Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  She ran toward her apartment — aroused slaves — and in person superintended the collection of a thousand things — ordered them thrown into whatever chests were handy — ordered the guards summoned — bade them carry the chests to the royal wharf.

  “You?” she asked Olympus then. He was not doing, not obstructing — an uncritical observer, silent until spoken to. “I had better stay here.”

  She nodded. “Let me talk to Thucydides.”

  Lieutenant of the Guard Thucydides came striding up the stairs with an expression suggesting consciousness of blackmail value.

  “Can I trust you?” Cleopatra asked him.

  “To the last breath of my life,” he answered, bowing.

  Lightest footed of them all, she led down a marble stairway. They pursued a white-clad phantom across courtyards — through a bronze gate — to a private wharf side, where the guards, all sweaty from their work and grinning with the enjoyment of a mystery, surrounded her.

  “On board!” she commanded.

  One by one all forty filed along the plank. Her women followed, free and slaves all mixed together, some giggling nervously — Charmian and Lollianè trying to set a calm example, and yet half rebellious themselves because, defying unseen danger, Cleopatra remained to the last between Olympus and Apollodorus. Lieutenant of the Guard Thucydides stood silent — speculating. There was no light, and the moon had gone down.

  “Careful!” Apollodorus whispered. “Let me deal with him. No bloodshed — just a shove. He will drown in that heavy armor.”

  But Ptolemy though she was, she avoided murder, with Olympus looking on. And besides, there was no stark need for it.

  She whispered: “If he sets foot on the plank—”

  Apollodorus vaulted to the barge deck, crouching there in darkness with a dagger ready.

  “Now, Thucydides, can I depend on you?”

  “For ever, Royal Egypt.”

  “Find Olympus. Bring him to me.”

  She stepped on board the barge, and someone pulled the gangplank in. Thucydides hurried away into the darkness — turning this and that way, peering into shadows, shouting:

  “Olympus! Hey! You star-gazer, where are you?”

  Not finding him, he returned to the edge of the wharf. The barge had gone! Its mooring ropes hung idle. Slaves had manned the long sweeps. He could see the white of women’s cloaks and the hull, blacker than night itself, already too far away for a man in armor to reach by jumping. Then he betrayed himself:

  “Wait there! Bring that barge back or I will—”

  He was mocked by the splashing sweeps, settling down to rhythmic, matter-of-fact headway. He could be heard clanking about in the dark until he found a small boat, — there were no slaves, jumped in and endeavored to overtake the barge. But he was unused to the oars, and the barge swept onward, slightly aided by the south wind, until presently a gruff voice hailed it out of darkness:

  “Ho, there!”

  “Dodecahedron!” cried Apollodorus.

  “You may come!”

  The starboard sweeps were drawn in. The barge bumped a ship’s side and somebody swore from the gloom overhead. Then, saving a low sound of water lapping against wood, and the creak of long spars slightly swaying in the upper air, there was silence. But the night felt full of eyes; there was a smell of men and of a clean ship, blended with a tang of tarry rope.

  A ladder creaked down from a tackle and two hairy seamen sprang out of the night, descending on the barge’s deck to hold the ladder steady.

  “Make haste!” said a gruff voice in the upper gloom. Cleopatra went up first, in quick jerk after jerk because her robe was in the way of active feet. Apollodorus followed, then the women one by one, then the guards. A sling was lowered from a spar, and to the sound of bare feet running on the deck the chests came overside and were immediately stacked under a paulin somewhere in the dark. A boat splashed, close by.

  “Tros!”

  The great sails blotted out the starlight and the deck was like the bottom of a pit, save that it swayed a little. There were creaky movements. Cleopatra could hear men breathing, and now and then metal struck metal, as if armed men lay in ambush.

  Tros loomed out of a shadow, with a white staff in his right hand.

  “Tros, is my treasure stowed? Then listen: that small boat splashing out there in the dark—”

  Tros turned away from her.

  “Conops! Send the oar-slaves up. Make fast the towrope. Set that beacon on the stern.”

  Cleopatra seized Tros’ arm:

  “Tros! That man in a small boat is Thucydides — an officer of my guard. He will betray me whether we take or leave him.”

  Tros leaned overside, and spoke low:

  “Conops! Let that fellow board the barge. Stay with him until you light the beacon, half-way to the Pharos. Then come aboard alone along the tow-rope.”

  He led the way up a ladder to the high poop, where a bearded man in chain mail lolled beside the steering oar. Beside the ladder, below the poop, there squatted a group of barbarous-looking men with big drums, cymbals and three harps.

  A voice cried out of darkness, far astern already, for the south wind made the barge drift. Tros looked over the poop-rail.

  “Anchor!” he commanded, and a clashing of cymbals shattered silence. From away up forward came an answering sea-song, and a rhythmic swinging strain — the thump-thump of a hawser being coiled down and the high squeak of a roller lacking oil. Then a voice cried:

  “Anchor home!”

  There was a vast, half-silent movement on the decks below. Cymbals clanged again. There came a thumping all along the ports — a landslide uproar, as the oars went outward, swinging, ready for the dip. Then silence.

  “Starboard oars ahead!”

  A double clang of cymbals and a monstrous splash, then steady drum-beat — churning of sea alongside — overseers’ voices. — The stars began to circle around the heavens and the great sails flapped.

  “Main sheet now! Port oars forward!”

  Came a rush of naked feet — terse orders grunted out in monotones — and presently the marvelous, delirious, mysterious motion of a great ship under oar and sail, lifting as she gained way. Sternward shone a thousand palace lights and to the south, beyond, a crimson splurge below the belly of a smoke-cloud, where rioters had fired a warehouse near Lake Mareotis.

  “You take Tros for granted?” asked Apollodorus. He appeared vaguely, it might be, jealous.

  “I take only destiny for granted,” she retorted curtly — almost angrily.

  Her women, arranging themselves in the lee of a bulwark on some mattresses that Tros had ordered put there, chattered in undertones, like birds at dusk, their personal discomfort driving greater matters out of mind. They shared wraps — spoke in whispers of the breathed air rising from the hold, and of the draft the great sails spilled on them.

  Cleopatra stood beside Apollodorus staring out astern along the tow-rope, to discover for herself what Odyssean trick Tros’ brain had thought of. For she knew, and did not doubt he knew, that archers posted near the Pharos Light could sweep the channel with a hail of arrows that perhaps might not sink ships but that could turn a deck into a slaughter-yard.

  If Tros had not seen war-ships weighing anchor in the Harbor of Happy Return nor had observed the archers marching along the Heptastadium, he had nevertheless made ready for such contingencies as craftily as he would have foreseen changes of the weather. And presently she understood.

  A light appeared. Conops had raised an iron beacon on the stern of the barge — had lighted it — tow and oil — exactly such a beacon as all big ships used, on rare occasions when the big ships weighed at night, to show their movements to the port authorities. But the light was a cable’s length astern; and on Tros’ ship all was so dark that there was grumbling from the lower oar-banks, checked by monosyllabic overseers.

  Tros only moved to cast his eye aloft where spars were hardly visible against the moonless sky; the
steersman knew exactly where to find him at any instant, on the port side of the poop, arms folded, bulking black against the gloom. He did not turn his head when savage, cat-and-dog-fight oaths came over-stern. But Cleopatra and Apollodorus leaned out over the taffrail, peering with eyes bewildered by the swaying beacon light that focused all attention on itself and made the hither darkness seem impenetrable.

  Suddenly the swearing ceased. “I see him!” laughed Apollodorus, stooping — groping. He discovered a thin hand-line — threw it — missed and had to haul it back. It was caught the second time, and presently a one-eyed face that had a knife between its teeth and swore incomprehensibly, advanced in jerks along the tow-rope. Leaning out, Apollodorus seized a hand and hauled in Conops, dripping, and as angry as wetted embers.

  He took the knife out of his mouth — with the back of his hand wiped blood from a long skin-gash on his cheek — spat — used blasphemy in three spliced longshore dialects, and then remarked to Cleopatra in polite Greek:

  “Blind shoals or a woman — which is worse?”

  She laughed. He started forward, but Tros stopped him before he reached the ladder.

  “What now? Is that blood? Are you hurt, little man?”

  “Hurt? No. Wet! The slack of that thrice-cursed towrope sunk us fathom-deep — the two of us — and he in a bower-anchor’s weight of armor. Asked where I was going — I showed him. Never thought an Alexandrian had spunk enough to follow. But he tried — and the rope was wet. He grabbed me — the rope jerked us high and ducked us under — by the hat of Hermes—”

  Tros interrupted, snorting: “How many times have I to tell you to be slower with your knife?”

  “My knife, master? What about his dagger? When I kicked him in the face to shake him off, he went mad — tried to cut the tow-rope — maybe thought to climb back on the short end — or that you might put about to pass a new rope, and so pick him up. I was reaching for his dagger, with an arm and a leg around the rope, when he slit my face — and there were the two of us ducked under, mark you, like a pair of porpoises, me waiting for the slack to tauten for a breath of air. As soon as I could draw my knife — I cut his fingers till he let go.”

  “You longshore brawler! You vicious wharf-rat! Get forward! Muster arrow-engine crews! Then up with you to the foretop and direct our arrow-fire. Remember now: The range should be a scant two cable-lengths. The barge should swing out with the wind when we change helm. I must squander a good tow-rope letting go — by Hermes, no, an ax will save the hither end of it! The barge should drift into the channel. If they shoot at it they may think they have slain our helmsman. If so, they will keep on shooting at the barge light. We should be half-way through the narrows before they see us. And we have the wind, so we can show heels after the barge is let go. But remember the south wind and allow for it. Their archers will be somewhere near that rock where you can see the white foam — that’s the only place where they have the whole width of the channel in range — so when you spot them, give direction so many paces right or left of that. Fall away!”

  Conops went forward, grinning. Tros turned to Cleopatra, changed his voice to an almost fatherly note and spoke as if resuming conversation:

  “If you live,” he said, “and if you grow wise at the business of being queen, you will not rid yourself of rogues. Some rogues serve better than the virtuous, who sometimes shake their virtue in extremity. But, mark you! Let them know you know them to be rogues, or they will show you disrespect, which is a stuff that brings thrones down tumbling.”

  “Greatness is the courage never to deceive oneself,” she answered. “Having greatness we are not deceived.”

  He stared at her, then meditatively turned away.

  And now the Pharos Light, five hundred feet in the air, was like a moon of ruby let down from the sky, its unseen marble tower unimaginable, so great was the height. What other sounds there might be were all silenced by the surf on Pharos Point. A prick of lantern-light moved jerkily alongshore. From the masthead Conops cried a warning. All along the deck the giant bowstrings began creaking to the strain of winches. Two crews manned the arrow-engines on the poop; and there were others, hardly heard, in darkness all along the ship’s waist on the port side.

  Conops cried out he could see the channel mark. Tros set a crew of ten men hauling on the tow-rope, shipwise, frugal, saving a few fathoms of it. Suddenly he gave a curt command. An overseer’s ax went through the rope with one blow. Then:

  “Helm starboard! Starboard again! So — starboard again! So — hold her!”

  The helmsman threw his weight against the long pine steering-oar, and the stars moved sidewise. Thunder of surf increased. Away astern — a swimming mystery — the barge light tossed and seemed to swing toward the eastern shore.

  Next, out of stilly night, beyond the surf and below the Pharos tower, came a trumpet blast — and — instantly — a meteor-flight of arrows, wrapped in burning tow to show their course. They whistled in a jewel-like parabola toward the barge, and fell short, dropping beautifully. Then another flight — another.

  “Forty paces to the left!” cried Conops.

  All along the great ship’s side, from bow to poop her deadly arrow-engines twanged and tautened to the clank of ratchets, sending sheaves of arrows screaming at the Pharos. There were intermittent, muttered orders — no haste — rhythmic swiftness unlike any human agency — suggestive of an underworld.

  Then Tros’ voice:

  “Haul in on the main sheets! Full speed with the oars!”

  He tapped the poop-rail with his staff to set time for the drums and cymbals. There began a wild harp-music. Gradually, gradually faster grew the stroke until the wake boiled egg-white and the very sails grew dimly visible in upcast phosphorescence. Then the ship’s bow lifted to the first wave on the harbor bar and suddenly the sails showed, bellied out and straining, dark against the red light of the Pharos beacon. They had turned the great lens, concentrating all the light in one long beam across the channel.

  “Light lamps below,” Tros ordered. “Stack oars. There’s a heavy dew, so wipe the arrow-engines dry before you house them. Sigurdsen — ho, Sigurdsen! Get forward there and slack away the shrouds—”

  Harps, drums, cymbals ceased. Oars thumped in through the ports and rattled into racks under the deck, and presently an endless stream of oarsmen poured up from the hold to spread their mattresses. Some, staring override, conversed and there was laughter — half heard through the “talking” of the great ship’s timbers and the creak of straining spars.

  Then, from the masthead:

  “Ships!” cried Conops’ voice. “Two — three — five — eight to port of us — they’re just in sight!”

  “They are too late,” Tros remarked.

  He turned toward the helmsman — gave him a new course and watched a while, then came and stood, hands resting on his hips, in front of Cleopatra, bulking big and making her look tiny.

  “You may have my cabin. Never a woman used it since the wife who was about to bear a son to me died — in Gaul — of Caesar’s arrow.”

  “Let my women have it,” Cleopatra answered, turning from him.

  Tros, standing with legs apart, his right hand stroking at his beard, watched her. He moved as if to go below, then, folding his arms on his breast, strode up to her again: “Royal Egypt,” he said bluntly, “I am not used to a bowed head and my knees give with an ill grace. If it pleases you, I am your servant.”

  “Admiral — Lord-Admiral,” she answered.

  “And the ship is yours.”

  “I will use the cabin. Lead me to it,” she commanded. Shouts came from ashore — another trumpet-blast — flight after flight of arrows plumped into the sea a cable’s length astern, their sound like fish chased by dolphins.

  CHAPTER VIII. “A phoenix hatches only in the hot flame.”

  They who are without virtue are blind to the virtue in others. So also, they who are unfit to govern are blind to authority and yield not except to
violence. He who has authority inherent in him, as he might have virtue, or a gift of song, or wit, needs neither trumpet nor insignia to tell him when he meets authority superior to his.

  — Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.

  IN THE great stern cabin under the poop of Tros’ ship Cleopatra lay, with Charmian beside her, in a bunk on the starboard side, on which had been spread an embroidered coverlet of Gaulish wool. Lollianè sat in Tros’ seat in the curve of the stern, with her elbows resting on the heavily built table in front of her, her eyes watching Apollodorus, his watching Cleopatra. Tros’ clothes, as gorgeous as eastern carpets, swung to every movement of the ship, from a pole set cornerwise across the cabin. There were several women huddled on a mattress on the floor. Apollodorus and Tros stood side by side, leaning their backs against the forward bulkhead.

  “Would you like two lanterns?” Tros asked.

  “Zeus, no! That one smells bad enough! Go on with what you were saying. Why will you not go home to Samothrace?”

  “The Samothrace that was, no longer is,” he answered. “You are of the Holy Mystery of Philae, and I marvel that a woman should have attained initiation. But I marvel more that you should ask me what you know I dare not answer.”

  But Cleopatra was sounding him, as he himself was used to sounding strange seas.

  “Samothrace, I know,” she said, “is like a volcano that is burned out, and now the buzzards build foul nests where once a purifying fire came forth. But if I were of Samothrace, I think I would not rest very long until I had lit again that olden fire.”

  “Each to his task,” Tros answered. “I, who lit my candle at the flame, was sent to Britain to encourage the Druids, who are wiser than I am; they were too wise to scorn my help. So the Britons, who had been quarreling among themselves, took thought about their manhood. They defeated Caesar. Twice they defeated him — once and again!”