John Roberts - The Princess and the Pirates

“They made off with all the good slave material,” Hermes observed. “Raiders usually do,” I affirmed. I saw Ariston looking bemusedly at the ruined temple and called him over.

“Is this how they commonly behave?” I asked him.

He shook his head vehemently. “Never saw anything like it. It makes no sense. You don’t kill sheep you don’t intend to eat. You shear them.”

“Exactly. They took everything of any use to them: food, wool, women, the young to sell, and able-bodied men who showed no fight. Then they went through this unnecessary butchery and burning. It merits some thought.”

A short while later Triton returned and reported no ships lurking about and no survivors visible from offshore. I had everyone, sailors and marines, assembled where I could address them.

“I want this island scoured,” I told them. “Bring me anyone you find alive. These unfortunate people,” I waved an arm, taking in the ruined village and its late inhabitants, “must be given burial and funeral rites, lest their shades follow our ships and bring us bad luck.” Actually, I rather doubted the power of the dead to do mischief to the living, but it is the custom and would make me feel better at any rate. “Get to it!”

There wasn’t enough wood left on the island to make a decent funeral pyre, so the men scraped a shallow grave in the sandy ground and the bodies were placed in it and covered over. Atop the grave a small cairn was built, and with Cleopatra’s assistance I performed a burial rite and poured offerings of flour, wine, and oil over the cairn.

The princess was sickened by the stench, but the sight of all the carnage did not terrify her as I might have expected. I commented upon this.

“The women of my house are schooled in controlling their emotions. Among the descendants of Alexander, great rage is the only emotion that may be displayed on public occasions.” The founder of her line, Ptolemy Soter, had married a sister of Alexander. Her name, not coincidentally, had been Cleopatra.

“Is this what war looks like?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” I said. “But this is very extreme. Sometimes we Romans destroy a town as thoroughly, but only to make an example, as when people who have accepted our terms treacherously repudiate a treaty and attack us.”

“Clearly, that was not the case here.”

“No, and I intend to learn why this was done.” The search party returned; and as I had expected, they brought in survivors: Three women and two men, all of them too stunned to feel terror. They did not look like Greeks but rather like some archaic survival of an earlier age, dark of skin with ink black hair that fell in snakelike locks to the shoulders of the men, to the waists of the women. Their clothes were filthy and ragged, their skins bruised and scratched. They had broad faces and might have been handsome had it not been for the brutish stupefaction of their expressions.

“What happened here?” They said nothing, did not indicate that they so much as heard my words. A marine began to handle them roughly, but I put a stop to it. “No. They’ve suffered enough. Let them rest. Give them food and drink; let them know they will come to no harm. No further harm anyway. I’ll question them later. Ion.”

“Yes, Senator?”

“It’s too late to return to Cyprus. We’d be overtaken by nightfall. We’ll stay here the night and go back at first light.”

Soon cooking fires were burning and sails were turned into tents for the men. The sights of the day had turned everyone somber, and there was little of the usual chatter. The sailors, who had worked the hardest, ate in silence, then turned in and slept like exhausted dogs. The marines, charged with security, sat up longer and conversed in low voices.

Cleopatra had brought her own tent, naturally, complete with all its furnishings. It was ringed with guards who stood at attention, spears erect as if this were a parade ground in Alexandria.

“Come join me, Senator,” she said, and I was nothing loath. Before the tent a fly was stretched and beneath this I sank into a folding chair with a seat and back of leopard skin. Cleopatra reclined luxuriously on a couch that was furnished with plump cushions. From what I could see, the tent was furnished with equal lavishness, and under it all were splendid carpets. I accepted a cup of wine from one of her slave girls. The cup was solid gold; I could tell by the weight.

“To hold all this,” I commented, “Your ship must be bigger on the inside than on the outside.”

She smiled. “It’s all in knowing how to pack.” She turned serious. “So have you come to any conclusions about this?”

“I am entertaining some possibilities. I would like to talk with those survivors before I try any conclusions.”

“Join me in some dinner. Maybe soon they’ll be recovered enough to tell us what happened.”

Cleopatra’s larder was decidedly superior to anything available on a Roman warship. It was not opulent, but everything was of the highest quality, and it included items such as honeyed figs and dates, fine seedcakes, and ducks brought that day from Cyprus and prepared by her amazingly efficient cooks.

“Take some of this over to those poor people,” she ordered a slave. The man loaded a tray with delicacies and disappeared.

“They’ll eat better than they have in their lives,” I said, “but it is a dear-bought meal.”

“How lost they must be,” she said. “Their whole world was destroyed.” When our dinner was finished, it was fully dark. Cleopatra and I rose and went to where the survivors sat at a little fire. Four of them were eating, but from the look in their eyes it was an automatic action. They did not even know what they were doing. Ion and a couple of the marines stood by watching. The shipmaster pointed to the woman who was not eating. She sat a little apart.

“A little while back that one went down to the shore and washed her face and arms. She must be coming out of it.”

With her face scrubbed clean of soot, dirt, and tear streaks, I could see that the woman had vertical lines tattooed from her lower lip to her chin, and a circle within a circle in the center of her forehead.

“Woman, can you understand me?” I asked, as gently as I could. Romans are not trained in gentle speech, but after what she had been through I was unlikely to terrify her. She looked up at me, so at least she was aware of her surroundings. She spoke a few words in a language unlike anything I had ever heard.

“Ion, do you think any of the men might know this language?” I asked. He frowned. “I have sailors from all over, but an earthquake wouldn’t wake them, what with the way you worked them today.”

“I can understand her,” Cleopatra said.

I turned to gape at her. “Princess, your linguistic skills are renowned, but I’ll wager the tongue this woman speaks is unique to this island.”

“It’s spoken all over the world,” she said. “It’s Greek. But it is the most archaic dialect I have ever heard spoken. This tongue was ancient when Homer composed his poems. I think it’s a variant of the Cycladic language, dead for a thousand years. I’ve only seen it written in some very ancient texts, and those copied from earlier writings.”

Cleopatra could always surprise you.

“Ask her to describe what happened.”

Very slowly, considering each word carefully and with many repetitions at the woman’s puzzled expressions, she got the question across. The woman began to speak in a gush of words but Cleopatra, by gestures, managed to slow her down. Finally she turned to me.

“Her name is Chryse. The village has no name and she knows no place but this island. The day before yesterday, five ships appeared offshore in the late morning. The people thought they wanted to trade for fish and wool so they rushed to the shore. But the strangers came ashore armed and began herding them together, tying the women and children with ropes, binding some of the younger men, killing others, and cutting down all the old people. With some others, she ran to the interior. She hid under a rock overhang she knew about. She does not know how these others managed to conceal themselves. She does not know what became of her man and her children.”