Читать книгу Purple Pirate - Talbot Mundy - Страница 6

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Too much planning is the commonest cause of defeat. The mediocre strategist conceives a plan and, like a pregnant woman, thinks the offspring of his belly and his mood shall set a heel on destiny. A true commander's plans are changeable, adaptable, reversible, sudden, frequently surprising even to himself; they are the means, that his genius seizes, to employ his whole strength, at a well considered moment, to a foreseen, unflinched from and undeviating purpose.

—From the Log of Lord Captain Tros of Samothrace

The seaman's consciousness produced its miracle. Tros made his landfall. A man at the reeling mainmast-head, with the eyes of a gull and the lungs of Aeolus, hailed the poop about two hours after Tros had made it high noon from a study of his three temperamental water-clocks. Conops, who took nothing on land or sea for granted except that Tros must be served, went aloft and confirmed the report. He could see the strange masses of foam on the southeastern shore of Cyprus—the foam from which, as all men knew, the goddess Aphrodite had been born. He could see the vague loom of the mountains beyond. But there was no sign of any Egyptian fleet—not a sail on all those tumbling seas.

Tros made his lee long before nightfall. He hove to, three or four cables' lengths from shore, in comparative calm, to give the cooks a chance to feed the crew. He was no believer in the Spartan diet that the Romans considered good for deep-sea discipline. Full bellies breed few mutinies. The British druids had taught him the secret of clean water-casks, purified with charcoal. He had found out for himself the value of dried Arabian apricots and dates, to offset the eternal Egyptian eggs and sun-dried meat. He had ample store, too, of onions, carrots, honey, olive oil, wheat and barley. His cooks were Syrians, and his ovens were things of his own invention, fired with charcoal. He knew, too, the value of song, to keep crowded men from thinking about hardship. He carried four bards, bawdy and well-paid rogues with harps, whose business was to improvise new words to ancient songs. They were even allowed to be personal about himself, and to put the men's grievances into song, provided they did it humorously. He had learned that good trick from the Northmen, the world's bitterest grumblers, whose skalds had an almost unlimited license to voice the moods of the men who must die at the word of command. Men die more gallantly who know that their leader knows their heart-aches.

He had solved a hundred problems that the Romans, with all their genius for war, had left unsolved. Romans had not understood the essential fact that command of the sea depends on mobile men, not ponderous, floating forts. They were still thinking in terms of the wars with Carthage, making a land-war of a sea-war, grappling ship to ship and relying on size, weight, numbers to offset speed and the ability to turn. It was not Romans—not at the moment—that worried Tros; he had the heels of any Roman ship afloat. It was Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, whom he feared as he paced his heaving poop. He had a mystical, obstinate conviction that a man and a woman are as light and darkness, strength and weakness. The woman was forever the betrayer. He was in the toils of a woman who hated Rome as much as he did, and who would use all resources, her own body included, in a war to a finish. A woman so intellectually subtle and steel-witted that she had even persuaded Caesar to despise Rome. A woman to whom religion, and even life, was a means to an end. A wholly admirable, baffling, utterly courageous woman, as rich as Croesus, as ready of laughter as a child, as alone as the Sphinx, as full of mystery as an Egyptian night.

Tros well knew that his crowning indiscretion had been to take Cleopatra into his confidence. He had been fooled by her love of ancient Egypt and by her understanding of the occult teachings of the Mystery of Philae. He had thought her a brilliant mystic in a world of ruthless greed—certainly the hope of Egypt, perhaps the hope of the world. He had discovered that ruthlessness and subtlety were as inseparable in Cleopatra's consciousness as the two sides of a ray of moonlight.

From the moment when he had told her of his projected voyage around the world he had been in her net, although it had taken him time to discover the fact. She understood his loyalties and his prodigious sense of gratitude—his will to repay favors and to reward the giver.

So she had cat-and-moused him, picking his brains while he employed them in her interest. It was her agents in Punt and Arabia who had gathered for him information about almost legendary lands to eastward. She had put at his command the almost fathomless resources of the Library of Alexandria and the spider-web channels of information possessed by the priesthoods of Isis, Serapis, Ammon and Aphrodite. With amusement, and another emotion that she did not confess to herself, though it lurked in her eyes in her moodier moments and Tros detected it, she had shared his prodigious passion for geography. He had an outline map of Africa, compiled from conjecture and hearsay. He had a chart of the Red Sea coastline from Berenice to Punt, and a hearsay and guesswork chart of the ocean and islands between Punt and India, part of it inked in by the Queen's own hand as the result of the examination of three Greek traders from Socotra, but they had been kept thirsty until willing to talk. Then one of them, with the sound of dripping water in his ears, had told too much—had boasted of a voyage he had made from Socotra eastward, to the land where slant-eyed men made silk from the magical vomit of captive worms, and a river as great as the Nile and as yellow as saffron poured into a sea whose fire made midnight luminous. So that Greek toiled now in the middle oar-bank, against the day when Tros might need him as interpreter and guide. Down on the lower oar-bank, was another, possibly useful pilot from an island far to westward of Africa, who spoke no language comprehensible to anyone but Tros himself and Conops, who had picked up scraps of Basque and could make occasional guesses at what the man meant.

But those were only parts of Cleopatra's ways—her baits, like her promise of fifty ships to accompany Tros around the world. Year after year Tros had laughed at himself as a male Penelope, forced for the sake of an ideal to unweave his own work. And now, as he gazed at the cloud-hung coast of Cyprus he knew he was no nearer to his goal, not though he should outwit Romans and Egyptians. He did not even know there were not traitors in the crew, although that was the least of his problems; if Tarquinius, or anyone else, had contrived to corrupt a few of them, he would know how to deal with that. He had the ever reliable Conops and he watched him now, with quiet amusement, training the ten new Jews to their appointed job.

They lacked the heft and whirlwind blast of charging battleaxmen, but they made up for that with deftness, speed and a ferocious will to earn their freedom. Conops lined them on the poop, and again and again made them leap to the deck to repel imagined boarders, their swords held ready for a lunge when the smashing shields should have hurled an adversary backward on his heels, all point, no time-wasting with the edge of the blade. Then, almost before their feet had touched the deck:

"Back to him! Back to your lord, you sons of Solomon! By Dionysus's back teeth, are you corpses, or your owner's bodyguard? You leave him exposed to arrow-fire? Up-shields to left and right of him, and leave him sword-room! You there, Jacob, what's a shield for? To hide your modesty, or to fight with and protect your owner? Gladiator, you? You'd last a minute! Let me see that shield dance! Aphrodite Kallipygos! Are you holding up a mirror for a priest to prick his pimples at?

"Now then: when they come at the quarter-deck you're not the deck! You don't wait for 'em! You're death on the wing, in the air before they know you've started. You don't need half-an-hour to kill your man and get back. You're too slow forming wedge. The wings don't fall back. The leader leaps forward, the rest hard after him, four to port and five to starboard. Hit 'em like a thunder-bolt!

"Jeremiah, let's try you in the centre this time. Now remember: you kick off the edge of the poop with your right foot, shields at half-arm and hilts well back. Smash, thrust, kill—and back quick! Odd numbers retire first, two paces, then even numbers two paces, odd numbers two paces—and you're on the poop before a priest could say money! Now then—clear the poop!—Form wedge!—Have at 'em! That's better! But for the love of your father Abraham, no wonder Pompey took Jerusalem! Why don't you wait and kiss the enemy? Why not be polite and let him reach the poop ahead of you? Haven't you ever seen a wave hit a beach and go curtseying back? Well then, try it again."

The hatches were on over the upper oar-banks, to make deck-room, and the whole ship's company was at drill of one kind or another. Tarquinius, not so seasick now, sat on the deckhouse roof pretending to watch the drill. But Tros had observed what might be signals ashore. He watched Tarquinius, trying to imagine what treacheries were brewing in the man's brain. It would be altogether too risky to arrive in the Bay of Salamis before daybreak, since there were dangerous shoals at the harbor mouth; so it would be quite possible for Tarquinius's signals, if he should make any, to reach Salamis overland hours in advance of Tros's arrival. How much truth had Tarquinius told? What did he know? How much was he merely guessing?

A simple solution would have been to imprison the Etruscan in an empty water-cask in the lower hold, and Tros loved simple solutions. But it would be too much like throwing away a key before discovering which lock it fitted The one almost absolute certainty was that Tarquinius was planning treachery and had not told all the truth, since such men never tell that, even under torture. Parts of the truth, yes. Odds and ends that were true yesterday, or might be true tomorrow, yes. But the truth at the back of his mind, his main information, and the hope or the plan he had based on it, never. There was no way to discover that but to leave him free and watch him.

There had been time, Tros reflected, since the corn fleet went to sea from Alexandria, for Tarquinius to send a message to Cyprus and to receive an answer. He might have sent such a message overland, by runner, by way of Syria. Through Charmion or the Queen's secretary he might very easily have learned of the Queen's intention to send Tros to follow the corn fleet; he might have known that several days before Tros knew it. He might have known it even before the corn fleet went to sea.

Such men usually have at least a dozen plans in mind. They dream dreams of what they would like to do, and of what they could do, given this or that turn of events; so not improbably Tarquinius had snatched at a thread that spider-webbed into a maze of previous intrigue. He was the kind of man who wrecks the designs of his betters, without ever having an honest design of his own; the kind who perceives a plot where none is, and who never believes the truth because he always thinks he sees some subtlety beneath it.

Tros sent for him. He came along the swaying deck between two seamen and collapsed limply, pea-green, on a coil of rope.

"I pity you," said Tros. "My mercy strains patience. Could you eat a stew of onions and beans and pig-meat?"

"Sulphury Cocytus! It makes me retch to smell it cooking."

"Very well, Shall I set you ashore?"

"Great Jupiter! You haven't that much kindness!" He looked incredulous, but a light had leaped into his eyes; they were flinty again, warmed by a colored hint of cunning. The avarice, that such men think is hope, had suddenly dismissed the lamentable complaints of his belly. His fingers gripped his knees. He sat upright. "For the feel of firm earth I would give more than you guess."

"Will you meet me in Salamis?"

"Immo."

"On your oath? By what do you swear?" Tros asked him.

"When I swear to the truth, I swear by Lars Tarquinius."

"Swear then, by your sorry-looking, seasick god, that you won't send word ahead of you by priest or pigeon—for I know there are homing pigeons in every temple hereabouts."

"Trust me! Should I find as much as a heap of stinking sacks in the nearest village, you may imagine me snoring on it all night long."

"And when you meet me in Salamis you will bring me all the news you can gather?"

"Aye and gladly, for I like you."

Tros did not wish to be too well liked by Lars Tarquinius. He craved his treachery, not his good will. Above all, he wanted him ashore before it was too dark for a pigeon to fly, and before it would be too late to find a fast horse. So he interrupted Conops, and at a gesture the Jews went forward toward the cook-house, breathing through their noses. In another moment the bustle and noise of drill and sword-stick practise was interrupted by Conops's whistle and shrill-lunged "boat away!" The boat crew, proud of seamanship as well as wary of rope-end and Conops's knife-hilt, had the eight-oared boat overside before two men could haul out Tarquinius's baggage. The protesting Tarquinius was swung overside in a noose, gangled above the waves and dumped into the stern seat with a thump that made his body-armor clank like a load of javelins. He vomited at last. But the idea of speed—that he must hurry because Tros was in a hurry—and had been jarred into his consciousness better than words could do it. He might not have believed mere forms of speech.

Tros eyed the declining sun, wishing he knew more about the ways of pigeons. However, failing pigeons, he felt sure Tarquinius would find some means of making mischief before daylight.

"Ahiram," he said, after dark, when the ship was again under weigh, hugging the lee under oar and shortened sail, "since Caesar died the rulers of the world have all been guessing. Aye, and all their generals, and all their captains. None knows what may happen. But I know this:"

He paused. Ahiram waited, in a sort of deep-sea silence that was part of his nature.

"An honest man, at such a time, is as a cork on the sea. But a rogue is like a rat that burrows underground toward the weak point."

"Aye. But who can see him burrow?" said Ahiram.

"Where he burrows, he bites," Tros answered, and Ahiram turned that over slowly in his mind. Suddenly he asked: "You think he bites us?"

"Are we weak?" Tros answered.

"Lord Tros, I can read this storm is passing. And another, soon coming, I smell. But your mind I can't read. Have you a plan?"

"I smell its makings. I have only an intention, not yet a plan," Tros answered.

"So? Then I smell trouble," said Ahiram. "As for me, I would have skinned that Etruscan. He has told some of the men that Queen Arsinoe pays double wages."

Tros nodded. He was beginning to see his way clear. All that night long there were beacons ashore, like rubies on the ledges of the hills.