Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Oh, my lord, my lord, how good to be with you!”

  She saluted. There was a bruise beneath the bracelet on her right wrist. Gravely Tros acknowledged her salute. He loved that. He would have hated a sentimental scene before his men. But there was something else he would have hated more. “You are in danger,” he said.

  “I love it!”

  His amber eyes admired, but his words were careful: “Have you been well served?”

  “Aye, royally!” She made a reckless gesture toward the charred ruins of the great ship on which she had fought beside’ him, in a gale, against the pirates hard by Salamis, when she was a queen and he not yet an outlaw. “And what matter a burned trireme, Tros, when we have such men as this one!”

  She looked at Conops. Conops eyed his master, unblinking, brass-faced.

  “Fall away, little man. Go and get food and then muster the men. Have them fall in at the dock-side. Send Ahiram to me.”

  “Aye, aye, master. Lord Captain’s escort— ‘ten-shun! Close order! Right-turn! By the right, quick-march! Left! Left! Left!”

  CHAPTER XXVII. “I am not she any longer. I am Hero”

  Two heads are better than one, and three than two. But when a plan is reached let there be one commander. One only. Let the others obey. I would rather obey a man, whose talent for command I thought inferior to mine, than make the unwise effort to attempt to share authority.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  Conops had not exaggerated. Old Esias was a nervous wreck; he had the office shutters up; the dingy room was lit by little clay lamps, and he was chary of those. He refused to listen to Tros’s plan, suddenly conceived and brilliant though it was. His gray-bearded face, shadowy and haggard in the dim light, twitched with anxiety. He kept tapping his old beautiful hands on the table in hysterical efforts to keep calm while Tros explained the plan to Hero. He kept interrupting.

  “But I say you shall listen. You shall! This once, before you ruin me and mine, I will say to a she-Ptolemy’s face what I think of you and all yours! — Hero now you call yourself! Jezabel it should be! The dogs ate Jezebel. You will wish you had died like Jezebel — yes, and and my partners — yes, and Tros, too — yes, and many others — if your sister Cleopatra should even dream you are in Alexandria! Is this your gratitude for secret aid? For credits — money — clothing — slaves that I have given you? Fool! Ingrate! Were it not for the Lord Captain I would turn you over to the Queen, your sister, to be raped by the dungeon slaves, and whipped, and torn with hot pincers, and thrown to the dogs on the city dung-heap! Let a palace sorcerer learn but a hint of the truth, and go murmuring to the Queen and say he saw your face, in a dream, in my office — and then what? Then what! Ruin! You, who had a kingdom! Eh? Eh? Only Cyprus, say you? But a kingdom! Was it not a kingdom? And now Boidion has it — a bastard — I say a bastard. Will she rest until she has betrayed you to death, to be rid of you — you and everyone of us who knows your secret? Ruin! Ruin! You trust her? You fool! Will she trust you? She will betray us all to death, lest you betray her!”

  Tros tried to calm him. “Peace, Esias.”

  “Peace? You? You speak to me of peace? You have ruined us all! For the sake of this girl who was walked through Rome at Caesar’s chariot tail — spat on by the Roman mob — who should have been strangled in the Tullanium — or sold into slavery to any fool who would buy! Why didn’t you kill her on the field of battle? You, Tros, who might have married Egypt! And what a king, what a king for Egypt!”

  He paused for breath. Tros sat silent, perceiving that Esias needed the comfort of released anger. Suddenly the old man resumed:

  “You craved a girl for your bed? You had but to ask for the pick of all my slave-girls. Gladly, gladly, free, I would have given! Or was it a wife you wanted? One word — one word from you to me, and every nobleman in Alexandria who owes me money should have begged you to become his daughter’s husband!”

  The object of Esias’s anger, less well schooled than Tros in self-control, but careful not to offend Tros’s dignity, tried quiet persuasion:

  “Esias, it is true, if I were claiming the throne of Egypt, you would be in danger. But I am no longer Arsinoe. I am Hero, wife of the Lord Tros. So forget I was Queen of Egypt until Caesar came. Forget I was ever a Ptolemy — ever this Queen’s sister. Forget, if you will, that in those days all the Jews in Alexandria preferred me and begged Caesar to—”

  “Wife?” He nearly screamed at her. “Who will call you his wife? Forget? Jews forget nothing! Never! What a Jew was, he is; and what he is, he will be! Let a whisper — just a little whisper creep into the Jewish quarter — let the Jews even hope you are in the city — and then what?”

  He snapped his fingers in her face. He slapped the palms of his hands on the table.

  “Then what! There would be an insurrection such as even Alexandria has not seen! My people can fight. They are fools. They would fight. But could they overcome the Queen’s’ troops? We should all be butchered! Once again they would raise their shout: Plunder the Jews!”

  Hero shrugged her shoulders. “Not for my sake, Esias. Did the Jews defend me against Caesar? Not they! When Caesar gave them rights and privileges—”

  Esias shook both fists at her and almost spat his anger:

  “Rights that Cleopatra steals, ignores, denies — day by day, here a little, there a little! It is not Arsinoe whom they love. Why should they love you? It is Cleopatra whom they hate! Why should they not hate her? Could Arsinoe be worse than she is? The woman whom they hardly know seems better to them than the—”

  “But I am not she any longer, Esias. I am Hero.”

  “Hero! You, Tros, my friend — what will you do with her? Where can you go? We have trusted each other. I have your money. Your pearl money, your corn money — you are wealthy. Where will you take your money? Into Syria, on this mad raid, where Cassius will get it, even if he doesn’t catch and crucify you? Shall I give you a draft on Rome? How long, do you think, before Antony would be spending your money on whores and actors — or Octavian spending it on sorcery to cure his pimples! Will you take it to Greece, and let Brutus seize it? The mealy-mouthed hypocrite Brutus is burning cities and selling noble people into slavery for the sake of the last drachma he can wring forth! Will you take it to Sicily for Sextus — or to Gaul, for Lepidus to pay his legions?”

  “I will leave it here, in your charge,” Tros answered. It was time to bring Esias to his senses. He shook the table with his fist. “I will trust you, Esias, until I find you false. Are we friends? For, if we are not, say so.”

  Esias stared, gaped and leaned back in his chair. His old eyes shone like jewels in the yellow lamplight, but he looked suddenly feeble and his face wan and tired.

  “Eh! Eh! Your pardon, Lord Captain.” He was trembling. “My friend, my true friend Tros, your pardon. I am old, and I know these Romans. I saw what Pompey did to Mithradates. I saw him plunder Syria — aye, and Jerusalem. And too well I know these Ptolemies, and the wickedness of their women — massacres! Treacheries! Murders! — Have you not loyally served this woman’s sister? And what has happened to your trireme?”

  He flared again, pointed, leaning forward with an elbow on the table:

  “You! Girl, who call yourself Hero! Be you false to the brave Lord Captain in the least matter — in one small trifle — in one slyness — in one wantonness — in one deceit — in one unfaithful gesture of a finger — and may the God of Vengeance damn you into everlasting death!”

  She kissed her hand to him. “Your armorers are good, Esias.”

  Tros laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Esias, the Queen expects me to march overland. Sell me that ship that is hauled out, three docks along.”

  “It leaks, Tros. It—”

  “Put the caulkers to work, day and night.”

  “No, no. Summon Eli. I am overwrought. Do as you will. Have anything you will. I will not listen.”

  “Say nothing then. Kn
ow nothing. Leave it to me. I shall need a second ship.”

  “I have no other. They have taken everything in the harbor that will float, to deport the Romans.”

  “Leave that also to me. Send word through all your stores and workshops that my orders are to be obeyed.”

  “I will tell Eli.”

  Eli, a freedman with slate-colored eyes and a stoop, smiled his way into the room and eyed Tros with the air of a doctor waiting to be told the symptoms. He was capable of running all Esias’s business. He had been a pupil of Sosigines the astronomer, trained to forget nothing he had ever seen or heard, and to carry exact figures in his head. He loved Tros, because Tros was nearly as quick a calculator as himself.

  “Chariots, yes, Lord Captain. Thirty or forty chariots that Caesar ordered — built by Triphales and never paid for — stored in Triphales’s warehouse — could be bought, no doubt, at less than half-price. Must be as dry as a bone by now. Wheels would need soaking to make the tires stay on. No harness, but the harness could be bought from Timon, supplier to most of the racing stables, and would be very expensive if made in a hurry — say a night and a day, if Timon’s gangs were paid a bonus. Horses? Mules?”

  “Yes, and camels — for a baggage-train for three hundred and fifty men. Have them hired and waiting by tomorrow morning. Understand Eli: I don’t want them. But I wish the Queen’s spies to believe I make ready to march.”

  Hero interrupted. “What can I be doing?”

  “Imitating nothing, nowhere?” said Esias. “I have had a bed brought for you. Go to bed then, and await your Lord.” He shook his finger at her. “You! You! Any spy may recognize you, any minute! Do you wish us all to be burned like Tros’s ship? You will hide where I tell you, though I change the hiding place ten times over!”

  She shrugged care-free shoulders. “I will visit the armorer again, to have my breast-plate fitted.”

  “I will send a slave-girl to be fitted for it. You will do as I tell you!”

  Tros interrupted: “Hero!”

  He was speaking for Esias’s benefit, and she knew it, but she thrilled to the sound of the new name that Tros had chosen for her, by the Nile, under the stars. There was something competent and gallant about her that made even old Esias stare with approval. Young — she looked almost a child against the gloom of the office wall, with the lamplight shining on her fair hair — hers was the smile of youth that knows not yet, but means to know; that did not yet, but means to do; that has felt the reckless danger-love of nothing more to lose, and all to win. And she had chosen her man, earned him, won him, knew his worth. He should learn hers. Little she guessed, yet, how he valued her, and she was likely not to learn that from his lips; Tros was no poet, no troubador, but a man of action using what he found good, for present needs and future far-viewed purpose. But that he understood her, as no one else had ever done, she began to perceive. That gave her confidence, which stole away the Ptolemy suspicion from her smile and left it clean, audacious, true.

  “You will do as Esias says.”

  She mocked him, imitating Conops: “Aye, aye, master!”

  One of his big hands seized both of hers, and she bit her lip. He was about as able to be gentle as a head-sea. But she didn’t flinch, didn’t try to withdraw her hands.

  “You have not become a courtier’s plaything. You have thrown in your lot with a man who owns no roof, no ship, and who must hack his way to what he will have — aye, and will do. You may look not to me for safety, other than as you and I together snatch it forth from danger. I live dangerously. Such is my religion. Sloth, ease, idleness — the love of safety and the fear of death — are no food for the soul. I will no more flinch from endangering you than me, if I believe we can win. But I see no sense in frightening Esias, nor in peril for its own sake. So, until we go, you will obey Esias.”

  “I will not obey him! Have I thrown away a throne to run a Jew’s errands?”

  Tros laughed. “I have run Esias’s errands — aye, and he mine — in the teeth of Rome! He has asked what! will of you, but he himself has said it. I will have you faithful. Comfort and mere obedience I can have of any boughten wench, who must obey or be whipped. But I wish to trust you as I do my own soul. If you wish that, you shall trust me also. We will have no secrets from each other, I have told you my plan. We have agreed on it. Having agreed, you obey. To the hilt, with all the mind you have, and all the marrow of your being, you will slam the meaning of my orders home into the teeth of destiny, and you will make me proud that I have such a woman to trust.”

  She stiffened her chin. “Did you hear him, Jew? I will obey because he said it. But—”

  Esias interrupted. “Never in all my life have I needed a woman to tell me what orders to give! You will go to your room and be quiet. Go now! I will send you some slaves. Examine them. Use your intelligence. Select one who is fit to serve you as Conops serves Tros. I will send you men-slaves, women-slaves and eunuchs. If you choose the right one, that one will be my wedding-gift. But if you choose the wrong one—”

  “Dealer in drabs! I have chosen a life. Do you think I need a Jew to teach me how to choose a servant? Very well, I will go to my cage. And you may try, if you will, behind my back to make the Lord Tros regret that it wasn’t you who chose his woman!”

  She laid her hand on Tros’s shoulder. “He will say I am the daughter of a drunken father, and the younger sister of two bitches whose milk is poison. What will you say?”

  “I will speak of munitions, and money, and men,” Tros answered. “There is a week’s work to be done in two nights and a day.”

  It was nearly as hard for him as for Esias to take a girl into his confidence. He was already busy with a stylus, beginning to write on waxed wood details of stores, tools and work to be done.

  “Observe this, Eli—”

  CHAPTER XXVIII. “One of the Queen’s ears”

  A man may be a murderer and faithful. Many are. A man may be a courtier, and faithful. Some are. But the courtier-murderer, disarmed and faced with the alternative of cold steel in his throat, will babble all he knows to avoid the kind of death that he has meted out to others. But first, disarm him. Armed, he believes himself an honorable man. Disarmed, he knows he has no honor.

  — From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

  There were dead rats. Some said they had fled from Tros’s trireme when it caught fire, but that didn’t account for their lying around dead, in dozens. The gloomy Olympus, clutching a purse beneath his black robe, prodded a dead rat with his taut-handled staff as he stood talking to Tros under the flare of a guttering torch, in the doorway of the smithy, where Tros was watching the most skillful armorers in the world convert old war-material to new. They were forging portable emplacements for the deadly arrow-engines saved from the burned trireme.

  “Has the Queen sent you to read my thoughts and-tell them to her?” Tros asked.

  “She didn’t send me. I came for the money of which you spoke. Esias gave it to me. Should the Queen ask, I will say I spoke with you about the stars that foretell danger from a woman.”

  Olympus could have had the money from Esias by sending his personal slave. He had another reason for coming at that hour, but it was not for nothing that even Caesar used to trust Olympus. He had taught the incredulous Caesar some of the rudiments of astrology. A learned ascetic, to whom vanity and mystery and an amused self-mockery were one, he was a good friend, but an exasperating lover of evasions and ominous hints. He went on speaking:

  “I was casting the Queen’s horoscope, on the palace roof, two hours after dark, while the chariots waited below to take her to Eleusis. They will be gay until dawn at Eleusis, partly to forget this plague that is killing hundreds. They fear plague. She fears treason. The plague serves her at the moment.”

  “Aye, and me also. My seamen would have marched unwilling.”

  Olympus stared. “It is true then that you go by road?”

  Tros nodded. He knew Olympus wouldn’t consciou
sly betray a friend but he might drop a hint to the Queen in order, after the event, to appear to have been all-knowing.

  “Three of my seamen are ill of the plague. So now the others are willing to march to the world’s end. Why else are they gay at Eleusis?”

  “Because three or four thousand Romans are already being herded on board that fleet of rotten ships. To be sent to Cassius, says the Queen, because Cassius demands it. To escape the plague, say they; for they love not Cassius, nor will they admit that they fear the mob, now that they obey the Queen. They pretend that they go of their own free will. To escape from our wrath, say the Alexandrines, who will tolerate any infamy whatever except a chariot-race swindle. And it flatters the Alexandrines to see Romans driven from the city. Over the wine at Eleusis they are casting dice to determine who shall fall heir to the Romans’ leavings.”

  Tros snorted. “As good as inviting Cassius to come and protect Romans’ property rights! Are they mad?”

  “No. Alexandrines. And the Queen’s guards, under a new commander, are already in possession, so the plunderers will be disappointed. She has sent Leander to command Pelusium — she says, because he is in debt, and might get into legal trouble in the city and therefore could be too easily bribed.”

  “And you say?”

  “That he has gone to Pelusium. I came to tell you.”

  Tros examined Olympus’s sallow face, but the eyes told nothing. No one could guess what Olympus was thinking. He had his own way of making his listener guess.

  “Were you speaking of me to the Queen?” Tros asked him.

  “Yes. We spoke of you. Then she invited me to midnight supper in her pavilion at Eleusis. But she asks too many questions.” He smiled. “She remembers too well my answers. It is never safe not to tell her the truth. I said I would rather go and talk to you, even than watch the beauty of naked bodies in lantern-light on Eleusis beach. She is intensely curious to know what the stars have to say about you and women. She and Charmion have quarreled. They are not yet reconciled.”