Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Tros strode for him. Orwic imitated. Conops ran in front, pretending to drive dogs away and pointing to guide his feet from pools of filth.

  “Go. Go now with the gods in mind,” said Tros and turned to give orders to Sigurdsen, who was to command the longboat. “You, who were a king, so do, that if others had obeyed you formerly as you obey me now, you would be a king this day! Your weapons are for a last resort. Be silent, crafty, cunning, cautious—” he emphasized each word with his fist on the Northman’s breast— “run rather than resist. If questioned, make no answer. Put one man ashore to follow the Lord Orwic and Conops as far as the city gate. Let him bring word to you when they have passed in. Come back to the ship with the information, taking care to keep the oars well muffled.”

  Then one last word to Orwic.

  “Cover your long hair with your pallium. One gold-piece to the captain of the gate guard. One piece of silver to each of the others. No more, or you’ll merely whet their appetites. Lud’s luck!”

  The muffled oar-beats thumped away into the dark, and silence fell. The whole crew was aware of mysteries impending. Aloft, the Northmen and some of the Eskualdenak leaned out of the rigging, watching the longboat until its shape was lost in the gloom. There began then a murmur of talking between decks, where the weary rowers sprawled. Jaun Aksue trespassed on the poop without asking permission and leaned over the rail beside Tros confidently, as if they two were equals.

  “Secrecy!” he remarked grinning. “My men crave wine and shore leave. We have been eleven days at sea. The Gades girls are famous and the red wine is the best in all this land.”

  Tros suppressed his instinct to knock the man down. Friction might ruin the vague plan he had in mind.

  “If you’re caught in Gades, you’ll be crucified,” he answered.

  “Maybe. But you have friends ashore, or you wouldn’t be here,” said Aksue. “You can give us shore leave. You can say we’re your slaves. We’ll act the part, then nobody can interfere with us. We needn’t go into the city. There are taverns outside the wall and lots of women. Promise us a day ashore and some money to spend, and we’ll keep as quiet as mice ‘til morning. Otherwise, I won’t answer for what my men will do.”

  Tros found it easy enough now to tolerate the impudence. That those proud Eskualdenak were willing to act the part of slaves solved more than half of the problem that had racked his brain for days and nights on end. He nodded.

  “You shall go ashore.”

  “And money?”

  “I will arrange it. Go and warn your men that if there’s any noise tonight, no shore leave!”

  For an hour he paced the poop anxiously. There might be Roman guard-ships on the prowl, and he had given hostages to fortune. He could not desert Orwic and Conops.

  At the end of an hour he heard splashing, and thought it was dolphins or porpoises. Then, staring into the darkness, he was nearly sure he saw the outline of a boat.

  “Sigurdsen!” he shouted. No answer. It was much too soon to expect Sigurdsen in the longboat.

  But the splashing continued. Presently he saw two human heads within a few feet of the ship’s side. A voice that he thought was a woman’s cried out to him in Greek to throw a rope. He went himself and lowered the rope ladder, ordering the deck-watch to the other bulwark. A man and a woman climbed up like wet shadows and stood dripping in the dark in front of him. The woman wore nothing but a Greek chlamys, with the wreck of a wreath of flowers tangled in her wet hair; the man had on a Roman tunic, that clung and revealed a lithe, athletic figure. They were nearly of a size. In the dark they looked like children up to mischief.

  “Tros!” said the woman. Tros nearly jumped out of his skin. Had he been recognized before he even set foot in Gades? Gesturing with a jerk of the head and arm, he led the way toward the cabin, where he might learn the worst without the deckwatch hearing it.

  At the door he paused and let them pass in ahead of him. For a minute he stood, making sure that the deck-watch were not near enough for eavesdropping, wondering how many of them had seen the swimmers come aboard. When he entered the cabin the girl had already clothed herself in his own best purple cloak, that had been hanging on the rail between the bunk and the bulkhead.

  “Tros!” she said. “Tros of Samothrace!” She laughed at him, seeming no worse for her swim, although the man was squatting on the floor and looked exhausted. She curtsied with a rhythm of bare legs. There was no fear in her eyes, nor even challenge, but a confidence expressed in laughter and a gesture of disarming comradeship.

  “Lord Tros,” she began again.

  “I am not Tros,” he answered sullenly.

  Of all the difficulties in the world he dreaded most a complication with women.

  “Oh, yes, you are!” she answered. “Horatius Verres saw your ship at sunset notched against the sky. He recognized it instantly. He was in hiding on the roof of Pkauchios’ ergastulum. He is a runaway from Gaul. I am Chloe, the dancer, Pkauchios’ slave. I am the favorite of Gades,” she added, as if she were not particularly proud of it but simply stating fact.

  “What do you want?” Tros asked sullenly. That the girl’s ivory-white skin shone golden in the whale-oil lantern light, and that her face was like a cameo against the shadow, only deepened his mistrust. He retired two paces from her and stood with his back against the door.

  “Only what I can get!” she answered, and sat on Tros’s bunk, arranging his pillows behind her, covering her bare knees with his blanket. “I could tell Balbus, the governor, who you are, but I won’t if you will bargain fairly.”

  Tros glanced at the man on the floor, who was slapping his head to get the water from his ears.

  “As prisoners—” he suggested.

  Chloe interrupted, laughing.

  “I am a slave who owns slaves. My women know where I am. I have two men- slaves waiting on the beach.”

  “Who is this fellow?” Tros asked.

  “I told you. Horatius Verres. He had a little difficulty with the Romans and had to run away from Gaul. If what he said is true, he lost his heart to a girl whom Caesar coveted — some young matron, I suppose, or Caesar wouldn’t have looked twice at her. Some one, to earn Caesar’s favor, accused poor Horatius Verres of accepting bribes to give Caesar an excuse to send him to Rome in fetters and keep the woman for himself. She found out the plot in time and warned him. So he slew the informer and tried to escape to Britain in one of four biremes that Caesar was sending along with some Eskualdenak to invade that country.

  “Somebody,” she looked merrily at Tros— “attacked those biremes, destroyed three of them, and captured a lot of Eskualdenak. The fourth bireme escaped to Gaul with Horatius Verres still on board, but he swam away before they reached port and escaped a second time overland. He reached Gades in a dreadful state, but I could see he was a pretty boy under all the rags and whiskers, so I hid him and saved him from Balbus’ labor gang, because he had told me his real name and an interesting story. I hid him on the roof of my master’s ergastulum. Later, when he was rested, I sent him to Simon the Jew, thinking Simon might do something for him, because Simon owes me money and can’t pay.”

  “Can’t pay? You say Simon can’t pay what he owes you?”

  She nodded.

  “You know Simon? He has lent all his money to Caesar and Balbus.”

  “Go on,” said Tros, his fingers clutching at his sword-hilt.

  He could not have asked a greater favor from the gods than that Simon should be short of money at the moment; but he was afraid of this woman, and still more afraid lest she should realize it.

  “Simon was shocked and virtuous,” she continued. “He would have informed Balbus if I hadn’t reminded him of a few little things I know about himself. He agreed to say nothing, but he was afraid to do anything, so Horatius Verres had to return to his hiding place. I was asleep this afternoon when he sighted your ship from the roof of the ergastulum, but he called to me through the window of my cottage in Pkauchios’ gar
den and said he would be safe if he could reach your ship, so I came with him to help him pass the gate guards, and then came out here for the fun of it. I wanted to see Tros the Samothracian.”

  “And are you satisfied?” Tros asked her.

  He knew the reputation of the Gades dancing girls — intrigue, well- educated villainy, greed, ulterior motives. He was sure that this one would not have dared to visit him unless convinced of her own safety. Perhaps she knew Orwic and Conops were ashore, and was counting on them as hostages to prevent her from being carried off to sea before daylight.

  She looked at him long and steadily, then nodded with a little uplift of her Grecian nose and a droop of the eyelids that suggested confidence in her own skill to read character.

  “Why did you come to Gades?” she asked. “Balbus, the governor, knows you are a pirate. I have heard him talk of it.”

  “I came to see Simon,” Tros answered, and watched her to judge the effect.

  By her face, by her manner, by the sudden, puzzled frown with a hint of speculation underlying it, he judged that she did not know about his having sent two messengers ashore. And her next words confirmed the guess.

  “Simon has much less influence than my master Pkauchios, who is an astrologer whom all men fear. If you will hide Horatius Verres on your ship, I will speak for you to Pkauchios. He is almost the only man who dares to go to Balbus at any hour of the night. He would make Balbus afraid to interfere with you, by talking about the stars and portents and all that nonsense. Then, what do you want to do? You know—” she looked at him keenly and impudently— “you can buy me. I have much influence in Gades.”

  “How much are you worth?” Tros asked her.

  “My value in the market? Two hundred thousand sesterces! You don’t believe it? Pkauchios had to pay the tax on that amount. He entered me on the list at much less, but the Roman who had farmed the taxes from Balbus ordered me sold at auction, so Pkauchios had to admit the higher value and pay a tax on the sale in the bargain. But I did not mean you should buy me. I meant you can buy my influence.”

  But in a world full of uncertainties, if there was one thing sure, it was that buying dancing women’s influence was as unthrifty a proceeding as to throw the money overboard. The only end of it would be the bottom of the thrower’s purse. Tros stared at Horatius Verres.

  “How did you obtain her influence?” he asked. “Did you pay for it?”

  The man smiled and troubled himself to rise before he answered.

  “Money?” he asked with a shrug of his shoulders. He had all the gestures of a well-bred man, and he was handsome in a dark way, although his eyes were rather close together. “I made love to her.”

  “I won’t enslave you,” said Tros, “but I won’t trust you until I know you better.”

  Verres bowed acknowledgment.

  “I am grateful,” he said, smiling again with a peculiar boyish up-twist of the mouth.

  Tros was about to speak again, but the deck-watch shouted, and a man pounded the cabin door.

  “Sigurdsen comes!”

  Tros had to go on deck or else summon Sigurdsen into the cabin. He did not want the deck crew in his confidence. He signed to Chloe and Verres to hide themselves in the dark corner, where his clothes hung between bunk and bulkhead.

  CHAPTER 70. Gades by Night

  Mastery? Its secret? Hah! Self-mastery! But few believe it; it is so simple that few attempt it. Many who attempt it fail because it is so simple. He who has it blames not failure on the disobedience of others, though he punish and reward. Reward and punishment are for the ignorant, who think that God, or the gods, or unknown powers send disaster. Self-mastery lets in intelligence to disobey the promptings of disaster. He who is master of himself, he is also master of events. Disaster shall serve his purpose, and why not? Disaster has neither brains nor heart nor understanding.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  ORWIC jumped on to the seaweed-littered beach, slipped on a heap of the slimy stuff and sprawled among the scampering crabs, where Conops helped him to his feet.

  “A bad omen, Lord Orwic. A bad omen!”

  But the Britons were not addicted to the vice of reading omens in every accident.

  “Go back in the boat, if you’re afraid,” he answered. So Conops started to lead the way on the five-mile walk toward the city across a dark, ill- smelling wilderness of sand and scrub where anything might happen. And Sigurdsen sent Skram, the skald, to follow them.

  They found a road after a while, with a stinking ditch on either side of it, and before long saw the lights of the drinking booths, brothels and slaughter yards outside the wall, where there was neither day nor night but one long pandemonium of vice and lawlessness. And soon after that the first of the scavenger dogs, prowling in search of stray goats or forgotten offal, winded them and started a yelp that brought the pack.

  Thereafter, they had to fight their way with knife and stick, not daring to gather stones lest the ferocious brutes should snatch that opportunity to rush them as they stooped. But the noise called no attention from the slums, where a dog-fight in the dark was nothing new, and when Skram, judging he was close enough to the gates, lay down to watch, the dogs devoted all their efforts to attacking him, leaving Orwic and Conops free to approach the gate with a semblance of Roman dignity. There Conops took command.

  There was a foot-gate in the midst of one side of the double, iron- strapped wooden one that had been closed at sunset; and in the midst of the small gate was a grilled opening that the guard could look through, and above that a lantern on an iron bracket.

  Long before they came into the lantern light Conops began talking fussily in Greek.

  “This way, master! That way! Mind the muck here! Dionysus! But the wine those rascals sell has madness in it! Master, master, try to walk straight!” Any one who understood Greek could not help but know that a Roman gentleman was coming from an evening’s entertainment.

  “There, master, give me your purse and lean against that wall while I call the gate guard!”

  Conops set his ugly face against the grill and whistled.

  “Quick!” he commanded. “My master is drunk, and ill-tempered because he has been robbed.”

  “Who is he?” a voice asked through the grill.

  “None of your business! Be quick, unless the lot of you want to be whipped in the morning!”

  “Was he robbed of his purse?”

  “Zeus! No. What do you take me for? I keep his purse.”

  “Well, you know what it costs. One gold-piece from each of you to the man on duty, and then the officer — he makes his own terms.”

  “Fool!” Conops roared at him. “Open! If you knew who waits you’d tremble in your mongrel skin!”

  The guard vanished. A moment later Conops heard him reporting through the guard-house window to his officer, and he made haste to improve the passing moment.

  “Master, master!” he yelled. “Don’t beat me! I’m doing my best! Order those blackguards in the guard-house beaten for daring to keep you waiting. Ow! Ow! Master, that hurts!”

  The captain of the guard came — a Numidian, as coal-black as the shadows, rolling the whites of his eyes in an effort to see through the grill, his breath reeking of garlic.

  “Who?” he demanded.

  “You’ll pay smartly for it if I have to tell you!” Conops answered. “Hurry up now! Two gold-pieces for you to hold your tongue and shut your eyes. Some silver for your men. My master’s drunk. I pity you, if you keep him waiting!”

  A great key jangled on a ring. The lock squeaked. Conops threw his arm around Orwic, whose face was smothered in the fold of his pallium.

  “Act very drunk!” he whispered, and hustled him through the narrow opening.

  On the far side he pushed him into the darkest shadow, where dim rays from a lantern showed the broad blue border of a Roman tunic and the sandaled legs below it, but nothing else. There was a chink of money. The Numidian signed to half
-a-dozen men to retire into the guard-house.

  “Remind him when he’s sober that I let him in without a fuss,” he said, grinning. “Who is he?”

  Conops laid a hand on the black man’s shoulder and leaned toward him as if to whisper, then apparently thought better of it. “No,” he said, “mind your own business. That’s wisest. I’ll remind him you were civil.”

  “All right. Don’t forget now! I’ll remember you, you one-eyed Greek! If I see you and ask a favor some time—”

  But Conops was gone, his left arm around Orwic and his right hand closed on something that, it seemed, he valued — possibly the purse. The captain of the gate guard may have thought so.

  “Act drunk — drunk — drunker than that!” he whispered. “Strike a blow at me!”

  It was too early for the streets to be deserted and the danger was of meeting Romans or some citizen who might imagine he recognized the drunken man and speak to him for the fun of it. But the street was crooked and the upper stories of the houses leaned out overhead until they almost met, creating a tunnel of gloom into which the yellow light of doors and windows streamed at intervals. The moment they were out of sight of the guard-house Conops advised a change of tactics.

  “Now sober! Now walk swiftly, as if we had serious business. Stride, man! Stride out! Remember you’re a Roman!”

  But the spirit of adventure was in Orwic’s veins. It was the first time he had seen a foreign city. Men who stood in doorways, housefronts, litters of the wealthy merchants borne on the shoulders of slaves — all was new to him and stirred his curiosity. Above all, as they threaded through the maze of narrow streets, the glimpse through certain open doors attracted him. For Gades had not yet been zoned, as Rome was, more or less, and as Lunden did not need to be. There were cavernous, white-washed cellars visible from midstreet, in which women danced to the jingling strains of strings and castanets.

  Naked-bellied women ran from one door, seizing Orwic, trying to drag him in to drink and witness Gadean indecency. One pulled away the pallium that hid the lower portion of his face and Conops struck at her too late; she glimpsed the long, fair hair that fell to the Briton’s shoulders, screamed of it, tried to tug the pallium again. “Haie, girls! A barbarian! A rich barbarian! Let’s teach him.”