by Talbot Mundy
“Alone?”
“No — the slave I gave her and three others. She went away in your little sailboat — she and her baggage. Oh, good riddance to her! Tros, you—”
“Left she no message for me?”
Alarm awoke, vibrant, awful, sudden. Conops’s trumpet clarioned the “Stand to arms and fall in!” The din of the workshops ceased on the clang of an armorer’s sledge. Then a drum-beat — the tump-burra-tump of the signallers marking the line for the men to form on — torchlight, the clatter of weapons and hurrying feet. Esias talked on:
“Tros, there was a slave-girl — that hair-dresser — the thief — the Circassian girl who stole Hero’s money and was waiting to be whipped — I had her fetched — put a piece of armor on her — I told her the police had come to take her to the execution place — so she ran—”
“What was Hero’s message to me?”
Tump-burra-tump-burra-tump— “Fall in there! — archers in the rear rank! — where’s your helmet, you? — go get it! — hit that man, decurion — is he drunk or asleep? — well, wake him up! — squad-commanders, roll-call! — here — here — here — here! — From the left — by squads — number!—”
“What was Hero’s message to me, Esias?”
Ahiram came three or four steps at a time, breathless. He saluted, waited, eyeing Tros with a kind of sulky what-new-madness-now? look.
“Ahiram, have the slaves finished caulking that hull on the ways, three docks along?”
“Aye.”
“Are the arrow-engines from the trireme aboard?”
“Aye, there’s barely room to work ship, so many gadgets.”
“Launch her! Take fifty men to do it. Warp her around to the pier at the end of this dock. Get the water-casks into the after hold. They’re full and ready! Manhandle ’em out of the wine-shed. They’re in a row by the door.”
“In the dark?”
“In an hour, or I’ll have a new lieutenant! Then load her — every last package that’s ready — ammunition on deck, under paulins.”
“All those mules? Those camels?”
“Dunderhead! Am I a cattle-boat captain? I let you go a-whoring in Rhakotis while another did your work, because I wanted the whores to tell the Queen’s spies we are marching overland. I hired the cattle for the same reason. Fall away and turn to! — Esias, some of the trireme’s gear is under hatches in that wine-ship that came in yesterday in ballast. She’s to follow me to sea. I need a crew.”
Esias wrung his hands. “Tros, Tros, my crews have all been pressed to take the Romans to Syria.”
Tros leaned through the window:
“Conops!”
“Coming, master!”
“Now Esias! What was Hero’s message?”
Esias fumbled in his clothing and produced a folded scrap of linen. He unfolded it and gave it to Tros with a trembling hand, irritably beckoning the old slave to hold the lantern closer. Greek characters had been scrawled on the linen with carmine pigment.
“Tros, Tros, let not a woman’s pen cause enmity between us!”
Tros read in silence:
“My lord and lover, I obey the Jew because you said it. And it is true, my presence here is too dangerous. But he said not whither I should go. Therefore lest this fall into the wrong hands, be the destination secret I will rejoin you. As I trust you, trust me.
“Hero”
Tros crunched the scrap of linen. Conops appeared at the stair-head.
“Yes, master? All hands under arms and ready! Where’s the lady?”
“You’re to command the wine-ship.”
“Aye, aye, master.”
“Pick a crew — you may have the eight Gauls and as many more as you think you’ll need. Follow my ship to Pelusium.”
“Aye, aye, master.”
“Wait!”
Esias clutched Tros’s arm. Echoed and reechoed by the limestone housefronts along a paved street in the distance, came drum-and-tuba music and the clanking tramp of armed men marching amid a tumult.
“Tros, Tros!” said Esias.
Tros was gone, Conops at his heels, to the roof by a winding stairway, through cluttered attics, to a trap-door and a pigeon-loft, thence along a parapet to a temple — roof, from where, between winged sphinxes, they could see northward and southward the full length of the city from the Heptastadium to Lake Mareotis. There were priests on the roof, like sleepy monkeys staring at catastrophe.
Beneath, in a blood-red river of smoky torchlight, poured a column of mounted men, infantry, loaded wagons. Queen’s cavalry were leading, plumes and pennoned lances dancing like flood-borne flotsam — plumed horses’ heads — torchlight on brass — staccato hoof beats. Then a Roman standard, followed by a column of men who marched too slackly to be regular Roman troops, but they all wore Roman helmets, Roman armor. Even from that height, at that angle, it was easy to tell they were out of training. They were men of the Gabinian legions, left behind by Caesar — well armed, but a rabble. Few but the officers and centurions had ever seen Rome. Wagons. Wagons.
Presently another standard, and the remnants of another legion. Behind that, away up the street to the right as far as the flares reflected on Lake Mareotis, shuffled a mob of burdened slaves and men too poor to own slaves, who carried their own baggage: Roman citizens — exiles, old enough and not too old to serve, but who had never marched with a legion — food for Cassius’s ambition — on their way to be drilled, marched to an unknown battlefield, and buried — or perhaps to be drowned on their way — or to die of plague in overloaded, rat-infested hulls. The street was lined with women, most of them wives being left behind — wives and children wailing, shrilling, shouting. Tuba music — drum-beat — mob-roar — tramp-tramp-tramp. Eddies among the women, where gangs of roughs elbowed their way to pelt the departing Romans with rotten vegetables.
To the left, the Heptastadium was a seven-furlong stream of smoky crimson. It looked like lava pouring along the harbor-surface. Thousands of torches revealed hundreds of boats — fishing boats, ships’ boats, barges, any boat whatever that could be pressed into service — all with their sterns to the causeway, ready to take the Romans to the ships that lay at anchor waiting for them. The ends of the wide Street of Canopus, east and west, were blocked by Cleopatra’s infantry, presumably to keep the departing Romans from having a change of heart and bolting east or west into the city.
Conops spoke: “Where is the lady?”
Tros told him, very careful what he said about Esias, because Conops kept no middle ground worth mentioning between friend and enemy.
“Master, I could take the Gauls and a boat and maybe find her. She can’t have gone far.”
“She has her rights,”. Tros answered, “you and I our duty. She obeyed my order to obey Esias. Now she demands that I trust her. I will — aye, even as I trust you. If she is the woman I take her to be, she has more brains than her sister. That is why Caesar preferred Cleopatra to her. He could out-wit Cleopatra. I believe she will make for Pelusium, and we may overtake her. Sending those Romans to sea will be an ugly business. They will be at anyone’s mercy.”
“Good riddance to ’em, I’d say. A-sea or a-shore, master, we could beat that lot, even with our few!”
“Aye, they’re a rabble.” He began to talk, to take his mind off Hero. “Cassius — unless I’m out on my reckoning — means to invade Egypt suddenly.”
“Across that desert?”
“By land and sea, both. He wants those Romans out of reach of the Alexandrine mob, that might tear them to pieces at the first news of a Roman raid. He would like to be able to boast to the Roman senate of how thoughtful he was for Romans’ safety. Cassius craves to do what Caesar did — rape Egypt for corn and money. But he hasn’t Caesar’s guts, nor Caesar’s brains. Caesar let the world go hang or await his pleasure while he took what he wanted. Cassius clings to Syria and Palestine, that writhe in his grip. Caesar would have snatched Egypt and then have turned back on Syria. Cassius is a mean man
, Conops; an envious, treacherous, spiteful coward frightened by a bold man’s opportunity. He despises his ally Brutus. Yet he fears Brutus might join Antony and march against him unless he marches into Asia Minor to Brutus’s aid, against Antony. So he hesitates. I count on Cassius to make a move as stupid as this move the Queen has made to subject and humiliate me. We could be caught here like rats in a trap, if the other woman weren’t so sure we intended to march by land.”
“The lady Charmion?”
“Aye.”
“I warned you against that one, master. All the flat-breasted ones that ever I knew were fit for nothing but to spite their betters.”
“Charmion thinks she serves the Queen well. — Listen!” Conversation with Conops hadn’t helped. Every emotion in him, every instinct, furiously urged him to send or go in search of Hero. It was another — a new alarm that changed irresolution into quick decision. Esias’s old smoky-faced slave came hurrying along the parapet, shouting “Lord Tros! Lord Tros!”
He and Conops awaited the man. The temple priests came snooping along roof-tiles to overhear what they might, since private secrets are a temple’s principal resource. But Conops rapped a priest on the ear with the back of his knife and thumped another’s skull with the hilt. The priests withdrew to a less uncomfortable distance.
“Lord Tros! Lord Tros! Come the Queen’s men — to the main gate, and the Lord Esias—”
The old slave nearly fell from the roof in the wind of Tros’s and Conops’s wake. He followed as fast as he could run, but he wasn’t even in time to see them charge past Esias and down the stairs to the dock-side. Everything there was as it should be. Fifty men had piled arms and gone with Ahiram; they had already launched the newly caulked ship; they were singing the old reprehensible song about what was wrong with Dido, as they hauled the ship around to the pier. Already the ton-weight water-butts were being rolled from the wine-shed. (There were wine-casks going too, but that was for the overseer to prevent if he could, or to tally if he could, in the darkness.)
Down at the end of the yard the main gate thundered to the assault of spear-butts and the shouts of men demanding admission.
“Open! In the Queen’s name, open!”
A hundred men fell in behind Tros. He marched them to the main gate and formed them in line.
“Front rank, draw — swords! — Archers — ready!”
Then he opened the heavily grilled port and looked through.
“Open!”
A captain of Queen’s police, with fifty men behind him, thrust a sword-point through the grille to emphasize impatience. He missed Tros by a hair’s breadth. Conops seized the sword and broke it. Tros ordered ten archers and a decurion to the nearest roof, whence they could command the approach to the gate.
“In whose name?”
“In the Queen’s name.”
“I know the Queen is at Eleusis. Who sent you?”
“Where is Captain Crinagoras?”
“Oh, is that your trouble? You may have him and his booty. You may send in four-and-twenty men without their weapons.”
Plainly these men lacked the Queen’s authority, although they used her name. Tros’s guess was right: they were Charmion’s messengers, sent out to prove to the Queen how vigilant was Charmion, how treacherous was Tros, how wise the Queen would be to listen always to Charmion’s secret advice. Their officer agreed to Tros’s terms — something he would never have dared to do if the Queen had sent him.
Tros’s ten-man bodyguard, at Conops’s signal, came and stood beside the postern, ready to deal with any armed man, or with any attempt at a rush. Tros opened the postern and counted aloud, until twenty-four were inside. Then he shot the bolt again and told the officer to wait.
“Fetch Crinagoras. Fetch those dead men. Fetch that slave-girl’s body. Lay it on a sheep-skin.”
The dead bodies, and their armor and weapons, were laid in a line in the lantern-light. Crinagoras came limping from the bite of the cord with which Conops had lashed him to a spar in the rope-loft. He had recovered a bit of his insolence; he recognized the Queen’s police and half-suspected Tros was in desperate straits. But he had his eye on Tros’s sword, and he could hardly have failed to see that the police within the gate were unarmed.
“What now?” he demanded, pitching his voice to a neutral note.
“Your friends have come for you. You and your booty, go back to the Lady Charmion, who sent you. Tell her to tell the Queen whatever lies she pleases. Say I march at daybreak, straight down the Street of Canopus. If she dares, let her try to stop me!”
Crinagoras laughed. “If I were you,” he said, “which I thank the gods I am not, I would rather quarrel with the Queen herself than with Charmion. The Queen has magnanimity. Charmion has only zeal. However, when they crucify you, I will come and cut your throat in return for your having spared me. Until then, Lord Captain, farewell.”
CHAPTER XXX. “I suppose we shall all have to die for the woman!”
No genuine seaman likes unseamanly devices or an ill found vessel. But genuine seamanship includes ability, and will, to make do what a landsman would consider useless, and therewith to accomplish what none but a seaman would dare to attempt.
— From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace
Fifty of Esias’s slaves were sent into the city, to spread rumors, to say that Tros was building a battering-ram with which to smash down the city gate if it were closed against him, and to beg responsible officials to clear the Street of Canopus before daylight, so that he might march away unhindered. With the Queen at Eleusis, a seashore resort a few miles eastward of the city, and most of her court there roistering and bathing as precaution against plague, it would have been easy enough for the officious Charmion to contrive a raid on Esias’s dock-yard. Tros had to provide against that. He knew no way to do it, except to tempt her to try a less dangerous trick. She could allege almost any excuse. Almost any officer commanding Queen’s troops would obey Charmion, it was so well known she had the Queen’s ear, managed the Queen’s spies and secretly did what Cleopatra herself could not do openly without too great scandal.
But Tros understood the embittered virgin. He knew what delight she took in surprises and suddenly sprung traps. He out-guessed her accurately, convinced her that he really intended to march overland, and counted on her setting, her trap at the eastern gate.
After the event, Charmion could truthfully say she had heard that Arsinoe, calling herself Hero, had escaped from Pelusium and had come by sea to Alexandria to raise a rebellion with Tros’s little army to aid her. It would be a simple business, that any ambitious officer could manage, to start a light near the Gate of Canopus and massacre Tros and his entire force before the Queen, at Eleusis, could even suspect what was happening. It would not be the first time that Charmion had interfered, on her own responsibility, and had saved herself from dismissal or worse by claiming she had preserved the Queen’s life.
A miracle had to be made. Tros did it. Before daybreak he had launched one ship, loaded that one and another, manned them both with all his men, and warped them out into the harbor. The seasonal north wind filled his sails as he headed westward, out through the mouth of the Harbor of Happy Return. In the torch-lit darkness he easily slipped past an anchored fleet, on which pandemonium reigned as the luckless Romans were brought aboard by the boat-load, quarreling, complaining, protesting, shouting from ship to ship. He was not even hailed until he had passed through the anchored line of harbor guardships, whose captains probably supposed two freighters with corn or wine were passing seaward. They hailed too late, and though they might have slipped anchor and overtaken him, they were too busy watching the Romans.
At break of day he turned eastward, with the Pharos lighthouse on his right hand and well out of range of the Pharos catapults and archers. The sky was cloudy to the northward. Usually he welcomed, rough weather that would help to baffle an enemy, but now he dreaded it even more than the risk of pursuit. Both ships were unse
aworthy. They were loaded almost awash. Their decks were so crowded with gear, last minute loads. and exhausted men, that it was hardly possible to manage the sails. Rowing was even more of a problem. The oars that had been saved from the trireme were too long. There were only hastily improvised tholes. Tros’s splendidly trained oarsmen prided themselves on being masters of the sea in almost any weather; but they were used to well designed oar-ports, room and calculated leverage — used to a ship that leaped to the catch of the blades as they swung together. However, with the north wind almost on the port beam and a dangerous lee shore to starboard, there was nothing for it but the oars.
There was more than a hundred miles to go, by any reckoning, and a girl only the gods knew where, who drew at Tros’s heart-strings. She was probably somewhere in-shore — perhaps cast ashore, perhaps on the Eleusis beach, where Cleopatra was probably having her early morning swim amid bored guards and naked women. It would be a marvel if Hero had sailed past Eleusis without being seen; an even greater marvel if she had escaped the guardboats that plied off-shore to protect the Queen’s person. Between Eleusis and the city, slightly to the southward of the main road, close to the slums outside the city wall, were the gibbets — a little forest of them, plainly visible from sea. Hero would be hardly likely to get further than the gibbets, if she had been caught and recognized.
However, Tros turned seaward — northeast. It was not that he feared the guardboats, or feared being recognized. The news of his flight would be known already; not improbably the Queen had already heard the news by galloper. But to head seaward was good strategy, good tactics. It was even possible the Queen might have seen him from the beach and have jumped to the false conclusion that he had Hero aboard and was escaping toward Syria to drive a bargain with Cassius. If so, that would give Hero a better chance to escape, if she had not been caught already. But it also served to disguise Tros’s real intention. And by gaining a wide offing, he would be able, about night-fall, far out of sight of land, to change helm, hoist sail again and make for Pelusium with a quartering wind. There might be too much wind by evening, but even so, that would be better than too little. Conops on the wine-ship had the easier task, a less littered and crowded deck, a lighter vessel; but both ships labored dangerously on the moderate sea; the oar-work was heart-breaking, even though there were plenty of men and they rowed in relays. Progress was agonizingly slow.