus caught were Herod’s:

  “Did you imagine I would lead men here until I understand the risk? Can I afford to lose a thousand through miscalculation? I am not Lord of Egypt! I am Governor of Galilee. I had to drain a hundred villages to bring a thousand men. It cost me — Allah! It has cost me more than you can repay!”

  With the corner of his eye he saw Apollodorus listening.

  “And how should I know treachery was not intended?” he went on. “This lover of yours—”

  Cleopatra made an almost unseen gesture to Apollodorus to restrain himself.

  “ — he can tell you, I have left my men where they can strike. You summoned me. I came. But I have taken care.”

  “Why did you come at all?” asked Cleopatra.

  “Why? Why? You implored me to come! You besought me to come! Apollodorus promised you shall later lend me men to make me King of Syria, if I will help you now. He brought a pearl and said it was your gift. Do you send a prince a pearl that you may flout him when he makes you royal offers in return? None flouts me with impunity!”

  “Having helped you when the Jews had made you desperate, I turned to you for help,” said Cleopatra. “You were the first I thought of. Your answer is to threaten me with violence unless I run with you to Galilee! A Galilee for Egypt? Do you think me so mean?”

  “Me, or Apollodorus, or some other!” Herod answered, grinning meanly. “Better a little kingdom, Cleopatra, that is certain, than a great one merely yearned for! Mine may grow. But what of Egypt,’ when the Roman legions come collecting debts?”

  She turned her back and Herod’s own attendants closed in, forming a group around him to preserve his dignity. Apollodorus went to Cleopatra’s side and Diomedes rode up, angrily dismounting, jerking at the bridle.

  “Pompeius Magnus, you can see, has joined the enemy,” he almost shouted at her. “Now they can either hold him and sell him to Caesar, or employ him to withstand both you and Caesar! Yet you offer a discourtesy to this prince, who—”

  “If I offend you, Diomedes, leave me!” she retorted.

  She turned her back. She gestured to her women to surround her. Diomedes tried to talk to Charmian, who turned her back, too. Some of Herod’s men, to whom he had been whispering, returned toward the camp as Diomedes strode up, greeting Herod with a stately Old-World courtesy that Herod answered with conventional phrases and a lean mean smile.

  “I beseech you, Prince Herod,” Diomedes said, “to make allowance for a young queen in extremity. Her disappointments have been many, and this last one — the great Pompey going to our rivals is the bitterest of all. If you had only let her see your army—”

  “She shall see it!” Herod answered.

  Diomedes was too eager to restore good-will to notice the inflection:

  “If you have a thousand men, Prince Herod, I beseech you, summon them!”

  Herod made no move. His eyes were on the sea. He watched a small boat rowing shoreward. It was one that the Egyptians had sent to Pompey’s ship. In the stern sat someone in a crimson cloak, who could not well be any one but Pompey, although only four men sat with him and there was neither standard, nor yet fasces, that by right should have accompanied a man who claimed dictatorship of Rome. In the forepart of the boat sat three men, one of whom was recognizable by helmet and high plume as Ptolemy’s general, Achillas.

  On the far side of the estuary all that beach was swarming with the troops of Ptolemy and with the traders and the riffraff of Pelusium, but they made no outcry nor any movement toward that tongue of beach on which the boat should land its occupants.

  Said Herod: “Is there not an archer who can shoot that distance? Pompey and Achillas in the one boat — why not kill them before the boat can touch shore?”

  “Distance over water is deceptive,” Diomedes answered. “There are four full bow-shot lengths between us.”

  “Possibly. But shallow water,” Herod insisted. “Send your cavalry — water only knee-deep — archers up behind the horsemen — surprise—”

  “Shoal-water, yes,” said Diomedes, “but a quicksand, and a channel, then another quicksand. Then mud. Do you see the color of the outflow of the Nile? That red stuff settles into banks that catch ships as the sirup catches flies. They are as safe from us, and we as safe from them, as if we were a league apart. Do you see that boat we sent to Pompey’s ship to gain first word with him?” He pointed toward a rowboat laboring in surf along the tail-end of the shoal with more than half a league to go yet.

  Herod grinned, his sly eyes seeming to contain within their depths all knowledge of the treachery of ages. He was not a young man then. He was as old as evil.

  “I would not give this,” said Herod, and he snapped his fingers, “to be there in Pompey’s place! They hate me in Jerusalem, but when I come they greet me. Were I Pompey, I would think that silence ominous. And were I you, I would regret a rich prize almost within reach, yet slipping, slipping! Had I come but one hour sooner it should not have slipped away! I am in time to save another, though. Now listen to me. Let us not mind Pompey; he is lost forever.”

  Cleopatra, standing amid her women, turned her head to look for Apollodorus. He was missing. In the moment while her eyes sought swiftly for him, came a cry across the sea as if a woman’s soul had suddenly gone wailing through the gates of death. The cry came from the anchored ship, where Pompey’s wife was watching his arrival at the beach, foreseeing death three breaths before it happened amid silence with a thousand looking on.

  The boat’s bow touched the be
ach. Achillas rose and, setting one foot overside, extended his left hand, inviting Pompey to come forward and take hold of it. The rowers all leaped overside, waist-deep, to thrust the boat’s bow firmly in the sand, and Pompey, laying aside a book that he was reading, stood up, signing to his four companions to step ashore first. There was some slight argument about that, but they finally obeyed him, and he followed, alone, stepping from rowers’ seat to seat, a splendid figure, dignified, in no haste.

  He ignored Achillas’ hand. Intending to jump dry-shod from the boat’s nose to the beach, he passed between Achillas and two other men in Roman military dress. The taller of the two men drew a Roman sword and struck him in the back between the shoulder-blades. He gave no cry that anybody heard but turned in sudden agony and seemed to recognize the man who struck him. Then, as if ashamed, he covered his head with his crimson cloak. Instantly Achillas, now behind him, plunged a dagger in his back, and Pompey fell from view below the gunwale. Then Achillas and the other two were seen to leap on him, elbows and shoulders showing as they stabbed and hacked enough to kill a dozen men.

  Another moment, and the Roman who had struck first held a severed head in air. Another broken-hearted cry came wailing over-water from the ship. Achillas’ rowers jumped into the boat and, stripping the headless body naked, threw it overboard.

  Meantime, there was a scuffle on the beach. The Romans who had come with Pompey were surrounded. Three of them were stabbed to death; but the fourth man vanished unaccountably. Achillas and his two companions, the taller of them carrying the head, set off toward Pelusium, most of the soldiers, who had looked on, following in disorder, although a few remained to strip the bodies of the men just slain.

  Cleopatra gripped at Charmian’s shoulder.

  “Dogs!” she exclaimed, then threw both hands outward in a tragic gesture. “Oh, how I love a hero! How I hate such gods as let a hero die of mean men’s daggers — as a corpse uncared for is a prey of worms! O Charmian, is this a world? Or is it outer wilderness where lost souls long for Hades? — Look you, they will seize his ship next! They will slay his wife too! Do you see my brother’s warships working up against the wind to cut off her escape? Are we to stand here doing nothing?”

  But the ship that had brought Pompey had its anchor up already, and the wind, that was against the Egyptian fleet, was fair for a captain bold enough to try to use it through that shoal-encumbered channel. He had oars out, too. Cleopatra evoked unseen powers:

  “Now! If there is anything in all Olympus’ magic, — WOMAN, SAIL THOU SAFE AWAY IN MANZET, BARK OF RE!”

  Charmian began to tremble. Cleopatra seemed unconscious of anything except the race for the channel entrance — oars against oars and sail — distance two for one against the lone ship threading its course through quicksands.

  “They come too fast. They catch her!” exclaimed Charmian, inbreathing.

  But Cleopatra’s eyes had seen a sail approaching — purple — then another — two sails on the one ship, bellied out to westward with a squally east wind tugging at the sheets. The glitter of a long-tongued golden serpent’s head appeared.

  “Tros!” she said. “Tros of Samothrace!”

  The Egyptian ships had seen him too, to windward, bearing down on them with white foam seething off his bow and both his bulwarks dark with the heads of fighting men. They fell away before the wind, a dozen of them, to reform in battle line, and for a while they milled around in more or less confusion, their commanders shouting; until realizing they were helpless with the wind against them, they retired into the roadstead in the lee of the protecting westward shoal.

  The escaping ship was equally afraid of Tros, but its captain seemed to be a master navigator, crafty and self-confident. Not large enough or fast enough to dare to try conclusions in the open sea, he held a course to westward until Tros backed sail to wait for him. Dousing his own sail then, with Tros’ ship almost within range, he headed due east under oars until he had Tros down-wind and a shoal between them. Laboring along the shoal’s edge he could hoist his sail again at last, and Tros had his choice between a long stern chase or letting him escape.

  By that time Tros could see the frantic signals being made to him from Cleopatra’s camp. He hove to, with the oars just paddling sufficiently to keep him head to wind. It would have been madness to attempt the estuary, with a fleet in sight that could have stolen along presently in darkness to blockade the entrance. But a boat went over-side and headed toward Cleopatra’s camp — a long row across white-capped water.

  CHAPTER XI. “What can a woman do nobly and well except to bring forth children?”

  As there are blessing and cursing, so there is magic of two kinds: the one, personal and selfish; having its roots in fear and hatred, that is known as Black Art, and it leads into the limbus of annihilation. But the other is a natural result of spiritual rebirth — an awakening to recognition of all nature and its forces as a host of eager, ever-present friends.

  — Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.

  LOLLIANÈ saw Apollodorus beckon from a breastwork built by Diomedes to defend the ford by arrow-fire in flank. She left Cleopatra’s side, and when he saw her coming, he withdrew behind a gabion.

  “Sleep — rest yourself, Apollodorus,” she advised. “I never saw you so weary. Lie there in the corner on that lion-skin and sleep.”

  He laughed, peering around the gabion and over the breastwork, to make sure none was listening.

  “Don’t you admire our strategy? How great is Diomedes! He has set these earthworks to defend us from our own men! Subtler than a serpent! Flatterer! He called me Curlylocks! ‘Ho! You there, Curlylocks!’ He saw me just now as he rode toward the ford. ‘You love your handsome face,’ he said, ‘so I can count on you to try to save your beauty! Stay here. You shall have a dozen archers. Fire on our men if they start retreating!’ Generalship!”

  Suddenly his mood changed. He seized her by the right hand, deadly serious, and she glimpsed the man behind his mask of affectation.

  “Lollianè! Is a life worth living — is a death worth dying — to have done one thing nobly?”

  “What can a woman do nobly and well,” she answered, “except to bring forth children? And a child might be a coward. There is no foreseeing the end of anything.”

  He laughed again. “If there are gods, let them be blamed for endings! Whose praise do you value?”

  “Yours! Apollodorus, why ask? Why pretend? You know! I was as frank with you as you have been inscrutable! I never asked more than a moment’s taking of the love I offered. Are you satiated with love? Are you afraid of consequences? Afraid of Cleopatra’s jealousy? She only uses you, Apollodorus. When someone more useful appears she will yield you to me or to anyone else. It is oh, so little I ask of you! Praise? Hers and your own — none other!”

  “Nearer than most to the target,” said Apollodorus. “Nevertheless, you miss by two spans.”

  “How?” she asked him. “Tell me.”

  “No praise other than your own is worth to you the breath it uses.”

  “I could let hers go,” she answered. “Mine? I would praise myself forever, and sing songs forever, if I had yours! But not lip praise. Praise from the heart, Apollodorus! Once! I would remember it beyond death.”

  Apollodorus was too weary to conceal his thought. He saw her with the searching sculptor’s eye that looks through surfaces to principles and labors to interpret them.

  “I will never — never praise myself,” she said, “until you praise me. If I understood you, I would make you love me. But not greedily. I would not ask too much. I had a little Jewish slave-girl who used to tell me stories. Once she told me of a man named Samson. I forget the woman’s name, but she shore Samson’s locks to win him. Shall I shear your locks, Apollodorus? I would not do what that other woman did. She sold him to his enemies. But I would let you go if you would love me — utterly and truly — from your heart — once!”

  Weariness had stripped him of his skill and
she could see what underlay the cynicism in his eyes. Her intuition leaped. She understood! She understood him too well, reining in her triumph even as it broke loose, lest it run away with her and lose him after all.

  “Apollodorus! You, too! You shall win your own praise! Two by two we do things. One by one we pay the price of doing. I am not afraid.”

  She held her arms toward him.

  “Kiss me!”

  He raised her right hand to his lips and in a moment she was in his arms.

  “You are lovely, Lollianè. Any man might call me fortunate, and you have used wise words, but I think you stole them from Olympus, letting go the half of what he said: it is a world of clever sayings and of unwise deeds!”

  He lifted her and made her stand against the gabion, her face toward the sinking sun. His eyes were set again, into that curious, appraising, sculptor’s stare, incredulous of anything but his own ability to see.

  She trembled, sure of him at last — yet sure he would be merciless.

  “There is no song here,” he said, “nor any splendor of dawning hope. Could anything be worse?”

  “Nothing,” she agreed, “unless it were to lose you.”

  “That is for you, or for death to determine,” he answered. “Listen. While she and you and Charmian stood watching Achillas kill a man, whose feet he was not fit to lick, I crouched where Herod talked to Diomedes. Do you know what a fool in a rascal’s hands can be, and what might come of it?”

  She laughed. “I know to what extremes Apollodorus led me! Am I a fool? Are you a — ?”

  “Races are won at the finishing post,” he answered. “All plans look like madness until laurels are awarded. You are not in Herod’s hands yet — yet, I said — you heard me — yet! But she, you, I and all of us will be unless—”

  “The gods forbid! There is Tros,” she said. “Tros’ ship—”

  “Out of reach! Herod has persuaded Diomedes to leave two-thirds of our army here to deceive the enemy, while — for her own sake, mind you! — she is to be forced to go with Herod to his little principality in Galilee! Diomedes has agreed — agreed with Herod! — trusts him! — thinks a promise made by Herod can mean anything but treachery! And yet priests tell us there are gods — as if whatever gods there truly were would not protect us against honest fools like Diomedes!”