Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Tros was silent. His jaw came very slightly forward, but he gave no other sign of emotion. He hated her. Once he had almost loved her, even though she had almost always lied to him and never, absolutely never told more than part of the truth. He was astonished that he had never before realized that he hated her. He must be careful not to let her suspect it. She was going to count on his sense of responsibility for his men, on his loathing of broken loyalty, and, above all, on his fear for Hero’s safety. He could sense all that coming. If she really knew where Hero was, there could be only one possible reason why Hero had not been killed. She was to be held, in secret, as a hostage to compel Tros to obey.

  His answer was a blunt attempt to force the issue:

  “No one need ever know I sent a substitute Arsinoe to Cyprus. The substitute resembles her well enough.”

  “No one ever shall know,” she retorted. “Let the wench you sent to Cyprus be Arsinoe and take the consequences! But you, also, take the consequences.”

  “For instance?”

  “Trust me, you shall soon know. Tros, our friendship is as dead, of your treason against me, as some hundreds are dead of the plague that is sweeping the city. Never again speak to me of friendship, but of obedience!”

  He sat silent, less displeased than he chose to appear. In the name of their former friendship there was, almost nothing manly he would not attempt, if called on. But if Cleopatra chose to end the friendship, she, too, should face the consequences. He would not betray her. But the end had come of her power, which had been wholly based on friendship, to command his service at his own cost and his own risk.

  CHAPTER XXIV. “The city will be in a bad temper”

  The really dangerous people are not they who believe in violence as a means to every end, nor they who believe in treachery as a means to most ends. Those can be overcome by violence, and by alertness. The deadly menace is the intelligent man or woman whose mystic vision, trained in the ways of wisdom, as was Cleopatra’s, has been mis-directed and confused until suspicion has become the guiding principle and power the only end in view.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  There was a sudden fanfare of trumpets. A company of soldiers armed with whips advanced into the arena at the double and drove out the clowns and acrobats who had been entertaining the spectators in the interval between races. That always put the crowd into a good temper, for the purely Alexandrine reason that it annoyed the rich parvenus, who had paid huge prices for the troupes of entertainers. It was great fun to see expensive competitors for popularity interrupted and chased out of sight. The crowd booed the patrons who had paid for the show, and roared with laughter at the antics of the fleeing clowns.

  Then, perhaps because her sense of strategy dictated a pause in the conversation, Cleopatra appeared to become as interested in the arena as anyone else. A slave brought her the gilded wreath of victory, to be tossed down to the winner of the next race. A gate at one end of the stadium opened and four-horsed chariots came in with a burst of speed that was reined in, after fifty or sixty yards, to a spectacular canter. Passing beneath the royal box the charioteers saluted. Then, before reaching the turn at the western end, they wheeled and came back slowly to the starting post, which was a gilded pole exactly opposite the royal divan. The tumult of the excited crowd was like the roar of battle on a storm-bound beach.

  This was the big race of the year. Fortunes depended on it. In Alexandrine estimation it was more important than war and politics. Unlike the crowd in Rome, they didn’t care for scenes of carnage on the strewn sand, although dangerous driving excited them almost to madness. Where a Roman amphitheatre would have had trapdoors for admitting wild beasts, the Alexandrines had wooden gates in a marble wall for the swift removal of injured men and horses. Death was best out of sight, out of mind. They loved life swift and noisy. They loved fortunate people. The owner of the winning team, for a year to come, would be the most envied man in Alexandria. As likely as not, the losing owners would be almost bankrupt and might have to retire to their country estates, or even to flee the country to avoid creditors. Many losing owner had been sold into slavery.

  The crowd’s tremendous roar was punctuated by the sharp yelps of the layers of last minute odds in the betting booths beneath the tiers of seats. Streams of slaves were scampering along the corridors to make bets for their owners. The bookmakers were laying odds of three to one on Red, even money on White, three to one against Green and ten to one against Yellow. All the royal party seemed to favor Red; they were grumbling at having to accept odds of one to three. Cleopatra glanced at Tros:

  “Are you not betting? You, who take such chances! Or is your new woman already risk enough?”

  He made a wry face. “Yellow!”

  She looked at him intently. “Strange, how wise you sometimes are in little matters, and how foolish in great ones! You will win your bet.”

  He wondered what she might mean by that. Then he recalled the laughter in Leander’s eyes.

  “If I win, I shall not get paid,” he answered.

  “Why not?”

  “I gave my money to the Captain of your Guard, Leander. He advised me to bet on Yellow. He will either have betted on Red or else have simply pocketed the money.”

  “Why did you entrust your money to Leander?”

  “To buy his good will. But if Yellow should win, I shall have made an enemy instead of a friend. No matter. He won’t last long. I imagine, if you don’t pay his debts his creditors will make the city too hot to hold him.”

  “He is not worth it,” she answered. But Tros knew she rather liked Leander. He judged, from her effort to appear uninterested, that he had lodged a thought in her mind. Since Caesar’s death she had very frequently consulted Tros about whom to appoint, and whom to remove from office. She was staring at the Romans. They had a whole block of seats, over on the left beyond the seats of the priests of Serapis and the block reserved for the city officials. They were nearly all of equestrian rank; their togas made a solid splurge of color. Noisy, intemperate, insolent, treacherous opportunists, loathing Rome and loving Alexandrine luxury, but proud to be Roman citizens and boastful of Rome’s feats of arms. Hated by the Alexandrines. Caesar had imported most of them, but they had rather lost their grip on the city since Caesar’s death.

  It was a huge stadium, with an elongated oval wall, about four feet, high, on the inside of the course, so that the narrowest parts of the course were at the starting and finishing post directly beneath the royal box, and at the corresponding curve on the far side. There was barely room to get the plunging stallions in line for the start; and it was an accepted principle, hugely enjoyed by the crowd, to injure one’s opponent’s team if it could be done without risk to one’s own. So there was some marvelous manoeuvring — twenty or thirty false starts and at least as many hair’s-breadth escapes from disaster. The charioteers even used their long whips on each other, and it seemed that Red got the worst of those exchanges. Red was drawn on the inside. The other charioteers did all they could to make him smash his wheels against the low wall. Their efforts excited the crowd to spasms of frenzy that brought a curious smile to Cleopatra’s lips.

  Yellow came in for almost none of the rough jockeying. Drawn on the outside, the charioteer was able to keep his stallions from becoming as frantic as the others. They were sweating less. But, on the other hand, they looked less spirited, and he less competent; he appeared to have none of the brilliant audacity that the Alexandrine crowd adored. The odds against him went to twelve to one before the drop of the starter’s signal.

  They were off at last, amid a tumult that re-echoed from the high marble walls of the stadium and made the blue sky seem to be a roof of solid noise. Tros almost missed seeing the start, because someone leaned over between the fans and whispered to the Queen; she appeared not to notice the whisper, but her left hand tightened on a scrap of parchment. Surreptitiously she read the parchment, and then crumpled it, keeping it cl
enched.

  Yellow tailed off at the start, three lengths in the rear, and made no effort to steal the lead at the first turn. Red was leading, with Green and White neck-and-neck behind him. The crowd, for the moment, grew almost quiet until, beneath the royal box again at the end of the first round, White drew even with Red. The real battle began then. The spectators lost their reason — lost all consciousness of anything but mad excitement. Excepting the Queen and Tros, the royal party went as mad as the rest of them. Tros was watching the Queen with the side of his eye. She was watching the Romans.

  There was something ominous about the Romans. Their cheering was arrogant, organized, almost battle-angry, triumphant when Red regained the lead but changing its tone as the tactics of the other charioteers grew more evident. They were forcing the speed at the turns. The speed caused Red to swing wide, so that Green could cut in and steal the inside position. White fell into third place. At the next turn Green deliberately reined wide, forcing Red to the off, and leaving room for White to spurt up again on the inside. The Romans rose in their seats and had to be shouted down by the armed attendants; two or three Romans resisted and were thrown out. The Alexandrine stadium was better policed than the city streets.

  “After this race,” said Cleopatra, “you will find those Romans reasonable.”

  Tros laughed. “The only reasonable Roman is he who has won. You know their motto: Parcere subjectis, deballare superbos! Spare the conquered, but lick hell out of the proud!”

  She answered rapidly, as excited as he had ever seen her. She seemed to have forgotten enmity, but perhaps that was force of habit. Since Caesar’s death she had talked with Tros more intimately than with almost anyone else except Charmion. However, Tros was on guard. It wasn’t likely she was talking without a hidden motive.

  “This was the Romans’ bid for popularity. Everyone knows they have bribed the others to let Red win. Even I knew it! All the city has betted on Red.”

  “And you?”

  “It was expensive. But mine is the deeper purse. The city will be in a bad temper. Watch Yellow.”

  The spectators were already in a vicious temper, screaming, cursing, calling on a hundred gods, beating one another’s heads and being beaten to their seats by attendants armed with batons for the purpose. Nothing but a miracle could save Red. Green and White were worrying like wolves at a stag, first one and then the other cutting in at the turns and forcing Red toward the outer wall. Yellow, three lengths in the rear, was using no whip; his stallions were going well within their strength, and he had lost his look of incompetence. He was awake and alert, with his team in control, and he seemed to know what was going to happen.

  Red had the faster team, but they were worried and frightened by their opponent’s tactics. He used his whip on the other charioteers and on their horses, but he could never get far enough ahead at the turns to prevent one of them from cutting in on the inside while the other crowded him outward. Six times around the course they fought it out amid a tumult, in which color, noise and motion were all mingled in a sun-lit roar of agonied suspense. And then the end came, just before the finish of the sixth circuit within fifty feet of the royal box, with one more round to go.

  At the last turn Red had gained a slight lead, but his bullied stallions were tiring. White, on the inside, called on his team for a last spurt — the last ounce that was in them. Flailing with his whip, he drew abreast. He forced Red almost to the outer wall. He let Green pass him on the inside. That was the end of White; his exhausted horses faded and fell away into last place. Yellow, third now, began to drive like a winner — like Phoebus-Apollo pursuing defeated night behind the Horses of the Sun.

  Green, on the inside, with a team that was nearly done for, made a furious bid for the lead. Red accepted the challenge. For fifty thundering strides they were neck-and-neck. Then Yellow challenged — drew even, on the inside. Within fifty yards of the royal box twelve whip-mad stallions strained in a line that wavered like spring steel. Suddenly Green swerved. He crashed Red. There was a yell like the agonied death-cry of a nation. Green and Red went down in a dusty thunder-thump of broken-legged horses, splintered poles, smashed wheels, chariots and men. Yellow went on alone to win the race, with White following at hardly more than a trot.

  The stadium slaves were on the job in a second. Before Yellow had made the last circuit at full gallop they were out with their mules and ox-hide sleds and had dragged the wreck out of sight, through a door in the wall. The Queen stood up, on a footstool, to lean over the bank of flowers and toss the gilded wreath to the winner. She looked delighted. But the Romans, over on the left, were dour. The attendants were frightened, forming squads with their backs to the wall behind the topmost tiers of seats. The cheated crowd became a mob as suddenly as if a wind had smitten them and whipped them into fury. They poured into the arena, with the ominous riot-snarl that sounds more terrible than war, and began pelting the Romans with scraps of metal wrenched from the decorative emblems, marble fingers of statues — anything that could be broken off and used as a missile before the soldiers could interfere. And the soldiers were strangely dilatory, although some of the Queen’s Guard, commanded by Leander in person, filed into the royal box and formed a crimson-cloaked screen on three sides.

  The Queen took Tros’s arm, looking tiny beside him. Tros caught Leander’s eye and smiled. Leander’s grim and stony look was hardly likely to be due to the riot. He was surely not afraid for the Queen. The crowd was unarmed. There were plenty of royal guards. Riots were of such common occurrence in Alexandria that the authorities looked on them as all in the day’s work. The royal box and its apartments were as safe as a fortress; being built of marble, they were even fireproof. No, there was something else the matter with Leander. He avoided Tros’s eyes. And when the Queen looked up in his direction he deliberately looked away, pretending to be keeping an eye on his men.

  The Queen spoke, but she had to repeat it, because Tros was turning over in his mind the problem of what use he might make of Leander, who now owed him a sum of money that he never possibly could pay.

  “Tros, I asked you to pick tip that scrap of parchment.” He stooped for it.

  “Keep it,” she said, “Come with me and read it.”

  Olympus, standing in the corridor like a wan ghost in a black shroud, made a sign with his tau-handled staff — a bit unnecessary, Tros thought. He was already on guard with every nerve in his being. Gloomy old Olympus was a bit too fond of that air of mysterious, all-observing wisdom. However, there was one thing about Olympus: he never claimed personal fees for his friendly efforts to act like the finger of Fate. It was sufficient for Olympus that one made gifts to the priests of far-off Philae.

  CHAPTER XXV. “You will obey, Lord Captain!”

  It was the sea, with its roaring rage and smiling treachery, that taught me sometimes to appear to yield. Many a time I have luffed and let an enemy believe me beaten. I have avoided battle. I have run. But I have never struck my flag. Storm lover though I have ever been, and conqueror of storms though I have had to be — aye, though I pray for a storm if I must meet an enemy at sea — I see no wisdom in opposing storm and enemy. Rather I use the one to help me to defeat the other. And if it seems advisable I run from both, to await my moment.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  There were three foreign envoys in the buffet-room. All three were unofficial, at cross purposes, as diplomatically rude to one another as they were eager to be first to obtain a private audience. Since Caesar had set the precedent, Cleopatra very often used the stadium as a means of holding secret, strictly unofficial conversations that she preferred not to trust to her minister’s ears. Those unofficial envoys were wary of the wine that was being pressed on them by the chamberlain and his staff of beautifully mannered courtiers. Cleopatra’s wine had a curious reputation for loosening secretive tongues, though some said it was the Queen’s own witchery that did the damage.

  One of the envoys
was a Syrian in Roman uniform — undoubtedly from Cassius. One was a solemn-eyed Gaul, in trousers, with Mark Antony’s name continually on his lips. The third was a Parthian, splendidly dressed and jewelled, but looking ill at ease; he had two companions; they were whispering together. All three envoys moved to attract the Queen’s attention, but the chamberlain manoeuvred his crew of exquisites so as to make it easy for her not to notice them. She preceded Tros into a frescoed room floored with onyx and severely furnished. It had a window opening into a small courtyard with three blind walls and a view of the sky. Two deaf-mute fan-bearers followed; they could read nothing, write nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, do nothing except stand, and sway their jewelled fans, and see, and smile, and symbolize Egyptian thralldom to a Greek throne.

  “No,” said Cleopatra, “read it.”

  She and Tros stood at the window, where she could watch his face and he could see the fine handwriting on the parchment. It was one of those slips on which the Queen received so many secret messages. It was sealed, but the signature was almost illegible, as if the writer had deliberately disguised it, from fear or some other motive.

  “In obedience to commands received by royal messenger, this commander of the royal fortress at Pelusium has this day arrested and imprisoned, secretly as directed, a certain woman calling herself Hero, representing herself to be the wife of a merchant of Memphis but wearing beneath her chiton a silken girdle with a jewelled golden buckle and undoubtedly did formerly belong to Tros of Samothrace. The bearer of this message has the girdle. He is also returning the painted portrait of the woman, which was sent for identification and has been found to resemble her nearly enough, though she is some years older than the portrait suggests and the color and manner of wearing the hair seem different. This may be due lo the painter’s desire to flatter, and to the portrait having been made several years ago. In obedience to the royal command the prisoner was searched, but has not yet been questioned under torture, with the consequence that she has said nothing of any importance. Her mood is sulky and her manner toward her custodians insolent, in spite of good treatment. An accounting of the money found in her possession and of her personal belongings, is on a separate sheet, properly attached.”