John Masters (5 page)

The man Pendril stood in the prow of the galley, steadying himself with one hand on the buttocks of the carved figurehead. He was square-built and strong, as though rough-hewn from a hard reddish wood, with curly red hair and deep blue eyes. He did not seem to note the heave and shudder of the vessel under his feet, nor to feel the spray dashing regularly onto his cheeks, nor to hear the rhythmic grunt of the rowmaster's chant to the rowers. The gray mountain in the sea loomed close now. For the past hour its cliffs had cut off the westerly sun. Pendril stared at it somberly, like a man watching a woman whom he has never possessed but dreams of above all. He knew every cleft and crag of those cliffs, every stone and bush and flower. The wind began to slacken, cut off by the sea mountain. The man stared on.

The girl Tamar stood in the stem, holding with one hand to the gunwale beside her. The wind molded her cotton dress against her thighs and breasts and whipped tendrils of her black hair about her ears. Beside her, two bare-chested sailors held the steering oar, their feet braced strongly against slats set in the deck.

The girl's husband, Daniel, came up from their cabin and stretched and yawned. He looked over the side and called, "Pendril, it is calmer. We can round the point after all."

The man in the bow did not seem to hear, and Daniel repeated his remark louder. Pendril turned then and came aft, rolling easily with the motion of the galley. "It is only calm here because we are in the lee of Alube," he said. He spoke a strangely accented Phoenician which Tamar found harsh and unpleasing.

"I disagree," Daniel said. "It is calm. Keep them rowing."

Tamar nodded approvingly. The new boatswain was a rude man, experienced, of course, but uneducated. Daniel was too gentle with him. Such men as he only understood force.

The boatswain said, "Look, you can see the waves off the point from here. That's a dangerous race in this wind." Daniel stamped his foot. "I am the owner and the captain! We will not anchor. We will round the point and go into Carteia!"

Tamar caught the boatswain's blue eyes glancing at her under raised eyebrows and scowled fiercely at him.

Pendril said, "You are the captain, but you are not the god Melkart. The rowers are exhausted. The race prevents the oars' getting a good bite. We will not get around the point, however long we try."

"Go farther out into the strait," Daniel said. "There is no race there."

"No," Pendril answered. "But the current against us is over a knot faster than we can row."

"Oh, anchor then," Daniel cried and strode up to the bow and stood there with arms folded.

Pendril shouted below, "Stand by to anchor." The rowmaster stuck his head through the hatch, where he could hear the deck commands and bob down to give the necessary orders to the rowers below. One sailor stayed at the steering oar; the other five went to the bows, thrusting Daniel out of the way with little ceremony. He came aft, and Tamar went to him.

"The gods have turned the wind against us," he said gloomily.

"Or perhaps it is Pendril who makes us go so slowly. I wish you had not hired him."

Her husband shrugged. She knew he had had no choice, for the real boatswain had deserted at the last port, Sexi. It had been a stroke of good fortune to find a qualified man ready and willing to take the long journey to the Tin Islands, and without one they could not go, for Daniel had never sailed beyond Gadir.

"Come," she said. "The cook is making a savory smell." He brightened and rubbed his hands together gleefully, for his moods were never deep or long held but like a child's.

She slept badly that night, partly because the motion of the ship was different from when it lay in harbor, partly because dreams disturbed her. She had hoped, after supper, that Daniel would take her as a man had a right to take his wife, though he so seldom did. She had yearned toward him, caressed him while they ate, pressed her body against him when they lay down, sent him messages of love and desire from her eyes. But he did not respond, only slept.

Sleep did not come to her for two hours, and when it did, images of lust filled it. Unknown men held her, and she welcomed them one after another. Daniel shook her at last where she lay beside him on the wolf skins and said she would awaken the whole ship, she was making so much noise. But though she tried to soothe the trembling void of her womanhood, she could not sleep again.

In the morning the wind still blew strong from the west, and broken white water extended far out from the point of the Rock. She was pacing the deck by dawn, tired but unable to rest, biting her nails, patting her hair, looking at the sailors asleep by the mast. Daniel came up, followed by Pendril.

"This wind will hold all day," Pendril said.

"We shall stay here till tomorrow then," Daniel said at once, as though to forestall the boatswain's suggesting the same thing.

"Aye, captain," Pendril said. "Then I shall go ashore to Carteia. It is Midsummer's Eve, our most important feast day."

"Very well," Daniel said.

"I shall be back before dawn tomorrow. It would be safe to let half the sailors and rowers ashore, too. They will..."

"No," Daniel snapped and turned his back.

"I want to go, too," Tamar said suddenly, astonished to hear herself saying the words. "Take me to Carteia, Daniel. There must be an inn where we can stay."

"But, Tamar, we will be there tomorrow... her husband said.

"I want to go today, now," she cried. "I am tired of being caged in this ship. I want to see the feast!"

Daniel said, "I am tired, wife. In truth, I do not feel well.... Would you go with Pendril, if you must go? She can stay with your family, I suppose?"

Pendril said, "I have no family. There is the inn." He launched the little horse-prowed dinghy over the side. Tamar hesitated, frowning. Pendril and a sailor dropped lightly into the dinghy. He called up roughly, "If you are coming, come."

"Wait," she commanded and rushed to her cabin. Quickly she tidied her hair, put it up with her silver pins and comb, donned her best robe, fastened the neck with a little bronze scarab brooch, and made up her eyes with antimony.

Pendril waited, tossing alongside in the little
hippos.
She was a spoiled Judean brat but pretty in a wild way and brave. Not many rich women would be going to the Tin Islands when they might be entertaining lovers in comfort at home.

She came on deck, and his eyes widened. She looked like an Egyptian whore now ... albeit a beautiful one. That husband of hers was a pleasant fellow but not built for the sea: or for women perhaps.

A sailor helped her into the
hippos.
"Careful now,"

Pendril growled, "Kneel. I cannot save you if you go over."

"There would be no need," she snapped. "
I
can swim."

"Enjoy yourself," Daniel called from the deck, as the sailor started paddling the
hippos
toward the cliffs. In a few moments they reached the small waves in the shallows. Pendril swung himself overboard and held out his arms. She ignored him, lifted her robe above her knees, stepped over the side, and waded ashore. The sailor paddled back to the
Kedesha.

Ahead, a great cave opened at the foot of the cliff, a steep slope of sand and earth leading up into it. Pendril started up into the cave, and Tamar followed, wondering. Deep in under the overhang of the arch she found Pendril on his knees, digging with his hands in the powdery earth. He did not turn round or speak.

"What are you looking for?" she asked at last.

He did not answer, and she began to turn the dark powdery earth over with her foot, not knowing what she might find. Sailors had been sheltering in this cave for a long time.

Pendril's hands touched something hard; he scraped away some more soil and pulled out a stoppered jar. "Strong wine," he said briefly, broke the seal, and poured some of the colorless liquor down his throat. She was gazing at him, and she seemed lonely and unsure for the first time. He handed her the jar. "Take some."

She drank cautiously, gasped, coughed and spluttered, and gave him back the jar. Smiling, he reburied it. He had hidden his first jar here eighteen years ago, when he was twelve, and had kept one buried ever since.

He led back down the sand slope. The blue and yellow
Kedesha
rocked gently on the swell two hundred feet offshore. Tamar stopped and gazed at the ship. Everyone on board seemed to have gone back to sleep. Pendril said, "Are you coming, or are you going to wait here, hoping that your husband will come after all? Because you will wait a long time."

"Hold your tongue," she snapped. "Lead me to Carteia."

"This way, this way," he said with burlesque obsequiousness and led on fast, deliberately forcing the pace; but he heard her sandals keeping close behind, and there was no sound of heavy breathing. After a steep climb he stepped out onto the rough ground above the flat point. The west wind blew hard, shaking the grass and wild flowers about his feet. The sea was gray green, shimmering under wind-driven spume. Over there the African pillar towered out of a glittering sea haze about its feet. It was here that he had lain with the girl Menesha and, her hair spread in the flowers, asked her to be his wife; and she had laughed up in his face, saying, "Be a sailor's wife? You are mad, Pendril!"

A redlegged partridge ran out from a bush ahead. Tamar cried out behind him, and he turned to see her pick up a stone. He struck down her arm as she threw. The bird flew away with a hard clatter of wings.

"Why did you do that?" she said. "Partridges are good eating."

"Because ... he began and stopped. Why should he explain to her that this kind of redlegged partridge was sacred to him? Here on his Rock was the only place on the northern side of the sea that he had ever seen one. Other birds he loved to hunt with bow and arrow and sling, but this one, never.

"It is of no importance," she said, tossing her head. "Lead on." He was a boorish half-Iberian, half-Phoenician sailor, wholly beneath her notice.

"You throw well for a woman," he said. "And swim, you say? Perhaps you should have been born a man."

She sniffed angrily. They came to a patch of forest, and Pendril said, "Up there is a great cave and a shrine to Hercules."

"What does it look like?" she asked, interested in spite of herself.

"I have never entered," he said.

"What are you afraid of?" she asked. "There is but one God, Jehovah.... Shall I escort you in?" she mocked.

"No, no," he said sullenly. "The gods of this Rock are not to be blasphemed." He led down past the forest and around the skirt of the mountain where a path ran a hundred feet above the sea. Looking past his broad back she saw the sandy curve of a beach and, a mile away, white houses and the mouth of a river, heavy trees on each bank. She ran into him, for he had stopped without warning.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said and strode on.

"It must be something," she snapped. "What were you staring at?"

"The land," he said shortly. "Here, this corner of Alube, where the sand meets the Rock. On this slope, looking west across the bay at the mountains there, where the sun sets. This is where I want to build my house. I have wanted to all my life."

"Why do you not build it, then?"

"The Rock belongs to Astarte, and her priestess will not permit me."

She did not laugh, for he spoke seriously; and she knew, in her own religion, that YHWH kept a close grip on his own.

They came to the town, and Pendril said, "This is Carteia. A small place, but some of us would not trade it for Carthage itself.... Here is the inn. It is clean, and the host is not a robber."

"Where are you going?" she asked in sudden fear of being left alone in this strange place under the frowning Rock.

"To attend to my business," he said. "I will return here before dusk, when the rites begin."

He turned his back and strode away up the river front. The host of the inn came out, bowing courteously, and showed Tamar to a small room. Soon she went out to explore the town. It was a place of many smells, of fresh fish and oysters rotting in the dye works, of cooking spices, oil, garlic, seaweed, and the sea. The river slid by, blue-green and fresh, and she saw many fish in it. The air was clean, and birds sang in the woods at the edge of the river. Fishing boats big and small passed in from the sea, and the Rock stood as a sentinel over their comings and goings. Along the docks she saw great blue-backed tunny strung on hooks and men cutting them up and women rubbing salt into the flesh. One woman wore a silver brooch with the open Torah represented upon it, so Tamar asked, "Are you from Judea?"

The woman rested, her hands on her hips. "Yes. From Jerusalem."

"I, too," she said eagerly. "My father was a priest. The Babylonians killed him and all the family except an uncle, who took me to Carthage."

"You were lucky," the woman said. "You must have been only a child. You had nothing to lose. Some of us ... everything."

"There are more here?"

"About twenty," the woman said. "We all work today because most of the heathen do not, since this is their great feast of the year.... Did I not see you walking into the town with Pendril?" She nodded, and the woman continued. "Are you his woman?"

"God forbid," she snapped.

The woman looked at her strangely. "There are some who would agree with you," she said, "but most would not. Only, he will have nothing to do with any except the temple girls. We thought a foreign woman had caught him at last." She laughed pleasantly.

"No," Tamar said. The woman returned to her work with a nod, and Tamar walked on. Carteia was the boatswain's home, of course. It was strange to find a place where he was of more account than she or Daniel....

Pendril, meanwhile, was seated on a low stool before the high priestess of Astarte in her private chamber at the back of the temple. The light filtered in through gauzy curtains of purple and white, seeming to cast stripes of those colors upon the woman's high-boned, high-nostriled face. She was tall and slender. The lines under her huge eyes and the fine wrinkles in her brown skin showed her age—she was forty. She had permitted Pendril to make love to her since his fourteenth birthday.