Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks tp-6

by Poul Anderson

  While the words were sycophantic, that was conventional in this society, and the tone was anything but. Pummairam was having fun, Everard saw. Doubtless he was curious, too, as well as eager to earn more. He fairly quivered where he stood looking straight up at the huge man.

  Everard made his decision. “You win, you rogue,” he said, and grinned when Pummairam whooped and danced. It wasn’t a bad idea to have such an attendant, anyway. Wasn’t his purpose to get to know the city, rather than merely its sights? “Now tell me what it is you are thinking you can do for me.”

  The boy poised, cocked his head, laid finger to chin. “That depends upon what my master’s desire may be. If business, what kind and with whom? If pleasure, likewise. My lord has but to speak.”

  “Hm-m.…” Well, why not level with him, to the extent that is allowable? If he proves unsatisfactory, I can always fire him, though I expect he’d cling like a tick. “Then hear me, Pum. I do have weighty matters to handle in Tyre. Yes, they may well concern the suffetes and the king’s self. You saw how a magician tried to stop me. Aye, you aided me against him. That may happen anew, and I not so lucky next time. It’s barred I am from saying more about that. Yet I think you’ll understand my need to learn a great deal, to meet people of many kinds. What would you suggest? A tavern, maybe, and I buying drinks for the house?”

  Pum’s quicksilver mood froze to seriousness. He frowned and stared into space for a few heartbeats, before he snapped his fingers and cackled. “Ah, indeed! Well, excellent master, I can recommend no better beginning than a visit to the High Temple of Asherat.”

  “Hey?” Startled, Everard flipped through the information planted in his brain. Asherat, whom the Bible would call Astarte, was the consort of Melqart, the patron god of Tyre—Baal-Melek-Qart-Sor… She was a mighty figure in her own right, goddess of fruitfulness in man, beast, and land, a female warrior who had once dared hell itself to recall her lover from the dead, a sea queen of whom Tanith might be simply an avatar… yes, she was Ishtar in Babylon, and she would enter the Grecian world as Aphrodite…

  “Why, the vast learning of my lord surely includes the fact that it would be foolish for a visitor, most especially a visitor as important as he, not to pay homage to her, that she may smile upon his enterprise. Truly, if the priests heard of such an omission, they would set themselves against you. That has, indeed, caused difficulties with some of the emissaries from Jerusalem. Also, is it not a good deed to release a lady from bondage and yearning?” Pum leered, winked, and nudged Everard. “Besides being a pleasurable romp.”

  The Patrolman remembered. For a moment, he was taken aback. Like most other Semites of this era, the Phoenicians required that every freeborn woman sacrifice her virginity in the fane of the goddess, as a sacred prostitute. Not until a man had paid for her favor might she marry. The custom was not lewd in origin, it traced back to Stone Age fertility rites and fears. To be sure, it also attracted profitable pilgrims and foreign visitors.

  “I trust my lord’s folk do not forbid such an act?” the boy inquired anxiously.

  “Well… They do not.”

  “Good!” Pum took Everard by the elbow and steered him off. “If my lord will allow his servant to accompany him, quite likely I shall recognize someone whom he would find it useful thus to get acquainted with. In all abasement, let me say that I do get around and I do keep eyes and ears open. They are utterly at the service of my master.”

  Everard grinned, on one side of his mouth, and strode along. Why shouldn’t he? To be honest with himself, after his sea voyage he felt damnably horny; and it was true, patronizing the holy whorehouse was, in this milieu, not an exploitation but a kindness; and he might even get some lead in his mission…

  First I’d better try to find out how reliable my guide is. “Tell me something about yourself, Pum. We may be together for, well, several days if not more.”

  They came out on the avenue and threaded their way through jostling, shouting, odorous throngs. “There is little to tell, great lord. The annals of the poor are short and simple.” That coincidence startled Everard too. Then, as Pum talked, he realized that the phrase was false in this case.

  Father unknown, presumably one of the sailors and laborers who frequented a certain low-life hostel while Tyre was under construction and had the wherewithal to enjoy its serving wench, Pum was a pup in a litter, raised catch-as-catch-can, a scavenger from the time he could walk and, Everard suspected, a thief, and whatever else might get him the local equivalent of a buck. Nonetheless, early on he had become an acolyte at a dockside temple of the comparatively unimportant god Baal Hammon. (Everard harked back to tumbledown churches in the slums of twentieth-century America.) Its priest had been a learned man once, now gentle and drunken; Pum had garnered considerable vocabulary and other knowledge from him, like a squirrel garnering acorns in a wood, until he died. His more respectable successor kicked the raffish postulant out. Despite that, Pum went on to make a wide circle of acquaintances, which reached into the palace itself. Royal servants came down to the waterfront in search of cheap fun… Still too young to assume any kind of leadership, he was wangling a living however he could. His survival to date was no mean accomplishment.

  Yes, Everard thought, I may have lucked out, just a little.

  The temples of Melqart and Asherat confronted each other across a busy square near the middle of town. The former was the larger, but the latter was amply impressive. A porch of many columns, with elaborate capitals and gaudy paint, gave on a flagged courtyard wherein stood a great brass basin of water for ritual cleansing. The house rose along the farther side of the enclosure, its squareness relieved by stone facing, marble, granite, jasper. Two pillars flanked the doorway, overtopping the roof and shining. (In Solomon’s Temple, which copied Tyrian design, these would be named Jachin and Boaz.) Within, Everard knew, was a main chamber for worshippers, and beyond it the sanctuary.

  Some of the forum crowd had spilled into the court and stood about in little groups. The men among them, he guessed, simply wanted a quiet place to discuss business or whatever. Women outnumbered them-housewives for the most part, often balancing loads on their scarved heads, taking a break from marketing to make a brief devotion and indulge in a bit of gossip. While the attendants of the goddess were male, here females were always welcome.

  Stares followed Everard as Pum urged him toward the temple. He began to feel self-conscious, even abashed. A priest sat at a table, in the shade behind the open door. Except for a rainbow-colored robe and a phallic silver pendant, he looked no different from a layman, his hair and beard well-trimmed, his features aquiline and lively.

  Pum halted before him and said importantly, “Greeting, holy one. My master and I wish to honor Our Lady of Nuptials.”

  The priest signed a blessing. “Praises be. A foreigner confers double fortune.” Interest gleamed in his eyes. “Whence come you, worthy stranger?”

  “From north across the waters,” Everard replied.

  “Yes, yes, that’s clear, but it’s a vast and unknown territory. Might you be from a land of the Sea Peoples themselves?” The priest waved at a stool like that which he occupied. “Pray be seated, noble sir, take your ease for a while, let me pour you a cup of wine.”

  Pum jittered about for several minutes in an agony of frustration, before he hunkered down under a column and sulked. Everard and the priest conversed for almost an hour. Others drifted up to listen and join in.

  It could easily have lasted all day. Everard was finding out a lot. Probably none of it was germane to his mission, but you never knew, and anyway, he enjoyed the gab session. What brought him back to earth was mention of the sun. It had dropped below the porch roof. He remembered Yael Zorach’s warning, and cleared his throat.

  “Och, how I regret it, my friends, but time passes and I must soon begone. If we are first to pay our respects—”

  Pum brightened. The priest laughed. “Aye,” he said, “after so long a faring, the fire of Asher
at must burn hotly. Well, now, the free-will donation is half a shekel of silver or its value in goods. Of course, men of wealth and rank are wont to give more.”

  Everard paid over a generous chunk of metal. The priest repeated his blessing and gave him and Pum each a small ivory disc, rather explicitly engraved. “Go in, my sons, seek whom you will do good, cast these in their laps. Ah… you understand, do you not, great Eborix, that you are to take your chosen one off the sacred premises? Tomorrow she will return the token and receive the benison. If you have no place of your own nigh to here, then my kinsman Hanno rents clean rooms at a modest rate, in his inn just down the Street of the Date Sellers.…”

  Pum fairly zoomed inside. Everard followed with what he hoped was more dignity. His talkmates called raunchy good wishes. That was part of the ceremony, the magic.

  The chamber was large, its gloom not much relieved by oil lamps. They picked out intricate murals, gold leaf, inset semiprecious stones. At the far end shimmered a gilt image of the goddess, arms held out in a compassion which somehow came through the rather primitive sculpturing. Everard sensed fragrances, myrrh and sandal-wood, and an irregular undertone of rustles and whispers.

  As his pupils widened, he discerned the women. Perhaps a hundred altogether, they sat on stools, crowded along the walls to right and left. Their garb ranged from fine linen to ragged wool. Some slumped, some stared blankly, some made gestures of invitation as bold as the rules permitted, most looked timidly and wistfully at the men who strolled by them. Those visitors were few, at this hour of an ordinary day. Everard thought he identified three or four mariners on shore leave, a fat merchant, a couple of young bucks. Their deportment was reasonably polite; it was a church here.

  His pulses pounded. Damnation, he thought, irritated, why am I making such a production in my head? I’ve been with enough women before.

  Sadness touched him. Only two virgins, though.

  He walked along, watching, wondering, avoiding glances. Pum sought him and tugged his sleeve. “Radiant master,” the youth hissed, “your servant may have found that which you require.”

  “Huh?” Everard let his attendant drag him out to the center of the room, where they could murmur unheard.

  “My lord understands that this child of poverty could never hitherto enter these precincts,” spilled from Pum. “Yet, as I said earlier, I do have acquaintanceship reaching into the royal palace itself. I know of a lady who has come each time her duties and the moon allow, to wait and wait, these past three years. She is Sarai, daughter of shepherd folk in the hills. Through an uncle in the guard, she got a post in the king’s household, at first only as a scullery maid, but now working closely with the chief steward. And she is here today. Since my master wishes to make contacts of that sort—”

  Bemused, Everard followed his guide. When they halted, he gulped. The woman who, low-voiced, responded to Pum’s greeting, was squat, big-nosed—he decided to think of her as homely—and verging on spinsterhood. But the gaze she lifted to the Patrolman was bright and unafraid. “Would you like to release me?” she asked quietly. “I would pray for you for the rest of my life.”

  Before he could change his mind, he pitched his token onto her skirt.

  Pum had found himself a beauty, arrived this same day and engaged to the scion of a prominent family. She was dismayed when such a ragamuffin picked her. Well, that was her problem. And perhaps his too, though Everard doubted it.

  The rooms in Hanno’s inn were tiny, equipped with straw mattresses and little else. Slit windows, giving on the inner court, admitted a trickle of evening light, also smoke, street and kitchen smells, chatter, plaintiveness of a bone flute. Everard drew the reed curtain that served as a door and turned to his companion.

  She knelt before him as if huddling into her garments. “I do not know your name or your country, sir,” she said, low and not quite steadily. “Do you care to tell your handmaiden?”

  “Why, sure.” He gave her his alias. “And you are Sarai from Rasil Ayin?”

  “Did the beggar boy send my lord to me?” She bowed her head. “No, forgive me, I meant no insolence, I was thoughtless.”

  He ventured to push back her scarf and stroke her hair. Though coarse, it was abundant, her best physical feature. “No offense taken. See here, shall we get to know each other a bit? What would you say to a cup or two of wine before—Well, what would you say?”

  She gasped, astounded. He went out, found the landlord, made the provision.

  Presently, as they sat side by side on the floor with his arm around her shoulders, she was talking freely. Phoenicians had scant concept of personal privacy. Also, while their women got more respect and independence than those of most societies, still, a little consideration on a man’s part went a long ways.

  “—no, no betrothal yet for me, Eborix. I came to the city because my father is poor, with many other children to provide for, and it did not seem anybody in our tribe would ever ask my hand for his son. You wouldn’t possibly know of someone?” He himself, who would take her maidenhead, was debarred. In fact, her question bent the law that forbade prearrangement, as for example with a friend. “I have won standing in the palace, in truth if not in name. I wield some small power among servants, purveyors, entertainers. I have scraped together a dowry for myself, not large, but… but it may be the goddess will smile on me at last, after I have made this oblation—”

  “I’m sorry,” he answered in compassion. “I’m a stranger here.”

  He understood, or supposed he did. She wanted desperately to get married: less to have a husband and put an end to the barely veiled scorn and suspicion in which the unwedded were held, than to have children. Among these people, few fates were more terrible than to die childless, to go doubly into the grave… Her defenses broke apart and she wept against his breast.

  The light was failing. Everard decided to forget Yael’s fears (and—a chuckle—Pum’s exasperation) and take his time, treat Sarai like a human being simply because that was what she in fact was, wait for darkness and then use his imagination. Afterward he’d see her back to her quarters.

  The Zorachs were mainly upset because of the anxiety their guest caused them, not returning until well past sunset. He didn’t tell them what he had been doing, nor did they press him about it. After all, they were agents in place, able persons who coped with a difficult job often full of surprises, but they were not detectives.

  Everard did feel obliged to apologize for spoiling their supper. That was to have been an unusual treat. Normally the main meal of the day occurred about midafternoon, and folk had little more than a snack in the evening. A reason for this was the dimness of lamplight, which made it troublesome to prepare anything elaborate.

  Nonetheless, the technical accomplishments of the Phoenicians deserved admiration. Over breakfast, which was also a sparse meal, lentils cooked with leeks and accompanied by hardtack, Chaim mentioned the waterworks. Rain-catching cisterns were helpful but insufficient. Hiram didn’t want Tyre dependent on boats from Usu, nor linked to the mainland by an extended aqueduct that could serve an enemy as a bridge. Like the Sidonians before him, he had a project in train that would draw fresh water from springs beneath the sea.

  And then, of course, there was the skill, the accumulated knowledge and ingenuity, behind dyeworks and glassworks, not to mention ships less frail than they looked, since in the future they would ply as far as Britain…

  “The Purple Empire, somebody in our century called Phoenicia,” Everard mused. “Almost makes me wonder if Merau Varagan has a thing for that color. Didn’t W. H. Hudson call Uruguay the Purple Land?” His laugh clanked. “No, I’m being foolish. The murex dyes generally have more red than blue in them. Besides, Varagan was doing his dirty work a lot farther north than Uruguay when we collided ‘earlier.’ And so far I’ve no proof he’s involved in this case; only a hunch.”

  “What happened?” asked Yael. Her glance sought him across the table, through sunlight that slante
d in a doorway open to the garden court.

  “No matter now.”

  “Are you certain?” Chaim persisted. “Conceivably your experience will call something to our minds that will be a clue. Anyhow, we do get starved for outside news in a post like this.”

  “Especially adventures as wonderful as yours,” Yael added.

  Everard smiled wryly. “To quote still another writer, adventure is somebody else having a hell of a tough time a thousand miles away,” he said. “And when the stakes are high, like here, that really makes a situation feel bad.” He paused. “Well, no reason not to spin you the yarn, though in very sketchy form, because the background’s complicated. Uh, if a servant isn’t going to come in soon, I’d like to light my pipe. And is any of that lovely clandestine coffee left in the pot?”

  —He settled himself, rolled smoke across his tongue, let the rising warmth of the day bake his bones after the night’s nippiness. “My mission was to South America, the Colombia region, late in the year 1826. Under Simon Bolivar’s leadership, the patriots had cast off Spanish rule, but they still had plenty troubles of their own. That included worries about the Liberator himself. He’d put through a constitution for Bolivia that gave him extraordinary powers as lifetime president; was he going to turn into a Napoleon and bring all the new republics under his heel? The military commander in Venezuela, which was then a part of Colombia, or New Granada as it called itself—he revolted. Not that this Jose Paez was such an altruist; a harsh bastard, in fact.

  “Oh, never mind details. I don’t remember them well myself any more. Essentially, Bolivar, who was a Venezuelan by birth, made a march from Lima to Bogota. Only took him a couple of months, which was fast in those days over that terrain. Arriving, he assumed martial-law presidential powers, and moved on into Venezuela against Paez. Bloodshed was becoming heavy there.

  “Meanwhile Patrol agents, monitoring the history, turned up indications that all was not kosher. (Um-m, pardon me.) Bolivar wasn’t behaving quite like the selfless humanitarian that his biographers, by and large, described. He’d acquired a friend from… somewhere… whom he trusted. This man’s advice had, on occasion, been brilliant. Yet it seemed as if he might be turning into Bolivar’s evil genius. And the biographies never mentioned him…