Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  The owner of the place came out, a bull-necked Syrian who tried to keep Conops at bay while the slave-women struggled to hustle their quarry down steps into the cellar whence the din of music and the reek of wine emerged. The scuffle drew attention from a guard of the municipium, street-corner lurking, watching for a chance to blackmail somebody. He came on the run and, wise in all the short cuts to extortion, picked on Conops as a slave worth money, worth redeeming from the lock-up.

  Too quick for him, Conops stepped into the light that streamed from the cellar doorway, showed him something in the palm of a secretive hand. Whatever it was, the Syrian saw it, too, and drove the women down the cellar steps. The guard of the municipium strolled away, the Syrian grew laughingly apologetic. Conops led up-street in haste and around three corners before he paused and let Orwic come abreast.

  “What did you show him?” Orwic asked.

  “Oh, only a bronze badge I stole from that fool Numidian at the gate.”

  They reached the wide street running crosswise of the city-wide, that was, for Gades, where there was no wheeled traffic because of the house-fronts that jutted out promiscuously and the arches and bottle-necked passages — passed a temple of Venus, rawly new, of imported Sicilian marble, where Orwic’s British eyes stared scandalized at the enormous figure of the naked goddess colored in flesh tints and bathed in the flickering light of torches, and turned due eastward, up an alley between high, blind walls where the air smelt stale and filthy and there was not room for two men to pass without squeezing.

  There, in the stinking dark, men slept who had to be stepped over carefully. Some swore when awakened and followed with drawn knives, so that Conops walked backward, his own long knife-blade tapping on the wall to give the night-pads warning he was armed.

  And there were high doors in the walls, set in dark and unexpected corners, where men lurked who stepped out suddenly and blocked the way, demanding an alms with no humility. Conops slipped under Orwic’s arm and trounced one of them with the handle of his knife, whereafter Orwic called for consultation.

  “Tros recommended caution,” he remarked. “We can not fight all the thieves in Gades. Yet if we fee one rascal he will call his gang to murder us for the purse. We should be better off in the cellar where the women were; they might have taken our money without killing us, or so it seems to me. Pick me up that rascal. Has he breath left? Can he speak? So. Offer him silver to lead us to the house of Simon and keep other rogues at bay.”

  So, for a while they went preceded by a man in rags who announced in low growls to fellow-prowlers of the Gades underworld that these were privileged night-passengers who had paid their footing, and none offered to molest them after that, except one leper, who demanded to be paid to keep his filthy sores at a distance. He was of the aristocracy of beggardom and bound by no guild restrictions.

  And so into the ghetto, where another sort of night-life teemed in crowded alleyways. Iron-barred windows and a reek of pickled fish; sharp voices raised in argument; song, pitched in minor melancholy with an undertone of triumph; secrecy suggested by the eye-holed shutters; ugliness; no open doors, yet doors that did open secretively as soon as they had passed, to afford a glimpse of the unwelcome strangers.

  At the end of a few turns the beggar-guide professed to have lost himself, demanded his money and decamped. Orwic remembered the plan Tros drew in sand on the cabin table, but could not see that it faintly resembled any of these winding alleys. Conops, sailor by profession, had the bearings in his head, but could make nothing of the maze confronting them.

  “Let us return to the temple of Venus and start again,” he suggested. “There used to be an alley that ran nearly straight from there to Simon’s house.”

  But Orwic plunged forward at random toward a corner where a dim lamp burned in an iron bracket. Conops warned him they were followed and struck the blade of his long knife against a door-post, but Orwic turned and stuck his foot into a door that had opened just sufficiently to give a view of him. Conops, who knew Gades ghetto’s reputation, tried to pull him back: “Caution!” he urged.

  But Orwic was already inside. There was a leather screen, and Conops could not see him. He had to follow, and the door slammed at his back. The screen masked the end of a short, narrow passage that turned into a room, where there were voices and a dim light. Conops used up a few seconds lunging in the darkness with his knife to find out who and where the man was who had slammed the door. Then he groped for the door, but failed to find the lock, his fingers running up and down smooth wood. He could hardly even find the crack between door and frame.

  “Oimoi! Olola! Tros was mad to send a Briton!”

  Some one chuckled in the darkness. He lunged with his knife at the sound, but hit nothing, then decided to try the passage and the voices and the light. But first he knocked the screen down, being a Greek strategist. A clear line of retreat, even toward a locked door, seemed better than nothing.

  He found Orwic in a room whose walls were higher than its length or breadth. Somewhere in the darkness overhead there was a gallery that creaked, suggesting people up there listening, but the one dim light was below the gallery, its flickering light thrown downward by a battered bronze reflector. There was a smell of oil, spice, leather and tallow, but nothing in the room except a leather-covered table and two stools. Orwic leaned against the table. An old Jew sat facing him on one of the stools, his knees under the table and his back against the wall. The Jew wore the robes of his race and a dirty cloth cap, beneath which the oily ringlets coiled on either side of bright black eyes. He was scratching his curled beard as he contemplated Orwic.

  “Simon!” said Orwic. “Simon! Simon!”

  The Jew glanced at Conops, who stood sidewise in the door, tapping his knife against the post and swaying himself to see into the shadows.

  “Is he drunk?” he asked, speaking Greek. “My name isn’t Simon.”

  “Simon, son of Tobias of Alexandria,” said Conops. “Where is his house? We seek him.”

  “Every one in Gades knows the house of Simon, son of Tobias of Alexandria,” the old Jew answered. “Why do you break into my house?”

  Conops showed him the bronze badge, stolen from the captain of the gate guard, but that had no effect whatever.

  “Such a thing will get you into trouble,” said the Jew. “You have no right to it. That belongs to a captain of the slaves of the municipium.”

  Conops began to be thoroughly frightened. The stealthy sounds in gallery and passage and the confident curiosity of the old Jew assured him he was in a tight place.

  “Master, let’s go!” he urged in Gaulish.

  But Orwic could see no danger, and the Jew smiled, his lower lip protruding as he laid a lean hand on the table.

  “A Gaul? Ah! And a Greek slave? Who is your master?” he asked Conops. “What does he want with Simon ben Tobias of Alexandria? What is a Gaul doing with a Greek slave? You must tell me. Come and stand here.”

  He pointed to the floor beside him. Conops obeyed, knife in hand, well satisfied to stand where he could hold the old Jew at his mercy at the first suggestion of attack.

  “Put your knife away. Slaves are not allowed to carry weapons,” said the Jew, and again Conops obeyed. He could redraw the knife in a second. “Who is your master? Why did you come to my house?”

  Orwic seemed perfectly undisturbed, although he kept on sniffing at the strange smells.

  “Tell him to show us the way to Simon’s house,” he said patiently.

  “You would never be admitted into Simon’s house at this hour,” said the Jew. “There are always his slaves in the street, and they protect his house unless they know you. Do they know you?”

  “Tell him,” said Orwic, “that we have a letter for Simon.”

  But the Jew seemed to understand the Gaulish perfectly. “Show me!” he remarked, and held his hand out.

  “Don’t you, master! Don’t you!” Conops urged, but Orwic did not understand the Greek. He had
supposed the Jew demanded money to show the way.

  The Jew’s eyes gleamed in the direction of the door. Conops turned instantly. There were three Jews in the passage — confident, young, strong, armed with heavy leather porter’s straps, which was a weapon quite as deadly as a knife. They leaned with their backs against the passage wall and gazed through into the room with insolent amusement.

  “Simon is my friend,” said the Jew. “If it is true you have a letter, I will take it to him. You wait here. But I don’t believe you have a letter. You are robbers. Who should send strangers with a letter to Simon at this hour of night?”

  Conops explained that to Orwic.

  “Tell him he may come with us and satisfy himself,” said Orwic, beginning to be piqued at last.

  “Which of you has the letter?” the old Jew demanded, and the three young Jews in the passage-way advanced into the room, as if they had been signaled.

  “I can kill all three of those!” said Conops grimly.

  His hand went like lightning to his knife-hilt, but a woman screamed in the gallery and smashed something. Conops and Orwic glanced up, and in the same second each found himself caught in a rawhide noose, arms pinioned.

  They fought like roped catamounts with teeth and feet, but the three young Jews were joined by others, who helped to kneel on them and tie them until they could not move, the old Jew sitting all the while, his back against the wall, as if the whole proceeding were quite usual and did not interest him much.

  He said something in a sharp voice, and the men began to search their prisoners.

  One of them tossed the purse on to the table. Orwic’s short Roman sword followed, then Conops’ knife and the bronze badge taken from the gate guard. At last the letter was discovered, tucked under the belt of Orwic’s tunic. The old Jew read it, knitting his brows, sitting sidewise so as to hold it toward the light, his lean lips moving as he spelled the words.

  “Eh? Tros of Samothrace! Eh?”

  He rolled up the letter and thrust it in the bosom of his robe, then spoke rapidly in Aramaic to the Jews who were squatting beside their prisoners. Presently he opened the purse on the table, counted the money, threw it down, called to the woman, who tossed down a cloak from the gallery, and left the house, shuffling along the passage-way in slippers.

  CHAPTER 71. Chloe— “Qui saltavit placuit”

  For my own sake I give my slaves freedom. Obedience from a free man is not an insult to my manhood. If I punish free men for disobedience and evil manners I offend not my own soul. As for other men’s slaves, I judge their owners by the slaves’ behavior.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  TROS and Sigurdsen stood over by the water clocks, the full width of the ship from where Chloe and Horatius Verres sat in hiding. But Sigurdsen’s voice was a sailor’s and, the Gaulish being foreign to him, he spoke it with peculiar emphasis.

  “Skram was badly bitten by the dogs,” said Sigurdsen. “He saw both men enter the city, and he is afraid now he will go mad from dog-bite. The other men think Skram will bite them. They talk of killing him for a precaution.”

  Tros groped in a corner.

  “Take this,” he commanded. “Tell Skram and all those other fools that the druids gave it to me. It’ll sting, mind. You’ll have to hold him while you rub it on. Tell Skram that if he drinks nothing but water, and eats no meat for three days, he’ll recover and the dogs’ll die. Tell him I said that. Then put Skram to bed, choose another in his place, and row back to the shore and wait for Orwic, Conops and the man they’ll bring with them.”

  Sigurdsen departed and presently Skram’s yells announced the application of the pine-oil dressing to sundry tender parts of his anatomy. Being a skald, he had a strong voice trained to out-yell storms and drunken roistering.

  Chloe came out of the dark into the whale-oil lantern light.

  “You have sent men ashore?” she asked. “To get in touch with Simon? At this hour of the night? They’ll fail! They’ll be caught by Balbus’ city guards, or be killed by the Jews.” She thought a minute. “Better have sent me! Were they slaves?”

  “They are friends,” Tros answered. “Where did you learn Gaulish?”

  She laughed.

  “Pkauchios sent me to Gaul one time to dance for Caesar.”

  “Why did Pkauchios send you to Caesar?”

  “Pkauchios’ business is to know men’s secrets. But I failed that time. Caesar is no fool.”

  She sat on the bunk again, covering her bare knees with a blanket, and for an hour Tros talked to her, he pacing up and down the cabin floor and she regaling him with all politics of Gades.

  “Balbus bleeds the place,” she told him. “Balbus pretends to be Caesar’s friend, but he is the nominee of Pompey the Great, who has all Hispania for his province but stays in Rome and has men like Balbus send him all the money they can squeeze out of their governorships, not that a good percentage doesn’t stick to Balbus’ fingers. Balbus intends to rebuild the city. If those men you sent ashore get caught by the city guard, they’ll find themselves in the quarries sometime tomorrow. Balbus has forbidden the export of male slaves, because he wants to glut the market, so as to buy them cheap for his labor gangs. He sentences all able-bodied vagrants to the quarries. He will crucify you, though, if he catches you, unless—”

  “Are there any Roman warships in the harbor?” Tros asked her.

  “Only one guard-ship, a trireme, but it’s hauled out for repairs. The spring fleet hasn’t come yet, and the fleet that wintered here has gone to Gaul with supplies and recruits for Caesar’s army.”

  “When is the spring fleet expected?”

  “Any day. It’s overdue. The spring fleet comes with the merchantships to protect them from the pirates. They say the pirates are getting just as bad as they were before Pompey the Great made war on them; and they say, too, that Pompey is too lazy to go after them again, or else afraid that Caesar’s friends might take advantage of his absence. You know, Pompey and Caesar pretend to be great friends, but they’re really deadly enemies, and now that Crassus, the richest man in the world, has gone to Syria, people are saying it’s only a matter of time before Caesar and Pompey are at each other’s throats. Until now they’ve both been afraid of Crassus’ money bags, which seems silly to me. The winner could kill Crassus—”

  “And which side does Balbus take?”

  The girl laughed.

  “Balbus takes his own side, just like all the rest of us. Balbus aedificabit. He hopes to win fame by making Gades a great city. If Caesar should win in the struggle that everybody knows is coming, well — Balbus is Caesar’s friend. If Pompey wins, Balbus is Pompey’s nominee and very faithful to him.”

  “What about you?” Tros asked her.

  “What do I matter? I am a dancing girl, a slave — the property of Pkauchios the Egyptian.”

  “Which way lie your sympathies?” Tros insisted.

  “With me, of course, with Chloe. But Balbus loves me, if that is what you mean. He would buy me, if I weren’t so terribly expensive. And he would find some way of freeing me from Pkauchios, if Pkauchios weren’t so useful to him.”

  “How?”

  “Pkauchios reads the stars, and prophesies. Quite a lot of what he says comes true.”

  “Sorcery, eh?”

  “Call it that if you like. Pkauchios owns other dancing girls besides me. We are all of us rather well trained at picking up information.”

  “You say you know Caesar. You like him?”

  “Who could help it? He’s handsome, intelligent — oh, how I hate fools! — he has manners, fascination, courtesy. He can be cruel, he can be magnanimous, he thrills you with his presence, he’s extravagant — as reckless as a god with his rewards. Oh, he’s wonderful! There isn’t any meanness in him, and when he looks at you, you simply feel his power. You can’t help answering his questions. And then he just looks away — like this.”

  Chloe broke into a song that had become current whereve
r women followed in the wake of Roman arms:

  If my love loves not me,

  May a bear from the mountains hug him.

  “So now you love Balbus instead?” Tros suggested.

  “Bah! Thirty thousand Balbuses are not worth half of Caesar! I said, Balbus loves me. But he is too mean to buy me. What are two hundred thousand sesterces to a man who can tax all Gades and sell judgments and confiscate traitors’ property? I myself own more than two hundred thousand sesterces.”

  “Then why don’t you buy your own freedom?”

  “Two good reasons. One is, that I placed my peculium in Simon, the Jew’s hands, out of the reach of Pkauchios. And Simon can’t repay me at the moment, though he’s honest in money matters like most of the rich Jews. The other is, that if I buy my freedom, I should still be Pkauchios’ client. I couldn’t leave Gades without his permission.”

  “And — ?”

  Tros felt himself on the scent of something. He experienced that strange thrill, unexplainable, that precedes a discovery. He shot questions at random.

  “Why didn’t you deposit your money with the temple priests, as most slaves do?”

  “Because the priests hate Pkauchios. They would rob me to spite him. Simon is more honest.”

  Possibly she felt in Tros something like that same compelling force that she said had made her answer Caesar’s questions. After a moment’s pause she answered:

  “I didn’t want my freedom until—” she glanced at the dark corner where Horatius Verres sat in silence— “you see, I have more liberty without it. As a slave, there are few things I can’t do in Gades.”

  “But — ?” Tros insisted.

  She shuddered.

  “Roman law! If my master should be charged with treason they would have to take my evidence under torture. No escape from that. A slave’s evidence against her master mayn’t be taken any other way. Some of them die under torture. None of them are much good afterwards. They’re always lame, and the fire leaves scars.”