Читать книгу Queens Walk in the Dusk - Thomas Burnett Swann - Страница 4

CHAPTER TWO

Ten years later, aboard Aeneas’ ship, “The Gallant Bear”

Ascanius looked at the sky and could not find a cloud; the rowers toiled at their oars for lack of wind but did not begrudge the work, because they rowed for his father, Aeneas, the wandering hero from Troy. They were eager (he knew) to return to the sea and search for a land to build their second Troy. They wished to forget the burial on the island, proud Anchises, Aeneas’ aged father, an exiled king. The sail, windless, looked as limp and bedraggled as a sleeping bat. Behind them, Sicily was a diminishing coast, ragged with mountains; then a silhouette; then unbroken, unruffled sea. Aeneas stood like Apollo, slender of build, but bronze from the sun, as if he wore armor instead of a loin cloth, and clapped his hands to guide the beat of the oars.

The storm fell upon them like a horse with wings, a Pegasus; black and big as a town. Wings eclipsed the sun; hoofbeats rent the mast. Snap, snap, snap! The twenty oars were broken and kicked into the sea. The other vessels dissolved in the dark (devoured?). The sound of the waves as they struck the hull was like the clashing of rocks. They did not seem liquid, but hard; solid in fact, and some of them swept the deck and struck him in his eyrie under a rower’s bench.

Then, a fleeting lull, the eye of the storm, blackness around and above them, but they in a tiny calm.

“Little Bear,” Aeneas said, binding him under his bench, for the ship had no cabin; its awning had flown with its sail. “These thongs will hold you against the wind and the waves. If the ship should begin to sink, why, here, you pull this cord and release yourself.”

“Papa,” gasped the child. “The Gallant Bear has lost her sail and her oars—her teeth and claws. How can she fight?”

“It is Hera’s storm. I must pray to my mother, Aphrodite.”

“What does she know about storms?” Hera was Zeus’ queen; she commanded the elements. Aphrodite, or so he had thought, could only command the heart. “Papa!”

“Yes, Little Bear?”

“Kiss me, will you? It may be the last time. It will be like a coin with which to pay Charon, the gray ferryman.”

Aeneas enclosed the child in his arms. He kissed him on either cheek.

“Forehead too!”

“I am your coin. Go where you will, and I am with you, my son.”

Then, the winds returned, like Pegasus striking a fleet, and the horse was under the ship, lifting her onto a wave as high as the walls of Troy before their fall, and thrusting her straightaway toward a coast known only to Hera and her ally Poseidon, who had raised the waves at her august command.

Ascanius tried to watch his father comfort the men. They were driven by the sea. Comfort and not command was all he could give. He groped from bench to bench, he held the tiller’s hand when a wave—a hoof?—attempted to hurl him into the turbulence. As long as Ascanius saw his father, he would not need his coin. Storms had struck them in many seas.

But never Hera’s storm…

“Aphrodite, look after your son!” he prayed (“and grandson while you’re about it”). “I promise to ravish a virgin for you!” (“When I am older,” he added, for he was only ten and ravishing meant no more than a hug to him).

Then stillness, the Pegasus flown to his celestial haunt…an alien coast…the ship on a littered beach.

“Gallant Bear,” said Ascanius. “You brought us through!” Not I, not I…

But through to where?

Perhaps the shore of the Styx.

How often Aeneas had said to him, “Don’t be afraid, Little Bear. We’ve fought them for seven years, those jealous gods, and they aren’t going to get us now.” It was always “us”, he and his father, against the jealous gods.

“Well, Ascanius, we escaped them again. Her at least!” (“Her” being Hera; she hated Aeneas because he was a Trojan, as she had hated Troy, the city of Paris, who had proclaimed her—the Queen of the Gods, and for all Olympus to hear!—as less than Aphrodite.)

“But they did get Grandfather, didn’t they?” The old Dardanian king, Anchises, had demanded formality, and “grand” must be followed by “father”, and not “Papa”. Because he had been the lover of Aphrodite, who bore him Aeneas as a parting gift before she departed for another dalliance, he never forgot to demand respect. On Sicily, he had received a burial fit for a king.

“Age got him, not the gods.”

Ascanius lost his fear. At first he had hated the storm. Such fearful Pegasus hooves! Such a wind from the beating wings! But then his father had given him coins for Charon, the ferryman. When a hero says to his son, “Don’t be afraid,” well, you trust him even while spitting salt from your mouth, and endure the wind and the waves. And now they were safe if battered on the shore.

He looked at a pink, sandy expanse ablaze with sun. Sea-wrack surrounded them; holothurians, wrenched from the ocean floor; broken oars; configurations of coral like tiny, broken trays. The tide retreated behind them like a deserting host and left them forsaken in an alien land.

“Well,” said Aeneas. “Hera had done her worst—with Poseidon’s help. Divided us from our fleet. But failed to sink us. I guess my mother is keeping a watchful eye.” Slender and golden he looked in his loin cloth (Achilles had bulged with muscles, so it was said; Ajax was built like an ape). Armor was useless to men in a small and crowded ship. Nonetheless, he looked like a prince of Dardania joined to Troy, and the gold seemed to flow from his body and not the recovered sun.

Ascanius, like his father, believed implicitly in the gods; even a grandmother goddess, Aphrodite. But he had heard of her fickle ways and he did not trust in her help. (She seemed to spend inordinate time in trysts.) Trustful Aeneas, men said. Overtrustful, at times? Practicality fell to his son.

He whispered a consolation to the ship. “We’ll bind your wounds, old Bear. You brought us through!” Then to his father, “We don’t have a sail anymore. And Poseidon cracked our prow when he drove us onto the beach. Also, there may be Harpies in the place.” Harpies were far more murderous than a storm, the obverse of “parent” or “friend”. In the Strophades, those islets like shark teeth jutting from the sea, they had already fought the black-feathered, screeching women and almost lost their ships.

Aeneas shrugged. “Monsters perhaps. Giants or pygmies. Harpies, no. Not in Africa.” It was only the threat of a second and second-rate wife (after the first-rate first) which seemed to panic him. In fact, he had placed the women aboard the other ships. But Ascanius had his plans. Three, when his mother died in the fall of Troy, he had grown to a sturdy ten. It was time for another mother, however well he had loved the soft Creusa (he remembered little more than the softness of her voice, her scent of violets, and her parting words, “Grow up, Little Bear. Your father will need your love.”) More important, his father was lonely; he had grieved for seven years and he needed a woman in spite of himself (especially since he refused to couch with the women along their route and withstood the advances of the Trojan ladies aboard his other ships.)

Sometimes parents require a lot of care.

“And we lost the figurehead at the prow and the tail at the stern. One of her eyes is missing, too. At least, she squints.” Trojan ships, which combined both sexes just as they combined both male and female timbers, were built to resemble Hydras, Scyllas, lions, bears, and other dangerous creatures to terrorize a foe. The Gallant Bear had lost her gallantry. At best, she/he could frighten a squid.

“Well, it wasn’t much of a tail. More like a nub.”

“That’s not the point. A nub to a bear means as much as a long, snaky rump to a crocodile.” Ascanius was being neither childish nor whimsical. Every Greek or Trojan knew that a ship, built from the lordly timbers of a forest, retained its life and, while remembering its home, exulted in its freedom and assumed the characteristics of the beast for which it was named.

“Yes, we have work to do.” Aeneas was scanning the deck to see if the storm had hurt any men. (He had doubtless already made a count.) No, twenty crewmen, wet, bedraggled, but none of them harmed beyond a cut or a bruise. He always placed his men above his ship and even his mission, to found a second Troy, though founding a city was a command from the gods, who had supported Troy against the Greeks.

“A white sow and thirty piglets will show you the spot…” Thus, an oracle in Epirus had directed him.

“All right, Achates?”

“Tolerable, Aeneas. What about you?”

“A bruise or two, no more.”

Achates was a red-haired, freckled Trojan among a race of blondes (his father had owned a slave from the north). He had the look of a humorous child, which made him the butt of endless jokes and demanded a sharp tongue to defend his pride. He was, however, the kindest of men, next to Aeneas who loved him. Ascanius also loved him for being his father’s friend.

“All right. Nisus, Euryalus…?”

“Already dry from the sun.”

“Little Bear, we need some help. Provisions. I have heard of a Tyrian colony in these parts.”

“Carthage,” Ascanius said. Whatever the seamen said, he remembered word for word, including some words which would shock a whore (that was his favorite term. His father spoke of Helen as a “courtesan”: the sailors called her a “whore”). “They say that the queen is very beautiful—and a widow, of course. I expect she’s good in the couch.”

“What we need is a generous queen, however plain. Beautiful women tend to be vain and selfish. Look at Helen.”

“I was still a bit young to take a good look.” (Three, in fact. He remembered a roseate mist inseparable from a mirror shaped like a swan.) “But what about Mother?”

“Ah,” said Aeneas. “She was the rare exception, and her beauty was in her heart as well as her face.” Aeneas had wanted to be a wandering bard, but princes were trained to fight and rule. Nevertheless, he sang as sweetly as Orpheus, and he won a bride who loved him for his lyre, instead of his sword. (Ascanius saw that his father had saved the lyre from the storm; he was pleased; it would cheer him until they found the queen.)

“Papa?”

“Yes, Little Bear?”

“Will we meet again in Elysium? You and mother and I?”

“I have no doubt of it.” It was not a lie which adults tell children; Aeneas never lied; it was the truth which sustained him in what he called his remembering times.

“It’s a very long wait, however. Couldn’t you ravish a maiden along the way? If you won’t take another wife—”

“My crew has been talking again, Little Bear. Such matters are not for your ears.”

“But I love their talk! It’s so—salty. I take it they do such things without a second thought, and so could you. When maidens are spoils of war, they expect as much. They rather enjoy themselves, I am told.” Ascanius paused. “Or you could make do with Achates. After all, Achilles had Patroclus. Of course he ravished the ladies, too. The point is, he never couched alone.” Ascanius thought that to couch meant to share your covers for warmth and conversation.

“It’s time to explore.” (Aeneas hid a smile; no, he attempted to hide. Ascanius knew him like an open scroll.)

It was hard to raise a father without any help or advice. He loved the man. Grandmother, how he loved the man! He would have died for him, in the storm or a Harpy’s claws. Still, Aeneas was difficult. Not that he beat his men or neglected his son. At times he ought to beat the lazier men (though never neglect his son). Aeneas, hero of Troy, needed protection from his innocence. He would rather forgive an enemy than slit his throat. Achilles had fought for glory; Agamemnon for power. Aeneas had fought for his wife and son (and a kindly if lustful king, and a queen who had been a splendor of motherhood). If a virgin offered herself, he gave her a gift and sent her home to her family. After seven years, he could not forget Creusa, the bride of his youth.

“Yes,” said Ascanius. “We shall certainly have to find the beautiful widow Dido.”

At least the coast seemed lush and hospitable (if you ignored the stark inland peaks, which might have been Harpy-haunted from their look). Wild orange trees wafted their fragrance from white, diminutive blossoms. Palm trees resembled temple maidens; long, bending bodies, green tresses outcombed like those of an Egyptian wig. Fields of alfa grasses and emma wheat softened the steppes of chalk and marl, which climbed into the uninviting peaks. Monkeys chattered among the branches or peered around the trunks (and other creatures without a name…something…a fat little dwarf it seemed, with furry ears…only Ascanius saw him. Better to keep such sightings to himself! Little boys were sometimes accused of tales.)

Strange to find monster tracks in such a beautiful land. (Monoceros tracks? He knew of no larger beast.) Bushes had clearly been jerked from the ground by their roots, their leaves strewn randomly over the ground. The paths, which led from the sea, seemed heavily trodden by many beasts. Piles of dung lay at frequent intervals, and a musky scent in the air did not come from flowers or shrubs.

They were quick to encounter a maker of the paths. An enormous creature approached them, swaying and shaking his head from side to side, a sort of walking earthquake, Ascanius thought, as he felt a tremor and heard a reverberation. Its back was slightly arched and its ears were as big as Achilles’ shield, and it had a—a—

“Papa, is that a beak?”

“It’s called a trunk,” said Aeneas, who had never seen an elephant, but heard that Egyptians used them in work and war.

“Does he use it to breathe?”

“And also like an arm.”

“I hope he won’t pick me up.” Ascanius, being a handsome boy with hair as yellow as daisy hearts and eyes which put the murex dye to shame, had endured the coddlings and, until he had recently grown too large, the liftings of well-intentioned females throughout their flight from Troy (“poor motherless lad”). He liked affection, but pounces from strangers were meant for little girls.

“Here, stand behind me, Son.”

The elephant clearly had not come to greet the men.

Bypassing father and son, he attacked the ship with his trunk and his powerful feet.

“He knows the Bear’s alive! Bear is already hurt, and the elephant’s making him worse.”

“He wants to remove our means of escape.”

“Then, he will see to us,” Achates called from the shaking deck.

“Harpies, storms, now an el—elefoot.” The other men clung to the benches or the stump of the broken mast.

“Elephant,” corrected Ascanius. “Well, I shall tell him we come in peace.”

Meanwhile, nineteen crewmen gestured and shouted, and Achates smote the elephant on the head with an oar and lost the oar to the animal’s versatile trunk and found himself encircled and raised in the air.

“Put me down, you big-nosed brute.”

“No, no,” Ascanius cried. “We didn’t say hello. He probably thinks we’re enemies,” and he ran to the foot of the beast.

“Please, Sir, Achates meant you no harm. Will you set him on the beach?”

“Ascanius,” shouted Aeneas. “He can’t understand you,” and hurried after his son and poor Achates, who was hanging by one foot.

“Maybe not, but he looks intelligent to me. Not just any old elephant.”

“Till now you never heard of an elephant. You don’t know a thing about him.”

The animal lowered Achates toward the ground and dropped him on his head. Sweat caught the sun and made the Trojan’s freckles twinkle and glow. He brushed the hair from his eyes and looked like a little boy who has lost his knucklebones. Poor Achates! He seemed to attract misfortune, as the late prince Paris had attracted his ladies of doom.

“We were cast on your shores by a storm,” explained Ascanius, “and our ship was wrecked as you see. If you shove her into the water, she will probably sink. We would like you to lead us to the queen of the land.” He spoke with care and used some simple gestures to enforce his words.

Aeneas had overtaken his son and stood behind him, but wisely he did not speak; indeed, the elephant seemed to understand the boy.

He raised his trunk and emitted a noise like the sound of a trumpet, which calls men to war. (Remarkable trunk. There seemed no end to its skills.)

“I think he said yes,” observed Ascanius.

“I think he said, ‘Get the Hades out of here’,” gasped Achates, green in the face from his sudden ride. The combination of green and freckles resembled a rotting pear.

“We understand that the queen is a widow. Wouldn’t she like a hero to call on her? This is Aeneas, the hero of Troy. Why, he slaughtered the pride of Greece. At least a thousand warriors.”

“Ascanius, you know it was more like a hundred. Achilles nearly killed me. Diomedes too.”

“Hush, Papa, this is known as diplomatic parley. And ravished their women. More than a thousand, I think.”

“I never ravished a woman!”

The trumpet sounded a second blast.

“Well, your parley isn’t working.”

“That’s because you sound so cross.” Then to the elephant. “To be honest, sir, we need both food and material. Do you want us to starve on the beach?”

Silence. Elephantine deliberations.

“Papa,” whispered Ascanius. “Notice his ivory swords.” (Could those enormous ears overhear what he said?) “THEY ARE VERY FINE.”

“Tusks. A source of ivory for the Phoenician craftsmen.”

“You don’t mean they kill such animals for their tusks!”

“Yes, I’m afraid they do.”

“Well, they won’t kill him. He’s much too strong. And someone has polished his tusks. He couldn’t do it himself, could he? He must have some slaves.”

“Maybe he wants some more,” muttered Achates.

“He might have been breaking you in.” Ascanius grinned.

“Breaking me’s more like it.”

“Do you know, I think he wants a gift,” said Ascanius, faced with a being so immovable that he might have been stuffed for a megaron, the audience chamber of Grecian kings. “We’re always bringing gifts to the kings we visit.”

The word “King” appeared to delight the beast. A soft purring oozed from his trunk, like olive oil from a lamp. Elephantine decisions.

“You see, he does understand.”

Ascanius searched his mind—and his eyes searched the Gallant Bear to think of a suitable gift for a king among elephants. The ship was little help. Its bread, cheese, and wine had been swept to the fish in the storm; its image of Athena, the fabled Palladium, was hidden under a rower’s bench and could not be given even to a king except in the country where Aeneas settled and built his second Troy.

But Ascanius wore an armlet hammered of gold, an image of Tychon; his good luck god, embedded with malachites. A natal gift from Hecuba, queen of Troy, it was his rarest possession. “But a gift must be loved or else it is merely a bribe.” Aeneas had taught him that truth.

He slipped the armlet over his hand, leaving a circle on his brown skin, and held it in front of the elephant’s eyes. The eyes were small and visibly dim. But, sun enkindled the jewels and demonstrated, to even a dim-eyed beast, the value of such a gift. Ascanius slid the armlet down the tip of the upcurved, shorter tusk; much too small to reach the base. It lodged near the tip and seemed an appropriate gift from a prince to a king.

Ascanius tried to restrain his tears; he felt as if he had sacrificed his luck. (He loved his god and prayed to him as a friend, and told him secrets not even Aeneas must hear…of snaring a wife for a stubborn father; of talking to the ship, and yes, of getting a fuzzy reply in the form of thoughts instead of words…)

The elephant fell to his knees in a bow of thanks, awkward but touching, at least to Ascanius, who placed his hand on the leathery head and felt a warmth like the heat of a friendly hearth. Except…the animal thought to him: I am Iarbas, the king of the elephants. Your gift is royal, but I use my tusk to fight. Return the bracelet to your arm. It remains in my heart. He thought in pictures, instead of words. A Greek inscription for the name. A crown for his position. The bracelet. A battle between two elephants in which the gift appeared an impediment. The bracelet restored to Ascanius’ arm and, at the same time, retained in a huge complicated organ, like a human heart, which Ascanius had seen in a seaman rent by a Harpy’s claws. Ascanius did not have to arrange the images, which flowed into a coherent stream like the pictographs on old Egyptian scrolls.

Ascanius quickly reclaimed his god and smiled his thanks to Iarbas. He knew that he did not have to speak.

Follow me, little man, and meet the queen of your kind.

Then, Iarbas rose and ambled away from the sea along the widest path, swishing a skinny tail, more suitable to a dog.

Aeneas hugged his son against his breast. “Ascanius, you have saved the lot of us. But, you gave me quite a fright. Why, he might have caught you in his trunk.”

Such an embrace was the kind Ascanius liked: father and son, hero and hero-to-be. He returned the hug with all of his strength, and his strength was considerably more than that of his age.

“I’m the one who gets caught,” Achates sighed.

“He only meant to give you a scare,” said Ascanius, who did not like his elephant thought to be cruel. “At least he didn’t tusk you. Now let’s follow him to the queen.”

“Are you sure that’s where we’re going?” Aeneas had met his share of amorous queens. Dido was a queen whom he had to meet. He had heard, however, that she did not choose to wed.

“Oh, yes.”

“How do you know, Little Bear?”

“He told me. Also, his name’s Iarbas.” Of course! Iarbas had spoken only to him.

Ascanius looked at his father as they walked. Why, even at thirty-four, the man was Apollo and Paris in one. The yellow hair of his people had slightly silvered at the death of Creusa, but his face had remained unwrinkled and strangely young, except for his eyes, which had looked upon pillage and rape, the fall of a city, the death of a wife, a father, and loyal friends. When you have seen such woes, it seemed to Ascanius, the only cure is to see their opposite, and he hoped that Iarbas would lead them to just such a sight; namely a widowed queen who was ripe to wed.

* * * *

It was not a city like Troy (dimly remembered) or Tyre (of which he had heard); it was a simple town with a half-built wall at its foot; it climbed a low hill with white wooden houses whose doors and roofs were red and whose windows were filled with glass. Nowhere pillars of cedar and bronze; sphinxes of terra cotta; gods of gold and ivory; a palace with courtyards and fountains and coconut palms. Nowhere, display and pride; everywhere, sweet simplicity. Men and elephants, hoisting wooden stakes, toiled together to finish the palisade which was meant to enclose the town. But most of the people seemed to have gone to market, between the hill and the sea. In the shade of lemon trees, there were canvas stalls like inverted poppy blooms, white and black and red… There were curious animals—that was a camel, he knew from tales he had heard, though the creature looked like a hump-backed, oversized horse—and that was an ostrich with the snaky neck and the large feathery bottom, which seemed to be meant for carrying little boys. Perhaps he could buy a ride when he learned what ostriches liked to eat.

The people of the town were less to his fancy: white-robed merchants displaying their goods to wary buyers (for Tyrians, being traders, loved to bargain; and Dido had led the people of Carthage from Tyre). Wooden, three-legged stands held most of the wares: glass necklaces; terra cotta images of misshapen gods (like the dwarves he had seen near the ship?); ostrich eggs, split, hollowed and hardened into bowls; coconuts, lentils, cuttlefish, and other foods.

But most of the folk surrounded a lady in a chair. She had caught her hair in a knot behind her head with a plain leather band. She wore an ankle-long gown, spotlessly white but fashioned of inexpensive wool, with three flounces flaring from the waist. Her arms were bare and brown. Her hands were the tiniest he had ever seen, and yet he sensed their power, more of gesture than grip. It was as if by raising a hand she could calm a mob—or rouse an army to fight. Her feet were proportionately small, and one of her sandals held a broken strap. The people had formed a line in front of her chair (intended to be a throne? It was made of citron wood, not gold, and its feet were those of an ostrich and not a lion or a sphinx). They did not bring her gifts, but they bowed and presented various grievances: A craftsman had overcharged for a brick oven; a drunken sailor had started a fight. Her voice was soft, the essence of womanhood, but nobody seemed to question her judgments.

“Mennon, you charged your cousin an ox for a brick oven? For shame! You know it is only worth a ewe.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“And Aelous fighting again. Did he do any damage this time?”

“He broke my tooth,” cried a strapping youth from the crowd.

Witnesses nodded assent. The people were dark from the sun, and dark by race. Ascanius judged them to be less martial than mercantile; unimaginative except in trade, and devoted to their queen, who clearly came from another race. His father had taught him to make quick judgments, even if wrong, for the life of the Trojans since the fall of Troy did not allow delay. Time, their only treasure, must be carefully spent.

“Then he shall pay you a day’s catch in fish.”

The next in line did not present a complaint: a young girl—homely, Ascanius thought, with a nose which was twice the suitable size—and she carried a baby (homelier) in her arms.

“Semele. I didn’t know—!”

“Wanted to show you, Miss. Named her for you.” (Ugh. It looked like an unburnt offering. An oven would do it a world of good. Also, it smelled of rancid milk.)

The lady wore no adornment of any kind, neither bracelets, anklets, nor rings, but she reached in a wicker chest at her side and removed a chunk of amber which could be carved into gems, fashioned into a bottle to carry scent, or simply strung around the neck for luck. “This is my birthday gift for the little Dido.” She smiled; a radiance seemed to suffuse her colorless gown, and Ascanius saw that her amber hair was even more richly colored than her gift. Yes, he thought, she is surely the queen of the land, and as beautiful in her way as my father (and not too young—twenty-five I should think—to become his bride).

Then she raised her head and looked beyond the crowd and saw Aeneas’ band. She rose to her feet; there was an artless grace in the tilt of her head, her outstretched arms, her sudden smile.

“But you must be the men from the ship which was sighted floundering down the coast. And a little boy! And all of you golden-haired. You will need food and drink and rest.”

“I am Aeneas, Queen Dido, and the boy is my son.”

“The hero of Troy!”

Ascanius knew that his heroic father detested being called a hero; he liked to be called a bard.

“The survivor of Troy.”

She turned to her people. “Have I answered all your complaints?” Dusky of hair, muffled against the torrid African sun, the people forgot whatever complaints they had brought. Everyone knew of Troy…Helen…Achilles…and yes, Aeneas, who had been the greatest Trojan after the death of Hector and had wandered for seven years in search of a place where he could rebuild his home.

“Father,” said Ascanius. “Do you find her beautiful?”

“More,” said Aeneas. “I find her kind.”

“And remember that she is a widow…”

“But where is Iarbas?” she suddenly cried. “Surely he brought you here. The elephant king, I mean. He patrols my coast for me.”

“Why, he went to join his people, I expect,”said Ascanius.

“If he did, he is angry. See. His subjects have left my walls.”

“Angry with us?” asked Aeneas.

“Mostly with me,” she said. “I did not acknowledge him. Never mind. We shall go to my house.” But she minded more than she said, and there was fear in her amethyst eyes. (Ascanius thought: She is talking to hide her fear. I shall look for Iarbas and bring him to her house.) “No one could rightly call it a palace, but at least it is roomier than a ship. I know about ships, you see. I love them. They brought me here with my friends. But not exactly in comfort.” She indicated a bay to the south of the town; purple waters afloat with gilded ships. “Those are my walls,” she said, “till the elephants finish their task. Those are the reason my brother, the king of Tyre, has not pursued me. His captains were my friends. I left with half of his fleet.”

“We are both of us founders,” Aeneas said. “I too have a town to build. I can learn from you.”

“But you must wait for your ships to regather from the storm. I will send some punts to look for them. Meanwhile, you and your son and your men can wait with me. My home is humble, but my hearth is warm.”

Ascanius smiled his craftiest smile. Yes, she would make his father a splendid wife (and such an elegant bosom; a pillow for boys like him).

First he must find Iarbas, the moody king.