Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “A pretty skillful touch, Tros!”

  “But a touch. He shall learn what it means to hang on to an oar, with the wind across the current and the ship rolling. It needs more than muscle. Will you take them to Esias for me and bid him keep them at heavy labor until I return from this business? Them and the rug. That is my rug, remember! I believe you will find Esias in his office at the east end of the City. You will find me near my trireme.”

  “I am supposed to keep you in sight.”

  “Can you swim? Very well then. Go ashore in the barge and find Esias. Bring him to me. I am to trust you, she said. So I will, until you give me reason not to. Let us understand each other.”

  “Oh, I understand you.”

  “Let me know when you don’t. On any successful expedition there is only one commander. There is only one way of returning home alive and that is by obeying the commander. I am he.”

  Alexis got up and bowed as impudently as he dared. “I salute you. Should I call you Caesar?”

  “You may call me friend if you will. I will judge will, by behaviour.”

  Tros went forward and, pushing aside the lookout man, stood for several minutes with his hand on the high, carved, gilded stem. Suddenly he plunged overboard and was out of sight in a moment, lost to view in the mist that curled amid the rushes. He swam, as many strong men do, with prodigious waste of effort and it was several minutes before his hand caught the rail of a painted pleasure-boat and Conops hauled him overside.

  “Master, let me rub you dry with my shirt. This chill air—”

  “Give me food, you idiot! Do you think I can go since daybreak on an empty belly and wait to be bath-housed by a drunkard? Is there wine left?”

  “Aye, aye, master. I saved some from the Jews’ share. I said to the Jews, I said, it ‘ud need an artful eunuch, I said, to poison the Lord Captain. But if he comes to you parched from mistrusting palace wine, would you have him drink up Mareotis? Frogs and all, eh? Frogs, I said to ’em, said I, are against religion. Aren’t you Jews circumcised, I said, against the sin of eating frogs? So shall he drink ’em? Here you are, master, good wine! Wine of Chios! Kept cool, too. Here you are — bread, cheese, olives—”

  “Where is Aristobolus?”

  One of the Jews removed a disordered sail. Aristobolus lay bound and gagged, under the thwarts. Tros ate ravenously. “Head for the cross-city canal. Row slowly. Enter the canal in darkness. Has Aristobolus talked?”

  “Aye, master. As soon as we’d ungagged him and he’d wetted his throat with some of our Chian, he began talking a streak. Never heard such wild talk as his, not even from our Northmen when they’re drunk and homesick for the Baltic women. Any word of our Northmen, master?”

  “Aye. When we get back, sort out all their battle-axes and armor from the storeroom. Wrap them in a sail and have them ready.”

  “Trust you to make a landfall, fog or nighttime!”

  “Carry on with your tale.”

  “Master, maybe one of our lads hit him a bit hefty. He talked wild. Soon as he saw it was me, and me your man, and us all laughing and acting foolish, and out o’ reach o’ land and all that, first he offered us money. So we took what he had, and it was little enough for a gentleman of his fine speech and manners. Then we fed him but he didn’t eat much; and I told him he’s your prisoner, and you not in the habit o’ treating prisoners the way a pirate treats ’em — pirate though he said you are. He loosed off a fathom o’ talk about your being a pirate, and the Queen intending to have you crucified, because the Romans want it. And he said that if we love you, we should find you quick and let him tell you how to keep your soul inside your body.”

  “You remember his exact words?”

  “No, master. They were too many. Twenty men couldn’t remember ’em. But he talked, like a hawse paying out in a tide-rip, about how we’d better find you in a hurry. So I said you’re having your fun with a girl and it was worth a broken bone or two to interrupt you without reason why—”

  “You — You loose-tongued lecher!”

  “And I told him I lost my starboard eye, crack-peeping, to witness your secret interviews with kings and queens, I’m all that in your confidence. These lads confirmed it; they’ll make good sailors, time I’ve schooled ’em. One way and another, and what with threatening to drown him if he didn’t, he talked. Chronos! He talked of a prince named Herod, and this Queen’s father, and a lady by name of Boidion, and half the history of Egypt! Seems that this Queen’s father was a bit of what you’re fond of calling me. And he’d a gift for getting daughters, had King Ptolemy the Piper. Nearly all his get were daughters. The boys were sickly, but the birls were well joined, and good lookers, and any number of ’em. One she-child — one of his bastards — was by a Jewess, name of Esther I think he said, and they called the child Boidion. That particular she-child is the spitting image, so said this man when he’d had his second cup of Chian, of that Princess Arsinoe who got us into all that trouble off Salamis — born within the same month, and so like her, said he, it was awkward. But instead of poisoning her along with her mother, as would have been more usual, somebody whose job it was to clean up King Ptolemy’s leavings reported ’em dead and packed ’em off to Jerusalem, where the mother’s folks lived, and our lads here claim they knew the mother in Jerusalem. They swear she was a high priest’s daughter. I’ve schooled ’em with a rope’s end so they don’t lie to me worth mentioning. They claim they knew Boidion, too. They say she grew up to be a fine up-standing wench with saucy manners. And they agree she looks like Queen Arsinoe of Cyprus.”

  The ten Jews nodded, one by one, solemnly, resting on their oars as Tros looked at them for confirmation of the story.

  “Well,” said Conops, “this here Aristobolus said, if I understood him right, that that swine of an Etruscan Tarquinius — only he called him a smart fellow — who was left in Cyprus in command of Queen Arsinoe’s bodyguard, has killed Arsinoe — dagger, poison, bow-string, drowned, he didn’t say what — and crossed to Syria, and gone to Jerusalem, and found Boidion, and called her Arsinoe, and brought her to Egypt, and raised an army, and intends to march on Alexandria and make her Queen of Egypt. I made him say it over and over, and I got it right. That’s his story. And he said that the thing for you to do is to join Boidion — he said near Memphis — because, said he, for two reasons. First, Queen Cleopatra has your name on her list of suspects for the torturer to examine. Second, knowing this Boidion isn’t Arsinoe; soon as you’ve helped to make her Queen you’ll have the pick of whatever’s going, and if you’re so minded you can even marry her and make yourself viceroy, or you’ll tell what you know. There, master, he said plenty more, but that’s all I remember.”

  “Why did you gag him again?”

  “I had to take the sail off him, master. If I’d let him go on talking he’d have had me that mixed up I’d never have remembered half of what I do remember. And besides, there were two boats full o’ Queen’s men, and I saw them search a boat or two, and they might have searched us. So I readied him up. We lashed the iron killick to his feet. We’d have dumped him if the Queen’s men came close. No knowing what might have happened if they’d found him aboard of us, and us your men, in a boat that we’d have had to do some full gale lying to explain.”

  “One of these days,” said Tros, “you’ll be a valuable man.”

  That was high praise. Conops pondered it in silence, and Tros sat thinking until mist and darkness blended and suddenly the guard at the mouth of the cross-city canal challenged gruffly. Tros answered:

  “Junior court chamberlain Alexis’s boat, on the Queen’s business.”

  Someone stuck a torch into a fire-pot and whirled it until five guards stood revealed with the crimson firelight gleaming on polished armor.

  “Junior lord chamberlain Alexis came ashore in the Queen’s barge. Who are you?”

  “Ask him! Who tells the Queen’s business to the first fool who asks?”

  “Come closer! Row in here t
o the wharf!”

  “At your own risk! Halt me at your peril! I’ve a prisoner for the dungeon.”

  “Oh. Well — he’ll have company! They’ve been packing them in! Pass!”

  CHAPTER XV. The fly-by-night flotilla

  In battle, in mutiny, in mid-debauch, in unexpected crisis, men remember justice, though they know not what it is that they remember. They will leave in the lurch a captain who has spoiled them with over-kindness. They will kill a captain who fears them. They will sham drunkenness — aye, sham death — aye, even choose death — rather than obey a captain who has ever flinched from peril, labor, hardship that he bade them face. But they will rally to a just man, though the night is in arms against him and though they know not why.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  Nightmare. The slums of Rhakotis by crimson torchlight. The great trireme, high on the ways, with her gilded serpent, draped in paulin, thrust between the roofs of storage sheds.

  There were men beneath her, examining the torn tin sheathing by the light of tow flares. A steam of Esias’s slaves, under the watchful eyes of two of Esias’s partners, carrying ashore the gear, ammunition and dunnage and Tros’s personal possessions to be locked out of reach of ‘longshore thieves. Old Esias, with his hand on the master-shipwright’s shoulder, listening to Tros and nodding as he watched the secretary-slave jot down instructions.

  “Strip off all the tin sheathing, Esias. Test every nail in the hull. They’re mostly oak tree-nails, and tight, but some of them may have been shorn from the shock of collision; we hit those pirate hulls with our sails full o’ wind and a big sea running; we have had to work double-shifts at the water-hoist, all the way from Tarsus. Have your shipwright test every inch of her timbers. If there’s anything soft, out with it; anything cracked, out with it. Replace with Lebanon cedar. There’s a lot of that tin too badly torn to be put back; have it melted down, and rebeaten. Watch it, though; it’s worth nearly its weight in silver. — Now then: I’ll be taking a hundred men. The remainder I’ll leave in your charge. Dribble out their back pay miserly. The half they’ve had already will be gone by morning. Dole out the balance fast enough to keep them from thieving themselves into trouble, but slowly enough to keep them standing by.”

  “Lord Captain, I have the Queen’s minister’s order not to repair your trireme,” said Esias. “I am already in trouble for having done your business. Selling your pearls to the Queen for such a high price has aroused the anger of the Treasury. They — he—”

  “So you told me already. Did he order you not to make ready to repair, at full speed, when you get the word? Do as I say, Esias!”

  “I will risk that. There was no order not to make ready. But a hundred — of your own men — before morning? Even your lieutenant Ahiram wenches himself stupid in the House of Carousal.”

  “Ahiram shall stand by the ship,” Tros answered. “He is as useless on land as a whore at sea. Now listen: my prisoner Aristobolus is in your rope-shed, under a guard of your freedmen. Hold him there until I come for him, but drop a word in his ear that I am perhaps more friendly to him than I seem. I need eight more boats — good ones, not too heavy. Set a cask in each boat, full of good drinking water. I need wine and provisions for one hundred and twenty men for ten days — sails and gear for each boat — tow-line — plenty of spare rope — blankets — the fools are afraid to sleep without their heads covered — fire-pots — throw in a bolt or two of bandage-linen, there’ll be broken heads to mend — enough cut firewood for a few days’ cooking — better put your slaves to work on that this minute — one hundred and fourteen horse-tail fly-switches — I want men fit to fight, not blown meat — and an open letter of credit from you to all your agents up the Nile.”

  “And all this before morning, Lord Captain?”

  “Before midnight, Esias!”

  “Impossible!”

  “Esias, did I save your corn from the pirates? Did I sell it to the Romans for its full value? That, too, was impossible. But have you had your money for the corn?”

  “Lord Tros—”

  “May God guide your efforts, Esias!”

  “Lord Tros — a moment!”

  Esias, a bit feeble with age and shaken by excitement, took his arm and walked beside him.

  “This way! This way!”

  He led into the deepest shadow between piles of ship’s stores.

  “Take this! It came from Pelusium. Nay, I know not how my agent got it. There were two letters, one from Tarquinius, so openly delivered that the Queen’s spies could not help but know about it; they came and took it; and this one, that my agent sent stitched in a saddle-girth. Seethe seal is unbroken.”

  “Do you know from whom it is?”

  “Nay, nay. I guess. I do not wish to know. Tell none that I gave it to you.”

  Esias hesitated.

  “And?” Tros asked him. “There was speech on your lips, Esias.”

  “Beware of the Lord Alexis!”

  “Aye, I will well beware of him.”

  Esias hurried away. Tros climbed the ship’s side and entered his cabin that had already been stripped of nearly all its contents. The whale-oil lamp still burned. By its light he examined the letter. It was of folded parchment, soiled with horse-sweat, addressed in fine Greek characters to Tros of Samothrake. He felt a curious excitement. He smelt and felt the letter half-a-dozen times before he broke the wax, sealed with a thumb-print, and read it. It was written in Greek, in the same fine, educated hand.

  Should you hear of my being in Egypt, doubt not. Should you hear of my dying in Egypt, doubt that, unless they say I died in armor. You will know whose armor. I am altogether weary of being a stake on the board in a game played by fools and swindlers. But again they throw the loaded dice. So it is I who must fight for myself, since there is none other for whom the fight is worth the effort, you not having designed to — (Several words had been crossed out; horse-sweat had made the correction illegible.) — So, if I am to die now, farewell and forget me. But if I live, you shall judge again.

  There was no signature. But there could be no possible doubt in Tros’s mind of the writer’s name. Arsinoe had not returned the armor that she wore in the sea-fight off Salamis. Her reference to the armor was identification enough.

  Tros swore. He set his teeth. He burned the letter in the flame of the whale-oil lamp and trod the ashes of the parchment into powder. Two revolutions? Arsinoe in Egypt? Boidion in Egypt? As like as twins — as desperate as hunted felons — as determined as the Queen herself to possess the throne, and as careless of others’ danger!

  Was Artistobolus’s story true? Was it Cassius’s plan to substitute the bastard Boidion for Arsinoe? Did Cassius think Arsinoe was dead? Or was she dead? — Was this letter a trick? Tarquinius and Serapion were capable of anything treacherous. Had they killed her? It might be Arsinoe’s handwriting, it might not. How much did the Queen know? Why the devil didn’t the woman ever tell a man all she knew, instead of sending him half-informed on deadly errands?

  There was no time now to think about it. More important at the moment were the Northmen’s battle-axes and their armor. Tros went and watched them wrapped up, ready. And then action.

  He marched away into the night, in armor because dark Rhakotis was as full of daggers as mongrel dogs. His ten-Jew bodyguard trudged at his back. Conops strode beside him, wise in all the by-ways, familiar with every bawdy-house and tavern from wharf-side to city wall, and from the wall to the slums beyond it, amid the slaughter-yards, slave-barracks, native Egyptian mud-brick huts and factories, along the road to the Necropolis.

  First, they entered a tavern called the House of Carousal, that twanged with zither-music and swished with the exciting hiss of shaken sistra, in a reek of wine-fumes. Naked, sweat-wet bellies — brown, black, white, ivory-hued — wove in and out in the reddened smoke of unglazed lamps and torches set in sconces on painted walls. Bare feet thumped on the tiled floor. Song — it was a sentimen
tal, stupid, new-fangled chorus about the blue-eyed girls of Gaul — shrilled from the throats of wenches who sat on the customers’ knees and kept them plied with wine. It was a deep-sea sailor’s heaven, rigidly exclusive: no one of less than quarter-deck rank might enter and be robbed in that place. The proprietor and four half-naked bullies hurried to the door to protest against the presence of the Jews, who were obviously of inferior rank, and moreover armed, which was against law and custom. Conops hit one of the bullies on his spare-rib with the hilt of his knife — set him spinning — howling — doubled with pain. There was an instant uproar. The musicians tried to out-din the tumult.

  Tros spied Ahiram. The Phoenician, in gold earrings, with a silken scarf tied on his head and a girl on each knee, looked frightened. He moved like a man in a dream. But he showed his teeth when Tros shook off a dozen naked dancing-girls who tried to cling to his arms, and to pull off his armor and persuade him to stay and be entertained. Tros came and stood in front of him. Ahiram forgot his manners:

  “Teeth of a yellow bitch! Am I your watch-dog — day in, day out — a-sea and a-shore? Did I come alive out of gale and battle to be robbed of a bit of wenching?”

  “You have until midnight, Ahiram, to go and stand by the ship. If Esias reports you absent at midnight, I will order him to pay you off.”

  Ahiram came to his senses, a bit gradually. He pushed the women off his knees.

  “What’s in the wind, Lord Captain?”

  “Treason! If they fire the trireme in my absence, I will blame you, Ahiram!”

  “You are going somewhere?”

  “Aye. Do I leave a man behind me?”

  “Aye, aye, Lord Captain.”

  Grumbling, Ahiram began there and then the tedious business of disputing the amount of his bill; two or three hours’ carousing would only have made the return to duty all the harder to face, so he smote the protesting wenches. Tros left him arguing how much he owed. He flung a coin to the proprietor, who cursed him as he went out.