Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “I appoint you first oarsman on the starboard side,” he said. The fellow grinned, saluted and departed down the hatch. He had expected to be punished. Orwic stared, then exploded.

  “You reward him?”

  “No. I recognize him. There are seeds of leadership in that man.” He turned to the helmsman. “Let her fall off — easy now! This is a ship — not a four-horse chariot!”

  The Northmen managed the sheets and braces without a word from Tros, keeping their eyes on him, obeying gestured signals. For a while Tros watched the course, considering the wind, tide, current, then left Sigurdsen in charge and went back to the deckhouse where Gwenhwyfar lay. He found her lying with her face still buried in the mattress, looking like a drowned thing with her hair all matted. But she stirred as he entered.

  Tros leaned against the table, fingers rapping his sword-hilt. “Death, Gwenhwyfar, comes to all of us when we have played our part,” he said. “The men who know about such things have told me there is a long rest after that and utter happiness before we come again into the world and finish what we left undone. I will start my next life without this one’s rotten ropes to splice!”

  She raised her head and stared.

  “What would you have me do?” she asked. “You talk like Fflur. You act like destiny! I tremble when you speak. I hate you! What would you have me do?”

  “Act nobly!” Tros retorted. “All of us make errors. Make them bravely, bear the blame and eat the consequences. I will set you free in Pevensey. I have a letter and a cloak, shot full of arrow holes. Take both. Send them to Caesar or try once more to break me under the wheels of your revenge.”

  She sat up, elbows on her knees, head resting on her hands, her chestnut hair a cloud around her shoulders. But between her brown fingers her eyes were watching him.

  “You ask me to do you a favor?” she said at last.

  “Nay, save yourself, Britomaris and all Britain. So you and I will square our reckoning and hold no grudge between us when we come to earth another time.”

  “I like now better than another time,” she answered. “Tros, you are too strong. Have you any notion how a scornling feels?”

  “Aye. Once or twice I have despised myself,” Tros answered. “But I took care never to repeat the lesson. That is why I will set you free in Pevensey without conditions. I will not have your treachery for which to blame myself. You may be friend or enemy.”

  “If I say friend, will you trust me?”

  He nodded.

  “And if you say enemy, I will set you free nevertheless.”

  “Are you a very wise man or a fool?” she asked. “I know not in my own mind.”

  “I speak you fair, Gwenhwyfar.”

  “And you bid me send a written lie to Caesar!”

  Her lips curled, not exactly scornfully but with a hint of malice. She believed she had him on the quick.

  “Lie to Caesar or betray me and let Caesar’s army land in Britain!” he retorted. “Choose the lesser of two evils or the greater. Even as I choose between a fight with Caesar and the chance to run away. I will play the man. Play you the woman.”

  “Tros,” she said, “there is no gainsaying you! Very well, I will send your cloak to Caesar.”

  She lay down again, burying her face between her hands and breathing hard.

  Tros walked out, fastening the door behind him.

  CHAPTER 63. Gwenhwyfar Yields

  I have heard that a woman scorned is a worse danger than a fire on a ship at sea. But why scorn her? It is not by scorning fire and tempest that a captain brings a ship home. Though I buy not, need I scorn the would-be seller? Nay, if I show him a better market I may even earn his good- will. It is so with women.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  THERE was many a delay before they sighted Pevensey, and Tros dropped anchor in the lee of the long sand-flat that arose, with coarse grass shaking in the wind, between the harbor and the sea. There was a split sail with a patch on it, due to a Northman’s carelessness while Tros slept. A chafed throat-halyard had parted and a falling spar had smashed the cookhouse roof. Deck water-casks had gone adrift in a three-reef gale, and there was a great gap in the bulwark where a rolling cask had broken through.

  But the face of Helma on the figurehead still smiled and the long, forked serpent’s tongue flashed handsomely to every motion of the ship. There was an eye-appealing smartness in the way the sails were clewed up to the spars; and when the oars came out to work up to the anchorage against the tide, they swung together as if a hundred-handed Hercules were prisoned under deck. There was no sound of the whip, no swearing, nothing but the clang of cymbals and the drum-thud as they dipped, vermilion in emerald and white, and swung, Tros with his baton marking time, beside the helmsman on the poop.

  He did not choose to enter the port of Pevensey, and there were many reasons. First, the shifting sand banks with a tortuous course between them where a ship could take the sand bow-on before the lead came up. Second, it was late spring. Caesar’s biremes might be cruising in the Channel. Tros wanted sea-room. Given that, he feared no dozen biremes.

  Then, again, he did not care to take his crew into a British port yet. They were too near home. It was a first rule of ship’s husbandry to give the crew shore leave as often as convenient to save them from salt water boils, the scurvy, cramp and the depression born of oar monotony. But it was also a rule in any seaport to take a toll of all ships’ crews, decoying them to hiding places, where they could be caught and re-enslaved in due time, when the ship had sailed away without them. In a foreign port a man dared land his crew, because even a drunken oarsman reasonably treated on his own ship would hardly trust the promises of longshore tavern keepers. But near a home port, where the tavern keepers spoke their language, slaves were safest with a tide-rip hurrying between them and the land.

  There was a risk, too, that if he entered Pevensey, some fishing boat might sneak out of the harbor mouth, conceivably by night, and carry word to Caesar that the great ship was afloat and cruising between Gaul and Britain. That would end all prospect of the Spaniards’ sailing until Caesar could send a fleet out to destroy the monster ship, of which so many rumors must have reached him. Whereas, at anchor, there in the very jaws of the long harbor entrance, although out of sight of Pevensey itself because the coastwise towns of Britain were well hidden from the all too frequent raiders, Tros could see who came and went. Provided the watch were wakeful, even in the night no fishing boat could pass to sea without his leave.

  Last, given a fair wind-and at that season of the year the wind would suit them three days out of seven — the Spaniards could pass from Gaul to Britain at almost any point along the coast between dawn and dawn. If he should hear of them, he would want to waste no time nail-biting at the tide or feeling his way foot by foot to sea, in darkness, between sand banks.

  He had decided he would trust Gwenhwyfar, against Orwic’s firm conviction she would play him false. It was against reason and he knew it. But he had the trick of intuition and had learned, by long experience, that reason is a rut-bedraggled hag, while intuition is a goddess who can see inside the houses, into men’s hearts and beyond the hills and trees. Reason reckons yesterdays, but intuition tells about tomorrow.

  So the Northmen went to work repairing damage, and the Britons cleaned ship, sanding down the decks, while Tros, with a look-out at all three mastheads, interviewed Gwenhwyfar for the last time. She was smiling and well-pleased with him because he gave her money liberally for the journey home; but he knew no wind changed swifter than her moods, and he was minded, if he could, to say a parting word that should stick barbed into her memory.

  “If you can learn in this life to play fair, and to choose between friend and enemy, you might be a queen in the next life,” he said, fixing her with his lion’s eyes. He looked like a priest of Isis when he stood that way, still and smooth-browed, with the black hair straight over his forehead.

  She did not answer. She stoo
d waiting. British manners offered no alternative, so Tros embraced her, kissing both cheeks. She flung her arms around his neck then and caught her breath, sobbing, laughing, whispering in his ear:

  “I have lost you, Tros, but only this time! I will help you against Caesar, and next time—”

  A half sob choked her speech. She thrust herself away from him, wet-eyed, and she looked older than Tros by ten years, but there was a bravery of youth within her still and something not contemptible in line and gesture.

  “Like gods, we live forever,” Tros answered. “Do what is right, Gwenhwyfar.”

  That came as close to a blessing as he ever gave to any one in words, for sentimental mouthings nauseated him. He did not know why he should pity and like Gwenhwyfar. He knew he did, as surely as he knew she could never make him captive of her charms.

  He sent Orwic ashore with her in the longboat with eight Northmen and ordered up the slaves to line the rail by way of farewell compliment. But as he saw her rowed away, and in his heart knew she would not betray him but would spare no pains to ruin all her friends this once for sake of him, he wondered whether the gods themselves, in all their infinite and condescending irony, would stoop to use such means.

  He blew a great sigh, like a grampus coming up to breathe. “Well, I am not a god,” he muttered, “and I think I have hurt her less than she was willing to hurt me.”

  CHAPTER 64. News!

  A good plan is as easy to get as a chestnut from the embers. For one bad one there are ten good. But find me a man who can splice a broken plan and of its two parts build a new one in the crack of a sail’s splitting. I will make him free of my quarter-deck.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  BEFORE the next dawn following the afternoon when Tros dropped anchor off Pevensey, there were five small sailing boats made fast to the stern of the Liafail. Of the five, the first two had essayed to slip past by daylight, keeping to the shallow water on the far side of the channel. But one of the first things Tros had done was to take on a new deckload of flat stones, and to put Orwic to work at the catapult.

  Within an hour the catapult crew had all the marks within reach so well ranged that they actually hit one flat stone with another on the edge of the sandy beach. So when two boats sailed by, ignoring signals, one had the mast knocked out of her and the second put her helm up promptly, coming alongside, scandalized, to plead such innocence as only fishermen are guilty of, and none but madmen could believe.

  Neither boat carried anything that even looked suspicious, but their five- man crews denied that they knew who Caesar was, denied that they had ever heard of him.

  “Then stay here and be deaf a little longer!” was Tros’s comment. He put two Northmen into each boat to guard the ends of the ropes with which he tied them to the taffrail.

  By night it was not so simple, especially before the moon rose. Lapping of the waves against the ship drowned other noises. It was so dark that from the poop Tros could scarcely see the mainmast. So he showed a light and lowered both boats, filling them with Northmen, who had orders to lie close in-shore on the far side and pounce on all who tried to pass. One by one they brought in three more crews of fishermen, not one gray-bearded innocent of whom had ever heard of Caesar. Nor did they know how many more boats there were in Pevensey, nor who was Skell the Northman, nor Gwenhwyfar. They were quite sure they never had heard of Skell — so sure of it that Tros was quite sure they were lying.

  “Nevertheless, I think I, too, would lie if I were in their case,” he reflected, and he lent no ear to Sigurdsen’s suggestion of a rope’s end, nor to Conops’ talk about the virtues of a knife-point thrust between the toe nail and the quick. He fed those fishermen and waited.

  And a little after dawn there came a sixth boat, rowed by two men with a third man in the stern. And that was followed by a seventh, under sail, that carried, by arrangement with Gwenhwyfar, her own red woolen shawl tied up to the masthead, streaming in the wind. So they let that sailing boat go by unchallenged and Tros, superstitious in his own way, laughed to himself to think it was the seventh.

  “The sacred number — number of the gods!” he grinned, and waited for the rowboat.

  From it stepped and climbed the hanging ladder to the poop, a man whose dull red beard stuck outward all around his face. He had a basket in his hand as big as those the women carried on their backs to Lunden market. He declared his name was Geraint but his beady eyes that peered over apple cheeks did not suggest that he expected Tros to believe that or anything else. He set the basket on the deck and stared at Tros and waited.

  Tros poked at the basket with his toe a time or two, recalling in his mind the details of the system of communication he had settled on with Skell.

  “How many eggs do you bring? When did you leave Gaul?” he asked.

  “One egg,” the man replied, who said his name was Geraint. “I left Gaul day before yesterday.”

  “One egg! Lord Zeus!”

  Tros tore away the basket-lid and pulled another basket out, a third, and then a fourth inside that.

  “Four warships? And sailed yesterday?”

  The man grinned amiably, as if he admired the way Tros ground his jaws together.

  “Too much time wasted! Too late!” Tros muttered, wrenching at the lid of the last basket. It was fastened all around with fiber and not easy to remove. Sigurdsen, Orwic, Conops and Orwic’s four retainers came and watched. Tros pushed the basket toward Conops.

  “Use your knife,” he ordered, and Conops slid the blade under the fastenings. Tros had turned away, hands behind him, staring at the open sea, his heavily ringed fingers clenching and unclenching as he ground his teeth.

  How should he get men now? The Spaniards probably had landed yesterday in Britain and would be impossible to round up. True, he might catch Caesar’s warships on the way back, defeat them and take over the survivors of their crews, but a sharp exclamation from Conops made him turn again and stare. His eyes blazed suddenly. In Conops’ hand, raised by the hair, was a human head.

  “Skell’s!” said Conops.

  Sigurdsen pounced on the man who had said his name was Geraint, seized his wrists and lashed them tight behind his back. The man offered no resistance.

  “Torture!” said Conops, pointing with his right forefinger at the ghastly face. Orwic shuddered. Tros, his eyes changing, stared at the man whom Sigurdsen had pinioned.

  “You are not Geraint,” he said.

  “No,” the man answered. “I am Symmachus. I am a Gaul.”

  Tros made a gesture of disgust.

  “Put that thing back in all four baskets,” he commanded. “Put a stone in with it. Sink it in mid-channel.”

  He turned on the man who now admitted that his name was Symmachus.

  “You have your courage with you,” he remarked. The man smiled amiably.

  “Caesar said you are not a cruel man,” he replied. “He said, if you should slay me you would do it swiftly. And he paid me well. He gave my two sons money and as much land as two teams of oxen can plow. We had nothing. I am well content.”

  “Are you a fisherman?” Tros asked.

  The man nodded.

  “I lost my boat. My wife died of the hunger.”

  The man’s comically amiable face, framed in the dull-red whiskers, beamed with satisfaction. He had expected at least a scourging. His story was as frankly told as if he were relating something that was no concern of his at all.

  “Geraint brought Skell,” he said. “Geraint sold him to the Romans, but Skell slew Geraint when he saw he was betrayed. I saw that. The Romans took me for a witness. I saw Skell brought before Caesar. I was within six paces of him, squatting on the ground before the great tent. Caesar said to Skell, ‘I know you!’ But Skell said nothing.

  “For a long while Skell was silent, although Caesar asked him many questions. I saw Skell put his hand to his mouth, but the Roman officer who stood beside him saw that too, and smote him in the jaw and, seizing h
im, gagged him with a sword-hilt, breaking some teeth. He pulled out a piece of parchment from his mouth and offered it to Caesar, who smiled.

  “‘You are a spy,’ said Caesar. ‘You stand convicted. But Skell said nothing.

  “‘Torture him,’ said Caesar, ‘and when he is willing to tell his story, let me know. There is no need to preserve his usefulness,’ he added. ‘You may put him to extremity. When we have his story we are done with him.’

  “So they threw Skell to the ground not far from Caesar’s tent, and a black man came up who had a pot of charcoal. Hot irons were put to Skell’s feet until he yelled so that Caesar frowned and grew impatient, ordering that Skell be gagged, saying it was impossible to attend to important matters in the midst of so much noise. And after a long time an officer came to Caesar, who said that Skell would now speak.

  “So they carried Skell, he begging to be slain, and Caesar, observing him shrewdly, said he would confer that favor provided the truth were told, and all the truth, without prevarication. So Skell told about the eggs he was to send you in a basket to signify when and from which port the Spanish troops were sailing. And he told about this great ship, speaking very swiftly because he wished to die soon and be free from pain. But Caesar made him tell the story three times over. And the secretary wrote it.

  “Then Caesar, studying the tablet, made a gesture with his head and with his left thumb. So they dragged Skell away to the camp ditch at the place where the rubbish is burned, and presently they came back carrying his head.

  “There was much joking after that, and laughter, Caesar wondering whom he should send to you with that head in a basket in place of the eggs from a Spanish hen. And one said — he was a high officer. He wore a white cloak— ‘it will not do now to send the Spaniards.’ But it happened at that moment Caesar’s eyes observed me where I still squatted in the dust outside the tent.