Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Tros even left a pledge with the committee of nineteen to guarantee that he would not kill Balbus.”

  Balbus snorted.

  “A committee of nineteen? I never heard of them!”

  “You shall know them well,” said Caesar. “Continue, Verres.”

  “And while Tros and Balbus supped together they discussed—”

  “Stop!” commanded Balbus, almost choking. “Caesar, this is not your province! You have no authority to—”

  Caesar raised his right hand with a gesture so magnificent that Balbus checked a word midway and stared at him open-mouthed. Chloe was whispering again in Verres’ ear. Caesar nodded to Verres.

  “They discussed what Tros had previously said to me before the committee of nineteen — how that his father, dying, prophesied he should eventually render Caesar a great service.”

  Balbus breathed heavily and felt for something to lean against.

  His steward stepped up to the dais and, lifting his arm, placed it on his own shoulder.

  “My noble master has so burdened himself with public duties that he faints,” he said, beckoning to a slave to bring wine.

  “I suggest he has had wine enough,” said Caesar. “You may continue, Verres.”

  Chloe was watching Tros out of the corner of her eye. Her breast fluttered with excitement. Verres spoke:

  “While Balbus and Tros supped together, they discussed whether it were true that you invaded Britain for the sake of pearls.”

  “I invaded Britain,” said Caesar, smiling slightly with the corners of his eyes as he saw Tros glare at Chloe, “because the Britons intrigued with the Gauls against me, despite all warnings. But I confess the thought of pearls did interest me. I have in mind to make a breastplate of them for the statue of the Venus Genetrix in Rome, from whose immortal womb I trace descent,” he added pompously. It was his first hint of vulgarity, his first betrayal of a streak of weakness. “What else, Horatius Verres?”

  “Tros, who promised thirty pearls to Chloe to procure for him the interview with Balbus, discussed with Balbus at the supper table how he might offer three hundred pearls to yourself, Imperator, as an inducement to you to bury enmity!”

  The lie slid off his handsome lips as smoothly as the passing moment. Balbus, his steward urging with a whisper, leaped at opportunity at last.

  “I told him he should offer at least a thousand pearls,” he blustered, avoiding Tros’s eyes. “Caesar, the words had hardly left my lips when you burst in on us!”

  Horatius Verres, hand to his mouth, stepped back a pace.

  “I told you I serve Caesar!” he whispered to Tros.

  “Have you the pearls?” asked Caesar, and Tros saw light at last, knew he must make a sacrifice, but saw he held the situation in the hollow of his hand.

  “I have them on my ship,” he answered, standing forth and facing Caesar.

  But his eyes were busily numbering the men at Caesar’s back. Beyond the legionaries, in the gloom of the fountained courtyard, he could dimly make out Orwic and the Eskualdenak crowding the Romans.

  “I have here five men to your one, Caesar, and I care nothing for your friendship.”

  “Have I offered it?” asked Caesar, adjusting his wreath with one fore- finger. “Let us have no brawling, Tros. The place smells like a tavern” — he sniffed disgustedly— “but” — he bowed with mock politeness— “perhaps our host Balbus will excuse us if we act like sober men!”

  “Caesar, I could have slain you when you entered. I could slay you now,” Tros answered. “I would hold my own life cheap at the price of saving Gaul and Hispania, but the gods have laid no such task on me. Ten tyrants might replace you if I slew the one. I came here for my own sake. I will pay three hundred pearls for what I want. Agree with me or—”

  He raised the golden bugle to his lips. Orwic began shouting to him:

  “Tros! Tros! What is happening?”

  “Await my bugle blast,” Tros answered. “Caesar, is it yes or no?”

  The legionaries raised their shields an inch or two, but Caesar spread both arms out to restrain them.

  “Better to die a thousand times than to live in fear of death,” he said, “but I see, Tros, that you know that. Since neither you nor I fear death, we may stand on common ground. What is it you require of me?”

  “You named me pirate,” Tros growled at him.

  “I withdraw that gladly, though you sunk my ships. You have served Rome by saving Gades from the mob. I will write it,” said Caesar.

  “You owe my friend Simon of Gades three million sesterces,” said Tros.

  “If that were only all!” said Caesar, smiling with an air of mock humility. “Debts, Tros, seem as necessary to a statesman as is the appetite that makes us eat. Your friend Simon shall be paid.”

  “How? When?” Tros asked him.

  A flash of humor blazed in Caesar’s eyes. He looked at Balbus long and keenly.

  “Balbus — how? When?” he asked calmly.

  Balbus bit his lip.

  “Come now, Balbus. Tros saved your life, and it is easier for me to act against you than to threaten you. How shall Simon be paid? That legion that went to Porta Valleculae is on its way back, Balbus, shouting, ‘Caesar is imperator!’ — No, no, Tros, there is a truce between us. Stay! I merely wish that Balbus should choose his allegiance — of your free will, Balbus — of your free will! You are under no distraint. As you wisely remarked, I have no authority in Gades, even though the committee of nineteen has begged me, on my way between the harbor and your house, to add Hispania to my province and appoint my own officials. They amused me, but it might amuse me more to—”

  “Caesar, I beg you to permit me to assume the debt!” said Balbus. “I am afraid it will keep you poor and out of mischief for a long time,” Caesar remarked. “If I consent to allow to escape my mind irregularities that I have heard of, would it be agreeable to you to confer in future with that committee of nineteen with respect to all local issues?”

  Balbus nodded sulkily.

  “And to remember, Balbus, that they have my individual protection? If the world were my province — then would you wish to rebuild Gades?”

  “Caesar, I yield,” said Balbus. “When the day comes that you strike at Pompey, I am with you.”

  “Tut-tut!” remarked Caesar. “Who spoke of striking at Pompey? But I see Tros grows impatient. He is thinking of that legion on its way back from Porta Valleculae. Tros, you are a greater man than I believed you. A mere pirate would have plundered Gades with the opportunity you have had. Had you been a rash fool, you would have tried to kill me. You might even have succeeded and the world would have been the worse for it. So the world owes you a reward, Tros.”

  “Reward my men!” Tros answered. The Eskualdenak were growing noisier every minute and Orwic’s voice was hoarse from trying to restrain them.

  “Balbus shall pay them handsomely,” said Caesar. “They have saved his life. The world is richer for our noble Balbus, although he personally will be poorer for a long time! Yes, Tros, I will accept your gift of pearls for the breastplate of the Venus Genetrix, be it understood — a very amiable goddess, my immortal ancestress.”

  He strode forward to a couch and sat with grace and dignity, letting the scarlet cloak fall carefully to hide his knees.

  “You are in haste, I don’t doubt. Yes, of course, that legion is returning. Yes, yes. Balbus, may your secretary bring me ink and parchment? I carry my own pen. Tros, I believe you have my seal. Will you return it to me? Balbus, will you kindly see that Tros’s men are handsomely paid? They were my men until Tros ran off with them, hah-hah! Very clever of you, Tros, but beware next time we meet! There was three months’ pay at that time owing to each man. So I suggest it would be very handsome of you, Balbus, to give each man three months’ full pay of a Roman soldier. It might encourage them not to loot the house!

  “Then, will some one go for Simon and for the committee of nineteen? Balbus, I would like to int
roduce them to you and to recommend them personally to your generous consideration. By the way, Tros, where are those pearls?”

  “On the ship,” Tros answered.

  Chloe came and stood in front of him and smiled. She held her hand out. Tros counted thirty pearls into her palm, holding his sword under his armpit.

  “Caesar!” she said excitedly. “Imperator! Grant me permission to wear pearls!”

  Glancing up from the parchment he was writing, Caesar frowned. Horatius Verres put a word in:

  “Imperator, no permission will be needed. She will be a Roman’s wife!”

  “Very well. Why interrupt?” said Caesar, and went on writing. “Balbus,” he jerked over his shoulder, “are Tros’s men being paid?”

  “My treasurer is paying them.”

  “Has Simon been sent for? Very well. Be good enough to sign this undertaking to pay to Simon three million sesterces in equal payments of three hundred thousand sesterces every three months. You understand, of course, this payment is not taxable. He must receive the whole of it. Tros—”

  He stood up, holding out a parchment.

  “This confers on you authority to go anywhere you please, including Ostia and Rome. It specifically withdraws the charge of piracy against you and names you the friend of the Roman People. You will find the committee of nineteen on the porch. They will return your one-eyed hostage to you. If you should remove his other eye, he might see his way into trouble less easily.

  “However, that is for you to decide. You will meet your friend Simon on your way toward the city gate. Be good enough to take him with you to your ship and to give him those pearls, which he may bring to me and I will give him this liquidation of his debt in exchange for them. I understand you have a hostage on your ship, one Gaius Suetonius. Release him, please. Not that he has any virtue, but for the sake of his beautiful armor. Have you any other prisoners?”

  “Herod, the Jew,” Tros answered.

  “That scoundrel?” Caesar nodded. “Send him to me in charge of Gaius Suetonius! Be good enough to avoid collision with the little ship on which I came. It is anchored rather close to yours. You will go to Rome now?”

  “Aye!” Tros answered, accepting the parchment.

  “Hah! You will try to prevent me from invading Britain! You will find the Romans less reasonable than myself. When you have failed, come and make your peace with me. I will receive you! Thanks for the pearls for the—”

  “For the wives of the Roman senators!” said Tros and, bowing, first to Caesar, then to Balbus, marched out straight through the ranks of Caesar’s bodyguard. He was greeted by a roar from the Eskualdenak:

  “Wine! Women! Wine!”

  His answering roar, bull-bellowed, cowed them into silence.

  “To the ship! Behind me, march! Or I will give the lot of you to Caesar! Ho there, Conops! Run ahead of me and keep a bright lookout for Simon.”

  Then he strode under the gloomy cypresses to Balbus’ front gate and Orwic fell in step beside him full of eagerness to know exactly what had happened.

  “Happened?” he said. “I have promised druids’ pearls to Caesar’s light o’ loves, and I have served Caesar, though I had the best of him. Rot me all death-bed prophecies. They dull men’s wits!”

  “What next?” asked Orwic.

  “Oar and sail for Ostia, before Caesar has time to set a trap for us in Rome!”

  CHAPTER 82. Rome: 54 B.C.

  I have failed often at what I attempted, and at the time I have learned from failure nothing except not to flatter it by calling it the end. At its worst it is but a beginning of some new phase of destiny. But looking backward, as when remembering night at daybreak, I have learned what gives me courage to look forward. I perceive that failure more often than not is the fruit of a man’s forgetfulness of his own importance in the Eternal Plan.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  SUMMER twilight deepened and the bats began to flit among the tombs and trees that lined the Via Appia. Dim distant lights irregularly spaced, suggested villas, standing well back from the road amid orchards and shade-trees, but the stench of trash-heaps and decaying ordure overwhelmed the scent of flowers, and there was a dirge of stinging insects irritating to seafaring men. The slaves who bore Tros’s litter flapped themselves with olive twigs, muttering and grunting as they bent under their burden.

  Beside the litter, cursing unaccustomed sandal-straps that chafed his swollen feet, limped Conops, with the tassel of his knitted seaman’s cap dangling over the empty socket of his right eye. With his left hand he held the litter, and with the stick in his right hand he kept prodding the wretched contractor’s slave in front of him, throwing him out of step and then abusing him in half the languages of Asia Minor.

  On a horse behind the litter, looking like a centaur — for he rode magnificently — Orwic led twelve Britons, who marched leg-wearily with short spears over their shoulders; they wore a rather frightened look and crowded closely in the ranks. Behind them came a two-wheeled cart piled high with luggage held down by a net. Two Northmen were perched on top of the pile, and behind the cart trudged four-and-twenty other Northmen, battle-axes over shoulder, targets slung behind them. They swung from the loins like men well used to it, although there was a hint of a deep-sea roll, and more than a suggestion in the northern song they hummed of wind, waves and battle on a surf-enthundered beach.

  A beacon many miles away behind — where one stage-contractor was giving warning to the next one beyond the skyline, that a personage was coming southward and would need relays of horses — gleamed on the narrow road and made imagination leap the shadows in between; the Via Appia ran as straight as an arrow and twenty weary miles resembled one.

  In front, the lights of Rome blinked sparsely. There was a house on fire that threw a red glare on the belly of a cloud and showed in silhouette the roofs of temples and the outlines of two hills edged with buildings, like the teeth of a broken saw. There were temple lights, and over one or two streets where the night life swarmed there lay a stream of hazy yellow. Here and there a light showed through an upper window, and there was a suggestion rather than the sound of babbling tongues; Rome looked, in the near distance, like a crouching monster, and the ear deceived itself with what the eye conveyed.

  In the shadows of the tombs and cypresses that lined the road lurked men — and occasionally women — who peered at the litter and vanished at the sight of so many armed men. Runaway slaves, almost numberless, lived in the shadow of terror cast by stenching gibbets, on which scourged human bodies writhed or rotted near every cross-road; there had been a recent and, as usual, sporadic outburst of official morals, so the runaways were rather less bold and more hungry, lurking in the neighborhood of villas and the north- and south-bound traffic, but afraid to try conclusions with the passer-by.

  “Master,” said Conops at last, thrusting his ugly head in through the litter curtains, “take advice from me for once and let us find an inn. There are enough of us to throw out all the thieves who occupy the place—”

  “Aye, and to make a meal for nearly half the bedbugs!” Tros interrupted. “No more inns, little man! Rot me such dung-heaps! Am I a Carthaginian ambassador that Rome should not provide me with a decent place to sleep? I tell you, Conops, here, unless a man considers his own dignity, none thinks he has any.”

  “Would we were safely at sea again!” Conops grumbled, leaning his weight on the litter and kicking at one of the bearer-slaves, whose slouching irritated him.

  “We are near Zeuxis’ house. I see it yonder,” Tros said, leaning through the curtains. “Bid the bearers turn where that tree, like a broken ship’s mast, stands against the sky.”

  “Zeuxis sounds like a Greek in foreign parts,” said Conops gloomily. “Commend me rather to a crocodile! Not for nothing, master, was I born in Hellas. Keepers of Roman inns are like their bedbugs — one can crack them between thumb and finger. But a Greek — has this Zeuxis a master?”

  “He
is a distinguished Roman citizen,” Tros answered. “Furthermore, I have a hold on him.”

  “Poseidon pity us! A Greek turned Roman is a wolf with a woman’s wits! Better give me the pearls to keep!”

  “Keep your insolence in bounds, you ignorant salt-water fish! Go forward — lead the way up the path beyond that broken tree; try not to behave as if you were selling crabs out of a basket! Spruce yourself! Erect yourself! Up chin, you dismal looking dog! Put your knife out of sight! Shall Zeuxis’ servants think we are Cilician pirates? Swagger forward now, and ruffle on the manners of a nobleman’s retainer!”

  Conops did his best, shaking the dust from his kilted skirt and straightening his cap, but he limped painfully. Orwic, recognizing climax, ordered out a great ship’s lantern from the cart and sent one of the Britons running forward with it; he thrust the lantern into Conops’ hand and ran back to his place in the ranks as if ghosts were after him, whereat Orwic laughed.

  The lane by the broken tree was unpaved and dusty but there was a row of recently set cypresses on either hand; their height, a grown man’s, intimated that the owner of the villa at the lane’s end had not occupied it long, but he was advanced in his notions of living. There was gravel in the ruts, and there were no pigs sleeping in the shadows. The lowing of cows in the distance suggested affluence, and as the lane lengthened there began to be neat walls on either hand, built of the broken rubble of older walls well laid in pozzolana.

  The lane ended at a high gate swung on masonry posts surmounted by marble statuary, whose outline merged itself into the gloom of overhanging trees. A grille in the wooden gate was opened in answer to Conops’ demand to know what the owner of the house would say to keeping the most noble and famous Tros of Samothrace waiting in the dark. The slave behind the grille remarked that he would go and see. During the short pause, all of them, including Orwic’s horse, flapped savagely at swarms of gnats.

  Then the great gate swinging wide, revealed the porch of a Greco-Roman villa, newly built, its steps about two hundred paces from the garden entrance. Parchment-shaded lanterns cast a glow over the columned front, making the stucco look like weathered marble. There was a burst of music and an almost overwhelming scent of garden-flowers, as if the gate had dammed it and now let it pour into the lane. A dozen slaves came running, six on each side of the path, and behind them Zeuxis strode, combining haste with dignity, extending his arms in welcome as Tros rolled out of the litter and stood blinking at the lamplight.