The Dancing Girl of Gades/Chapter 4

RWIC jumped on to the seaweed-littered beach, slipped on a heap of the slimy stuff and sprawled among the scampering crabs, where Conops helped him to his feet.

"A bad omen, Lord Orwic. A bad omen!"

But the Britons were not addicted to the vice of reading omens in every accident.

"Go back in the boat, if you're afraid," Orwic answered. So Conops started to lead the way on the five-mile walk toward the city across a dark, ill-smelling wilderness of sand and scrub where anything might happen. And Sigurdsen sent Skram, the skald to follow them.

They found a road after a while, with a stinking ditch on either side of it, and before long saw the lights of the drinking booths, brothels and slaughter yards outside the wall, where there was neither day nor night but one long pandemonium of vice and lawlessness. And soon after that the first of the scavenger dogs, prowling in search of stray goats or forgotten offal, winded them and started a yelp that brought the pack.

Thereafter, they had to fight their way with knife and stick, not daring to gather stones lest the ferocious brutes should snatch that opportunity to rush them while they stooped. But the noise called no attention from the slums, where a dog-fight in the dark was nothing new, and when Skram, judging he was close enough to the gate, lay down to watch, the dogs devoted all their efforts to attacking him, leaving Orwic and Conops free to approach the gate with a semblance of Roman dignity. There Conops took command.

There was a foot-gate in the midst of one side of the double, iron-strapped wooden one that had been closed at sunset; and in the midst of the small gate was a grilled opening that the guard could look through, and above that a lantern on an iron bracket.

Long before they came into the lantern light Conops began talking fussily in Greek.

"This way, master! That way! Mind the muck there! Dionysus! But the wine those rascals sell has madness in it! Master, master, try to walk straight!" Any one who understood Greek could not help but know a Roman gentleman was coming from an evening's entertainment.

"There, master, give me your purse and lean against the wall while I call the gate guard!"

Conops set his ugly face against the grill and whistled.

"Quick!" he commanded. "My master is drunk, and ill-tempered because he has been robbed."

"Who is he?" a voice asked through the grill.

"None of your business! Be quick, unless the lot of you want to be whipped in the morning!"

"Was he robbed of his purse?"

"Dionysus! No. What do you take me for? I keep his purse."

"Well, you know what it costs. One gold piece from each of you to the man on duty, and then the officer—he makes his own terms."

"Fool!" Conops roared at him. "Open! If you knew who waits you'd tremble in your mongrel skin!"

The guard vanished. A moment later Conops heard him reporting through the guard-house window to his officer, and he made haste to improve the passing moment.

"Master, master!" he yelled. "Don't beat me! I'm doing my best! Order those blackguards in the guard-house beaten for daring to keep you waiting. Ow! Ow! Master, that hurts!"

The captain of the guard came—a Numidian, as coal-black as the shadows, rolling the whites of his eyes in an effort to see through the grill, his breath reeking of garlic.

"Who?" he demanded.

"You'll pay smartly for it if I have to tell you!" Conops answered. "Hurry up now! Two gold pieces for you to hold your tongue and shut your eyes. Some silver for your men. My master's drunk. I pity you, if you keep him waiting!"

A great key jangled on a ring. The lock squealed. Conops threw his arm around Orwic, whose face was smothered in the fold of his pallium.

"Act very drunk!" he whispered, and hustled him through the narrow opening.

On the far side he pushed him into the darkest shadow, where dim rays from a lantern showed the broad blue border of a Roman tunic and the sandaled legs below it, but nothing else. There was a chink of money. The Numidian signed to half a dozen men to retire into the guard-house.

"Remind him when he's sober that I let him in without a fuss," he said grinning. "Who is he?"

Conops laid a hand on the black man's shoulder and leaned toward him as if to whisper, then apparently thought better of it.

"No," he said, "mind your own business. That's wisest. I'll remind him you were civil."

"All right. Don't forget now! I'll remember you, you one-eyed Greek! If I see you and ask a favor some time—"

But Conops was gone, his left arm around Orwic and his right hand closed on something that, it seemed, he valued—possibly the purse. The captain of the gate guard may have thought so.

"Act drunk—drunk—drunker than that!" he whispered. "Strike a blow at me!"

It was too early for the streets to be deserted and the danger was of meeting Romans or some citizen who might imagine he recongized [sic] the drunken man and speak to him for the fun of it. But the street was crooked and the upper stories of the houses leaned out overhead until they almost met, creating a tunnel of gloom into which the yellow fight from doors and windows streamed at intervals. The moment they were out of sight of the guard-house Conops advised a change of tactics.

"Now sober! Now walk swiftly, as if we had serious business. Stride, man! Stride out! Remember you're a Roman!"

But the spirit of adventure was in Orwic's veins. It was the first time he had seen a foreign city. Men who stood in doorways, house-fronts, litters of the wealthy merchants borne on the shoulders of slaves—all was new to him and stirred his curiosity. Above all, as they threaded through the maze of narrow streets, the glimpse through certain open doors attracted him. For Gades had not yet been zoned, as Rome was, more or less, and as Lunden did not need to be. There were cavernous, whitewashed cellars visible from mid-street, in which women danced to the jingling strains of strings and castanets.

Naked-bellied women ran from one door, seizing Orwic, trying to drag him in to drink and witness Gadean indecency. One pulled away the pallium that hid the lower portion of his face and Conops struck at her too late; she glimpsed the long, fair hair that fell to the Briton's shoulders, screamed of it, tried to tug the pallium again.

"Haie, girls! A barbarian! A rich barbarian! Let's teach him."

HE owner of the place came out, a bull-necked Syrian who tried to keep Conops at bay while the slave-women struggled to hustle their quarry down steps into the cellar whence the din of music and the reek of wine emerged. The scuffle drew attention from a guard of the municipium, street corner lurking, watching for a chance to blackmail somebody. He came on the run and, wise in all the short cuts to extortion, picked on Conops as a slave worth money, worth redeeming from the lock-up.

Too quick for him, Conops stepped into the light that streamed from the cellar doorway, showed him something in the palm of a secretive hand. Whatever it was, the Syrian saw it, too, and drove the women down the cellar steps. The guard of the municipium strolled away, the Syrian grew laughingly apologetic. Conops led up-street in haste and around three corners before he paused and let Orwic come abreast.

"What did you show him?" Orwic, :asked.

"Oh, only a bronze badge I stole from that fool Numidian at the gate."

They reached the wide street running crosswise of the city—wide, that was, for Gades, where there was no wheeled traffic because of the house-fronts that jutted out promiscuously and the arches and bottle-necked passages—passed a temple of Venus, rawly new, of imported Sicilian marble, where Orwic's British eyes stared scandalized at the enormous figure of the naked goddess colored in flesh tints and bathed in the flickering light of torches, and turned due eastward, up an alley between high, blind walls where the air smelt stale and filthy and there was not room for two men to pass without squeezing.

There, in the stinking dark, men slept who had to be stepped over carefully. Some swore when awakened and followed with drawn knives, so that Conops walked backward, his own long knife-blade tapping on the wall to give the night-pads warning he was armed.

And there were high doors in the walls, set in dark and unexpected corners, where men lurked who stepped out suddenly and blocked the way, demanding an alms with no humility. Conops slipped under Orwic's arm and trounced one of them with the handle of his knife, whereafter Orwic called a halt for consultation.

"Tros recommended caution," he remarked. "We can not fight all the thieves in Gades. Yet if we fee one rascal he will call his gang to murder us for the purse. We would be better off in the cellar where the women were; they might have taken our money without killing us, or so it seems to me. Pick me up that rascal. Has he breath left? Can he speak? So. Offer him silver to lead us to the house of Simon and keep other rogues at bay."

So, for a while they went preceded by a man in rags who announced in low growls to fellow-prowlers of the Gades underworld that these were privileged night-passengers who had paid their footing, and none offered to molest them after that, except one leper, who demanded to be paid to keep his filthy sores at a distance. He was of the aristocracy of beggardom and bound by no guild restrictions.

And so into the ghetto, where another sort of night life teemed in crowded alleyways. Iron-barred windows and a reek of pickled fish; sharp voices raised in argument; song, pitched in minor melancholy with an undertone of triumph; secrecy suggested by the eye-holed shutters; ugliness; no open doors, yet doors that did open secretively as soon as they had passed, to afford a glimpse of the unwelcome strangers.

At the end of a few turns the beggar-guide professed to have lost himself, demanded his money and decamped. Orwic remembered the plan Tros drew in sand on the cabin table, but could not see that it faintly resembled any of these winding alleys. Conops, sailor by profession, had the bearings in his head, but could make nothing of the maze confronting them.

"Let us return to the temple of Venus and start again," he suggested. "There used to be an alley that ran nearly straight from there to Simon's house."

But Orwic plunged forward at random toward a corner where a dim lamp burned in an iron bracket. Conops warned him they were followed and struck the blade of his long knife against a door-post, but Orwic turned and stuck his foot into a door that had opened just sufficiently to give a view of him. Conops who knew Gades ghetto's reputation, tried to pull him back.

"Caution!" he urged.

But Orwic was already inside. There was a leather screen, and Conops could not see him. He had to follow, and the door slammed at his back. The screen masked the end of a short, narrow passage that turned into a room, where there were voices and a dim light. Conops used up a few seconds lunging in the darkness with his knife to find out who and where the man was who had slammed the door. Then he groped for the door, but failed to find the lock, his fingers running up and down smooth wood. He could hardly even find the crack between door and frame.

"Oimoi! Olola! Tros was mad to send a Briton!"

Some one chuckled in the darkness. He lunged with his knife at the sound, but hit nothing, then decided to try the passage and the voices and the light. But first he knocked the screen down, being a Greek strategist. A clear line of retreat, even toward a locked door, seemed better than nothing.

He found Orwic in a room whose walls were higher than its length or breadth. Somewhere in the darkness overhead there was a gallery that creaked, suggesting people up there listening, but tie one dim lamp was below the gallery, its flickering light thrown downward by a battered bronze reflector. There was a smell of oil, spice, leather and tallow, but nothing in the room except a leather-covered table and two stools. Orwic leaned against the table. An old Jew sat facing him on one of the stools, his knees under the table and his back against the wall. The Jew wore the robes of his race and a dirty cloth cap, beneath which the oily ringlets coiled on either side of bright black eyes. He was scratching his curled beard as he contemplated Orwic.

IMON!" said Orwic. "Simon! Simon!"

The Jew glanced at Conops, who stood sidewise in the door, tapping his knife against the post and swaying himself to see into the shadows.

"Is he drunk?" he asked, speaking Greek. "My name isn't Simon."

"Simon, son of Tobias of Alexandria," said Conops. "Where is his house? We seek him."

"Every one in Gades knows the house of Simon, son of Tobias of Alexandria," the old Jew answered. "Why do you break into my house?"

Conops showed him the bronze badge, stolen from the captain of the gate guard, but that had no effect whatever.

"Such a thing will get you into trouble," said the Jew. "You have no right to it. That belongs to a captain of the slaves of the municipium."

Conops began to be thoroughly frightened. The stealthy sounds in gallery and passage and the confident curiosity of the old Jew assured him he was in a tight place.

"Master, let's go!" he urged in Gaulish.

But Orwic could see no danger, and the Jew smiled, his lower lip protruding as he laid a lean hand on the table.

"A Gaul? Ah! And a Greek slave? Who is your master?" he asked Conops. "What does he want with Simon ben Tobias of Alexandria? What is a Gaul doing with a Greek slave? You must tell me. Come and stand here."

He pointed to the floor beside him. Conops obeyed, knife in hand, well satisfied to stand where he could hold the old Jew at his mercy at the first suggestion of attack.

"Put your knife away. Slaves are not allowed to carry weapons," said the Jew, and again Conops obeyed. He could redraw the knife in a second. "Who is your master? Why did you come to my house?"

Orwic seemed perfectly undisturbed, although he kept on sniffing at the strange smells.

"Tell him to show us the way to Simon's house," he said patiently.

"You would never be admitted into Simon's house at this hour," said the Jew. "There are always his slaves in the street, and they protect his house unless they know you. Do they know you?"

"Tell him," said Orwic, "that we have a letter for Simon."

But the Jew seemed to understand the Gaulish perfectly.

"Show me!" he remarked, and held his hand out.

"Don't you, master! Don't you!" Conops urged, but Orwic had not understood the Greek. He had supposed the Jew demanded money to show the way.

The Jew's eyes gleamed in the direction of the door. Conops turned instantly. There were three Jews in the passage—confident, young, strong, armed with heavy leather porters' straps, which was a weapon quite as deadly as a knife. They leaned with their backs against the passage wall and gazed through into the room with insolent amusement.

"Simon is my friend," said the Jew. "If it is true you have a letter, I will take it to him. You wait here. But I don't believe you have a letter. You are robbers. Who should send strangers with a letter to Simon at this hour of the night?"

Conops explained that to Orwic.

"Tell him he may come with us and satisfy himself," said Orwic, beginning to be piqued at last.

"Which of you has the letter?" the old Jew demanded, and the three young Jews in the passageway advanced into the room, as if they had been signalled.

"I can kill all three of those!" said Conops grimly.

His hand went like lightning to his knife-hilt, but a woman screamed in the gallery and smashed something. Conops and Orwic glanced up, and in the same second each found himself caught in a rawhide noose, arms pinioned.

They fought like roped catamounts with teeth and feet, but the three young Jews were joined by others, who helped to kneel on them and tie them until they could not move, the old Jew sitting all the while, his back against the wall, as if the whole proceeding were quite usual and did not interest him much.

He said something in a sharp voice, and the men began to search their prisoners.

One of them tossed the purse on to the table. Orwic's short Roman sword followed, then Conops' knife and the bronze badge taken from the gate guard. At last the letter was discovered, tucked under the belt of Orwic's tunic. The old Jew read it, knitting his brows, sitting sidewise so as to hold it toward the light, his lean lips moving as he spelled the words.

"Eh? Tros of Samothrace! Eh?"

He rolled up the letter and thrust it in the bosom of his robe, then spoke rapidly in Aramaic to the Jews who were squatting beside their prisoners. Presently he opened the purse on the table, counted the money, closed it, threw it down, called to the woman, who tossed down a cloak from the gallery and left the house, shuffling along the passage-way in slippers.