“So’s Hiram, I gather—and now his rule is threatened likewise, by whatever devil is loose in the world.”
When Everard emerged, sure enough, there was Pum waiting. The boy skipped to meet him.
“Where would my glorious master go today?” he caroled. “Let his servant conduct him whithersoever he wills. Perhaps to visit Conor the amber factor?”
“Huh?” In slight shock, the Patrolman goggled at the native. “What makes you think I’ve aught to do with… any such person?”
Pum returned a look whose deference failed to mask its shrewdness. “Did not my lord declare this was his intention, while aboard Mago’s ship?”
“How do you know that?” Everard barked.
“Why, I sought out men of the crew, engaged them in talk, lured forth their memories. Not that your humble servant would pry into that which he should not hear. If I have transgressed, I abase myself and beg forgiveness. My aim was merely to learn more of my master’s plans in order that I might think how best to assist them.” Pum beamed in undiminished cockiness.
“Oh. I see.” Everard tugged his mustache and peered around. Nobody else was in earshot. “Well, then, know that that was a pretense. My true business is different.” As you must have guessed already, from the fact of my going straight to Zakarbaal and lodging with him, he added silently. This was far from the first time that experience reminded him that people in any given era could be intrinsically as sharp as anybody futureward of them.
“Ah, indeed! Business of the greatest moment, assuredly. The lips of my master’s servant are sealed.”
“Understand that my aims are in no way hostile. Sidon is friendly to Tyre. Let’s say I’m involved in an effort to organize a large joint venture.”
“To increase trade with my master’s people? Ah, but then you do want to visit your countryman Conor, no?”
“I do not!” Everard realized he had shouted. He curbed his temper. “Conor is not my countryman, not in the way that Mago is yours. My folk have no single country. Aye, most likely Conor and I would not be understanding each other’s languages.”
That was more than likely. Everard had too much intellectual baggage to carry as was, information about Phoenicia, to pile on a heap about the Celts. The electronic educator had simply taught him enough to pass for one among outsiders who didn’t know them intimately—he hoped.
“What I’ve in mind,” he said, “is just to stroll about the city today, whilst Zakarbaal seeks to get me an audience with the king.” He smiled. “Sure, and for this I could well put myself in your hands, lad.”
Pum’s laughter pealed. He clapped his palms together. “Ah, my lord is wise! Come evening, let him deem whether or not he was led to pleasure and, yes, knowledge such as he seeks, and perhaps he… will in his magnanimity see fit to bestow largesse on his guide.”
Everard grinned. “Give me the grand tour, then.”
Pum assumed shyness. “May we first seek the Street of the Tailors? Yesterday I took it upon myself to order new garb that should be ready now. The cost will bear hard on a poor youth, despite the munificence his master has already shown, for I must pay for speed as well as fine material. Yet it is not fitting that a great lord’s attendant should go in rags like these.”
Everard groaned, though he didn’t really mind. “I catch your drift. Och, how I do! ’Tis unsuited to my dignity that you buy your own garments. Well, let’s go, and ’tis I will be standing you your coat of many colors.”
Hiram did not quite resemble his average subject. He was taller, lighter-complexioned, hair and beard reddish, eyes gray, nose straight. His appearance recalled the Sea Peoples—that buccaneer horde of displaced Cretans and European barbarians, some of them from the far North, who raided Egypt a couple of centuries before, and eventually became the principal ancestors of the Philistines. A lesser number, ending up in Lebanon and Syria, interbred with certain Bedouin types who were themselves getting interested in nautical things. From that cross arose the Phoenicians. The invader blood still showed in their aristocrats.
Solomon’s palace, of which the Bible was to boast, would when finished be a cut-rate imitation of the house in which Hiram already dwelt. The king himself, though, usually went simply clad, in a white linen kaftan with purple trim, slippers of fine leather, a gold headband and a massive ruby ring to signify royalty. His manner, likewise, was direct and unaffected. Middle-aged, he looked younger, and his vigor remained unabated.
He and Everard sat in a room broad, gracious, and airy, that opened on a cloister garden and fish pond. The carpet was of straw, but dyed in fine patterns. Frescos on the plaster walls had been done by an artist imported from Babylonia, depicting arbors, flowers, and winged chimeras. A low table between the men was of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It held unwatered wine in glass cups, and dishes of fruit, bread, cheese, sweets. A pretty girl in a diaphanous gown knelt nearby and strummed a lyre. Two manservants awaited orders in the background.
“You are being right mysterious, Eborix,” murmured Hiram.
“Sure, and ’tis not my wish to withhold aught from your highness,” Everard replied carefully. A word of command could bring in guardsmen to kill him. No, that was unlikely; a guest was sacred. But if he offended the king, his whole mission was compromised. “Aye, vague I am about certain things, but only because my knowledge of them is slight. Nor would I risk laying baseless charges against anyone, should my information prove in error.”
Hiram bridged his fingers and frowned. “Still, you claim to bear word of danger-word which contradicts what you have said elsewhere. You are scarcely the bluff warrior you pass yourself off as.”
Everard constructed a smile. “My lord in his wisdom knows well that an unlettered tribesman is not necessarily a fool. To him I admit having, ah, earlier shaded the truth a wee bit. ’Twas because I had to, even as any Tyrian tradesman does in the normal course of business. Is that not so?”
Hiram laughed and relaxed. “Say on. If you are a rogue, you are at least an interesting one.”
Patrol psychologists had invested considerable thought in Everard’s yarn. There was no way for it to be immediately convincing, nor was that desirable; the king should not be stampeded into actions that might change known history. Yet the tale must be sufficiently plausible that he would cooperate in the investigation which was Everard’s real purpose.
“Know, then, O lord, that my father was a chieftain in a mountain land far over the waves—” the Hallstatt region” of Austria.
Eborix went on to relate how various Celts who had been among the Sea Peoples fled back there after the shattering defeat which Rameses III inflicted on those quasi-vikings in 1149 B.C. Their descendants had maintained tenuous connection, mostly along the amber route, with the descendants of kinsmen who settled in Canaan by leave of victorious Pharaoh. Old ambitions were unforgotten; Celts have always had a long racial memory. Talk went on about reviving the great Mediterranean push. That dream strengthened as wave after wave of barbarians came down into Greece, over the wreckage of Mycenaean civilization, and chaos spread through the Adriatic and far into Anatolia.
Eborix knew of spies who had also served as emissaries to the kings of the Philistine city-states. Tyre’s amicability toward the Jews did not exactly endear it to the Philistines; and of course the riches of Phoenicia provided ever more temptation. Schemes developed fitfully, slowly, over a period of generations. Eborix himself was not sure how far along arrangements might be, to bring south an army of Celtic adventurers.
To Hiram he admitted frankly that he would have considered joining such a troop, his hand-fast men at his back. However, a feud between clans had ended in the overthrow and slaying of his father. Eborix had barely escaped alive. Wanting revenge as much as he wanted to mend his fortunes, he made the trek hither. A Tyre grateful for his warning might, if nothing else, give him the means to hire soldiers of his own and bring them home to reinstate him.