by Talbot Mundy
“I have a letter from him, written on the very day that you returned to Salamis after the sea-fight. It came in sections, by eighteen pigeons, to the Syrian coast, and thence by runner.”
“Surely you show great wisdom in taking that jackal’s word against mine,” Tros answered. “Did he write it to you, or to Charmion?”
She ignored the question. Suddenly, in a voice that suggested an archer’s tautened bow-string, she loosed her secret news: “My dear sister has left Cyprus!”
Tros stared, but he could only judge that she was studying him as alertly as he was studying her. If she was telling the truth, he was in as deadly danger as he ever had been in, in the whole of his dangerous life. Did she suspect him of conspiracy? He did the opposite of what any other man in Egypt would have dared to do. He told her the truth:
“I had been in Alexandria not three hours, Egypt, before several men, of whom one was your spy — I knew him — told me that tale. Your spy — he spoke with me near the municipal building — said she is in Egypt. I wouldn’t have believed that rogue if he had told me the day of the week! He invited me to go to her, to command her army. Did he tell you my answer?”
She smiled. “He said you spoke with Aristobolus, and with two others. The two others are in custody. Where is Aristobolus?”
Tros grinned. “I can answer for four of his freedmen. They attacked me, lest I should betray Aristobolus.”
“Bloodshed again — in the City? I am told you have freed some slaves, that they may bear arms. Are you planning to send them broiling in the Royal Area, as you did your Northmen?”
He was glad to change the subject. “I came here,” he answered, “to claim my Northmen. Of your magnanimity, release them! The only crime they committed was to break the heads of some Romans for speaking about you loosely.”
“Do you remember my terms?” she retorted. “You may have them when you have kept your own promise.”
“I have kept it, Egypt. Your war-fleet captains had abandoned the corn fleet to its fate. I found it and protected it from Romans and from pirates also. I sold the corn to Brutus, because he and Cassius are at the moment the greatest potential danger to you unless they can feed their armies.”
“And you have loosed against me a more dangerous, a more treacherous enemy than any Roman! Arsinoe, I tell you, is in Egypt! Do you call that doing me a service? Well for you, Lord Tros, that I mistrust Tarquinius! He has written a letter to you, in care of the Jew Esias, to await your coming; and it fell into my hands, as I don’t doubt he intended it should. He informs you, in that letter, that the Princess Arsinoe, acting on your advice, mind you, has taken those pirates that you gave her, and some men that my loving cousin Herod offered, and some of the Gaulish legionnaires that Ahenobarbus left behind in Cyprus, and has crossed to Syria. At the time of writing, she expected Cassius to help her to reach Egypt, because Cassius would prefer a queen on the throne of Egypt who is more subservient to Roman arrogance.”
“I should have slain that rat Tarquinius when you put him aboard my ship to spy on me,” Tros answered-. “You know him as well as I do. And he knows me as well as you do. I will wager that he wrote that letter to persuade you to mistrust both me and Esias, who are the two men in Egypt who can’t be bribed to betray you. May I see the letter?”
“Yes: No — no, I haven’t it here.” She studied him for at least a minute. Then, suddenly: “You arc a sentimentalist. Could you be coaxed to betray me?”
“I have been coaxed with hard blows and soft speech, Egypt. But here I am.”
“I am sending you to deal with Arsinoe.”
“Me?”
“You — secretly — finally — once and for all! She is said to have several hundred men. She moves on Memphis, the ancient capital, where she expects to be able to raise an army. But I have my grip on Memphis. I hold hostages; I have the sons and daughters of most of the important men of Memphis who might otherwise go to her aid. She has raided the quarterly caravan from the emerald mines, and she is robbing the tomb-robbers, for gold with which to lavish bribes. I have caught the ring-leaders in Alexandria, but all the Romans in the city, and many others would take her part if she should begin to succeed. She must be dealt with swiftly.”
“I am useless without my Northmen!”
“You? Useless?”
Will against will. It was almost like a physical clash of weapons.
“Royal Egypt, you are too fond of clipping the wings of the hawk that shall fly your errands! You obliged me to go to sea without my Northmen. I fought a battle that I came near losing for lack of their good fighting arms!”
“A few barbarians — a mere handful of brutes with battle-axes?”
“Thirty-eight comrades in arms! Thirty-eight veterans! Egypt, have you their equal?”
She eyed him darkly, resting her chin on her hand. “It is not soldiers or sailors, but generals that I need,” she said after a moment. “I can supply you with plenty of men.”
“Aye,” he answered, “but you haven’t one commander whom you dare to trust out of reach of the executioner! So you propose to flatter me by—”
“Yes,” she interrupted, “I fear I flatter you. But there is no one else I can trust at the moment. I want her killed, not captured. Tros, incredible though this may sound to you, I love Arsinoe. I saved her from execution after Caesar’s triumph when, if the Roman mob had had its way, she should have been slain in the Tullianum. It was I who begged Caesar to make her Queen of Cyprus. But the girl is my ceaseless enemy. There is nothing to do but to kill her.”
“Therefore you degrade me to the rank of butcher?”
“I wish her to be killed — not shamed — not put to torture — not cruelly ill-used, as she would ill-use me if she could seize my throne. She must die. You, of all men, should understand that.”
It was useless to fence with Cleopatra when she talked in that vein. She lied, and Tros knew it. She neither loved nor pitied Arsinoe, although it was no doubt true that she would take no delight in Arsinoe’s shame or torture. Cleopatra had good taste; she didn’t enjoy physical cruelty. She merely wanted Arsinoe killed, and to avoid the blame for having killed her.
“Pitying the girl,” said Tros, “in the fight off Salamis I gave her a chance to die as you or I would choose to if the world should have no honorable room for you or me. But she fought too well, in one of my men’s armor. She came out unscathed, with her dagger dripping and a laugh on her lips.”
“Tros — I believe you love her!”
“Egypt, I love man or woman who is brave.”
“It is more than rumored that she loves you!”
“So. Am I indictable by rumor?”
“If you love her — if she loves you — need I explain that loving-kindness should grant her a swift death, rather than the ignominy of, for instance, such a punishment as our elder sister Berenice underwent? It is as an act of mercy, that I send you.”
“Have you mercy for my Northmen?”
“I depend on your love for your Northmen to outweigh any emotions that a girl might arouse, who is nothing if not capable of seducing such a sentimentalist as you arc!”
Tros strode to the window, turned away from her, turned again and strode back. He was thinking of the two-pound hammered bracelet.
“Egypt—”
“Think!” she warned him. She could see the wrath on his face, and the deadlier integrity behind it — the iron resolution.
“I have done my thinking, Egypt. I am no queen’s catspaw.”
She had her hand on the padded hammer of a golden gong shaped like a lion’s face.
“You refuse?”
The threat of death had never made Tros less than obstinate — but craftily obstinate, lightning quick to guess the weakness that lingered on threat instead of striking first in order to compel. Not for one fraction of a moment did he forget his duty to his Northmen. As long as they lived, he would do his best to be their dependable Lord Captain.
“Aye. I will
not go unless on my own terms. If you had another to send, you would not send me. If you trust me to go, and insist I shall go, you shall trust me to do as I see fit.”
“Oh well,” she answered. “Indiscretion would be bad for your Northmen. You appreciate that?”
He nodded. She had laid that heavy bracelet on the table. He glanced at it, then looked straight into her eyes.
“And I demand Cleopatra’s promise. Not royal Egypt’s, but the promise of the Cleopatra whom I snatched away from Rome before Caesar’s murderers could plunge their knives into you also — do you understand what I mean? I have been your good friend, Egypt.”
There was no warm emotion expressed in her eyes. She looked even slightly contemptuous of his claim on her gratitude. But she seemed to be reappraising him, perhaps wondering whether to tell him more, and to trust him less; because the more a man knows, the less easy he is to compel. And as yet she was only learning statecraft. She had not yet reached the ripeness of judgment that, a few years later, almost made her mistress of the world..
“How can I make any other than what you are pleased to call a royal promise?” she asked after a moment’s pause. “We Were friends, you and I, when I was a homeless exile. True. But who serves whom for nothing? Has a queen friends? What request can Cleopatra grant, that Egypt might not forbid? It must be something strange — something new in the way of demands on a reigning queen!”
“Not new in your ears, Egypt! If I go to Memphis — if I solve this riddle for you — if I quell rebellion before it rocks your throne — thereafter will you set my Northmen free, and rather than hinder will you aid me to set forth on my voyage?”
She smiled.
“Around the world? You will desert me for that chimera? Very well then. You have Egypt’s promise that she shall not interfere with Cleopatra’s farewell! How will you find Arsinoe? What guides — what forces will you need? This is secret, remember.”
“Secret?” He laughed. “Perhaps Cassius thinks it a secret. If it’s true, it can mean only one thing: Cassius, in collusion with the Alexandrine Romans, is attempting to seize Egypt and get rid of you, without the expense and risk of marching his mutinous legions across the desert from Syria. You don’t dare to declare war on Cassius; your own army would desert you, as your fleet already has done. So you demand of me a secret effort against treason.”
She stared. His frank assertions never failed to bring that frown to her forehead. He continued:
“I will go, and I will do it. Then I will demand from you my Northmen. Is that agreed?”
She nodded.
“It is known I am here. How will you explain my absence from the City?”
“They shall say you have been sent into exile.”
“Memphis? There will be a north wind. I can swoop on Memphis. I will be off before daybreak, Egypt, with my own men. Tell me what you think you know of Arsinoe’s movements. Mind you, I don’t believe the story.”
But he did believe it, and she knew he did. Tros was thinking of the blood-red lamp on a hillside amid the phantom trees of Salamis. Cleopatra’s eyes looked darkly vengeful.
“Alexis has all the information. He is to go with you.”
Tros scowled. He hated her cynical courtier-friend Alexis — a man who had not been long enough at court to amass enough money to pay his debts, but he was doing nicely.
There were two gongs near her. She struck one that clanged like the clash of cymbals. Instantly the curtains on the rear wall parted. It was the wrong gong. Two huge Nubians rushed in, cloaked with leopard-skin, armed with brass scimitars. Trained to be swift to protect their royal mistress, they rushed Tros, one from either side, too swiftly for Cleopatra to stop them. They never even saw her raised hand. Her voice froze in her throat as a scimitar slit the air. It missed — went spinning — struck the other Negro’s neck and embedded itself in the door panel. Tros’s fist, quicker than the weapon, had clubbed his assailant’s arm — struck it numb. His right foot tripped the man; his left fist sent him staggering into the other Nubian, and they fell in a mess of blood at Cleopatra’s feet. Tros pitched both men through the open window. Then he picked up a Damascus mat, covered the blood with it, strode to the door, pulled the scimitar out from the panel and tossed that, too, through the window.
“If I am under arrest,” he said, “no more than your word is needed.”
She looked angry, contemptuous, disgusted, but not afraid for a moment. Suddenly she laughed.
“It was a mistake!”
“Are they sufficiently rebuked?”
“I am! Tros, what an expensive guest you are! Those slaves cost me more than the rug you have used for a mop! I bought the rug in Rome from the spoil of Mithradates’s palace. Now the Nubians are useless. You may have them. You may have the rug, too.”
She struck the other gong, and then walked to the window with Tros while a eunuch brought in slaves to clean the tiled floor. The rug was rolled and tossed through the window to the Nubians, one of whom was bandaging his neck with a rag from his chiton. The other lay stunned on the terrace. At a gesture from the Queen the wounded man unrolled the rug, hove the stunned man on to it and dragged him out of sight.
Cleopatra’s mood had changed as utterly as a landscape changes when the clouds let through the sun. She laid her hand on Tros’s arm.
“You, who are fitter to be a king than any warrior on earth — for you have brains as well as courage — is Egypt too little?”
She was almost, not quite tall enough for the crown of her head to reach his shoulder. Not answering, he stared through the window, southward, toward the fabled land of Khem.
“Do you seek new conquests? You, who hate Rome as I hate Rome, and as Rome hates me — there is Syria to conquer — Parthia — India. Egypt or Rome will prevail in the end. But who shall lead the battle-line of Egypt? Southward — forever southward, beyond the desert, aye, and beyond the mountains where they say the Nile begins — there are realms beyond realms awaiting conquest. Does your imagination feel no challenge?”
At last he looked down at her. “Aye,” he answered. “In this pavilion you and Caesar used to speak of it. I have sat here listening.”
“You are younger, stronger, healthier than Caesar was: And you are not, like Caesar, ham-strung by grudging loyalty to a Roman wife and Roman prejudices.”
“No,” he answered. “I have other prejudices.”
“And no wife.”
“No. Nor a master! I am my own man.”
“Gyved by sentiment to two score bawdy battle-ax-men, whose hearts are in the brothels and their brains in the lees of a jar of Cretan wine!”
“They are my men. They are comrades-in-arms. I have led them. They and I have fought a main or two with death together. I will do your errand, Egypt.”
“You are also a greater fool than Caesar knew how to be!” she answered. “Oh, that Caesar had had your strength, to shake off his assassins!”
“Do you mean oh, that I had Caesar’s ambition?”
“Yes, I mean it! Would you like to be King of Syria?”
“Syria is not yours, Egypt.”
“Not yet! But would you like to be King of Syria?”
“No — nor King of anywhere.”
“Go! You bore me. I will send you Alexis. He shall meet you at the barge. You know him?”
“Yes. I know him.”
“Mind — you are to trust him.”
“May I trust you, to keep your promise?”
“Keep your own promise. You will not need to remind me of mine.”
He remembered her younger sister’s promise, given on the gallery on the hill above star-lit Salamis:
“Yes, Tros, I will rule or I will get out. Do you think, then you will understand me?”
CHAPTER XIV. “One of these days you’ll be a valuable man”
I have observed that generous determination to attain an objective come what may, reveals the means; as if the generosity were lamplight.
— From the Log
of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace
Sunset was bathing the roofs of Alexandria, and the evening mist was rising on Mareotis, when the royal barge left Pleasure Island. Alexis, a very handsome fellow, with a comically aristocratic Alexandrine manner of taking nothing seriously, snuggled himself in a woolen cloak and kissed a parchment order on “any or all district treasurers.” It bore Cleopatra’s signature and seal.
“No limit!” he remarked. “I bless my father and my mother, who conceived me as full of cupidity as a Rhakotis prostitute! There are compensations, even for having to leave Alexandria. Dreadful ordeal, but sublime opportunity! When I return I will buy me Arabian horses. Hitherto, mine has never been better than second chariot. It is simply a question of money. Buy the best horses. Bribe the other fellows’ charioteers. Watch me win next time!”
“Better rob tombs like the Queen,” Tros answered. “The Queen keeps her eye on the treasury statements.”
“On the tombs, too,” said Alexis. “Mining is a royal monopoly. She calls tombs mining! Did you notice that stuff on the table?”
“Where is it from?”
“Near the Great Pyramid.”
Tros grinned, thinking of his Northmen.
“Tros, you’re a very remarkable man. I have you to thank for this treasury order! If it weren’t for you, she would have sent two generals, each to keep an eye on the other. They would have been much more expensive than you and me. I would give ten per cent of my probable peculations to know what you said to the Queen.”
“You buy things twice over, do you?” Tros answered. “You heard every word of what I said to her.”
“Well, since you have guessed so accurately, I admit it. I was behind the curtain. I saw you smash these Nubians. Gods! Look at them! I don’t know yet whether she meant them to kill you, or not, and I’ll bet they don’t know, either. Perhaps she doesn’t know. I think she left it to destiny, the way you or I would toss a coin or bet a fortune on a cock-fight. She is like that — superstitious. What will you do with the Nubians?”
“Oar-bank. I never yet knew a royal slave worth a drachma until he had learned what work is. They shall blister their hams and work the fat-off. That duffer let go his scimitar at a mere touch.”