Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  The riot had been quelled in the arena. Many of the seats were empty, but the racing had resumed. For the time being the remaining spectators were in a state of harmless ecstasy. Tros found Leander at the foot of the stairs, and Leander returned him his sword.

  “See here, Tros—”

  “Hold your tongue, Leander, lest you say the wrong word! I know what you did. You owe me what your boon companions would call a debt of honor. Can you pay it? Not you! Neither can you pay Esias, who at a word from me would hound you for payment. You can have my friendship if you want it. I spoke to the Queen about you. She may perhaps promote you to command Pelusium. If so, then remember who befriended you instead of compassing your ruin.”

  Their eyes met. They exchanged salutes. There was no knowing what such a man as Leander would do, or not do. If the Queen should send him to command Pelusium, he might try to repay his debt to Tros by being complaisant. He might let the secret prisoner escape. Or he might try to wipe out the personal debt, and to strengthen himself in the Queen’s favor, by setting such a trap as should eliminate Tros forever. It was even possible that Cleopatra wanted that to happen. It would be an easy, subtly ingenious way of executing, without scandal to herself, an old friend who had become as obnoxious as Tros of Samothrace. She was capable of even deeper subtlety than that.

  Leander was probably treacherous, but he was certainly not subtle, although he might be one of the dozens of ambitious gallants who owed their positions to Charmion’s influence and who would obey Charmion’s slightest hint. If so, Charmion’s spite was likely to employ Leander’s treachery. But it would be safer to trust Leander than the Queen. Cleopatra had forfeited the confidence of Tros of Samothrace, irrevocably and forever.

  CHAPTER XXVI. “What matter a burned trireme — ?”

  When I ask myself, as I think all thoughtful men inevitably do: have I done my duty? Have I acted manly? I perceive it is impossible oneself to answer. That is something that only other men can do, until the god’s day comes to issue judgment: — aye, and beware of flattery! Men’s speech is seldom sheeted close to Truth’s wind. But their deeds are eloquent. So that when ignorant dogs of bawdy seamen, whom I have shepherded and thrashed and loved and led, behave like loyal comrades behind my back, then I take comfort. My men shall judge me. Gods, if gods there be, may judge me by the good foul-weather friends, who have stood by.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  Two Romans invited themselves into Tros’s litter. He knew them both, and didn’t like them, but he couldn’t in common decency refuse to give them a lift. They were lean men, but Tros and his sumptuous litter were weight enough for eight Negro slaves; they showed the whites of their eyes, already terrified by the rioting. It had spread to the streets. Some of the enraged spectators were pursuing Romans, hunting them high and low, assisted by a. mob that neither knew nor cared why. Even with the curtains drawn there was a chance that Tros’s might be spotted and dragged out to be beaten to death. They sat facing the rear.

  “A bad business,” said the smaller of the two, a man named Titus Sallustius Varro. He leaned to draw the curtains closer. “Tros, did you lose any money?”

  “No. I betted on Yellow.”

  “Dioscuri! How did you know? Who told you?”

  “One of the Queen’s officers.”

  “There! Orosius, didn’t I tell you it was a put up job! Tros, Polyclem the banker had it all set for Red to win. He and a few others have been planning it since last year. He spent a fortune on it, in bribes and one way and another. It looked like a sure thing. All we Romans have lost more than we could afford. This is a trick of that bitch Cleopatra’s — and a smart trick, too — to put us Romans in peril. When enough Romans have been murdered by the crowd to make a good showing she will turn out the troops to protect the rest of us and then claim credit for being the friend of the Roman people!”

  Orosius grunted. “Have you heard the rumor that she intends to put every Roman citizen of military age aboard that fleet of rotten ships and send us all to Cassius in Syria?”

  “Of course I’ve heard it. Ugh! Cassius would be a fine host. He is so avaricious and mean, he would make a cold in the head pay dividends! This may be part of the inducement, to make rotten ships look safer to us than a riotous city!”

  “I have not even packed,” said Orosius.

  “Then you’d better do it, if you don’t want your belongings looted,” said the other.

  “I intend to stay here. Like you, my friend, I came here to enjoy myself and not be liable to military conscription. I hope this wantoning Queen may catch the plague!”

  “Anyhow, Tros, we are grateful to you for the protection of your litter.”

  There was more protection than Tros could explain, although the two Romans took for granted that he had an armed escort. Tros had brought no escort with him. But now he could hear the tramp of armed men, on either side of the litter. Was he under arrest? Had he angered the Queen too deeply? Were the Queen’s Guards obeying a secret order to escort him to a dungeon? He found that hard to believe, but it was possible. He peered through the curtain.

  One glance was enough. It changed him from a man with heartache to a man whose heart thumped with the surge of daring. He leaned against the back of the litter, and, for the first time since he had watched the fire devour his trireme, laughed with the love of life. He was a man again. He could win. He could not fail. He knew it!

  It was an almost noiseless belly-laugh, homeric; huge; but quiet, meant only for Fortune’s ears. Not luck. Fortune. Tros never flattered luck. He played his own men fair; so forging faith upon the anvil of events that, though fortune might seem to fall by accident from heaven, it was actually his by right of deeds well done and loyalty well led. But when it happened, it stirred the roots of his warrior’s humour.

  “You laugh, Tros. What on earth do you find to laugh at — you and your burned trireme? Do you find our predicament funny?”

  “No, no. I laugh at memories. Where do you wish to be set down?”

  “At the house of Polyclem the banker. We must find out what is to be done to prevent that cursed Queen from ruining us all.”

  The clanking thirty-inch marching step of men in armor was a key to the right of way through even Alexandrine rioters in quest of heads to break before the city police should interfere. It was only unarmed, unescorted Romans who were being made to wish, for once in their lives, that they looked like other people. Tros’s guests dived through the curtains and into a house almost before the litter had come to a halt. Then a snub-nosed face with one eye, under a crestless helmet, peered through the off-side curtains.

  “Where now, master?”

  “To wherever she is!”

  Conops was alive and looking saucy. That was absolute proof that Conops’s charge was out of harm’s reach. Hero couldn’t possibly be a prisoner in Pelusium; otherwise Conops would be there too, or dead, or looking downcast.

  The face vanished. The litter proceeded on its way toward the Rhakotis docks.

  “Conops! Climb in.”

  Seaman style, as if he were rolling into a hammock, Conops invaded the litter and squatted, facing Tros. His one eye was as alert and shameless as a bird’s. His smile was of brass, his armor as bright as polishing could make it. There wasn’t a hint in his manner that anything on earth was unusual, or out of place, or even dangerous. There he was, ready for trouble or anything else.

  “Is the hurt leg all right, master?”

  “Well enough. You disobedient rogue! I sent you in charge of the men to Pelusium. Where are they?”

  “All safe, master, all accounted for. Seven of ’em died of wounds on the way down-river, but the rest of the wounded got ’em a wench a-piece to cherish ’em and they’ll be fighting fit again in no time. Sigurdsen’s in charge; he’s bled enough to fill a water-cask, but he’s well enough already to crave a crack at me with his battle-ax. The men are billeted in five villages, all within sound of a bugle-bl
ast, and the flies are bad, but the grub’s good, liquor scarce and wenches plenty. There was a bit o’ trouble with the village men-folk, but we didn’t touch marketable virgins, so there wasn’t much they could do about it. All the way down-Nile we’d no trouble at all, barring a couple of fights or so, and one man caught by a crocodile. The fool went swimming. But I saved his armor. Near Pelusium a black he-slave belonging to Esias’s partner came up-river looking for us, and then I knew we’d reached the end of a run o’ luck and had the dirty end o’ trouble to begin on.”

  “What mischief have you been up to now?”

  “Saving your grace and presence, master, I was forced to give a licking to the lady you said was to mind my orders. She can fight back. She was tougher licking than a lad o’ twice her weight, what with her pulling a knife, and me not wanting to spoil her good looks, and one thing and another. But she’s your woman. You said she was to mind me. I made her do it.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In Esias’s office. Old Esias offered her some slave-girls and a soft bed, but she made him dig out armor that really fits her. Last I saw of her, an hour ago, she was watching the smiths make a change in the set of a shoulder-piece. Esias is scared half-crazy.”

  Tros scowled. “Understand me. If she wants you flogged, I will do it. Even if I think you did right, I will do it. You have laid your hand on your superior. If she complains to me, you will take the consequences.”

  “Aye, aye, master.”

  “Tell your story.”

  “Esais’s partner’s black slave came up-Nile and warned us that the Queen’s men in Pelusium were watching for a lady calling herself Hero. Seems the Queen had reports from her spies. Like as not that dog Tarquinius, that you saw fit not to kill, had told all about your swapping one princess for another. Or maybe it was just the bad luck along of changing a girl’s name, same as changing a ship’s. Anyhow the Queen knew. A man had killed a racing camel, carrying a secret message along the sea-road from Alexandria to Pelusium, ordering the arrest of a woman named Hero; and the commander of Pelusium, Pausanias, had sent for Esias’s partner to warn him to detain her and hand her over if she should turn up. And he’d sent a lieutenant and twenty men upriver to look for her.

  “That was when the trouble started between her and me. Right then. She was for setting an ambush for the Queen’s men, and then for fighting our way across the border and sending word to you. You never saw the like o’ the way she tried to take command, until I’d proved I’d sew her up in a sail if she didn’t obey me, same as you said, ‘board-ship fashion, quick and handy and no back-talk.”

  “Did you hurt her?”

  “No more than I had to, master. She’d a wrenched arm that hurt a trifle, along of her pulling a knife, but she can use her arm again, and I let her keep the knife. She’d a bit of a sore rib, and her wrist was skinned. But I was thoughtful not to hurt her good looks.”

  “Well, what else happened?”

  “You remember, she’d two slave-girls. One of ’em nursed Sigurdsen so good that he begged leave to buy her. And your lady’s generous. She gave him the girl — a nice buxomly, motherly wench and just the thing for that homesick Northman. But I took the other and I made bold to promise her freedom, and a good dowry to boot, if she’d do as I said. She’s smaller, but about your lady’s shape. They don’t look much alike, and their hair’s not the same color, but I made her put on your lady’s fine clothes and she was passable. I learned her. I drilled her. I took that British buckle you’d given your lady, and had her sew it to a girdle and wear it next her skin, as if it was a secret; and I dressed up your lady to look like a slave. She and the slave-girl swapped names — Marianne her name is — she’s from Idumaea — and I took the slave-girl, calling herself Hero, with pretty near all your lady’s fine apparel, along ahead in the leading boat, me and the boat’s crew acting deferential.

  “She’s a good girl. She acted pretty when the Queen’s men from Pelusium came swooping out from an ambush in the reeds. It wasn’t us they wanted; Esais’s partner’s slave had made me sure o’ that, so I could afford to be impudent, and I was. I told ’em what they’d catch for pirating your woman, and a nice new young woman at that, with the bloom still on her. And they didn’t like it, master. Your name’s big in Pelusium. But they’d their orders, so they carried her off, she play-acting like a sulky queen, same as I’d learned her, treating the officer like so much dirt and saying mighty little. She was easy learning; she’d waited on quality; she knew how a princess behaves when she’s out o’ patience.”

  “Well, and then what?”

  “Well, master, I tried to guess what you’d ha’ done, saving your presence, if you’d ha’ been me. Your orders were for me to stay in command of the men. Maybe I should have obeyed orders. Anyhow, I didn’t. I made the best dispositions I could, and then left Sigurdsen in charge; he’s well enough to keep order, and too bad tempered not to. Seemed we were plenty near Pelusium. We were so near, I could send Esias’s partner’s slave for money and a few things we needed. There were villages thereabouts and, as I said, wenches, so I billeted the men. It took a day and a night to get ’em settled down ship-shape and the fighting done with. By that time I’d begun to wonder how long it ‘ud be before they’d learn they’d got the wrong girl in Pelusium, not to mention me having the right one, in a way of saying, under hatches. Pluto, she’s a hot one, master! Sigurdsen was battle-axing mad about the way I’d handled her. He said she’s blood-royal, and me no better than a whore-son seaman showing her the butt-end of a boarding pike. One way and another, it was time to find you.

  “So I took the eight Jews you’d left with me, and they’re good lads. Time I’ve learned ’em, they’ll be fit for any duty. I didn’t dare try the canals, for fear o’ Queen’s spies; and I didn’t dare take one of our river-boats coastwise, for fear of upsetting it in the shoals; they chop up ugly in the least little bit of a norther and our Jew-lads are no more seamen than I’m a rabbi. But we took our boat down-river in the night — only a third of a moon, and the big fort throwing a shadow as black as Baltic tar — and we came on a little jewel of a sponge-ship, in Pelusium for water, with her captain and crew aboard. They were three sheets to the wind on new wine, and only eight of ’em, so we got to sea with no worse than a couple o’ knife-cuts, and the sail as full of arrows as a sea-urchin o’ spikes. Those sponge-boats can go to windward, and I’d hoped to steal out and be gone before the fort ‘ud know it. But there’d been a tidy bit o’ head-cracking and swearing, and they’d heard us. They opened fire from the fort bastion. So we had to use sweeps, and well we did; it’s a mean passage out through that mouth o’ the Nile, in the dark. The rest was easy, master. We’d a fair wind. And when the spongers learned whose men we are, and saw we’d a fine lady with us, and her calling me such names as only a royal lady would ha’ dared to use to anyone, seaman or no seaman, and I’d promised ’em money, they made no trouble at all.”

  “When did you reach Alexandria?”

  “One hour after midday, master. And the first thing I saw was the bones of our trireme all black and gutted. Pluto! Then I knew you’d need me, no matter what else. Old Esias was in a panic. First eye-full, he knew who she was. He tried to hide her in a back-room. But all she wanted was armor to fit, and clean linen. I’d laundered what she had on, and it didn’t look good, on account o’ the mud in the sponge-boat water-cask. Old Esias warned me to go and hide in a sail-loft, and he overpaid the sponge-boat crew and bought their sponges to keep ’em quiet. Then he wrung his hands and said the very sight o’ me in the city might start worse trouble than was already. But I got hold of the other two Jews, and eleven fighting men can beat a shipload o’ trouble when they’re so minded. I guess you’d fouled your anchor on a bad lee and might be needing a hand. Esias wouldn’t tell, but Ahiram said you’d gone to talk to the Queen. So it was simple. I’d had the Jew-lads shine our armor, to keep ’em out o’ mischief on the sponge-boat. I inspected ’em. We were fit to be an
yone’s escort. So we marched though the city and acted we’d nothing to do but play knuckle-bones, in among the parked litters. Presently a riot started and we watched ’em chivvying the Romans. They scragged two. Then you came, and a couple o’ Romans got in talk with you and got into the litter, so we minded our manners. I reckoned you’d notice us soon enough. That’s all, master. Should I ha’ stayed at Pelusium?”

  Tros peered out. They were approaching the guarded gate of Esias’s dock. He looked hard at Conops.

  “Had you been anything else than the scoundrelly, damned disobedient, shameless dog that you are, you would have obeyed orders and stayed at Pelusium.”

  “Yes, master.”

  “And had you been anything else than the faithful, loyal, dirty-weather comrade that you are, I would reduce you for disobedience.”

  “Yes, master.”

  “I am well pleased. I would rather have seen your ugly face this afternoon than a hundred armed men.”

  Silence.

  “You have done well.”

  Silence. The clank of the ten Jews marching. A shout, and the creak of the opening dock-yard gate.

  “It would hurt my heart to have to thrash you.”

  Silence.

  “I will do it, if she wishes.”

  “Aye, aye, master.”

  Conops rolled out of the litter before it came to a halt between Esias’s office door and the dock where the bones of a splendid ship lay black and useless.

  “Escort— ‘ten-shun! Lord-Captain’s salute — pree-sent arms!” Clang.

  Then Hero — not so long ago Arsinoe, Queen of Cyprus — ex-Queen of Egypt — outlaw — looking like a fair-haired lad in armor: