Cutter's Island

by Panella, Vincent

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “No reason at all.”

  “Follow me,” he says, whacking the donkey so a cloud of dust rises from its rump. We descend to a small cove protected by two walls of weed-blackened rocks reaching into the sea and defining a small beach of white sand. A deserted hut sits above the tide line. Inside we find a few tin spoons, a broken bowl, and a rusty gaff hook which Cutter picks up and examines.

  “This old man was living here when we took the island. He sold us fish for several years and claimed to know the future. He predicted the weather as well as our chances for success on several missions. Often we’d find him sitting in the surf in a kind of trance, his beard soaked, the seaweed gathered between his legs like a bunch of serpents, mumbling incomprehensible repetitive sounds. He’d say he was talking to the gods.

  “One day he came to deliver his catch and told me that in a vision he’d seen me drinking water from the ocean. ‘What does that mean?’ I asked him. He didn’t answer, and disappeared after that, leaving all his belongings behind, including the skiff, his most valuable possession. The ability to endure this loss signals the potency of his vision.”

  We sit outside the hut and Cutter begins working the gaff into the sand, as if to dig something up.

  “I believe the old man saw my death,” he says, looking off into the distance. “Drinking water from the ocean could mean lying face down in the water, the way a dead man floats.”

  He continues working the gaff into the sand, pulling it toward him, bringing up wet stones and small bits of shell.

  “Maybe he did,” I say.

  He looks quickly at me, then away.

  “In the end, all that matters is how you live, not how you die. Life is cheap today, and luck is always on the prowl. I live to be free of you. This means I do all in my power to weaken your city, by taking its goods, money, and people. That’s my life, and if I end up doing the dead-man’s float, so be it.”

  “You must believe the ransom is worth more than the harm I’ll ever do to you, otherwise you’d kill me.”

  “Of course. What can you do? Come after us when this is over?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Answer your own question, Lord.”

  He turns to me, but I maintain the path of my gaze straight down to the placid surf. I don’t see the surf from my present perspective, but from the ocean. My ships land there in the faint light, ships like death’s black shades, and with a clanking of weapons the men disembark and form up on the beach. I inspect the ranks, and the hairs on my neck stiffen. All feeling runs out of my legs.

  “A difficult question,” I say, picking up some sand in my cupped hands and letting it fall through my fingers.

  “Perhaps I can answer it. I know you as I knew so many others. A young man of moderate ambition, a nephew of Marius who barely escaped Sulla’s retribution, living his life on the periphery of power. A faggot perhaps, or more likely one of those two-way types of which there are so many these days. You’re well known for fancy food, tailored clothing, and poetry recitation. You also have a taste for other men’s wives. This tells me something, Lord. Sulla taught you that sticking out your neck can get your head cut off. You wisely play the fop, and I’d play it for years to come if I were you. Sulla may be dead, but his generals are still in power—Pompey and Crassus. They’re the bright new stars, and you know it. Believe me, I know all about you, Lord. I know the names of your wife and child, how much property you own and what it’s worth. This is my business.”

  “And what does all this tell you. Will I return or not?”

  He digs more with the gaff, and with a speculative look on his face as if trying to bring the answer up from the sand. Apparently finding none, he throws the tool aside, then runs both good and bad hands through his hair.

  “If the old man were here,” he muses, gesturing to the gaff hook, “he’d have the answer. But since events are uncertain, I think it best you know about me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because wherever you go, whatever your decision, you’ll understand the depth of my anger toward your people.”

  Cutter’s story

  “On the docks of Miletus I grew up as a pale-skinned urchin with hollow cheeks and dark eyes. At a young age I’d learned to use those liquid eyes to exploit those who came to sample the city’s pleasures. I was one of a group of wharf rats who prostituted themselves, or lured the unsuspecting to dark streets where their money or lives were taken.

  “So I was a street pirate, but my idols were the sea dogs, those men with ears and noses spiked with jewelry, fingers sheathed with gold and precious stones. Their purple-and-gold-trimmed galleys defied your state most openly, and operated with the approval of provincial governors by exploiting their greed.

  “I signed up, and they took me on. But without the streets and alleys of the city to protect me, without my fellow wharf rats, I was vulnerable, and learned what uses there were for a young boy at sea. At first I was passed around like common property, but then a fierce Egyptian took me for his lover. And for the satisfaction of his persistent desires I was rewarded with gold, and protected from abuses by the others. So the pirate life became another reality, like a dream. And it was easy work. Our victims rarely fought back, and between my regular pay and my lover’s gifts, I soon had a sack of gold in my duffel.

  “But pirates, no matter how much of the sea they dominate, never rule for very long, and the time came when your people took control. Fleets of warships hunted us systematically, and one day we were set upon by four quadremes in the Euboean Channel. Our flagship was rammed and sunk, and all its men drowned or killed in the water by dart men. My own smaller galley was boarded and towed to the nearest land.

  “While ready-cut timbers were unloaded for crosses, the Roman commander addressed us. He was a lean, sharp-jawed man with haughty blue eyes and hair the color of golden wheat. He told us that the penalty under law for the crime of piracy was crucifixion. We would be tied to our crosses, whipped with rods, and made to suffer our wounds all night. Come morning, each man would be stabbed in the throat with a short sword—which he held up for all to see. The subsequent beheading and display of our severed heads would be of no concern at that point. He explained that the punishment would be carried out quickly, but that under law, he had no choice in the matter, or the method.

  “By nightfall all of my shipmates, including the Egyptian, had been beaten bloody and fixed to their crosses, which were stood up in holes dug deep into the sand. The commander interceded for my life, if only to use me as a serving boy for the troops’ dinner that night. So while my shipmates moaned and twisted on their crosses, I served up flat bread and salt fish by the wind-whipped blaze of our galley, which had been pulled ashore and set afire.

  “That night, wrapped in the commander’s cloak, I tried to sleep on the sand. But the agonies of my mates kept me awake. I saw them in the shifting light of the bonfire. My Egyptian had been set toward the front. His body was crisscrossed with bloody welts. He was still conscious, and when he saw that I’d been spared, he cried out for me.

  “Hearing his cries, the commander took me aside and said, ‘Is that man your lover?’

  ‘“Yes, Lord.’

  ‘“Then go to him.’

  “I wasn’t allowed to bring water because it would prolong life and suffering. For the same reason the Egyptian forbade me to tear off part of my tunic and try to wipe his wounds. He wanted death to come quickly now. So I sat at the base of the crucifix, which was all he asked. Once I was there he didn’t complain about his suffering. So I sat. The wind died down, and the tide wash gradually worked its effect on me. The world was as cold as the sea, or as warm. Repetition was the only reality.

  “Gradually the fire from our galley reduced to embers, and on the back of my neck I felt the occasional drops of warm blood dripping from the Egyptian’s feet. The commander had given me a few swallows of wine, and this allowed me to sleep. I awoke with his clo
ak around me. My Egyptian was barely breathing.

  “In the morning the Marines cut down the bodies and did the stabbing. Their method was to hold the flat of the sword blade up against chin before thrusting. This ensured the quickest death, and I concede it was done efficiently, and without taunting or mockery. Long stakes were then driven along the beach above the tide line, and the dead were beheaded with large-bladed axes. Each man’s crucifix served as a chopping block. I carried the gore-smeared timbers back to the loading skiffs, watching my shipmates’ blood pool on the warming sand.

  “When the heads were impaled on the stakes, we disembarked. The commander placed me on his flagship, and while I held onto the stern rail of the swift-pulling galley, he surreptitiously caressed my arm. The scene on land shrank, the fence of heads—wind blowing their hair every which way—blended into the background of rock and sand, and the bodies, strewn around at random, drew crowds of gulls and vultures. I watched until distance put the beach out of sight.

  “I’m not ashamed of my past. Life on ship taught me how to manipulate men. For us, the sting of immediate pleasure, the need for release, wants also a sense of triumph: yes, you’re the biggest, the sweetest! Yes, yours feels better than his! What clowns and fools we are!

  “The commander brought me home and kept me first as his instrument of pleasure. His own father had been a prince in southern Gaul, captured in a battle against Marius, and later given his freedom for good service. Now he had a wife of your upper classes, but still needed this affirmation, this sense of triumph. And so I gave it to him. I told him he meant everything to me. My complete surrender overpowered him, and he began to reciprocate. There were times when the tables were turned, when I wanted the affirmation, and my lover gladly complied.

  “He taught me how to read and write, and set me free when he became a grandfather. The drive was gone and he knew it, not the drive for release, for he still had that, but that deeper desire for my complete submission was no longer important. So he released me with gold in my pocket. I travelled briefly through your city, then went back home and outfitted a ship and a crew of men.

  “By then your people were too busy killing each other, and no other nation would stand against us. So we ruled the seas from Spain to Asia. Then our king, Mithridates, emboldened by your weakness, made a pact with Sertorius the one-eyed Spaniard. We were to become his navy. Sertorius spoke to us on the deck of a flagship and was followed up the gangplank by a white fawn with flower garlands around its neck. Everyone said the fawn gave Sertorius godlike powers, and that he could never lose a battle.

  “Sertorius promised to restore the republic to virtue, return its boundaries to the boot-shaped peninsula, and give political rights to all. We Cilicians would be ruled by Mithridates once more, and Greece would be ours as well. So we gave him our ships, and while helping him invade the islands off Spain, my galley was lost in a storm near Ibiza. I clung to a broken spar, and after being rescued, signed on as a slinger with a troop of Libyans.

  “I’d never marched with an army before, and it was hard going for a short-legged man. An army is like a moving city. You sleep in a camp with orderly rows of streets and tents. Then you move out and the city becomes a river, flowing from one horizon to the next, meandering in open country, choked and turbulent in the narrow passes, disappearing in the woods and flowing deep in the valleys. You have supply trains and quartermasters. You have dust and honking mules and the endless double file of strong-legged infantry with field packs slung over their shoulders. Marching between them with their oak staffs are the iron-hard centurions, who keep discipline. These men are the high priests of battle, feared by the rank and file even more than the enemy.

  “And so I fought at the River Sucro, after Sulla sent Pompey to crush Sertorius. Pompey charged straight into our volleys of missiles. After withstanding those stones which should have killed him, he shook himself like a dog coming out of the water, buckled his helmet, then came straight at me with his spear levelled, fixing me with a cold, murderous look. He’d picked me out as the man who cried out against him and whose stone almost brought him down.

  “He charged straight, shouting Eja! Eja! Alala!—your battle cry, and a fearsome thing to hear, especially when the ranks of legionaries took it up.

  “Luckily that dart struck him in the fleshy thigh muscle above the knee, so the wound was serious, but not killing. He fell from his horse before he could reach me. His men carried him off, but our Libyan skirmishers began such fighting over his horse and trappings that our line began to buckle. I retreated back to the camp just as Sertorius came up and routed Pompey’s cavalry.

  “But such is the confusion of battle that I found our camp overrun with enemy. They were killing everyone in sight. I threw off my sling and sidearm and crawled under a wagon, from which they pulled me out by both legs.

  “While trying to convince them I was an officer’s valet and not a soldier, Pompey came up on a horse, and seeing me, slid down and came over.

  “I was immediately put on my knees, and my head bent down, forbidden to look upon the great man. But I saw the bandage on his thigh where the dart had struck.

  “Pompey grabbed my hair and lifted my head up.

  “He said, ‘This one spoke my name.’ His wide, dark eyes took me in, but his face was completely blank. This was a man of stone. He released me and I was put in the prisoner train as part of his personal baggage. They marched me into Italy and then to his gladiator school at Capua.

  “Of course I was trained. They didn’t just throw me into the arena in a Samnite’s getup. They fed me well, built up my body, pampered me with physicians, trainers, and men who could massage so much fatigue from your muscles it felt as if your soul had flown—but only until the fear crept back in.

  “I was a clown at first, amusing the crowd with mock fights. My usual opponent was a monkey in a legionary costume, trained to throw a javelin and close with the short sword. After a little of this so-called combat the monkey— at my command—would kneel and beg for mercy, and I would turn to the crowd for a verdict. This was invariably to let him live. At my command the poor beast would drop his weapons and jump into my arms, and I would hold him like a baby and pretend to cry in remorse as I kissed him. The crowd loved me for it.

  “That was the easy part. Later I fought in real contests, first in the smaller arenas, then on to Paestum, Pompeii, the city itself. Non Missio was our school motto. We guaranteed our death. ‘Don’t show fear,’ we told each other, ‘fight hard…. ‘Let’s die well, for our own dignity.’

  “And so you die well. This is your propaganda, and we fell for it. Don’t raise your finger for mercy, but calmly remove your helmet and expose your neck to the killing thrust, and hope that it’s fast. This was yet another world, another reality.

  “But I wanted not to die well. I wanted to die like a coward to spite them, to make them angry, to take away their satisfaction, to make them sick with themselves. But I feared it, I feared the degradation of slow death.

  “Thus I played into your hands.

  “As a member of Pompey’s team, I took part in the games he sponsored to win over the mob. And I’ve seen the spectacles, leopards pulling racing chariots, bulls fighting bears, pickpockets thrown to the beasts, lions pitted against black tribesmen plucked from the edges of the earth, with the arena decorated with false jungle foliage.

  “Pompey never forgot my face, and one day he came to Capua to find me. So many of the wealthy tour the schools, led by the director through the training pits. It was a hot day and I was practicing sword work on a dummy. Although my eyes were blurred with sweat I immediately sensed the aura of a great man, the mood of awe created in the air about him. You know great men when you see them. Even our arrogant director was humbled, a man so high and mighty that he never hesitated to beat us with his fists for making mistakes. Oh, how I love your people!

  “I’ll admit that I cringed under the stare of those blank, dark eyes. Here was a man surely born wi
th an empty spot in his soul, an oblivion to feeling that kept him apart from other men.

  “Pointing me out to the director, Pompey said, ‘This is the one.’ Then he passed on to another part of the school. I heard the director say the words ‘something special,’ to a further remark Pompey made. For weeks after that I slept badly, believing the ‘something special’ would be Pompey’s revenge on me.

  “But to those who attend the games, my fate was ordinary. It’s common for your people to explore everything to excess, including death. They particularly relish the deaths of the brave ones who mock fate by surrendering their hard-won freedom and returning to the arena for glory and money—the crowd deifies these men. Having lost their sense of personal valor, your people honor nothing more than heroism in others, victory against all odds. But heroism being rare in the arena, they feast on poor fare in greater amounts. Vicious butchery whips them into a frenzy, and they wallow in the false tragedy of prearranged death.

  “Wounds and maiming such as mine are no more than the squeaks of a dying hare to those whose jaded appetite needs constant relief from the boredom of having nothing to do. For the politicians know that too much boredom will stimulate the brain to thought, even to political action. So your mob is pampered and feared, and barely notices anything less than sensational violence. A man with a puncture wound in his side, another with a severed limb, those who limp off with broken bones that never heal properly, these are mere table scraps. When boredom sets in at the games, they strangle a few slaves while waiting for the next contest.

  “They trained me as a Samnite, short sword and square shield, like your legionaries use, and they would often match me against taller men as a way of showing how your method of fighting surpasses all others. So I faced Thracians with curved scimitars and small round bucklers, and I learned how to ‘get inside’ the retiari, with their long tridents and cunningly thrown nets. I was a dangerous swordsman not only because of my fast reflexes, but because I was left-handed, and this is a deadly anomaly.