The Dancing Girl of Gades/Chapter 5

ROS and Sigurdsen stood over by the water-clocks, the full width of the ship from where Chloe and Horatius Verres sat in hiding. But Sigurdsen's voice was a sailor's and, the Gaulish being foreign to him, he spoke it with peculiar emphasis.

"Skram was badly bitten by the dogs," said Sigurdsen. "He saw both men enter the city, and he is afraid now he will go mad from dog-bite. The other men think Skram will bite them. They talk of killing him for a precaution."

Tros groped in a corner.

"Take this," he commanded. "Tell Skram and all those other fools that the Druids gave it to me. It'll sting, mind. You'll have to hold him while you rub it on. Tell Skram that if he drinks nothing but water, and eats no meat for three days, he'll recover and the dogs'll die. Tell him I said that. Then put Skram to bed, choose another in his place, and row back to the shore to wait for Orwic, Conops and the man they'll bring with them."

Sigurdsen departed and presently Skram's yells announced the application of the pine-oil dressing to sundry tender parts of his anatomy. Being a skald, he had a strong voice trained to out-yell storms and drunken roistering.

Chloe came out of the dark into the whale-oil lantern light.

"You have sent men ashore?" she asked. "To get in touch with Simon? At this hour of the night? They'll fail! They'll be caught by Balbus' city guards, or be killed by the Jews." She thought a minute. "Better have sent me! Were they slaves?"

"They are friends," Tros answered. "Where did you learn Gaulish?"

She laughed.

"Pkauchios sent me to Gaul one time to dance for Cæsar."

"Why did Pkauchios send you to Cæsar?"

"Pkauchios' business is to know men's secrets. But I failed that time. Cæsar is no fool."

She sat on the bunk again, covering her bare knees with a blanket, and for an hour Tros talked to her, he pacing up and down the cabin floor and she regaling him with all politics of Gades.

"Balbus bleeds the place," she told him. "Balbus pretends to be Cæsar's friend, but he is the nominee of Pompey the Great, who has all Spain for his province but stays in Rome and has men like Balbus send him all the money they can squeeze out of their governorships, not that a good percentage doesn't stick to Balbus' fingers. Balbus intends to rebuild the city. If those men you sent ashore get caught by the city guard, they'll find themselves in the quarries sometime tomorrow. Balbus has forbidden the export of male slaves, because he wants to glut the market, so as to buy them cheap for his labor gangs. He sentences all able-bodied vagrants to the quarries. He will crucify you, though, if he catches you, unless—"

"Are there any Roman war-ships in the harbor?" Tros asked her.

"Only one guard-ship, a trireme, but it's hauled out for repairs. The spring fleet hasn't come yet, and the fleet that wintered here has gone to Gaul with supplies and recruits for Cæsar's army."

"When is the spring fleet expected?"

"Any day. It's overdue. The spring fleet comes with the merchant ships to protect them from the pirates. They say the pirates are getting just as bad as they were before Pompey the Great made war on them; and they say, too, that Pompey is too lazy to go after them again, or else afraid that Cæsar's friends might take advantage of his absence. You know, Pompey and Cæsar pretend to be great friends, but they're really deadly enemies, and now that Crassus, the richest man in the world, has gone to Syria, people are saying it's only a matter of time before Cæsar and Pompey are at each other's throats. Until now they've both been afraid of Crassus' money bags, which seems silly to me. The winner could kill Crassus—"

"And which side does Balbus take?"

The girl laughed.

"Balbus takes his own side, just like all the rest of us. Balbus aedificabit He hopes to win fame by making Gades a great city. If Cæsar should win in the struggle that everybody knows is coming, well—Balbus is Cæsar's friend. If Pompey wins, Balbus is Pompey's nominee and very faithful to him."

"What about you?" Tros asked her.

"What do I matter? I am a dancing girl, a slave—the property of Pkauchios the Egyptian."

"Which way lie your sympathies?" Tros insisted.

"With me, of course, with Chloe. But Balbus loves me, if that is what you mean. He would buy me, if I weren't so terribly expensive. And he would find some way of freeing me from Pkauchios, if Pkauchios weren't so useful to him."

"How?"

"Pkauchios reads the stars, and prophesies. Quite a lot of what he says comes true."

"Sorcery, eh?"

"Call it that if you like. Pkauchios owns other dancing girls besides me. We are all of us rather well trained at picking up information."

"You say you know Cæsar. You like him?"

"Who could help it? He's handsome, intelligent—oh, how I hate fools!—he has manners, fascination, courtesy. He can be cruel, he can be magnanimous, he thrills you with his presence, he's extravagant—as reckless as a god with his rewards. Oh, he's wonderful! There isn't any meanness in him, and when he looks at you, you simply feel his power. You can't help answering his questions. And then he just looks away—like this."

Chloe broke into a song that had become current wherever women followed in the wake of Roman arms:

"So now you love Balbus instead?" Tros suggested.

"Bah! Thirty thousand Balbuses are not worth half of Cæsar! I said, Balbus loves me. But he is much too mean to buy me. What are two hundred thousand sesterces to a man who can tax all Gades and sell judgments and confiscate traitors' property? I myself own more than two hundred thousand sesterces."

"Then why don't you buy your own freedom?"

"Two good reasons. One is, that I placed my peculium in Simon, the Jew's hands, out of the reach of Pkauchios. And Simon can't repay me at the moment, though he's honest in money matters like most of the rich Jews. The other is, that if I buy my freedom, I would still be Pkauchios' client. I couldn't leave Gades without his permission."

"And—?"

Tros felt himself on the scent of something. He experienced that strange thrill, unexplainable, that precedes a discovery. He shot questions at random.

"Why didn't you deposit your money with the temple priests, as most slaves do?"

"Because the priests hate Pkauchios. They would rob me to spite him. Simon is more honest."

Possibly she felt in Tros something like that same compelling force that she said had made her answer Cæsar's questions. After a moment's pause she answered:

"I didn't want my freedom until—" she glanced at the dark corner where Horatius Verres sat in silence—"you see, I had more liberty without it. As a slave there are few things I can't do in Gades."

"But—?" Tros insisted.

She shuddered.

"Roman law! If my master should be charged with treason they would have to take my evidence under torture. No escape from that. A slave's evidence against her master mayn't be taken any other way. Some of them die under torture. None of them are much good afterwards. They're always lame, and the fire leaves scars."

ROS whistled softly to himself, pacing the cabin floor, his hands behind him. Suddenly he turned on her.

"You didn't come here just for Horatius Verres' sake! You didn't cross that marshland in the dark for the fun of a swim to a pirate's ship! You called me a pirate just now. You had Verres' word for that. Whose else?"

"Cæsar wrote to Balbus to be on the watch for you. I saw the letter. It came by the overland mail three weeks ago."

"You a slave, and you risk yourself on a pirate's ship?"

"Well, I thought I would make friends with you."

"Why?"

"Because, if Pkauchios gets into difficulties, I might be able to escape to somewhere. Almost anywhere would do."

Tros, pacing the floor again, turned that over in his mind, reflecting that if she were willing to risk herself in what she supposed were a pirate's hands, she must be in serious danger of the Roman torturers. Pkauchios, her master, must be well into the toils. However, he was not quite sure yet that she was telling him the truth.

"You say Balbus loves you and would torture you?" he asked. "He is the governor, isn't he? He can overrule the court. He would find some excuse—"

"Bah!" she interrupted. "Balbus would enjoy it! You should see him at the circus. He isn't satisfied unless a dozen horses break their legs under the chariot wheels. See him at the spectacles. He likes the agony prolonged. A month ago he had a woman scourged and then worried by dogs, but he gave her a stick to defend herself and it took the brutes an hour to kill her. Balbus pretends he does it for the people's sake, but he makes them sick. It is he who likes it!"

Tros grinned pleasantly. The girl was trembling, trying to conceal it. He perceived he might make use of her, but fear, and the more of it the better, though a safe spur, would not provide against her treachery. He must supply hope, practical and definite. However, first another question, to make sure he was not wasting time and wit:

"So, after all, you have no real influence with Balbus?"

"That I have! I say, he loves me! I whisper, and he favors this or that one. But he would get just as much pleasure out of seeing me tortured as he does out of hiring me from Pkauchios to dance before his guests. He would say to the world, 'See how just I am. Behold my impartiality. I torture even Chloe, qui saltavit, placuit.' Then he would enjoy my writhings! He would enjoy them all the more because he loves me."

Tros stood staring at her, arms akimbo.

"Do you think, at a word from you, Balbus would admit me into Gades?" he asked.

"That would come better from Pkauchios. Pkauchios can go to him at any hour and say he has read portents in the stars," she answered.

"Can you manage Pkauchios?"

She frowned, then nodded.

"Yes. But he is dangerous. He will try to put you to his own use." Suddenly she laughed. "Let Pkauchios go to Balbus and prophesy that Tros the Samothracian will enter the harbor at dawn in his great red ship. It is red, isn't it? So Cæsar's letter said."

"Vermilion, with purple sails!" Tros answered proudly.

"And let Pkauchios say to Balbus that Tros of Samothrace is destined to render him a very great service. At dawn, the first prophecy will come true. So Balbus win believe the second and will receive you eagerly."

Tros nodded. He well knew the Romans' superstitious reverence for signs and omens. But he also knew the notorious treachery of the dancing girls of Gades, so there remained to pin down this one's friendship for himself.

"Do you care for pearls?" he asked her, and she gasped.

He took a big one with his thumb and finger from the pocket in his belt and placed it on the palm of her extended hand.

"You shall have enough of those," he said, "to make a necklace."

"But a slave mayn't wear them."

"You shall buy your freedom from your master."

"But Simon can't give me my money!"

"And if all plans fail, you shall escape with me on my ship—you and Horatius Verres."

"If?" she said, watching him, weighing the pearl in the palm of her hand.

"If you give to me in full, meanwhile, your influence in Gades! If you work for me ten times as faithfully as you have ever served your master! If you fail me in nothing, and lend me all your wit and all your knowledge."

"A bargain!" she exclaimed and held the pearl between her lips a moment. Then, suddenly, "Show me the rest of them! How many pearls?"

"You shall have them at the right time. Their number will depend on you," Tros answered, stepping to the door. He heard the oar-thumps of the long-boat. "How will you go back?"

"I will swim."

He shook his head. "I will send you ashore. Say nothing to the men. But how will you reach the city? There will be no Horatius Verres this time to fight the dogs off and protect you."

"I told you I am a slave who owns slaves. I have two men waiting for me on the beach."

Tros heard the deck-watch challenge and Sigurdsen's answering howl from close at hand.

"There is time yet," he said, glancing at the water-clock. "Hide there." He pointed to the dark comer where Horatius Verres sat. "If this is Simon coming, don't let him see you. Slip out when he enters the cabin and I will order my boatmen to row you to the beach."

Then he peered at Verres. He could hardly see his outline in the shadow under the row of clothing.

"You," he said, "stay where you are, and don't let me hear a sound from you!"