Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Why not say he stole your money also?” Tros asked.

  It was too late for Tarquinius to take a different line. He had chosen his gambit. He had to carry on.

  “Did you know,” he asked, “or have you perhaps guessed, that the crews of the fleet that a fool of a minister ordered to escort the corn ships are mutinous, and that before they sailed they had corrupted your crew? I have been a sick man, ever since we left port, but I am not blind. I am a professional observer. I saw the whispering going on among your station captains and decurions. I will make you a wager of all the money I have, that they all now know the contents of that letter that your servant removed from my baggage.”

  “Are you sure you had the letter with you?” Tros asked.

  “Yes,” Tarquinius spoke slowly, carefully inventing detail. “A letter from a friend of mine in Rome, asking whether you can’t be won over to Arsinoe’s side. My friend says that Ahenobarbus is at sea with a fleet, and no one knows whose side he takes but, certain senators in Rome having denounced you as an enemy of the Roman people, Ahenobarbus intends to treat you as a pirate. My friend’s name is Publius Cinna; he is one of the secretaries of the senate, so he learns pretty nearly everything that is going on. He asked me to advise you to abandon Egypt and to attach yourself at once to Queen Arsinoe, because Rome intends to recognize Arsinoe’s claims.” He paused. Then: “You realize, of course, that Cleopatra would disown you in a moment. Arsinoe, on the other hand, is one of those romantic fools who wouldn’t — not if you had helped her in a tight place.”

  “How did you get that letter?” Tros asked.

  “None of your business. Buy me if you want my channels of communication. The point is, your crew know the contents of that letter, and they know what it means to be treated as pirates by any Roman captain who can catch them. Have you ever heard, Captain Tros, of a commander being forced by his men to change sides? Doesn’t a wise commander change sides before they force him? Learning what they wish, doesn’t he command that, so that they may think him a wise leader? Your man Conops, whom you think is such a loyal dog, employs his loyalty this minute in persuading your crew that the way to save you and them from crucifixion is to force you to declare for Arsinoe.”

  Tros smothered a smile. Roman torturers, in Gaul, had burned out Conops’s eye for refusing to tell Tros’s secrets. However, there was no need to say anything about that. He struck the gong. The steward entered.

  “Conops.”

  The steward vanished. Tarquinius tried to employ the ensuing minute shrewdly, “Doubtless,” he said, “he has thrown the letter overboard. He isn’t likely to admit having stolen it.”

  Conops entered, with his knitted red cap pulled down over his blind eye. He was dripping-wet, barefooted, chewing a clove of garlic.

  “My cloak. No, not that one, you unthrifty wastrel! Do I wear my best one on a wet night? The shabby one. The old brown one. So. Now the sword. Stay here. Sit down and do your best to entertain this Roman eques.”

  Eyeing the Etruscan, and particularly his dagger, with obedient, watchdog curiosity, Conops took the third chair. By way of suitable entertainment he began dying tricks with his knife. Tros grinned and went on deck.

  Immediately outside the door, to port and starboard of a short passage, were two low-roofed cabins. The one on the port hand contained the steward’s quarters, pantry and bunks for Conops and several other dependable men. Tros, waiting for a moment of balance between waves, opened the door and peered in. There was no light — no other sound than snoring, but the steward came to life from somewhere and loomed like a ghost in the dark.

  “Go in and fill the Etruscan’s cup. Give Conops about a third of a cupful. Then fetch out the wine-skin, get a lantern, and wait for me at the door of the starboard bunk-house.”

  Tros climbed to the poop. It was almost too dark to see the steersmen, two of them at the one long oar, their eyes straining to catch the least gesture of the Phoenician Ahiram, who leaned with his back against the taffrail and sensed the course by only he knew what means, but it was partly by the wind on the back of his neck, and partly by the feel of the roll and plunge, and partly by the angle of the waves that thundered astern. There were no stars visible. There was no sign of the Pharos lighthouse, visible from forty miles at sea on clear nights. The deck watch of twenty men had been brought up to the poop, to have them handy where they could hear commands; they were herded together close to the bulwark and their humming was faintly audible below the howl of the wind. Ahiram asked leave to come about and heave to. Tros studied the sea and the wind and the ship’s motion for about three minutes before he answered:

  “Carry on, Ahiram. This should blow itself out before tomorrow’s sunset. If the wind eases, we’ll shake down a reef. There’ll be no chance to use oars. Even under the lee of Cyprus there’ll be a heavy sea for a couple of days.”

  The Phoenician’s teeth showed for a second, in a flash of a grin that might have meant anything. Tros leaned beside him for a while, listening to the weight of the wind in the reefed sails, reconsidering his judgment, estimating speed, and then, little by little, letting other thoughts enter his mind. There was a weird sensation, nowhere to be felt but on a ship at sea, of hundreds of lives confined, in silence, within a living thing that was all sound and motion. Four hundred and three-score men, as ignorant of their destiny as the ship herself, all under one man’s hand, all drilled and armed for not even Tros himself could guess what violent event.

  He was determined, if wind and sea would let him, to reach Salamis ahead of the ten Egyptian ships with whose admiral he was supposed to cooperate. He hardly doubted that admiral’s treason. It was almost a certainty. Fleets, since Caesar’s death, had become pawns in a game of Who-owns-the-money? That Egypt had enormous stores of food and money was no special reason for loyalty to Cleopatra. Rather the contrary. The plunder would be shared among those who could foresee who would steal her throne.

  Some Roman. It could be no one but a Roman. Rome could no longer exist without Egypt’s corn and money. But which Roman? Which of the warring generals would sense out his chance to seize Arsinoe, in Cyprus, under pretext of restoring Cyprus to Roman rule; and to do then what Caesar did after Pharsalia — set sail for Alexandria and seize the palace? It would be a simple matter to depose or to kill Cleopatra; should a Roman fleet appear, she would very likely be murdered by the Roman legions in Alexandria. To establish Arsinoe on the throne, with Roman legions in support, would amount to annexation of Egypt. And whoever could accomplish that would have Rome at his feet. He would have all the wealth of Egypt with which to debauch and bribe and buy Rome.

  His muttered thoughts went down wind, but Ahiram saw his lips move. The Phoenician thrust his head closer, and dared to repeat his advice to put the ship about and heave to.

  “Carry on,” Tros answered. “It will blow itself out, like a woman’s anger.”

  The Phoenician shook his head and Tros laughed, no longer thinking of the storms that he understood, but of the minds of three women that he could read rather well but did not understand.

  The Greek second officer came to the poop. The watch changed, but the Phoenician refused to go below. He and the Greek stood watch together, straining their eyes toward the faint grayish loom of the sails in the dark. Tros left them and found the steward waiting for him with the wine-skin and a lantern. He entered the starboard bunk-house, where a dozen of his faithful Northmen usually lived, between him and a possibly mutinous crew. He took the lantern from the steward and swung it. The ten young Jews were sleeping two in a bunk, to share five blankets. They had wrapped their armor in the other five, and they had their bows in bed with them, to keep the gutstrings dry and the wood from absorbing moisture. As they awoke with the light in their eyes they fell out of the bunks and stood to attention, naked.

  “Fetch the storekeeper!”

  The steward set down the wine-skin and went on the run. Not another word was spoken until the storekeeper came, breathless,
lugged out of a warm bunk with no time to clothe himself, his naked skin glittering wet in the lantern-light. He was scared; he had never been summoned at night except for neglect of duty. Tros let him take a good look at the bunkhouse interior. Then he smashed him in the face with the full strength of his right fist. The man staggered against the bulkhead and pitched forward with the ship’s roll. Tros’s fist met him with a crack like the sound of a slaughterer’s pole-ax and the man collapsed into a lower bunk.

  “Come out of that! Stand at attention!” Then, after another swing of the lantern: “Am I a pauper, that ten men share five blankets? Where are the bow-covers? Where are the woolen bags for their armor?”

  “They are slaves, Lord Captain. Should I serve them the same as the others?”,

  “By the living Lords of Earth and Sea, are my ears failing? Did I hear you? Dog of a Tyrian ingrate, that would let the rats eat blankets rather than see slaves warm! Silence! Slaves, are they? They have saved my property by taking thought, so they have saved you from being punished. You escape with a reprimand.” Tros smashed him again in the face. “Now go and fetch ten bow-covers and ten bags for their armor. Bring them yourself, you mean-souled miser, and take care they are dry when they get here. Fall away.”

  The Jews were shivering. Tros bade them cover themselves and hold out their mugs for the steward to pour wine. First he made them drink enough to keep the rest of the wine from spilling; then he made them stand with their backs steadied against the bunks, holding the cups to their breasts.

  “Your officer,” he said, “will be my man Conops. You will obey him instantly, to the death, at all times, and whatever he commands. He is neither a beauty, nor a philosopher, nor a man of breeding. He can neither read nor write. But he is loyal. Be you loyal also. Your principal duty will be to guard me, day and night. Your battle station will be beside and behind me, wherever I am. No man who is obedient and brave shall ever look to me in vain, either for his rights or any good that I can do him. Wrap your weapons carefully when the storekeeper brings the covers. Treat him respectfully. Remember: when I reprimand a man, that ends it. I despise — I get rid of a man who lets his malice linger in the bruise that justice made. You may turn in.”

  He took one more turn on the poop, where he received the reports from the officers on watch that all was well below. Then he returned to his cabin, where the steward re-hung the wine-skin to the beam. Tarquinius was sprawling forward on the table, and his dagger was on the floor under Conops’s foot. There was a question in Tros’s eyes. Conops answered it as soon as the steward had gone:

  “He offered me fifty denarii to tell him the way to your good will, master.”

  Tarquinius stirred and groaned. “I would have offered more,” he said, looking up with his head in his hands, “if I had had it. Tell him to return my dagger. When I lurched he took it from me. He is as suspicious as a scorpion.”

  Conops looked at Tros and half-closed his one eye. Tros nodded.

  “I have given you the ten Jews, Conops. Lick them into shape. And if I catch them lacking discipline, or hating you, or mistrusting you, or unwilling to jump at a wink, I will give them another officer and send you to the lower oar-banks. Learn them first. Then teach them. Fall away.”

  “Yes, master. Shall I give the eques his dagger?”

  Tros took it. He struck its point into the table. Conops was out of the cabin before the dagger had ceased to vibrate. Then Tros sat down.

  “Tarquinius,” he said, and he watched the man as if he could read through his skin to the nature beneath, “my good will is as easy to get as a death on a dark night.”

  The Etruscan sat upright with an effort. He laid his right fist on the table and clenched it so hard that the knuckles grew white.

  “Captain Tros, I have intelligence for sale.”

  “If a louse should valuably serve me, Tarquinius, I would let him live, to be a louse, until he should be cracked by someone who loves justice less than I do.”

  “Make me a bid. I need a patron.”

  Tros’s humor welled to the surface in a grand, unconquerable grin that made the Etruscan’s eyes turn shifty and set his fingers drumming on the table.

  “Let that dagger alone, Tarquinius. Let us see now: you are the client of the Lady Charmion, and her you propose to betray. You are the spy of the Queen’s secretary, and him you propose to betray. You are my guest, and me you have tried to betray; you have tried to make my crew mutinous, and to make me believe they are so. You are in correspondence with Ahenobarbus, aren’t you?”

  “How do you know it?”

  “In the same way that I know you lied about a letter from Publius Cinna, which you said my man Conops stole. You tried to dagger Conops, to prevent him from telling the truth to me; that was why he took your dagger.” Tros flicked the dagger and made it thrum again. Then he pulled its point out of the oak and handed it back to Tarquinius with an unspoken and almost unexpressed contempt that stung worse than a blow.

  “But that is not all,” he continued, observing the ferocious hatred that had steeled the Etruscan’s eyes. “You have lied to me about my friend Esias, to whom I don’t doubt you would lie about me, if you should see occasion. You intend to lie about us all to the Princess Arsinoe, whom you will betray to whoever shall make it worth your while.”

  The Etruscan snarled. “You make out a fine case! You remind me of that old four-faced humbug Cicero accusing Cataline and Verres. Name me a man or a woman of any importance in the world who isn’t ready to betray you, or me, or anyone at the toss of a coin! Does the Queen of Egypt trust you? Hah! Where are your Northmen? It is because they trust you, and she thinks you are fool enough to keep faith with drunken savages, that she has dared to risk turning you loose to chance your own neck and fortune for her advantage. Win or lose, she would betray you in a minute.”

  “But you?”

  “Bona dea! Didn’t I tell you the truth? I told you I serve only me, Lars Tarquinius!”

  “The truth saved you from drowning,” Tros answered. “That is once when you served yourself well. For that truth, I will be your patron.”

  “How much will you pay me?”

  “Your life. Your liberty. I will set you ashore, to continue to serve Lars Tarquinius. You may sell me to the highest bidder. Make what profit you can.”

  “You mean — if I should strike a bargain with Arsinoe — you would keep to its terms?”

  “I strike my own bargains. I name my own terms,” Tros answered. “You live. That is all of the terms of my bargain with you. Go ashore and serve Tarquinius. Betray me.”

  Tros struck the gong. The steward came.

  “Pick up Lars Tarquinius’s corselet and carry it forward for him. Help him along the deck to his quarters.”

  Tros returned to the poop, noticing as he passed that Conops had transferred himself to the starboard bunk-house with the ten new Jews.

  CHAPTER IV. “When I swear to the truth, I swear by Lars Tarquinius!”

  Too much planning is the commonest cause of defeat. The mediocre strategist conceives a plan and, like a pregnant woman, thinks the offspring of his belly and his mood shall set a heel on destiny. A true commander’s plans are changeable, adaptable, reversible, sudden, frequently surprising even to himself; they are the means, that his genius seizes, to employ his whole strength, at a well considered moment, to a foreseen, unflinched from and undeviating purpose.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  The seaman’s consciousness produced its miracle. Tros made his landfall. A man at the reeling mainmast-head, with the eyes of a gull and the lungs of Aeolus, hailed the poop about two hours after Tros had made it high noon from a study of his three temperamental water-clocks. Conops, who took nothing on land or sea for granted except that Tros must be served, went aloft and confirmed the report. He could see the strange masses of foam on the southeastern shore of Cyprus — the foam from which, as all men knew, the goddess Aphrodite had been born. He could
see the vague loom of the mountains beyond. But there was no sign of any Egyptian fleet — not a sail on all those tumbling seas.

  Tros made his lee long before nightfall. He hove to, three or four cables’ lengths from shore, in comparative calm, to give the cooks a chance to feed the crew. He was no believer in the Spartan diet that the Romans considered good for deep-sea discipline. Full bellies breed few mutinies. The British druids had taught him the secret of clean water-casks, purified with charcoal. He had found out for himself the value of dried Arabian apricots and dates, to offset the eternal Egyptian eggs and sun-dried meat. He had ample store, too, of onions, carrots, honey, olive oil, wheat and barley. His cooks were Syrians, and his ovens were things of his own invention, fired with charcoal. He knew, too, the value of song, to keep crowded men from thinking about hardship. He carried four bards, bawdy and well-paid rogues with harps, whose business was to improvise new words to ancient songs. They were even allowed to be personal about himself, and to put the men’s grievances into song, provided they did it humorously. He had learned that good trick from the Northmen, the world’s bitterest grumblers, whose skalds had an almost unlimited license to voice the moods of the men who must die at the word of command. Men die more gallantly who know that their leader knows their heart-aches.

  He had solved a hundred problems that the Romans, with all their genius for war, had left unsolved. Romans had not understood the essential fact that command of the sea depends on mobile men, not ponderous, floating forts. They were still thinking in terms of the wars with Carthage, making a land-war of a sea-war, grappling ship to ship and relying on size, weight, numbers to offset speed and the ability to turn. It was not Romans — not at the moment — that worried Tros; he had the heels of any Roman ship afloat. It was Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, whom he feared as he paced his heaving poop. He had a mystical, obstinate conviction that a man and a woman are as light and darkness, strength and weakness. The woman was forever the betrayer. He was in the toils of a woman who hated Rome as much as he did, and who would use all resources, her own body included, in a war to a finish. A woman so intellectually subtle and steel-witted that she had even persuaded Caesar to despise Rome. A woman to whom religion, and even life, was a means to an end. A wholly admirable, baffling, utterly courageous woman, as rich as Croesus, as ready of laughter as a child, as alone as the Sphinx, as full of mystery as an Egyptian night.