Читать книгу Queen Cleopatra - Talbot Mundy - Страница 6

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How hardly we remember, on this nether millstone, which is earth, and with that upper millstone, which is circumstances, grinding all our grosser nature into dust that is to clothe oncoming souls—how hardly we remember that these tragedies are but a brief dream, and these little purposes what nothingness they are!

—Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.

TROS stood and gazed until Cleopatra spoke at last: "I saw your wonder-ship at dawn."

"Royal Egypt, greeting!"

"Whence are you?" she demanded.

"From many seas. I touched at Sicily and Cyprus, after coming through the Gates of Heracles, from India, by way of Africa, having put forth first from a land called Britain, where I built my ship by the leave of Caswallon the king."

"That was a bold voyage. Have you news of the Roman armies?"

"I learned that Caius Julius Caesar has defeated Pompey."

Tros watched her keenly, but he could detect no sign of emotion other than immediate interest, although Apollodorus caught his breath and Charmian and Lollianè looked frightened.

"I have heard the opposite," said Cleopatra.

"I, too, heard many tales," said Tros. "But I came on Pompey's fleet, whose admiral knew the outcome and besought me to get word to Pompey that his fleet is at large and loyal to him. Having heard that Egypt had loaned Pompey corn and ships and men—there were twenty Egyptian ships with that fleet—I thought that in defeat he might seek friendship here, and so I came. I am an enemy of Caesar."

"And you live? Then Caesar is not omnipotent! For what cause are you Caesar's enemy?"

"I upheld a weaker cause," said Tros, "because it was the less unrighteous of the two."

Cleopatra's eyes changed and for a moment she seemed to lose her interest. She glanced at Charmian and at Olympus.

"I mistrust men who prate of righteousness," she said. "My brother's minister, the eunuch Potheinos, always boasts of his. Theodotus, Ptolemy's tutor, is a worse rogue if that were possible, but you would think, to hear him talk, that the gods learned virtue from him. My brother's general, Achillas, stabs men in the name of Mithras the Redeemer. But Apollodorus doesn't believe there are any gods or such a thing as righteousness. He seeks ease in the easiest way. I trust him—"

"You are not invited to trust me," said Tros, so bluntly that again she liked him on the instant.

"Yet there are very few," she answered, "whom I dare to trust. If you are telling me the truth, that Caesar has defeated Pompey—"

"If I should lie to you, I would lie more cleverly," Tros interrupted. "Caesar defeated Pompey near Pharsalia. I heard few details, beyond that Pompey's army is a scattered rabble and Pompey himself a fugitive."

Cleopatra pondered that a moment, resting her chin on her hand.

"Caesar," she said presently, "will hardly consider himself beholden to them who lent ships and men and corn and money to his adversary. Tell me: what is Caesar like? I have heard he is a base-born demagogue. Is he less evil than his reputation?"

"Many men are," Tros answered. "Aye, and some women," he added pointedly. "Base-born Caesar is not. He claims to trace his pedigree direct to Venus. He is Pontifex Maximus of Rome, but he believes no more in gods than he does in chastity. He is a lean sarcastic cynic with a handsome face, who understands men's weaknesses; and he is cunning, but he masks that, so that his soldiers think he is as simple as themselves. He poses as the champion of the common people. He is an autocrat—a despot. He will know no rest until—"

"I know," said Cleopatra. "He has won the world if he has beaten Pompey. What gods looked on, I wonder, when a prince such as Pompey ever has been, went down to defeat!"

"He who steps into the shade, shall he summon the sun?" asked Olympus, but nobody appeared to notice him. He stood in shadow—one of those learned freedmen, such as all the Ptolemies had kept at court to make appropriate remarks. He wore the robes of a physician.

"Lord Tros, to whom else have you told this news of Caesar?" Cleopatra asked.

"To none, Royal Egypt. News is worth more than money."

"Why then did you tell me?" she asked, suddenly again suspicious of him.

"I have found my market," he retorted. "There is no safe port for me this side of the Gates of Heracles, as long as Caesar rules the Roman world."

"What of it?"

"I never understood a woman," Tros said awkwardly. "But you will soon discover that you, too, have Caesar to deal with. It needs fathomless resources to defeat him. If you have courage, and the resolution to defy Rome, I will give aid gladly."

"You a Greek," she said, "and you will give? Nay, you spoke of a market. Name your price."

"I said, give! I am of Samothrace," Tros answered.

"Yes," she said, nodding, "I have heard of that oath.* How does it run? To uphold justice—give without price—trusting to the gods for recompense, not stipulating what the recompense shall be—is that it?"

[* The mysteries of Samothrace were impenetrable, so much so that many modern historians have jumped to the conclusion that the ultimate, outer, notorious decadence presented a true picture of the inner secrets. But read H. P. Blavatsky and others. The greater mysteries died out from below, for lack of individuals of sufficient strength of character and moral purity to undergo the initiation.]

"The great gods keep the record of the oath I took," Tros answered sullenly.

"Where are your wife and children, and where is your home?" she asked him.

"I am a lone man, Royal Egypt, and I have no home on land. The sea is home and wife and enemy in one. And as for children, I have left a deed or two, and here and there a little good-will. That sort propagate their kind to better advantage than the squabbling brats that men get by surrendering their dignity to women."

Cleopatra went and sat where she could stare at him.

He seemed incredible—too good to believe. She was beyond laughter. She enjoyed him with a sort of ecstasy, with which she always wondered at a hero—on the very rare occasions when a hero crossed her line of vision. Blunt speech invariably thrilled her, as no mock-heroics ever did. The one wholly unforgivable, contemptible and loathsome sin, in her eyes, was hypocrisy. The most refreshing thing on earth was lack of it.

"I will make you admiral of all my fleet," she said at last.

"You have a fleet?" Tros asked her.

"There is your ship. I believe in my destiny. I appoint you admiral."

Tros bowed to her, perhaps to hide the smile that he could not keep from betraying itself around the corners of his eyes. She was as frank with him as he had been with her:

"I also have no home on land," she went on. "Like you, I must win mine; for this Lochias is a nest of spies and murderers; and Egypt lies like a naked woman ready for Rome to violate. But I will win, though I die for it."

"Death is no serious matter," said Tros.

She stared at him again, delighting in him.

"But you can take no oath to me," she said at last. "You have sworn the oath of Samothrace, and I know that excludes all others—even as the oath that I took forbids me to swear any lesser allegiance. So I demand a pledge."

With his hand on his sword-hilt Tros bowed his head as if gathering thought from an unseen realm of inspiration. Then he groped into his belt and drew forth the little golden box.

"I had these from the Druids, for a service that I did them," he remarked. He went down on a stubborn knee, like one of his own great oaken catapults obeying the strain of the tautening winch. "You may have them, as a token that I hold you to your promise to resist Rome—by force of arms—by trickery—with courage—and not yielding to death, or the fear of death, or to any power less than Destiny."

She was wondering at Tros, and she only glanced at the pearls before she gave the box to Charmian to hold. Tros stood up.

"The Druids said of those," he went on, "that they are the tears the gods shed over the infidelities of men. Be you faithful, and remember: I will hold you to it!"

"Faithful!" she answered. "Is it likely that the gods would send me such a man as you if I were capable of unfaith?"