by Talbot Mundy
He filled the wine-cups, groping for them by the light of the dying embers.
“No, no! Queen Arsinoe of Egypt!” said Aristobolus, drinking. “I commit myself. I swear to that. By Zeus, and by the Holy Sacrament of Isis, I swear I will live or die by Queen Arsinoe of Egypt!”
“Queen Arsinoe of Egypt!” said Alexis, wry-faced; the wine was the stuff that Esias sold to deep-sea captains. “I am superstitious. I don’t like to take oath about dying. Death is a damned unpleasant event that will occur too soon, no matter when. Who ever heard of Boidion? Long live Queen Arsinoe of Egypt!”
It was Tros’s turn. He had given a great deal of thought to what he might say, that would convince two suspicious conspirators without violating his own conscience. He fell back on his rumored connection with the Mysteries of Samothrace and Philae. Even the mocking skeptics knew that such men rarely bound themselves by oath, but, when they did so, held themselves bound by its terms until released by death.
“By my soul, and for the sake of Egypt, until her death or mine I will keep full faith with Queen Arsinoe.”
Was Arsinoe dead? And did the Queen know that Alexis was a traitor? Was this Cleopatra’s way of outwitting and making an end of a man whom she discovered she had trusted too far? It might be.
“You talk like a shaveling priest, you stormy war-horse!” said Alexis. “Soul? How much for it? If I could find mine, I would sell it for one night of joyous living.”
“Aye,” added Aristobolus, “and you would sell it for the sake of your hair and hide! The Queen’s torturers will attend to us three if we fail. It seems to me, we can trust one another. What now?”
“Do you know where to find her?” Tros asked.
Aristobolus perceived his value. “Do I? Is it likely I would go to all that trouble to persuade you, if I couldn’t go straight to her hiding place?”
“Then you shall go!” Tros answered. “You shall take Alexis with you. You shall say I come with all possible haste with a hundred men.”
Alexis controlled himself remarkably well, but his voice was strained:
“Do you always go in for astonishing people? I think we should stick together. Suppose I refuse?”
“The consequences might be pleasanter,” said Tros, “than being torn to pieces in the Queen’s dungeon. But to die for disobedience has always seemed to me a miserable death. I command this expedition. I protect men who obey me.”
Alexis sounded as if he swallowed something. He had lost his air of frivolous inconsequence.
“What is your plan?” he demanded.
“To commit you to the hilt! I don’t propose to commit myself to revolution and leave you one chance to betray me! And—” Tros added, “I shall need more men.”
“Hah! You will look for your Northmen? Don’t waste time. I was told they were sent to the mines. By now they have been flogged and starved and worked until they’re useless.”
“We are to go on ahead of you?” Aristobolus asked. “How will you find us? We are likely to be difficult to follow. There are no streets in the desert.” He added slowly: “We should not feel, shall I call it fortunate? if you should turn aside, or retreat, and leave us trying to explain to desperate venturers why we have brought them false news. What guarantee do you offer? What pledge?”
Silence. Then suddenly:
“Conops!”
Tros’s quarter-deck voice startled the owls. It awoke wildfowl in the reeds. It brought a hermit peering at him over the edge of a broken cornice. Alexis threw a lump of broken masonry at the hermit. He helped himself to the sour wine with a shrug of resignation. He rubbed his face with the stuff, to allay the irritation of fly- and mosquito-bites. He spoke to Aristobolus:
“We are like clay in this man’s hands. I wouldn’t trust him — Trim, do you hear me? I wouldn’t trust you if I didn’t know you sold out in Cyprus to the Roman admiral Ahenobarbus. The Queen was told so, but she didn’t believe it. I know it.”
Conops appeared; at a sign from Tros he squatted, his one eye as bright as a cat’s in the glow from the embers.
“Choose the eight best rowers from the whole flotilla, Conops. You may also have two of the Jews — your own choice. Take these noblemen up-river, at the fastest speed you can make. You are to eat and sleep by watches. Speed is the main thing. Set both noblemen ashore, with a day’s provisions, wherever the Lord Arsitobolus says is his destination. Wait there for me. Hide if you can, but keep a good lookout.”
“Aye, aye master.”
“When?” asked Aristobolus.
“Now! When you have reached your objective, you will send back somebody to guide me from the point where I am to pick up Conops.”
Aristobolus objected: “Tros, there isn’t any need for all this precaution. Even supposing we weren’t honest men, we wouldn’t dare to mislead you. There is too much at stake. The Alexandrine Romans are all waiting for news of our first success to declare for Arsinoe and kill that bitch Cleopatra. Do you suppose we would be such clowns as to forfeit your aid by any treachery. We need you! Once we’re south of Heliopolis there won’t be a living human being who isn’t on our side. They wait for nothing but enough troops to strike at Memphis. Heliopolis will follow Memphis. Victory will lead to victory. The Queen’s troops will all come over to our side if we win one battle.”
“Very likely,” said Tros. “But you will do as I tell you. Go and choose your rowers, Conops.”
“Tros,” said Alexis calmly, “you’re a vile commander of an expedition. You begin by offending all the prejudices of the men on whom success depends.”
“Criticize me later, when you know what I know, and when you have seen what I will do,” Tros retorted.
He went outside and gave secret orders to Conops; then, presently, advice:
“The one to keep your eye on is Alexis. Aristobolus is a mere bungler. I am not yet quite sure that Alexis isn’t the Queen’s agent. He may have been sent along to worm his way into my confidence, and perhaps to stab me if I over-step discretion. Take a look in his baggage while he sleeps.”
“I could kill him, master.”
“Do as I tell you:”
“Aye, aye.”
“He is probably in the pay, or under the influence of the Roman proconsul Cassius, who is directing a conspiracy from Syria. However, never mind that. Our business is to prevent a revolution before it begins. We have to force the hands of the conspirators. So don’t let Alexis out-guess me. Whether he is secretly the Queen’s man, or actually her enemy, I want him convinced, until he shows his own hand, that I hate the Queen and that I intend to command the rebellion.”
“Trust me, master. I’ll convince him!”
“Where are the Northmen’s axes.”
“All in your boat, master. I took out the Lord Alexis’s dunnage and put them in its place. They’re sharp, but I packed the hones along with ’em. Their shields are under the paulin in Thestius’s boat.”
“Good. You may tell Alexis that I told you I intend to start at daybreak.”
Fifteen minutes later, Conops started up-stream — an oar-pulsed shadow on the star-lit bosom of the river.
One hour later, the flotilla followed. In the stern of the leading boat Tros slept, at ease, unworried. The outcome was for Destiny to unfold. He had laid his bet on the board. And if Destiny should call upon him for some Odyssean wit and Herculean energy, he had it, and would use it to the limit.
But he dreamed. It was not normal for Tros to dream of women. He dreamed of a girl in armor.
CHAPTER XVII. “Bracelet maker!”
I am familiar with the arguments of priests, whose truth I vigorously doubt because they take for granted claims impossible to prove. And I am equally familiar with logic that denies all speculative thought, as if a midnight to a midnight were the limit of existence, and a man no more important than a house. I find the one as superstitious as the other, and, of the two, perhaps the priests less stupid.
As for me, I am a mystic, not denying what I
merely do not like or do not understand, nor claiming absoluteness for the truth I think I know. And I believe — and I enjoy believing, that a Greater Mystery than human mind can even dimly know, selects and sets us amid flames of love and hate, wherein we forge new weapons, and for them new uses, and for our souls new destiny.
— From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace
Purple Egyptian night. The rising full moon barely beginning to silver the eastern sky. Absolute darkness in among the reeds, and almost utter silence; the wind’s whisper out-soughed men’s breathing. The wide river mirrored the colored stars. There was occasional clank of steel, as someone’s weapon touched his neighbor’s armor — an occasional thump of boat against boat. A hum of insects. A mud smell from the caked bank. A hippopotamus blew, in mid-river. Somewhere over on the far bank half-a-mile away a lion roared, melancholy-lonely. The flotilla lay clutched to the reeds by oarsmen’s hands, invisible, their owners straining to catch Conops’s words as he made his report to Tros:
“Aye, master. I put ’em ashore about five miles south o’ here, at a temple. A whacking big one. It looks mighty like a town. There’s a fleet o’ boats there — some as big as sea-barges. Five-and-thirty armed men — looked like Syrians to me, in scraps of old Roman uniform and what not — rushed to the pier the minute I hailed — and the priests not taking notice. Any number o’ priests. I’d say I saw, all told, about two hundred soldiers bivouacked alongside a high white wall that comes pretty near down to the river. Four men whipped the Lord Alexis’s luggage out of the boat. I’d looked; there wasn’t much more in it, master, than enough fine clothes to keep him looking ship-shape for a year, I’d say, maybe longer; and perhaps some money, in a big leather bag inside his bed-linen. He doesn’t believe you’re a rebel, but Aristobolus does. It’s my belief Alexis means to set an ambush for us. I and the crew were bidden welcome, but I backed away to save argument and came on downstream, same as you said. That was yesterday morning and the lads about all in; there’s a Gaul so blistered he’ll be no use for two or three days.”
“We’ve enough blistered men to stand by the boats. Go ahead. What did you find out?”
“I scouted all yesterday afternoon, and all today. Both banks are as quiet as death — all the peasants scared stiff, hiding. Found a few, but couldn’t kick a word out of ’em. Yonder, master — you can’t see ’em from here — four or five miles from here to there, across corn land, but the corn’s all been harvested — are the pyramids, and the Sphinx. Tombs, too — thousands of ’em, I’d say. There’s a school o’ mummies, all laid out like fish to dry; they’re stripping ’em, I guess for jewelry. There are three sets of buildings set in a triangle, wide apart. There’s a mud-and-straw barrack, near a well in a hollow, with maybe three or four hundred laborers; but they’re nothing — needn’t reckon with ’em — they eat whip like donkeys. Near-by them is a better built barrack, full o’ soldiers. Queen’s men I reckon, as shabby as Rhakotis beggars, but well armed. They’re a mixed lot, with Greek officers — I’d say about two hundred men, with their officers horsed on little bits o’ nags, that eat date-straw, I saw ’em do it.”
“Where are our Northmen?”
“Master, I’m laying it out the way I conned it. Let me pay the rope out end-first, or I’ll get it snarled. I left the lads were. I went yonder and climbed a pyramid. There’s three big ones, and several smaller. The biggest’s as big as a mountain. You can’t climb that one, it’s all smooth white stone — steep as our shrouds, pretty near, and no foothold. But some of the casing of the next biggest is broken, so that one’s easy, but it’s hotter up there than a spitted kidney. It was too hot for flies. But there were scorpions. I was stung twice — found a Gypsy woman later; and she gave me breast-milk to put on the bites, so I wouldn’t bite myself to death the way I’ve heard happens. I had a good view from up near the top. Between the two biggest pyramids, corner to corner, there are two long mud-brick walls, and they’re patrolled at night by soldiers. Inside that space there’s a four-walled enclosure of mud-brick. Inside that is the smallest o’ the three sets of buildings — a barrack o’ some sort, and it’s there I think they berth our Northmen, and I think they chain ’em nights, but I’m not dead sure o’ that either. It was after sunset when I counted, seemed to me, eight-and-thirty fellows, pretty well tuckered, being herded out of a hole in the ground — maybe a tomb — toward that place I just told you. By the time I was down off the pyramid — it’s a long run around from the rear, and me as thirsty as a salt fish — they were all inside the wall, and I couldn’t get by the soldiers. But I thought I heard chains. The wall’s about two o’ my height, and the gate’s a boat’s deck — takes a dozen men to shift it.”
“What then?”
“Came back here for food and sleep. After supper, rowed across the river. Camp o’ black tents in a hollow near the far bank, and a lot o’ camels. It’s all desert to eastward, but there’s reeds, and there were two boats in the reeds. Just on general principles I tried to steal the boats, but they’d a watch set, and one of our lads got a cut on the arm — the left arm — nothing serious. So I came back, and before sunrise I was off again, scouting. I tried listening at the soldiers’ barracks, but I didn’t dare get caught or you’d ha’ lacked information. And besides, I thought I’d time enough — didn’t expect you until tomorrow night, master. You must ha’ come like holy Hermes.”
“So what?”
“Up-river, as I told you, there’s a temple and about a couple o’ hundred armed men — maybe more, with Aristobolus and Alexis and I don’t know who else. From the temple there’s a road that leads to Memphis. You can see the roofs of Memphis. It’s a big city. They’ve shut the gates, and manned the walls by the look of it. There’s another road between the pyramids and Memphis but no traffic. All day long not a sign of a living man on both roads. But over yonder, by the pyramids, they’re digging out mummies by the dozen. If our Northmen are there, I couldn’t swear to it. I didn’t see ’em. They were down in a hole in the ground before I got there, and it was dark before they let ’em out. So I came back.”
“And?”
“Master, I’m not lying. I’m a sea-cook if I didn’t jump into the lap o’ that Princess Arsinoe — her that we left behind in Cyprus. She was sitting down here, on the bank, beside where we are now, talking free and easy to the boat’s crew; and them telling her who they are, and where they come from, and where you are. I jumped from the top of the bank, being scared o’ snakes, and fell right over here. I rolled off quick. I’d seen her dagger a man in the fight off Salamis. She knew me in a minute — called me by name.”
“Was she alone?”
“No. Two boat-loads o’ men; I counted ten in one boat; the other boat was downstream a way, in the reeds, and I couldn’t see how many. The men I did see were some o’ the pirates that we took prisoner and you gave to her in Salamis. The boats were the same we’d tried to make away with from the far bank.”
“Men armed?”
“To the teeth.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Two hours — maybe two hours and a half.”
The moon rose, bathing the land in silver streaked with shadows. The river began to look like molten metal.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. Barring telling me I stink worse than if I’d been buried a week, she said never a word. Seems I’d hurt her instep. She was spitting mad for a couple o’ minutes. Then she laughed. Then she up and went, walking, with a man behind her carrying that suit of armor we lent her and never got back.”
“Which way?”
“The way I’d come — toward the pyramids, across the belt of corn land. Her men followed — maybe twenty — twenty-four all told.”
“And?”
“I scuttled her boats. They’d set no boat watch.”
“No sign of the Lord Alexis?”
“No. Nor of Aristobolus.”
Tros cursed the moon. Then, presently, he blessed it. He
climbed the bank and made his way to high ground. The whole landscape was bathed in pale white light, streaked with dark shadows of ridges that lay like wafer-courses, roughly south and north, but there was one wide shadow that curved northwestward until it reached the Great Pyramid and seemed to pour into a pool of ink beyond. One pyramid looked black, another gray, but the great one gleamed like marble. He could see the lights of Memphis — very few, scattered apart. There was a dark line that was likely a mud-brick wall, and he could count six watch-fires; probably there were others, down in the dunes, but all Egypt had to be thrifty of fuel. It looked like a long way to Memphis, and the land looked as dead as the bones of death itself, and deathly quiet.
Suddenly he saw what made him bless the moon. There were men on the march — southward — away from the pyramids — not along the road to Memphis, but toward what appeared to be low ground, with what might be the roof of a building barely visible, about mid-way between Memphis and the Nile. Even with a seaman’s eyes it was very difficult to judge direction or distance. It was impossible to count the marching men because of the shadows they cast. They might be a couple of hundred, a few more or a few less, with officers on little bits of horses. They appeared to have no baggage-train.
Was Arsinoe with them? Conops said she had gone away in that direction. If so, what of Boidion? Was the Boidion story a mare’s nest? Or had Conops mistaken Boidion for Arsinoe? Tarquinius the Etruscan might easily have given Arsinoe’s armor to Boidion, and might easily have informed her well enough to call Conops by name. According to Conops the girl had said nothing to him; if she were Boidion, she might have feared betraying her real identity. It might be — it looked like it — she probably was leading, or being led, to unite with the forces from the temple up-river for a march on Memphis. Four or five hundred men might easily take Memphis; there would only be police, and perhaps a few officers and a rabble of impressed, hurriedly armed citizens to be overwhelmed.