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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Talbot Mundy's 'Queen Cleopatra' is a gripping historical fiction novel that transports readers back to the ancient world of Egypt, immersing them in the tumultuous reign of one of history's most infamous rulers. Mundy's vivid descriptions and attention to detail bring the landscapes and characters to life, making the reader feel as if they are actually witnessing the events unfold before their eyes. The book's narrative is intricately woven with political intrigue, betrayal, and the struggle for power, providing a fascinating insight into the complexities of Cleopatra's rule. Mundy's prose is both engaging and compelling, drawing readers into a world of opulence and danger. Set against the backdrop of ancient Egypt, 'Queen Cleopatra' seamlessly blends historical fact with fictional storytelling, creating a gripping tale that will captivate readers from beginning to end. Talbot Mundy's deep knowledge of history and his ability to craft a compelling narrative make 'Queen Cleopatra' a must-read for anyone interested in historical fiction or ancient Egypt. With its richly drawn characters and immersive storytelling, this novel is sure to leave a lasting impression on its readers.
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Queen Cleopatra
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I "A king's ship! But which king's?"
How often and with how great a longing I have tried to read the heavens! Yet the sea is nearer; can I understand that? Land is underfoot; about me is a host of other men; and I myself am nearest to myself of all things. If I find it difficult to know myself and to discover what my next act ought to be, is there a likelihood that I can read another's heart or know the meaning of the sky? I doubt—I welcome doubt when men say this or that of any one except themselves. And when they speak about themselves, however solemnly, I wonder whether they know any more of them than I of me. —Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
CLEOPATRA yawned. The rising sun, with a hint in its hue of the heat it had left behind in Asia, began brightening the gilt and marble coloring of the harbor water, streaking it with silver, making spots of gorgeous color where the seaweed and the scum and flotsam drifted. Through the windows, the masts of a hundred ships appeared like pen-strokes in the haze. Three crows came and perched on the marble balcony rail, alert and impudent, as Cleopatra jumped from her bed and came out under the awning, stretching herself.
"Charmian!" she called. "Oh, Charmian!"
Charmian entered through the Persian curtains at the rear of the room, wearing one of the new-fashioned Indian cotton dresses with a pale blue fringe that well offset her coppery golden hair. For a while the two gazed seaward, arms about each other's shoulders. Then:
"I had a dream," said Cleopatra, half closing her eyes to recall it. "This palace was mine, and I could see all Egypt. It was mine, too. Somebody—I don't know who—had banished Ptolemy and Arsinoe with all their brood of eunuchs. He had given me the reins, and he was watching me. He wasn't a god, and he wasn't Apollodorus, or Diomedes, or Olympus. It was a true dream, not a nightmare."
She spoke Greek with the broad Macedonian vowel sounds and the eclectic choice of words of an accomplished linguist.
"Any fool can die," she went on. "I am not afraid of their poisons and daggers."
"Then what do you fear?" asked Charmian.
"To die at the wrong moment."
Seven more crows joined the three on the railing.
"They are talking again of making you marry Ptolemy," said Charmian. "They held a conference last night that did not break up until an hour or two ago."
"Who told you?"
"Lollianè. She had it from Apollodorus. He had it from Theodotus, who told Apollodorus to tell you."
"So it comes from my brother's tutor, does it? Well, do you see those crows?" said Cleopatra. "I would rather trust them than Theodotus. What else did they say at the conference? Have they any news?"
"None—only yesterday's, that Pompey has defeated Caius Julius Caesar. That puts them in a quandary, because you lent Pompey fifty ships, which should make Pompey your friend. And Rome's treasury must be empty. Pompey will have no other way of rewarding his legions than to swoop down and seize the wealth of Egypt. He will probably support you. That was what the talk was all about. There was nothing else to discuss, with that dread hanging over them. So they decided the best thing to do is to carry out your father's will in every detail, marry you to Ptolemy, and make it difficult for Pompey to befriend you without recognizing your brother and, of course, themselves."
"What they do to my dead body, only their own vileness may dictate," said Cleopatra. "While I live it is mine and it is I who dispose of it. No. Not to the highest bidder, Charmian. Strange how you virgins think of nothing but the highest bidder! My brain and my body are all that I have to fight with, but they are good weapons."
Charmian nodded. "But they say," she went on, "that, as far as the law is concerned, the marriage could be effected without your being present. There is ample precedent. Some contended last night that a brother and sister marriage is a good thing, because inbreeding tends to fix the type of royalty. The priests say the ancient Egyptians practiced it."
"This is modern Egypt," Cleopatra answered. "You speak, Charmian, as if you agree with them."
"No. I am reporting to you. And they say, if you refuse, they may marry Arsinoe to Ptolemy, put them on the throne together and repudiate you."
Charmian followed Cleopatra's gaze seaward. There were a thousand sounds; all Alexandria was stirring. Not two hundred paces from the palace windows melons were being unloaded from a barge to an accompanying thwacking of an overseer's stick reminding a slave-gang that the night was over. Beyond the wharves and the crisscrossed spars and masts the calkers' hammers had begun. The guard changed at the gate below; the clang of arms resounded, followed by the retreating tramp of the men who had been relieved.
But sound travels strangely over water, and particularly when the sea is still, with that oily sheen on it that foretells beat. Totally distinct from all the other sounds, seeming to come now from this direction, now from that, there was a pulsation, suggesting a hint of martial music.
"A ship, I suppose," remarked Charmian after a long pause.
"Do you think they are making that noise to their gods?" suggested Cleopatra. "What extraordinary gods the sailors worship! If I were a god, and sailors made that noise to me, I would send a tempest!"
"Look," exclaimed Charmian, "there goes the harbor master."
"Ready to sell the port to the first strong bidder, or to plunder the first weak one," Cleopatra commented without changing her expression or her tone of voice, but rather as if she were memorizing facts for future reference.
The great marble watch-tower on the Isle of Pharos—like a gleaming phantom nearly five hundred feet tall—was just beginning to be visible as the sun sucked up the mist. A stumpy ship, as big but not so graceful as Cleopatra's royal barge, possessed of prodigious overhangs that made her pitch to the slightest swell, got up anchor with a deal of shouting and made toward the harbor mouth. The oars hit the water unevenly—sulkily—as if the gang were half awake. As sharp as the crack of trodden seaweed came the whip on naked shoulders, and the ship veered off her course a moment when the slaves quickened the time unevenly; then, having eaten enough punishment, they swung together and the harbor master's wake became a thing of reasonable dignity.
More leisurely, but with almost as much shouting, two long war-ships, each with two banks of oars, cast off their warps and followed, keeping their distance, line abreast, as if they preferred to look at what the mist might bring forth before deciding what to do. They had no beaks and they hardly resembled war-ships, except for groups of archers standing near the bow; and they had the same long overhangs as the harbor master's craft, that possibly were good for estuary work but that suggested neither comfort nor safety when driving into long seas. Their oars thumped rhythmically, but the noise did not obliterate that other, approaching sound.
Suddenly Cleopatra caught her breath, for never educated Greek lived who did not thrill to the challenge of beauty.
A light air from the westward lifted the gossamer curtain of mist and the sun blazed on a golden prow, shaped like a serpent that raised its glittering head against a purple sail. A ship whose sides were all vermilion, except where white foam boiling from her bow uncovered flashes of gleaming metal below the water-line, came head-on toward the harbor mouth, her long oars sparkling as they smote the blue seas into swirling streaks of green and white.
"Oh!" Cleopatra gasped. "Oh! Any life is worth living when things like this happen!"
Armed men were in the ship's bow—great men in helmets. Under the curve of the enormous purple fore-sail could be seen the figure of the helmsman leaning his weight against the steering oar, with a bigger man, the captain of the ship, beside him. Aloft, perched high on the foremast was a cup-shaped nest that shone as if built of bronze, the heads of men protruding over its brim.
"Surely no Roman ship! No Roman has such taste as that! A king's ship! But which king's?"
Cleopatra's eyes were glittering. Whatever was royal and brave thrilled her to the point where emotion, ceasing, became contact with the gods. She seemed something more than woman in that moment.
From behind her, through the wide opening between room and balcony, six women came and stood with fruit and cakes on silver dishes and milk in an alabaster goblet.
They tried to call her attention but she dismissed them with a gesture—then changed her mind suddenly and seized two handfuls of the cakes, which she threw to the crows. She watched the birds pounce and fly away, and for about two minutes after that her attention was divided between the oncoming ship and one crow that devoured its cake on a near-by roof. The bird opened its beak wide, fluttered and fell dead.
"Whose ship?" Cleopatra repeated. Charmian did not answer.
The long ship swerved until the after-sail came into full view and the rowers' beads all along one side were visible. And now the noise explained itself—cymbals, drums and harps under the break of the bow, where the big man on the poop could see them and set the time with a staff that he held in his right hand.
"Sixty oars to a bank, and three banks!" Cleopatra said, counting. "And, oh, they move like music! Charmian, did you ever see such grandeur expressed in anything? Whose ship can it be?"
Charmian turned her head, but checked herself in mid-speech, pointing:
"Was that dead bird there just now?" she demanded.
"No. Let one of the women pack it in a box and send it to Potheinos with my salutation. Bid him and Ptolemy his master eat it. Bid Lollianè deliver the message—they won't dare to harm her—not just yet; they think Apollodorus loves her. That is not yet true—not yet. Then send Diomedes to me—I must find out whose ship that is."
Charmian crossed the bedroom to the door and the moment she opened it a man of over fifty years of age strode in as if he had been waiting to be summoned. His sinews resembled molded metal. His skin, except where the scars were ill-concealed by artificial stain, had been burned brass-color by the sun. His shaved upper lip was straight and quarrelsome and a curled, short, black beard stuck forward pugnaciously under it. He wore the Grecian military kilt, that came not more than mid-way down his thighs, and kept one hand on the bronze hilt of a Damascus sword, whose scabbard was embossed with portraits of the legendary heroes.
He was in no wise disconcerted by a nearly naked queen, he also being Greek. He saluted with an air of veteran fidelity, then peered under his right hand seaward, his eyes narrowing to slits because of the strong glare on the water.
"Whose ship, Diomedes?"
"Tros! By Osiris, Tros! May all the gods regard his impudence!"
His voice was as harsh as shaken iron, and it made Cleopatra smile.
The long ship, having rounded the Pharos, well within the harbor now, bore down on the harbor master's sluggish craft without again changing course or checking speed. The wind had ceased to fill the sails, but the beat of the martial music quickened and the long oars flashed response—vermilion blades a-plunge in jade-green, leaving egg-white foam on royal blue—until, urged by sudden panic and the whip, the harbor master's crew went to work frantically to row their craft out of the way. She of the purple sails boiled on without changing her course by a hair's breadth, straight for a point midway between the war-ships, leaving the scandalized harbor master pitching and rocking in her wake.
And then another marvel, heightened by the drifting mist that had again obscured the Pharos; suddenly she brailed those purple sails, as swiftly as they take in awnings when the first rain of a season bursts on pleasure gardens. At a clanging signal from the cymbals and the harps, she swung, with starboard oars aback and port oars pulling short swift strokes that hardly buried the vermilion blades, turning in her own length. And there she lay, broadside to the war-ships' bows, her golden serpent grinning at them, and her four great catapults drawn taut by unseen mechanism.
Cleopatra caught her breath again. "Tros of Samothrace?" She laughed, with a half-note of excitement peculiar to her. "I remember him well. He came to my father's court and said the world was round. I stood behind the curtain, and they punished me afterward for saying I agreed with him. My father agreed with him, too, being drunk, and not afraid when he was drunk; but the priests said such mysteries were not good for people to know, and they tried to have Tros imprisoned, but Olympus warned him, and my father gave him some money, being drunk again, so that he might go away and prove what shape the world is."
"Olympus should have minded his own business!" said Diomedes, thrusting his beard forward, scowling.
Seeing he was not looking at her, Cleopatra smiled, and one of her women, believing the smile auspicious, came forward with slippers and a thin robe of silk, embroidered with Persian roses.
Charmian returned and stood beside her.
"Do you think there will be a battle?" Charmian asked. "Oh, you virgins," remarked Cleopatra. "Virgins think of nothing but extremes—no middle course!"
Diomedes uttered a brassy cackle of a laugh. "They say of Tros, he never fights if he can get what he wants by running," he remarked; but it was not quite clear whether he approved of that or not.
He of Samothrace, it seemed, had no intention of beginning the hostilities. The cymbals clanged again. The oar-blades on the port side all flashed forward to the limit of their scope and hung there, ready to snatch and swing the ship entirely round.
"I wonder what he wants," said Cleopatra.
"Water—food—fuel—medicine—fresh fruit—news—information—any of the things that mariners put into port for," Diomedes answered. "Crews go sick and mutiny unless they are allowed on shore at intervals. Or perhaps he brings news of Roman doings—Aries! The clumsy, mud-begotten fellaheen! I am ashamed! By Alexander's right hand, if we had a man like Tros, and one such ship, we could defy your brother's mongrels—and Rome—and—"
"All the world, if only Tros would admit the world is flat!" laughed Cleopatra.
Diomedes scowled, He did not like irreverence.
"Watch those clumsy, ill-trained idiots!" he muttered.
One of the war-ships had put a rowboat overside and managed it so awkwardly that the boat upset, spilling men into the harbor. So the other war-ship lowered a boat in turn while the crew of the first were fished for, and an officer was rowed toward the long vermilion ship, who did a deal of shouting at long range before venturing cautiously alongside.
"Oh, well, I suppose that means Tros will join my brother. They will buy him," said Cleopatra.
It was her first note of discouragement that day. But suddenly her mood changed.
"Diomedes! Go and—no! Your imagination is as flat as you think the world is! Besides, I want you for something else! Find me Apollodorus. Tell him to reach Tros of Samothrace, and to win him over to my side. Tell him he may promise anything—you understand me? Anything!"
"Tros is not the man to choose the weaker of two sides," Diomedes objected, recovering possession of his middle age, that patronized her youth. "And promises—Tros has heard them by the hundred thousand. Neither is Apollodorus likely to pursue safe courses."
"That is why I send Apollodorus and not you! He makes no gods of mothy precedents! Go, tell Apollodorus he must bring me Tros of Samothrace—must bring him here! When you have done that, go into the city and buy me food that has not been poisoned! Buy it yourself, have it cooked in your own household and bring it to me with your own hands! That is how much I trust you. Go, sir!"
Diomedes backed away, the buckles of bronze armor clanking. He looked as unimaginative and as honest as the door-post that he struck before he turned and left the bedroom.
Cleopatra gestured to her women. "Dress me," she commanded. Three of them went to make ready the bath, and for a long time she paid no attention to the other three, who stood mute, in a row on the balcony threshold, looking nervous. They were dressed in the loose, white Syrian slave-smocks without border or embroidery, but though the slave-look haunted them, they had a definite air of being better bred and educated than the ordinary run of servants.
The small boat rowed back to the war-ship. The first war-ship swung and started slowly for the inner harbor; the second followed, even more slowly, seeming to strive after dignity but failing, because, every time a whip cracked, an oar moved out of time. The harbor master appeared in doubt what to do and dawdled in the offing. The long vermilion ship lay still, her oar-blades idle on the water but the spaces between them as exactly measured as the teeth of a gigantic comb. Nothing happened until the Egyptian ships had passed into the inner harbor.
Then the man on the poop shook his staff and suddenly the cymbals clanged. The oars leaped into life with an intoxicating quiver of trained strength held in restraint—. paused, ready for the dip—and plunged, as the staff set the time for the tune of the harps and the cymbals that governed the speed.
"That is the way to rule—the way I will rule," said Cleopatra. "That man has dignity."
The long ship, heedless of the harbor-master's shouts, ignoring him as utterly as whales ignore the gulls, advanced to within a cable's length of the public wharf about a bow-shot from the palace windows and dropped anchor. She was instantly surrounded by a swarm of small boats, some of which tried to make fast to her stern. But the man on the high poop shouted, and though the moving bulwark with its shields was lowered, and a ladder was hung overside, no small boat trespassed within the reach of the vermilion oar-blades.
It was not until armed men had been stationed at regular intervals along the ship's sides that the oars were drawn in through the ports and the big man, followed by three others, descended the ladder into one of the shore-boats, deliberately chosen from the swarm that plied for hire.
He was rowed ashore and swallowed by the yelling crowd that already choked the wharf, making his way through it with the sturdy gait peculiar to deep-sea captains. Then the small boats, full of shouting hucksters, circled around and around the great ship, keeping their distance because of businesslike-looking watchmen armed with slings.
A barge-load of outrageously behaving women tried to approach the ladder, but an officer on the high poop threatened and the flat barge backed away, the women screaming ribaldry and someone on the barge inciting them to greater effort. Two of the women stripped themselves and danced naked on the barge's foredeck, obscenely wriggling their stomachs.
Cleopatra turned and faced her slaves, who flinched but stood their ground. They had seen the crow die. One was still holding the goblet of milk, and another the plate of cakes. The third, a Circassian, had nothing in her hand.
"Drink the milk!" Cleopatra commanded, looking straight at the Circassian.
Charmian bit her lip. The Circassian hesitated, caught her breath, then laughed half bravely and took the goblet from the other's hand.
"If I had known," she said, "I would have eaten and drunk to warn you they were poisoned."
She mastered herself and raised the goblet to her lips.
"I should have known. I deserve to die. Farewell, O Queen!"
Cleopatra snatched the goblet from her. She dashed its contents in the faces of the other two.
"Call the guard!" she commanded.
Charmian ran to the door. Two Nubians entered, stolid and solid as polished ebony, with leopard-skin over their shoulders and immense swords sheathed in scabbards of red leather.
"That Circassian is innocent, but take those other two slaves to my sister Arisinoe and tell her she should punish them for failure—even as I am being punished for having failed to do my duty long ago. I should have slain Arsinoe."
The Nubians seized the trembling women by the arms and hurried them away. Cleopatra turned to the Circassian.
"Is the bath ready?" she asked. "Oh, if we could wash away our bodies and leave nothing but our souls! Osiris! But what black loathsome objects some of us would be!"
CHAPTER II "Queen? Which queen?"
Be man what he may, the fact is, nevertheless, that he conceives himself to be something different from what he appears to himself to be and to what others think he is. —Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
THE palace occupied the whole of the Lochias Promontory, which jutted out into the harbor and was surrounded by a high wall. Thus the Royal Area consisted almost of a city in itself.
Outside that Lochias wall, at its eastward end, not far from the public wharves but far enough to avoid the smell of fish and other perishable cargoes, was a block of palatial apartments facing inward on a courtyard in which a fountain played amid palms and semi-tropical shrubs.
There was always a swarm of men and women at the bronze gate, which stood wide open day and night but was guarded by armed Nubian slaves who admitted nobody without credentials. Within that courtyard there was never a woman seen since it was part of the pose of the gilded bachelors who lived there to pretend to avoid women, and particularly matrimony. They regarded themselves as the salt of the earth—sole arbiters of fashion, sport and politics. They patronized and honestly admired the arts and kept themselves, at least in theory, abreast of all the sciences, in which Alexandria led the world. They were mostly pure Greek by ancestry, spoke Greek and regarded themselves as Greeks, although there were Latins among them—very rarely an Egyptian. They thought of Alexandria as a Greek jewel bound on to the brow of Africa.
Apollodorus leaned against a palm within the courtyard, discussing the merits of certain horses with a group of his Cappadocian grooms. He glanced up sharply as he saw Diomedes come clanking importantly through the gate, then continued his conversation. Diomedes came on until the grooms slunk aside to make room for him, but Apollodorus affected not yet to have seen the veteran.
"Greeting, Apollodorus."
"Voice of Pluto! Man of iron, how you terrify me! May the beautiful gods, if there are any, forgive you, Diomedes! You haven't shaved your upper lip this morning."
"What is that to you? Faugh! You smell like a woman, of roses! I have been up all night, protecting the life of the young Queen to whom you profess such wordy loyalty. If you had manlier inclinations, Apollodorus, you might put your talents to a better use than setting fashions and admiring your own beauty. I would admire a few good scars on you."
"Man of blood! But to what do I owe the honor of this visit? Do you think I am corruptible? You haven't come because you love me. What then?"
"I have come to find out how reliable you are. Horns! I am a soldier. I seek deeds, not words!" said Diomedes angrily. "I seek no favors. Zeus forbid that!"
"Aren't you mixing your theology? First Horus, and now Zeus! They say they have some very interesting gods in India; why not add them to your list? There was a lecture about them in the library—discreetly distant entities to swear by, too remote for consequences!"
"Isis! How long shall I brook your insolence? I bring you a direct command from Royal Egypt."
"Oh, you are running an errand for her? That is different. What says she, O oldest of all messengers!"
"I am young enough to slit your cockscomb! Take care how you irritate me! You are to find Tros the Samothracian, who came ashore from that ship with the purple sails."
"And? Having found him? What then?"
"Bring him."
"To you?"
"To me."
"She said that?"
"Yes."
"Diomedes, you astonish me! You at your age! She has all the intuitions that distinguish royalty from blunderers like you and sybarites like me. She would know without anyone telling her, that I would not run your errand. I know you are lying to me, Diomedes!"
"You Sicilian rogue!"
Diomedes faced about and Apollodorus' mocking laugh followed him out through the gate to where slaves awaited him, holding his restless red stallion.
"My chariot!" Apollodorus ordered then. "Who knows where Tros of Samothrace went?"
His grooms knew all the gossip. Two of them vied to be first to inform him.
"To the house of Esias—Esias the Jew."
The chariot, cream-colored, gilt-edged, decorated with colored painting representing the nine Muses and drawn by three white horses, was at the gate in charge of a Thracian charioteer almost more swiftly than Apollodorus could reach his chambers and throw on a light driving cloak of cloth-of-gold. The Thracian passed him the reins and sat facing the rear, on one of the two small seats. Apollodorus guided the impatient team through crowded cross-streets at a slow trot.
There was a kaleidoscope of color—shopfronts, garments, head-dresses, and every imaginable shade of human skin. The din was a delirium of many tongues, for all the languages of the Levant were spoken in Alexandria. The smell was of spices and fruit, and of flowers crushed underfoot. The flow of movement, mixed of dignity and restlessness, was mainly north and south, from the wharves on the shore of the Mareotic Lake at the city's rear to the sea-front. Long lines of loaded slaves, with a foreman in front of them shouting for right of way, threaded the swarm that jammed the corners of the streets to listen to excited public speakers airing views on topics of the moment.
Handsome slaves, gaudily dressed to challenge attention and selected for their strength of lung, stood on platforms to yell news of auctions, amusements and cure-all remedies. Beggars, tumblers and performers of acrobatic tricks, singers of topical songs and groups of itinerant musicians completed the confusion, and at times Apollonius had to draw rein until the charioteer could press to the front and force a passage. He was not recognized until he swung eastward into the Street of Canopus and let the horses break into a gallop.
But the moment the galloping hooves were heard, heads turned and he was greeted with the joyous roar of a crowd that loved its sports above its pocketbook. The cheers increased into a tumult until the colonnaded arches of the three-mile-long street volleyed with applause:
"Apollodorus! Oh, Apollodorus!"
It was paved, that street, and all the buildings facing it were built of marble. It was more than a hundred feet broad, stretching the full length of Alexandria from gate to gate. The roofs of the colonnades were riotous with flowers and women's garments; they were the stadium from which merchants' wives viewed the frequent political rioting, or delighted equally to watch the chariots of men of fashion racing, in despite of law, in mid-street. But there was only one chariot deemed worthy of attention when Apollodorus came in view.
Men, women, children, soldiers, slaves, all surged to catch a glimpse of him. Speed—furious speed preserved him from being hemmed in and almost worshiped. He drove with apparent recklessness that masked consummate skill, standing with legs apart, his golden cloak afloat in the breeze behind him, laughing and waving his hand to the crowd that poured in from the side-streets just a stride too late to block his way.
Women threw flowers from upper windows. One tossed her heavy bracelet into the chariot from the roof of the colonnade; it hit the charioteer, drawing blood. Apollodorus threw a kiss to her, and bade the Thracian keep the bracelet as a salve for damages. The whole voice of Alexandria seemed blended into one exultant roar:
"Apollodorus! Oh-h-h! Apollodorus!"
The swarm grew denser as he neared the Jewish quarter at the east end of the city, for the uproar had warned the throngs in meaner streets, who flowed into the Street of Canopus ahead of him and forced him to slow down at last. He gave the reins then to the charioteer and made the best of it with good grace, sitting down on the little rear seat to lean out and grasp the hands of men, laughing when a woman jumped into the chariot. She kissed him, pulling his wreath awry. He gave it to her. The crowd snatched it, tearing it to pieces to wear as favors.
The last half-mile was covered at a slow walk, and even that speed would have been impossible if the Thracian had not tickled the horses with his whip to make them rear and plunge; but they arrived at last in front of a building that was as big, if not as beautiful, as any on that famous street.
It was of the same decadent Greek design as all the others, fronted by a Corinthian colonnade; but sacks of corn, opened for inspection, and men of many nations, some sailors, some from the desert, lounging in the three wide doorways and sprawling on long benches on the sidewalk, gave the place an untidy atmosphere of business that seemed to have overflowed from the dense and shabby back-streets where the Jews lived cheek by jowl in smelly tenements.
Apollodorus jumped out of the chariot and reached the shop door in one bound, escaping into gloom where counters served by fifty or sixty slaves reached in long parallel rows from front to rear. He was met and greeted by a curly-bearded Jew, dressed in embroidered silk, whose dark face was a cartoon of oblique diplomacy.
"Greeting! Greeting! Greeting! Noble Apollodorus!" The Jew clasped his own right hand in his left and shook it, as if shaking hands with fortune. "Golden greeting! We are honored! What is it we are privileged to do for the noble Apollodorus? Corn for the stable—good corn, heavy and plump in the grain? A new slave? We have a new consignment of Circassians and Greeks—some very pretty girls guaranteed virgins—some Persians—an Arabian or two—and three from Gaul, extremely choice. Or is it—"
"Esias! Esias himself!" Apollodorus interrupted.
"How delighted he will be! How flattered! How it will grieve him that he is engaged in private conference and cannot—"
"Spare his grief then, Judas, and avoid its consequences! Lead me in."
"But, my Lord, I dare not! He is closeted just now with an important visitor, the great Tros, Lord of Samothrace."
"Announce me, or I go in unannounced!"
"But the Lord Tros said—"
Apollodorus began to stride toward the shop's rear, where two seamen in red kilts, who wore big gold earrings and assorted weapons, guarded the door of Esias' private sanctum. Judas, fawning like a brown-eyed dog, tried to restrain him, then, having failed, pushed past the seamen and flung the door open.
"The Lord Apollodorus!" he announced, and shut the door again behind him silently.
At the rear of a large, low, dingy room sat two men, their backs to a window. There were shelves of papyrus and parchment documents on either hand and stacks of locked wooden boxes marked with red Hebrew characters. Samples of spice on a table filled the whole room with a pungent smell. In the darkest corner squatted three slaves, with stylus and tablet, ready to take dictation but out of ear-shot until required.
The two men in the window rose grudgingly, as if annoyed by the interruption. One was an elderly Jew, with the dark oiled hair in curls on either side of his olive-colored face. It was the handsome, rather crafty face of a cautious friend or a resourceful enemy. His brown eyes shone like topaz. His beard was beautifully curled. His wrinkled hands were long and subtly flexible. His cloak, of dark, embroidered crimson silk, had come from eastward of where, in popular opinion, a trackless sea poured over the rim of the world.
"Noble Apollodorus!" he murmured, bowing, and made a sharp noise with his fingers indicating to the slaves where they should set a chair for his guest.
The other man was like a weather-beaten Heracles. His height was an inch or two less than six feet, but his strength and his commanding presence made him seem much taller. Leonine, amber-yellow eyes peered challenging from under dense black hair, bound low on his forehead by a circlet of plain gold. His neck which had been browned by wind and sun, bore the big head with unconquerable grandeur, emphasized by barbaric gold ear-rings and a black beard, curled up short.
His cloak, of golden cloth, was bordered with wide crimson, and under that he wore a blue tunic embroidered with intricate designs in gold thread. There were massive jeweled rings on three fingers of either hand and a heavy bracelet on his right wrist. A long sword, sheathed in leather stamped with designs in gold and green, lay on the seat beside him, and there was a curiously carved dagger at his waist. His hairy legs, as strong as trees, were spread apart, deep-sea fashion, as he stood with his broad back to the light and stared at Apollodorus.
"The noble Apollodorus, seven times Victor in the Games—the noble Tros, a lord of Samothrace," Esias announced, introducing them, and resumed his seat.
"If you have business with me, be swift with it," said he of Samothrace.
He sat down slowly, with an air of taking soundings first, less ponderous than deliberate of movement, but he looked as capable as the sea itself of swift surprises.
"I am Connoisseur of Arts to Egypt's Queen."
"Queen? Which queen?"
"One is—will be plenty," Apollodorus answered.
"Esias informs me," said Tros with a voice like rolling thunderbolts, "that there are two queens and two kings."
"No, no!" Esias interrupted. "You mistook me, noble Tros. I said, Cleopatra is the queen, but her younger sister Arsinoe, a mere child, has obstinate supporters. Nevertheless, their brother Ptolemy, who claims to share the throne with the elder sister, is in the strongest tactical position. The youngest, the fourth, is a mere child—a sickling."
The leonine eyes of the Samothracian looked keenly at the Jew's. Then, moving his head slowly, he stared at Apollodorus.
"You are a Connoisseur of Arts? Is that a reason for interrupting my business with Esias?"
Apollodorus smiled back imperturbably.
"They say of Esias," he answered, "that his business is more important than that of any dozen kings. Nevertheless, mine with you outweighs his. I am instructed to take you to Queen Cleopatra."
Tros was half on his feet on the instant.
"You? Take me? You mean by force?"
"By force of curiosity. I guarantee you, that in all your wanderings you have never seen anything as priceless or as interesting as what I shall show you."
Tros grinned at him and sat back. He reached into a pouch beneath his belt and laid a small box on the table.
"Look, thou Connoisseur of Arts! Open and look within!"
The box was of gold engraved with deep designs unknown to Egypt.
"Are you wise? Are you wise?" Esias cautioned, clasping and unclasping his fingers nervously.
"Wiser than those who swore the world is flat!" Tros answered. "Open that box and look!"
Apollodorus pulled off the lid and caught his breath. He laid the box down on the table and stared at it, poking with his forefinger. He pushed it nearer to the light. He invoked a dozen or more gods. And then he looked at Tros again.
"You could buy Rome with those!" he remarked. "Unless Rome should take them from you!" warned Esias.
"You will show me a more priceless and a greater sight?" Tros asked.
"Why, yes," said Apollodorus, pushing the box toward him. "I will show you a woman to give them to. They are almost worthy of her."
"Give them? To a woman?"
Tros snorted. He stuck his finger in the box and rolled its contents to and fro. On a lining of black cloth there lay a dozen pearls, so perfect that they looked like symbols of eternal dawn. Two were almost as large as pigeons' eggs.
The Jew's eyes glittered. "Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "They are the best even I have seen—and I saw the pearls of Mithridates that Pompey took to Rome. But who shall buy these? Monstrous things! They are neither corn nor slaves. They are worth no more than somebody will pay. Who has money enough? Nah-h-h—and listen to me: I have seen ill-fortune dog the feet of them who owned such jewels. There was Mithridates. There is Pompey, whom they call the Great, who plundered him. I am not one of those who think that Pompey will end by being master of the world."
"I won these by not plundering," said Tros. "My friends, the British Druids, gave them to me for a certain service that I did."
"That may be better. That may change it. It may. It may," Esias answered. "Nevertheless, I could not afford to buy them. Who can? They are something to give to your enemy, to make all other men his enemy. I will not even accept them for safe-keeping. But I will open you a credit against that bag of smaller ones. I will sell those for your account, although I warn you, I look for no good market for pearls until this cursed war is over and the world has opportunity to grow luxurious again."
Tros closed the box and returned it to the pocket beneath his belt. Then, reaching to the seat behind him, he laid a small heavy bag on the table and pushed it toward Esias.
"One thousand, three hundred and eleven pearls. Write me your receipt."
Esias wrote. It was plain that they trusted each other; there was nothing said about the weight and Esias did not check the number.
"You may have what money you need, and I will deliver those stores you require for your ship," said Esias.
Tros nodded. "And now you. Tell me again what you want."
He knitted his great shaggy brows and glared at Apollodorus.
"I lack nothing," Apollodorus answered.
"Your purpose?"
"To discover the easiest course between birth and death, O Conqueror of Seas! I worship the unattainable. I glory in the unknown quantity. Which is why I adore art—and Cleopatra."
"Therefore you will die on a dunghill!" Esias commented. "Because the mob which knows nothing of art and less of Cleopatra, will despise you whenever you cease to win chariot races."
"I would rather admire my own opinion, dying on a dunghill, than despise myself in affluence," Apollodorus answered cheerfully. "However, each to his own peculiarities. We flatter ourselves by calling them ideals, whereas they are merely habits. You are consistent in yours, Esias, which is why I like you well enough."
The Samothracian was leaning back again, watching the Sicilian's face across the shaft of light that streamed through a slit in the linen window-shade.
"Is the world flat, or is it round?" he asked suddenly.
"I don't see that it matters, noble Tros," Apollodorus answered. "If the world pleases, it has my permission to be square, or pyramid-shaped, or a dodecahedron. I am all-tolerant of everything except stupidity and bad art."
Tros leaned forward suddenly, elbows on the table.
"What do you know about dodecahedrons?"
"Nothing," Apollodorus answered blandly. But their eyes met. Esias, alert and inquisitive, failed to detect any signal that passed between them. Nevertheless—
"I will go with you," said Tros.
He rose and gathered up his long sword, then turned to Esias.
"I am curious to see his wonder-woman," he said gruffly.
"But the slaves, Lord Tros. You were to see my strong slaves. I have a Gaul who could break an oar by pulling, and you will lose him—you will lose him—he will certainly be sold unless you seize the opportunity."
"I will return and look him over."
"How soon? There is much that you and I should talk of privately. Shall I reserve the slave for you? He is not cheap, but a wonder—a very Heracles. Until this evening then—but not later, Lord Tros—there are many inquirers for him—he is a good investment. I will reserve him until this evening, eh?"
"As you will," Tros answered, working his way out from behind the table and striding heavily toward the door.
He rolled a little in his gait, as if a deck were heaving under him. His eyes conned every detail of the room as if he memorized his bearings. There was also a wholesome deep-sea smell to him that Apollodorus noticed, and a recurrent, more or less unconscious gesture of habitual command.
CHAPTER III "Halt in the name of Ptolemy!"
We recognize a kindred spirit, or a greater spirit, neither by eye nor by ear, but by the heart, which sees by flashes of the Light within ourselves. —Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
OUTSIDE, the chariot's restless team was being petted by a noisy throng of sightseers, to the intense annoyance of the charioteer, who began to grin, however, when Tros followed Apollodorus into the chariot and the horses reared at the touch of the reins.
The team leaped forward, scattering the crowd. The Thracian jumped in, squatted on the floor, leaving his master's guest his choice of the two rear seats and studying with interest the enormous size of Tros' legs—ready to avoid being stepped on when their owner should lose his balance.
But Tros surprised him. He stood, legs well apart, hands clenched behind him, holding on to nothing, looking ahead calmly over Apollodorus' shoulder—an imperturbable figure, king-like in his crimson-bordered cloak. Apollodorus sent the horses at the limit of their speed, but Tros stood calmly surveying the splendor of Alexandria and its feverishly moving crowd.
"You astonish me," Apollodorus remarked over-shoulder at last. "I never before saw a seaman who could ride a chariot."
"On a paved street? You should go to Britain," Tros answered. "My friend the King, Caswallon, drives wild horses over goat-tracks, at a speed that would show you nothing but his dust!"
"Good drivers, are they, the Britons?"
"Hah! You should have seen them swoop into the Roman ranks, eight chariots abreast, with scythes on the wheel-hubs and the scythe-points almost touching, then wheeling like pigeons to right and left to mow the Romans down—and that on a beach, mind you, with a big surf running. I have ridden across the breadth of Britain with Caswallon. Nearly half my crew are Britons."
"Good sailors?" Apollodorus asked.
"No. Rank bad. There will never come a sailor from that island—not though the world should last for ever. I make use of them to serve the catapults, to scrub decks, cook, and man the oars in fair weather. They are also good at music. They can harp and chant. For the foul-weather work I have Northmen, who came from the top of the world, where the winters are dark and six months long. I have, too, Eskualdunak* from Spain—red-headed rogues, each with a fine opinion of himself. They need an iron discipline. Five hundred men in all—a quandary to keep well fed. A great ship such as mine is more care than a kingdom."
[* Basques.]
Apollodorus laughed. "An obol for your ship then! Nay, that is too much—that is more than all the kingdoms of the world are worth!" But suddenly his manner changed. The horses checked a little, feeling subtle warning pass along the reins. Ahead—away ahead, where a bright-hued stream of slaves and merchants flowed across-street, south and north, the crowd had parted suddenly to let two chariots through that came at full pelt.
"Racing?" Tros asked. He had seen a street race on his way that morning.
"Ptolemy's men!" Apollodorus answered, leaning forward, holding the reins short, as if about to make the sharp turn at the barrier's end in an arena. All his debonair indifference was gone.
The crowd under the colonnades began to shout excitedly, well used to mid-street racing in defiance of the law, but this was novelty. This looked like such a game as Romans loved to stage, with death included, and a slim chance even for Apollodorus to escape alive.
Toward him, furiously, one on either hand, the two-horsed military chariots came headlong, clattering and swaying, two men helmeted like heroes leaning out of each to shout and gesture. They appeared to be commanding him to stop, but Apollodorus held his course exactly down the middle of the street, only making sure that he had his team in hand.
Suddenly, within a hundred paces, both oncoming chariots swung inward, wheeling, trying to bar the way. Their horses slid and struggled—met breast to breast—a pole broke and a horse went down—
"Halt! Halt in the name of Ptolemy!"
A man in leopard-skin leaped out of the confusion and came running to seize Apollodorus' reins. He received a whip-lash on the face that sent him reeling. The Sicilian swung his frenzied team to the right and escaped collision by an inch, then shook the reins and took the middle of the street again, full pelt.
"Not bad," said Tros. "The Britons would have done it better."
Apollodorus did not answer, for again the crowd had scattered. Cavalry were coming—a troop of Ptolemaic guardsmen, at the trot, their red plumes dancing and the sun a-gleam on brass. General Achillas, splendid in his armor, led them, with a mercenary Roman body-guard of four on either hand.
Between them and Apollodorus was a cross-street, running right and left. He raced for it, leaning forward, shaking the reins, fanning his team with the long whip, silent. And a roar went up like that of the arena when the favorite begins to make his bid to leave the field behind and the watching crowd grows frantic.
"Ah-h-h! Apollodorus! Ah-h-h!"
There was a mob surge at the cross-street, where the crowd ran helter-skelter. Some of them, divining that he meant to take the right-hand turn, went scattering into mid-street to avoid him, getting in the way of the oncoming calvary that had broken into a gallop. A trumpet sounded.
"Fools!" said Apollodorus grimly between set teeth. "Good! They have started a riot!"
There began to be a clamor and the thwack of the flat of swords on heads and shoulders—then a mob snarl. Stones, onions, broken bricks and flower-pots suddenly began to rain from windows, roofs and colonnades. The air became charged with flying debris. Alexandria, not often in a mood to be imposed upon, had snatched excuse for one of its sudden tantrums and the sunlit Street of Canopus changed into a rainbow tumult quicker than the eye could follow or the unused stranger understand.
Apollodorus took the turn on one wheel, not ten paces clear of the indignant cavalry.
Achillas and his cavalry shook off the crowd and poured into the street behind the chariot. The din and thunder of pursuit gave warning to whole blocks of market-stalls and tenements. A thousand wild-eyed Alexandrians on the instant recognized Apollodorus in headlong flight, saw the helmets of oncoming cavalry, and charged into the street to block pursuit with any weapons they could lay their hands on, yelling for their favorite.
Apollodorus, with the crowd between him and the cavalry, had no fear now of being overtaken in the side streets, through which he began to weave his way as swiftly as the throng would let him.
They came to a side-gate of the Royal Area, threading their way through a crowd that hemmed in the chariot like water against a ship's sides. Half Alexandria seemed to have something to sell, or else a peition to make, to the supposedly more fortunate palace occupants. There were merchants with strings of slaves, lawyers, beggars, laden camels, temple priests, magicians, burdened asses, dogs, parrots and apes for sale, itinerant water-carriers inhabitants of all the lands surrounding the Mediterranean, including renegade Romans and the destitute wives and children of some of the Gabinian troops whom Pompey had recalled to serve him against Caesar. Sweating agitators, hardly heard above the tumult, stood on portable platforms to harangue them all—each agitator raucous with a cure-all of his own for solving all the public difficulties.
"See how our rhetoricians keep themselves in practice!" Apollodorus exclaimed merrily, waving his arm. "One by one the silly fellows shout themselves into a fit of apoplexy or a public office, and I don't know which is the worse for them or us!"
A group of soldiers at the gate made a way for him by locking spears in line and, wheeling outward, forcing back the crowd to either hand. He drove into a marble courtyard, and a huge gate made of Euxine timber, painted red in contrast to the white stone walls, swung shut behind him.
CHAPTER IV "I will make you admiral of all my fleet."
How hardly we remember, on this nether millstone, which is earth, and with that upper millstone, which is circumstances, grinding all our grosser nature into dust that is to clothe oncoming souls—how hardly we remember that these tragedies are but a brief dream, and these little purposes what nothingness they are! —Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
TROS stood and gazed until Cleopatra spoke at last: "I saw your wonder-ship at dawn."
"Royal Egypt, greeting!"
"Whence are you?" she demanded.
"From many seas. I touched at Sicily and Cyprus, after coming through the Gates of Heracles, from India, by way of Africa, having put forth first from a land called Britain, where I built my ship by the leave of Caswallon the king."
"That was a bold voyage. Have you news of the Roman armies?"
"I learned that Caius Julius Caesar has defeated Pompey."
Tros watched her keenly, but he could detect no sign of emotion other than immediate interest, although Apollodorus caught his breath and Charmian and Lollianè looked frightened.
"I have heard the opposite," said Cleopatra.
"I, too, heard many tales," said Tros. "But I came on Pompey's fleet, whose admiral knew the outcome and besought me to get word to Pompey that his fleet is at large and loyal to him. Having heard that Egypt had loaned Pompey corn and ships and men—there were twenty Egyptian ships with that fleet—I thought that in defeat he might seek friendship here, and so I came. I am an enemy of Caesar."
"And you live? Then Caesar is not omnipotent! For what cause are you Caesar's enemy?"
"I upheld a weaker cause," said Tros, "because it was the less unrighteous of the two."
Cleopatra's eyes changed and for a moment she seemed to lose her interest. She glanced at Charmian and at Olympus.
"I mistrust men who prate of righteousness," she said. "My brother's minister, the eunuch Potheinos, always boasts of his. Theodotus, Ptolemy's tutor, is a worse rogue if that were possible, but you would think, to hear him talk, that the gods learned virtue from him. My brother's general, Achillas, stabs men in the name of Mithras the Redeemer. But Apollodorus doesn't believe there are any gods or such a thing as righteousness. He seeks ease in the easiest way. I trust him—"
"You are not invited to trust me," said Tros, so bluntly that again she liked him on the instant.
"Yet there are very few," she answered, "whom I dare to trust. If you are telling me the truth, that Caesar has defeated Pompey—"
"If I should lie to you, I would lie more cleverly," Tros interrupted. "Caesar defeated Pompey near Pharsalia. I heard few details, beyond that Pompey's army is a scattered rabble and Pompey himself a fugitive."
Cleopatra pondered that a moment, resting her chin on her hand.
"Caesar," she said presently, "will hardly consider himself beholden to them who lent ships and men and corn and money to his adversary. Tell me: what is Caesar like? I have heard he is a base-born demagogue. Is he less evil than his reputation?"
"Many men are," Tros answered. "Aye, and some women," he added pointedly. "Base-born Caesar is not. He claims to trace his pedigree direct to Venus. He is Pontifex Maximus of Rome, but he believes no more in gods than he does in chastity. He is a lean sarcastic cynic with a handsome face, who understands men's weaknesses; and he is cunning, but he masks that, so that his soldiers think he is as simple as themselves. He poses as the champion of the common people. He is an autocrat—a despot. He will know no rest until—"
"I know," said Cleopatra. "He has won the world if he has beaten Pompey. What gods looked on, I wonder, when a prince such as Pompey ever has been, went down to defeat!"
"He who steps into the shade, shall he summon the sun?" asked Olympus, but nobody appeared to notice him. He stood in shadow—one of those learned freedmen, such as all the Ptolemies had kept at court to make appropriate remarks. He wore the robes of a physician.
"Lord Tros, to whom else have you told this news of Caesar?" Cleopatra asked.
"To none, Royal Egypt. News is worth more than money."
"Why then did you tell me?" she asked, suddenly again suspicious of him.
"I have found my market," he retorted. "There is no safe port for me this side of the Gates of Heracles, as long as Caesar rules the Roman world."
"What of it?"
"I never understood a woman," Tros said awkwardly. "But you will soon discover that you, too, have Caesar to deal with. It needs fathomless resources to defeat him. If you have courage, and the resolution to defy Rome, I will give aid gladly."
"You a Greek," she said, "and you will give? Nay, you spoke of a market. Name your price."
"I said, give! I am of Samothrace," Tros answered.
"Yes," she said, nodding, "I have heard of that oath.* How does it run? To uphold justice—give without price—trusting to the gods for recompense, not stipulating what the recompense shall be—is that it?"
[* The mysteries of Samothrace were impenetrable, so much so that many modern historians have jumped to the conclusion that the ultimate, outer, notorious decadence presented a true picture of the inner secrets. But read H. P. Blavatsky and others. The greater mysteries died out from below, for lack of individuals of sufficient strength of character and moral purity to undergo the initiation.]
"The great gods keep the record of the oath I took," Tros answered sullenly.
"Where are your wife and children, and where is your home?" she asked him.
"I am a lone man, Royal Egypt, and I have no home on land. The sea is home and wife and enemy in one. And as for children, I have left a deed or two, and here and there a little good-will. That sort propagate their kind to better advantage than the squabbling brats that men get by surrendering their dignity to women."
Cleopatra went and sat where she could stare at him.
He seemed incredible—too good to believe. She was beyond laughter. She enjoyed him with a sort of ecstasy, with which she always wondered at a hero—on the very rare occasions when a hero crossed her line of vision. Blunt speech invariably thrilled her, as no mock-heroics ever did. The one wholly unforgivable, contemptible and loathsome sin, in her eyes, was hypocrisy. The most refreshing thing on earth was lack of it.
"I will make you admiral of all my fleet," she said at last.
"You have a fleet?" Tros asked her.
"There is your ship. I believe in my destiny. I appoint you admiral."
Tros bowed to her, perhaps to hide the smile that he could not keep from betraying itself around the corners of his eyes. She was as frank with him as he had been with her:
"I also have no home on land," she went on. "Like you, I must win mine; for this Lochias is a nest of spies and murderers; and Egypt lies like a naked woman ready for Rome to violate. But I will win, though I die for it."
"Death is no serious matter," said Tros.
She stared at him again, delighting in him.
