by Talbot Mundy
“You, who know what pride I have in you, shall now have opportunity to justify it. You are all my freedmen. I have given you freedom, discipline, justice, self-respect. And I have led you, holding your lives as sacred as my own. Never had I led you into danger that I have not shared — aye, and a lion’s share. Now I go alone, into a greater than any danger yet, and I rely on you all to behave, in my short absence, as if my eyes were upon you. You can reward my leadership and confidence, no otherwise until I come again, than by obedience to Hero, whom I leave in my place in command.”
There was no ovation. He made them present arms to Hero, to the thunder and blare of martial music. Then he left them wondering. They were better so, mystified, than if they knew too much. He had made his choice of the fastest liburnian. He had already triple-manned it, with the pick of his seamen and the most skillful rowers in the fleet. He took his Syrian steward as personal servant, sent Tarquinius aboard without a moment’s previous notice, and gave a final, laconic charge to Sigurdsen and Conops:
“Obey Hero. Be free with advice. But obey. Be your loyalty to her, and to each other, as ungrudging as to me. Hers is the high command, the final decision in any event, the full responsibility.”
He avoided a public sentimental farewell with Hero. He could not have endured it. His last words to her were as martial as to his men. He took care that his officers should overhear them:
“Remember, girl, I will uphold you in any event, no matter what your errors, so be you are brave and faithful. Look to it, then, that you shame me not with laxness, nor with any cowardice that I would have to acknowledge as mine because I left you to represent me.”
She couldn’t speak. She saluted him warrior style, with the hilt of her sword to her lips, as the liburnian cast off and Tros set forth upon the boldest venture of a life that had been lived in almost ceaseless war by land and sea. Proscribed as a pirate by Rome and Egypt, he was on his way to snatch the visioned future from the locked jaws of the very Tiber Wolf itself.
He was trusting Destiny. If Destiny should call for courage, energy and wit, he had them. He had left his heart behind him; he was trusting Hero far more than was fair to her or even fair to the men who must obey her. In a way he had trusted Herod. But was he trusting Tros of Samothrace too far? Had he risked all he had on one throw of the dice, in a game he did not understand?
He looked up at the stars. There was no answer. He doubted that even Olympus could read the stars aright.
CHAPTER XLIV. “You, Tros! — clear the room!”
Half human history was made by drunkards in their cups and written down by slaves of one impostor or another in the hope of table-leavings.
— From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace
Three crews to spell each other at the oars, night and day, day and night. A steady wind to starboard that permitted sailing a third of the time. A light, scrubbed hull that had been stripped of all unnecessary weight. Tros at the helm, relieved at intervals by an Argive veteran. The liburnian leaped. The long leagues reeled away astern. But Tros fumed.
He was throwing a main in the face of Destiny. He knew it. Sextus Pompeius, pirates — even the Alexandrine Roman Varro might ruin him, if Varro should have the enterprise to make a bold bid. By this time Ahenobarbus had probably drawn Cyprus blank; he might be prowling in search of the Alexandrine fleet. He might have picked up information from some fisherman or other who had seen sails headed westward. Ahenobarbus had an insult to avenge. He had threatened Tros with crucifixion if he ever caught him. If he should descend on Suda Bay for water and provisions, there could be only one possible outcome; between the Cretans in the mountains and Ahenobarbus’s well manned quinquiremes, and almost certain of betrayal by the Alexandrine Romans under Varro, Hero’s fate would be death, if not worse. She had once laughed in Ahenobarbus’s face, had mocked his ignorance of decent manners. If he should catch her alive he would make no bones whatever about having her scourged and sold into slavery.
Twice the hard-driven liburnian came in sight of Sicilian pirates, but they were down-wind, on the sky-line. Once Tros sighted a small squadron that might be Sextus Pompeius’s scouts; but he had the weather gauge of them, too, and though they gave chase they were soon out-distanced. Dread of Roman warships, with unpaid crews and plunder-hungry captains who were worse than pirates, had emptied all those seas of merchant vessels.
But when a dawn broke at last on the shoaling, opal-tinted harbor of Tarentum it revealed a crowd of shipping, nearly all empty hulls awaiting sailing permits or an escort and less certainty of capture should they sail in quest of cargo. But there were several store-ships deeply laden. There were half-a-dozen quinquiremes at anchor, without rowers, manned by a mere skeleton crews. There was a fleet of biremes on the beach, being cleaned and repaired. Two fully manned triremes guarded the fairway at anchor. The city looked dead, of the civil war. But it was probably more than alive with fear of the Triumvirate, not knowing whether Antony was paramount, or Octavian, or neither of them. The Senate might regain authority and punish whoever had been disloyal. Even the anchored fleet could probably not have told who owned it at the moment.
Tros drove at top speed between the triremes. Before they had challenged he was past them, semaphoring with both arms unintelligible signals that checked their legitimate impulse to open fire with arrow-engines. At reckless speed he brought the liburnian alongside the stone steps of the public wharf, tossed oars by way of salute, and made fast, within three hundred yards of the liburnian that he had lent to Herod; luckily its crew were out of sight, perhaps in prison, so there was no telltale cheering.
As he stepped ashore he was met by a score of officials, someone’s lictors and two maniples of Gaulish legionaries commanded by an Etruscan tribune who happened to know Tarquinius.
So Tarquinius was useful. It was he who told the necessary lies about Tros being a special secret envoy to the Triumvirate in Rome from Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. Asked for his credentials, Tros scowled the officials out of countenance. He demanded proof of their authority to question him. He threatened to report them all to Antony for delaying urgent public business. But he did show his letter from Varro imploring aid for loyal Romans. It appeared then that Antony, not Octavian, was the triumvir whose name spelled terror in Tarentum. Antony had recently proscribed and ordered slain some leading citizens for what he called treason; he had confiscate their possessions and ordered their dependents sold into slavery. It was one of those critical moments when a well told lie, immediately followed by an insolent demand, works wonders. And besides, the liburnian and its crew amounted to a fairly valuable pledge in pawn, so the officials became polite.
But the mail contractor was a veteran extortioner, who swore that his last team had been hired by Prince Herod, two days ago; the prince had bid four times the regular price charged travelers who had no senatorial permit:
“By Phoebus-Apollo, I haven’t a horse with four legs, nor a chariot left that hasn’t broken wheels.”
“So much the worse for you.” Tros answered. “For unless I am on my way within the hour, I will have you flogged for negligence.”
Those mail-contracts were as good as gold-mines to the concessionnaires, but the penalties for negligence were ruthless. Tros might not be bluffing. The contractor weakened.
“I have to keep horses on hand for people traveling with senatorial passes. A great envoy, such as you say you are, should show munificence. If I risk being caught short, how much will you pay me?”
“Charge the bill to the Roman senate, as is customary in the case of envoys,” Tros retorted. “Antony will authorize the payment. One minute over the hour, and your hide shall learn whether I keep my word or not!”
There remained Tarquinius. He had been seasick all the way from Suda. He was in no condition to go bumping a hundred and twenty miles a day, on roads that were last repaired when Pompey brought ten thousand Jews in chains from Palestine and killed them at quarrying stone. To take Tarquinius to R
ome might prove more dangerous than to have left him behind to worry Hero. However, Tarquinius spoke first:
“Lord Captain Tros, you promised—”
“Ask.”
“Accept me as your client. Leave me here and trust me. Here I have several friends, but in Rome too many enemies. I am not, as you know, a hypocrite, pretending to mealy virtues that are not mine, nor ever will be. Unvirtuously, I can serve you well, and I believe you are a patron who protects and rewards his clients. I have done you some mischiefs, but never again!”
“Aye,” Tros answered. “Mischiefs, and I forgave them. But remember: what was tolerable mischief in a mere adventurer, would be treason if you pledge faith as a client. If I trust, and you betray, I will kill you as a duty that I owe to faithful men.”
“Accept me. I will not betray you.”
“Very well, Tarquinius. I will give you your chance. Remain here since you know these Tarentines. Find out what is in those store-ships. Pick up any other information you can. Find the crew of the other liburnian, and use your wits to keep both crews out of trouble.”
That was a great load of Tros’s mind, when, a few minutes short of the hour, he got under way, at the steady league-eating lope of the iron-legged stage horses, with his steward, two seamen and his baggage in a chariot behind. But he was burning with anxiety, nevertheless. He hated chariots. He hated to sit still. He loathed the dust. He felt like a blind, impatient human shuttle being threaded across the warp of time by destiny, that mocked his vision. And he loathed the filthy food at bedbug-infested inns, whose keepers were well aware that reputable travelers could claim the hospitality of equals, in country villas, and that only rogues or men in trouble used roadside inns.
But Tros didn’t care to claim anyone’s hospitality. In the inns, he and his men could protect themselves against the cutthroat rabble who lay in wait for unescorted strangers; all the way to Rome they each had only four hours’ sleep, in turns, the others standing guard; only three times they fought for their lives against ex-soldiers, masterless and ganged up for any adventure. There was on invariable formula: a gang would offer itself; employment refused, the fulsome compliments would turn to jeering insult; that ignored, one of Tros’s men would be hustled and accused of crowding or treading on someone’s foot. Then a fight would begin.
But the average Roman soldier was not a good swordsman. He was not even a Roman. He was a peasant-farmer’s son, who had been taught to fight pretty well in mass formation. Without officers to direct him he was peasant-minded, slow, and easily scared by superior skill and courage. Tros’s men had been picked. They could fight like gladiators. As for Tros’s long sword, he met no gladiator on the road to Rome who was game for more than one encounter with its lightning-lunge. The Roman military sword was not much more than a heavy dagger, almost useless, except in overwhelming numbers, against a man who used more than a yard of artful, glittering Damascus steel.
The constant brawls were a strain on the nerves, and they might have been avoided by turning aside to country villas. Even in the owners’ absence, the servants would not have refused hospitality to a distinguished-looking stranger. But such villas were always a considerable distance from the main road, and Tros had not an hour to waste. Besides, there was no knowing who had been proscribed, and who not. There were bands of Antony’s and Octavian’s soldiers raiding country estates, day and night, beheading any owner who was on their lists or who couldn’t give a convincingly proper account of himself. All Italy was in a state of terror, almost all business at a standstill. The only agency of government that still functioned was the mail service with its relay-stations every twenty or thirty miles. There was nothing for it but to drive straight to the heart of the terror, at top speed.
Tros reached Rome one day near sunset, a few minutes before the guard changed and they closed the gate. There was a long row of human heads on spikes outside the gate and, beyond those, a small forest of gibbets on which lingering scourged victims writhed amid clouds of flies. The stench was suffocating. But Rome always stank. Tros’s seaman’s nostrils, eloquent of disgust, gave him an arrogant air that re-enforced, embellished genuine resolution.
He didn’t look like a man whom even Roman officers could safely treat with insolence. His unusual costume, his air of authority, his claim to be a foreign envoy on secret, urgent public business, his free use of Antony’s name, and the overbearing ferocity of his impatience vouchered him past the gate guard. The centurion in command detached a man to accompany him, to make sure that he really did go to Antony’s house. There, there were two full cohorts of legionaries drawn up in the street, but the soldier’s presence seemed to satisfy their officers, who questioned him curtly and waved Tros forward. That vouchered him past the lictors, whose fasces rested in a line, five at each side of the great front door. An insolent tribune, helmeted and scarred like a veteran twice his age, took saucy leave of manners and commanded a whole maniple of the Tenth to lock spears in the splendid entrance. But a partially drunk and wholly jovial senator, with a Grecian vase in his arms and surrounded by slaves all similarly burdened, on his way somewhere, parted the spears and rebuked the tribune.
“Pollux! It is easier to enter this house than to leave it!” Suddenly he saw Tros — recognized him:
“Tros! By the lingering stink of Lethe, Tros! I saw you fight in the arena — in the days when Pompey was the god, and Caesar not yet on the march to play god in his shoes and be, in turn, immortalized with daggers!”
Something incongruous stirred in the senator’s drunken brain. Pompey’s house — Caesar’s — now Antony’s —
“Tros, are you here from the dead to warn this bloody-minded drunkard of his end? Or have you, too, come for plunder? Make haste. Octavian has claimed the house, so Antony is giving away its treasures to annoy him. Go in. If he likes you he will tell you to help yourself. But take care not to irritate him! It was you, I remember, who routed him out and bade him play the man when Caesar died of playing despot! Out of the way with your maniple, you saucy young butcher, you half-hatched cockerel, you pretty target for a javelin, you tut-mouthed impertinence! Way for your betters! Go in, Tros. Tell Antony I admitted you. He’ll want to know how anybody but assassins, informers, whores and actors got by the door. He’ll either kill you or give you a fortune. Who cares? Go on in.”
The solemn dignity of Pompey’s house had vanished, along with two thirds of its splendid furnishings. But most of the Greek statuary remained; the oriental magnificence of proportion; the utterly un-Roman beauty of the bronze and marble decoration. It was the din that made the place unfamiliar; it had been a haven of literary calm in Pompey’s day. The house was crammed now with noisy visitors, most of them drunk — prostitutes, actors, dancers, senators, army officers, professional athletes, gladiators, bankers, politicians, pleaders. In a corner in one room a group of humorists were sorting Cicero’s plundered manuscripts out of a basket; someone was reading scraps of them aloud amid roars of laughter. There were sentries in the passages, and a few quiet men who moved amid the crowd, observant, saying nothing.
An efficient Greek slave, noticing the splendor of Tros’s cloak and sword-belt, led him aside, enquired his name, dusted him, sponged his feet, provided wine and gave him what was better — news.
“Prince Herod? Yes, two days ago. Yes, he is in the house now — not to be interrupted — yes, my lord, a woman. Yes, he has had several conferences with the Lord Antony, who seems very partial to prince Herod’s company. You have come to tonight’s banquet? If so, I will notify the steward.”
Tros gave the slave a shrewdly calculated tip — not enough to arouse suspicion, not so small as to suggest that he didn’t know that slave’s importance in the household:
“Bring me a morsel of plain food, here, now. Then lead me to your master. Don’t, if you can help it, let Prince Herod know I am here.”
There was nothing to be gained by interviewing Herod, who had either already done his work, or hadn’t done it. It
would have hugely amused Herod to answer questions with adroit misinformation. Astonished by Tros’s arrival, he would have simulated delight, and have played for time, in order to invent some subtle means of steering Tros’s haste to his own advantage. Good. Herod was with a woman. Might she keep him out of mischief! Tros swallowed food and strode like an envoy of destiny straight to the man who had murdered his way to control of the power of Rome — the coming ruler of the world, if he could outwit young Octavian and smash Brutus’s and Cassius’s hold on the East.
Mark Antony was drunk — not drunk enough to be irresponsible, but enough to fire his vanity and make him reckless, ruthless, boisterously generous, and savage by turns. Triumvir, co-dictator, Caesar’s ex-chief of staff, idol of half the Roman legions, he sat at a table gulping wine and letting whim dictate judgment of life or death. The room was packed with supplicants, some of them well-born women frantically pleading for the lives of friends, sons, husbands, lovers. They who were wise, and who had it, spoke mainly of money.
Herculean, burly, restless to begin a night of revelry, his curly black hair ruffled by a nervous gesture of his left hand, his imperial toga in disarray and his blood-shot, bold eyes, speculating but not calculating, Antony listened, or appeared to listen, and then tossed irrevocable judgments, to a secretary-slave, who wrote on two scrolls of parchment, one for the record and one for the waiting stewards of greed and fear.
The fear — the sense of guilt was unmistakable. It underlay the overgrown-boyish, sensuous-impetuous beauty of Antony’s eyes and mouth. It underlay the bullying air of self-reliance. Antony was a statue of a man, with grand, well-moulded, rippling muscles that a gladiator well might envy. He looked well bread, well educated, and he was; but there was something of the parvenu about him, something of the mountebank and self-conscious humbug. Brute and artist were at war within him; he looked aware of it, a bit ashamed but utterly unwilling to deny the brute its day of power.