Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “I have heard of Britain. Wasn’t Caesar defeated in Britain?”

  “Yes, twice. I had a hand in it. It was after Caesar’s first invasion that I caught some Vikings raiding up a river called the Thames. They gave Caswallon the King and me a tough battle, but we defeated them. All the prisoners were mine, including women, but I had to beat their leader to his knees before he would surrender. A giant named Sigurdsen. He had been a king in his own land. He became my friend. I took his young sister to wife. He and his men helped me to build this trireme. Sigurdsen became my first lieutenant. He and his men have been my good foul-weather comrades-in-arms. Do you suppose I would let them rot in Egypt’s labor-gangs, and sail away to please my vanity?”

  She dismissed the Northmen without a gesture. “But the young wife?”

  “Helma died in Gaul, from one of Caesar’s arrows.” Sympathy didn’t even flicker on the surface of Arsinoe’s expression.

  “So you took another woman?”

  “I have found none to whom I cared to pledge myself in honorable love.”

  “You love boys?”

  “That I hold unmanly.”

  He turned away. Samothracian mystic though he was, it never pleased him to reveal, even to intimates, the inward consciousness of spiritual law that guided all his conduct. Least of all did he choose to expose it to a woman’s mockery. He stared at the hills of Cyprus, and at the weird cream-colored foam that boiled off-shore. He ordered a boat away, with Conops to pilot the clumsy quinquireme — a patronizing courtesy that he knew Ahenobarbus would resentfully accept. It would rankle. He laughed. There were few things he loved better than to prick Roman conceit.

  Then he sent the leadsman to the chains and concentrated all his attention on the course between the shoals that guarded Salamis. He said not another word to Arsinoe until the quinquireme, too was at anchor, half a bow-shot distant, and the captains of the corn fleet lowered little boats to come and learn whose prey they were. He took a long look at the harbor-front, and at the burned biremes stranded on a shoal, before he stared again at Arsinoe with a gaze that thrilled her, though he didn’t intend that it should.

  “I gave you my leave,” he said, “to die in battle, since it seemed to me you were in danger of a much less honorable death.”

  “Lord Tros, I wished that. But I find I don’t die tamely, like a butchered sheep. I fight, when there is anything to fight with — or to fight for.”

  “So I see. But for what did you fight?”

  “To walk earth with a man!” Her expression was almost the same as when she threw the silver pitcher overboard. “Oh, if you but knew how I am weary of these palace pimps, treacherous he-prostitutes, sellers of their little leprous souls! Liars, ingrates, greedy cowards, so in love with vice they think a decent man a pervert! I am thrown among them, and what can I do?”

  “It is your little kingdom.” he answered. “Rule it.”

  “Mine? Me? My kingdom? Between poison and a dagger — between sale to the Athens whorehouse agents or the pirate fleets that raid when it pleases them — I have two slave-girls, of whom I trust one and not always doubt the other.”

  “Now you will have a Roman bodyguard,” he answered. “And I will choose for you two score of the pirate prisoners. They are likely to be more dependable than Romans, if you have the right stuff in you. There is something in the Romans’ character that makes them feel humiliated if they obey a woman.”

  “Ah, but you are a man! Caesar wasn’t half the man that you are!”

  “Are you a whipped girl, crying for your nurse’s gods to come and punish your enemies?”

  “Tros! Seize Cyprus!”

  He didn’t answer. It seemed less cruel than to arouse hope by explaining again. She might consider argument an invitation to be winsome, and he didn’t wish that, he liked her too well.

  The corn boat captains came, and were obsequiously grateful for Ahenobarbus’s promise of full pay and arrears in Tarsus. The destination was all one to them. It was not their corn. They were not their ships. It would be nothing new in their experience if the Roman should break his promise; but no pay would be better than the fate that pirates might impose.

  Soon Tarquinius came and reported failure, full of lies about how diplomatic he had been. But the point was that Cinyras and the temple priests had refused to surrender the treasure. He hadn’t dared to attempt to storm the temple gates with such a small force, in the face of indignant hundreds. A big mob had appeared from nowhere and had stoned the hungry marines, who were already badly discouraged by the shipwreck and the long march.

  Ahenobarbus set ashore two hundred men, and led them himself to the temple, where he threatened to behead Cinyras. Before nightfall he was in possession of the treasure and the priests, including Cinyras, were his prisoners awaiting imposition of merciless fines as soon as Ahenobaru’s spies could discover how much money they had hidden.

  But Tarquinius and Serapion struck up something that resembled friendship, and the oily rogue Serapion came to Tros’s ship and knelt to Arsinoe, kissing her hands. He begged pardon, promised good behavior, tried to excuse his former conduct by asserting, and bringing witnesses to prove it, that he had made Arsinoe a virtual prisoner in her palace to protect her from the plots that her own rashness had encouraged. He placed his hands between Tros’s knees and swore undying gratitude if Tros would not deprive him of his office. Tros, who had no vestige of authority to do anything of the kind, would have removed him to Alexandria for Cleopatra to deal with, because in theory. Serapion was Cleopatra’s agent. But Ahenobarbus, who had at least a commission from Brutus and the legend S.P.Q.R. on his standard, upheld Serapion, remarking that Tarquinius would keep an eye on him.

  Arsinoe remained on Tros’s trireme even when he went ashore to bury his dead in a cave on the bank of the River Bocarus. More to annoy Ahenobarbus than for any reason, he demanded a Roman officer, fifty Roman marines and a standard to accompany the funeral cortege and to honor the dead with a final salute.

  “A Roman standard — Roman arms to salute dead pirates?”

  “Seamen. They died to save you lubbers. Recognition of their seamanship and valor may humiliate, it won’t discredit you.”

  Ahenobarbus sent a hundred men; and he was liberal, too, about wine and provisions for Tros’s ship, which he requisitioned in Brutus’s name and paid for with the fines that he imposed on Cinyras, and from the balance of the temple treasure after he had settled with Tros for the corn. But he made all the trouble he could about the pirate prisoners and bitterly resented Tros’s selection of two dozen of them to be Arsinoe’s personal bodyguard.

  “She will be well enough guarded by the men I will leave with her.”

  But Tros had his way, and it was Tros who had the last word with the pirates, after he and Conops had made the cautious final selection:

  “You will guard her with your lives, and you will obey no one but her. You have been chosen because you are men of spirit, likely to prefer an honourable death to shameful profit. You are my men, lent to her, responsible to me; and when I come again to Cyprus I will properly reward your faithful duty.”

  It was Tros who escorted Arsinoe to her palace — the building from which she had escaped when Serapion set guards at all the entrances to keep her a virtual prisoner at his disposal. It was Tros who dismissed the swarm of servants and engaged others, not that he had any confidence in new ones, but because they couldn’t be worse than the others, and perhaps might be a little better. Most of them were slaves, but in the short time at his disposal it was next to impossible to discover who owned them; there appeared to be a contract system for supplying servants, and it was as secret as the methods of the Delos and Athens slaves, whose agents were everywhere, spying, bribing, intriguing. It appeared that Serapion knew all those agents, or nearly all, and many of them knew Tarquinius.

  The last night before leaving Salamis, when the treasure was on board and all was ready to weigh at daybreak to escort Ahenobarbus and the
corn fleet as far as Tarsus, Tros visited the palace. He and Arsinoe talked by moonlight on the wide stone gallery, where she showed him the branch of the tree by which she had escaped from Serapion’s clutches. It had been a daring jump. Not many men would have dared it.

  “Girl,” he advised her, as they sat together with a shaded lamp between them, “if a kingdom is what you crave, remember this: it can’t be yours until you learn those arts your sister Cleopatra better understands than you. She has suffered less than you, thus far, in a great arena, because she knows how to feed the mice and put the elephants to work. She discovers what strong men want, and keeps them wanting it.”

  “You hate her?”

  “No, I admire anyone who can outwit me. Probably she hates me. It would be natural. When Caesar died, she offered me Caesar’s place. I refused. She has compelled me, one way or another, to do Caesar’s tasks without the recompense — if what Caesar had was recompense.”

  “Why did you refuse?”

  “Because I have no use for Caesar’s laurels or his leavings. I haven’t Caesar’s cynical way with women. I crave no kingdom. I will sail around the world as soon as I can find my Northmen.”

  “Oh, if I were Boidion!”

  “Who is Boidion?”

  “No one. Just a bastard sister — my age, born almost on the same day. Boidion’s mother was sent to Jerusalem, by friends, I suppose, to save the child from being poisoned: So Boidion hasn’t been taught she is a princess. She hasn’t felt what it means to be Queen. She hasn’t even tasted failure. She isn’t surrounded by needy courtiers with wet lips, who steal her pocket-money and try to seduce her while they poison one another for the chance to sell her, imitation crown and all, to any rascal who can out-cheat them with stolen money.”

  “I have heard Cleopatra say the same thing.” Tros answered. “Only she didn’t mention Boidion.”

  “If I were only Boidion,” she went on, “I would love a man, and be should love me, and together we would turn our backs on all this filth.”

  “If you should love a man,” Tros answered, “how should he know it? If he should love you, how should you know it? That is something kings and queens have it hard to determine. But the world is crowded full of men and women who ask nothing better than to be parasites. The mother of my sons will be neither queen nor bastard. I will know her by her deeds, not by her appeals to a kind of avarice that, if I have it, I despise nevertheless.”

  He wished she didn’t look so like Cleopatra. She was much taller and more beautiful, but there was the same stealthy reserve in her eyes. It might mask cunning. Or it might be the baffled courage of a girl whose pride had been too often and too severely punished. He remembered how brave she had been, and with what dignity she had endured, barefooted and half-naked, the dreadful march through Rome at Caesar’s chariot-tail. He wished he understood women better, so that he might judge her, but he knew he didn’t understand them; so he bade her farewell gruffly, rather than be guilty of suggesting more than he meant.

  “You will return?”

  “Aye, I have promised the pirates.”

  “But you promise me nothing?”

  He thought a moment. “No. But, if you wish, you may make me a promise.”

  “And if I do? And if I keep it?”

  “Then I shall understand you better.”

  “What is this promise?”

  “Rule. Or get out.”

  He hardly heard her answer; he remembered it afterwards. He kissed her hands and left her, growling a final admonition to the pirates on guard at the door. But to Tarquinius, who came to the moonlit harbor-front to bid him farewell, he was more explicit:

  “You Etruscan scoundrel. I perceive a virtue in you that I better like than some men’s good repute. Mark this: protect that girl, and you may offend her, treat her treacherously, and I will put you to a dog’s death, even if I have to hunt you to the earth’s ends.”

  “If you see my virtue, hire me,” Tarquinius answered. “Do you think I live on promises and threats?”

  Tros gave him some money.

  “Is this an advance of wages?”

  “It is a gift. If you want wages, earn them.”

  “Do you think I sell my good will for such a price as this?” Tros laughed gruffly. “I am buying nothing. I have made you a threat and a promise. You shall find they hold good.” Tarquinius saluted.

  Tros was rowed to the trireme, where until daylight he paced the quarter-deck. Each time he turned and he stared at a hillside balcony framed amid shadowy trees, where a shaded lamp burned blood-red.

  CHAPTER X. “Aye, a fine May morning!”

  The great Lord Taliesan the Druid warned me of what I knew already but too often ignored — aye, and still do when the waves of destiny uplift me for a moment. Taliesan said it thrice: Expect not gratitude from rulers whom your efforts serve. Rather they are likely to demand more, blaming you for not enough and taking credit to themselves for what you did. I have never met a man as wise as Taliesan.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  There was no disguising the trireme’s injuries. The dead had been so many that the lower oar-bank could no longer be manned. There were smashed bulwarks, hastily repaired but unpainted. There were scars where the pirate ships had grappled and ground the trireme’s flanks. The purple sails, bent on for effect (there was no wind) emphasized the battle-havoc. The victorious trireme appeared to be limping home from ignominious defeat — an unfortunate impression to create in Alexandria. The Alexandrines loved successful people and proofs of success.

  Tros glowered as he paced his quarter-deck and studied the magnificent harbor-front. It was as busy as ever. One might imagine there were no such people as Romans, at civil war with one another for the right to plunder the whole known world. Ahiram said something about the splendor of the marble buildings in the morning sun. Tros stared at him a moment, glanced at the helmsman, and then answered with cold, passionate anger that made the Phoenician flinch:

  “Aye, a fine May morning. Counting wounded who are fit to die, we have lost one hundred and eleven men. And to what good purpose?”

  Ahiram sniffed the off-shore zephyr that bore the mingled smell of flowers, spices, vegetables, animals and men. It was good in his salty nostrils. He retorted:

  “You’ve your cabin stuffed with chests of gold enough to buy one of yon palaces. If I were you, I’d buy a palace, instead of wanting to sail around the world. Maybe the world isn’t round. You only think it is. You don’t know. And the sea is a hard life. Courtiers have it easy. Three special cooks to stew a sow’s teats for your breakfast, and a brace of wenches to relacquer your toenails every time you kick a blackamoor for being late with the wine! Wenches — wenches! Think of it — the pick of the world’s best lookers any time you want ’em!”

  It was nothing new that the Phoenician’s thoughts should run in that vein after a month at sea. It had been a long, hard pull from Tarsus, half a month too early for the northerly summer breeze. The helmsman’s thoughts also were home-coming seamanly eager. Tros rebuked him:

  “Eyes on the course, you Argive satyr!”

  Every man who could find an excuse to be on deck, or who could escape a decurion’s vigilance, was leaning overside to stare at the Rhakotis wharf, where the bawds were waiting, strumpet-gay in all the colors of the rainbow. Defeat or victory were all one to those parasites, so be the crew had money. Ahiram, thinking of shore-leave, tried to change his commander’s humor. Tros was quite capable of withholding the crews’ wages, and Ahiram’s too, for the sake of wharf-side morality. Dreadful thought.

  “And the Queen? She should be feeling good,” said Ahiram.

  “She has seen our sails since daybreak,” Tros answered. “She rises early — stands naked, facing east, at sunrise. By pigeon post from Salamis to Tyre, and thence by runner, she will have had secret information of our victory at sea — aye, and of more besides.”

  “She should be pleased,” said Ahira
m. “Her own fleet had deserted to the Romans. We’ve saved Salamis from pirates. We’ve out-smarted the Romans. We’ve sold the Egyptian corn and got paid for it. We’ve established Queen Cleopatra’s sister as safe as a peg in a hole on the throne of Cyprus. The Queen has had plenty of time to hear all about it. She’ll be pleased to see us — aye, and generous.”

  Tros stared. It amazed him that a man could be so simpleminded. “Does your Sidonian intellect perceive the evidences of her pleasure? Where are the garlanded boats to bring us greeting? Not even a signal from the Pharos! Not even the hog-eyed harbor-master in his galley! Not even Esias’s boat! Phagh! She has probably warned Jew-Esias I am out of favor. The more you do for kings and queens, the less they trust you and the more they want.”

  “Like whores,” said Ahiram. “But you’re no easy one yourself, Lord Captain. True, you pay well, and you’re a man of your word. But the price a man pays for serving you well is to be given an even harder task.”

  “Hard over! Ease your sheets now; there might come a flurry of wind. Down haul, and stow sails. — Cymbals! — Starboard, half ahead! — Port side, half astern! — Easy Starboard, half ahead! — Easy!”

  Tros guided the trireme, to the clash of the signalling cymbals, and with gestures to the helmsman, through the narrow entrance of the inner harbor of Rhakotis, where there were docks and repair-yards, hemmed in by offices, lumberyards, storage-sheds and taverns in a spider-web maze of irregular streets.

  He was going to have to haul out, and no bones about it. The trireme leaked. She had been damaged under-water by the headlong, full sail impact against pirates’ hulls. Esias’s largest hauling-out dock was vacant, so he put a crew ashore to warp the ship into it, with Jack-of-all-jobs Conops and the ten-Jew bodyguard to beat the women back and give the crew a chance to handle the lines. There were fifty belly-naked strumpets screaming with laughter and feigning Bacchanalian frenzy, and another hundred swarming across the roof of Esais’s office, while their owners watched them through the barred gate.