Cleopatra's Promise

by Talbot Mundy

  CLEOPATRA’S PROMISE

  A novelette by Talbot Mundy

  from Adventure v092n04 June 15, 1935

  Illustrations by N. O'Keeffe

  EPUB Created Feb 2012

  by

  Amontoth (Genesis)

  CHAPTER I

  THE ANGER OF TROS

  THERE was no disguising the trireme's injuries, nor her commander’s discontent. Tros had buried his dead in Cyprus, in a cave near Salamis. They had been so many that the lower oar-bank could no longer be manned. There were smashed bulwarks, hastily repaired but unpainted. There were scars where the enemy ships had grappled and ground the trireme’s flanks, like killer-sharks fast to a whale, in a storm that rolled them gunwales-under.

  The purple sails, bent on for effect— there was no wind— emphasized the battle-havoc. The victorious trireme appeared to be limping home from ignominious defeat— an unfortunate impression to create in Alexandria. The Alexandrines loved successful people and proofs of success.

  Tros glowered as he paced his quarterdeck and studied the magnificent harbor-front. It was as busy as ever. One might imagine there were no such people as Romans, at civil war with one another for the right to plunder the whole known world. Ahiram, second-in-command, in Tros’ third-best cloak, said something about the splendor of the marble buildings in the morning sun. He came of a silent race, and it was not often that he volunteered remarks about anything except the management of the ship, but the strain of his captain’s silence had become too much even for his taciturn disposition. Tros stared at him a moment, gave an order to the helmsman, and then answered with cold, passionate anger that made the Phoenician flinch:

  “Aye, a fine May morning! Counting wounded who are fit to die, we have lost one hundred and eleven men. And to what good purpose?”

  Ahiram sniffed the off-shore zephyr that bore the mingled smell of flowers, spices, vegetables, animals and men. It was good in his salty nostrils. He retorted:

  “You’ve your cabin stuffed with chests of gold enough to buy one of yon palaces. If I were you, I’d buy a palace, instead of wanting to sail around the world. Maybe the world isn’t round. You only think it is. You don’t know. And the sea is a hard life. Courtiers have it easy. Three special cooks to stew a sow’s teats for your breakfast, and a brace of wenches to relacquer your toenails every time you kick a blackamoor for being late with the wine!”

  It was nothing new that the Phoenician’s thoughts should run in that vein after a month at sea. But the helmsman’s thoughts also were home-coming seamanly eager. Tros rebuked him: “Eyes on the course, you Argive satyr!”

  Every man who could find an excuse to be on deck, or who could escape a decurion’s vigilance, was leaning overside to stare at the Rhakotis wharf, where the bawds were waiting, gay in all the colors of the rainbow. Defeat or victory were all one to those parasites, so be the crew had money.

  Ahiram, thinking of shore-leave, tried to change his commander’s humor. Tros was quite capable of withholding the crew’s wages, and Ahiram’s too, for the sake of wharf-side morality. Dreadful thought.

  “And the queen? She would be feeling good.” said Ahiram.

  “She has seen our sails since daybreak,” Tros answered. “She rises early — stands naked, facing East, at sunrise. By pigeon post from Salamis to Tyre, and thence by runner, she will have had secret information of our victory at sea —aye, and of more besides.”

  “She should be pleased,” said Ahiram. “Her own fleet had deserted to the Romans. We’ve saved Salamis from the pirates. We’ve outsmarted the Romans. We’ve sold the Egyptian corn and got paid for it. We’ve established Queen Cleopatra’s sister as safe as a peg in a hole on the throne of Cyprus. The queen has had plenty of time to hear all about it. She’ll be pleased to see us—aye, and generous.”

  Tros stared. It amazed him that a man could be so simple-minded. “Does your Sidonian intellect perceive the evidences of her pleasure? Where are the garlanded boats to bring us greeting? Not even a signal from the Pharos! Not even the hog-eyed harbor-master in his galley! Not even Esias’ boat! Phagh! She has probably warned Jew-Esias I am out of favor. The more you do for kings and queens, the less they trust you and the more they want.”

  “But you’re no easy one yourself, Lord Captain,” said Ahiram. “True, you pay well, and you’re a man of your word. But the price a man pays for serving you well is to be given an even harder task.”

  “Hard over! Ease your sheets now, Ahiram; there might come a flurry of wind. Down haul, and stow sails. Cymbals! Starboard, half-ahead! Port side, half-astern! Easy all! Starboard, half-ahead! Easy!”

  Tros guided the trireme, to the clash of the signaling cymbals, and with gestures to the helmsman, through the narrow entrance of the inner harbor of Rha-kotis, where there were docks and repair-yards, hemmed in by offices, lumber-yards, storage-sheds and taverns in a spider-web maze of irregular streets.

  He was going to have to haul out, and no bones about it. The trireme leaked. She had been damaged under-water by the headlong, full sail impact against pirates’ hulls. Esias’ largest hauling-out dock was vacant, so he put a crew ashore to warp the ship into it, with Jack-of-all-jobs Conops and the ten-Jew bodyguard to beat the women back and give the crew a chance to handle the lines. There were fifty strumpets screaming with laughter and feigning Bacchanalian frenzy, and another hundred swarming across the roof of Esias’ office, while their owners watched them through the barred gate.

  No sign of the one man in Alexandria on whom Tros felt he could rely. The temple gongs were clanging for some festival or other, but that was no reason why Esias should be conspicuously absent. Jews didn’t recognize pagan festivals if they could help it, but there was not even one of Esias’ partners on the wharf to do the honors and to give the last breathless news of what had happened while Tros was at sea out of touch with events.

  It was impossible to keep the crew any longer aboard. From Cyprus by way of Tarsus to Alexandria had been a toilsome voyage against a head wind, short of provisions and water. Tros had an unfashionable objection to cutting the throats of wounded men, so one of Esias’ sheds would have to be turned into a hospital, and the Osirian priests, who were pretty good doctors, would have to be sent for and suitably persuaded with gifts of young black bulls and money. The trireme’s doctor, assisted by the bards, had done his best, but he was overworked and short of bandages.

  The moment the oars were all stowed in the overhead racks the rowers swarmed on deck, each man with his little bag of personal possessions. The women began to swarm aboard, and there was no stopping them until Tros made it known that there would be no pay for the crew until the trireme had been hauled out and stripped ready for Esias’ shipwrights.

  Ahead, leading between city slums, there was a ramp made of balks of timber, with enormous capstans at the upper end. There were cranes, sheer-legs, workshops, everything for repairing, building or rebuilding four ships at a time, but all the gear would have to go ashore before repairs could commence. The women began to lose enthusiasm. The crew clamored to be put to work and get it done with.

  Tros went ashore. He strode into Esias’ gloomy office with the air of a man looking for trouble, as if more of it might help him to conquer what he had already. There were plenty of slaves at the long drafting tables, plenty of clerks to bow and be obsequious, but no Esias and not even a partner. There was an atmosphere of unspoken unwelcome, if not ill will, slaves taking their cue from displeased masters. However, a slave in a brown smock, walking backward, opened a door and admitted Tros into an inner office, shutting the door behind him with a peculiar, stealthy movement that suggested a trap.

  HILLEL, the man whom Tros least liked of Esias’ five partners, sat staring acros
s a table that was piled with scrolls. He was a middle-aged man with a keen face and a pronounced stoop from the shoulders, whose hands clutched invisible things with nervous indecision.

  “Lord Captain Tros,” he said, without rising, “you were better at sea. You have brought your ship into a harbor full of intrigues of which no man can foresee the outcome.”

  “Where is my friend Esias?”

  “He was summoned to the palace as soon as your ship was sighted. There is no word from him since. I think the queen suspects him of intriguing with you. Lord captain— if he is in the dungeon— being tortured— as his friend, are you not willing to spare his old bones by making haste to tell the queen your secrets? He won’t tell them. He will never tell without your permission.”

  “You are inventing alarms,” Tros answered.

  “Am I? It is said that you sold the corn fleet to the Romans.”

  “I did. I have the money.”

  “Lord Tros, there is a plot that has been discovered. They are taking many important people to the dungeons. It is being said you have conspired with the Romans to overthrow Queen Cleopatra, and to put her sister Arsinoe of Cyprus on the throne in her stead! Have you her with you on the trireme?”

  Tros laughed, angrily. “Am I a madman? Arsinoe is in Cyprus. The money for Esias’ corn is in my cabin. Send your slaves to carry it here and get it counted. Give me a receipt and credit me with my fifth of it all. Get the pay-roll from my clerk. Pay the crew half their wages, after they have hauled out. Has Esias sold my pearls?”

  “He sold them to the queen.”

  “For a fair price?”

  “An incredible price. But let him tell you, if they haven’t flayed him to death! The queen has the pearls. We have the money. But where is Esias?”

  “I will see the queen and ask her.”

  “Lord Tros, you were better at sea! You were better at sea! The queen may order your arrest. She is afraid. She is a Ptolemy. A fearful Ptolemy is a deadlier menace to her friends than a poisonous serpent! She suspects every one.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of conspiring to kill her and put her sister Arsinoe on the throne. There is a rumor that Arsinoe is on her way to Egypt. It is said that the Roman proconsul Cassius is sending an army to her aid from Syria. It is being said that you plotted it, and that Esias knows. It is said it was you who persuaded the Egyptian war fleet to desert to Cassius, that there might be no fleet in Alexandria to resist invasion. And Esias—”

  “Is not a fool, such as you are, Hillel. Neither is the queen such a fool that she would risk the enmity of all the Jews in Alexandria by torturing Esias— nor such a fool as to believe Arsinoe could land in Egypt in advance of a Roman army and escape death. You are full of rumors and they belly-ache you, Hillel. I go to the palace. Order me a litter and summon the master-shipwrights. Have them grease the ways thoroughly before they haul out. Can you rid the wharf of those wenches?”

  “Lord Captain Tros, at least a third of them are spies expressly sent to learn from your men what you were doing in Cyprus, in Tarsus and elsewhere. I ordered the wharf-gate locked. They came over the roof. I ordered them driven away, and I received a warning, from no other than the personal slave of the chief of police, not to interfere with the rights of their master’s guild.”

  “Clear me a shed for a hospital.”

  “Lord Tros, send your wounded to a temple.”

  “Nay. Let them lie in comfort.”

  “As for the trireme, frankly, I would not dare to—”

  Tros interrupted. “This, Hillel, is a list of the repairs that I know need doing. Check that and write me an estimate. But as for what needs doing below water, we shall know when she is hauled out, so summon the shipwrights.”

  “Lord Tros—”

  “I believe you heard me, Hillel. Attend to it. Order a litter— a good one.”

  Hillel shrugged his shoulders and sent a slave for a hired litter. Tros overheard the command.

  “I will ride in a private litter,” he remarked, casually, as if he were ordering the next course of a meal, but his leonine eyes looked dangerous and Hillel noticed it. He explained:

  “Lord Captain Tros, you are out of favor. Who is there who would dare to lend his private litter? In such times as these, when no one knows who is to be accused next, who shall lend his litter and liveried bearers to a man denounced as a pirate?"

  “Who denounced me?”

  “One of the queen's ministers.”

  Tros threw back his shoulders. He astonished even Hillel, who knew better than to expect mild measures from the man whom Cleopatra had employed to do what not one of her own commanders could have been trusted, or would have dared to attempt.

  “Send your best dressed slave to the palace to say that Lord Captain Tros awaits a litter to convey him to an audience with the queen.”

  “Lord captain, what if she sends a guard instead, to take you to the dungeon!”

  Tros snorted. “She is not a coward. She is not a reptile, nor a born fool. She and I have been friends too many years for her to put me to that indignity, on the strength of a mere rumor.”

  “Lord Tros, dozens of her friends are in the dungeons!”

  “Send for the royal litter!”

  He strode out of the office and watched Esias’ slaves remove the treasure from the cabin— watched the wounded being laid on the wharf in a dismal row— watched the grease being laid on the ramp— ordered all the gear and even the arrow-engines unshipped— foresaw and attended to a hundred details— until at last, to the confusion of Hillel, a litter did come from the palace, borne by eight men in Queen Cleopatra's livery and preceded by a eunuch who was insolent and elegant enough to be the Queen’s own usher.

  There was no bodyguard provided. That was the only suggestion that Tros might be in disfavor. But he was in no mood to go unsuitably attended. He summoned his ten Jews, ex-gladiators. They looked splendid enough in their polished armor to be any one’s escort; but Conops, with his one eye and his slit lip, in a kilt and a tasseled red cap, looked not so praiseworthy. Nevertheless, it did not occur to Tros to enter upon deadly danger without Conops at his heels.

  “Tidy yourself, you filthy dock-rat! Where’s your armor? Stick that knife inside your shirt and gird a sword on. Try to look less like an ape that fell into a sewer. Shall I go through the streets of Alexandria ashamed of the commander of my escort? Spruce yourself!”

  “Aye, aye, master.”

  “And remember not to touch your forelock to the Queen’s guards! Be insolent.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  “Lord Tros,” said Hillel, “armed slaves? Armed slaves in the city? It is known that those men are slaves and that Esias gave them to you.”

  “I know the law,” Tros answered.

  “So do the royal guards!” said Hillel. “Those arrogant dogs—”

  “Shall bite a bad bone! Be assured of it, Hillel!”

  Conops, changing even his normal habits with his master’s mood, bethought him of dignity and sent one of the Jews to bring his armor. He made another Jew spit-and-polish an imagined rust-spot. Even the armor could not make him look less bow-legged, nor give him height, but he looked at least businesslike in the gleaming crestless helmet, and there was no doubt at all of his grip on his ten men.

  “Fall in, you sons of Abraham! Five of you to each side of the litter! Now then, pick your heels up! March like gladiators! Clank like one man!

  “Ready, master! Lord captain’s escort, by the centre, forward, quick march! Left! Left! Left! You’re out of step, Josephus— do you think it’s a dance you’re doing for the dock-side wenches? Left! Left!”

  The dock gate opened wide and Tros went forth, to he knew not, and Conops cared not, what fate.

  CHAPTER II

  “GIVE THESE MEN THEIR FREEDOM.”

  THE eunuch got lost in the crowd. He was so full of his own importance that he walked straight ahead with his nose in the air, and when a polyglot swarm of loafers r
ushed from watching some street-corner acrobats to the more exciting spectacle of a tavern fight between Greeks and Gabinian ex-soldiers, some of them still in the rags of Roman uniform, the eunuch remained ignorant for several minutes that he was no longer being followed by his cortege.

  Tros had whispered to Conops, and Conops rose to the occasion. The litter-bearers protested, but the ten Jews prodded them as if they were asses, and in a moment the litter was going at a dogtrot up a side street, taking a devious but comparatively unobstructed course toward the splendid municipal building —not, however, toward the front entrance, whose marble steps were packed with people waiting to see a religious procession.

  Being a festival day, the courts and the principal municipal offices were closed. The whole long marble-fronted, colonnaded Street of Canopus was a mass of spectators in holiday miood, through which the chariots of exquisites were being driven headlong by charioteers who enjoyed being cursed, and whose owners could afford to be fined if the police could get near enough to take their names.

  It was a dinning, ululating, pulsing city, full of street fights and laughter and flowers, with the wealth all in view and the poverty kept where it belonged, out of sight in the meaner by-ways. Nothing— absolutely nothing was allowed to interfere with Alexandrine gaiety. Even business— and it cost money to be gay and splendid— ceased while the Alexandrines played.

  But from sunrise to sunset, three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, one could pay taxes; so there was one office, entered from the rear of the municipal building, whose doors never closed during daylight hours.

  Two or three hundred yards away from the door of that office Conops collected the Jews’ swords and piled them beside Tros in the litter. He even piled their helmets in the litter to complete their air of innocence.

  In armor, without helmets or weapons, they looked ridiculous. They were jeered by the crowd. But they reached the office door without having to use their fists on any one except the litter-bearers, who felt like lost sheep without their eunuch and suspected, too, that they were being put to unlawful purpose and would be whipped when the eunuch found them.