Читать книгу Queen Cleopatra - Talbot Mundy - Страница 12

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Some men build—upraising one thing from the products of a thing thrown down. But other men, as scavengers, see only fuel in a living tree or quarries in the monuments of bygone days. Nobility, it may be, is a tendency to imitate the Lords of Life by building—whether it be character, or cities: Ignobility a tendency to imitate the Hounds of Death, that, seeing what is built up, hunger to annihilate.

—Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.

THE dust-cloud to the eastward thinned and soon a dozen chariots whirled out of it, Apollodorus leading. Arab horsemen galloping to meet them wheeled into a cavalcade that crowded either flank and thundered in the rear until the leading chariot drew rein at last in front of Cleopatra's tent.

Apollodorus, travel-stained and hollow-eyed, so weary that he reeled when his feet touched ground, was almost knocked down by a following chariot's horses that were too far spent to feel their driver wrenching at the reins.

A very young man sat in that second chariot at ease. He took his time about descending and he made no comment, although he seemed to be amused by Apollodorus' narrow escape. He looked distinguished, and, in a sly way, dignified.

He had a beard already long enough to curl. His almond finger-nails were beautifully polished, and his feet, in doe-skin slippers, were as small and well shaped as a woman's. Gilded chain-mail showed through the opening of his tunic, over which he wore a thin striped cloak of green and gold. His head-dress was in the Arab style, but green and gold instead of white, and fastened with a jeweled brooch. He had rings on nearly all his fingers and a jeweled dagger at his waist.

If his clothing was designed to draw attention from his face, it failed. He was darkly handsome. Apollodorus' good looks faded in comparison. But it was said that even his own mother swooned at the baleful influence of Herod's eyes. Herod's own attendants all wore charms against them.

An Arab chief rode up and, hardly pausing to salute, demanded:

"We were promised a thousand men. Where are they?"

Two hundred Arabs clustered around him and Apollodorus waited breathless for the answer. When it came, in Herod's good time, it was like hot kettle-water, scalding what it touched:

"Son of a hundred thousand stinking dogs! You dare to breathe on me! Do I need to answer you what I have done with one man—or a thousand—or ten thousand?"

"Nevertheless, Prince Herod, this is a defeated army unless reenforcements come!"

Prince Herod laid a finger on his shapely nose and showed his teeth, whiter than ivory beneath the black mustache.

"Scatter, you dogs, to your gutters! See what I will come and do to you!"

The Arab rode back to his friends and passed the word among them:

"Herod has a thousand at his back, or he would never dare to speak thus."

Presently a scout came galloping to say he had seen dust again along the eastward sky-line.

"Dust of many horsemen!"

Herod turned toward Apollodorus, ignoring servants, who had poured out of the other chariots to wipe his slippers, brush dust from his cloak and sprinkle him with Persian scent of myrrh-and-rose-leaves.

"Where is she?" he asked—as he might have asked where dinner waited.

Apollodorus did not answer. He was noticing how strangely empty was the camp, and how discouragingly shabby it all looked. His eye then for a moment resting on the fort beyond the river he detected archers gazing seaward.

Diomedes came in sight, from the direction of the ford, apparently in haste to reach the seashore, angry with a horse that trod the soft sand balkily and followed by a group of officers. Apollodorus started off on foot. Herod chose a chariot whose horses were less foundered than his own, but Apollodorus, overtaken, would not ride, so Herod drove on, his attendants trailing as first one man's wind gave out, and then another's.

So when Apollodorus came in sight of the beach after passing behind smelly lines of breastworks and reed-thatched shelters, from which spearmen and archers of a dozen seaport towns observed him sulkily, Herod was already standing apart from a group of men and women, Cleopatra facing him at spear-length's distance. Herod looked irritably nervous, angry that a woman should oppose his will. The crowd had stood back. Even Cleopatra's women had withdrawn to thirty paces.

The first words that Apollodorus caught were Herod's:

"Did you imagine I would lead men here until I understand the risk? Can I afford to lose a thousand through miscalculation? I am not Lord of Egypt! I am Governor of Galilee. I had to drain a hundred villages to bring a thousand men. It cost me—Allah! It has cost me more than you can repay!"

With the corner of his eye he saw Apollodorus listening.

"And how should I know treachery was not intended?" he went on. "This lover of yours—"

Cleopatra made an almost unseen gesture to Apollodorus to restrain himself.

"—he can tell you, I have left my men where they can strike. You summoned me. I came. But I have taken care."

"Why did you come at all?" asked Cleopatra.

"Why? Why? You implored me to come! You besought me to come! Apollodorus promised you shall later lend me men to make me King of Syria, if I will help you now. He brought a pearl and said it was your gift. Do you send a prince a pearl that you may flout him when he makes you royal offers in return? None flouts me with impunity!"

"Having helped you when the Jews had made you desperate, I turned to you for help," said Cleopatra. "You were the first I thought of. Your answer is to threaten me with violence unless I run with you to Galilee! A Galilee for Egypt? Do you think me so mean?"

"Me, or Apollodorus, or some other!" Herod answered, grinning meanly. "Better a little kingdom, Cleopatra, that is certain, than a great one merely yearned for! Mine may grow. But what of Egypt,' when the Roman legions come collecting debts?"

She turned her back and Herod's own attendants closed in, forming a group around him to preserve his dignity. Apollodorus went to Cleopatra's side and Diomedes rode up, angrily dismounting, jerking at the bridle.

"Pompeius Magnus, you can see, has joined the enemy," he almost shouted at her. "Now they can either hold him and sell him to Caesar, or employ him to withstand both you and Caesar! Yet you offer a discourtesy to this prince, who—"

"If I offend you, Diomedes, leave me!" she retorted.

She turned her back. She gestured to her women to surround her. Diomedes tried to talk to Charmian, who turned her back, too. Some of Herod's men, to whom he had been whispering, returned toward the camp as Diomedes strode up, greeting Herod with a stately Old-World courtesy that Herod answered with conventional phrases and a lean mean smile.

"I beseech you, Prince Herod," Diomedes said, "to make allowance for a young queen in extremity. Her disappointments have been many, and this last one—the great Pompey going to our rivals is the bitterest of all. If you had only let her see your army—"

"She shall see it!" Herod answered.

Diomedes was too eager to restore good-will to notice the inflection:

"If you have a thousand men, Prince Herod, I beseech you, summon them!"

Herod made no move. His eyes were on the sea. He watched a small boat rowing shoreward. It was one that the Egyptians had sent to Pompey's ship. In the stern sat someone in a crimson cloak, who could not well be any one but Pompey, although only four men sat with him and there was neither standard, nor yet fasces, that by right should have accompanied a man who claimed dictatorship of Rome. In the forepart of the boat sat three men, one of whom was recognizable by helmet and high plume as Ptolemy's general, Achillas.

On the far side of the estuary all that beach was swarming with the troops of Ptolemy and with the traders and the riffraff of Pelusium, but they made no outcry nor any movement toward that tongue of beach on which the boat should land its occupants.

Said Herod: "Is there not an archer who can shoot that distance? Pompey and Achillas in the one boat—why not kill them before the boat can touch shore?"

"Distance over water is deceptive," Diomedes answered. "There are four full bow-shot lengths between us."

"Possibly. But shallow water," Herod insisted. "Send your cavalry—water only knee-deep—archers up behind the horsemen—surprise—"

"Shoal-water, yes," said Diomedes, "but a quicksand, and a channel, then another quicksand. Then mud. Do you see the color of the outflow of the Nile? That red stuff settles into banks that catch ships as the sirup catches flies. They are as safe from us, and we as safe from them, as if we were a league apart. Do you see that boat we sent to Pompey's ship to gain first word with him?" He pointed toward a rowboat laboring in surf along the tail-end of the shoal with more than half a league to go yet.

Herod grinned, his sly eyes seeming to contain within their depths all knowledge of the treachery of ages. He was not a young man then. He was as old as evil.

"I would not give this," said Herod, and he snapped his fingers, "to be there in Pompey's place! They hate me in Jerusalem, but when I come they greet me. Were I Pompey, I would think that silence ominous. And were I you, I would regret a rich prize almost within reach, yet slipping, slipping! Had I come but one hour sooner it should not have slipped away! I am in time to save another, though. Now listen to me. Let us not mind Pompey; he is lost forever."

Cleopatra, standing amid her women, turned her head to look for Apollodorus. He was missing. In the moment while her eyes sought swiftly for him, came a cry across the sea as if a woman's soul had suddenly gone wailing through the gates of death. The cry came from the anchored ship, where Pompey's wife was watching his arrival at the beach, foreseeing death three breaths before it happened amid silence with a thousand looking on.

The boat's bow touched the beach. Achillas rose and, setting one foot overside, extended his left hand, inviting Pompey to come forward and take hold of it. The rowers all leaped overside, waist-deep, to thrust the boat's bow firmly in the sand, and Pompey, laying aside a book that he was reading, stood up, signing to his four companions to step ashore first. There was some slight argument about that, but they finally obeyed him, and he followed, alone, stepping from rowers' seat to seat, a splendid figure, dignified, in no haste.

He ignored Achillas' hand. Intending to jump dry-shod from the boat's nose to the beach, he passed between Achillas and two other men in Roman military dress. The taller of the two men drew a Roman sword and struck him in the back between the shoulder-blades. He gave no cry that anybody heard but turned in sudden agony and seemed to recognize the man who struck him. Then, as if ashamed, he covered his head with his crimson cloak. Instantly Achillas, now behind him, plunged a dagger in his back, and Pompey fell from view below the gunwale. Then Achillas and the other two were seen to leap on him, elbows and shoulders showing as they stabbed and hacked enough to kill a dozen men.

Another moment, and the Roman who had struck first held a severed head in air. Another broken-hearted cry came wailing over-water from the ship. Achillas' rowers jumped into the boat and, stripping the headless body naked, threw it overboard.

Meantime, there was a scuffle on the beach. The Romans who had come with Pompey were surrounded. Three of them were stabbed to death; but the fourth man vanished unaccountably. Achillas and his two companions, the taller of them carrying the head, set off toward Pelusium, most of the soldiers, who had looked on, following in disorder, although a few remained to strip the bodies of the men just slain.

Cleopatra gripped at Charmian's shoulder.

"Dogs!" she exclaimed, then threw both hands outward in a tragic gesture. "Oh, how I love a hero! How I hate such gods as let a hero die of mean men's daggers—as a corpse uncared for is a prey of worms! O Charmian, is this a world? Or is it outer wilderness where lost souls long for Hades?—Look you, they will seize his ship next! They will slay his wife too! Do you see my brother's warships working up against the wind to cut off her escape? Are we to stand here doing nothing?"

But the ship that had brought Pompey had its anchor up already, and the wind, that was against the Egyptian fleet, was fair for a captain bold enough to try to use it through that shoal-encumbered channel. He had oars out, too. Cleopatra evoked unseen powers:

"Now! If there is anything in all Olympus' magic,—WOMAN, SAIL THOU SAFE AWAY IN MANZET, BARK OF RE*!"

[* Re was the Egyptian Sun-god—Manzet his vehicle. But the formula was said to be valueless without the rigorously guarded secret teaching, which only a few people were privileged to obtain. There is many a magic formula in common use to-day, whose real meaning has been long ago forgotten. Perhaps the commonest of all is the word "Hurrah!"]

Charmian began to tremble. Cleopatra seemed unconscious of anything except the race for the channel entrance—oars against oars and sail—distance two for one against the lone ship threading its course through quicksands.

"They come too fast. They catch her!" exclaimed Charmian, inbreathing.

But Cleopatra's eyes had seen a sail approaching—purple—then another—two sails on the one ship, bellied out to westward with a squally east wind tugging at the sheets. The glitter of a long-tongued golden serpent's head appeared.

"Tros!" she said. "Tros of Samothrace!"

The Egyptian ships had seen him too, to windward, bearing down on them with white foam seething off his bow and both his bulwarks dark with the heads of fighting men. They fell away before the wind, a dozen of them, to reform in battle line, and for a while they milled around in more or less confusion, their commanders shouting; until realizing they were helpless with the wind against them, they retired into the roadstead in the lee of the protecting westward shoal.

The escaping ship was equally afraid of Tros, but its captain seemed to be a master navigator, crafty and self-confident. Not large enough or fast enough to dare to try conclusions in the open sea, he held a course to westward until Tros backed sail to wait for him. Dousing his own sail then, with Tros' ship almost within range, he headed due east under oars until he had Tros down-wind and a shoal between them. Laboring along the shoal's edge he could hoist his sail again at last, and Tros had his choice between a long stern chase or letting him escape.

By that time Tros could see the frantic signals being made to him from Cleopatra's camp. He hove to, with the oars just paddling sufficiently to keep him head to wind. It would have been madness to attempt the estuary, with a fleet in sight that could have stolen along presently in darkness to blockade the entrance. But a boat went over-side and headed toward Cleopatra's camp—a long row across white-capped water.