Wayward Son

by Tom Pollack

  Cain grimaced but found himself unable to speak as a coughing spasm took hold.

  “No matter,” said Tanith. “You are safe now. My father, Ahiram, is the captain of this vessel. We are Phoenicians, from Tyre. We will care for you. Can you understand me?”

  Gratefully, Cain signaled comprehension, closed his eyes, and let himself drift to sleep.

  ***

  The Phoenicians, Cain found, were as good as their word. By the time they reached their homeport of Tyre, he had fully recovered from his ordeal at sea. Naturally, Captain Ahiram and Tanith had inquired about his past in Egypt. Cain summarized his experiences, saying that he had led a successful career as a merchant before becoming unwittingly caught up in a plot against the pharaoh. Judged guilty of treason, his life had been spared because of his previous services to the monarch. As a reduced punishment, he was flogged and then consigned to the sea.

  As he recounted this narrative several days after his rescue, Cain could see that Tanith hung on his every word. If she had a husband, he thought, she would surely be living in Tyre, and probably supervising the household and raising their children. So it was very likely that she was still unmarried. But why, with her gazelle-like grace and voluptuous figure, would she still be unattached?

  Learning that Cain had some experience in seafaring and in trade, Captain Ahiram gladly showed the castaway around the ship. A round boat merchant vessel, she was about eighty feet in length and powered by a single bank of oars and a small sail. Her professional crew numbered twenty: fourteen oarsmen, a cook, and five marines. Tanith was attended by a single maidservant. At the stern were two oars that served as a rudder. Attached to the stem post at the prow was a large clay container called an amphora, which held an ample supply of drinking water. Most of the deck space was occupied by similar ceramic containers, held in place by sturdy railings. Inside these vessels was the ship’s reason for being: the trade goods that had made Phoenicia one of the wealthiest civilizations in the entire region.

  Ahiram explained that they were returning from the western edge of the Nile delta, when they rescued Cain. It had been a prosperous journey. Outbound from Tyre on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, they had been laden with cedarwood, embroideries, fine linen, wine, salt, dried fish, and glazed pottery. Now the cargo containers held papyrus, ivory, spices, and incense—all of which could be sold in Tyre for a handsome profit. Despite his recent debacle with the pharaoh, trading was in Cain’s blood, and he listened eagerly to Ahiram’s recital.

  It took them ten days to cover the route to Tyre. Although they hugged the shoreline for the journey’s later stages, Ahiram was not at all reluctant to shave off the distance by plotting a more direct course on the open sea and by traveling at night. He explained to Cain that the Phoenicians had steadily improved their navigation techniques, using a detailed knowledge of the night sky at various seasons of the year. Listening politely, Cain recalled the years of his great wandering during which he had learned to navigate by similar means.

  As Cain spent more time with his rescuer, he discovered that he had a great deal in common with the beautiful young woman from Tyre. Like Cain, Tanith had traveled far and possessed an innate curiosity about other cultures and customs. She entertained him with amusing stories about the ports she had visited, and he regaled her with some tales of his own about life on the Nile. The economics of trade were second nature to Tanith, and Cain quickly recognized a merchant mentality akin to his own.

  While Ahiram was communicative, even chatty, on the subjects of seafaring and trade, he remained somewhat aloof when it came to Cain and Tanith’s growing attachment. They seemed to be in constant company during the day and, Ahiram suspected, for much of the night. Ahiram was too much of a realist to believe that he could rein in his daughter. Even as a child, she had displayed a forceful, independent spirit. But Ahiram was also privately skeptical of Cain’s account of events in Egypt. Why had Ramesses spared his life? Plots against the pharaoh, in Ahiram’s experience, were always punished with death. Ahiram suspected there was another dimension to Cain’s past. Perhaps he had even been a Hebrew slave. After all, when his crew pulled him from the water his body clearly bore the marks of a severe flogging. Who was this mysterious man for whom his fearless daughter had dove into the sea?

  No such misgivings troubled Tanith, though. Both she and Cain sensed that their shipboard romance was ripening into deep attachment. Yet their intimacy was not unfettered. Cain did not confide the secrets of his past, and neither did Tanith speak of the ill-fated, arranged marriage that had been dissolved in Tyre seven years before when it was discovered she was barren. A wife who could not produce an heir was unacceptable in Phoenician culture, and Ahiram was forced to bear the shame of taking his daughter back to live under his roof. The short-lived marriage was one reason why father and daughter spent as little time as possible in Tyre. They preferred a seafaring life, where wagging tongues could cause them less pain.

  Besides their conversations about enchanting ports of call and the economics of trade, Cain and Tanith also delved into several lengthy discussions of the new Phoenician alphabet. It had been many decades since Cain had been in contact with Phoenicians, although of course he had visited their city-states on some of his Mediterranean excursions as a trader. Now he learned, to his amazement, that they had invented a writing system vastly superior to Egyptian hieroglyphs.

  “Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth, he,” Tanith drilled him.

  Cain promptly repeated the names of the first five Phoenician letters, and then used a makeshift stylus to inscribe the symbols on a papyrus sheet.

  “You have an excellent memory!” Tanith complimented him.

  “You are an inspiring teacher,” he diplomatically replied.

  “All right, my handsome pupil. Write me the symbols for the next five, and say the letters aloud.”

  Cain pronounced the letters as he wrote them: waw, zayin, heth, teth, yodh.

  “Who invented this marvel?”

  “If it was a single individual, he or she is not known,” Tanith replied. “But for my part, I think it was a woman.”

  “How so?” Cain asked with a hint of teasing.

  “Because women are more economical than men. Look at how much papyrus our alphabet saves!” she glowed.

  Once they put in to the island of Tyre, Ahiram courteously invited Cain to stay with the family for the week’s layover. The city’s twin harbors, one on the island’s north side and the other to the south, had made it one of the great trading centers of the Mediterranean. Contact with Egypt had commenced soon after Tyre’s foundation, some fifteen hundred years before. Perhaps its best-known product was Tyrian purple dye, derived from the shell of a native sea snail. Outlandishly expensive and produced only in Tyre, the dye had become the exclusive emblem of royalty and nobility, for only the extremely wealthy could afford it. The purple powder had even given the Phoenicians their name, courtesy of trade with Greece, where the word phoinike meant “the land of the purple.”

  Cain and Tanith spent the days exploring the city and its environs, while Ahiram attended to commercial transactions, winding up affairs from the previous voyage and preparing for the next one. The city had grown considerably since Cain’s last visit. In the bazaar, for example, there were now literally hundreds of food stalls. Grilled fish with garlic, large tureens of steaming lentil soup, and baskets heaped with freshly baked bread emitted mouthwatering aromas. The busy hum of a thousand conversations was punctuated by the shrill cries of vendors hawking their wares. Stately men, attired in their belted, pleated skirts with multicolored, embroidered borders, strolled among the stalls. Even in the warm sunshine, they wore their cone-shaped hats. Women wore long tunics tied at the waist with tasseled belts. Like Tanith, they braided their hair down the back with two shorter braids on each side. But Cain saw no woman who could compare to Tanith in his eyes.

  Cargo for the new venture began to accumulate in short order, as Ahiram’s crew loaded gra
in, Phoenician glass, and gaudily embroidered textiles onto his ship. Cain helped with the purchasing, and his negotiating ability was welcome to the captain, allaying his apprehensions somewhat about the new addition to his team. This would be the longest expedition the captain had ever undertaken. In addition to Cyprus, Lycia on the southern coast of Asia Minor, the island of Crete, and the Greek mainland near Athens, Ahiram had set his sights on the western Mediterranean, where the prize commodity was silver from Spain. After that, if all went well, he would venture outside the inland sea, all the way northward to Britain, in quest of tin. This metal, smelted with copper from Cyprus, had already yielded bronze for the Phoenicians, another mainstay in their prospering economy.

  The night before departure, Cain improvised an Egyptian senet board from a piece of wood in Ahiram’s workshop and taught Tanith how to play over goblets of sweet white wine. To his astonishment, she beat him on the very first try.

  “Beginner’s luck,” he murmured with a slight smile.

  “Nonsense, my sweet,” she countered, but her liquid brown eyes softened the retort. “You too are an inspiring teacher, that’s all.”

  After a few more games, they strode to the large stone terrace of Ahiram’s estate, which enjoyed a panoramic view of the water separating the island city from the mainland. Large flowerpots contained a profusion of lilies, poppies, camelias, and roses, affording the terrace a riot of color in the daytime and a gentle mosaic of scents by night. A gigantic full moon, just gliding from copper into gold, hung in the eastern sky. Cain drew Tanith close.

  “Where are we headed together?” he asked her.

  “I do not know our destination,” she whispered as his arms encircled her. “It is the journey that matters.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The Voyage from Tyre to Cyprus, circa 1230 BC

  FAVORED BY A STEADY southeast wind, they made the 125-mile journey from Tyre to the large island of Cyprus in only three days. Ahiram’s oarsmen were grateful for the respite, although the captain, ever mindful of discipline, ensured that they were kept occupied with shipboard maintenance tasks.

  On the second day out, the first mate was supervising a small detachment of marines on a cargo inspection. Discovering a faulty seal on one of the grain containers, he opened the amphora only to confront the beady eyes of a pair of rats, who scurried across the deck in search of a new hiding place. Cain, looking on, made a mental note to suggest that Ahiram acquire a cat or two in Cyprus. As he well knew, the Egyptians had used these animals for centuries to protect their grain from rodents. In fact, cats were so prized in Egypt that they were mummified, buried lovingly with their owners, and sometimes even worshipped.

  Cain thought it strange, but in all his travels as a seafaring trader he had never visited Cyprus. After he admitted this to Tanith, who had been to the island often with her father, she assumed with alacrity the role of storyteller and guide.

  “Cyprus is very ancient,” she told him the next day as they sat under an awning at the stern of the ship. “It is said that the island had water wells seven thousand years ago, when villages first sprang up. The Greeks have been colonizing there for several centuries now. We Phoenicians share stories with them about our greatest goddess, Astarte. The Greeks call her Aphrodite. Like the Greeks, we believe that she was born on Cyprus.”

  Cain smiled. From their exploration of Tyre, he knew that Tanith was a fervent devotee of Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of love, fertility, and war. When his companion shyly lowered her eyes, Cain decided it would be diplomatic to change the subject.

  “What were you sketching so busily this morning?” he inquired. One of Tanith’s many accomplishments was her talent as an illustrator. Since she favored marine subjects, she had plenty of inspiration on her voyages. Opening a protective metal tube that lay beside her on deck, she showed Cain a sketch of a smiling bottlenose dolphin. The likeness was uncanny. The unfinished shape was so vibrant that it looked as if it might leap from the papyrus roll onto the deck.

  “But we haven’t seen any of these so far on the voyage, have we?”

  “No, but all my past sightings of them are engraved on my memory since they are so graceful.”

  Cain stretched out lazily on the deck in the warm sunshine.

  “Tell me a story,” he murmured.

  “There is a famous tale about dolphins told by the Greeks. It’s about a poet and musician named Arion. I wonder if you have ever heard it?”

  “No, please go on.”

  “Well, Arion, who lived once upon a time in Corinth in Greece, decided he would enter a poetry competition in Sicily. So he traveled westward and, lo and behold, won the contest. The Sicilians awarded him rich prizes, and these were loaded onto the ship that would bring him back to Greece. But fate had other plans.”

  She was a natural storyteller, Cain thought. A woman like Tanith should have the chance to beguile her children with bedtime tales and lullabies.

  “And then what happened?” he urged.

  “You know yourself that life at sea can hold many surprises. The greedy sailors plotted to kill Arion and steal his new riches. They gave the musician a choice: either kill himself with his own dagger and be buried on land at their next port of call, or throw himself into the water, where he would surely perish. You know that the Greeks have a horror of remaining unburied.”

  Cain thought fleetingly of Pharaoh, reflecting dryly that the monarch had neglected to accord him any choices—not even unpalatable ones.

  “And then,” Tanith continued, “how do you think Arion answered them?” Cain furrowed his brow in curiosity and gestured for her to tell him more.

  “Even under such pressure, he remained calm. All Arion requested was permission to sing one final song. He took up his lyre in praise of Apollo, the god whom the Greeks revere as the patron of poetry and music. The song was so beautiful that a school of dolphins collected around the ship. I can picture them, Cain. Did you know that dolphins sometimes kiss each other on the beak?”

  Cain shook his head in disbelief.

  “Well, they do. They love both music and humans, which perhaps amounts to the same thing. If Arion saw such a kiss, maybe the sight made him leap into the water. Because, according to the story, that’s exactly what he did after the song’s final notes.”

  “So he drowned among the dolphins?” Cain asked.

  “Not at all, my dearest. One of the dolphins offered its back to Arion and saved him. His rescuer took him to the southern tip of the Peloponnesus. And then, through the blessings of Apollo, the dolphin was transformed into a constellation. On clear nights, you can see her in the sky.”

  “Before the dolphin set him on her back, did she drag him by the hair, by any chance? And by the way, how do you know that the dolphin was a she?” smiled Cain.

  Tanith shrugged her shoulders casually, just as the lighthouse on the coast of Cyprus hove into view. “How do you know she wasn’t?”

  ***

  They stayed in Cyprus four days. Cain and Tanith spent time sightseeing, while Ahiram supervised cargo off-loading and purchased a consignment of copper ore, for which Cyprus was famous. Copper, the principal element for the durable alloy bronze, was highly prized for weapons manufacture in Asia Minor and on Crete, the next two stops on the ship’s itinerary. In his negotiations, Ahiram also ensured that the suppliers would provide him with an even larger quantity of ore on the return voyage, for delivery back in Tyre.

  By now it was past midsummer. There was no time to waste, since the sailing season in the Mediterranean would end in early October. Ahiram planned to spend the winter months in Greece with his ship in dry dock, then set out the following spring for the westward excursion to Spain and then past Gibraltar into the open ocean, northward to Britain. With luck and hard work, he could figure on making the return journey to homeport in Tyre by the end of the following season. It was an ambitious itinerary, but Phoenician mariners lived ambition as an article of their faith. After all, Phoenicians had
circumnavigated Africa before Ahiram was born.

  Their next port was Patara in Lycia, located near the mouth of the yellow-hued Xanthus river on the southwest coast of Asia Minor. The water owed its peculiar color to the golden tint of the alluvial soil. Here Ahiram moored his cargo ship in the harbor, transferring the goods for trade to a barge for delivery upriver in the town of Xanthus. During the transfer, Cain admired the speedy, well-coordinated teams of dockworkers as they passed the amphoras from hand to hand to the tune of sea shanties sung in chorus.

  It was in Lycia that the travelers first heard of a lengthy war unfolding hundreds of miles to the northwest. The Greeks, it was said, had united under the leadership of a Mycenaean king, Agamemnon, to lay siege to the wealthy city of Troy on the coast of the Aegean Sea. Two Lycian chieftains named Glaucus and Sarpedon had allied their troops with the Trojans. Cain and Tanith speculated on the outcome of the struggle. They suspected they would hear far more about the conflict after they arrived in Greece.

  “What is said to have been the cause of this war?” Ahiram wanted to know one evening, as they sat together enjoying some of the local wine.

  “Some are blaming it on the abduction of a Greek queen by a Trojan prince,” Tanith replied. “The queen, named Helen, was the wife of Agamemnon’s brother. Prince Paris was the son of Priam, the Trojan king.”

  “You don’t really believe that story, do you?” Cain asked teasingly.

  “Why not? Are women not worth fighting for?” Tanith answered with a smile.

  “Some are, and some are not.” Cain answered with measured deliberation, as if he were methodically assessing the issue. “But from what they are saying about the gold and horses of Troy, I am willing to bet this war is being waged for wealth, and not for a woman.”

  “Nevertheless,” Tanith rejoined, “you have to admit that the Greek version makes for a good story.”