by Talbot Mundy
“Master, there are three quinquiremes and two good-sized liburnians in a cove at the end of a bay to the north of us, just around the promontory. One quinquireme’s aground by the beak with a list to starboard and a big sea pounding her. All the others are trying to haul her off. There’s a third liburnian scouting seaward. That one hailed me, but I took a chance among the shoals, where he couldn’t follow, and their arrows fell short.”
“War crews?” Tros asked.
“Aye, master. Full crews. Crowded. One of the towing quinquiremes has lost her starboard dolphin overside. Some lubber let go the halyard. It almost crashed her own deck; they’d the yard braced fore and aft, to ease the roll. If they should stay there and fish for the thing it might be noon before they get here.”
“Do they look like saving the quinquireme?”
“Pluto! They’re rowing to whip, you can tell that by the jerk of the oars. If weight and strength can manage it, they’ll haul her off. But you know Romans. They’re towing crisscross o’ the way she beaked in.”
“Did the liburnian keep you in sight?”
“No, master. She made sail to a squall o’ wind and headed seaward, nearly due north. Being low in the water and pretty busy with the sea over the shoals, I couldn’t see much. It’s cloudy to the northward, and a high sea running, but I glimpsed a fleet of thirty, or maybe forty sail.”
“Headed this way? Romans?”
“Pirates, I’d say. All lateen-rigged, masts too high and spars too short to be Egyptian ships. But I couldn’t swear to it.”
“Do you see that hill yonder? Take a fresh boat crew, have them set you ashore as close to the hill as you can get without being seen, climb to the top of the hill, and come back and report.”
“Aye, aye, master.”
The cymbals clanged and the oars dipped to keep the trireme slowly moving as a screen behind which Conops headed for the shoal-water, where he was soon out of sight. The trireme returned to mid-channel. The Egyptian doctor, who had been a court physician in Damascus, came out of the forward deckhouse to make sure his assistant had heated the tar; he seemed disappointed that there were no wounds to be cauterized yet. Tros sent a man for his helmet and body-armor; the ten Jews, sitting, out of the way, with their backs to the lee bulwark, smiled and drew their bow-strings between caressing fingers. Tros drew on the purple cloak over his armor. The armor clanked. The crew grinned.
Then the hand of Lars Tarquinius appeared. From the wharf, between the anchored corn ships, came a gaily painted, high-prowed galley rowed by forty oars. It carried an olive branch at the masthead. There was a high-roofed cabin in the stern. The deck was white with the smocks of slaves and the robes of priests in high, conical hats. It came at a great pace and lay alongside, as close as it could without touching oars. Two trumpeters on the roof of the cabin sounded a brilliant flourish; then a herald hailed — a fellow in a bright blue cloak, with a voice as brazen as his helmet.
“Come aboard, eh?” said Ahiram.
Tros laughed curtly. “Go you. Say I will receive the Queen Arsinoe. Have a care for our paint when they come alongside.”
So they lowered a boat and Ahiram borrowed Tros’s second-best cloak, the canary-yellow one with crimson lining. Grizzled and hook-nosed seaman though he was, with eyes that lay deep amid weathered seams, like all Phoenicians, he knew how to do the honors without compromising himself or his chief. Tros shouted and the starboard oars came inboard with a thud and flourish, all together. Ahiram brought the forty-oared galley alongside, taking command with a-natural authority that left the Cypriote captain speechless. Like Conops, there was only one man in the world whom Ahiram obeyed.
They lowered a narrow gangplank from Tros’s deck to the roof of the galley’s cabin, and a high priest would have come up first, with two attendants, but he hesitated. The plank swayed. There was no rail, nothing but one hand-rope, and the angle was steep; he thought of dignity, and thought too long about it. Queen Arsinoe stepped past him and came up the plank in six boyish strides without touching the rope. Tros, waiting for her on the main deck, bowed low and she gave him the backs of both her hands to kiss, while two eunuchs and two of her women squabbled with the priest and his attendants for right of way on the gangplank. The trireme’s crew saluted — perfectly timed motion and a crash of shields. Ahiram helped the high priest up the plank. Tros led the way to the cabin and slammed the door in the face of the priest and all Arsinoe’s attendants.
“A plain place,” he remarked, “in which to receive a princess. It is the best I have. I am unused to women.”
“Still?” She laughed. “My sister Cleopatra hasn’t weaned you of that inexperience?” She sat down in his chair at the table end, throwing open the royal purple cloak that she wore over an almost transparent white Greek himation, edged too with purple. Tros knew enough about women to recognize spur-of-the-moment attempts to storm his interest. She had a garland on her coppery-golden hair, and looked Bacchanalian, with a ribbon beneath her breasts, beautiful bare legs and gilded sandals. Taller than Cleopatra, better looking with a straighter, more Grecian nose, she had all of her older sister’s charm and lacked nothing of her regal self-assurance except for something in her eyes. They were beautiful eyes, blue, almost violet, but they seemed to be wondering, guessing, asking. Cleopatra’s eyes knew and demanded.
She didn’t invite Tros to be seated. He stood studying her, not having seen her since she walked in golden chains at Caesar’s triumph, mocked by the Roman women and leered at bawdily by garlic-reeking mobs from the slums of Tiber-side. She had matured. Not yet eighteen, she looked Cleopatra’s age — perhaps twenty — twenty-two. She had the same trick of seeming to be about to speak, with parted lips, but lingering to taste the flavor of a thought before tossing it forth in words exactly in the middle of a note. She had almost Cleopatra’s challenge, that could make catastrophes look like opening gambits in a royal game. Almost; not quite. There was something lacking, though it surely was not experience.
“Lord Tros, I need you.”
He frowned. It was the right, and the wrong way, to challenge his interest.
“You need me,” she added.
That was the wrong way. Tros didn’t need her. His frown unfroze, leaving only the seams on a warrior forehead. He had read one riddle.
Her secret had crept forth and betrayed her, as her smile changed subtly to that of a woman whose subtlety was merely guile, whose geese were swans, whose will was hope, whose daring was despair. It was the smile of a girl who had tasted failure, seeing lesser recklessness and greater treachery succeed.
“Lord Tros, why are you deceived by the treacheries of that witch, my sister? Do you love dark forces? Is the dying magic of the night of ancient Egypt, that she wantons after, able to oppose the living gods? Do you mock destiny? Or like Ajax, do you defy the lightning? Does it mean nothing, that I was exiled to this foam-born isle of Cyprus, where the goddess Aphrodite was created by the Lord of gods and men?”
That again was the wrong approach. Tros’s amber eyes began to glow with a fertility that made her hesitate. He had forgotten that he had just now slammed the door in the face of a high priest. That high priest had been king of the greater part of Cyprus until crusty old Cato came from Rome and traded him a temple for his throne. Tros was too devoutly skeptical, too true a mystic, to fear anything but his own self-judgment. He didn’t talk about living gods. He lived life. Destiny was something he created, by dealing with facts as they turned up.
“Let us speak of the corn fleet,” he answered.
“Lord Tros, I have heard my sister loves you, but that Charmion, who is like a cat with a wild-cat kitten, said nay to it.” Tros was silent. She continued:
“Cleopatra’s love is like a quicksand that swallows and awaits the next victim. Not a doubt she loves you. Who else is there for her to love than you, who are descended from the gods — aye, a god upon earth, not a decayed old politician such as Caesar, with bad teeth and a bald head! Are you a son o
f Poseidon, the god of the Sea?”
Cunning, but unclever. Rare was the man who doubted that the gods impregnate chosen mothers and beget great heroes; rarer yet, the man who would repudiate such parentage, if he could see advantage to himself Caesar held claimed dissent from Venus. Alexander the Great denied his father Phillip, boasting the Lord of gods Zues — Ammon, in the form of a snake had begatten him by this virgin mother Olympus. Cleopatra herself claimed superhuman parentage. So did Arsinoe; she was inviting Tros to claim equality with all the great ones of the earth.
“I am who I am,” Tros answered. Cleopatra would have known what that meant, but Arsinoe thought he boasted, and her eyes became luminous, flattering, unwisely confident. Herself a skeptic of all temple teachings and, like most well-born youngsters, drenched with the Aristotelian philosophy, she made the mistake of believing Tros would yield his egoism to the flattery of superstitious nonsense.
“My astrologer,” she said, “forewarned me of your coming—”
“Is his name Lars Tarquinius?” Tros interrupted. “Princess, I have come for the corn fleet. I am told your viceroy Serapion has seized it for a bargain counter in his gamble for power.”
“Serapion!” she answered. “My viceroy?” Her lip curled. “I am Serapion’s puppet.” Cleopatra’s lips would have been less indiscreet, they would have smiled inscrutably. Cleopatra’s voice would have been charged with unguessable meaning but Arsinoe was self-accusing. “I have used whom I could. It was that fox Herod who reconciled Serapion. Lord Tros, I need you! I am Queen of Egypt and whoever the Queen of Egypt weds is King of Egypt. Does the throne of Egypt not encourage you to change your dislike of women for a mood less unheroic? Are you not in Esias’s confidence? I know you are! His money! The impatient fury of the hundred thousand Jews of Alexandria! One word from you! Now is the time, Lord Tros — the day of destiny! Seize Egypt! The oracles all declare this hour awaits a man of destiny.”
“Let the hour learn patience!” Tros retorted. “I am not he.” Arsinoe’s face became less charming, but more truthful, and Tros liked her better. The Ptolemy, cat-like watchfulness smoldered within the sudden anger of her eyes, but it revealed courage that despair had disguised, not weakened.
“You realize,” she asked him, “what I offer?”
“Aye,” he said, “but none else heard it. I am not so constituted that I crave a wider kingdom than my own ship. Least of all have I the genius to be a queen’s he-concubine.”
She laughed and looked lovely again. “Queens have hearts as well as thrones,” she answered. “I could glory with body and soul in the love of a man whose greatness overcame me. Am I, as a woman, unattractive to you?”
“Princess, I have no heart for women.”
“A mother bore you. Have you no heart for a son, Lord Tros, who shall reap where you ploughed?”
He was silent, his face a mask that any intelligent woman could read. She knew she had touched his secret yearning. She believed she had uncovered his weakness. She played her last stake — sprung her secret — which Cleopatra her sister would not have done:
“Admiral Ahenobarbus has declared for Brutus, because Brutus, who slew Caesar, will restore republican government in Rome. Ahenobarbus is here to set me on my throne of Egypt, for the sake of the money that Brutus needs to pay his army. As for the corn fleet, whose is it? It shall be Brutus’s gift, and mine, to the Roman people!”
Bargain by threat. Triumphant lips and questioning eyes. It did not occur to her that Tros already might have made a bargain and that if so, he would keep it or die. It did begin to dawn on her that he had told her nothing, whereas she had revealed her hand. The noise of squabbling outside the cabin door perhaps suggested to her she should rush her fences, so she squandered information on which the fate of a world might depend, whereas Cleopatra would have watched, listened and kept it secret.
“My sister’s ten ships reached here the day before yesterday. They declared for me. They departed at once for Syria to transport some of Cassius’s troops to invade Egypt. Better agree with me, Lord Tros! Can you fight Ahenobarbus? He has three quinquiremes, two biremes, three liburnians, and all my army. Did you know I have an army?”
It was a fair guess that she, or at any rate Serapion had some troops who would fight for whoever paid them. It was an equally fair guess that they had not been paid since Cato had raped the treasury of Cyprus, more than three years ago. Tros made an even fairer guess than that:
“Princess, you have not yet had word with Ahenobarbus! You have only heard what Serapion, or perhaps that high priest, says was Ahenobarbus’s message. And to that you have added what Lars Tarquinius has said to you since midnight. If you choose, you may come with me and have word with Ahenobarbus face to face.”
She sat suddenly bolt upright. Then she leaned an elbow on the table, studying Tros’s eyes. Hers were the yes of a rebellious victim who had been played like a pawn in a losing game. She was excited. She was trying to be cautious.
“I believe you would betray me to Ahenobarbus.”
“Very well then. Your own galley awaits you. Return ashore.”
She stood up, for a moment, almost her sister’s strength of character — Strength of decision — revealed itself. She came toward him and put her hands on his shoulders. Her delicious scent was in his nostrils. Her dangerous, sensuous lips challenged his.
“Lord Tros—”
He interrupted. “Are you afraid to return to Salamis?”
“Lord Tros, I need you to be my weapon and my strong right arm! Slay me that dog Serapion! It is he who would sell me to Ahenobarbus, that Ahenobarbus may sell me in turn to Cassius. I think they mean to marry me to Herod. Should they set me, as their puppet, on the throne of Egypt, what shall I be without a man at my side? Herod is not a man, he is a beautiful, sensuous parasite.”
Tros put his hands behind his back. He knew Herod — rather like him. She detected her mistake and changed tactics instantly:
“Lord Tros, you are worth ten times ten of Cassius and Brutus! You are worth ten Antonies! That pimply catamite Octavian would flinch beneath the weight of your shadow! And is there a woman more worthy than Ito share a throne with you and to be your son’s mother?”
There came a thunder on the cabin door. Arsinoe gripped at Tros’s shoulders.
“Answer me! Speak! You and I—”
He removed her hands gently, turned away from her and jerked the door ajar. A hoarse voice shouted through the opening:
“Lord Captain, both biremes weigh anchor! Conops is returning in great haste!”
“Princess,” said Tros, “my first task is to meet Ahenobarbus. I have come for the corn fleet.”
“You shall see,” she said, “whether I am not fit to be your son’s mother! To your post, Lord Captain! Give me armor!”
He shook his head. He opened the door to bow her out, grimly amused by the backs of his new Jew bodyguard, who were keeping at bay a high priest who had been a king — an angry high priest and a host of even more indignant priestlings and eunuchs. Arsinoe went past Tros with a stride like Diana’s. She pushed a Jew from the ranks as she forced her way through the bodyguard and faced the high priest. He flinched. Her eyes were murderous.
“Go!” she commanded. “To your temple! To your treacheries! To your prayers, O venerable lord of lies! Away with you — before I bid my admiral Lord Tros to toss you overside!”
The ten Jews looked eager to do that. They were grinning. Tros stood speechless. He loved a bold stroke, suddenly done, loved it too well to interfere. The high priest was equally speechless; in his beard and his conical hat he looked ridiculous, with his mouth agape and his eyes stupidly staring.
“I will teach you who rules Cyprus!” said Arsinoe. “Away!” She gestured to the Jews. They glanced at Tros. He nodded. They advanced, opening to right and left to pass Arsinoe. The high priest recoiled, turned, hurried, even ran. He and his followers were crowding the gangplank almost before Tros had reached the quarter-deck. Th
e biremes were already almost within range, abreast, close together. Tros’s voice rang like a clarion:
“Forward catapults!” he ordered. “Range five. Ready!”
“Range five! Ready!”
“Port oars aback! Starboard oars, slow ahead!”
The signal cymbals clanged. The last of the high priest’s followers jumped for it; six of them fell into the sea, as the gangplank came in and the starboard oars went out, thrusting the forty-oared galley away. Six strokes and the trireme lay head on to the biremes. They ceased rowing. The high priest was signalling wildly; he ordered the olive branch hauled down from the galley’s masthead. A bireme, perhaps by way of warning, fired a rock from her forward ballista. It fell short by fifty paces. Tros accepted battle.
“Both forward catapults — fire!”
A moment’s pause while the leaden balls were primed and plugged — then two thuds that shook the ship, and suddenly the whole crew roared, the rowers taking cue from the men on deck. Two hits! Both shots crashed among the rowers of one bireme, bursting between decks with a stenching cloud of colored smoke. Green and yellow flame shot skyward. The bireme veered toward the other as the oars missed time, fell into utter confusion, and ceased. There seemed to be no sand for extinguishing fire. There was panic. Men leaped overboard and tried to swim to the other bireme.
“Full speed ahead!”
Vermilion oar-blades flashed and the foam boiled white as Tros guided his trireme straight at the other Roman ship. The Roman’s only chance was to meet the attack beak first, then drop her corvus, spike Tros’s deck and make a hand-to-hand fight of it. Should the beak miss, she could smash Tros’s oars and lay alongside. But Tros had sea-room. He swerved. He let go three screaming volleys from the starboard arrow-engines as he shot past and came hard about, head on again to the Roman, who had backed oars and was turning for shelter behind the burning ship.
“Catapult him!” said a voice beside Tros.
Arsinoe was biting her lip, her bosom heaving with excitement, her clenched hands gripping her open cloak.