“Egypt, cats, mice, pyramids—but what were we talking about?” I said. “Oh, yes—the curious pictures in this place.”
The tavern was called the Murex Shell. A large picture of its namesake was painted on the outside wall, and a border of clay tiles, impressed with such shells, surrounded the doorway. Inside the tavern, however, no murex shells were to be seen, and the frescoes on the walls had nothing to do with the production of purple dye. Instead, these pictures, painted on every available surface, appeared to depict the exploits of two heroes unknown to me. One was much taller and broader than the other, a brawny giant with a fiery red beard. The smaller of the two had a snub nose and wore a gray cloak with a peaked hood. Both carried swords, and in many of the pictures, wielded them with devastating results.
“What did you say they were called?” I said.
“Fafhrd—”
“Yes, I heard you say that the first time. I thought you were clearing your throat.”
“Very funny, Gordianus. I repeat: Fafhrd. An exotic name, to be sure. They say he was a veritable giant and came from the far north, beyond the Ister River, beyond Dacia, beyond even the wild lands of Germania.”
“But there are no lands north of Germania—are there?”
“None that any man I know has ever visited. Still, they say that’s where Fafhrd came from.”
“Fafhrd! Fafhrd!” I tried saying the name a few times, until a nod from Antipater indicated that I had it right. “And the other one? This so-called Gray Mouser?”
“He seems to have been a local boy, growing up on the streets of Tyre. Darker and smaller and wirier than his companion, but equally adept with a sword. Indeed, it is said that the two of them were the finest swordsmen of their day.”
“And when was that?”
“Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser lived in Tyre about a hundred years ago. My grandfather met them once. According to him, they were not merely the greatest swordsmen of their day, but of all time.”
“A bold claim. Why have I never heard of them?”
Antipater shrugged. “I suppose they are best known here in Tyre, where they made a great impression on the locals. And in Tyre, they are best remembered here, inside the four walls of the Murex Shell, where they spent a great deal of time drinking and wenching—”
“This smelly little place is a virtual shrine to them!” I laughed, looking at all the pictures on the walls.
Antipater sniffed. “Just because you never heard the tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, growing up in far-off Rome—”
“But Teacher, you and I have been traveling all over the Greek-speaking world for over a year—to Ephesus and Halicarnassus and Olympia, and to all those islands in the Aegean—and I don’t recall ever seeing a single image or inscription about either of these fellows, anywhere. No priest ever invokes them. No poet I know of—including you!—recounts their exploits. Could it be that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are just local legends, known only here in Tyre?”
Antipater’s grumbling was as good as an admission that I was right. But even as a callow teenager, I could imagine that the heroes of an old man’s youth must be particularly dear to him, so I desisted from casting more doubt on the renown of these supposedly great swordsmen.
“It’s funny,” I said, “what an odd couple they make. In some of the pictures, you might think you’re seeing a tall god and his dwarfish servant, and in others a diminutive sorcerer and the lumbering automaton who does his bidding.”
“Very imaginative, Gordianus,” said Antipater sourly. We had both emptied our cups, and he called for the serving girl to bring more wine.
“So what are we seeing in these picture?” I said, striving to show more respect.
Antipater looked elsewhere and pouted for a bit, but his natural urge to play the pedagogue, along with the chance to revisit one of his boyhood fascinations, was too powerful for him to resist. “Well, since you ask … in that picture over there, we see their encounter with the Sidonian smugglers; and there, their legendary run-in with the Cilician pirates, and the rescue of the kidnapped Cappadocian princess. That image shows their encounter with the female Cyprian slave-dealer—how formidable she looks!—and there we see the rendezvous that turned into an ambush. And there, the Idumaean brigands come galloping out of the desert, in search of the priceless tomb-filched Egyptian jewels that no one ever saw.”
“And yet, we see them in the picture.”
“Artistic license, Gordianus!”
“What about that picture?” I pointed to a particularly bawdy image above the widow.
“Ah, there we see pictured the night that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser together enjoyed the lascivious favors of Laodice of Egypt, who afterwards sent a troop of Nubian eunuchs to behead them. But our heroes escaped, as you can see, taking the ebony chest of Laodice with them—which turned out to contain not only her fabulous collection of aphrodisiacs, but the very cup from which Socrates drank the hemlock.”
“Fantastic!” I said. “And over on that wall—those images seem to represent a whole other set of adventures.”
“Very astute of you. Yes, those images depict exploits of a more supernatural nature. Thus you see the occasion when the two swordsmen consulted the strange demon called Ningauble, which as you can see is depicted as a fat-bellied figure wearing a cloak with a shadowy hood from which protrude seven eyes on seven writhing stalks.”
“How terrifying!”
“In fact, Ningauble of the Seven Eyes proved to be a friendly demon and a sage counselor. It was Ningauble who dispatched the two on their greatest journey, a trek to the east, far beyond the snowy peaks of the Lebanon Mountains. For a while they followed the legendary route of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand. Then they headed even farther into the unknown, arriving at last at the Lost City, and then at the Citadel Called Mist, where they encountered their greatest foe, an adept of truly terrifying magical powers.” Antipater’s eyes sparkled as he recounted the details.
I nodded, taking in the fabulous images. “And what about that picture over there? It looks as if the two are taking part in a battle. A famous battle?”
“Yes, that would be the siege of Tyre by Alexander the Great, during which the two fought valiantly to defend the city. Fafhrd is shown manning the walls and heaving stone blocks onto the besieger’s ships, while the Gray Mouser is depicted underwater, filing through the anchor chains. All around them swords clash and arrows fly—”
“But Teacher, didn’t you say that these two lived in Tyre a hundred years ago?”
“Yes.”
“And wasn’t the siege by Alexander a hundred years before that?” I smiled, because for once I actually remembered one of Antipater’s history lessons.
He coughed. “Yes, that is correct.”
“Then how could they possibly—?”
“Again, artistic license!” he insisted. “Or … it may be that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser truly were in Tyre at events a hundred years apart.”
I tried not to smirk.
“Not everything in this world is as straightforward as you hardheaded Romans would like to think,” said Antipater. “It is certain that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were in Tyre a hundred years ago—my own grandfather attested to that fact, as do all these pictures around you—but no one knows whence they came, or where they went. There are those who believe that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser arrived from a realm outside of ordinary time and space, a place of magic, if you will, and so it may be that they were present here in Tyre not just a hundred years ago, but also a hundred years before that.”
“So why not a hundred years later? Which means … they might be here today!” I made an exaggerated show of peering at our fellow patrons, most of whom were quite shabby. A few cloaked figures in the tavern might have passed for the Gray Mouser, but no red-bearded giant was to be seen.
Antipater glowered, and I felt a bit ashamed of teasing him. To distract him, I pointed to the images that had started me on this discussion. They were locat
ed to either side of the door by which we had entered. “Those are the two pictures I find most curious.”
Antipater raised a bristling white eyebrow. “Yes? And why is that? Describe!” Making a pupil enumerate the details of a statue or painting was a common tutorial exercise, one which Antipater had required of me often in our visits to temples and shrines—but never before in a tavern.
“Very well, Teacher. Each picture has two parts. In the first image, the one on the left, Fafhrd has a beautiful girl on his lap, a girl wearing a Cretan-revival dress that leaves her breasts entirely bare—but in the adjacent panel, it’s a giant sow on his lap. Since the sow is wearing the same scanty outfit as the girl, it seems we’re meant to think the girl has turned into the sow! And there, in the matching picture on the other side of the doorway, the Gray Mouser is coupled with another lovely maid, but in the next panel, she’s become a giant snail. What sort of tale is that? Heroes copulating with pigs and snails! And why are such unseemly images given such prominent placement, where no one visiting the tavern could possibly miss them? What a thing to see as you’re leaving, with a bellyful of wine and your head in a whirl!”
“Those pictures are especially noteworthy,” said Antipater, “because the events they depict happened right here, in the Murex Shell.”
“You must be joking! Women were transformed into pigs and snails on this very spot?”
“The fact is indisputable. My grandfather was a witness.”
“Yes, I’m sure he was, but—”
“They were the victims of a curse, you see—Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, I mean. Any girl they embraced turned into a loathsome creature before their very eyes. It was to banish this curse that they set out on the quest that would lead them first to Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, and then, after many perils, to the Citadel Called Mist and their confrontation with the magical adept. But the story began right here, in the Murex Shell, with the tavern wench who turned into a sow. And the adept responsible for that curse had his origin here in the city of Tyre, as well. And where do you think the adept learned his sorcery?”
“I have no idea.”
“From books that came from a private library right here in the city—strange volumes, collectively known by their owner as the Books of Secret Wisdom. Scrolls from many times and places, all full of esoteric knowledge to be found nowhere else. As a boy, I heard my grandfather speak of those books in a whisper, but when I asked if one could read them, he said they were far too dangerous. He told me to stick to my Homer instead.”
“And a good thing you did, for like Homer, you became a poet.”
“Yes, a poet of great renown; the greatest poet in the world, some say.” Antipater sighed. He had many attributes, but modesty was not among them. “Ah, but what a different life I might have led, if as a boy I’d had access to the Books of Secret Wisdom! The power contained in those volumes is said to be beyond human reckoning. Not the power of the poet to entrance an audience with laughter and pathos—no, I mean the power of sorcery, able to bend the very fabric of reality!”
We had encountered a bit of magic on our journey, as in our encounter with the witch of Corinth. I shuddered at the memory and drank deeply from my cup.
Antipater finished his cup at the same time and called for more wine. I had never seen him in such a wild mood. “And now,” he said, “after a lifetime away, I return to the city of my birth, a wiser man than when I left—and a craftier, more devious man, as well, I dare say. More determined. Less fearful.”
“Fearful of what?”
“The Books of Secret Wisdom! Don’t you understand, Gordianus? That’s why we’ve come here to Tyre.”
I frowned. “I thought Tyre was just a stop on the way between Rhodes and Babylon. That, and the place you were born, of course. It makes sense that you’d want to do a bit of reminiscing—”
“Oh, no, Gordianus, we are here for a very specific purpose. We have come to the city of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the heroes of my childhood. Their adventures meant everything to me as a boy. And their greatest adventure brought them face-to-face with the magic to be found in the Books of Secret Wisdom—which I intend to possess at last! I’ve already taken steps toward acquiring them. By this time tomorrow—ah, but here’s that pretty serving girl!”
He held his empty cup toward the girl. Was it the wine I had drunk, or was she looking more voluptuous than ever? Her smile was very friendly.
I swallowed a mouthful of wine. “By this time tomorrow … what?”
Antipater smiled. “You’ll see. Or rather, you won’t see!” He laughed aloud, sounding so strange that I hurriedly gulped down the whole cup of wine.
The next morning, in the upstairs room we had taken at the Murex Shell, I woke with a terrible hangover. Worse than the pounding in my head was the nattering of Antipater, who seemed completely unaffected by the wine he had consumed the night before.
“Up, up, Gordianus! We are in Tyre and must make the most of our brief stay here.”
“Brief?” I groaned and covered my head with a pillow. “I thought we might stay here for a while … in this nice, quiet room—”
“Ha! Once I achieve my intention, we will leave Tyre at once. So let us play tourist while we can.” He yanked the pillow away and practically kicked me out of bed.
An hour later, with some food in my belly and fresh sea air filling my lungs, I set out with Antipater for a tour of the city. Tyre was not as grand as some of the places we had seen in our travels, but it was one of the oldest cities we had visited and full of history. It was seafarers from Tyre who first sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules (known to them by his Phoenician name, Melkart); it was Queen Dido of Tyre who founded the city of Carthage, which once rivaled Rome. Carthage was no more, but Tyre still stood, though changed forever by the conquest of Alexander the Great.
“Alexander found the city an island, and left it a peninsula,” said Antipater. By winding streets we had arrived at the highest point of the city, from which Antipater pointed to the massive earth-and-stone causeway that connected the erstwhile island on which we stood to the mainland. “Alexander besieged the island fortress not just by sea but also by land, building that mole out to the island so that he could bring up huge battering rams. Seven months it took him to bring Tyre to its knees, but in the end he succeeded, and marked his conquest with a celebration over there, in the ancient Temple of Melkart. Thus did Tyre become part of the Greek-speaking world, and has been so ever since, sometimes under the sway of the Seleucids, sometimes under the Ptolemies of Egypt. But forty years ago, Tyre regained her independence and began to issue her own coinage again—the famous shekel of Tyre. Once more, she is a proud and independent city-state, and may remain so—if she can elude the clutches of Rome.” This was not the first time Antipater had expressed a degree of anti-Roman sentiment.
By winding streets we descended to the city’s waterfront, which teemed with activity. Tyre is blessed with two natural harbors, one to the north and one to the south, and both were filled with ships. The wharves were crowded with busy sailors and merchants overseeing the slaves who loaded and unloaded cargoes. The waterfront taverns were doing a brisk business (including the Murex Shell, which was off the northern harbor). Away from the waterfront, in paved enclosures, dyers went about the work of spreading wet green cloth. According to Antipater, the hot sunlight would turn the purple to green.
“How can that be?” I said. “It sounds like magic.”
“Does it? Yes, I suppose it does. But we shall come back later, and you’ll see that it’s a fact.” He smiled. “One way or another, you shall see some magic done this day!”
I looked at him sidelong. “Teacher, what are you talking about?”
“Last night, after I put you to bed, I went back downstairs and made contact with the fellow I’d been hoping to meet.”
“What fellow?”
“The man who knows the man who currently owns the Books of Secret Wisdom. We are to meet him tonight, in th
e Murex Shell.”
“And then what?”
“You’ll see. Or not see!”
My memory was muddled by wine, but I vaguely recalled Antipater uttering a similar turn of phrase the previous night. What was my old tutor up to?
We continued our tour of the city, which was actually quite small and easily traversed on foot. Having so little land to build on, the Tyrians built up, and in the central part of the island the tightly packed residential tenements were five or six or even seven stories tall. This made Tyre an even taller city than Rome, and many of the narrow, winding streets were quite dark, even at midday. The areas more open to the sun were largely occupied by the dye manufactories, and in those neighborhoods the air was the foulest I had ever smelled in a city. This had something to do with the various solutions and compounds involved in the production of the purple dye, which emitted powerful odors.
To get a bit of sunlight and fresh air, we took a stroll on Alexander’s causeway, but Antipater declined to walk all the way to the mainland. I could see that a considerable town had grown up along the shore, but Antipater assured me there was nothing of interest to see in the drab suburbs of the mainland. Instead we turned back and made our way to the Temple of Melkart. The place was musty and dark and smelled of mildew, but it did contain an eternal flame (not unlike the hearth of Vesta back in Rome), as well as some remarkable statues and paintings of the god I knew as Hercules, who was Tyre’s most venerated deity.
On our way back to the Murex Shell, we stopped at the square where the dyers had earlier spread their cloth, and I was amazed to see that the green had indeed turned to purple as it dried.
“Like magic!” I whispered.
Antipater only smiled and nodded.
That night at the Murex Shell, in a small private room off the tavern, we dined on a salad of octopus and hearts of palm followed by fish stew, served by the same pretty blonde who had brought our wine the night before. Her name, I learned, was Galatea.
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