Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “You and your gods! I would give ten gods for your little finger! So would Caesar!” She nodded, and went to do his bidding, careful not to stay too long near the dungeon gate because of loiterers — and because there was a bad stench coming through the entrance tunnel.

  “You will kill Zeuxis?” Nepos asked, taking Tros’s arm as he returned into the dungeon. “Better let me have him crucified. I can contrive that easily.”

  “Friend Nepos, will you do me this last favor, that you let me attend to Zeuxis?”

  It was pitch dark when the party filed out of the dungeon with the wounded Northmen leaning between comrades and one carried on a stretcher in the midst. The streets were nearly empty. Whoever was abroad at that hour took care to avoid so large a company of stalwarts, who were very likely gladiators carrying a drunken master home. The slaves at the city gate were playing dice beside a torch and hardly looked up. Nearly all the porters near the bridge-foot were asleep. The long, shadowy fish-wharf, built of wooden piles, appeared deserted as Tros led the way down creaking wooden steps. He saw the men whom Conops had brought, all sitting glooming by a bonfire built of broken crates below a low shed, with their oars like a gridiron’s shadow leaning up against the shed wall. And he saw the boats, their noses to the bank within a stone’s throw of the men. For one long, hopeful minute he believed he had escaped Helene.

  But she stepped out of a shadow suddenly and took his hand. “Tros, here is Zeuxis! He supposes he is to meet a man who is willing to murder you for half your pearls!”

  She pointed into shadow. Tros sprang. He dragged out Zeuxis, squealing, shook him like a rat until his breath was gone, then gave him to two Northmen to be gagged and bound. The men by the bonfire recognized Tros then and ran to greet him; he had hard work to prevent them from making an uproar.

  “Man the boats! Silence!” They threw the Greek into the first boat as it nosed the wharf. When that was done, and all his men were loaded in the three boats, he turned on Helene suddenly.

  “Are you alone? Are you safe?”

  “I have servants yonder. Are you coming? What will they do with Zeuxis? Drown him? Sell him into slavery?”

  “He comes with me to Britain,” Tros said grimly. “I am taking him to save you from his tongue. If his affairs don’t prosper in his absence, perhaps Caesar may recompense him! Farewell, Helene! You may look for manumission and the pearls when I have said my say in Caesar’s ear!”

  He jumped into the foremost boat, but she seized the painter and tossed it cleverly around a bollard. He could have cut it with his sword but hesitated, wondering what treachery she might do yet if he should leave her feeling scorned. She solved that problem for him.

  “Tros,” she said, “they have ordered out the triremes!”

  “How do you know?” he demanded. Whereat she laughed a little.

  “Tros, you are lost unless you come with me to Gaul!”

  “So it was you who suggested triremes, was it? You who told Pompey to capture my ship? Well, we shall see!”

  He cut the painter with his sword and left her standing there. He could see her figure, like a shadow, waving, until the boats swept out of sight around a bend, and the last he heard of her was his own name rolling musically down the river.

  “Tros! Tros! Turn while it is not too late! Tros!”

  Danger was as nothing to the thought of an entanglement with her! Lions had not scared him half as much! Escape from the arena had not brought as much relief as leaving her behind! All the way down-Tiber, as he urged his men and beat time for the oars, he exulted at having saved her from betrayal by the Greek, but more at having saved himself out of her clutches. But he still had to save his ship. He still had to save Caswallon and his Britons. Row! Row!

  They passed by Ostia at midnight, seeing nothing but the watchmen’s lanterns and the low line of the receding hills on either hand, with here and there a group of shadowy masts inshore. As dawn approached they rested on their oars and let the longshore current bear them northward as they keep all eyes strained for the three great purple sails. Orwic was the first to see them, yelling and waving his arms in the boat ahead. Tros was the first to see two other sails, a mile apart and a mile to seaward of his own ship, that appeared as dawn sent shimmering light along the dancing sea.

  Sigurdsen was standing in to search the harbor mouth. The triremes had put out to sea in darkness and hard worked to windward of him. They were closing in now under oar and sail to force him into Ostia or crush him on their boiling bronze beaks.

  “Row! Row!”

  By the time Tros stepped on to his own poop there was not a quarter of a mile between the three ships. The triremes’ oars were beating up the sea into a white confusion. They were coming along two legs of a triangle before a brisk breeze.

  “Out oars! Drums and cymbals!”

  Tros took the helm from Sigurdsen and put the ship about.

  “Let go halyards! Downhaul!”

  The three great purple sails came down on deck. The trireme captains mistook that for a signal of surrender. They slightly changed course so as to range alongside, one on either hand. Tros set the drums and cymbals beating.

  “To the benches, Conops! Half-speed, but splash! Make it look like a panic until I give the word. Then backs and legs into the work and pull!”

  The Liafail, tin-bottomed and as free from weed as on the day Tros launched her in the Thames, began to gather headway. The trireme captains saw she meant to try to escape between them. Judging her speed, they changed helm simultaneously, leaning over in the wind and leaping forward to the shouts of the oar-overseers, their rams awash in the rising sea. The Liafail’s oars splashed as if the crew were panic-stricken, until Tros threw up his right hand for a double drum-beat.

  “Row!” Conops echoed him.

  There were seconds while the issue hung in balance — seconds during which Tros dreaded that the trireme captains might have speed, too, in reserve — but he could see the weeds under their hulls. Or that they might have manned their arrow-engines — though it was not probable that they had had time enough to get their fighting crews on board. He beat time, setting an ever faster oar-beat, doubting his own eye, mistrusting his judgment, believing he had overrated his own ship’s speed and under-guessed that of the triremes. Wind and wave were against him.

  But his great bronze serpent in the bow laughed gaily, shaking its tongue as it danced on the waves. Too late, both the trireme captains saw he had escaped. They changed helm, tried to back oars, let go sheets and halyards — and crashed, each beak into the other’s bow, with a havoc of falling spars and breaking timber and the oars all skyward as the rowers sprawled among the benches.

  “Catapult?” asked Sigurdsen. “They are a big mark. We could hit them with the first shot.”

  Conops came on deck to watch the triremes rolling, locked together, sinking.

  “Arrows?” he suggested, fingering the ‘paulin housing of an arrow- engine.

  “Let be!” Tros answered. “Spare them for the sake of Nepos and the Vestal Virgins!”

  For a while he laughed at the absurdity of coupling the Roman headsman and the Vestals in one category. Then:

  “Have we wine aboard? Serve wine to all hands. There’s a long pull and a hard blow to the coast of Britain. May the gods give us gales from astern and no scurvy!”

  CHAPTER 96. Britain: Late Summer

  I perceive that, even as the seasons and the years, and night and day make war on one another, there will be conquerors and conquered, until Wisdom reigns. But I believe we enter into Wisdom one by one. A herd hates Wisdom. I perceive that conquerors can conquer fools; they are already the slaves of avarice and suchlike vices, and among the avaricious Avarice is King. A wise man’s conquest is himself, to the end that the gaining gales of Wisdom may fill his sails and, blowing him clear of the shoals of ignorance, storm him toward new horizons.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  A ROW of bonfires on a beach glared f
itfully. The skeletons of ships and a mystery of moving shadows on a white chalk cliff suggested through squalls of rain a battlefield of fabulous, enormous monsters. The bonfire flames were colored by the sea-salt and by copper fastenings that men were raking out as swiftly as the timber was consumed; the figures of the men suggested demons of the underworld attending furnaces where dead men burned their baggage on the banks of Styx. A half gale blew the flames irregularly. A tremendous thunder and the grinding of surf on shingle sang of high tide and a gradually falling sea.

  Under a rough shed made of ships’ beams with a mass of sand and seaweed heaped to windward Caesar sat, pale and alert, with a list of the ships on his knees. Two veterans guarded the hut, their shields held to protect them as they leaned on spears and stared into the rain. A tribune, cloaked and helmeted, sat on a broken chest near Caesar’s feet, attending to a stream of very precisely worded orders, that were being written on a tablet by a Gaulish slave as fast as Caesar could dictate them.

  “That will be all now. Work will begin at dawn,” said Caesar, taking the tablet from the slave and frowning over it in the unsteady light from a bronze ship’s lantern hanging from a beam. “Curius, will you address the men at daybreak and assure them, that though Caesar accepts disaster he is not resigned to it. Tell them that a difficulty is an opportunity to prove how invincible Caesar is. The fleet is broken — but by the sea, not by the human enemy. It will be seen how swiftly Romans can rebuild it. And now see who is out there in the dark. I heard a voice.”

  “Wind, Imperator.”

  “I heard a voice. Whose is it?”

  Decimus Curius got to his feet with an air of not relishing the weather. He was sleepy, and stiff from exposure to storms. He drew his cloak around him, shuddering as he stepped into the darkness. Presently his voice called from where a campfire shone on one plate of his armor:

  “There is a man who says his name is Tros of Samothrace. He is alone.”

  Caesar’s eyes changed, but the slave, who watched narrowly, detected no confession of surprise; only the lean right forefinger went to straighten his thin hair, after which he adjusted the folds of his tunic and cloak.

  “You may bring him in,” he said.

  Tros loomed into the lantern light; the tribune at his side, though helmeted, looked hardly half as big.

  “It is a bitter wind that blows you into my camp as a rule!” said Caesar, “but in this instance the omen arrives after the event! My fleet already has been wrecked. What other misfortune can Tros of Samothrace invent for me?”

  “I am the messenger of destiny,” Tros answered and Caesar stared at him, as it might be, curiously.

  “Is your ship also broken on the beach?”

  Tros answered with a gruff laugh.

  “My ship rides the storm. It will wreak no havoc with that remnant of your fleet that frets its cables off a lee shore. I am an envoy, subject to the usages of truce.”

  “Provide him with a seat,” said Caesar. The slave pulled up the broken chest under the lantern light.

  “You interest me, Tros. You are a very circumspective man for one so deaf to his own interests. How often have I offered you my friendship?”

  “As frequently as I gave opportunity!” Tros answered. “I am not your friend. I said, I am the messenger of destiny. I wish to speak with you alone.”

  The tribune, close behind Tros, pointing at his long sword, shook his head emphatically. Caesar smiled, the deep, long lines around his mouth absorbing shadow, making his aristocratic face look something like a skull. He nodded.

  “You may leave us, Curius.”

  The tribune shrugged his shoulders.

  “Caesar, fortune has not favored us of late,” he protested. “You heard him with his own mouth say—”

  “Curius, when I let fear control me, I will not begin with enemies who candidly profess their enmity! You may leave us, too,” he added, glancing at the slave.

  Still standing — peering once or twice into the darkness to make sure the tribune and the slave were out of earshot — Tros looked straight at Caesar and repeated the one secret word that the Vestalis Maxima had whispered to him. Caesar looked almost startled, but he made no comment beyond signing to Tros to sit down on the chest.

  “Have you conquered the Britons?” Tros asked.

  “Very far from it,” said Caesar. “Their chief, Caswallon, is an excellent general with a sort of genius that needs time and persistence to defeat. Their chariots are ably handled. So is their cavalry, and I am very short of cavalry, which makes it difficult to bring the Britons to a pitched engagement. But we will do better when the storms cease and the leaves are off the trees. You may say I have defeated them in one sense. Their army is scattered. But they are able to raid my long line of communication and to harass my foraging parties. I have seen fit to withdraw my army to the coast and to await reinforcements from Gaul. Meanwhile, there is this misfortune to my fleet. So — now that I have satisfied your curiosity, assuage mine. What do you think to gain by knowing all this?”

  “I am here,” said Tros, “to turn you out of Britain!”

  Caesar smiled.

  “I admire you confidence, but I think you misjudge my character. When I invade, I conquer. If you have nothing else to suggest — well, I suppose what is left of my fleet is at the mercy of your ship, since you say so, but — I can imagine worse predicaments. Surely yours is equally unpleasant!”

  “I am an ambassador,” said Tros.

  “So I understood. You made use of a word that tempted me to speak you very frankly. Why not discharge your embassy instead of talking nonsense?”

  Tros sat. With an elbow on his knee, he leaned forward until his face was not a yard from Caesar’s. He spoke in a low voice, slowly and distinctly:

  “These are the words of the Virgo Vestalis Maxima: ‘Bid Caesar turn his eyes toward Rome! Bid him look to Gaul, that when the time comes he may leave Gaul tranquil at his rear!”’

  “You bring me dangerous advice!” said Caesar. But his eyes had changed again; he seemed to be considering, behind a mask of rather cynical amusement, calculated to make Tros feel he had blundered into too deep counsels.

  “Julia is dead,” Tros added, turning his head away, as if the statement were an afterthought. He had been eight-and-twenty days at sea. He thought it probable Caesar had that news already. But the corner of his eye detected absolute surprise. Caesar leaned and gripped him by the shoulder.

  “Are you lying?”

  “That is for you to judge,” Tros answered. “Are you a leader of men and need to ask that?”

  “How did they keep the news from me? I have had despatches—”

  Tros laughed. “If I were Pompey I would take good care to keep it from you until my army was as powerful as yours! But I am glad I am not Pompey. I foresee the end of that proud—”

  “Very noble Roman!” Caesar interrupted, finishing the sentence.

  Tros sat motionless. The Roman imperator stared into the night beyond him, seeming to read destiny among the shadows and to hear it in the dirging of the sea. The very pebbles on the beach cried, “Cae-sar!” The surf’s thunder was ovation.

  “It is not yet time,” he said at last. “I will conquer Britain.”

  “Nay, Caesar! The very gods are warning you! Twice running they have wrecked your ships!”

  “Unless memory deceives me, it was you the first time,” Caesar answered, showing not the least trace of resentment. “Generalship, Tros, consists in following an advantage instantly — which is why I doubt you now. You were blind then to your opportunity. Shall I believe you have turned suddenly into a — what is it you called yourself? — a messenger of destiny!”

  “Caesar!” Tros stood up and raised his right fist, holding his left palm ready for the coming blow of emphasis. His amber eyes shone like a lion’s in the lantern light. “Thrice I might have slain you! If I cared to deal treacherously, all your legions could not save you now! But I am here to save the Britons,
not to do cowardice. Any scullion can stab. And I despise not you, though I despise your aim. You are resolved to conquer Britain for your own pride’s sake and for the luster it may add to your famous name. But choose between Rome or Britain. What shall hinder Pompey from arousing Gaul against you and then taking the dictatorship? Is it plunder you crave? I have deposited a thousand pearls with the Vestalis Maxima for you, to make that breastplate for the Venus Genetrix — a thousand pearls, each better than the best that Pompey took from Mithridates and was too ungenerous to give to the Roman people!”

  He smashed his fist into his palm at last and Caesar blinked at him, smiling, moving a little to see past him and to signal to the tribune not to run in and protect him.

  “We are not electing a people’s tribune, Tros! Sit down and calm yourself.”

  But Tros stood, knotting his fingers together behind his back to help him to subdue the violence of his emotion.

  “Pride is it?” he asked. “You shall boast, if you will, you have conquered the Britons! You shall show those pearls in Rome in proof of it! The Vestal has my leave to give them to you when you turn away from Britain. It is the Britons and their homesteads I will save. If you wish to say you conquered them, you have my leave — and I will add Caswallon’s if he will listen to me!”

  “Where is he?” Caesar asked, very abruptly. “I defeated him at the Thames, where he defended a ford with more skill than one might expect from a barbarian. Since then his army is divided into independent groups that harry my communications and I can not learn where he is.”

  “I doubt not he expects me. I have sent a man ashore who will find him and bid him meet me at a certain place,” said Tros. “If I should go to him and say Caesar accepts that tribute of a thousand pearls in the name of the Roman people, and is willing to make peace and to withdraw his army, I am sure I can persuade Caswallon to permit the legions to embark unhindered. And for the rest — if you crave a few chariots to adorn your triumph, and a few promises not covered by security — perhaps even a brave man’s oath of honor that he will not encourage rebellion in Gaul I can arrange that. Otherwise—”