ROS went to the deck and peered over the bulwark into darkness. There was a half-moon now, but the ship's shadow covered the long-boat and he could only vaguely see the shapes of four men sitting in the stern, one of whom was hugely fat, unquestionably Simon.
Sigurdsen climbed to the deck and grumbled, using Norse oaths:
"Helpless! Weighs like six men! Have to hoist him!"
"Orwic? Conops?"
"Haven't seen them. Fat man rode horseback to the beach. Asked for you. Others are his servants."
Sigurdsen ordered a rope rove through a block on the after yard-arm and a bight put in the raid of it. Tros leaned overside.
"Simon!" he called. "Simon ben Tobias?"
A hoarse voice answered him. Question and answer followed in a mixture of three languages, but Tros could hardly hear what Simon said.
"Ho there!" he exploded. "Put a parceling on that rope? Will you cut good Simon's rump in halves? Now steady. That's a nobleman of Gades, not a sack of corn!"
They walked the grunting weight up to the bulwark rail and swung him inboard, where Tros received him in strong arms.
"Simon, salaam! Salaam aleikum. Marhaba fik!"
"Peace? Blessing? There is none in Gades!" Simon answered, wheezing with fatness and asthma. "Curses on this night air. There is death in it! Tros, Tros, I can not pay the debt I owe you!"
Tros hurried him into the stateroom, a slave, who had clambered up the ship's side, fussily arranging shawls around the old Jew's shoulders. A second slave helped a lean man up over the bulwark, who followed in uninvited.
"Door—door—shut the door!" Simon gasped in Greek, the language he had grown more used to than his native tongue.
The two slaves slammed it and remained outside. Tros helped Simon into a chair beside the table and then turned to face the second man, an old Jew in a cloak and a dirty cloth cap, beneath which long black ringlets curled beside his eyes. He disliked the man at once instinctively.
"Who is this?"
Simon, coughing apoplectically, answered—
"Herod ben Mordecai."
It might have been the cough, but it appeared to Tros he did not like the name.
"A friend?" he asked.
Simon did not answer—only coughed again, his tongue between his teeth.
Herod ben Mordecai smiled, his lower lip protruding as he thrust his head and shoulders forward to peer into Tros' face.
"Let us hope we are three friends!" he said significantly. "Shall I sit on that chair or on this one?"
He began to peer about the cabin, his bright eyes appraising everything. Tros sat down on his own oak chair with his back to the stern of the ship and Simon on his right. Herod ben Mordecai helped himself to the third chair, facing Simon, with his back toward the corner in which Chloe and Horatius Verres crouched in hiding.
"Where are the Lord Orwic and the man I sent with him?" Tros asked, looking straight at Simon.
Simon's face, majestic, heavy-browed and framed in a patriarchal beard, but sallow now from ill-health, wrinkled into a worried frown. Old before his time and physically weak from being too much waited on, he looked too strong-willed to yield to death and yet unable to enjoy the life he clung to. His clothes were wholly oriental, of embroidered camel hair, and there were far too many of them, making him look even fatter than he was. An eastern head-dress, bound on with a jewelled forehead band, concealed his baldness and increased his dignity; and he wore heavily jewelled rings on three of the fingers of each of his fat hands. He had kicked off his sandals when he entered and his fat feet, stockinged in white wool, were tucked up under him and hidden by the bulge of his prodigious stomach.
"I haven't seen them!" he said hoarsely, with a gesture of both hands that disclaimed all knowledge. He looked at Tros, not at the Jew who faced him, and he dropped no hint by word or gesture. Tros could not have told how the information was conveyed, but understood that Herod ben Mordecai was the man who could answer his question.
"Then how did you get my letter?" he asked.
"Herod ben Mordecai brought it," said Simon and drawing short, asthmatic breaths, he folded both hands on his stomach. Plainly there should be no secrets told in Herod's presence. Tros stared at Herod hard, but the old Jew's brilliant eyes met his without a quiver.
"How did you obtain my letter?" he demanded.