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?"