by Talbot Mundy
“Spare his grief then, Judas, and avoid its consequences! Lead me in.”
“But, my Lord, I dare not! He is closeted just now with an important visitor, the great Tros, Lord of Samothrace.”
“Announce me, or I go in unannounced!”
“But the Lord Tros said—”
Apollodorus began to stride toward the shop’s rear, where two seamen in red kilts, who wore big gold earrings and assorted weapons, guarded the door of Esias’ private sanctum. Judas, fawning like a brown-eyed dog, tried to restrain him, then, having failed, pushed past the seamen and flung the door open.
“The Lord Apollodorus!” he announced, and shut the door again behind him silently.
At the rear of a large, low, dingy room sat two men, their backs to a window. There were shelves of papyrus and parchment documents on either hand and stacks of locked wooden boxes marked with red Hebrew characters. Samples of spice on a table filled the whole room with a pungent smell. In the darkest corner squatted three slaves, with stylus and tablet, ready to take dictation but out of ear-shot until required.
The two men in the window rose grudgingly, as if annoyed by the interruption. One was an elderly Jew, with the dark oiled hair in curls on either side of his olive-colored face. It was the handsome, rather crafty face of a cautious friend or a resourceful enemy. His brown eyes shone like topaz. His beard was beautifully curled. His wrinkled hands were long and subtly flexible. His cloak, of dark, embroidered crimson silk, had come from eastward of where, in popular opinion, a trackless sea poured over the rim of the world.
“Noble Apollodorus!” he murmured, bowing, and made a sharp noise with his fingers indicating to the slaves where they should set a chair for his guest.
The other man was like a weather-beaten Heracles. His height was an inch or two less than six feet, but his strength and his commanding presence made him seem much taller. Leonine, amber-yellow eyes peered challenging from under dense black hair, bound low on his forehead by a circlet of plain gold. His neck which had been browned by wind and sun, bore the big head with unconquerable grandeur, emphasized by barbaric gold ear-rings and a black beard, curled up short.
His cloak, of golden cloth, was bordered with wide crimson, and under that he wore a blue tunic embroidered with intricate designs in gold thread. There were massive jeweled rings on three fingers of either hand and a heavy bracelet on his right wrist. A long sword, sheathed in leather stamped with designs in gold and green, lay on the seat beside him, and there was a curiously carved dagger at his waist. His hairy legs, as strong as trees, were spread apart, deep-sea fashion, as he stood with his broad back to the light and stared at Apollodorus.
“The noble Apollodorus, seven times Victor in the Games — the noble Tros, a lord of Samothrace,” Esias announced, introducing them, and resumed his seat.
“If you have business with me, be swift with it,” said he of Samothrace.
He sat down slowly, with an air of taking soundings first, less ponderous than deliberate of movement, but he looked as capable as the sea itself of swift surprises.
“I am Connoisseur of Arts to Egypt’s Queen.”
“Queen? Which queen?”
“One is — will be plenty,” Apollodorus answered.
“Esias informs me,” said Tros with a voice like rolling thunderbolts, “that there are two queens and two kings.”
“No, no!” Esias interrupted. “You mistook me, noble Tros. I said, Cleopatra is the queen, but her younger sister Arsinoe, a mere child, has obstinate supporters. Nevertheless, their brother Ptolemy, who claims to share the throne with the elder sister, is in the strongest tactical position. The youngest, the fourth, is a mere child — a sickling.”
The leonine eyes of the Samothracian looked keenly at the Jew’s. Then, moving his head slowly, he stared at Apollodorus.
“You are a Connoisseur of Arts? Is that a reason for interrupting my business with Esias?”
Apollodorus smiled back imperturbably.
“They say of Esias,” he answered, “that his business is more important than that of any dozen kings. Nevertheless, mine with you outweighs his. I am instructed to take you to Queen Cleopatra.”
Tros was half on his feet on the instant.
“You? Take me? You mean by force?”
“By force of curiosity. I guarantee you, that in all your wanderings you have never seen anything as priceless or as interesting as what I shall show you.”
Tros grinned at him and sat back. He reached into a pouch beneath his belt and laid a small box on the table.
“Look, thou Connoisseur of Arts! Open and look within!”
The box was of gold engraved with deep designs unknown to Egypt.
“Are you wise? Are you wise?” Esias cautioned, clasping and unclasping his fingers nervously.
“Wiser than those who swore the world is flat!” Tros answered. “Open that box and look!”
Apollodorus pulled off the lid and caught his breath. He laid the box down on the table and stared at it, poking with his forefinger. He pushed it nearer to the light. He invoked a dozen or more gods. And then he looked at Tros again.
“You could buy Rome with those!” he remarked. “Unless Rome should take them from you!” warned Esias.
“You will show me a more priceless and a greater sight?” Tros asked.
“Why, yes,” said Apollodorus, pushing the box toward him. “I will show you a woman to give them to. They are almost worthy of her.”
“Give them? To a woman?”
Tros snorted. He stuck his finger in the box and rolled its contents to and fro. On a lining of black cloth there lay a dozen pearls, so perfect that they looked like symbols of eternal dawn. Two were almost as large as pigeons’ eggs.
The Jew’s eyes glittered. “Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “They are the best even I have seen — and I saw the pearls of Mithridates that Pompey took to Rome. But who shall buy these? Monstrous things! They are neither corn nor slaves. They are worth no more than somebody will pay. Who has money enough? Nah-h-h — and listen to me: I have seen ill-fortune dog the feet of them who owned such jewels. There was Mithridates. There is Pompey, whom they call the Great, who plundered him. I am not one of those who think that Pompey will end by being master of the world.”
“I won these by not plundering,” said Tros. “My friends, the British Druids, gave them to me for a certain service that I did.”
“That may be better. That may change it. It may. It may,” Esias answered. “Nevertheless, I could not afford to buy them. Who can? They are something to give to your enemy, to make all other men his enemy. I will not even accept them for safe-keeping. But I will open you a credit against that bag of smaller ones. I will sell those for your account, although I warn you, I look for no good market for pearls until this cursed war is over and the world has opportunity to grow luxurious again.”
Tros closed the box and returned it to the pocket beneath his belt. Then, reaching to the seat behind him, he laid a small heavy bag on the table and pushed it toward Esias.
“One thousand, three hundred and eleven pearls. Write me your receipt.”
Esias wrote. It was plain that they trusted each other; there was nothing said about the weight and Esias did not check the number.
“You may have what money you need, and I will deliver those stores you require for your ship,” said Esias.
Tros nodded. “And now you. Tell me again what you want.”
He knitted his great shaggy brows and glared at Apollodorus.
“I lack nothing,” Apollodorus answered.
“Your purpose?”
“To discover the easiest course between birth and death, O Conqueror of Seas! I worship the unattainable. I glory in the unknown quantity. Which is why I adore art — and Cleopatra.”
“Therefore you will die on a dunghill!” Esias commented. “Because the mob which knows nothing of art and less of Cleopatra, will despise you whenever you cease to win chariot races.”
&nb
sp; “I would rather admire my own opinion, dying on a dunghill, than despise myself in affluence,” Apollodorus answered cheerfully. “However, each to his own peculiarities. We flatter ourselves by calling them ideals, whereas they are merely habits. You are consistent in yours, Esias, which is why I like you well enough.”
The Samothracian was leaning back again, watching the Sicilian’s face across the shaft of light that streamed through a slit in the linen window-shade.
“Is the world flat, or is it round?” he asked suddenly.
“I don’t see that it matters, noble Tros,” Apollodorus answered. “If the world pleases, it has my permission to be square, or pyramid-shaped, or a dodecahedron. I am all-tolerant of everything except stupidity and bad art.”
Tros leaned forward suddenly, elbows on the table.
“What do you know about dodecahedrons?”
“Nothing,” Apollodorus answered blandly. But their eyes met. Esias, alert and inquisitive, failed to detect any signal that passed between them. Nevertheless —
“I will go with you,” said Tros.
He rose and gathered up his long sword, then turned to Esias.
“I am curious to see his wonder-woman,” he said gruffly.
“But the slaves, Lord Tros. You were to see my strong slaves. I have a Gaul who could break an oar by pulling, and you will lose him — you will lose him — he will certainly be sold unless you seize the opportunity.”
“I will return and look him over.”
“How soon? There is much that you and I should talk of privately. Shall I reserve the slave for you? He is not cheap, but a wonder — a very Heracles. Until this evening then — but not later, Lord Tros — there are many inquirers for him — he is a good investment. I will reserve him until this evening, eh?”
“As you will,” Tros answered, working his way out from behind the table and striding heavily toward the door.
He rolled a little in his gait, as if a deck were heaving under him. His eyes conned every detail of the room as if he memorized his bearings. There was also a wholesome deep-sea smell to him that Apollodorus noticed, and a recurrent, more or less unconscious gesture of habitual command.
CHAPTER III. “Halt in the name of Ptolemy!”
We recognize a kindred spirit, or a greater spirit, neither by eye nor by ear, but by the heart, which sees by flashes of the Light within ourselves.
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
OUTSIDE, the chariot’s restless team was being petted by a noisy throng of sightseers, to the intense annoyance of the charioteer, who began to grin, however, when Tros followed Apollodorus into the chariot and the horses reared at the touch of the reins.
The team leaped forward, scattering the crowd. The Thracian jumped in, squatted on the floor, leaving his master’s guest his choice of the two rear seats and studying with interest the enormous size of Tros’ legs — ready to avoid being stepped on when their owner should lose his balance.
But Tros surprised him. He stood, legs well apart, hands clenched behind him, holding on to nothing, looking ahead calmly over Apollodorus’ shoulder — an imperturbable figure, king-like in his crimson-bordered cloak. Apollodorus sent the horses at the limit of their speed, but Tros stood calmly surveying the splendor of Alexandria and its feverishly moving crowd.
“You astonish me,” Apollodorus remarked over-shoulder at last. “I never before saw a seaman who could ride a chariot.”
“On a paved street? You should go to Britain,” Tros answered. “My friend the King, Caswallon, drives wild horses over goat-tracks, at a speed that would show you nothing but his dust!”
“Good drivers, are they, the Britons?”
“Hah! You should have seen them swoop into the Roman ranks, eight chariots abreast, with scythes on the wheel-hubs and the scythe-points almost touching, then wheeling like pigeons to right and left to mow the Romans down — and that on a beach, mind you, with a big surf running. I have ridden across the breadth of Britain with Caswallon. Nearly half my crew are Britons.”
“Good sailors?” Apollodorus asked.
“No. Rank bad. There will never come a sailor from that island — not though the world should last for ever. I make use of them to serve the catapults, to scrub decks, cook, and man the oars in fair weather. They are also good at music. They can harp and chant. For the foul-weather work I have Northmen, who came from the top of the world, where the winters are dark and six months long. I have, too, Eskualdunak from Spain — red-headed rogues, each with a fine opinion of himself. They need an iron discipline. Five hundred men in all — a quandary to keep well fed. A great ship such as mine is more care than a kingdom.”
Apollodorus laughed. “An obol for your ship then! Nay, that is too much — that is more than all the kingdoms of the world are worth!” But suddenly his manner changed. The horses checked a little, feeling subtle warning pass along the reins. Ahead — away ahead, where a bright-hued stream of slaves and merchants flowed across-street, south and north, the crowd had parted suddenly to let two chariots through that came at full pelt.
“Racing?” Tros asked. He had seen a street race on his way that morning.
“Ptolemy’s men!” Apollodorus answered, leaning forward, holding the reins short, as if about to make the sharp turn at the barrier’s end in an arena. All his debonair indifference was gone.
The crowd under the colonnades began to shout excitedly, well used to mid-street racing in defiance of the law, but this was novelty. This looked like such a game as Romans loved to stage, with death included, and a slim chance even for Apollodorus to escape alive.
Toward him, furiously, one on either hand, the two-horsed military chariots came headlong, clattering and swaying, two men helmeted like heroes leaning out of each to shout and gesture. They appeared to be commanding him to stop, but Apollodorus held his course exactly down the middle of the street, only making sure that he had his team in hand.
Suddenly, within a hundred paces, both oncoming chariots swung inward, wheeling, trying to bar the way. Their horses slid and struggled — met breast to breast — a pole broke and a horse went down —
“Halt! Halt in the name of Ptolemy!”
A man in leopard-skin leaped out of the confusion and came running to seize Apollodorus’ reins. He received a whip-lash on the face that sent him reeling. The Sicilian swung his frenzied team to the right and escaped collision by an inch, then shook the reins and took the middle of the street again, full pelt.
“Not bad,” said Tros. “The Britons would have done it better.”
Apollodorus did not answer, for again the crowd had scattered. Cavalry were coming — a troop of Ptolemaic guardsmen, at the trot, their red plumes dancing and the sun a-gleam on brass. General Achillas, splendid in his armor, led them, with a mercenary Roman body-guard of four on either hand.
Between them and Apollodorus was a cross-street, running right and left. He raced for it, leaning forward, shaking the reins, fanning his team with the long whip, silent. And a roar went up like that of the arena when the favorite begins to make his bid to leave the field behind and the watching crowd grows frantic.
“Ah-h-h! Apollodorus! Ah-h-h!”
There was a mob surge at the cross-street, where the crowd ran helter-skelter. Some of them, divining that he meant to take the right-hand turn, went scattering into mid-street to avoid him, getting in the way of the oncoming calvary that had broken into a gallop. A trumpet sounded.
“Fools!” said Apollodorus grimly between set teeth. “Good! They have started a riot!”
There began to be a clamor and the thwack of the flat of swords on heads and shoulders — then a mob snarl. Stones, onions, broken bricks and flower-pots suddenly began to rain from windows, roofs and colonnades. The air became charged with flying debris. Alexandria, not often in a mood to be imposed upon, had snatched excuse for one of its sudden tantrums and the sunlit Street of Canopus changed into a rainbow tumult quicker than the eye could follow or the unused s
tranger understand.
Apollodorus took the turn on one wheel, not ten paces clear of the indignant cavalry.
Achillas and his cavalry shook off the crowd and poured into the street behind the chariot. The din and thunder of pursuit gave warning to whole blocks of market-stalls and tenements. A thousand wild-eyed Alexandrians on the instant recognized Apollodorus in headlong flight, saw the helmets of oncoming cavalry, and charged into the street to block pursuit with any weapons they could lay their hands on, yelling for their favorite.
Apollodorus, with the crowd between him and the cavalry, had no fear now of being overtaken in the side streets, through which he began to weave his way as swiftly as the throng would let him.
They came to a side-gate of the Royal Area, threading their way through a crowd that hemmed in the chariot like water against a ship’s sides. Half Alexandria seemed to have something to sell, or else a peition to make, to the supposedly more fortunate palace occupants. There were merchants with strings of slaves, lawyers, beggars, laden camels, temple priests, magicians, burdened asses, dogs, parrots and apes for sale, itinerant water-carriers inhabitants of all the lands surrounding the Mediterranean, including renegade Romans and the destitute wives and children of some of the Gabinian troops whom Pompey had recalled to serve him against Caesar. Sweating agitators, hardly heard above the tumult, stood on portable platforms to harangue them all — each agitator raucous with a cure-all of his own for solving all the public difficulties.
“See how our rhetoricians keep themselves in practice!” Apollodorus exclaimed merrily, waving his arm. “One by one the silly fellows shout themselves into a fit of apoplexy or a public office, and I don’t know which is the worse for them or us!”
A group of soldiers at the gate made a way for him by locking spears in line and, wheeling outward, forcing back the crowd to either hand. He drove into a marble courtyard, and a huge gate made of Euxine timber, painted red in contrast to the white stone walls, swung shut behind him.
