Tros of Samothrace E-Book

Talbot Mundy

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The cable that Julius Caesar has made in helping find the best way to attack Britain is to play a double game. He must save his father and encourage the resistance of the British leaders to remove Rome from its legions that are ready to conquer the land of Gaul. Offenses, intrigue, and many murders pose a threat to accompaniment by Caesar’s Caesar in his amphibian landings and battles.

Leseprobe

Contents

INTRODUCTORY Talbot Mundy on Julius Caesar and the Samothracian Mysteries

CHAPTER 1. Britain: The Late Summer of 55 B.C.

CHAPTER 2. “And ye know whether Caesar lies or not.”

CHAPTER 3. Gwenhwyfar, Wife of Britomaris

CHAPTER 4. Fflur

CHAPTER 5. A Prince of Hosts

CHAPTER 6. Concerning a Boil and Commius

CHAPTER 7. Gobhan and the Tides

CHAPTER 8. An Interview Near a Druid’s Cave

CHAPTER 9. Tros Displays His Seamanship and a Way of Minding His Own Business

CHAPTER 10. Caius Julius Caesar

CHAPTER 11. The Expedition Sails

CHAPTER 12. The Battle on the Beach

CHAPTER 13. Hythe and Caswallon

CHAPTER 14. “If Caesar could only know”

CHAPTER 15. Early Autumn: 55 B.C.

CHAPTER 16. Lunden Town

CHAPTER 17. A Home-Coming

CHAPTER 18. The Phoenician Tin Trader

CHAPTER 19. A Sitting of the Court of Admiralty: 55 B.C.

CHAPTER 20. Hiram-Bin-Ahab Stipulates

CHAPTER 21. In Which the Women Lend a Hand

CHAPTER 22. Mutiny and Mal de Mer

CHAPTER 23. Tros Makes a Promise

CHAPTER 24. Rome’s Centurion

CHAPTER 25. “God give you a fair wind, Hiram-Bin-Ahab!”

CHAPTER 26. “Neither Rome nor I Forgive!”

CHAPTER 27. The British Channel

CHAPTER 28. Northmen!

CHAPTER 29. Battle!

CHAPTER 30. Tros Makes Prisoners and Falls in Need of Friends

CHAPTER 31. A Man Named Skell Returns from Gaul

CHAPTER 32. “A pretty decent sort of god!”

CHAPTER 33. In Lunden Pool

CHAPTER 34. Cornelia of Gaul

CHAPTER 35. Tros Strikes a Bargain

CHAPTER 36. Rash? Wise? Desperate? Or All Three?

CHAPTER 37. The Battle at Lud’s Gate

CHAPTER 38. Winter, Near Lunden Town

CHAPTER 39. The Gist of Skell’s Argument

CHAPTER 40. “What shape is the Earth?”

CHAPTER 41. “The world is round!”

CHAPTER 42. Galba, the Sicilian

CHAPTER 43. The Conference of Kings

CHAPTER 44. Caswallon’s Ultimatum

CHAPTER 45. Eough, the Sorcerer

CHAPTER 46. Eough Applies Alchemy

CHAPTER 47. The Start of the Mad Adventure

CHAPTER 48. The Liburnian

CHAPTER 49. Luck o’ Lud o’ Lunden

CHAPTER 50. The Gods! The Gods!

CHAPTER 51. Ave, Caesar!

CHAPTER 52. “I Build a Ship!”

CHAPTER 53. Gathering Clouds

CHAPTER 54. Fflur Pays a Debt

CHAPTER 55. “The Fool! Lord Zeus, What shall I do with him?”

CHAPTER 56. A Bargain with the Druids

CHAPTER 57. Liafail

CHAPTER 58. The Lord Rhys

CHAPTER 59. The Lord Rhys’s Tenantry

CHAPTER 60. Make Sail!

CHAPTER 61. A Letter to Caesar

CHAPTER 62. Discipline

CHAPTER 63. Gwenhwyfar Yields

CHAPTER 64. News!

CHAPTER 65. The Fight off Dertemue

CHAPTER 66. Men—Men—Men!

CHAPTER 67. “Pluto! Shall I set forth full of dreads and questions?”

CHAPTER 68. Off Gades

CHAPTER 69. Visitors

CHAPTER 70. Gades by Night

CHAPTER 71. Chloe—“Qui saltavit placuit”

CHAPTER 72. Herod Ben Mordecai

CHAPTER 73. The Cottage in Pkauchios’ Garden

CHAPTER 74. Gaius Suetonius

CHAPTER 75. Pkauchios, the Astrologer

CHAPTER 76. Balbus qui murum aedificabit

CHAPTER 77. Conspiracy

CHAPTER 78. The Committee of Nineteen

CHAPTER 79. At Simon’s House

CHAPTER 80. In Balbus’ Dining Hall

CHAPTER 81. Caesar—Imperator!

CHAPTER 82. Rome: 54 B.C.

CHAPTER 83. Politics

CHAPTER 84. Helene

CHAPTER 85. Marcus Porcius Cato

CHAPTER 86. Julius Nepos

CHAPTER 87. Virgo Vestalis Maxima

CHAPTER 88. The Praetor’s Dungeon

CHAPTER 89. Pompeius Magnus

CHAPTER 90. The Carceres and Nepos, the Lanista

CHAPTER 91. Tros Forms an Odyssean Plan

CHAPTER 92. Ignotus

CHAPTER 93. Conops

CHAPTER 94. Circus Maximus

CHAPTER 95. The Link Breaks

CHAPTER 96. Britain: Late Summer

INTRODUCTORY Talbot Mundy on Julius Caesar and the Samothracian Mysteries

Arthur S. Hoffman, chief editor of Adventure from 1912 to 1927, wrote the following article for the magazine’s “Camp Fire” section as an afterword to the first part of “Tros of Samothrace.” The article contains, and is written around, a letter from Talbot Mundy in which the author describes his views of Julius Caesar as a man and a leader, and speculates on the nature of the Samothracian Mysteries.

Thanks and credit for making the text of this article available to RGL readers go to Matthew Whitehaven, who donated a copy from his personal archive for inclusion in this new edition of the book.

When Talbot Mundy first began talking to me about the Tros stories (there are to be others) and about Caesar and his times I began cussing myself for having done what I very particularly hold in contempt–I’d been swallowing whole some other fellow’s collecting and interpretation of facts and the whole conception resulting therefrom. All of us are naturally inclined to do this; that is why our civilization shows so many stupidities. But a minority struggle against this lazy, sheep-like habit and try to think for themselves as best they can. I’d flattered myself I was among those who tried–and then Talbot Mundy came along and made me see what a stupid sheep I’d been.

Since school I haven’t studied history (except for a few years that of ancient Ireland) or even done more than desultory reading–for example, learning from Hugh Pendexter’s stories more than I’d ever known of the history of our own country, and from others of our fiction writers more of the history of various countries. I’d had to translate Caesar’s Commentaries and to absorb more or less history as she is taught. It was impressed upon me that Caesar was a great man, an heroic figure. His Commentaries I accepted as true word for word. Did not other historians accept and build upon them? Were they not everywhere perpetuated in the schools without ever a question raised as to their complete trustworthiness.

In later years, of course, I learned that historians, instead of being infallible, were merely human beings grubbing among scattered bits of facts and trying to build out of them a complete conception of something on which they generally had no first hand information whatever. Also, that if one them made a mistake, many of those after him were likely to swallow the mistake and perpetuate it, and, on the other hand, that the historian of today, having at hand added bits of facts, is likely to consider the historian of yesterday very much out of date and not to be trusted too much in his deductions. In other words, any historian, including him of today, is, by the historian’s own test, not a final authority but merely a more or less skilful guesser at the whole truth from what small bits of it he manages to collect.

Yet I had been swallowing whole, without question, all the historians had been handing me. To be sure, Shaw years ago had merrily slapped most of the historians in the face and presented a comparatively new conception of Julius Caesar, but by that time I’d reached the stage where I didn’t accept other people’s say-so so easily. Like a true sheep, I relapsed pretty well into my old conception of a very heroic Caesar and a very wonderful and rather admirable Roman Empire.

Then Mr. Mundy, after much delving into books, arose and challenged the whole works and I awoke to contempt for myself. I didn’t mean I just scrapped all my old conceptions and accepted his, but I realized that I, at least, had nothing with which to support the old ideas against the new. Maybe Mr. Mundy is all or partly wrong. I don’t know. Let’s hear the other side in rebuttal. There are plenty of historians, both professional and amateur, among us who gather at Camp-Fire. Let’s hear from them.

One thing seems clear to me. If historians have accepted the Commentaries as completely as Mr. Mundy says, then I’m “off them” and for the same reason as Mr. Mundy–I hesitate to swallow whole the account of himself and his doings that an ambitious man wrote or had written to be read by the voters and politicians he must win to him in order to realize his ambitions. Let’s hear Mr. Mundy’s case:

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I have followed Caesar’s Commentaries as closely as possible in writing this story, but as Caesar, by his own showing, was a liar, a brute, a treacherous humbug and a conceited ass, as well as the ablest military expert in the world at that time; and as there is plenty of information from ancient British, Welsh and Irish sources to refute much of what he writes, I have not been to much trouble to make him out a hero.

In the first place, I don’t believe he wrote his Commentaries. His secretary did. Most of it is in the third person, but here and there the first person creeps in, showing where Caesar edited the copy, which was afterward, no doubt, transcribed by a slave who did not dare to do any editing.

The statement is frequently made that Caesar must be accurate because all other Roman historians agree with him. But they all copied from him, so that argument doesn’t stand. No man who does his own press-agenting is entitled to be accepted on his own bare word, and as Caesar was quite an extraordinary criminal along every line but one (he does not seem to have been a drunkard) he is even less entitled to be believed than are most press agents. He was an epileptic, whose fits increased in violence as he grew older, and he was addicted to every form of vice (except drunkenness) then known. He habitually used the plunder of conquered cities for the purpose of bribing the Roman senate; he cut off the right hands of fifty thousand Gauls on one occasion, as a mere act of retaliation; he broke his word as often, and as treacherously, as he saw fit; and he was so vain that he ordered himself deified and caused his image to be set in Roman temples, with a special set of priests to burn incense before it.

As a general he was lucky, daring, skilful–undoubtedly a genius. As an admiral, he was fool enough to anchor his own feet off an open shore, where, according to his own account, a storm destroyed it. (In this story I have described what may have happened.) And he was idiot enough to repeat the mistake a year later, losing his fleet a second time.

He pretends his expeditions to Britain were successful. But a successful general does not usually sneak away by night. On his second invasion of Britain he actually raided as far as Lunden (London) but it is very doubtful whether he actually ever saw the place, and it is quite certain that he cleared out of Britain again as fast as possible, contenting himself with taking hostages and some plunder to make a show in his triumphal procession through the streets of Rome. And whatever Caesar wrote about those expeditions, what his men had to say about them can be surmised fairly accurately from the fact that Rome left Britain severely alone for several generations.

Caesar reports that the Britons were barbarians, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. They were probably the waning tag-end of a high civilization; which would mean that they had several distinct layers of society, including an aristocratic caste–that they had punctilious manners, and a keen and probably quixotic sense of chivalry. For instance, Caesar’s account that they fought nearly naked is offset by the fact that they thought it cowardly not to expose their bodies to the enemy. Their horsemanship, their skill in making bronze wheels and weapons, and their wickerwork chariots can hardly be called symptoms of barbarism.

The Britons were certainly mixed; their aristocrats were fair-haired and very white-skinned; but there were dark-haired, dark-skinned folk among them, as well as rufous Northmen, the descendants of North Sea rovers. They can not have been ignorant of the world, because for centuries prior to Caesar’s time there had been a great deal of oversea trade in tin. They used gold, and in such quantities that it must have been obtained from oversea. They were skilful in the use of wool. And they were near enough to Gaul to be in constant touch with it; moreover, they spoke practically the same language as the Gauls.

The Samothracians Mysteries have baffled most historians and, down to this day, nothing whatever is known of their actual teaching. Of course, all the Mysteries were secret; and at all times any initiate, of whatever degree, who attempted to reveal the secrets, or who did reveal any of them even unintentionally, was drastically punished. At certain periods, when the teaching had grown less spiritual, such offenders were killed.

Samothrace has no harbors and no safe anchorage, which may account for the fact that it has never been really practically occupied by any foreign power, although it is quite close to the coast of Greece. The ruins of the ancient temples remain today. It is probably true that the Samothracian Mysteries were the highest and the most universally respected, and that their Hierophants sent out from time to time emissaries, whose duty was to purify the lesser Mysteries in different parts of the world and to reinstruct the teachers. At any rate it is quite certain that all the Mysteries were based on the theory of universal brotherhood (any Free and Accepted Mason will understand at once what is meant by that) and that they had secret signs and passwords in common, by means of which any initiate could make himself known to another, even if he could not speak the other’s language. The Mysteries extended to the far East, and travel to the East, for the purpose of studying the Mysteries was much more common that is frequently supposed.

Caesar loathed the Druids (who were an order–and a very high one–of the Mysteries) because his own private character and life were much too rotten to permit his being a candidate for initiation. In all ages the first requirement for initiation has been clean living and honesty. He admits in his Commentaries that he burned the Druids alive in wicker cages, and he accuses the Druids of having done the same thing to their victims; but Caesar’s bare word is not worth the paper it is written on. His motive is obvious. Any any one who knows anything at all about the Mysteries–especially any Free and Advanced Mason–knows without any doubt whatever that no initiate of any genuine Mystery would go so far as to consider human sacrifice or any form of preventable cruelty.

Kissing was a general custom among the Britons. Men kissed each other. The hostess always kissed the guest. It was a sign of good faith and hospitality, the latter being almost a religion. Whoever had been kissed could not be treated as an enemy while under the same roof.

The spelling and pronunciation of common names presents the usual problem. Gwenhwyfar, of course, is the early form of Guinevere, but how it was pronounced is not easy to say. Fflur was known as Flora to the Romans, and the accounts of her beauty had much to do with Caesar’s second invasion of Britain, for he never could resist the temptation to ravish another man’s wife if her good lucks attracted his attention. (But I will tell that in another story.)

To me there seems no greater absurdity than to take Caesar’s Commentaries at their face value and to believe on his bare word that the Britons (or the Gauls) were savages. It is impossible that they can have been so. The Romans were savages, in every proper–if not commonly accepted–meaning of the word. The only superiority they possessed was discipline–but the Zulus under Tchaka also had discipline. The Romans, in Caesar’s time at any rate, had no art of their own worth mentioning, no standard of honor that they observed (although they were very fond of prating about honor, and of imputing dishonor to other people), no morals worth mentioning, no religion they believed in, and no reasonable concept of liberty. They were militarists, and they lived by plundering other people. They were unspeakably corrupt and vicious. A Roman legion was a machine that very soon got out of hand unless kept hard at work and fed with loot, including women. They were disgraceful sailors, using brute force where a real seaman would use brains, and losing whole fleets, in consequence, with astonishing regularity. They were cruel and vulgar, their so-called appreciation of art being exactly that of our modern nouveaux-riches; whatever was said to be excellent they bought or stole and removed to Rome, which was a stinking slum even by standards of the times, infested by imported slaves and licentious politicians.

But they did understand discipline, and they enforced it, when they could, with an iron hand. That enabled them to build roads, and it partly explains their success as law-makers. But Rome was a destroyer, a disease, a curse to the earth. The example that she set, of military conquest and imperialism, has tainted the world’s history ever since. It is to Rome and her so-called “classics” that we owe nine-tenths of the false philosophy and mercenary imperialism that has brought the world to its present state of perplexity and distress, long generations having had their schooling at the feet of Rome’s historians and even our laws being largely based on Rome’s ideas of discipline combined with greed.

Rome rooted out and destroyed the Mysteries and gave us in their place no spiritual guidance but a stark materialism, the justification of war, and a world-hero–Caius Julius Caesar, the epileptic liar, who, by own confession, slew at least three million men and gave their women to be slaves or worse, solely to further his own ambition. Sic transit gloria Romae! –Talbot Mundy

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The last paragraph gives this little brain a mighty lot to think about. Is it the Roman Empire we are to thank for much of our present-day materialism? I wonder what our world would be like now if some other people or peoples had brought to the front another kind of civilization and standard? After all it is the moral standard, the mental point of view, that endures. The Roman Empire has rotted into mere history that we argue about. But, after all these centuries, is its moral and social standard gripping and guiding us today? What will our own moral and social standard do to the future of the world?

These Mysteries of Samothrace and elsewhere–what if Rome had not crushed them out? Or did she? Are they and their teachings still among us, our backs turned to them or out feet ground on them as backs and feet were in Rome’s day?

After a thousand or two years we are not quite so material as Talbot Mundy paints the Romans, but still, considering us as a whole, isn’t materialism our controlling influence? The magnificent Roman Empire is rotted, gone, wiped out. The world has pretty well employed itself in proving that materialistic nations can not endure. Some time will it get tired and start developing the other kind so that they in turn can have their trial? Will our nation ever do that, or will it just go on doing what the Roman Empire did and become what the Roman Empires is–a thing wiped from the physical earth but sending its curse of materialism down the centuries?

We’re not a materialistic nation? Well, if we’ve gone so far we don’t even know we’re materialistic, we’re in worse shape than I thought.

(Source: The Camp-Fire, Adventure, February 10, 1925)

CHAPTER 1. Britain: The Late Summer of 55 B.C.

These then are your liberties that ye inherit. If ye inherit sheep and oxen, ye protect those from the wolves. Ye know there are wolves, aye, and thieves also. Ye do not make yourselves ridiculous by saying neither wolf nor thief would rob you, but each to his own. Nevertheless, ye resent my warning. But I tell you, Liberty is alertness; those are one; they are the same thing. Your liberties are an offense to the slave, and to the enslaver also. Look ye to your liberties! Be watchful, and be ready to defend them. Envy, greed, conceit and ignorance, believing they are Virtue, see in undefended Liberty their opportunity to prove that violence is the grace of manhood. –from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan

TOWARD sunset of a golden summer evening in a clearing in a dense oak forest five men and a woman sat beside a huge flat rock that lay half buried in the earth and tilted at an angle toward where the North Star would presently appear.

At the southern end of the clearing was a large house built of mud and wattle with a heavy thatched roof; it was surrounded by a fence of untrimmed branches, and within the enclosure there were about a dozen men and women attending a fire in the open air, cooking, and carrying water.

Across the clearing from a lane that led between enormous oaks, some cattle, driven by a few armed men clothed in little other than skins dawdled along a winding cow-path toward the opening in the fence. There was a smell of wood smoke and a hush that was entirely separate from the noise made by the cattle, the soft sigh of wind in the trees, the evensong of birds and the sound of voices. Expectancy was in the air.

The five men who sat by the rock were talking with interruptions, two of them being foreigners, who used one of the dialects of southern Gaul; and that was intelligible to one of the Britons who was a druid, and to the woman, who seemed to understand it perfectly, but not to the other men, to whom the druid had to keep interpreting.

“Speak slowly, Tros, speak slowly,” urged the druid; but the big man, although he spoke the Gaulish perfectly, had a way of pounding his left palm with his right fist and interjecting Greek phrases for added emphasis, making his meaning even more incomprehensible.

He looked a giant compared to the others although he was not much taller than they. His clothing was magnificent, but travel-stained. His black hair, hanging nearly to his shoulders, was bound by a heavy gold band across his forehead. A cloak of purple cloth, embroidered around the edges with gold thread, partly concealed a yellow tunic edged with gold and purple.

He wore a long sword with a purple scabbard, suspended from a leather belt that was heavily adorned with golden studs. His forearm was a Titan’s, and the muscles on his calves were like the roots of trees; but it was his face that held attention: Force, under control with immense stores in reserve; youth unconquerable, yet peculiarly aged before its time; cunning of the sort that is entirely separate from cowardice; imagination undivorced from concrete fact; an iron will and great good humor, that looked capable of blazing into wrath–all were written in the contours of forehead, nose and jaw. His leonine, amberous eyes contained a hint of red, and the breadth between them accentuated the massive strength of the forehead; they were eyes that seemed afraid of nothing, and incredulous of much; not intolerant, but certainly not easy to persuade.

His jaw had been shaved recently, to permit attention to a wound that had now nearly healed, leaving a deep indentation in the chin, and the black re- growing beard, silky in texture, so darkened the bronze skin that except for his size, he might almost have passed for an Iberian.

“Conops will tell you,” he said, laying a huge hand on the shoulder of the man beside him, “how well I know this Caius Julius Caesar. Conops, too, has had a taste of him. I have seen Caesar’s butchery. I know how he behaves to druids and to kings and to women and to all who oppose him, if he once has power. To obtain power–hah!–he pretends sometimes to be magnanimous. To keep it–”

Tros made a gesture with his right fist, showed his teeth in a grin of disgust and turned to the other Samothracian* beside him. “Is he or is he not cruel, Conops? Does he keep Rome’s promises? Are Rome’s or his worth that?” He snapped his fingers.

Conops grinned and laid a forefinger on the place where his right eye had been. Conops was a short man, of about the same age as Tros, possibly five-and-twenty, and of the same swarthy complexion; but he bore no other resemblance to his big companion. One bright-blue eye peered out from an impudent face, crowned with a knotted red kerchief. His nose was up-turned, as if it had been smashed in childhood. He had small brass earrings, similar in pattern to the heavy golden ones that Tros wore, and he was dressed in a smock of faded Tyrian blue, with a long knife tucked into a red sash at his waist. His thin, strong, bare legs looked as active as a cat’s.

“Caesar is as cruel as a fish!” he answered, nodding. “And he lies worse than a long-shore Alexandrian with a female slave for hire.”

The druid had to interpret that remark, speaking in soft undertones from a habit of having his way without much argument. He was a broad-faced young man with a musical voice, a quiet smile and big brown eyes, dressed in a blue-dyed woolen robe that reached nearly to his heels–one of the bardic druids of the second rank.

It was the woman who spoke next, interrupting the druid’s explanation, with her eyes on Tros. She seemed to gloat over his strength and yet to be more than half-suspicious of him, holding her husband by the arm and resting chin and elbow on her knee as she leaned forward to watch the big man’s face. She was dressed in a marvelously worked tunic of soft leather, whose pricked-in, barbaric pattern had been stained with blue woad. Chestnut hair, beautifully cared for, hung to her waist; her brown eyes were as eager as a dog’s; and though she was young and comely, and had not yet borne a child, she looked too panther-like to be attractive to a man who had known gentler women.

“You say he is cruel, this Caesar. Is that because he punished you for disobedience–or did you steal his woman?” she demanded. Tros laughed –a heavy, scornful laugh from deep down near his stomach.

“No need to steal! Caius Julius Caesar gives women away when he has amused himself,” he answered. “He cares for none unless some other man desires her; and when he has spoiled her, he uses her as a reward for his lieutenants. On the march his soldiers cry out to the rulers of the towns to hide their wives away, saying they bring the maker of cuckolds with them. Such is Caesar; a self-worshiper, a brainy rascal, the meanest cynic and the boldest thief alive. But he is lucky as well as clever, have no doubt of that.”

The druid interpreted, while the woman kept her eyes on Tros.

“Is he handsomer than you? Are you jealous of him? Did he steal your wife?” she asked; and Tros laughed again, meeting the woman’s gaze with a calmness that seemed to irritate her.

“I have no wife, and no wife ever had me,” he answered. “When I meet the woman who can turn my head, my heart shall be the judge of her, Gwenhwyfar.”*

“Are you a druid? Are you a priest of some sort?” the woman asked. Her glowing eyes examined the pattern of the gold embroidery that edged his cloak.

Tros smiled and looked straight at the druid instead of at her. Conops drew in his breath, as if he was aware of danger.

“He is from Samothrace,” the druid remarked. “You do not know what that means, Gwenhwyfar. It is a mystery.”

The woman looked dissatisfied and rather scornful. She lapsed into silence, laying both elbows on her knees and her chin in both hands to stare at Tros even more intently. Her husband took up the conversation. He was a middle-sized active-looking man with a long moustache, dressed in wolf-skin with the fur side outward over breeches and a smock of knitted wool.

An amber necklace and a beautifully worked gold bracelet on his right wrist signified chieftainship of some sort. He carried his head with an air of authority that was increased by the care with which his reddish hair had been arranged to fall over his shoulders; but there was a suggestion of cunning and of weakness and cupidity at the corners of his eyes and mouth. The skin of his body had been stained blue, and the color had faded until the natural weathered white showed through it; the resulting blend was barbarously beautiful.

“The Romans who come to our shore now and then have things they like to trade with us for other things that we can easily supply. They are not good traders. We have much the best of it,” he remarked.

Tros understood him without the druid’s aid, laughed and thumped his right fist on his knee; but instead of speaking he paused and signed to them all to listen. There came one long howl, and then a wolf-pack chorus from the forest.

“This wolf smelt, and that wolf saw; then came the pack! What if ye let down the fence?” he said then. “It is good that ye have a sea around this island. I tell you, the wolves of the Tiber are less merciful than those, and more in number and more ingenious and more rapacious. Those wolves glut themselves; they steal a cow, maybe, but when they have a bellyful they go; and a full wolf falls prey to the hunter. But where Romans gain a foothold they remain, and there is no end to their devouring. I saw Caesar cut off the right hands of thirty thousand Gauls because they disobeyed him. I say, I saw it.”

“Perhaps they broke a promise,” said the woman, tossing her head to throw the hair out of her eyes. “Commius* the Gaul, whom Caesar sent to talk with us, says the Romans bring peace and affluence and that they keep their promises.”

“Affluence for Commius, aye, and for the Romans!” Tros answered. “Caesar made Commius king of the Atrebates. But do you know what happened to the Atrebates first? How many men were crucified? How many women sold into slavery? How many girls dishonored? Aye, there is always peace where Rome keeps wolf’s promises. Those are the only sort she ever keeps! Commius is king of a tribe that has no remaining fighting men nor virgins, and that toils from dawn to dark to pay the tribute money that Caesar shall send to Rome–and for what? To bribe the Roman senators! And why? Because he plans to make himself the ruler of the world!”

“How do you know?” asked the woman, when the druid began to interpret that long speech. She motioned to the druid to be still–her ear was growing more accustomed to the Samothracian’s strange pronunciation.

Tros paused, frowning, grinding his teeth with a forward movement of his iron jaw. Then he spoke, looking straight at the woman:

“I am from the isle of Samothrace, that never had a king, nor ever bowed to foreign yoke. My father is a prince of Samothrace, and he understands what that means.” He glanced at the druid. “My father had a ship –a good ship, well manned with a crew of freemen–small, because there are no harbors in the isle of Samothrace and we must beach our ships, but seaworthy and built of Euxine* timber, with fastenings of bronze. We had a purple sail; and that, the Romans said, was insolence.

“The Keepers of the Mysteries of Samothrace despatched my father in his ship to many lands, of which Gaul was one, for purposes which druids understand. Caesar hates druids because the druids have secrets that they keep from him.

“He denounced my father as a pirate, although Pompey,* the other tribune, who made war on pirates, paid my father homage and gave him a parchment with the Roman safe-conduct written on it. My name, as my father’s son, was also on the parchment, as were the names of every member of the crew. I was second in command of that good ship. Conops was one of the crew; we two and my father are all who are left.”

Tros paused, met Conops’ one bright eye, nodded reminiscently, and waited while the druid translated what he had just said into the British tongue. The druid spoke carefully, avoiding further reference to the Mysteries. But the woman hardly listened to him; she had understood.

“Our business was wholly peaceful,” Tros continued. “We carried succor to the Gauls, not in the form of weapons or appliances, but in the form of secret counsel to the druids whom Caesar persecuted, giving them encouragement, advising them to bide their time and to depend on such resources as were no business of Caesar’s.

“And first, because Caesar mistrusted us, he made us give up our weapons. Soon after, on a pretext, he sent for that parchment that Pompey had given my father; and he failed to return it. Then he sent men to burn our ship, for the sake of the bronze that was in her; and the excuse he gave was that our purple sail was a defiance of the Roman Eagles. Thereafter he made us all prisoners; and at that time Conops had two eyes.”

Gwenhwyfar glanced sharply at Conops, made a half contemptuous movement of her lips and threw the hair back on her shoulders.

“All of the crew, except myself and Conops, were flogged to death by Caesar’s orders in my father’s presence,” Tros went on. “They were accused of being spies. Caesar himself affects to take no pleasure in such scenes, and he stayed in his tent until the cruelty was over. Nor did I witness it, for I also was in Caesar’s tent, he questioning me as to my father’s secrets.

“But I pretended to know nothing of them. And Conops did not see the flogging, because they had put his eye out, by Caesar’s order, for a punishment, and for the time being they had forgotten him. When the last man was dead, my father was brought before Caesar and the two beheld each other face to face, my father standing and Caesar seated with his scarlet cloak over his shoulders, smiling with mean lips that look more cruel than a wolf’s except when he is smiling at a compliment or flattering a woman. And because my father knows all these coasts, and Caesar does not know them but, nevertheless, intends to invade this island–”

The druid interrupted.

“How does he know it is an island?” he asked. “Very few, except we and some of the chiefs, know that.”

“My father, who has sailed around it, told him so in an unguarded moment.”

“He should not have told,” said the druid.

“True, he should not have told,” Tros agreed. “But there are those who told Caesar that Britain is a vast continent, rich in pearls and precious stones; he plans to get enough pearls to make a breastplate for the statue of the Venus Genetrix)* in Rome.

“So my father, hoping to discourage him, said that Britain is only an island, of no wealth at all, inhabited by useless people, whose women are ugly and whose men are for the most part deformed from starvation and sickness. But Caesar did not believe him, having other information and being ambitious to possess pearls.”

“We have pearls,” said the woman, tossing her head again, pulling down the front of her garment to show a big pearl at her breast.

The druid frowned:

“Speak on, Tros. You were in the tent. Your father stood and confronted Caesar. What then?”

“Caesar, intending to invade this island of Britain, ordered that I should be flogged and crucified, saying: ‘For your son looks strong, and he will die more painfully if he is flogged, because the flies will torture him. Let us see whether he will not talk, after they have tied him to the tree.’”

“What then?” asked the druid, with a strange expression in his eyes.

“Yes, what then?” said the woman, leaning farther forward to watch Tros’s face. There was a half smile on her lips.

“My father offered himself in place of me,” said Tros.

“And you agreed to it!” said the woman, nodding, seeming to confirm her own suspicion, and yet dissatisfied.

Tros laughed at her.

“Gwenhwyfar, I am not thy lover!” he retorted, and the woman glared. “I said to Caesar, I would die by any means rather than be the cause of my father’s death; and I swore to him to his face, as I stood between the men who held me, that if my father should die first, at his hands, he must slay me, too, and swiftly.

“Caesar understood that threat. He lapsed into thought awhile, crossing one knee over the other, in order to appear at ease. But he was not at ease, and I knew then that he did not wish to slay either my father or me, having another use for us. So I said nothing.”

“Most men usually say too much,” the druid commented.

“And presently Caesar dismissed us, commanding that we should be confined in one hut together,” Tros went on. “And for a long while my father and I said nothing, for fear the guard without might listen. But in the night we lay on the dirt floor with our heads together, whispering, and my father said:

“‘Death is but a little matter and soon over with, for even torture must come to an end; but a man’s life should be lived to its conclusion, and it may be we can yet serve the purpose for which we came to Gaul. Remember this, my son,’ said he, ‘that whereas force may not prevail, a man may gain his end by seeming to yield, as a ship yields to the sea. And that is good, provided the ship does not yield too much and be swamped.’

“Thereafter we whispered far into the night. And in the morning when Caesar sent for us we stood before him in silence, he considering our faces and our strength. My father is a stronger man than I.

“There were the ropes on the floor of the tent, with which they were ready to bind us; and there were knotted cords for the flogging; and two executioners, who stood outside the tent–they were Numidians*– black men with very evil faces. And when he had considered us a long time Caesar said:

“‘It is no pleasure to me to hand men of good birth over to the executioners.’

“He lied. There is nothing he loves better, for he craves the power of life and death, and the nobler his victim the more subtly he enjoys it. But we kept silence. Then he rearranged the wreath that he wears on his head to hide the baldness, and drew the ends of his scarlet cloak over his knees and smiled; for through the tent door he observed a woman they were bringing to him. He became in a hurry to have our business over with.

“It may be that the sight of the woman softened him, for she was very beautiful and very much afraid; or it may be that he knew all along what demand he would make. He made a gesture of magnanimity and said:

“‘I would that I might spare you; for you seem to me to be worthy men; but the affairs of the senate and the Roman people have precedence over my personal feelings, which all men will assure you are humane. If, out of respect for your good birth and courageous bearing–for I reckon courage chiefest of the virtues–I should not oblige you to reveal the druids’ secrets, I would expect you in return to render Rome a service. Thereafter, you may both go free. What say you?’

“And my father answered: ‘We would not reveal the druids’ secrets, even if we knew them; nor are we afraid to die.’

“And Caesar smiled. ‘Brave men,’ he said, ‘are more likely than cowards to perform their promises. I am sending Caius Volusenus* with a ship to the coast of Britain to discover harbors and the like, and to bring back information. If he can, he is to persuade the Britons not to oppose my landing; but if he can not, he is to discover the easiest place where troops can be disembarked. It would give me a very welcome opportunity to exercise my magnanimity, which I keep ever uppermost in mind, if both of you would give your promises to me to go with Caius Volusenus, to assist him with all your knowledge of navigation; and to return with him. Otherwise, I must not keep the executioners waiting any longer.’

“I looked into my father’s eyes, and he into mine, and we nodded. My father said to Caesar:

“‘We will go with Caius Volusenus and will return with him, on the condition of your guarantee that we may go free afterward. But we must be allowed to travel with proper dignity, as free men, with our weapons. Unless you will agree to that, you may as well command your executioners, for we will not yield.’

“And at that, Caesar smiled again, for he appreciates dignity–more especially if he can subtly submit it to an outrage.

“‘I have your promise then?’ he asked; and we both said, ‘Yes.’

“Whereat he answered:‘I am pleased. However, I will send but one of you. The other shall remain with me as hostage. You observe, I have not put you under oath, out of respect for your religion, which you have told me is very sacred and forbids the custom we Romans observe of swearing on the altar of the gods.’

“But he lied–he lied. Caesar cares nothing for religion.

“‘The son shall make the journey and the father shall remain,’ he said to us, ‘since I perceive that each loves the other. Should the son not keep his promise, then the father shall be put to certain trying inconveniences in the infliction of which, I regret to say, my executioners have a large experience.’

“He would have dismissed us there and then, but I remembered Conops, who alone of all our crew was living, and I was minded to save Conops. Also I knew that my father would wish that, and at any cost, although we dared not speak to each other in Caesar’s presence. So I answered:

“‘So be it, Caesar. But the promise on your part is that I shall go with dignity, and thereto I shall need a servant.’

“‘I will give you a Gaul,’ said he.

“‘I have no use for Gauls,’ I answered.‘They are treacherous. And at that he nodded.‘But there is one of our men,’ said I, ‘who escaped your well-known clemency and still endures life. Mercifully, your lieutenants have deprived him of an eye, so he is not much use, but I prefer him, knowing he will not betray me to the Britons.’

“Caesar was displeased with that speech, but he was eager they should bring the woman to him, so he gave assent. But he forbade me to speak with my father again until I should return from Britain, and they took my father away and placed him in close confinement.

“A little later they brought Conops to me, sick and starved; but the centurion* who had charge of prisoners said to me that if I would promise to bring him back six fine pearls from Britain, he for his part would see to it that my father should be well treated in my absence. So I promised to do what might be done. I said neither yes nor no.”

“We have pearls,” said the woman, looking darkly at Tros, tossing her hair again.

“Nevertheless,” Tros answered, “to give pearls to a Roman is to arouse greed less easy to assuage than fire!”

“You said Caesar will make himself master of the world. What made you say that?” asked the woman.

“I will tell that presently, Gwenhwyfar–when Caswallon* and the other druids come,” he answered.

CHAPTER 2. “And ye know whether Caesar lies or not.”

Listen to me before ye fill your bellies in the places habit has accustomed you to think are safe. Aye, and while ye fill your bellies, ponder. Hospitality and generosity and peace, ye all agree are graces. Are they not your measures of a man’s nobility? Ye measure well. But to ignorant men, to whom might is right, I tell you gentleness seems only an opportunity. If ye are slaves of things and places, appetites and habits, rather than masters of them, surely the despoiler shall inflict upon you a more degrading slavery. Your things and places he will seize. Your appetites and habits he will mock, asserting that they justify humiliation that his violence imposes on you. Be ye, each one, master of himself, or ye shall have worse masters. –from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan

THE long British twilight had deepened until the trees around the clearing were a whispering wall of gloom, and a few pale stars shone overhead. The wolves howled again, making the cattle shift restlessly within the fence, and a dozen dogs bayed angrily. But the five who sat by the rock in the midst of the clearing made no move, except to glance expectantly toward the end of the glade.

And presently there began to be a crimson glow behind the trees. A chant, barbaric, weird and wonderful, without drumbeat or accompaniment, repeating and repeating one refrain, swelled through the trees as the crimson glow grew nearer.

Tros rose to his feet, but the druid and the others remained seated, the woman watching Tros as if she contemplated springing at him, although whether for the purpose of killing him, or not, was not so evident. Conops watched her equally intently.

It looked as if the forest was on fire, until men bearing torches appeared in the mouth of the glade, and a long procession wound its way solemnly and slowly toward the rock. The others stood up then and grouped themselves behind Tros and the druid, the druid throwing back his head and chanting a response to the refrain, as if it were question and answer. The woman took her husband’s hand, but he appeared hardly to notice it; he was more intent on watching the approaching druids, his expression a mixture of challenge and dissatisfaction. He began to look extremely dignified.

There were a dozen druids, clad in long robes, flanked and followed by torchbearers dressed in wolf-skin and knitted breeches. They were led by an old man whose white beard fell nearly to his waist. Five of the other druids were in white robes, and bearded, but the rest were clean-shaven and in blue; all wore their hair long and over their shoulders, and no druid had any weapon other than a sickle, tucked into a girdle at the waist. The torchbearers were armed with swords and spears; there were fifty of them, and nearly as many women, who joined in the refrain, but the old High Druid’s voice boomed above all, mellow, resonant and musical.

The procession was solemn and the chant religious; yet there was hardly any ceremony when they came to a stand near the rock and the old druid strode out in front of the others, alone. The chant ceased then, and for a moment there was utter silence. Then the druid who had been acting as interpreter took Tros’s right hand and led him toward the old man, moving so as to keep Tros’s hand concealed from those behind. The old man held out his own right hand, the younger druid lifting the end of Tros’s cloak so as to conceal what happened.

A moment later Tros stepped back and saluted with the graceful Mediterranean gesture of the hand palm outward, and there the ceremony ceased.

The old druid sat down on a stone beside the rock; his fellow druids found places near him in an irregular semicircle; the crowd stood, shaking their torches at intervals to keep them burning, the glare and the smoke making splotches of crimson and black against the trees.

The younger druid spoke then in rapid undertones, apparently rehearsing to the older man the conversation that had preceded his arrival. Then Tros, with his left hand at his back and his right thrown outward in a splendid gesture that made Gwenhwyfar’s eyes blaze, broke silence, speaking very loud:

“My father, I know nothing of the stars, beyond such lore as seamen use; but they who do know say that Caesar’s star is in ascension, and that nightly in the sky there gleam the omens of increasing war.”

The High Druid nodded gravely. The chief let go his wife’s hand, irritated because she seemed able to understand all that was said, whereas he could not. The younger druid whispered to him. It was growing very dark now, and scores of shadowy figures were gathering in the zone of torchlight from the direction of the forest. There was a low murmur, and an occasional clank of weapons. Tros, conscious of the increasing audience, raised his voice:

“They who sent me hither say this isle is sacred. Caesar, whose camp- fires ye may see each night beyond the narrow sea that separates your cliffs from Gaul, is the relentless enemy of the druids and of all who keep the ancient secret.

“Ye have heard–ye must have heard–how Caesar has stamped out the old religion from end to end of Gaul, as his armies have laid waste the corn and destroyed walled towns. Caesar understands that where the Wisdom dwells, freedom persists and grows again, however many times its fields are reaped. Caesar does not love freedom.

“In Gaul there is no druid now who dares to show himself. Where Caesar found them, he has thrown their tortured carcasses to feed the dogs and crows. And for excuse, he says the druids make human sacrifice, averring that they burn their living victims in cages made of withes.

“Caesar, who has slain his hecatombs, who mutilates and butchers men, women, children, openly in the name of Rome, but secretly for his own ambition; Caesar, who has put to death more druids than ye have slain wolves in all Britain, says that the druids burn human sacrifices. Ye know whether Caesar lies or not.”

He paused. The ensuing silence was broken by the whispering of men and women who translated his words into the local dialect. Some of the druids moved among the crowd, assisting. Tros gave them time, watching the face of the chief and of his wife Gwenhwyfar, until the murmur died down into silence. Then he resumed:

“They who sent me into Gaul, are They who keep the Seed from which your druids’ wisdom springs. But he who sent me to this isle is Caesar. They who sent me into Gaul are They who never bowed a knee to conqueror and never by stealth or violence subdued a nation to their will. But he who sent me hither knows no other law than violence; no other peace than that imposed by him; no other object than his own ambition.

“He has subdued the north of Gaul; he frets in idleness and plays with women, because there are no more Gauls to conquer before winter sets in. He has sent me hither to bid you let him land on your coast with an army. The excuse he offers you, is that he wishes to befriend you.

“The excuse he sends to Rome, where his nominal masters spend the extorted tribute money wrung by him from Gauls to buy his own preferment, is that you Britons have been sending assistance to the Gauls, wherefore he intends to punish you. And the excuse he gives to his army is, that here is plunder –here are virgins, cattle, clothing, precious metals and the pearls with which he hopes to make a breastplate for the Venus Genetrix.

“Caesar holds my father hostage against my return. I came in Caesar’s ship, whose captain, Caius Volusenus, ordered me to show him harbors where a fleet of ships might anchor safely, threatening me that, unless I show them to him, he will swear away my father’s life on my return; for Caius Volusenus hopes for Caesar’s good-will, and he knows the only way it may be had.

“But I told Caius Volusenus that I know no harbors. I persuaded him to beach his ship on the open shore, a two days’ journey from this place. And there, where we landed with fifty men, we were attacked by Britons, of whom one wounded me, although I had not as much as drawn my sword.

“Your Britons drove the Romans back into the ship, which put to sea again, anchoring out of bowshot; but I, with my man Conops, remained prisoner in the Britons’ hands–and a druid came, and staunched my wound.

“So I spoke with the druid–he is here–behold him– he will confirm my words. And a Roman was allowed to come from the ship and to take back a message to Caius Volusenus, that I am to be allowed to speak with certain chiefs and thereafter that I may return to the ship; but that none from the ship meanwhile may set foot on the shore.

“And in that message it was said that I am to have full opportunity to deliver to you Caesar’s words, and to obtain your consent, if ye will give it, to his landing with an army before the winter storms set in.

“Thus Caius Volusenus waits. And yonder on the coast of Gaul waits Caesar. My father waits with shackles on his wrists. And I, who bring you Caesar’s message, and who love my father, and who myself am young, with all my strength in me, so that death can not tempt, and life seems good and full of splendor–I say to you: Defy this Caesar!”

He would have said more, but a horn sounded near the edge of the trees and another twenty men strode into the clearing, headed by a Gaul who rode beside a Briton in a British chariot. The horses were half frantic from the torchlight and fear of wolves, but their heads were held by men in wolf-skin who kept them to the track by main strength. Conops plucked at the skirt of Tros’s tunic:

“Commius!” he whispered, and Tros growled an answer under his breath.

The two men in the chariot stood upright with the dignity of kings, and as they drew near, with the torchlight shining on their faces, Tros watched them narrowly. But Conops kept his one bright eye on Gwenhwyfar, for she, with strange, nervous twitching of the hands, was watching Tros as intently as he eyed the stranger. Her breast was heaving.

The man pointed out as Commius was a strongly built, black-bearded veteran, who stood half a head shorter than the Briton in the chariot beside him. He was dressed in a Roman toga, but with a tunic of unbleached Gaulish wool beneath. His eyes were bold and crafty, his head proud and erect, his smile assuring. Somewhere there was a trace of weakness in his face, but it was indefinable, suggestive of lack of honor rather than physical cowardice, and, at that, not superficial. His beard came up high on his cheek-bones and his black hair low on a broad and thoughtful forehead.

“Britomaris!” cried the driver of the chariot, and he was a chief beyond shadow of doubt, with his skin stained blue and his wolfskins fastened by a golden brooch–a shaggy-headed, proud-eyed man with whipcord muscles and a bold smile half-hidden under a heavy brown moustache.

The husband of Gwenhwyfar stood up, dignified enough but irresolute, his smoldering eyes sulky and his right hand pushing at his wife to make her keep behind him. She stood staring over his shoulder, whispering between her teeth into his ear. The chief who drove the horses spoke again, and the tone of his loud voice verged on the sarcastic:

“O Britomaris, this is Commius, who comes from Gaul to tell us about Caesar. He brings gifts.”

At the mention of gifts, Britomaris would have stepped up to the chariot, but his wife prevented, tugging at him, whispering; but none noticed that except Tros, Conops and the druids.

At a signal from the other chief a man in wolf-skins took up the presents from the chariot and brought them–a cloak of red cloth, a pair of Roman sandals and three strings of brass beads threaded on a copper wire.

It was cheap stuff of lower quality than the trade goods that occasional Roman merchants brought to British shores. Britomaris touched the gifts without any display of satisfaction. He hardly glanced at them, perhaps because his wife was whispering.

“Who is here?” asked Commius, looking straight at Tros.

At that Conops took a swift stride closer to his master, laying a hand on the hilt of his long knife. Gwenhwyfar laughed, and Britomaris nudged her angrily.

“I am one who knows Commius the Gaul!” said Tros, returning stare for stare. “I am another who runs Caesar’s errands, although Caesar never offered me a puppet kingdom. Thou and I, O Commius, have eaten leavings from the same trough. Shall we try to persuade free men that it is a good thing to be slaves?”

The chief who had brought Commius laughed aloud, for he understood the Gaulish, and he also seemed to understand the meaning of Gwenhwyfar’s glance at Britomaris. Commius, his grave eyes missing nothing of the scene, stepped down from the chariot and, followed by a dozen men with torches, walked straight up to Tros.

His face looked deathly white in the torch glare, but whether or not he was angry it was difficult to guess, because he smiled with thin lips and had his features wholly in control. Tros smiled back at him, good nature uppermost, but an immense suspicion in reserve.

Gwenhwyfar, clinging to her man’s arm, listened with eager eyes and parted lips. Conops drew his knife clandestinely and hid it in a tunic fold.

“I know the terms on which Caesar sent you. I know who is hostage for you in Caesar’s camp,” said Commius; and Tros, looking down at him, for he was taller by a full hand’s breadth, laid a heavy right hand on his shoulder.

“Commius,” he said, “it may be well to yield to Caesar for the sake of temporary peace–to give a breathing spell to Gaul–to save thine own neck, that the Gauls may have a leader when the time comes. For this Caesar who seems invincible, will hardly live forever; and the Gauls in their day of defeat have need of you as surely as they will need your leadership when Caesar’s bolt is shot. That day will come. But is it the part of a man, to tempt these islanders to share your fate?”

“Tros, you are rash!” said Commius, speaking through his teeth. “I am the friend of Caesar.”

“I am the friend of all the world, and that is a higher friendship,” Tros answered. “Though I were the friend of Caesar, I would nonetheless hold Caesar less than the whole world. But I speak of this isle and its people. Neither you nor I are Britons. Shall we play the man toward these folk, or shall we ruin them?”

The crowd was pressing closer, and the chief in his chariot urged the horses forward so that he might overhear; their white heads tossed in the torchlight like fierce apparitions from another world.

“If I dared trust you,” Commius said, his black eyes searching Tros’s face.

“Do the Gauls trust you?” asked Tros. “Are you a king among the Gauls? You may need friends from Britain when the day comes.”*