by Talbot Mundy
Cleopatra held out a girdle for Tros to examine. It was of new silk and he had never seen that before. The Queen glanced at the flowers that he had tucked into the empty loop on his sword-belt.
“Do you recognize the buckle?”
He was silent.
Few rulers on a tottering throne, surrounded by treachery, amid a populace accustomed to violence, would have dared to laugh at Tros as Cleopatra did then. There were only the unarmed deaf-mutes to protect her. Tros could have pitched them, with hardly an effort, through the window that was letting in the roar of riot. True, there were guards outside the door, but he could have killed her before they could have burst in to interfere The reddening fury in his eyes would have made a coward scream for help. Cleopatra laughed gaily and tossed him the buckle.
“Keep it — for a reminder of my mercy! In all your travels, impudent Lord Captain, have you known another Queen who could forgive such treason as yours? Were you in such need of a woman? You, whose chastity has been a byword! You could have had your choice of any woman at my court. Were she already married, I would have had her divorced to please you. But my sister! My bitterest rival! And instead of slaying the traitor Alexis, you have had the monstrous impudence to send him and that Etruscan rat Tarquinius to put one of my father’s bastards on the throne of Cyprus in Arsinoe’s place! You purple pirate! Before your first kiss from Arsinoe’s lips was dry, Tarquinius had written me! Did you think Alexis, who betrayed me, would not betray you in turn? He, too, has written. Too merciful, too credulous, too amorous Lord Captain Tros!”
She paused, between mockery and waspish anger. He stood silent, weighing the buckle as if in a scale against impulse.
She continued:
“And so Arsinoe, for whom the throne of Cyprus wasn’t good enough, has changed her name to Hero, has she, to become the paramour of the very pirate I sent to make an end of her! And Boidion the bastard has become Arsinoe and is Queen of Cyprus! Your Hero, is she so much lovelier than I, that you propose to share my throne with her? Is that it? What did you propose to do with me, Lord Captain?”
He did what he knew she hated him to do — folded his arms and paced the floor. Suddenly he turned on her:
“Egypt, let well alone! Hero—”
“Truly!” she interrupted. “You will say she is no longer my dangerous enemy! She shall be even less dangerous! Pausanias, who commands at Pelusium, is a little too much an admirer of you, Lord Captain. I will send another to replace him, who is less likely to love you and do your bidding.”
He thought of Leander, suddenly. It was a poor straw to snatch at. But had he, on the inspiration of a moment, caught in the toils of debt the man whom the Queen would now send to Pelusium? If necessary, he could ask Esias, Leander’s biggest creditor, to apply pressure. Did the Queen believe Leander could be trusted to be Tros’s enemy because he owed a debt of honor that he couldn’t pay?
Cleopatra’ sat down in an ebony chair, as dignified as the painting of Penelope rejecting suitors on the frescoed wall. Tros strode toward her, towering above her:
“Egypt, neither Hero nor I would have your throne as a gift. No, nor though you have burned my trireme, which was a cruel and faithless act, would I lift a hand against you. For I know your difficulties, and I pity your fear to trust man or woman. But—”
He hesitated. She was looking haggard. Her youth was gone. The underlying Ptolemaic savagery had overwhelmed her real genius. She was in a mood, at that moment, to summon the guard and wreak vengeance.
“Yes?” she prompted. “What?”
He dared her: “Harm you one hair of her of whom we speak, and count me from that hour your enemy forever.”
Instead of summoning the guard she sneered:
“It is easier to deal with enemies than false friends!”
He knew the danger was gone for the moment. Sneer and threat were evidence enough that she had in mind something else than silly vengeance. He laughed. “Aye, you have your executioners. They can lop off loyal heads as easily as any. But they would have done their work on me already unless your need of me were greater than your malice.”
“Malice?” She glared.
“Aye, malice! Jealousy! Unqueenly, mean ingratitude!”
“Have a care, Tros!”
“Too little care I have had! I have saved you, at my own cost and my own risk, how many times since the day I snatched you, exiled and defeated, from a beach and brought you — a chit of a naked girl — to match your wits with Caesar’s! Have I ever accepted a price, or a gift in return for the blows I have struck to save you on your throne? Have I ever grudged my loyalty, that you should cat-and-mouse me as you do your generals and ministers, who would sell you to the highest bidder if they dared? When have I sold you? When have I taken a bribe to betray you?”
“A man who can change my sister’s name and substitute a bastard on the throne of Cyprus, could change his own coat!” she retorted. “I can’t even trust you not to sail away and leave me like Dido weeping for Aeneas. No reward can hold a man like you. I even offered you a throne — my own throne! You refused that. Now you wench it with the sister who once stole my throne, who even drove me out of Egypt — who hates me with envenomed pride because I spared her, and begged her life after Caesar’s triumph — who wasn’t satisfied with Cyprus, but invaded Egypt to—”
Tros interrupted: “It was Boidion who invaded Egypt, and you know it! Your rat Tarquinius betrayed Hero. She is no longer Arsinoe. Hero escaped, and came to Egypt to prevent—”
“I know your Hero! She came looking for you, to inflame you — madden you with kisses on a field of battle! Hero is her new name, is it? I will send Leander to command Pelusium! There shall be a fine new tale of Hero and Leander, I guarantee you, unless you buy my pardon!”
Tros almost lost his self-command.
“It is for sale, is it? Buy it? Shall I bargain with a woman who burned my trireme to escape from keeping a promise?”
“Bargain with you!” she retorted. “After you have bedded with the wench I sent you secretly to kill? You will obey, Lord Captain!”
That suited Tros perfectly. He recovered his self-control, but he dissembled it beneath a scowl that would have frightened any ordinary woman. Pride in his own integrity would have compelled him to keep a bargain. There was no man or woman on earth who could make him obey, unless of his own free will. Obedience was something he demanded of the free men whose captain he was. He was not Cleopatra’s subject. He had never accepted her commission.
Cleopatra misunderstood his scowl. She mistook it for irresolution. “Should you disobey, your Hero will endure the fate of my elder sister Berenice, who usurped my father’s throne for a while in the days when you were pirating in Gaul, Lord Captain. You may have heard how Berenice died? Not comfortably. And your friend Esias, who sold me your pearls for a price that would build a fleet of triremes, shall hand over your fortune to my treasurer.”
Tros did his best to look scared, but the threat reassured him. He began to feel almost at ease. She was threatening what she knew, and he knew equally well, she would not dare to do. Not even Caesar had taken too many liberties with the Jewish bankers. Bad subjects. Easy to scare into secret opposition or open rebellion; extremely difficult to rob by any other means than force of arms. And if she could secretly murder Hero, then her hold over Tros would be gone. She would never release Hero of her own free will. But she was indignant that she would certainly have had her done to death already if she didn’t need Tros’s services so desperately that she couldn’t afford to let spite have its way. There was time. Hero was not in immediate danger.
“What then?” he demanded. “I suppose, as usual you won’t inform me fully. You will send me on another blind errand.” He deliberately angered her again by doing what he knew she hated — accurately guessing at the thought behind her eyes. “Charmion, of course, has been urging you to have me beheaded, or worse. You refused, because you are in danger from Cassius, and you daren’t send an
army against him. So Charmion sulks, and you make demands on me. What are they?”
She disguised her irritation. She was too intent now on what she needed.
“Two of Mark Antony’s Syrian spies have brought definite news that Cassius is secretly sending a force of Arabs to try to win over the Pelusium garrison and raise a evolution that will compel me to abdicate or perhaps marry Herod. I dread Herod’s brains more than Cassius’s legions. How many men have you? I know you sent more than a hundred down the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, including your brawling Northmen, whom you had the impudence to release from a prison camp without my order. I know those are now billeted among the villages south of Pelusium. How many men have you here in the city?”
It was no use lying. She probably knew, and, if she didn’t, she could find it out in an hour.
“Two hundred and forty and some odd, counting officers,” he answered.
“Pirates! Lawless mercenaries! Not to be mistaken for my men. Rebels against me — driven from the city! Can you arm them?”
“Their arms were already ashore when the ship burned.”
“All told about three hundred and fifty men? Well armed? Fit to fight against Arabs?”
“If you let me have my Basques, whom you let your lately executed Governor of the City sentence to enlistment in the Red Sea Coast Patrol, I should have more than five hundred men.”
She pondered that a moment. Those Basques were one more hold she had on him.
“They are too far away. It would take too long to summon them. Cassius knows, that I know, that it was he who instigated Boidion. His agents have been intriguing with my ministers and generals; he knows I know that. He knows I have uncovered a Roman conspiracy to rise against me the minute anyone of a half-a-dozen plots looks likely to succeed. He is afraid that the minute these Arabs, with whom he hopes to surprise me, reach Pelusium I may order all the Romans in the city butchered. So he has demanded that I send to him — he says to Syria, to be sent on from there to Brutus, all that remain of the two legions that Caesar left here, the old. Gabinian irregulars and every Roman citizen in Alexandria of military age. If I refuse, he will make that an excuse for invading Egypt. If the Romans refuse to leave, he will say it was I who refused to send them. And they don’t want to go. They don’t like Cassius. They don’t trust him. They would rather be here for the looting whenever Cassius invades. That is the meaning of this riot.”
She paused. She appeared to be listening to the din through the open window, but she was studying Tros, weighing in her mind how much or how little to tell him. The din in the stadium had perceptibly lessened when she picked up the thread of her monologue:
“Now perhaps you understand why I have spent so much money to make the Alexandrines believe the Romans have swindled them over a chariot-race. There is no easier way than that to enrage Alexandrines and make them murderous. I have more than a thousand agents in the city spreading the rumor that the Romans all betted on Yellow; that they only pretended beforehand to favor Red, in order to lengthen the odds against Yellow. By tonight the Romans will be glad to leave the city. The ships are ready for them. They are not good ships, and I don’t care what happens to them. Cassius’s excuse for an invasion will be gone and it will take him time to invent another. Meanwhile, there will be no Romans in the city to bribe my officers and to raise rebellion — if, Tros, you should fail to find and defeat those Arabs before they reach Egypt! Cassius knows my army is in no condition to oppose his seven legions. But my spies say his legions would rather mutiny than march across the desert. He believes he could persuade them to march, though, if he can gain a quick success that would make the loot look worth the effort. Cassius has at least five legions, perhaps six by now, at Jericho. I have six thousand men at Pelusium, and I am afraid they may welcome the Arabs. Nearly all my generals are traitors, and the rest are incapable.”
“I know one good general,” said Tros. “Lend him to me — and a thousand men.”
“No. Idiot! Shall I have it said that I have sent my troops to wage war on Cassius’s allies? That would make even his mutinous legions march! Besides, I need what loyal troops I have to guard the Red Sea Coast against Arabs, and the southern and western frontiers against Ethiopians, Nubians Senussi, who would plunder Egypt if they saw a moment’s chance. I tell you, I don’t dare to be openly Cassius’s enemy. Rome hates him. Even Brutus, his ally and co-murderer, loathes him. Antony and Octavian intend to rid the earth of him. But Rome would never tolerate my taking up arms against a Roman proconsul. Though the Romans hate him worse than they hate me, they would call it an insult to the Roman people. They would avenge the insult. Such an excuse as that might even end their civil war; they might make common cause against me. So, you understand, I must employ a man whom I can disown, who is not my subject, who has never held my commission, but who has a motive of his own for hating Cassius. You saw Cassius kill Caesar. Caesar was your friend.”
Tros put his hands behind his back and kept silence. It was true that he hated Cassius — despised him, and Cassius knew it.
But was Cleopatra telling the truth? If Hero really was a prisoner, why was she, being kept in Pelusium, so, near the border? If Cassius’s Arabs should lay their hands on her and learn who she really was, she would again be a deadly menace to the throne of Egypt. Cassius would surely try to use her to foment rebellion.
Was Hero actually dead? Was Cleopatra pretending she had not had her killed, in order to compel Tros to do her bidding? She perceived, but misinterpreted his doubt. She lied, and he knew she was lying:
“Cassius’s envoy demanded that your ship should be burned as a punishment for your having sunk two Roman biremes in Salamis. That is another count that you have against Cassius.”
“Set Hero free,” he said, “and I will do your errand.”
“Do my errand,” she retorted, “or take the consequences. Defeat Cassius’s Arabs, and I will forgive your impudent theft of your brawling Northmen. I will even forgive your treatment of Alexis, and of that whore Boidion. I may even recognize Boidion as Arsinoe and let her leave Cyprus, since you have forced me into that predicament. And if Cassius’s intrigue fails, you may have your Hero and go whither you will.”
“Is that a genuine promise?” he asked. “Or another cat-and-mouser?”
“It pleases you to be insolent because now you know my danger, Captain Tros. If you don’t believe that promise, believe this one: fail, and I will show you your Hero’s head on the end of the torturer’s pike before the torturer deals with you likewise! Do we understand each other?”
He turned his back on her. He paced the floor. She mistook the strangle-grip of his hands behind his back, the tension of his forearms and the way he averted his eyes when he turned, for signals of defeat. The truth was, that he wished her not to see the battle-anger in his eyes. He knew he could not possibly disguise it, not for a minute or two. Had he answered her then, he could not have controlled his voice. At the moment he had only one wild thought, and he had to dismiss that before he could think reasonably and speak calmly. How could he seize Pelusium with three hundred and fifty men? He must drown that thought. He must think of something practical.
“Stand still, Tros! You irritate me when you pace up and down. If you succeed, I will even help you to build a new trireme.”
He laughed, with a shrug of his shoulders. The laugh meant that he would never again trust her, not though she should swear on the secret scrolls of the Hierophants of Philae. But she thought it meant he yielded. He had his eyes in control at last. His cunning obeyed him. He discovered words to flatter her conceit, and yet not make a promise such as self-respect might forbid him to break.
“When do you wish me to go?”
“Now — swiftly and in silence — just as soon as you can get your men together and equip them. I will send a secret order to take from the government arsenal whatever you need and can’t get from Esias.”
“If I return successful,” he answered, “I will hold you
to the last word of your promise.” But he said that to deceive her, to make her think he believed, or at any rate hoped that she would keep a promise made without witnesses. He knew he had to rescue Hero, if she were still alive. If she were dead, he — even he, who hated with his whole soul to become a turncoat under any provocation — would have vengeance or die.
Cleopatra was not quite unaware of his thought:
“I will send word to Pelusium,” she said, “to have your Hero tortured to death if you attempt a rescue. You will go by land, because I wish to be sure of your movements; and also because I have no good ships to spare; and even if I had them, my spies tell me that Cassius has concentrated a fleet at Gaza. He could overwhelm you at sea. And you are a pirate. He would attack you without the least compunction. You will go overland to intercept the Arabs, but leave Pelusium alone. The price of disobedience or failure will be the death of the fool who threw her throne away for your sake! Fortune favor you, Lord Captain. No need to inform me of your plans; I shall receive reports of your doings. On your way out, kindly tell my chamberlain to bring in the Gaul.”
He backed out, bowing low to hide his facial expression. By the time the door had closed behind him he was smiling, and none could have guessed his thoughts — unless Olympus did. Olympus watched him. Tros wondered how much, or how little Olympus actually knew of Cleopatra’s secrets. Certainly Olympus knew enough to make Charmion jealous. And how much did Charmion know? Charmion’s quarrels with the Queen were usually due to the fact that Charmion was the more or less secret director of the Queen’s spies and the Queen’s secret police. How much did Olympus know of this new development? Tros didn’t dare to be seen talking to him — not then.