CHAPTER THREE
VISITORS
THE MINUTE the sun dipped below the skyline Tros ordered, "Out oars!" and, taking full advantage of the tide, dropped anchor in pitch darkness almost within hail of a spit of land that jutted into the mouth of Gades Bay. The moisture-laden Virazon, the sea-breeze that blows all night long between spring and autumn had not yet broken the dead calm. There was a stench of rotting seaweed from the shore, a croon of short waves on a sandy beach and, except that, silence.
There was no moon yet, but the starlight shone with milky whiteness that revealed the ghost-white city several miles away, rising tier on tier on a peninsula that was almost an island. About half a mile from where he had anchored a beacon-light flared in an iron basket, and in the distance, to the northward of the city, was a parallelogram of crimson fires that marked the outline of a Roman camp.
By lantern light in the after deck-house, with the ports well shrouded, Tros watched Conops get into the costume of a Greek slave.
"Now remember to act slavish!" he instructed. "Little man, much rests on you this night! To the Lord Orwic be fussily obsequious. See that he treads in no ordure near the gate. Watch that none touches him. Carry a stick to drive the dogs away from him, and use it at the least excuse. Talk Greek to him[1] no matter that he doesn't understand. To the gate custodians be insolent. If they ask your master's name and business, tell them they may have it and a whipping in the bargain tomorrow morning for their impudence. In a pinch use Simon's name, but not if you can help it, because if they learn you are visiting Simon it might occur to them to extort a bribe from Simon by holding you both in the guardhouse until he comes."
"Trust me, master! I know Gades. There is a place outside the city wall where dancing girls are kept before they ship them for the Asia trade. Too bad we haven't scent of jasmine to make our clothes smell of an afternoon's adventure! Never mind. I'll manage it."
Then Orwic came, jingling a purse of gold and silver coins that Tros had given him, bending to admire the fashion of a Roman pallium and tunic, loot from Cæsar's bireme that Tros had captured a year ago.
"Walk not like a horseman!" Tros protested. "A Roman noble walks with a stride that measures out the leagues. Come, try it on the deck."
Tros strode for him and Orwic imitated. Conops ran in front, pretending to drive dogs away and pointing to guide his feet from pools of filth.
"Go. Go now with the gods in mind," said Tros and turned to give orders to Sigurdsen, who had manned and lowered the long-boat and was waiting to go overside.
"You, who were a king, so do, that if others had obeyed you formerly as you obey me now, you would be a king this day! Your weapons are for a last resort. Be silent, crafty, cunning, cautious—" he emphasized each word with his fist on the Northman's breast—"run rather than resist. If questioned, make no answer. Put one man ashore to follow the Lord Orwic and Conops as far as the city gate. Let him watch from a safe distance and bring word to you when they have passed in. Come back to the ship with the information, taking care to keep the oars well muffled."
Then one last word to Orwic.
"Cover your long hair with your pallium. One gold-piece to the captain of the gate guard. One piece of silver to each of the others. No more, or you'll merely whet their appetites. Ludd's luck!"
The muffled oar-beats thumped away into the dark, and silence fell. The whole crew was aware of mysteries impending. Aloft, the Northmen and some of the Eskualdenak leaned out of the rigging, watching the long-boat until its shape was lost in gloom. There began then a murmur of talking between decks, where the weary rowers sprawled. Jaun Aksue, leader of the Eskualdenak, trespassed on the poop without asking for permission and leaned over the rail beside Tros confidently, as if they two were equals.
"Secrecy!" he remarked grinning, and turned his back to the rail to fill his lungs with the first breath of the night wind that began to make the ship swing slowly at her anchor.
Tros swallowed resentment.
"Caution your men to be silent," he said and turned away.
But Aksue laid a strong hand on his arm.
"My men crave wine and shore leave—money. You wouldn't let us kill the whales. We have been eleven days at sea. The Gades girls are famous and the red wine is the best in all Spain."
Tros had hard work to suppress his instinct to knock the man down, but friction with the Eskualdenak just then would have ruined the vague plan he had in mind.
"I saved you men from Cæsar and from the Britons," he answered. "If you're caught in Gades, you'll be crucified,"
"Maybe. But you have friends ashore, or you wouldn't be here," said Aksue. "You can give us shore leave if you want to. You can say we're your slaves. We'll act the part, then nobody can interfere with us. We needn't go into the city. There are taverns outside the wall and lots of women. All we demand is a day ashore and some money to spend. Promise that, and we'll keep as quiet as mice 'till morning. Otherwise, I won't answer for what my men will do."
Tros found it easy enough now to tolerate the impudence. That those proud Eskualdenak were willing to act the part of slaves solved more than half of the problem that had racked his brain for days and nights on end. He nodded.
"You shall go ashore."
"And money?"
"I will arrange it. Go and warn your men that if there's any noise tonight, no shore leave!"
For an hour after that Tros paced the poop anxiously, his ears alert for the approach of shipping, for there might be Roman guard-ships on the prowl, and he had given hostages to fortune. Orwic and Conops were friends. He could not put to sea and desert them. Unless or until they returned he must stay where he was.
At the end of an hour he heard splashing, and thought it was dolphins or porpoises. Then, staring into the darkness, he was nearly sure he saw the outline of a boat.
"Sigurdsen!" he shouted, but there was no answer, and he remembered it was much too soon to expect Sigurdsen in the long-boat.
BUT the splashing continued, and presently he saw two human heads within a few feet of the ship's side. A voice that he thought was a woman's cried out to him in Greek to throw a rope. He went himself and lowered the rope ladder, ordering the deck-watch to the other bulwark. A man and a woman climbed up like wet shadows and stood dripping in the dark in front of him. The woman wore nothing but a Greek chlamys, with the wreck of a wreath of flowers tangled in her wet hair; the man had on a Roman tunic, that clung and revealed a lithe, athletic figure. They were nearly of a size, and in the dark they looked like children up to mischief.
"Tros!" said the woman, and Tros nearly jumped out of his skin.
Had he been recognized before he had set foot in Gades?
Gesturing with a jerk of the head and arm, he led the way toward the stateroom, where he might learn the worst without the deck-watch hearing it.
At the door he paused and let them pass in ahead of him. For a minute he stood, making sure that the deck-watch were not near enough for eavesdropping, wondering how many of them had seen the swimmers come aboard. When he entered the state-room the girl had already clothed herself in his own best purple cloak, that had been hanging on the rail between the bunk and bulkhead.
"Tros!" she said. "Tros of Samothrace!" And she laughed at him.
She seemed no whit worse for her swim, although the man was squatting on the floor and looked exhausted. She curtsied with a rhythm of bare legs. There was no fear in her eyes, nor even challenge, but a confidence expressed in laughter and a gesture of disarming comradeship.
"Lord Tros," she began again.
"I am not Tros," he answered sullenly.
He was afraid. Of all the difficulties in the world he dreaded most a complication with a woman.
"Oh yes, you are!" she answered. "Horatius Verres saw your ship at sunset notched against the sky. He recognized it instantly. He was in hiding on the roof of Pkauchios' ergastulum[2] He is a runaway from Gaul. I am Chloe, the dancer, Pkauchios' slave. I am the favorite of Gades," she added, as if she were not particularly proud of it but simply stating fact.
"What do you want with me?" Tros asked her sullenly. That the girl's ivory-white skin shone golden in the whale-oil lantern light, and that her face was like a cameo against the shadow, only deepened his mistrust. He retired two paces from her and stood with his back against the door.
"Only what I can get!" she answered, and sat on Tros' bunk, arranging his pillows behind her, covering her bare knees with his blanket "I could tell Balbus, the governor, who you are, but I won't if you will bargain fairly."
Tros glanced at the man on the floor, who was slapping his head to get the water from his ears.
"As prisoners—" he suggested.
Chloe interrupted, laughing.
"I am a slave who owns slaves. My women know where I am. I have two men-slaves waiting on the beach."
"Who is this fellow?" Tros asked.
"I told you. Horatius Verres. He had a little difficulty with the Romans and had to run away from Gaul. If what he said is true, he lost his heart to a girl whom Cæsar coveted—some young matron, I suppose, or Cæsar wouldn't have looked twice at her. Some one, to earn Cæsar's favor, accused poor Horatius Verres of accepting bribes so that Cæsar might send him to Rome in fetters and keep the young woman for himself. But she found out the plot in time and warned him. So he slew the informer and tried to escape to Britain in one of four biremes that Cæsar was sending along with some Eskualdenak to invade that country.
"Somebody—" she looked merrily at Tros—"attacked those biremes, destroyed three of them, and captured a lot of the Eskualdenak. The fourth bireme escaped to Gaul with Horatius Verres still on board, but he swam away before they reached port and escaped a second time overland. He reached Gades in a dreadful state, but I could see he was a pretty boy under all the rags and whiskers, so I hid and saved him from Balbus' labor gang, because he had told me his real name and an interesting story. I hid him on the roof of my master's ergastulum, and later, when he was rested, I sent him to Simon the Jew, thinking Simon might do something for him, because Simon owes me money and can't pay."
"Can't pay? You say Simon can't pay what he owes you?"
She nodded.
"So you know Simon? Well, he has lent nearly all his money to Cæsar and Balbus, who pay back only when it suits them."
"Go on," said Tros, his fingers clutching at his sword-hilt.
He could not have asked a greater favor from the gods than that Simon should be short of money at the moment; but he was afraid of this woman, and still more afraid lest she should realize it.
"Simon was shocked and virtuous," she continued. "He would have informed Balbus if I hadn't reminded him of a few little things I know about himself. He agreed to say nothing, but he was afraid to do anything, so Horatius Verres had to return to his hiding place. I was asleep this afternoon when he sighted your ship from the roof of the ergastulum, but he called to me through the window of my cottage in Pkauchios' garden and said he would be safe if he could reach your ship, so I came with him to help him pass the gate guards, and then came out here for the fun of it. I wanted to see Tros the Samothracian."
"And are you satisfied?" Tros asked her.
He knew the reputation of the Gades dancing girls—intrigue, well educated villainy, greed, ulterior motives. He was sure that this one would not have dared to visit him unless convinced of her own safety. Perhaps she knew Orwic and Conops were ashore and was counting on them as hostages to prevent her from being carried off to sea before daylight.
She looked at him long and steadily, then nodded with a little uplift of her Grecian nose and a droop of the eyelids that suggested confidence in her own skill to read character.
"Why did you come to Gades?" she asked. "Balbus, the governor knows you are a pirate. I have heard him talk of it."
"I came to see Simon," Tros answered, and watched her to judge the effect.
BY HER face, by her manner, by the sudden, puzzled frown with a hint of speculation underlying it, he judged that she did not know about his having sent two messengers ashore. And her next words confirmed the guess.
"Simon has much less influence than my master Pkauchios, who is an astrologer whom all men fear. If you will hide Horatius Verres on your ship, I will speak for you to Pkauchios. He is almost the only man who dares to go to Balbus at any hour of the night. He could make Balbus afraid to interfere with you by talking about the stars and portents and all that nonsense. Then, what do you want to do? You know—" she looked at him keenly and impudently—"you can buy me. I have much influence in Gades."
"How much are you worth?" Tros asked her.
"My value in the market? Two hundred thousand sesterces![3] You don't believe it? Pkauchios had to pay the tax on that amount. He entered me on the list at much less, but the Roman who had farmed the taxes from Balbus ordered me sold at auction, so Pkauchios had to admit the higher value or else lose me to the highest bidder and pay a tax on the sale in the bargain. But I did not mean you should buy me. I meant you can buy my influence."
But in a world full of uncertainties, if there was one thing sure, it was that buying dancing women's influence was as unthrifty a proceeding as to throw the money overboard. The only end to it would be the bottom of the thrower's purse. Tros stared at Horatius Verres.
"How did you obtain her influence?" he asked. "Did you pay for it?"
The man smiled and troubled himself to rise before he answered.
"Money?" he asked with a shrug of his shoulders. He had all the gestures of a well bred man, and he was handsome in a dark way, although his eyes were rather close together. "I had no money. I made love to her. Who wouldn't? She thought it a merry jest at first. But I convinced her by threatening to yield myself to Balbus if she wouldn't believe my heart is hers."
"Oh, I wasn't convinced, but he is a pretty liar," Chloe interrupted. "So I decided to help him and get rid of him," she added with a swift glance at the Roman, who was watching Tros.
But Tros saw the glance and placed his own interpretation on it.
"I will keep you on my ship," he said to Verres. "And I won't enslave you, but I won't trust you until I know you better."[4]
Verres bowed acknowledgment.
"I am grateful," he said, smiling again with a peculiar boyish up-twist of the mouth.
Tros was about to speak again, but the deck-watch shouted, and a man came running to the stateroom door—pounded on it.
"Sigurdsen comes!"
Tros either had to go on deck or else summon Sigurdsen into the cabin. He did not want the deck crew in his confidence. He signed to Chloe and Verres to hide themselves in the dark corner, where his clothes hung between bunk and bulkhead, not wishing, either, to discuss his visitors with Sigurdsen, preferring to keep information to himself until the time came to make use of it. As he would have to talk to Sigurdsen in Gaulish there was a chance that Chloe, at any rate, might not understand the conversation. He would keep the Roman on the ship, so that it did not matter whether he should understand or not.
- ↑ There was a large Greek colony in Gades, where the language was as much in use as any other at that time.
- ↑ A private prison kept for the punishment of slaves.
- ↑ About $8,500—a very high, but not an unheard of price for a slave who could make enormous profits for her master.
- ↑ It would have been quite simple for Tros lawfully to enslave Verres. For instance, on arrival at some other port he could have presented a bill for passage money, and if Verres did not pay that, he could attach his person for debt.