The Dancing Girl of Gades/Chapter 10

ONDERING the situation in all its bearings, Tros called Chloe back into the stateroom while the deck crew lowered Simon into the long-boat.

"Your Horatius Verres waits for Cæsar and is Cæsar's man. You have befriended Verres. Therefore Cæsar will befriend you. Why, then, should you be in haste to flee from Gades?"

"Torture!" she said and shuddered. "Horatius Verres sent a messenger who may reach Cæsar in time to warn him. But if Balbus dies and Cæsar comes, then Cæsar will investigate—"

"This is not his province. He has no authority in Spain."

"He is Cæsar," Chloe answered. "And I shall be tortured, because Pkauchios will certainly be found out and they will need my evidence against him."

"So, unless we save Balbus' life—"

Chloe looked into Tros' eyes. She laid the palms of her hands against his breast, her lip quivering for a second—on the verge of tears, but struggling to regain her self-control.

"Lord Tros," she said, "there isn't a slave in Gades but knows Cæsar would jump at an excuse to invade Pompey's province. Pompey and Cæsar pretend to be friends. They're as friendly as two lovers of one woman! Balbus is Pompey's nominee, and he is willing to win Gaul for Pompey or to betray Spain into Cæsar's hands, whichever of the two he thinks is stronger. All men know there will be war before long, and none can guess whether Pompey or Cæsar will win. Pompey is lazy, proud, rich, popular. Cæsar is energetic, loved, feared, hated, deep in debt."

"Wager your peculium on Cæsar!" Tros advised.

"Nay, on Horatius Verres! Have you ever loved a woman?" she asked.

Tros did not answer. He stroked his chin, watching her eyes. She asked him another question.

"Do you think it possible for me to tell the truth?"

He nodded. He expected a prodigious lie was coming. Her eyes were melting, soft, abrim with tears, held bravely back. The stage was all set for Gadean trickery. But she surprized him.

"I would die for Horatius Verres! I would submit to torture for him. But not for you, Pkauchios, Simon, Balbus, Cæsar nor any other man!"

"Pearls?" Tros asked her, studying her face.

She reached for the hem of her chlamys and produced the one pearl he had already given her, holding it out in the palm of her hand.

"You may keep them! Simon may keep my money unless you find a way of freeing me tonight! I will sing no more. I will dance no more and please none but myself. For they shall buy me where the other dead slaves' bodies rot if I lose Horatius Verres. Tros of Samothrace, if you have never loved a woman—"

"Come," said Tros.

The long-boat set them on the seaweed-littered beach, where an officer of Balearic slingers, aping Roman airs and very splendid in his clanking bronze, signed to Tros to pass on, but demanded to be told by what right Simon, the Jew, paid visits to a foreign ship in harbor. A party of Simon's slaves, with his great unwieldy, paneled litter in their midst had been detained some distance o£F, a detachment of slingers guarding them.

Simon began to argue excitedly, gesticulating, gasping as the nervousness increased his asthma. Chloe interrupted.

"Do you know me?" she asked.

"I pass you, exquisite Chloe!" the officer answered in Latin with an atrocious Balearic accent.

"I pass Simon!" she retorted. "Do you dare to prevent me?"

"But Chloe—"

"Bring me Simon's slaves or count me your enemy!" she interrupted.

With a half humorous grimace the officer beckoned to his men to let Simon's slaves advance.

"Remember me, O favorite of Fortune!" he said to Chloe. "My name is Metellus."

"I will mention you to Balbus. I will lie to him about your good looks and your loyalty," she promised, and motioned to Simon to climb into his litter.

"Be your memory as nimble as your wits and feet!" Metellus answered, shrugging his shoulders and signing to his men to let the party pass.

Those Balearic slingers lined along the beach were a godsend from Tros' point of view. There was a crowd of hucksters, pimps, idlers and loose women noisily protesting because the soldiers would not let them approach the shore. In the distance where the fishing boats were anchored three liburnians patrolled the waterfront and kept small boats from putting out. There was no chance of communication with the ship, no risk of the crew getting drunk or of Jaun Aksue and his Eskualdenak escaping.

All the way to the city gate the road was lined with idlers who had come to stare and touts who heralded the fame of Gades' brothels. They praised Tros' purple cloak, admired his bulk and strength, flattered, coaxed and tried to tempt him with descriptions of alleged delights, pawing at him, pulling, fighting one another, spitting and cursing at Simon's slaves for thrusting the litter through their ranks. They offered horses, donkeys, mules, drink, women and at last a litter.

Tros hired the litter and bade Chloe climb into it and ride with him. But she refused.

"There are some things I can not do. Once I bought a litter. But it is against the law for slave or even for freed women. The Romans' wives threatened to have me whipped. So I walk, and those women envy me my health, if nothing else!"

They were stared at by the gate guards and by the crowd that swarmed there, but not in any way molested. There was no wheeled traffic, but the narrow street was choked with burdened slaves, mules, oxen and leisured pedestrians who flowed in a colorful hot stream between the lines of stalls and booths that backed against the houses. There was a din of chaffering and a drone of flies where the fruit- and meat- and fish-shops made splurges of raw color; and there was a stench of overcrowded tenements that made Tros cough and gasp.

But people were less curious inside the city, and Chloe's presence had more effect. She walked ahead with one of Simon's slaves on either side of her, and the crowd made way, occasionally cheering, calling compliments, addressing her by name as if she were a free celebrity. One man, forcing his way through the crowd, presented her with flowers and begged her to ride in his chariot if he should win next month's quadriga race in the arena.

HE nodded gaily and led on along the winding street until it widened suddenly and approached an irregular square with trees along one side of it and a statue of Balbus the governor in the midst. On the left hand of the street, with its front toward the square, was a great white building with small, iron-barred windows and the legend S. P. Q. R. in enormous letters amid scroll work all along the coping. From the windows issued shrill, spasmodic, tortured woman's screams, increasing and increasing, until the street crowd set its teeth and some laughed nervously, then ceasing abruptly, only to begin again.

There was no passing at that point. The crowd jammed the street. Even Chloe was helpless to force a way through, and while she pushed, coaxed, pleaded, argued, a girl younger than herself rushed out of a doorway fighting frantically with the crowd that interfered with her and, falling to her knees, seized Chloe's legs.

Her face was half hidden in a shawl; Chloe pulled it back and recognized her. The girl sobbed, and as the screams from the window rose to a shrill, broken summit of inflicted agony, she burst into a torrent of stuttering words all choked with sobs, her fingers clutching Chloe's knees.

Tros rolled out of the litter, for it was useless to try to force that eight-manned object through the crowd. He touched Chloe's shoulder.

"Her mother!" she whispered. "Some informer has told Balbus of a plot. He takes her mother's testimony."

She stooped and kissed the girl, then broke away from her and, beckoning to Tros to follow, began using violence and Balbus' name to force her way through, the crowd gradually yielding.

Around the corner, on the side of the building that faced the trees, eight Roman soldiers under a decurion leaned on spears beside the stone steps that led to a wide arched entrance. Beyond them, in the shadow of the wall, eight more legonaries stood guard over a group of miserable prisoners, gibing at them when they shuddered at the screams that could be heard there even more distinctly than in the street because the stone arch of the entrance magnified the noise. Held back by a rope between the steps and the trees at the back of the square was a crowd of Romans, Spaniards, Greeks, Moors, Jews, slaves and freemen, their voices making a sea of sound that paused regularly when the screams increased.

Chloe led Tros to the steps and whispered Balbus' name to the decurion in charge, who stared at Tros but nodded leave to enter. They fought their way into a crowded lobby, where men and women stood on tip-toe trying to see through the open courtroom door over the shoulders of two legionaries whose spears and broad backs blocked the way. There was hardly breathing room. A woman in a corner had fainted and a man was pouring water on her from a lion's mouth drinking fountain built into the wall.

Chloe kicked, shoved, imprecated, cried out Balbus' name and worked her way at last, with Tros behind her, until she touched the spears held horizontally across the door and Tros could see over her shoulder into the crowded courtroom.

The screams for the moment had ceased. On a sort of throne on a raised dais with a chair on either side of it on which the secretaries sat, was Balbus, governor of Gades, exquisitely groomed, pale, clicking at his front teeth with a thumbnail. He was handsome, but much darker than the average Roman; there were rings under his eyes, that had a bored look, as if he found it difficult to concentrate on a subject that vaguely irritated him. His crisp black hair was turning gray, although he was a comparatively young man. He looked decidedly unhealthy.

Presently he sat bolt upright and the crowded courtroom grew utterly still. When he spoke his well trained voice had the suggestion of a sneer, and his frown was a tyrant's, impatient, exacting, final—like the corners of his mouth that tightened when his lips moved.

"I have considered the advocate's argument. It is true, it is a principle of Roman law that no injustice shall be done; but this woman is not a Roman citizen, nor is she the mother of more than one child, so she has no rights that are involved in this instance. Treason has been charged against the Senate and the Roman People, a most serious issue. This woman has refused to answer truthfully the questions put to her, although she has been accused of knowing the conspirators' names. We must have her testimony. Let the torturers continue. Apply fire."

He leaned forward, elbow on his knee, and again the awful screams began to fill the stone-roofed hall. A scream from the street reechoed them. The crowd on the wooden benches reached and craned to get a better view and the sentries in the door-way stood on tip-toe; all that Tros could see over their shoulders was a glimpse of the men who held the levers of a rack and the red glow of a charcoal brazier. There began to be a stench of burning flesh.

Chloe slipped under the spears of the sentries; one of them reached out an arm but recognized her as she turned to threaten him, grinned and nodded to her to go wherever she pleased. She disappeared into the crowd that stood in the aisle between the benches. The next Tros saw of her she was in front of the dais, looking up at Balbus, who sat motionless, chin on hand, elbow on knee, apparently not listening. The tortured woman's screams made whatever Chloe said inaudible to any one but Balbus and, perhaps, his secretaries, who, however, were at pains to appear busy with their tablets.

Balbus suddenly sat upright, raising his right hand.

"Cease!" he exclaimed in a bored voice. "There will be a short recession. Remove the witness. Let the doctor see to her. After the recession I will examine the other witnesses in turn. It is possible we may not need this one's testimony."

The witness' screams died to a sobbing moan, and there was a murmur in the courtroom. Some one cried out, "Favoritism!" At the rear of the room there were audible snickers. Ushers and sentries roared for silence and, as two men carried the victim out on a stretcher through a side door, Balbus spoke with a metallic snarl:

"I will clear the court if there are further demonstrations! This is not a spectacle, but a judicial process. A courtroom is not an arena. Let decency attend the acts of justice. The next spectator who betrays disrespect for the dignity of Roman justice shall be soundly flogged!"

E AROSE and left the courtroom by a door at the rear of the dais, nodding to Chloe as he went. She seized a court official by the arm and the crowd in the aisle made way in front of them. The official, lemon-faced, his skin a mass of wrinkles, sly-eyed from experience of litigation and his long nose looking capable of infinite suspicion, beckoned to Tros. The sentries let him through and the crowd in the courtroom turned to stare as he swaggered up the aisle, his sea legs giving him a roll that showed off his purple cloak and his great bulk to advantage. With his sword in its purple scabbard and the broad gold band that bound his heavy coils of black hair he looked like a king on a visit of state and, what was more to his purpose, he knew it. They passed the torture-implements, where a Sicilian slave on his knees blew at a charcoal brazier in preparation for the next unwilling witness; the long-nosed official opened the door at the rear of the dais and Chloe, all smiles and excitement, led the way in.

"The renowned and noble Tros of Samothrace!" she exclaimed, and shut the door behind her, leaning with her back against it.

Balbus looked up. He was sitting by the window of a square room lined with racks of parchments, holding toward the light a tablet, which he appeared to find immensely interesting. Tros approached him and bowed, hand on hilt.

"So you are that pirate?" said Balbus, looking keenly at him.

"That is Cæsar's view of it," Tros answered. "I had the great Pompeius' leave to come and go and to use all Roman ports, but Cæsar stole my father's ship and slew him."

"Why do you come to Gades?"

"To find a friend who shall make it safe for me to take my ship to Ostia, and there to leave the ship at anchor while I go to Rome."

"For what purpose?"

"To stir Cæsar's enemies against him; or, it may be, to persuade his friends of the unwisdom of his course. I hope to keep him from invading Britain."

"Who is this friend whom you propose to find in Gades?"

"Yourself, for all I know," said Tros, spreading his shoulders and smiling. "I offer quid for quo. A friend of mine may count on me for friendship."

Balbus was silent for a long time, appearing to be studying Tros' face, but there was a look behind his eyes as if he were revolving half a dozen issues in his mind.

"You took a hostage from me!" he said suddenly.

"Aye, and a good looking one!" Tros answered. "I was fortunate. You shall have him back when I leave Gades. I am told he knows your secrets."

"What if I hold you against him?" Balbus sneered; but he could not keep his eyes from glancing at Tros' sword.

Tros smiled at him.

"Why, in that case, my lieutenant would take my ship to Ostia. And I wonder whether that hostage, whom he will there surrender to the Romans, will keep your secrets as stoutly as the woman in the court just now kept hers!"

Balbus glared angrily, but Tros smiled back at him, his hand remaining on his sword-hilt.

"However, why do we talk of reprisals?" Tros went on after an awkward pause. "Balbus, son of Balbus, is it wisdom to reject a friendship that the gods have brought you on the western wind?"

Balbus looked startled, but tried to conceal it. Chloe, her back to the door, took courage in her teeth and interrupted in a strained voice:

"What said Pkauchios? A red ship with a purple sail? A bold man in a purple cloak?"

"Peace, thou!" commanded Balbus, but in another second he was smiling at her. "Chloe," he said, "you dance for me to-night?"

She nodded.

"As long as Pkauchios owns me." Balbus stared at her, frowning:

"Pkauchios will never manumit you!" he said. "You know too many secrets."

Chloe bit her lip, as if she regretted having spoken, but her eyes were on Tros' face and appeared to be urging him to follow the cue she had given.

"Balbus, what if I should save your life?" Tros asked. "What then? Or shall I sail away and leave you?"

Again Chloe interrupted:

"Balbus! What said Pkauchios? What said the auguries? 'Death stalks you in the streets of Gades unless Fortune intervenes!'"

Balbus stared at Tros again.

"How come you to know about conspiracies in Gades?" he demanded.

"I, too, consult the auguries," said Tros. "For my ship's sake I read the stars as some men read a woman's eyes. The stars have blinked me into Gades. The very whales have beckoned me! My dreams for nine nights past in storms at sea have been of Gades and a man's life I shall save."

Balbus' lips opened a little and his lower jaw came slowly forward. He used his left hand for a shield against the sunlight streaming through the window and, leaning sidewise, peered at Tros again.

"You look like a blunt, honest seaman," he remarked, "save that you are dressed too handsomely and overbold!"

"My father was a prince of Samothrace," Tros answered; whereat Balbus shrugged his shoulders. It was no part of the policy of Roman governors to appear much thrilled by foreign titles of nobility.

OW Tros was utterly perplexed what course to take, for which reason he was careful to look confident. He knew the information that he had from Chloe might be a network of lies. There might be no truth whatever, for instance, in her statement that Cæsar was on his way to Gades; on the other hand it might be true, and Balbus might be perfectly aware of it. Examining Balbus' eyes, he became sure of one thing—Balbus was no idealist; a mere suggestion of an altruistic aim would merely stir the man's suspicion.

"I come to fish in troubled waters," Tros remarked. "I seek advantage in your disadvantage."

Suddenly, as if some friendly god had whispered in his ear, he thought of the Balearic slingers on the beach and how readily their officer had fielded to Chloe's arrogant support of Simon. He remembered that shrug of the shoulders when she promised to praise him to Balbus.

"Are your troops dependable?" he asked, knowing that mutiny was as perennial as the seasons wherever Roman troops were kept too long in idleness. He began to wonder whether, perhaps, Balbus had not sent for Cæsar to help him out of an emergency. Secretaries, slaves might have spread such a rumor. Chloe might have magnified it and distorted it for reasons of her own; the Gades dancing girls, he knew, were capable of any intrigue. For that matter Horatius Verres might be Balbus' spy, not Cæsar's.

But Balbus' startled stare was more or less convincing. And it dawned on Tros that a Roman governor who felt entirely sure of his own authority would not yield so complacently to that hostage trick; a man with his nerve unshaken would have countered promptly by arresting Tros himself. Balbus was worried, nervous, trying to conceal the fact. Subduing irritation, he ignored Tros' question and retorted with another—

"You used Cæsar's seal! What do you know of Cæsar's movements?"

"None except Cæsar can guess what he will do next," Tros said, trying to suggest by his expression that he knew more than he proposed to tell.

"Word came," said Balbus, "that you fought a battle with his biremes. I have heard that the Druids of Gaul report to you all Cæsar's moves in advance. Can you tell me where he is now? If you tell the truth, I will do you any favor within my power."

The pupils of Tros' amber eyes contracted suddenly. His head jerked slightly in Chloe's direction and Balbus took the hint.

"Chloe," he said, "go you to that woman who was tortured. Help to bandage her. Condole with her. Try to persuade her to confess to you the names of the conspirators who are plotting against my life. Tell her that if she confesses she shall not be tortured any more, and she may save others from the rack."

Chloe left the room, and Tros did not care to turn his head to see what effect the dismissal had on her.

"Now, what do you know of Cæsar?" Balbus asked.

Tros smiled. He was determined not to answer until sure of where the forks of Balbus' own dilemma pricked. And the longer Tros hesitated the more confident Balbus grew that Tros knew more than he would tell without persuasion.

"You are Cæsar's enemy?" he asked.

Tros nodded.

"I am of the party of Pompeius Magnus," Balbus remarked, narrowing his eyes.

Tros nodded again.

"It would not offend Pompeius Magnus if—ah—if death should overtake Cæsar," Balbus remarked, and looked the other way.

"So I should imagine," Tros said, watching him.

Balbus stroked his chin. It had been beautifully shaven. Tros kept silence. Balbus had to resume the conversation:

"If Cæsar should visit Gades and should die, all Rome would sigh with relief; but the Senate would assert its own dignity by crucifying any Roman who had killed him. You understand me?"

Again Tros nodded. He was having hard work to suppress excitement, but his breath came regularly, slowly. Even his hand on the jeweled sword-hilt rested easily. Balbus appeared irritated at his calmness. He spoke sharply—

"But if an enemy of Cæsar slew him—" Tros stroked his chin, passing the hand over his mouth to hide a smile—"that man would have a thousand friends in Rome!" Balbus went on. Then, after a moment's pause, his eyes on Tros, "Cæsar's corpse could harm no friends of yours in Britain!"

For as long as thirty breaths Tros and Balbus eyed each other. Then:

"Spies have informed me," said Balbus, "of a rumor that Cæsar intends to come here. What else than that news brought you into Gades? Did you not come to waylay and kill him?"

Tros, stroking at his chin again, assumed the slyest possible expression.

"I should need such guarantees of safety and immunity as even Balbus might find it hard to give," he remarked.

"We can discuss that later on," said Balbus. "Cæsar moves swiftly and secretly, but I know where he was three days ago. He can not be here for four or five days yet. We have time."

However, Tros remembered his friend Simon—probably already home by now and in abject terror awaiting news of the interview. Also he thought of Chloe. Those were two whose loyalty he needed to bind to himself, by all means and as soon as possible.

"I will make a first condition now," he said abruptly. "Simon, the Jew owes money but can not pay. He says you owe him money and will not pay. Will you settle with Simon?"

Balbus looked exasperated.

"Bacchus!" he swore under his breath.

It needed small imagination to explain what situation he was in. Like any other Roman governor, he had been forced to send enormous sums to Rome to defray his own debts and to bribe the professional blackmailers who lived by accusing absentees before the Senate. He had not been long enough in Gades to accumulate reserves of extorted coin.

Tros understood the situation perfectly. He also knew how men in debt snatch eagerly at temporary respite.

"There is no haste for the money," he remarked. "Let Simon write an order on your treasury which you accept for payment, say, in six months' time."

Balbus nodded.

"That would be an unusual concession," he said, "from a man in my position. But I see no serious objection."

"Would any one in Gades dare to refuse to accept such a document in payment of a debt?" Tros asked him.

Balbus stiffened, instantly assertive of his dignity.

"Some men will dare almost anything—once!" he remarked. "It would be a dangerous indiscretion!"

"Even if it were the price of the manumission of a slave?"

"Even so."

"Very well," said Tros. "There is a female slave in Gades whom I covet. Can you order the sale of that slave to me?"

"Not so," said Balbus. "But I can order the slave manumitted at the price at which the owner has declared that slave for taxation purposes, and provided the slave pays the manumission tax of ten per cent. on her market value."

"I am at the age when a woman means more to me than money," Tros remarked.

Balbus nodded. That was no new thing. The dry smile on his face revealed that he thought he had Tros in the hollow of his hand.

"But how did you make the acquaintance of this slave in Gades?" he asked curiously.

Tros could lie on the spur of a moment as adroitly as he could change his ship's helm to defeat the freaks of an Atlantic wind.

"She was sold under my eyes in Greece, two years ago. I was outbidden," he answered promptly. "I learned she was brought to Gades and, if you must know, that is why I risked coming here. She is extremely beautiful. I saw her just now in the street."

"Do you know who owns her?"

"I will find out."

"Well," said Balbus, "make your inquiries cautiously, or her owner may grow suspicious and spirit her out of sight. You would better get her name and legal description, her owner's name and her taxable value, have the document drawn and bring it to me to sign before the owner learns anything about it."

"When? Where?" Tros asked him.

Balbus turned in his chair suddenly and looked straight into Tros' face, staring long and keenly at him.

"At my house. Tonight," he said deliberately, using the words with emphasis, as a man might who was naming an enormous stake in a game of chance. "I bid you to my house to supper at one hour after sunset. There is an Egyptian named Pkauchios in Gades, an astrologer of great ability in the prediction of events. For two months he has predicted daily that Cæsar will die very soon by violence. Last night, between midnight and the dawn, he came to me predicting your arrival after sunrise. He prophesied that you shall serve me in a matter of life and death. I am thinking, if it should be my life and the death of Cæsar—"

"I must consult this Pkauchios!" said Tros, and Balbus nodded.

"I will send you to him."

"No," said Tros, "for then he will know I come from you. And if he has lied to you, he will lie to me. But if I go alone I may get the truth from him. I will not slay Cæsar unless I know the elements are all propitious."

"Go to him then," Balbus answered. "Make yourself as inconspicuous in Gades as you can. Bring me an exact account to-night of all that Pkauchios has said to you. I will sign the order for Simon's money and for the manumission of that slave girl just to let you feel my generosity. Thereafter, we will discuss the terms on which you shall—ah—shall—ah—act as the instrument of fate."