by Talbot Mundy
Rhys stared blankly.
“That is all I have!” he said in an awed voice.
“No, not all. Not quite all. But enough to keep you chastened for a while!” Caswallon answered, nodding.
Rhys exploded.
“I appeal! You have no legal right to fine me! This is a monstrous fine for nothing! It is plunder! I defy you! I demand a trial before the council!”
“Shall I leave you to the Lord Tros?” Caswallon asked, raising his eyebrows. “Rhys, Rhys, I am ashamed! If I were not an easy-going king I would have slain you long ago. I spare you because you rule your district, though you rule it over-harshly. But I will not trust you until that fine is paid, because I know you have plotted with Caesar and Gwenwynwyn. Spare me, then, the deeper shame of having to expose you.”
He turned his back to give Rhys time to think. There was no shame on Rhys’s face, only calculation of the odds against him and a cold, pragmatic selfishness.
“I will pay,” he said, catching his breath. It hurt him more to say it than a whipping would have done.
“I will see that you do!” Caswallon answered, turning again to face him. “Tros, I saw Rhys’s steward climb the ladder with him. Where is he now?”
“In the fore-peak unless he was the man who fell overboard.”
“Let the steward be brought. Rhys, you will send your steward, giving orders to him in my presence to bring the doubled tribute money and the fine in full to Lunden. When the whole of it is paid the Lord Tros will release you and as many of your men as have not been killed through your own treachery. Tros, can you keep Rhys safe without fetters?”
Tros nodded.
“Sigurdsen shall nail him into an empty water-cask, and he shall stay in darkness in the ship’s hold until you send me word to loose him. As for his men in the shed down yonder—”
“They are yours!” Caswallon interrupted. “They are not bad fighting men. They are Rhys’s best. Bring them here and put a hatch on them until the ship sails.”
Tros demurred.
“They are not slaves,” he objected. “They will simply run at the first chance, and meanwhile I shall have to handle them with capstan bars. There’ll be trouble enough without—”
“Chain them to the oars!” Caswallon urged.
Tros shook his head. He knew, from long experience of ships in the Levant, the uselessness of that procedure. Men chained to the oars die of heart- break, and the work they do is not worth food and whip. Even the Romans realized it and, except in the case of punished criminals, never chained men at the galley benches. “Throw them into Lunden jail,” he answered.
“But I thought you must have men?”
“I must. But I have other men in mind.”
Caswallon strode out of the deckhouse, beckoning Tros to follow. “Brother Tros,” he said, taking his arm outside the door, “I can not put men in Lunden jail without bringing them to trial except in cases of high treason and rebellion. Even for high treason or rebellion, I must have the council’s affirmation.”
“Then, let them go,” said Tros.
“Tchutt! They would try to rescue Rhys. Rhys is known to be rich. I must reduce Rhys’s riches drastically before I can afford to turn those men loose. Bring them aboard the ship.”
Tros laughed.
“I have made no bargain yet with Rhys,” he answered. He returned into the deckhouse, where Rhys sat glowering at Sigurdsen. “Rhys—”
“I am the Lord Rhys to my enemies!”
“Lord Rhys, I have no notion how many of your men are still alive in yonder shed, but as many as live are my hostages. I will keep them aboard this ship until I am out of reach of your poisoners, your arrows, your informers. If, when you have paid the Lord Caswallon’s fine and I have set you free, you do me no annoyance of whatever kind, you shall have those men back, subject to their good behavior as well as yours. So you would better warn them, even as I will. When I have no further use for them as hostages, say a month from now, or a few days more or less, and provided you have done me not an injury meanwhile, I will set them free somewhere on the coast of Britain, each with his weapon and a little journey money, and they may find their own way back to you. Is that clear?”
Rhys nodded, scowling.
“You understand me? Fully? Very well then. Bring his steward, Sigurdsen. After the steward has received instructions, nail Rhys up in the water-cask and let Northmen stand watch over him in two-hour tricks. Rhys, Lord Rhys, you would better bid your steward make haste. It will be dark there in the hold. A water cask is big, but not a pleasant place to spend a week in. Fall away, Sigurdsen. I’ll watch him while you bring the steward.”
CHAPTER 59. The Lord Rhys’s Tenantry
There is a true measure by which to judge any captain’s value. Is he fat, and are his led men hungry? Is he at ease, and are they weary? Is he in receipt of dignities, and is their lot humiliation? Does he bribe them to obtain obedience? Is he revengeful; is he afraid to punish, lest worse happen?
— from The Log of Tros of Samothrace
STORES began coming aboard that afternoon, although the slaves claimed holiday to celebrate the launching. Tros did not dare to waste minutes now. Hours might make the difference between catching Caesar’s Spaniards in mid-channel or being obliged to land and fight them somewhere on the British coast. At sea, the odds were in his favor, supposing he could lick that crew of his into anything like shape. On land, five hundred Spaniards under a Roman officer would have it all their own way, as against himself with only eight-and-forty Northmen. Orwic and perhaps a few of his retainers and as many of his British slaves as he might dare to form into a landing party.
Men, men, men! He must have men! That song was singing in his brain while they towed the Liafail alongside the light pier he had constructed, and all the rest of that day until midnight. He drove the slave gangs mercilessly. Endless streams of food, stores, water, ammunition, tools, spare sails and cordage poured into their appointed places, and the Northmen labored at the stowing, each man in charge of one section of the hold.
The risk of fire made Tros’s skin creep. He was everywhere, cautioning torchmen, alert and anxious. Glendwyr with a bucket gang and another gang in readiness to man the great chain-pump, stood watch amidships, and there were boxes of wet sand set wherever there was room for them. Conops in person stowed the leaden balls filled with mixed explosive in the magazines below the four great catapults, and in other magazines beside those, tons of charcoal, resin, sawdust, sulphur and that other strange ingredient from under the horse manure in the cave below Caswallon’s stables.
By midnight, because Tros had foreseen everything, the stores were stowed, the lights were out, the slaves asleep on bunks beside the staggered oar benches and the hatches, covered with pitched canvas, in position. All lay snug and tight against the rain that drummed on the upper deck. The shrouds were slackened; the ship was again in mid-stream riding to her own bronze anchor with a cowhide parceling on the warp, and the shipyard deserted. The Northmen — they were Tros’s marines, berthed for his protection between his stateroom under the poop and the rows of bunks on which the rest of the crew slept — snored in their own snug quarters. Conops, yawning at the anchor watch, cried, “All’s well!” It was a day’s work to be proud of, and a night of nights — the first afloat!
But the more Tros thought, the more he gloried in the great ship’s size and her proportions and the novelty and skill of her design, the more he wondered at success, the more the fact oppressed him that he must have men, men, men.
On either side of the ship there were three banks, each for fifty oars. He had less than two hundred Britons. It was just conceivable that his eight- and-forty Northmen were enough to handle, reef, steer and provide the necessary boatswains, two lieutenants and two oar captains, one for each side of the ship. But of the Britons, ten were needed for the cooking and such details. Ten more were not more than enough to keep the ship comparatively clean. And though the druids had given him a kegf
ul of pungent smelling extract that they said would keep the smallpox and the harbor plague away, he knew cleanliness as all essential. He had seen too many ships rot, crew and all, of their own foulness.
Then, the wear and tear aloft would be too prodigious, and would call for constant overhauling, for he had not only three masts, in itself an innovation, but three topmasts, his own bold, original invention, and a corresponding maze of rigging. Under sail he did not doubt he would have speed enough to run from any Roman on the seas but, failing wind, he would need at least another hundred and fifty oarsmen, to allow for a few sick men and a few reliefs. And even so, there would be no men to spare to man the catapults, the arrow-engines and to stand off boarders.
Men! He must have men swiftly, and at least two hundred. Moreover, they must not be Britons, or the risk of mutiny would be too great. He laughed to think that Caesar should send Spaniards from Gaul exactly at the moment when he needed them. He scowled when he thought of the weakness of his untrained crew.
“The gods,” he told himself, “enjoy a man’s alertness. They are offering me opportunity.”
He did not pray to the gods. He knew better. Such prayer as he put forth was will to seize the moment, action, effort and self-watchfulness.
Nor had he qualms about the Spaniards, who were surely not yet slaves. They were men, presumably, who hired themselves to Caesar for his purposes; expecting, in addition to their pay, such loot and opportunities for license as his victories should provide. In Tros’s view of things, that made them his fair prey. He respected no man’s liberty unless the man himself respected other people’s. A soldier fighting for the freedom of his own land, he admired, he loved; a mercenary in the pay of an invader he considered no more than a prostitute to Caesar’s will, no more to be treated as a free man with a free man’s rights than cattle need be.
But how to get those Spaniards! First, by hook or crook, he must instill enthusiasm into his untrained British oarsmen, and then train them — no small miracle! Thereafter, making out of Thames-mouth for the open sea, he must give his Northmen practice in the handling of the ship before he could dare to engage Caesar’s warships, clumsy and ill-handled though the Roman biremes might be. He must cruise along the coast and run in to find Skell’s messenger. And if, as was all too likely, Skell should fail him, he must cruise down-channel searching for the Spaniards, trusting to the gods to show them to him.
“Zeus!” he muttered. “How I’d love a crew of Romans! Give me enough Romans and I’d purge Rome! But they won’t follow a man who doesn’t believe that Rome is right whatever Rome does.”
If he would go to Rome to plead Caswallon’s cause he must have men with him who would regard Rome as their natural enemy, or at least not as their mother city, and who, in consequence, would not desert in the hope of finding easier servitude ashore. He was sure of his Northmen and Britons. He was nearly sure the Spaniards would have had their bellyful of Caesar and would be complacent about changing masters.
He slept not at all that night, but paced the poop with the blustering rain in his face, using himself to the feel of the ship underfoot, to her length and breadth, to her height above the water — absorbing her into his consciousness.
When dawn at last sent shafts of golden light along the river, touching the great serpent’s trembling tongue, Tros greeted it, arms folded, on the poop and laughed along the deck to Conops who came sleepily off watch to urge him to turn in and rest.
“These Britons of ours will tax you, master! Sleep before the trouble starts!”
“It has begun!” Tros answered, glancing at the river. “Turn out all the Northmen!”
There were two-score boats already coming up-stream, loaded full of traders and olla-podrida of Thames’ side.
“Watch that no slave goes overboard, and stand those boats off with arrow- fire if need be! Let no boats but Orwic’s or Caswallon’s come alongside.”
It was an ancient game, as old as navigation, to approach a ship about to sail and tempt her crew with promises of shore work and high wages. Her master, then, had the alternative of long delay while he pursued deserters or of putting to sea short-handed, leaving his slaves to become the property of whoever had tempted them ashore.
He began to be angry with Orwic for keeping him waiting; angry with Caswallon because he knew it was Caswallon who had feasted Orwic all night long, and that both of them were probably dead drunk; angry with a longshore crowd that was already looting in the shipyard, breaking up the sheds and carrying off in oxcarts and on men’s heads every stick that was removable. But more than all else, he was angry because the boats were there and he must make the first experiments with the oars before an audience of critics who would laugh.
He ate breakfast without appetite, then ordered an anchor out over the stern and let the ship swing down-stream.
“Man the benches!” he commanded, scowling at the onlookers. If he had thought they would accept a reasonable sum he would have paid them all to go away.
First came babbling confusion while the Britons were selected, bench by bench, for reach of arm, known courage or faint heartedness; and a mark was painted on each man to correspond to the bench on which he was to sit and on the oar he was to use.
The business took two hours, and no one was satisfied. The upper-bank men grumbled at the length and weight of the oar they had to pull; the lower-bank men cried for head room, air, view, noisily asserting fear that waves would enter through the lower oar-ports.
“Whip!” Tros thundered. “Whip for the man who speaks again until I give leave!”
There had not been much whip hitherto in Tros’s mixed methods of maintaining discipline. A sudden onslaught by the Northmen leaping along the gang-planks by the benches and the cracking of leather whips on naked shoulders produced more effect than if the Britons had been used to it. There was silence and a long pause. One by one, then, the Northmen showed the rowers what would be expected of them at the signal.
Wand in hand on the poop, Tros stood where the drum and cymbal men could see him. They were stationed forward, under the break of the high bow, protected from the weather, cautioned never, for any reason, to take their eyes off the officer of the watch. Tros gave the signal:
“Ready!”
Drums and cymbals crashed three times, and the oars, after a lot of shouting by the Northmen, moved into position ready for the dip. Again and again Tros repeated the signal, Conops running along the gang-planks, moving and readjusting oar-handles until all the vermilion blades were poised exactly evenly above the water. Then, setting the time slowly for the drums and cymbals, he made them move the oars in air until the rowers caught the rhythm and began to swing in unison. A cymbal-crash began the swing. A drumbeat finished it. Then:
“Dip!” he thundered, and the fun began.
For a while he was like to have to serve out new oars from the spares that were stowed in brackets fastened to the deck-beams overhead, so excitedly the Britons worked, blade hitting blade, oar-handles bumping into backs, the Northmen yelling, and the great ship swaying in the muddied water, straining at her warp. Ten, twenty times Tros signaled, “Stop!” then started them again. It was two hours, and they were all dead weary, Conops foaming at the mouth and the Northmen growing gloomy with despair, before the rowers had the hang of it and could pull ten strokes without a dozen of them “catching crabs.”
Then Orwic came, pop-eyed from too much food and drink, seated between Fflur and Caswallon in the state barge, dressed in all his finery of cloth-of-gold and jewelry, with half-a-dozen boxes full of changes of apparel and sufficient assorted weapons to have armed a company of infantry. With him he brought four fair-haired gentlemen-at-arms, as heavy as himself from too much feasting, looking scared, as if they had made their wills and testaments, not hoping to see home again.
Fflur’s eyes were wet with tears. She came up first on to the poop and kissed Tros three times, hugging him.
“Lord Tros, we love you because you have loved us,
and we feel we have done too little to befriend you in return.”
Caswallon laughed to hide the quaver in his voice and clapped Tros hard between the shoulder-blades.
“You take my good friend Orwic! Will you leave me my enemy, Rhys, in exchange? I sent my archers with that steward to add their own impatience to his zeal. A galloper brings news they are already on the road home with the chariots and the tribute money, driving the cattle in front of them. So loose Rhys Tros. Tros, look at the sun on the water! Lud laughs to have your great ship on his bosom!”
They all leaned overside to see the ship’s reflection, silver and vermilion.
“Rhys’s men?” Caswallon asked.
“I have them, all safe under the hatches, except three whose skulls lacked thickness. I will set them ashore when I am out of Rhys’s reach. Not, that is, until I see the last of Britain.”
“The last? Nay, nay, Tros. You will come back,” Caswallon answered with an air of prophecy.
Fflur shook her head.
“I fear we see the last of Orwic, too,” she said, eyes wet with tears again.
“Not so!” Tros answered. “I spoke carelessly. This first voyage I make in search of men. If I fail, I will return up-Thames to coax a British crew from you before I sail for Rome. So you must watch Rhys!”
“You will not fail,” Fflur said confidently.
“If I fail not, it would grieve me not to have my friends rejoice,” Tros answered. “If I win those Spaniards, let us have a feast aboard my ship.”
“Where?”
“Vectis. I will anchor in the lee of Vectis. Set a watch for me. Whichever way the wind blows, I will anchor on the island’s leeward side.”
“That is not my country, and Lud knows I hate the sea, but Fflur and I will come to meet you in a ship from Hythe — which is not in my country either, but they pay me tribute. That is a promise. Let us go now. I hate partings,” said Caswallon.
