Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

Tros hoped, and half-believed that the Queen would yield, or would offer to compromise, if only to prevent him from doing what actually nothing could induce him to do. He despised Cassius. He would not ally himself with Cassius in any event. But the Queen might not realize that. And the Queen might be in the midst of new embarrassments; the sending to sea of the Alexandrine Romans might have removed a political balance-weight and have loosed other forces of discontent. She might be in serious need of Tros’s strong right arm.

  Hero was for immediate action, and small wonder. Her life would have been worth about a minute’s purchase if the Queen’s agents could catch her. It was a new and difficult experience for Tros to argue with her; he was too long used to reaching his own decisions in silence, then issuing sudden commands and being instantly obeyed. But he listened to her. He weighed her impatient counsel, in the scale of his own experience, against his own opinion. He already knew what he would do with Cassius, he needed no advice as to how to treat that specimen. But he knew he had to get on working terms with Hero. He and she had to learn to be more to each other than merely lovers, or than merely boon companions-in-arms.

  Tros had already thought of that. “Antony wouldn’t thank to Mark Antony, against any reasonable terms that Antony can offer! I remember Antony well; he is an opportunist with a reputation for keeping his word. He was kind to me when I was a prisoner in Rome. He tried to seduce me. I think he even thought of begging me from Caesar.”

  Tros had already thought of that. “Antony wouldn’t thank us,” he answered. “He would either have to kill Cassius or make terms with him. If he killed him, that would offend everyone in Rome who disliked Caesar. Antony has plenty of political enemies; he can’t afford to give them such a talking point as that. If, on the other hand, he made terms with Cassius, that would reveal his own hypocrisy. Antony was Caesar’s friend; Cassius was Caesar’s murderer. It would give Octavian, Caesars’s heir, a fresh excuse for quarrel. Antony has Octavian and Lepidus to deal with, and the three men hate each other like hungry dogs. If the latest advices from Rome are as true as old Esias and his partners think they are, the Triumvirate has only patched up its quarrels in order to present a united front against Sextus Pompeius, who is ravaging the coasts of Italy. True, we have two good ships. But between here and Rome we might meet Cassius’s and Brutus’s fleet, commanded by Ahenobarbus; or we might meet an overwhelming force of pirates; or we might fall foul of Sextus Pompeius.”

  “But why wait here?” she objected. “I think Herod is plotting against us in Pelusium.”

  “Not Herod! He is too afraid of falling into Cleopatra’s hands.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Not I! But I trust his intelligence to tell him on which plate lies the choice meat.”

  “Will you surrender Cassius to Cleopatra?”

  Tros laughed. “I wish her no such dilemma. It wouldn’t profit you and me to see Egypt ruined. If Cleopatra should kill Cassius, that would give Rome a perfect excuse for forgetting its own quarrels and making immediate war on Egypt. The Triumvirate would patch up peace with Brutus and descend on Egypt for the plunder. They need it. Rome’s treasury must be emptier than it was in the Punic Wars. But if Cleopatra didn’t kill him, that would amount to the same thing; they would accuse her of giving aid and comfort to Rome’s enemy. They might even make terms with Sextus Pompeius for the sake of his ship.”

  “Cleopatra will never forgive either of us,” Hero answered. “I know she won’t, because I know I wouldn’t. She will be our enemy forever, and she will never believe we haven’t designs on her throne.”

  “That is not a reason why I should betray Egypt to plunder and rape by Roman armies. Girl, what we need is a safe port, in which to build the ship we need, for our voyage around the world. There is no other port as good as Alexandria. There, is all my money. There, my friends are. There, is the collected information that I shall need for the voyage. First let us save Egypt from Cassius, if we can, without strengthening Rome.”

  “But we are pirates! If Cleopatra should destroy us all, including Cassius, not even Rome could accuse her of insulting Roman dignity!”

  Tros had thought of that, too. He demanded from Leander a good vedette boat. He sent that to sea, to keep station between the off-lying shoals, with orders to hurry in and report anything that might even look like Cleopatra’s or any other war-fleet on the sky-line. Then he himself went to inspect the shipping in the maze of canals that constituted Pelusium Harbor. He demanded, and took, two big sailing barges of the type that bore coastwise traffic — seaworthy — fairly fast. Into those he ordered all the cargo and munitions of war moved from his own two battle-broken vessels.

  As many of the wounded as were willing were sent ashore, to take their chance in Pelusium. But few were willing. The city had a reputation. Its maze of booth-built slums contained more desperate rogues than any other city in the world, not even Rome excepted. Pelusium was a port of refuge for runaway slaves, deserters, fugitives from justice, absconding debtors, rebels against foreign governments. All of them were nominally subject to enforced labor. They were very seldom paid. They were always alert for a chance to murder and rob. The Pelusium gibbets were a stenching eye-sore. The slave-traders of Pelusium were the world’s worst — far worse than those of Delos or Athens; they were reckless of human life because only well-educated men, or very pretty and obscenely well-trained girls were worth as much as a load-galled ass.

  So awnings had to be spread on the barge decks, and the wounded laid beneath those, to make room on the crowded biremes, where there was work going on to make them better fit for battle. Sigurdsen’s men’s stolen women were put to work to nurse the wounded, but they were not good for much except to fan away flies. The doctor had to whip a number of them; and they were in the way of the men who were working cargo.

  Tros had well earned Leander’s gratitude, but he didn’t trust him for a minute. He thought well enough of him to suspect that, given his choice without too much danger to himself, he would be loyal to the Queen. Leander had a great number of troops wider his command. They, and the majority of their Officers were almost worthless, polyglot, poorly paid and ill-treated-scourings from all over the world. But Leander was an experienced guards officer, who would know how to make them obey. He had probably hanged a lot of them already. There was a lot of bugle blowing in the garrison compounds within the fortress walls. There was drill going on. Leander was energetically taking hold. He wasn’t likely to attack the biremes without definite orders from the Queen, but he was probably getting ready for any contingency. He would be a fool if he hadn’t used the pigeon post to keep the Queen informed.

  Meanwhile, however, Leander promptly responded to Tros’s requests for provisions, wine and water. He even invited Tros ashore to come and confer with him. But Tros declined the offer, shrewdly guessing that the Queen or Charmion had sent by pigeon post a carefully detailed plan for a trap. That Tros didn’t walk into it wasn’t likely to increase the Queen’s good opinion of Leander, and that was in a way unfortunate, because Leander might do something on his own initiative to reestablish himself in the Queen’s confidence.

  The certainties were few, the probabilities many, the possibilities almost infinite in number. It absolutely certain that a tremendous climax was impending. It was equally certain, in Tros’s mind, and even Hero was beginning to appreciate it, that Tros would do nothing that he could safely avoid that might endanger Cleopatra’s throne. It was not in him to humiliate, more than might be absolutely necessary, a former friend whose excruciating difficulties he well understood.

  It was another certainty that Cassius was fuming himself, in a stifling cabin, into a condition in which he should be tolerably easy to manage. Cassius, no doubt, was undergoing mental torture and Tros didn’t spare him one pang of it. To a man like Cassius it was very likely nearly as bad as the physical sufferings that his agents had inflicted on the Syrians and Jews in efforts to discover their hidden money. It was equally cert
ain that both Cassius and Cleopatra would wish, if possible, to suppress the whole story of the attempted invasion: Cassius for the sake of his dignity, Cleopatra for obvious diplomatic reasons.

  But what would the Queen do? Tros didn’t know. He couldn’t guess. It seemed probable that if the Queen should have her way, there would be an attempt at diplomatic trickery of some ingenious sort.’ She would offer a compromise, and something might come of that. But if Charmion’s insistence should prevail, there would be an attempt to use overwhelming force; there would be troops on the march already. The Queen’s ministers, on the other hand, well knowing how undependable the troops were, and whose fault it was, would be likely to propose the despatch of couriers to pretend to negotiate terms but actually to attempt murder — perhaps to poison the supplies from Pelusium. Tros was very careful to try out the food, wine and water on his prisoners before he let it be served to his men.

  Meanwhile, he carefully read Cassius’s correspondence. There were, not remarkably surprising, but immensely revealing letters from Pausanias, and from several of Cleopatra’s ministers and generals, most of them asking for bribes in advance, in exchange for more or less vague promises. There was next to nothing that bore Cassius’s signature. But there was one priceless document, written in Charmion’s spidery hand. Far from suggesting she was a traitress, it seemed to confirm her loyalty to Cleopatra; probably the Queen had seen it before it was sent. But it convicted Cassius beyond a reasonable doubt of treachery to Brutus. Tros gleefully packed it away, on the top of the pile.

  Then he and Hero examined prisoners for information, and he put Tarquinius to the same task. Hero was very good at it. She could persuade men to talk, who quite reasonably would have preferred death to telling Tros what they knew. Little by little, hint by hint, betrayal by betrayal, Cassius’s predicament was unfolded; it became intelligible why he had run such an apparently insane risk. One of Cassius’s lictors, whom he had recently caused to be flogged — an illegally outrageous treatment of a Roman citizen — was seduced by Tarquinius’s guile to reveal the details of Cassius’s quarrel with two of his generals, whom he had not dared to try to discipline. Tarquinius himself was an unreliable but prolific fountain of information, very eager now to win Tros’s confidence.

  The captured rowers, fettered, flogged and half-fed, nearly all Jew farm-lads but some of them fishermen, were grateful for being unfettered and rather skeptically encouraged by Tros’s promise of freedom before long. But they had little or no information to give worth listening to. Force had to be used to put a number of them on the barges to man the hurriedly improvised oar-benches. They would have preferred to remain on the biremes, where they felt protected. As far as possible Tros separated relative from relative and friend from friend, retaining one lot on the biremes to release his own best men for battle duty and sending the other lot to the barges, where they were likely to obey orders rather than run away and lose touch with their friends. But he set several squads of archers to shoot any who tried to escape.

  The townspeople of Pelusium had no means of making trouble. The ford — the notorious, treacherous ford, through which so many armies in the course of centuries had waded, one way or the other in the course of the ebb and flow of Egypt’s history, was commanded by Tros’s archers. Not a man dared try to cross the ford without his leave; not a boat dared approach from Pelusium without signalling first for permission. Both river banks were protected by wide swamps and high reeds, and he posted a few of his most reliable men beyond the reeds, to give warning of any attempt to outflank his position.

  Evidently Cassius had already thought of a tempting proposal to make. He kept sending his slave to request a conference. But Tros would have nothing to say to him. He allowed Casius on deck for an hour at a time, under the exasperating supervision of a Northman sentry. The crew showed him no deference. The men at work repairing bulwarks and remounting arrow-engines, cursed him when he got in their way. Finally, Cassius lost his temper and abused Tros scurrilously from as near as the Northman would let him approach. The Northman sentry promptly hustled him below. Cassius was playing into Tros’s hands. Tros understood him. He was quite sure of what he would do with Cassius.

  Hero was really the most distracting problem. Tros loved her. He wasn’t a man who loved or did any other thing by halves. He knew she loved him. He perceived both justice and expediency in revealing to her as much as he could of his thoughts, and all his plans. But it was difficult. She had none of Cleopatra’s mistrust of a friend; less than none of a lover. She was too trusting, too inclined to attribute superhuman virtues to whomever she admired, and she admired Tros with every fibre of her being. But she had even more than Cleopatra’s share of audacity, curiosity, delight in swift solutions. Her recent taste of dangerous independence, and release from the mental torture of being surrounded by politicians whom she knew she couldn’t trust, caused her to tax Tros’s patience more than she guessed. She wanted to know everything. She wanted to know Tros’s thoughts before he had had time to think them.

  She was amorous. Her frankly passionate interruption of Tros’s meditations delighted the crew, but they gave the observant hypocrite Cassius abundant opportunities to sneer. Himself a notorious lecher, he seemed to think it politic to hold her in contempt as being not much better than a prostitute. He smiled with superior disdain, too, at Tros, whose notorious chastity had given rise, wherever Tros was known, to all sorts of surmises. The long imprisoned flood tide of Tros’s manhood couldn’t break bounds secretly — not on a crowded ship, no matter what small privacy the deckhouse cabin provided. Perhaps Cassius hoped to assume, in Tros’s eyes, a superior standard of wisdom and moral restraint, that should serve his purpose in the hour of bargaining for terms. Cassius, whatever his motive — and it may have been mere malice — sneered.

  Tros, having made up his mind, like most one-woman men, was squandrous of indulgence of mind and body. A man can’t answer incessant questions, listen to eagerly given advice, make vigorous love, and simultaneously ponder a strategic problem that involves at least a dozen unknown quantities.

  It may have been love-making, and Hero’s impatient attempts to become Tros’s one indispensable luxury, friend and confidante, that caused him almost to incur disaster. If so, he never blamed her for it. He was one of those rare individuals who blame none but themselves for whatever happens. As commander, he believed it was his business to foresee, not to be confused by personal distractions. He could forgive anyone, except himself, for almost anything except treachery in the guise of friendship.

  CHAPTER XXXIV. “Are you here to preach to me, Olympus?”

  There are some who are too proud to yield until compelled by force of arms. They are not to be blamed. It is their privilege; I also, if I think my cause is just, maintain it to the last breath. But let them not blame me when I accept the challenge. I will yield anything for friendship’s sake, except a principle that I believe is right.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  It was hardly daylight, but the kites were already circling over the marshy suburbs of Pelusium, when Tros’s scouts brought word that an army was on the march from the direction of Alexandria.

  Almost simultaneously, from the direction of the ford, came Olympus in a boat rowed by eight slaves. The Queen had picked her man well. Strictly unofficial. Discreet. Indubitably loyal to the throne, and Tros would by likely to believe him, even though he might withhold important truth; no one, not even the Queen herself, could persuade Olympus to be a downright liar.

  Tros gave him plenty of time to observe the martial readiness that reigned from stem to stern. He looked dog-tired. He must have travelled by relays of racing camels. Tros donned his armor and the purple cloak over it, watching through the midship deckhouse port for symptoms of Olympus’s state of mind, himself agreeably aware that no one less than Cleopatra’s sister with her own royal hands was wiping fingermarks from his gleaming corselet.

  But the court astrol
oger-physician, half-Greek half-Egyptian, learned in all the arts, leanly ascetic, was not the man to reveal thought on the surface. Dressed in the loosely flowing robes of a philosopher, tall, solemn, he stood on the deck like a prophet of doom, observant but asserting nothing.

  So presently Tros strode forth. He embraced Olympus. The crew stood to attention with a clang and thump of arms. The dignity and circumstance of proper compliment were as important to Tros as the forms of religious ceremony. The utterly unmartial Olympus gravely acknowledged the salute of men whose art and mystery were war. Then, arm-in-arm with Tros, he walked aft to the only place on the crowded ship where it was possible to talk without being overheard. Even so, he spoke low-voiced:

  “Tros, you appear to be caught in no such trap as the Queen imagines. Pausanias brought your message. He even confessed it was you who had forced him to obey the Queen’s warrant to turn over the command of the fort to Leander. But the Queen’s spies were hard on his heels. He knew it. He didn’t dare not to be truthful. He knew his enemies were urging the Queen to have him executed. The pigeon post brought details of the battle, and the Queen laughed gaily at the news of Cassius’s predicament, before she realized what it might mean to her. It seemed to me that in the first flush she was proud of you, and pleased. But Pausanias told her — hoping, I suppose, to curry favour that he badly needs — that your ships, and the captured biremes, too, are on the mud and unfit to defend. He said your crew was decimated in the battle and that you can’t escape. She perceived the implications. So she sent me to talk matters over.”

  “Do you bring her answer to my message?” Tros asked.

  “Officially, no. General Antyllus brings it, and two thousand men, I believe, to help him say it plainly. But privately, yes. Royal Egypt has not altogether forgotten she is Cleopatra, who is beholden to you for many a brave deed you have done in her behalf.”