Читать книгу Queen Cleopatra - Talbot Mundy - Страница 3

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How often and with how great a longing I have tried to read the heavens! Yet the sea is nearer; can I understand that? Land is underfoot; about me is a host of other men; and I myself am nearest to myself of all things. If I find it difficult to know myself and to discover what my next act ought to be, is there a likelihood that I can read another's heart or know the meaning of the sky? I doubt—I welcome doubt when men say this or that of any one except themselves. And when they speak about themselves, however solemnly, I wonder whether they know any more of them than I of me.

—Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.

CLEOPATRA yawned. The rising sun, with a hint in its hue of the heat it had left behind in Asia, began brightening the gilt and marble coloring of the harbor water, streaking it with silver, making spots of gorgeous color where the seaweed and the scum and flotsam drifted. Through the windows, the masts of a hundred ships appeared like pen-strokes in the haze. Three crows came and perched on the marble balcony rail, alert and impudent, as Cleopatra jumped from her bed and came out under the awning, stretching herself.

"Charmian!" she called. "Oh, Charmian!"

Charmian entered through the Persian curtains at the rear of the room, wearing one of the new-fashioned Indian cotton dresses with a pale blue fringe that well offset her coppery golden hair. For a while the two gazed seaward, arms about each other's shoulders. Then:

"I had a dream," said Cleopatra, half closing her eyes to recall it. "This palace was mine, and I could see all Egypt. It was mine, too. Somebody—I don't know who—had banished Ptolemy and Arsinoe with all their brood of eunuchs. He had given me the reins, and he was watching me. He wasn't a god, and he wasn't Apollodorus, or Diomedes, or Olympus. It was a true dream, not a nightmare."

She spoke Greek with the broad Macedonian vowel sounds and the eclectic choice of words of an accomplished linguist.

"Any fool can die," she went on. "I am not afraid of their poisons and daggers."

"Then what do you fear?" asked Charmian.

"To die at the wrong moment."

Seven more crows joined the three on the railing.

"They are talking again of making you marry Ptolemy," said Charmian. "They held a conference last night that did not break up until an hour or two ago."

"Who told you?"

"Lollianè. She had it from Apollodorus. He had it from Theodotus, who told Apollodorus to tell you."

"So it comes from my brother's tutor, does it? Well, do you see those crows?" said Cleopatra. "I would rather trust them than Theodotus. What else did they say at the conference? Have they any news?"

"None—only yesterday's, that Pompey has defeated Caius Julius Caesar. That puts them in a quandary, because you lent Pompey fifty ships, which should make Pompey your friend. And Rome's treasury must be empty. Pompey will have no other way of rewarding his legions than to swoop down and seize the wealth of Egypt. He will probably support you. That was what the talk was all about. There was nothing else to discuss, with that dread hanging over them. So they decided the best thing to do is to carry out your father's will in every detail, marry you to Ptolemy, and make it difficult for Pompey to befriend you without recognizing your brother and, of course, themselves."

"What they do to my dead body, only their own vileness may dictate," said Cleopatra. "While I live it is mine and it is I who dispose of it. No. Not to the highest bidder, Charmian. Strange how you virgins think of nothing but the highest bidder! My brain and my body are all that I have to fight with, but they are good weapons."

Charmian nodded. "But they say," she went on, "that, as far as the law is concerned, the marriage could be effected without your being present. There is ample precedent. Some contended last night that a brother and sister marriage is a good thing, because inbreeding tends to fix the type of royalty. The priests say the ancient Egyptians practiced it."

"This is modern Egypt," Cleopatra answered. "You speak, Charmian, as if you agree with them."

"No. I am reporting to you. And they say, if you refuse, they may marry Arsinoe to Ptolemy, put them on the throne together and repudiate you."

Charmian followed Cleopatra's gaze seaward. There were a thousand sounds; all Alexandria was stirring. Not two hundred paces from the palace windows melons were being unloaded from a barge to an accompanying thwacking of an overseer's stick reminding a slave-gang that the night was over. Beyond the wharves and the crisscrossed spars and masts the calkers' hammers had begun. The guard changed at the gate below; the clang of arms resounded, followed by the retreating tramp of the men who had been relieved.

But sound travels strangely over water, and particularly when the sea is still, with that oily sheen on it that foretells beat. Totally distinct from all the other sounds, seeming to come now from this direction, now from that, there was a pulsation, suggesting a hint of martial music.

"A ship, I suppose," remarked Charmian after a long pause.

"Do you think they are making that noise to their gods?" suggested Cleopatra. "What extraordinary gods the sailors worship! If I were a god, and sailors made that noise to me, I would send a tempest!"

"Look," exclaimed Charmian, "there goes the harbor master."

"Ready to sell the port to the first strong bidder, or to plunder the first weak one," Cleopatra commented without changing her expression or her tone of voice, but rather as if she were memorizing facts for future reference.

The great marble watch-tower on the Isle of Pharos—like a gleaming phantom nearly five hundred feet tall—was just beginning to be visible as the sun sucked up the mist. A stumpy ship, as big but not so graceful as Cleopatra's royal barge, possessed of prodigious overhangs that made her pitch to the slightest swell, got up anchor with a deal of shouting and made toward the harbor mouth. The oars hit the water unevenly—sulkily—as if the gang were half awake. As sharp as the crack of trodden seaweed came the whip on naked shoulders, and the ship veered off her course a moment when the slaves quickened the time unevenly; then, having eaten enough punishment, they swung together and the harbor master's wake became a thing of reasonable dignity.

More leisurely, but with almost as much shouting, two long war-ships, each with two banks of oars, cast off their warps and followed, keeping their distance, line abreast, as if they preferred to look at what the mist might bring forth before deciding what to do. They had no beaks and they hardly resembled war-ships, except for groups of archers standing near the bow; and they had the same long overhangs as the harbor master's craft, that possibly were good for estuary work but that suggested neither comfort nor safety when driving into long seas. Their oars thumped rhythmically, but the noise did not obliterate that other, approaching sound.

Suddenly Cleopatra caught her breath, for never educated Greek lived who did not thrill to the challenge of beauty.

A light air from the westward lifted the gossamer curtain of mist and the sun blazed on a golden prow, shaped like a serpent that raised its glittering head against a purple sail. A ship whose sides were all vermilion, except where white foam boiling from her bow uncovered flashes of gleaming metal below the water-line, came head-on toward the harbor mouth, her long oars sparkling as they smote the blue seas into swirling streaks of green and white.

"Oh!" Cleopatra gasped. "Oh! Any life is worth living when things like this happen!"

Armed men were in the ship's bow—great men in helmets. Under the curve of the enormous purple fore-sail could be seen the figure of the helmsman leaning his weight against the steering oar, with a bigger man, the captain of the ship, beside him. Aloft, perched high on the foremast was a cup-shaped nest that shone as if built of bronze, the heads of men protruding over its brim.

"Surely no Roman ship! No Roman has such taste as that! A king's ship! But which king's?"

Cleopatra's eyes were glittering. Whatever was royal and brave thrilled her to the point where emotion, ceasing, became contact with the gods. She seemed something more than woman in that moment.

From behind her, through the wide opening between room and balcony, six women came and stood with fruit and cakes on silver dishes and milk in an alabaster goblet.

They tried to call her attention but she dismissed them with a gesture—then changed her mind suddenly and seized two handfuls of the cakes, which she threw to the crows. She watched the birds pounce and fly away, and for about two minutes after that her attention was divided between the oncoming ship and one crow that devoured its cake on a near-by roof. The bird opened its beak wide, fluttered and fell dead.

"Whose ship?" Cleopatra repeated. Charmian did not answer.

The long ship swerved until the after-sail came into full view and the rowers' beads all along one side were visible. And now the noise explained itself—cymbals, drums and harps under the break of the bow, where the big man on the poop could see them and set the time with a staff that he held in his right hand.

"Sixty oars to a bank, and three banks!" Cleopatra said, counting. "And, oh, they move like music! Charmian, did you ever see such grandeur expressed in anything? Whose ship can it be?"

Charmian turned her head, but checked herself in mid-speech, pointing:

"Was that dead bird there just now?" she demanded.

"No. Let one of the women pack it in a box and send it to Potheinos with my salutation. Bid him and Ptolemy his master eat it. Bid Lollianè deliver the message—they won't dare to harm her—not just yet; they think Apollodorus loves her. That is not yet true—not yet. Then send Diomedes to me—I must find out whose ship that is."

Charmian crossed the bedroom to the door and the moment she opened it a man of over fifty years of age strode in as if he had been waiting to be summoned. His sinews resembled molded metal. His skin, except where the scars were ill-concealed by artificial stain, had been burned brass-color by the sun. His shaved upper lip was straight and quarrelsome and a curled, short, black beard stuck forward pugnaciously under it. He wore the Grecian military kilt, that came not more than mid-way down his thighs, and kept one hand on the bronze hilt of a Damascus sword, whose scabbard was embossed with portraits of the legendary heroes.

He was in no wise disconcerted by a nearly naked queen, he also being Greek. He saluted with an air of veteran fidelity, then peered under his right hand seaward, his eyes narrowing to slits because of the strong glare on the water.

"Whose ship, Diomedes?"

"Tros! By Osiris, Tros! May all the gods regard his impudence!"

His voice was as harsh as shaken iron, and it made Cleopatra smile.

The long ship, having rounded the Pharos, well within the harbor now, bore down on the harbor master's sluggish craft without again changing course or checking speed. The wind had ceased to fill the sails, but the beat of the martial music quickened and the long oars flashed response—vermilion blades a-plunge in jade-green, leaving egg-white foam on royal blue—until, urged by sudden panic and the whip, the harbor master's crew went to work frantically to row their craft out of the way. She of the purple sails boiled on without changing her course by a hair's breadth, straight for a point midway between the war-ships, leaving the scandalized harbor master pitching and rocking in her wake.

And then another marvel, heightened by the drifting mist that had again obscured the Pharos; suddenly she brailed those purple sails, as swiftly as they take in awnings when the first rain of a season bursts on pleasure gardens. At a clanging signal from the cymbals and the harps, she swung, with starboard oars aback and port oars pulling short swift strokes that hardly buried the vermilion blades, turning in her own length. And there she lay, broadside to the war-ships' bows, her golden serpent grinning at them, and her four great catapults drawn taut by unseen mechanism.

Cleopatra caught her breath again. "Tros of Samothrace?" She laughed, with a half-note of excitement peculiar to her. "I remember him well. He came to my father's court and said the world was round. I stood behind the curtain, and they punished me afterward for saying I agreed with him. My father agreed with him, too, being drunk, and not afraid when he was drunk; but the priests said such mysteries were not good for people to know, and they tried to have Tros imprisoned, but Olympus warned him, and my father gave him some money, being drunk again, so that he might go away and prove what shape the world is."

"Olympus should have minded his own business!" said Diomedes, thrusting his beard forward, scowling.

Seeing he was not looking at her, Cleopatra smiled, and one of her women, believing the smile auspicious, came forward with slippers and a thin robe of silk, embroidered with Persian roses.

Charmian returned and stood beside her.

"Do you think there will be a battle?" Charmian asked. "Oh, you virgins," remarked Cleopatra. "Virgins think of nothing but extremes—no middle course!"

Diomedes uttered a brassy cackle of a laugh. "They say of Tros, he never fights if he can get what he wants by running," he remarked; but it was not quite clear whether he approved of that or not.

He of Samothrace, it seemed, had no intention of beginning the hostilities. The cymbals clanged again. The oar-blades on the port side all flashed forward to the limit of their scope and hung there, ready to snatch and swing the ship entirely round.

"I wonder what he wants," said Cleopatra.

"Water—food—fuel—medicine—fresh fruit—news—information—any of the things that mariners put into port for," Diomedes answered. "Crews go sick and mutiny unless they are allowed on shore at intervals. Or perhaps he brings news of Roman doings—Aries! The clumsy, mud-begotten fellaheen! I am ashamed! By Alexander's right hand, if we had a man like Tros, and one such ship, we could defy your brother's mongrels—and Rome—and—"

"All the world, if only Tros would admit the world is flat!" laughed Cleopatra.

Diomedes scowled, He did not like irreverence.

"Watch those clumsy, ill-trained idiots!" he muttered.

One of the war-ships had put a rowboat overside and managed it so awkwardly that the boat upset, spilling men into the harbor. So the other war-ship lowered a boat in turn while the crew of the first were fished for, and an officer was rowed toward the long vermilion ship, who did a deal of shouting at long range before venturing cautiously alongside.

"Oh, well, I suppose that means Tros will join my brother. They will buy him," said Cleopatra.

It was her first note of discouragement that day. But suddenly her mood changed.

"Diomedes! Go and—no! Your imagination is as flat as you think the world is! Besides, I want you for something else! Find me Apollodorus. Tell him to reach Tros of Samothrace, and to win him over to my side. Tell him he may promise anything—you understand me? Anything!"

"Tros is not the man to choose the weaker of two sides," Diomedes objected, recovering possession of his middle age, that patronized her youth. "And promises—Tros has heard them by the hundred thousand. Neither is Apollodorus likely to pursue safe courses."

"That is why I send Apollodorus and not you! He makes no gods of mothy precedents! Go, tell Apollodorus he must bring me Tros of Samothrace—must bring him here! When you have done that, go into the city and buy me food that has not been poisoned! Buy it yourself, have it cooked in your own household and bring it to me with your own hands! That is how much I trust you. Go, sir!"

Diomedes backed away, the buckles of bronze armor clanking. He looked as unimaginative and as honest as the door-post that he struck before he turned and left the bedroom.

Cleopatra gestured to her women. "Dress me," she commanded. Three of them went to make ready the bath, and for a long time she paid no attention to the other three, who stood mute, in a row on the balcony threshold, looking nervous. They were dressed in the loose, white Syrian slave-smocks without border or embroidery, but though the slave-look haunted them, they had a definite air of being better bred and educated than the ordinary run of servants.

The small boat rowed back to the war-ship. The first war-ship swung and started slowly for the inner harbor; the second followed, even more slowly, seeming to strive after dignity but failing, because, every time a whip cracked, an oar moved out of time. The harbor master appeared in doubt what to do and dawdled in the offing. The long vermilion ship lay still, her oar-blades idle on the water but the spaces between them as exactly measured as the teeth of a gigantic comb. Nothing happened until the Egyptian ships had passed into the inner harbor.

Then the man on the poop shook his staff and suddenly the cymbals clanged. The oars leaped into life with an intoxicating quiver of trained strength held in restraint—. paused, ready for the dip—and plunged, as the staff set the time for the tune of the harps and the cymbals that governed the speed.

"That is the way to rule—the way I will rule," said Cleopatra. "That man has dignity."

The long ship, heedless of the harbor-master's shouts, ignoring him as utterly as whales ignore the gulls, advanced to within a cable's length of the public wharf about a bow-shot from the palace windows and dropped anchor. She was instantly surrounded by a swarm of small boats, some of which tried to make fast to her stern. But the man on the high poop shouted, and though the moving bulwark with its shields was lowered, and a ladder was hung overside, no small boat trespassed within the reach of the vermilion oar-blades.

It was not until armed men had been stationed at regular intervals along the ship's sides that the oars were drawn in through the ports and the big man, followed by three others, descended the ladder into one of the shore-boats, deliberately chosen from the swarm that plied for hire.

He was rowed ashore and swallowed by the yelling crowd that already choked the wharf, making his way through it with the sturdy gait peculiar to deep-sea captains. Then the small boats, full of shouting hucksters, circled around and around the great ship, keeping their distance because of businesslike-looking watchmen armed with slings.

A barge-load of outrageously behaving women tried to approach the ladder, but an officer on the high poop threatened and the flat barge backed away, the women screaming ribaldry and someone on the barge inciting them to greater effort. Two of the women stripped themselves and danced naked on the barge's foredeck, obscenely wriggling their stomachs.

Cleopatra turned and faced her slaves, who flinched but stood their ground. They had seen the crow die. One was still holding the goblet of milk, and another the plate of cakes. The third, a Circassian, had nothing in her hand.

"Drink the milk!" Cleopatra commanded, looking straight at the Circassian.

Charmian bit her lip. The Circassian hesitated, caught her breath, then laughed half bravely and took the goblet from the other's hand.

"If I had known," she said, "I would have eaten and drunk to warn you they were poisoned."

She mastered herself and raised the goblet to her lips.

"I should have known. I deserve to die. Farewell, O Queen!"

Cleopatra snatched the goblet from her. She dashed its contents in the faces of the other two.

"Call the guard!" she commanded.

Charmian ran to the door. Two Nubians entered, stolid and solid as polished ebony, with leopard-skin over their shoulders and immense swords sheathed in scabbards of red leather.

"That Circassian is innocent, but take those other two slaves to my sister Arisinoe and tell her she should punish them for failure—even as I am being punished for having failed to do my duty long ago. I should have slain Arsinoe."

The Nubians seized the trembling women by the arms and hurried them away. Cleopatra turned to the Circassian.

"Is the bath ready?" she asked. "Oh, if we could wash away our bodies and leave nothing but our souls! Osiris! But what black loathsome objects some of us would be!"