by Talbot Mundy
Tros found Skell on a frame bed strung with deer-sinews before a good oak fire, at which an old woman was stirring a stew in an earthen pot. He had a cloak over him, and shivered as if he were suffering from ague, but he sat up when Tros entered, offered Tros a stool and threw off his fit of depression along with the cloak. He was still wearing the dagger, as Tros noticed, and he touched it, which was not good manners; but he sent the old woman for mead and two beakers, bidding her warm it at the fireside when it came, and he had the good sense to make no reference to the caterwauling and insulting song outside.
Tros kept an eye on the hag and on the mead beside the fire, for he knew Skell’s reputation and yet did not wish to refuse to drink with him.
“I am ill,” said Skell, “and I wish you would cry this bargain off that we have made between us. I am willing to do whatever you say, provided I can do it. Name me another tryst that I should keep instead.”
But Tros had expected that.
“You are too late, Skell,” he answered. “They have brought that galley up the river. Caswallon has claimed it, to hold it in trust until he shall decide the outcome of the wager.”
“But I can not cross to Gaul. No ship will take me,” Skell objected. “At this season of the year they lay up all the ships in mud berths. Now if you would let me take that galley, Caswallon might consent to that, then perhaps I could get a crew together and—”
But Tros had thought of that, too. He interrupted:
“The galley is unfit for sea, Skell. She needs alterations and repairs, which I will make in good time. But I know a man who will take you to Gaul. He is Hiram-bin-Ahab, the Phoenician, whose ship sails soon.”
And then, with both eyes on the hag who warmed the mead, for he knew Skell could not spring at him to use the dagger without the string bed squeaking a warning, he baited a trap into which he felt sure Skell must walk.
“I have a plan, Skell, to make it easy for you to get my father out of Gaul. There is a river called the Seine that flows northwestward into the channel between Gaul and Britain, reaching the sea a good long journey to the westward of Caritia.
“I will take a ship, and there, in the mouth of that river, I will wait for you, so you can deliver my father alive to me without much difficulty, making your way across country in the night-time until you reach the river- mouth.”
“But how shall I find your ship?” asked Skell.
The mead was warm enough and would be too warm in a minute, so he signed to the hag to pour it. Tros took the beaker that was farthest from him and held it while the hag poured, withdrawing it suddenly before it was full so that the hag spilled quite a little, after which he watched Skell’s face in the firelight.
Skell said the lip of the other beaker was dirty and bade the hag go and wash it, then went on talking in a hurry.
“How shall I find your ship?” he repeated. There was a thin smile somewhere in the midst of his foxy beard. “You will be in hiding, I suppose?”
“Among the reeds and with my mast down, yes,” Tros answered. “But ashore, near where I hide, I will set up a cairn of white stones, and if you shout my name three times from there, I will come for you.”
Skell’s eyes betrayed that he was tempted by the bait, but Tros proposed to tempt a bigger fox than Skell. The man he wanted out of winter camp was Caesar, the restless aspirant for fame who spent all winter editing a secretary’s summer notes.
“I said I would make it easy for you, Skell. Now listen: I have Caesar’s memoranda and his seal, to recover which, Caesar would set all his prisoners free, to say nothing of my father. I, on the other hand, value my father higher than Caesar’s secret papers, although I have read some of them and there are documents that I daresay Caesar would be glad to have. What if I should bury that box of documents and seals under the cairn of white stones? Knowing that was there, would you not find it easier then to bargain for my father’s freedom?”
“How do I know you would do that?” Skell demanded, trying to look indifferent, but his eyes betrayed him.
“I must trust you, and you must trust me, Skell.”
“Yes, we must more or less trust each other.” Tros played his favorite trick then, of raw, cold frankness:
“You see, Skell, I do not pretend to like you. You are a man who did me an ill service. I am compelling you to pay the price for that, and I do not think you like me any better than I like you. I am offering to help you carry out your bargain, because I know that you are not to be trusted otherwise. For my part, you shall have the seal and documents, and the galley, if you deliver my father alive into my hands at the mouth of the Seine within a month from now.”
Skell stroked his red beard. He could hear the singing outside, as the fox hears hounds in the covert.
“All right,” he said. “Caesar knows me. He will listen. But I must have money for my expenses.”
But again, Tros was not to be caught. He hoped it was true that Skell needed money.
“I will settle with the Phoenician for your passage to Caritia,” he answered. “Nothing more than that.”
“Then I must have a pledge from you that you will really wait for me at Seine-mouth.”
“My father is in Caesar’s hands,” Tros answered. “I could not give a more compelling pledge.”
“Nevertheless, as you said just now, you and I are not friends. Something of value is needed, to make your word good to me,” Skell objected.
The glint of avarice was in his eyes, and a vague look, as if he were hopeful still of finding an excuse to back out. But Tros laughed, kicking his sword-point to the rear and drawing the blade six inches.
“Very well,” he said. “You shall have this sword, the best sword in the world, a sword that once was Philip of Macedon’s. You shall have it through the middle of your heart, Skell, if you fail to deliver my father at Seine-mouth and I ever set eyes on you again! Is that a pledge you value? Would you like to test it? If so, arm yourself and come outside.”
“I can not fight I have the ague,” Skell answered. “When does the Phoenician sail?”
“In a few days. If you go aboard his ship tonight, or tomorrow night, you will be rid of all this annoyance.”
Tros jerked his head toward the door, against which clods of earth were thumping.
“They are likely to burn your thatch if you delay,” he added. “Shall I tell the Phoenician to send his seamen for your baggage?”
Skell agreed, with a mean, exasperated glare in his eyes, scratching his teeth with his thumb nail, grinning as Tros turned his back to go. But Tros turned again suddenly, because of that dagger and its possibilities, and caught the grin before Skell could cover it, which put him in a marvelous good humor, because he was sure then that Skell was contemplating exactly such treachery as would fit in with his own plans.
So as he left the house he caught a clod of earth intended for Skell’s door and pelted one of the children with it. Then, because that frightened some of them — since they knew Tros was Caswallon’s friend — he found a lump of chalk and drew a caricature of Skell, beard, moustache and all, on the oaken door and left them pelting rocks, earth, acorns and all manner of dirt at that.
Later, on the grass before Caswallon’s porch, he paid the seamen and, as their eyes glinted at the gold coin, he made them a proposal:
“Ye have found me a hard captain but a profitable man to serve. If ye had served me with less knife throwing and with more goodwill, ye should have had the double of all that money.”
He picked up handfuls of gold from one of Caesar’s bags and let the coins dribble through his fingers.
“What now if I promise you two for one of what you have received, for one more short voyage before winter sets in? Think of it. Money enough to buy a farm apiece and to live the rest of your lives ashore like gentlemen!”
They agreed, for never sailor lived who did not covet a farm, until he had one. But Caswallon laughed.
“Buy farms? They will buy drink and the caresses
of the womenfolk who gut fish by Ludgate wharf!”
“Maybe,” Tros answered. “They are no doubt better at that than at seamanship. But they don’t spew their victuals overside whenever a ship rolls, and I shall need them when some of your peak-capped cockerels are lying belly upward on that galley’s deck praying to the mast and sky to stand still!”
“You will find my cockerels crave money too,” Caswallon answered.
“For a venture against Caesar?”
“Oh! No, perhaps not, not, that is, if Caesar can be made to foot the reckoning!”
CHAPTER 20. Hiram-Bin-Ahab Stipulates
Bargains! Bargains! Listen to me: Who but the highest bidder names the price of that which can be bought and sold? And does Eternity make bargains? Unbidden, unbought, unpaid for, all the affluence of all Eternity is poured upon you, aye, unceasing. And ye bargain? I will tell you a secret. Though I tell it, it remaineth secret, saving only to the wise; and the wise are they whom Wisdom guideth through the maze of other men’s illusions. That which is freely given without thought of recompense, and without stipulation or pity or blame, but given simply from the storehouse of the giver’s affluence, whether it be goods or deeds or good-will — that is a free gift. It setteth the giver free and him to whom the gift is given. Because it is a free gift, it is free to go forth as the sunshine and the wind, unlimited by ignorance, envy, greed, ambition and the bonds that ye impose on one another. And I tell you, in all this universe there is nothing as good as freedom. But ye seek to burden tomorrow with the harness of today’s necessities; and your necessities, I say, are nothing but the shadows of your fear of that very freedom ye pretend to seek.
— from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan
TROS sat by the hearth in Caswallon’s hall, staring with leonine eyes at the fire, reading pictures in it. Caswallon sat beside Fflur, his long legs stretched toward the blaze, his skin, where it showed at neck and breast, looking whiter than ever because the firelight threw it into contrast with the fading blue designs that were drawn on it with woad.
Three hounds slept on the warm tiles. Red apples simmered in the warming mead. Orwic faced the fire with knees clasped in his hands and his back against an upset table.
A dozen men snored on the benches that lined three walls. Wind whined under the eaves, rattling the shutters, and now and then a gust of smoke was blown down chimney, followed by soot and enough rain drops to make a splutter.
“Of what are you thinking?” asked Fflur.
She had been watching Tros, marveling at his strength and at his brow under the black hair, that was as splendid as the carving of an ancient king’s.
“Of Skell, of Caesar, of you,” Tros answered,
“What of Skell? You named him first.”
“He will go to Caesar, saying that I, Tros, son of Perseus, am the man who wrecked that fleet off the shore of Kent. That I, Tros, have bribed him with the promise of Caesar’s own galley, to go to Caesar and make terms for my father’s freedom.
“That I, Tros, will be waiting at Seine-mouth for my father to be delivered to me, having with me Caesar’s own seal and Caesar’s chest containing all his private memoranda.
“He will say to Caesar. ‘Make haste! Set an ambush at Seine-mouth! Thus you will recover your seal and documents, and will have two prisoners instead of one — one of whom knows much about Caswallon and the Britons!’ Thereafter, Skell will say, ‘Reward me commensurately with the dignity and sense of justice of a Roman Imperator to whom important service has been done.’ Thus Skell will speak to Caesar.”
“And Caesar?” asked Fflur.
“He will listen, and smile. He will see through Skell as readily as you see through a serf who comes telling tales about the kitchen wenches. He will ask whether Skell has seen the seal and documents; and he will not be sure whether to believe Skell when that foxy-haired liar says Yes.
“But Caesar is a restless man, and by that time he will have grown tired of a woman, that being his habit; and maybe there will be no other woman there just then who pleases him. He likes them educated, entertaining. He grows difficult to please. He will bethink him that the Gauls along the coast might be caught brewing mischief if he should pay them an unexpected visit, for he knows the Gauls squirm under his heel. It will occur to him that life in camp is stupid, more particularly to a man of scholarly mind who has lost his secretary’s notes.
“And he will remember that among those notes are some that would be very dangerous to him, if they should happen to reach Rome or fall into the hands of one of his own lieutenants, who might have brains enough to use them. So he will not dare to send a subordinate to Seine-mouth; he will go in person, with a cohort or perhaps two cohorts of cavalry, moving secretly and very swiftly, as his habit is. At Seine-mouth he will lie in wait for me.”
“And me?” asked Fflur.
“Skell will tell Caesar of you. To suck himself into Caesar’s good grace, he will fill Caesar’s mind so full of you that Caesar will never rest until he shall have made you prisoner. And that is why I need Orwic and as many other young blades as will endure the sea a while and pledge themselves to obey me. If my good fortune holds, Fflur shall have Caesar and hold him to ransom!”
“By Lud of Lunden, nay!” Caswallon swore. “If Caesar again sets foot in Britain, he shall die here. I will give him his choice of weapons, and he shall fight me, without armor, before all my men.”
“He will choose scent bottles and powder puffs,” said Orwic, glancing at Caesar’s neat case of cosmetics that Tros had bestowed on Fflur. “I like this venture against Caesar, though I hate the sea. Say more about it.”
“Is not all said, except what the gods shall say to it?” Tros answered. “We have the galley. We must fit her like a well-found Roman warship straight from Ostia with a despatch for Caesar from the Roman Senate. The despatch, you understand, calls for delivery of my father, Perseus, Prince of Samothrace, who is to be taken to Rome for trial on charges of conspiracy against the Senate and the Roman People, which is how all those robbers refer to themselves.
“First we set Skell ashore, and he talks. When we return, Caesar will not be there, because he will have gone to wait for me at Seine-mouth, hoping to catch me. I, commander of the bireme, deliver the despatch by Hiram-bin-Ahab, the Phoenician, and will not wait, but order it to be opened by whoever is in command in Caritia, declaring I am in great haste to return to Rome because of winter storms.”
“If I were a Roman in Caritia,” said Orwic, “I would ask why you had not delivered that demand for Perseus when you came the first time. The Romans will think it strange that you should return with a message which you might just as easily have sent ashore with Skell.”
“You don’t know the Romans,” Tros answered. “In the first place, they will never dream that one of their biremes might fall into the hands of an enemy who could use it. They think Caesar’s galley was sunk when his fleet was destroyed off Kent.
“In the second place, Hiram-bin-Ahab shall say the omens were unfavorable when I came the first time. Romans are mad on the subject of omens. Furthermore, Hiram-bin-Ahab shall say that I did not, nor do I, care to bring my crew too near the shore, for fear of desertions, they having grown discontented because of contrary winds, much labor at the oars and scurvy.
“Omens, tides, contrary winds, scurvy, they know those well. That list will satisfy their curiosity.”
“It wouldn’t mine,” said Orwic. “But perhaps we Britons are less stupid than the Romans. Lud knows, they were stupid enough in the fighting at Kent. They won the first battle by being too stupid to know they were beaten! What if their liburnians, as you call them, should come out to investigate you?”
Tros, who was an opportunist first and last and liked to fit his plans to each emergency as it arose, began to wish he had worked out the details thoroughly before taking Britons into his confidence. They were good friends, and generous enthusiasts, but so full of their own superiority to foreigners of any kind that a
man needed all his wit to manage them.
Orwic began suggesting wild plans of his own, that included loading horses on the galley, sailing to Caritia and setting fire to Caesar’s camp.
“And if we do that at night, we can ride ’em down in darkness as they run downwind in a panic!”
“I have it!” Tros slapped his thigh so suddenly he woke the dogs. “The first time Hiram-bin-Ahab puts in to Caritia, he lands Skell and says I wait offshore because I suspect my crew of sickening with smallpox.
“My name for the occasion, let us say, is Caius Marius Poseidonius. The Phoenician shows an order signed by Caius Marius Poseidonius, commander of the bireme, authorizing him to land Skell in Caritia. And he, also, prefers not to stay in port because his men who visited my galley may have caught the sickness.”
“Good,” Caswallon nodded. “That should satisfy them. The worst plague we ever had was caught from a ship. We burned the ship and slew the crew, kindly and with dignity. The druids saw to that; but the sickness spread all over Britain, because the Iceni carried it north on their way home from selling horses. The Romans will want none of that stuff.”
“And Caesar,” said Tros, “will have another good excuse to leave Caritia. He is afraid of smallpox. He will think Hiram-bin-Ahab may have brought it into port. He will certainly go that same night, very likely throwing Skell into a pest-house under observation of the surgeons, who will set fire to the hut and say it was an accident. Caesar will go that very day to Seine-mouth to investigate Skell’s story.”
Fflur nodded, and nodded, and nodded, her gray eyes watching Tros. Caswallon held a finger up for silence; he knew that mood of hers. But all she said was, “You are right now, Tros.”
“And when I appear the second time,” said Tros, “Hiram-bin-Ahab shall say I have seen Caesar at a place along the coast. He shall add, it is true about smallpox. They will understand that Caesar wishes to kill my father Perseus without risk of being blamed for it. They will put him aboard Hiram-bin-Ahab’s ship and order Hiram-bin-Ahab out of harbor with all speed.”
