Читать книгу Queen Cleopatra - Talbot Mundy - Страница 10

Table of Contents

They who are without virtue are blind to the virtue in others. So also, they who are unfit to govern are blind to authority and yield not except to violence. He who has authority inherent in him, as he might have virtue, or a gift of song, or wit, needs neither trumpet nor insignia to tell him when he meets authority superior to his.

—Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.

IN THE great stern cabin under the poop of Tros' ship Cleopatra lay, with Charmian beside her, in a bunk on the starboard side, on which had been spread an embroidered coverlet of Gaulish wool. Lollianè sat in Tros' seat in the curve of the stern, with her elbows resting on the heavily built table in front of her, her eyes watching Apollodorus, his watching Cleopatra. Tros' clothes, as gorgeous as eastern carpets, swung to every movement of the ship, from a pole set cornerwise across the cabin. There were several women huddled on a mattress on the floor. Apollodorus and Tros stood side by side, leaning their backs against the forward bulkhead.

"Would you like two lanterns?" Tros asked.

"Zeus, no! That one smells bad enough! Go on with what you were saying. Why will you not go home to Samothrace?"

"The Samothrace that was, no longer is," he answered. "You are of the Holy Mystery of Philae, and I marvel that a woman should have attained initiation. But I marvel more that you should ask me what you know I dare not answer."

But Cleopatra was sounding him, as he himself was used to sounding strange seas.

"Samothrace, I know," she said, "is like a volcano that is burned out, and now the buzzards build foul nests where once a purifying fire came forth. But if I were of Samothrace, I think I would not rest very long until I had lit again that olden fire."

"Each to his task," Tros answered. "I, who lit my candle at the flame, was sent to Britain to encourage the Druids, who are wiser than I am; they were too wise to scorn my help. So the Britons, who had been quarreling among themselves, took thought about their manhood. They defeated Caesar. Twice they defeated him—once and again!"

"And then you set forth to sail around the world? Why did you turn back?"

"My heart said that my task was only half done. Caesar was still living, and Rome rampant. Who am Ito burst out of my egg until my work within the egg is finished?"

"Why did you not kill Caesar? I understood you to say you took him prisoner."

"It is not my habit to slay prisoners. A prisoner is one whom Destiny lets live a while. And who am I, that I should gainsay Destiny? It is Rome I dread, not Caesar."

"It is Egypt, not myself, that I will save from Rome," said Cleopatra, and Tros eyed her for a moment with a new approval.

"Caesar," he said, "is the genius of Rome in human shape. He is the very essence of the wolfish Roman energy, that uses even its own virtue to a cruel end. But to slay Caesar in order to check Rome's conquests would be sillier than to nail a shadow to the wall to check the growth of the tree that cast it. Rome might loose three Caesars on the world, in place of one."

Cleopatra mused a while. "And Pompey?" she asked suddenly.

"Pompey is a man whom dignities and partly understood philosophies have swallowed until he mistakes the surface for the heart of things. The name Magnus that they gave him blinded Pompey. He could no longer see his greatness since its shadow covered him; his littlenesses had to serve, and they were many, leading him this way and that into indecision and deceiving others."

Cleopatra followed her own train of thought, her eyes half closed, and for a long time there was silence, broken only by the "talking" of the great ship's timbers and the regular thrash of the sea against the oaken hull.

"I agree," she said at last, "that killing Caesar would not stay Rome's course. And yet stay it I shall! None knows, except I, who burn with it, what will there is in me to save my Land of Khem from the fate of Gaul—aye, and from the fate of Samothrace, whose spirit died."

"Nay!" Tros exclaimed. "That spirit flew forth. Samothrace is like the Moon, whose course was run and whose spirit found release into a larger sphere."

"They call me Sister of the Moon," she answered. "Is that ominous?"

"Woman, if you have heart enough to understand, all omens are only evidence that life and death succeed each other as the day and night. The faint of heart may shudder to see the sun sink westward. But a wise one greets the night and gives thanks, turning to the eastward presently to greet the sun again."

"And Caesar, you say,—Tros! I—no, not this Cleopatra—not this shadow that you see here, but I—I am Egypt! What does it mean, that I must go forth like a hunted criminal? Is that, too, ominous? Is Egypt doomed to die like Samothrace?"

"I tell you, Samothrace is not dead!" Tros retorted, "Do you look for the soul of Samothrace in the shell of a rock-bound island? Look then for the soul of Egypt in a bucketful of Nile mud! Did wisdom die the day Pythagoras went free from his tired old body? Did they poison all intelligence with Socrates? I never was admitted to the higher mysteries, not being whole enough in understanding of that little knowledge that I have. I am a novice. Nevertheless, where I go, there goes Samothrace! And when I die, that Spirit I have let shine—dimly though it shone through me—shall once again receive me and renew me, until I go forth to a new birth. In the interval shall seed I sowed not germinate? When I return to earth shall I find fault if Samothrace is known by other names, and if its spirit dwells in other lands than that bare island? Are the olden gods of Khem but worms, that eat their Egypt, and destroy it, and have no home left nor anywhere to go?"

She nodded. "You are generous to fight my gloomy spirit for me, Tros. Olympus puzzles me with long words and symbols, whose inner meaning seems to be a key to yet more mysteries. And Olympus is no man's enemy, which makes it difficult to have patience with him—"

"He is a greater than I," said Tros.

"Olympus ever bids me choose between the spirits of light and darkness. But do you know how difficult that is when darkness steals up, and there is gloaming, and no stars, but only a nameless fear and a loneliness beyond all reach of companionship?"

"It is alone that we learn at last how countless and how close the gods are," Tros replied. "And I tell you the gods would cease if they should cease to cherish—aye, and to obey us! But they obey the spirit in us, not the fumes from off our crucible of moods. Alone—not otherwise—we commune with the Spirit that is a bright light in the bosom of the Soul."

"I am afraid of mine," said Cleopatra. "When I feel that greatness in me, and that brightness, I become a coward. For I fear this little body and this brain will burn up."

"Aye, a shell breaks ere a phoenix hatches," Tros assured her. "And a phoenix hatches only in the hot flame."

"But you were telling me of Caesar. Speak on. Killing Caesar would be to unleash Rome without a master. Rome needs money and would drain the very dregs of Egypt for it."

"Aye," Tros answered, "and in the name of law would rape religion, tolerating—aye, and whoring for its body, but slaying its soul as it slays the souls of the women its dealers buy and sell."

"But Caesar?"

"He can whip his Romans to obedience. He has that merit."

"Then if I win Caesar?"

Tros pondered that a moment. "Caesar," he said then, "is a man whom many women have beguiled, to their own undoing. There is none—not man or woman—who has come within Caesar's orbit and not suffered for it."

"Suffering? We may expect that. Do we women bring forth children without suffering?"

"They cut Caesar forth from his mother," said Tros. "It may be justice that a woman suffers, since she peoples a world with men to wreak worse cruelties."

"Time was," Cleopatra said, "when Egypt was a land of wisdom and its kings were patriarchs whom men revered. When I was young my mother took me a long journey up the Nile, to Philae, and I saw on my way the Pyramid, Memphis, Karnak, Thebes. I saw what dignity and affluence are born into a world where wisdom reigns; and I saw how, when the spirit is no longer understood, a people lapses into dullness and the very temple columns fall. My mother told me stories of the Land of Khem that I will remember as long as I live; so that Egypt to me is not Alexandria, but thousands of years of splendid history that flow down from the past as the Nile flows from none knows what mysterious source. And I know that as the Nile flows, so that spirit lives on, rising and waning, yet ceaseless. And I know that spirit moves me whenever I forget life's meanness and remember what the Fathers told me at Dendera. Tros—I was anointed Pharoah of the Upper and the Lower Nile and High Priestess of Osiris and of Isis!"