by Talbot Mundy
The official, shrugging his shoulders, smirking, went away to bear that message and Tros sat down on a bench to wait. The slaves seemed amused that he should give himself such airs, yet have no personal attendants of his own; they whispered jibes about him in a language they thought he did not understand; but their snickering among themselves did not prevent Tros from hearing fragments of another conversation.
Close to the bench on which he sat were curtains concealing a doorway into another small room. He heard Chloe’s voice distinctly: “Pkauchios! It is a long time since you have dared to whip me! Come to your senses! I am Chloe, not one of the slaves who knows nothing about you!”
Pkauchios’ answer was indistinct, a mere murmur of anger forced through set teeth. Then Chloe again:
“Pkauchios!”
The Egyptian spoke louder with bitter emphasis:
“I have endured your impudence too long! One disobedience tonight or one mistake, and I will have all your peculium confiscated! I know where you put it out of my reach! I will demand it of Simon, who can’t pay! Simon is one of many who will feel the weight of my hand when tomorrow’s sun dawns! So remember, it is your own fault you have had no sleep. Dance and sing so well that Balbus is beside himself, or take the consequences and be whipped, reduced to beggary and sold tomorrow morning!”
The curtains parted and Pkauchios came through, frowning, stately, black- robed, with the asp of Egypt on his brow. He checked an expression of surprise at sight of Tros, but Tros managed to convince him he had heard nothing, by avoiding the obvious mistake of trying to convince him. He merely appeared glad to see him, showed him ostentatious deference for the benefit of the watchful slaves, and in a low voice spoke of the main issue:
“My men came ashore with your man, though the barge was hardly big enough to hold them. They are warned to keep silence in the quarry and to expect a midnight signal. Are your Gades rioters ready?”
Pkauchios nodded.
“They gather. Balbus’ guard has been well bribed and will not interfere when a crowd surrounds the wall. When your men lead, mine will follow. Near midnight a small town twenty miles away will be set on fire and the legionaries will be summoned to keep order and to help put out the flames.”
“In what mood is Balbus?” Tros asked him.
“He glooms. He has tortured witnesses all day and to no purpose. He even tried to read an augury in the entrails of a woman who was gored by a bull in the street as he came homeward. I have assured him you bring fortune.”
“Go to him again then. Tell him I must be allowed to wear my sword and cloak.”
“He will never permit it,” said Pkauchios, shaking his head.
“Then I go away now!” Tros answered and began to stride toward the door.
His cloak was quite as necessary as the sword because it concealed the golden bugle.
Pkauchios detained him, clutching his arm violently; nervousness robbed him that second of all his hierophantic calm.
“I will try. But ask not too much, or you spoil all.”
However, Tros knew how to deal with Romans, also with Egyptian sorcerers:
“All or nothing! Cloak and sword, or he may sup without me, and you may manage your own murders!” he added in a deep-growled undertone. Then, “Warn him he must make concessions if he hopes for help from me.”
The Egyptian’s face looked livid with resentment, but he vanished through the curtains and presently returned with Balbus’ head steward, a freed man, ruddy from high living and exuding tact as well as dignity. He bowed, offering a wreath of bay leaves.
“Illustrious guest of my noble master,” he said, “you are asked to pardon the indiscretion of the officious fool who first received you. He shall be soundly whipped. The noble Balbus naturally makes allowances for the customs of his guests and feels outraged that indignity was offered you. That handsome cloak and sword will ornament the simple style we keep, as truly as your presence will confer an honor. Pray permit me.”
He adjusted the chaplet of bay leaves and, again bowing, led the way across a fountained courtyard into Balbus’ presence, in a room whose walls were painted with pictures of Roman legendary but done in the Egyptian style by an artist who was evidently trained in Greece. There were six other Romans in the room, two of them military tribunes in crimson tunics. All rose to their feet as Tros entered; all eyed him curiously, each in turn acknowledging his stately bow but not one of them taking the trouble to return Pkauchios’ ravenly solemn greeting. Pkauchios stood back against the wall, and Balbus in a rather tired voice broke the awkward silence:
“Welcome! Be whatever gods you worship kind to us all!”
He presented Tros to all the other guests, explaining nothing, merely saying he was Tros of Samothrace whose ship lay in the harbor. They asked Tros whether he had had a pleasant voyage, and one or two of them marveled loudly at his good health.
“Most sailors come ashore so sick they can hardly walk,” said a tribune, admiring Tros’s bulk and stature.
“Aye,” said another, “and they all get drunk in Gades, where the fever enters as the fumes of wine depart. When Balbus rebuilds the city he will have enough sailors’ bones to mix all the mortar, if he pleases!”
Ushering six slaves in front of him, the steward brought in sharply flavored wine, and Tros noticed that Balbus hardly took time to spill the usual libation to the gods before he drank deep and let the slave refill his goblet. He had drunk three times and appeared to feel the effect of it, for his eye was brighter, when he gestured very condescendingly to Tros to walk beside him and led the way across the fountained court toward the dining hall.
“You shall sit at my right hand,” he said, as if offering the greatest favor in his gift.
The room in which the supper had been prepared was too large for the house, too grandiose, a foretaste, possibly, of Balbus’ plans for a new city. It was overloaded with extravagant decoration. Two rows of columns divided the room into three equal sections, in the middle one of which was the supper table with the couches set, ends toward it.
At the host’s end of the table was a dais hung with curtains, furnished with two gilded couches almost like long thrones. The dais was approached by three steps, and behind it were three more steps leading to a platform beneath a gallery. They had entered by a side-door, facing the kitchen and scullery; the main door of the room opened on that platform under the gallery at the rear of the dais.
Facing the dais, twenty feet beyond the table’s lower end, was a wooden stage for the entertainers, with a flight of steps leading to the tiled floor of the room and smaller, narrower stages on either side for the musicians, who greeted the guests with a noisy burst of string-music — a jarring twangle of very skillfully manipulated chords.
“I dread drafts,” said Balbus, explaining the crimson and blue curtains that hung from the canopy above the dais. “These stone buildings are cold when the night wind comes in from the sea. It is an ill wind, that sea wind. It moans. It makes me shudder.”
He tossed off a great goblet-full of red wine that the steward handed him, then reclined on the couch and signed to Tros to take the other one. The remaining guests were ushered to the places on either side of the table by obsequious attendants, and Pkauchios strode gloomily to what was evidently his usual place at the table’s lower end, with his back to the stage. A procession of slaves brought jars of wine, offering each guest his choice of half-a-dozen vintages, and the guests began drinking at once, ignoring Pkauchios, pledging Balbus and one another amid jokes and laughter.
Balbus acknowledged the toast with a nod, but was silent for a long time, now and then glancing at Tros while he toyed with the food, all sorts of food, fish, eggs, whale-meat, peacock, sow’s udders, venison, birds of a dozen varieties. Tros ate sparingly and drank less, but Balbus ate hardly at all, though he drank continually. There was almost no conversation up there on the dais until entertainment commenced on the stage and most of the guests readjusted their positions so a
s to watch more comfortably a performer on a slack-wire, who went through diabolical contortions with a naked knife in either hand.
The contortions seemed to suggest unpleasant memories to Balbus. He drank deep and leaned toward Tros.
“Now,” he said, “we can talk.”
Tros glanced at the curtains behind the dais, and hinted to Balbus that he was ready to talk secrets. Balbus jerked the curtains apart, revealing the great carved cypress door at the rear of the platform behind them. The door was slightly ajar, but it was fifteen feet or more away from the dais, and there was nobody there except one of Pkauchios’ slaves squatting beside a basket.
“What do you do there?” Balbus asked him. “I wait to summon the midnight dancers.”
“Wait outside!” commanded Balbus, and closed the curtains on their noisy rings and rod with an impatient jerk. The wire-walker had vanished from the stage. There were nine girls dancing bawdily to dreamy music in a greenish light amid incense smoke, and the guests were giving full attention to the stage.
“I understand you wish for influence in Rome,” said Balbus. “Caesar has denounced you as a pirate. There is a way open to you to become the friend of all Caesar’s enemies.”
“Are you his enemy?” Tros asked, and Balbus pouted, frowning.
“No. But the great Pompeius is my patron. A man in my position falls between two stools if he tries to serve two masters. If Caesar should trespass into Hispania, which is Pompeius’ and not Caesar’s province, he would do so at his own risk. My information is that he will be here within a few days.”
Tros pretended to think awhile and to drink cup for cup with Balbus, but at the foot of his couch near the corner of the curtains there was a very large Greek vase containing flowers, into which it was not particularly difficult to empty a wine-goblet unobserved.
“If Caesar died,” Tros said at last, “Pompeius would be practically owner of the world. He would reward you.”
Balbus nodded and drank deep again.
“Nothing for nothing!” Tros said abruptly. “I have brought with me the documents of which we spoke.”
He drew the parchments from the pocket in his cloak.
“Presently, not now,” said Balbus, showing irritation. “We will discuss those later. Watch this.”
“There is nothing to discuss,” Tros answered. “You have said you will sign these. Thereafter—”
But Chloe was on the stage, dancing and singing, and now Balbus had eyes and ears for nothing except her.
“Wonderful!” he muttered. “Wonderful!”
It was her wistfulness that pleased. Beneath the laughter and the daring was a hint of tragedy. She was arrayed in white, a wreath of roses in her hair — a picture of youth, innocence, mirth, modesty. But with an art beyond all fathoming she made it evident that modesty and innocence did not protect her. Not a gesture of in decency, no hint of the vulgarity the other dancers had displayed, marred rhythm, voice or harmony of sound and motion. Saltavit placuit.
But she pleased by being at the mercy of the men who watched, not posing as a victim that had been debauched, which is a blown rose, but as a bud just opening, aware of life, out-breathing from herself the fragrance of its essence, yet not hoping to be spared the pain of being plucked and trampled underfoot.
The words of the song she sang were Latin, but the mood was Greek, the tune a mere street melody imported by the legionaries from the wine-shops in the slums of Rome, cynically mocking its own plaintiveness.
Lover, trust the night; day’s beams shall burn again.
Dreams, trust the dawn; night’s shadow shall return.
Blossom blow! Wind shall bring the warm rain.
Fruit fall! Sleep! Again a summer sun shall burn.
Vineyard, thy plunder sparkles in the red wine!
Wind among the sedges, ripples on the shore,
Laugh to me of glory in the passing. Oh my lover,
Is it only love whose ashes live no more?
There were tears in Balbus’ eyes. He had reached an almost maudlin stage of drunkenness. When Chloe’s dance was done and the noisy guests pledged her in refilled goblets of Falernian, he leaned over toward Tros again and murmured:
“I will buy that girl, though she cost me a senator’s ransom! That dog of an Egyptian sorcerer shall find himself surprised for once! He may be able to read the skies, but in Gades I am Governor!”
Tros laughed, his mind on opportunity.
“For luck’s sake, noble Balbus, sign these first and pledge me to your service!”
He thrust the parchments forward.
“What were they, I forget,” said Balbus, passing a hand before his tired eyes. “O yes, Simon and a manumitted slave. Yes, I will presently be drunk. Yes, I will sign them.”
He called for his secretary, who came with pen and ink-pot, kneeling on the dais beside Balbus’ couch. The secretary read the documents.
“Are they correct?” asked Balbus.
“Simon’s account is correct, and he has charged no interest, although he grants six months’ time, but—”
“He may be dead in six months or an outlaw!” Balbus commented. The secretary smiled.
“ — but the name of the slave to be manumitted is not written. The master’s is—”
Balbus pushed him away; he nearly fell over backward. Chloe was coming down the steps from the stage amid shouts of greeting from the guests. “Dance, Chloe! Dance down here among us!”
Balbus beckoned to her.
“Bring my seal!” he snapped at the secretary. “Get me this business over with!”
Chloe came up to the dais and Balbus seized her around the waist, dragging her down beside him on the couch. To Tros it seemed her wistfulness was due to weariness as much as anything, but Balbus was too far gone in drink to make discrimination of that sort.
“Chloe!” he murmured sentimentally. “Chloe! Divine Chloe! What shall I do for you? That old Egyptian holds you at a price that—”
He kissed her and she let him cling to her lips, hugging her. The secretary came and pinched her leg. She glanced at him.
“Noble Balbus,” she said, “documents to sign! Oh, who would be a Governor of Gades! La-la!”
She broke away and knelt beside the secretary, exchanging one swift glance with Tros as she rubbed at her mouth with the back of her hand. Balbus had crushed her lips against her teeth.
“Swiftly now and be gone with you!” said Balbus, and the secretary put the seal on all three documents, thereafter holding them for Balbus to attach his signature. Having signed, Balbus snatched them and gave them to Tros. Chloe laughed excitedly, in a way that made Balbus stare.
“Your pen,” said Tros and the secretary brought it to him. Tros wrote the name of Chloe in the space provided and the secretary, leaning, watching him, laughed aloud, throwing up his hand in a salute to Chloe. Her eyes blazed answer, and it was that that made Balbus turn and stare at Tros.
“What is that? What have you written?” he demanded.
“I will read,” Tros answered, and stood up.
There was dancing on the stage that had been set with branches to suggest a forest, through which satyrs pursued wood nymphs; but it was dull stuff after Chloe’s entertainment. All eyes turned to Tros, and the musicians dimmed the clamor of their instruments.
“An order for the manumission of a slave,” Tros read, his great voice booming through the hall. “In the name of the Senate and the Roman People, I, Lucius Cornelius Balbus Minor, Governor of Gades, in conformance with the law and with the powers vested in me, hereby manumit one Chloe, formerly a slave of Pkauchios the Egyptian, and do accord to her the status of freed woman with all rights and immunities thereunto pertaining, she having paid in full her value of two hundred thousand sesterces to Pkauchios and thereto in addition, into the public treasury, the manumission tax of ten percent.”
Pkauchios sprang to his feet, indignant, staggered, his jaws working as he chewed on solid anger.
“But she
hasn’t paid it!” he exclaimed, his voice broken with excitement.
Tros gave a parchment to the secretary. “Take it to him!”
The secretary, smiling with stored-up malice, descended to the floor and gave Pkauchios one of Simon’s six months’ bills on the treasury. He appeared to believe that Balbus had contrived the entire high-handed business, so proceeded at once to lend a hand in it.
“Noble Balbus!” he cried from the end of the table where Pkauchios stood staring at the parchment. “This order is for two hundred and twenty thousand sesterces, whereas the price was but two hundred thousand. The tax has been included in the payment made to Pkauchios.”
The Egyptian lost his self-control. He shook the parchment in the faces of the grinning guests.
“This!” he exclaimed. “This is no payment! This is a mere promise—”
There was too much fume of wine in Balbus’ head for him to let that speech pass. Tros had watched him hesitating angrily between repudiation of the documents on the score of trickery and the alternative of making a hard bargain in exchange. Now he turned the full force of his insulted dignity on Pkauchios:
“You speak of my promise as — what?” he demanded, rising from the couch. His legs were steady, but Tros stepped close to him and offered his arm, which he leaned on with relief. “Do you question my signature? Do you dare to insult me in the presence of my guests?”
“But this is an unheard-of thing,” Pkauchios stammered, struggling to speak calmly.
“You question my authority?” demanded Balbus.
The Egyptian regained his self-control with a prodigious effort, drawing himself to his full height, breathing deeply, then folded the parchment and stuffed it into a pocket at his breast. His mouth was bitter, his eyes malignant.
“I was taken by surprise. I regret my improper exclamation. I accept the order,” he remarked and sat down, rising again promptly because Balbus was still on his feet.
Tros’s lips were close to Balbus’ ear.
“You will never have to pay that bill,” he whispered.
“He will sell it on the market,” Balbus answered irritably.
