Poul Anderson - Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks

Why, it’s my little wharf rat. “Hail, uh, Pum-mairam,” Everard said. The boy bounced up from his squat. “What are you waiting for?”

The slight brown form bowed low, albeit eyes and lips held as much merriment as reverence. “What but the fervently prayed-for hope that I might again be of service to his luminosity?”

Everard stopped and scratched his head. The kid had been almighty quick, had possibly saved his bacon, but—“Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve no further need of help.”

“Oh, sir, you jest. See how I laugh, delighted by your wit! A guide, an introducer, a warder off of rogues and… certain worse persons—surely a lord of your magnanimity will not deny a poor sprig the glory of his presence, the benefit of his wisdom, the never-to-be-forgotten memory in after years of having trotted at his august heels.”

While the words were sycophantic, that was conventional in this society, and the tone was anything but. Pummairam was having fun, Everard saw. Doubtless he was curious, too, as well as eager to earn more. He fairly quivered where he stood looking straight up at the huge man.

Everard made his decision. “You win, you rogue,” he said, and grinned when Pummairam whooped and danced. It wasn’t a bad idea to have such an attendant, anyway. Wasn’t his purpose to get to know the city, rather than merely its sights? “Now tell me what it is you are thinking you can do for me.”

The boy poised, cocked his head, laid finger to chin. “That depends upon what my master’s desire may be. If business, what kind and with whom? If pleasure, likewise. My lord has but to speak.”

“Hm-m.…” Well, why not level with him, to the extent that is allowable? If he proves unsatisfactory, I can always fire him, though I expect he’d cling like a tick. “Then hear me, Pum. I do have weighty matters to handle in Tyre. Yes, they may well concern the suffetes and the king’s self. You saw how a magician tried to stop me. Aye, you aided me against him. That may happen anew, and I not so lucky next time. It’s barred I am from saying more about that. Yet I think you’ll understand my need to learn a great deal, to meet people of many kinds. What would you suggest? A tavern, maybe, and I buying drinks for the house?”

Pum’s quicksilver mood froze to seriousness. He frowned and stared into space for a few heartbeats, before he snapped his fingers and cackled. “Ah, indeed! Well, excellent master, I can recommend no better beginning than a visit to the High Temple of Asherat.”

“Hey?” Startled, Everard flipped through the information planted in his brain. Asherat, whom the Bible would call Astarte, was the consort of Melqart, the patron god of Tyre—Baal-Melek-Qart-Sor… She was a mighty figure in her own right, goddess of fruitfulness in man, beast, and land, a female warrior who had once dared hell itself to recall her lover from the dead, a sea queen of whom Tanith might be simply an avatar… yes, she was Ishtar in Babylon, and she would enter the Grecian world as Aphrodite…

“Why, the vast learning of my lord surely includes the fact that it would be foolish for a visitor, most especially a visitor as important as he, not to pay homage to her, that she may smile upon his enterprise. Truly, if the priests heard of such an omission, they would set themselves against you. That has, indeed, caused difficulties with some of the emissaries from Jerusalem. Also, is it not a good deed to release a lady from bondage and yearning?” Pum leered, winked, and nudged Everard. “Besides being a pleasurable romp.”

The Patrolman remembered. For a moment, he was taken aback. Like most other Semites of this era, the Phoenicians required that every freeborn woman sacrifice her virginity in the fane of the goddess, as a sacred prostitute. Not until a man had paid for her favor might she marry. The custom was not lewd in origin, it traced back to Stone Age fertility rites and fears. To be sure, it also attracted profitable pilgrims and foreign visitors.

“I trust my lord’s folk do not forbid such an act?” the boy inquired anxiously.

“Well… They do not.”

“Good!” Pum took Everard by the elbow and steered him off. “If my lord will allow his servant to accompany him, quite likely I shall recognize someone whom he would find it useful thus to get acquainted with. In all abasement, let me say that I do get around and I do keep eyes and ears open. They are utterly at the service of my master.”

Everard grinned, on one side of his mouth, and strode along. Why shouldn’t he? To be honest with himself, after his sea voyage he felt damnably horny; and it was true, patronizing the holy whorehouse was, in this milieu, not an exploitation but a kindness; and he might even get some lead in his mission…

First I’d better try to find out how reliable my guide is. “Tell me something about yourself, Pum. We may be together for, well, several days if not more.”

They came out on the avenue and threaded their way through jostling, shouting, odorous throngs. “There is little to tell, great lord. The annals of the poor are short and simple.” That coincidence startled Everard too. Then, as Pum talked, he realized that the phrase was false in this case.

Father unknown, presumably one of the sailors and laborers who frequented a certain low-life hostel while Tyre was under construction and had the wherewithal to enjoy its serving wench, Pum was a pup in a litter, raised catch-as-catch-can, a scavenger from the time he could walk and, Everard suspected, a thief, and whatever else might get him the local equivalent of a buck. Nonetheless, early on he had become an acolyte at a dockside temple of the comparatively unimportant god Baal Hammon. (Everard harked back to tumbledown churches in the slums of twentieth-century America.) Its priest had been a learned man once, now gentle and drunken; Pum had garnered considerable vocabulary and other knowledge from him, like a squirrel garnering acorns in a wood, until he died. His more respectable successor kicked the raffish postulant out. Despite that, Pum went on to make a wide circle of acquaintances, which reached into the palace itself. Royal servants came down to the waterfront in search of cheap fun… Still too young to assume any kind of leadership, he was wangling a living however he could. His survival to date was no mean accomplishment.

Yes, Everard thought, I may have lucked out, just a little.

The temples of Melqart and Asherat confronted each other across a busy square near the middle of town. The former was the larger, but the latter was amply impressive. A porch of many columns, with elaborate capitals and gaudy paint, gave on a flagged courtyard wherein stood a great brass basin of water for ritual cleansing. The house rose along the farther side of the enclosure, its squareness relieved by stone facing, marble, granite, jasper. Two pillars flanked the doorway, overtopping the roof and shining. (In Solomon’s Temple, which copied Tyrian design, these would be named Jachin and Boaz.) Within, Everard knew, was a main chamber for worshippers, and beyond it the sanctuary.

Some of the forum crowd had spilled into the court and stood about in little groups. The men among them, he guessed, simply wanted a quiet place to discuss business or whatever. Women outnumbered them-housewives for the most part, often balancing loads on their scarved heads, taking a break from marketing to make a brief devotion and indulge in a bit of gossip. While the attendants of the goddess were male, here females were always welcome.

Stares followed Everard as Pum urged him toward the temple. He began to feel self-conscious, even abashed. A priest sat at a table, in the shade behind the open door. Except for a rainbow-colored robe and a phallic silver pendant, he looked no different from a layman, his hair and beard well-trimmed, his features aquiline and lively.