The Golden Slave

XVII

“You bid me surrender a guest, who has fought well for me to boot,” Mithradates said gravely. And then, with an imp’s grin: “Also, I doubt the reality of your threat. If the Cimbri were all like this one, Europe must still be too shaken to go adventuring in the East. Ten years hence, perhaps … but no one would hazard so rich a province as Pergamum just to capture a man. I have read your official documents, Flavius, and they convey nothing but a strong request.”

“Great King, it was never my intention to threaten,” answered the Roman with a smooth quickness. “Forgive clumsy words. We are blunt folk in the Republic. But of course the King understands that the Senate and the people of Rome will welcome so vital a token of a most powerful and splendid monarch’s good will toward them. I am authorized to make a small material symbol of the state’s gratitude, to the amount of―”

“I have seen what the bribe would be,” said Mithradates. “We shall discuss all this at leisure tonight.” His gaze flickering between Eodan and Flavius, he chuckled deeply. “There will be a feast at which you two old friends may reminisce. In the meantime, I forbid violence between you. Now I have work to do. You may go.”

Eodan backed out, taking Phryne’s arm at the door. “Come to my tent,” he said. “You should not have been so reckless as to travel hither.”

“I would not hold back from you even the littlest help,” she whispered. She caught at his cloak, and her tone became shrill. “Eodan, will he give you up to them?”

“I hardly think so,” said the Cirnbrian. Bitterness swelled in his throat. “But neither will he give Flavius up to me!”

They started across the courtyard, and the wind snatched at their mantles. Eodan looked back and saw Flavius emerging from the keep.

“Wait,” he said to Phryne. “There are things I would talk about that no one else has a right to hear.”

“You will disappoint the king,” she said in an acrid voice. “He is looking forward to the subtlest gladiatorial contest.”

Eodan strode from her. Flavius wrapped his toga more closely against the cold bluster of the air. He smiled, raising his brows, and stood waiting; his dark curly hair fluttered. But somehow no youth or merriment were left in him.

“Will you be kind enough to assault me?” he asked.

“I am not a fool,” grunted Eodan.

“No, not in such respects…. Since your life hangs now on the king’s pleasure, you will heel to his lightest whim like any well-trained dog.” Flavius spoke quietly, choosing each word beforehand. “Thus it is seen ― he who is born to be a slave will always be a slave.”

Eodan held onto his soul with both hands. At last he got out: “I will meet you somewhere beyond the power of both Rome and Pontus.”

Flavius skinned his teeth in a grin. “Your destruction is more important to me than the dubious pleasures of single combat.”

“You are afraid, then,” said Eodan. “You only fight women.”

Flavius clenched his free hand. His whittled face congealed, he said in a flat voice: “I cannot help but smite those women whom you forever make your shields. Now it is a Greek slave girl. How many more have you crawled behind, even before you debauched my wife?”

“I went through a door that stood unbarred to all,” fleered Eodan.

“Like unto like. Will it console you to know, Cimbrian, that she has divorced me? For she grows great with no child of mine, a brat I would surely drown were it dropped in my house.”

Eodan felt a dull pleasure. This was no decent way to hurt an enemy, yet what other way did he have? “So now your hopes for the consulate are broken,” he said. “That much service have I done Rome.”

“Not so,” Flavius told him. “For I allowed the divorce in an amicable way, not raising the charges of adultery I might. Thus her father is grateful to me.” He nodded. “There are troublous years coming. The plebs riot and the patricians fall out with each other. I shall rise high enough in the confusion so that I will have power to proscribe your bastard.”

It had never occurred to Eodan before, to think about the by-blow of his women. He had set Hwicca’s Othrik upon his knee and named him heir, but otherwise ― Now, far down under the seething in him, he knew a tenderness. He could find no good reason for it; there was a Power here. He would have chanced Mithradates’ wrath and broken the neck of Flavius, merely to save an unborn child, little and lonely in the dark, whom he would never see. But no, those guardsmen drilling beneath the walls would seize him before he finished the task.

He asked in a sort of wonder: “Is this why you pursue me?”

“I bear the commission of the Republic.”

“The king spoke truly ― they are not that interested in one man. This decree is a gesture to please you, belike through your father-in-law. You are the one who has made it his life’s work to destroy me.”

“Well, then, if you wish, I am revenging Cordelia,” said Flavius. His eyes shifted with a curious unease.

“I spared you at Arausio. And what was Cordelia to you, ever?”

“So now you call up the past and whine for your life.”

“Oh, no,” said Eodan softly. “I thank all the high gods that we meet again. For you killed my Hwicca.”

“I did?” cried Flavius. His skin was chalky. “Now the gods would shatter you, did they exist!”

“Your sword struck her down,” said Eodan.

“After you flung her upon it!” shrieked Flavius. “You are her murderer and none but you! I have heard enough of your filth!”

He whirled and almost ran. Phryne, small and solitary at the gate, flinched aside from him. He vanished.

Eodan stood for a while staring after the Roman. It came to him finally, like a voice from elsewhere: So that is why he must hate me. He also loved Hwicca, in his own way. Indeed the soul of man is a forest at night.

He thought coldly, It is well. Now I can be certain that Flavius will never depart my track until one of us has died.

Phryne joined him as he left. As they went mutely from the castle, Tjorr rushed up to them. “There are Romans come!” he bawled. “A dozen Roman soldiers in camp … I’d swear I saw Flavius himself go by…. Phryne! You are here!”

“Have you any further information?” asked the girl sweetly.

They walked toward Eodan’s tent, and she explained to the Alan what had happened. Tjorr gripped his hammer. “By the thunder,” he said, “it was well done of you! But what help did you think you could give us?”

“I did not know,” she answered unsteadily, “nor am I certain yet. A word, perhaps … one more voice to plead, with a flattering abasement impossible to Eodan … or some scheme ― I could not stay away.”

Tjorr looked at the Cimbrian’s unheeding back. “Be not angry with him if he shows you cold thanks,” he said. “There has been a blackness in him of late, and this cannot have lightened it.”

“He has already rewarded me beyond measure,” she said, “by the way he greeted me.”

They entered the tent. Eodan slumped on a heap of skins and wrapped solitude about himself. After some low-voiced talk with Phryne, it occurred to Tjorr to take her out and show her to his and Eodan’s personal guards, grooms and other attendants. “She is not to be insulted. Obey her as you would obey me. Any who behaves otherwise, I’ll break his head. D’you hear?”

When they came back it was approaching sunset. Eodan was sitting before a small pile of silks, linens and ornaments. “A slave brought these for you, Phryne,” he said. “The king commands your presence at his feast.”

“The king!” She stared bewildered. “What would the king with me?”

“Be not afraid,” said Eodan. “He is only cruel to his enemies.”

Tjorr’s eyes glittered. “But this is wonderful!” he cried. “Girl, your fortune may be made! I’ll get a female to help you dress―”

When she had gone he muttered, “She did not appear overly glad of the king’s favor.”

“She is too frightened on our behalf,” said Eodan. “Do you think she has good reason to fear?”

“I do not know ― nor care, if I can only lay hands on Flavius.”

As twilight fell, an escort of torchbearers came to bring them to the castle. Entering the feasting hall, Eodan saw it aglow with lamps. Some attempt to make it worthy of the king was shown by plundered robes strewn on the floor; musicians stood in the murk under the god-pillars and caterwauled. It was no large banquet Mithradates gave this night ― couches for a score of his officers, with Eodan on his right and Tjorr beyond him, Flavius on the left. Cimbrian and Alan wore Persian dress, to defy the plain white tunic of the Roman. The rest clad their Anatolian bodies in Greek style, save that the king had thrown a purple robe over his wide shoulders.

Eodan greeted Mithradates and the nobles as always, and reclined himself stiffly. The king helped himself to fruit from a crystal bowl. “Never before has this place known such an assembly of the great,” he declared with sardonic sententiousness. “And yet our chief guest has not been summoned.”

“Who might that be, Lord of the World?” asked a Pontine.

“It is not our custom that women dine with men,” said Mithradates. “We feel it a corruption of older and manlier ways.” That was a malicious dart at Flavius, thought Eodan. “Yet all you nobles would consider it no insult to guest a queen; and many philosophers assure us that royalty is a matter of the spirit rather than of birth.”

“Though the Great King shows that when spirit and birth unite, royalty comes near godhood,” said an officer with practiced readiness.

“I am therefore pleased to present to you all a veritable Atalanta ― or an Amazon princess ― or even an Athena, wise as well as valiant. Let Phryne of Hellas stand forth!”

She walked from the inner door, urged by a chamberlain. Her garb was dazzling ― long lustrous gown and flowing silken mantle, her hair and throat and arms a barbaric blaze of finery. It came as a wrenching in Eodan that she should look so unhappy. She advanced with downcast eyes and prostrated herself.

“No ― up, up!” boomed Mithradates. “The King would have you share his place.”

Eodan heard a muffled snicker at the table’s end. Blood beat thickly in his temples; what right had some Asiatic to laugh at a Greek? His eyes ranged in search of the man, to deal with him later. By the time he looked back, Phryne had reclined beside Mithradates on the royal couch.

“Know,” said the ruler in his customary Greek, “she spent her last wealth and risked life, freedom and honor to journey here from Sinope that she might plead the case of her comrades. And before then she had shared the perils of flight from Rome and battle at sea ― and she is learned enough to instruct the children of noblemen. Therefore I say a queen’s heart lies behind those fair breasts, and it shall have a queen’s honor. Drink, Phryne!”

He took up his huge silver chalice and gave it to her with his own hands. A low, envious gasp sighed down the length of the table.

Phryne lifted her decorous veil to put the cup at her lips. “Ha, ha!” shouted Mithradates. “See, she is beautiful as well! Let the feast begin!”

It was no banquet at all, compared to the least meal in Sinope ― little more than a roast ox and several kinds of fowl, stuffed with rice and olives. No acrobats or trained women being available, some young Gauls offered a perilous sword dance, and a Phrygian wizard showed such tricks as releasing doves from an empty box. Thus Tjorr enjoyed it better than any he had attended before; his guffaws rang between the guardsmen’s shields until even Flavius had to smile a little. Eodan hardly noticed what passed his eyes and teeth; he was too aware of the Roman.

When the meal was at last over, an expectant silence fell. Mithradates leaned toward Flavius. “Your account of your adventures was ungraciously curt today,” he said smiling. “Now we would hear more fully. You can be no ordinary man, who so endangered the Cimbrian.”

“Your Majesty flatters me,” said Flavius. “I am a most ordinary Roman.”

“Then you flatter your state. Though you belittled it earlier, in contending that one man might be so great a danger to it.”

“Would not Your Majesty alone be the greatest danger to us, were we so unfortunate as to lose your good will?”

“Ha! Let it not be said your race makes poor courtiers. Your compliments are only less polished than the orations in which you describe your own bluffness.” Mithradates drained his chalice and set it down; at once a slave refilled it. His gaze went from Flavius to Eodan and Tjorr, and back to Phryne. “Surely there is a purpose here,” he mused. “Lives are not often so entangled. I must take care to reach a decision that will accord with the will of the Most High.”

Eodan sat up. “My Lord,” he said raggedly, “give weapons to us two, or our bare hands, and watch who heaven favors!”

Mithradates murmured thoughtfully: “I have heard you speak of yourself, Eodan, as a man whom the gods hate.”

“For once he spoke truth, Your Majesty,” said Flavius. “It would be an impiety if ― if I, at least, suffered him to live.”

“Would you meet him in single combat, then?” asked Mithradates.

“It is an uncouth German custom, Your Majesty,” said Flavius. “It is not worthy of a civilized man.”

“You have not answered my question.”

“Well … I would meet him, Great King, if there were no better way.”

Eodan sprang to his feet. “At once!” he yelled.

“Give me my hammer, and I’ll take care of his following!” said Tjorr.

Phryne sat up on the couch. “No!” she gasped.

“Back!” cried Mithradates. His face was flushed with the wine; he drained a second cup in three gulps. “Back, lie down ― I cannot have this. You are both my guests!”

The room grew very quiet, until only the crackling fires and the heavy breathing of men had voice. And outside the wind prowled under the walls.

“This may not be,” said the king finally. “I am a civilized man, too. Let the world be sure I am no barbarian. We shall settle this dispute by reason and principle. Hear me and obey!”

“The King has spoken,” came whispers from around the long room.

“These people sought my roof,” said Mithradates, “and it was granted them to stay. They are under my protection.”

“The hospitality of Your Majesty is known throughout the world,” said Flavius. “But no guest may remain forever. Dismiss them from your presence, Great Lord, and I will wait for them outside your borders.”

“You have not yet given me a reason to send them away,” Mithradates told him.

“Your Majesty,” said Flavius, becoming grave, “I have charged them with revolt, murder, theft and piracy. They are foes of civilization itself, and the Roman state is certain that all civilized men will recognize that fact. Let me tell the King a tale.

“At their request, the Cimbri sent an embassy to Rome while they were still in Gaul. Their terms were refused, of course ― should we allow wild men within our borders? ― but they were shown about the city. Has the King heard what they thought most wonderful? The feed bags on drayhorses! It is truth I tell. They could not take their eyes off; they laughed like children. They were also shown that Grecian statue called the Shepherd, which the King has surely heard is one of our greatest treasures, the image of an old man with all the tragedy and dignity of age upon him. They wondered why anyone had troubled to picture a slave so old and lame as to be worthless!”

Flavius leaned forward, gesturing, his orator’s voice filling the hall with richness and warmth. “Great King, beyond our realms are the barbarians, the howling folk without law or knowledge. We have thrilled at your exploits when you broke the Scythians; there you served Rome, Your Majesty, even as Rome served Pontus on the Raudian plain. Our forefathers were not the same, Great King: yours were Persian shahs and mine were Latin freeholders. But the same mother bore us ― Hellas ― and we honor her alike.” He pointed at Eodan. “There he sits ― the enemy ― who would stable his horses in the Parthenon and kindle a fire with Homer. It is more that I hunt than this one barbarian, O Protector of the Greeks. It is barbarism itself.”

Stillness fell again. Mithradates drained another cup. Eodan crouched, waiting for he knew not what. The king looked at him. “What have you to say to that?” he asked.

Eodan thought dimly, I might play upon his honor, as Flavius did on his pride. I daresay he would allow me to remain in Pontus the rest of my life, did I show him a scar or two won in his service. But I am a Cimbrian.

He said heavily, in his rough Greek: “I ask no more than the rights of a man, My Lord.”

“A barbarian is not a man!” snarled Flavius.

Mithradates shifted the weight on his elbow till he stared down at Phryne. “Well,” he said, “we have one pure Hellene here. What does she think?”

“A Greekling slave!” exclaimed Flavius. “The King jests. He knows a slave is even less a person than a barbarian.”

Phryne sat up and flung at him: “You were a better man’s slave after Arausio. You needed the whole Roman army to make him yours in turn. Must we raise ancestors from Hades? Well, then, where were yours when mine fought at Salamis?”

Mithradates put on a frown. “Mine were in Persian ships,” he said.

“Yet now you are called the protector of the Greeks,” she answered promptly. He grinned. “Great King, who deserved better of you ― the man who freed even one little Greek, or the man whose people laid Corinth waste?”

“I believe you are at feud with all the gods, Eodan,” said Mithradates. “At least one must love you, to send you so fair an advocate.”

He sprawled lionlike, turning his maned head toward Flavius. “These people are still of my household,” he said. “Let no man do them harm. The King has spoken.”

Eodan’s heart lifted, however somberly, as Flavius bent his stiff neck. “I hear and obey, Your Majesty,” he mumbled.

“Well,” said Mithradates, his solemnity leaping to become genial, “remain a while. Accompany us back to Sinope. There is much I would ask of you, and you shall not go home empty-handed. Now fill all flagons and drink with me!”

Phryne stared at Eodan a moment. Then her face sank into her hands.

“But what is the matter?” said the King. “You have won your cause, girl.”

“Forgive me, Lord. That is why I weep.”

“Come, drink of my cup. Those eyes are too beautiful to redden.”

She accepted, shakily. Tjorr plucked at Eodan’s sleeve. “We seem to’ve escaped that snare,” he muttered. “Now we’ll have to devise one for Flavius.”

Eodan glanced across at the Roman, who was shaking in rage but somehow achieving mannered discourse with a Pontine officer. “Hm. Perhaps the King will let me pursue him when he departs … No, fear not, it would be an open act of war. It may be shall have to wait until there is actual war with Rome.” His fingers strained crooked upon the cushions. “Give it be otherwise!”

“Make not too free with such wishes,” cautioned Tjorr. “They are often granted, in ways we mortals did not look for.”

Eodan drank deep, as it was one means of easing the hate and the hurt within himself. He saw Flavius do likewise. Mithradates was in conversation with Phryne; none dared interrupt him. Eodan drifted about, playing some pachisi with one man ― he played badly tonight ― and talking of cavalry tactics with another. Time went.

He heard Mithradates at last, when the deep voice crashed through all the babble around: “Come with me now.”

He swung about, suddenly cold. The king was standing up. Phryne had risen, too; her hands were lifted, and behind her thin veil he saw horror.

“What does My Lord mean?” she said, almost wildly.

Mithradates threw back his head and bellowed laughter. “You cannot be that much a maiden,” he whooped. “They only raise them like that in Asia, for a novelty.”

She sank to her knees, so that his bulk loomed up in shadow and she was only a little heap of gaily colored clothes before him. “Great King, I am not worthy,” she stammered.

“What the skulls and bones is this?” muttered Tjorr at Eodan’s ear. “Her luck has found her and she won’t go with it!”

The Cimbrian’s gaze swept the hall. Most of the court was too drunk to heed the byplay; a few watched with lickerish interest. Flavius stood under a pillar, grinning.

Truly, thought Eodan in the darkness of his head, some god had rewarded Phryne. A royal concubine was rich and honored; it was by no means impossible to become a royal wife; and Mithradates, they said, was man enough to satisfy all his harem. The Cimbrian took a step forward, feeling his skin prickle. He grew aware that his hand felt after a sword he did not have.

Phryne, huddled at the king’s feet, looked sideways. Her look met Eodan’s; it was black with ruin. He glided toward her, hardly knowing what he did. Phryne shook her head at him, and he jerked to a halt. O Bull of the Cimbri, what Power used his limbs tonight?

“You have shown yourself well worthy,” said Mithradates on an impatient note. “Rise and come.”

Perhaps only Eodan saw her lips tighten. She beat her head on the floor. “Lord, forgive your slave. The Moon forbids me.”

“Oh. Oh, indeed.” Mithradates stepped back, a primitive unease on his face. “You should have told me that earlier.”

“I was too bedazzled by My Lord,” she said. Her regained wit bespoke some resolution taken. Eodan wondered with a chill what it had been.

“Well… rise.” Mithradates stooped for her hand and pulled her up as if she were weightless. She stood trembling before him. “A week hence, my tent will be decked with kings’ robes for you,” he said. “In the meantime, you shall have a tent and servants of your own, and ride in the Tetrarch’s litter.”

“Great King,” she whispered ― had Eodan not been close, he would not have heard it―”if your handmaiden should in any way be displeasing to you … should somehow wrong Her Lord … you will not hold it the fault of her friends? They knew nothing of me save that I waited in Sinope to do the King’s will, even as they wish only to do it.”

“Indeed,” said Mithradates roughly. “I am no fool. And have I not raised my shield above them?” He clapped his hands. “Let the chamberlain see to her well-being. Find me a couple of Gallic girls for tonight.”

Phryne went past Eodan. She threw him only the quickest of glances, but never had he seen a look more lonely. The hurried whisper drifted to him: “Do not be troubled on my account. I do what is best. Make your own way in the world.”

He stared after her. The Power drained from him, he felt tired and empty. He heard Tjorr rumble answer to Mithradates: “No, Lord, I’m sure she’s not one of these women who hate the touch of men, even if she has stayed maiden uncommonly late. Haw! On the contrary, Lord, the man she likes will have enough to do!”

“I thought so myself,” said Mithradates. “It is a good omen, that she was kept for me alone.”

It went through Eodan like a sickness ― they dared speak thus of his oath-sister! He would have challenged the king himself if ― if ― An exile ate bitter bread. He had only changed one slavery for another.