“Be at ease,” he repeated. “Let your mind roam free. On behalf of the king, I seek knowledge of certain men who once visited his father, late in the life of glorious Abibaal.”
Her gaze widened. “Master, I can scarcely have been born.”
“I know. But what of older attendants? You must know everybody on the staff. A few might remain who served in those days. Would you inquire among them?”
She touched brow, lips, bosom, the sign of obedience. “Since my lord wills it.”
He passed on what scant information he had. It disturbed her. “I fear—I fear naught will come of this,” she said. “My lord must have seen how much we make of foreigners. If any were as peculiar as that, the servants would talk about them for the rest of their days.” She smiled wryly. “After all, we’ve no great store of newness, we menials within the palace walls. We chew our gossip over and over again. I think I would have heard about those men, were anybody left who remembered them.”
Everard cursed to himself in several languages. Looks like I’ll have to go back to Usu in person, twenty-odd years ago, and scratch around—regardless of the danger of my machine getting detected by the enemy and alerting him, or me getting killed. “Well,” he said, strained, “ask anyway, will you? If you learn nothing, that won’t be your fault.”
“No,” she breathed, “but it will be my sorrow, kind lord.” She knelt again before she departed.
Everard went to join his acquaintance. He had no real hope of discovering a clue on the mainland today, but the jaunt should work some tension out of him.
The sun was low when they came back to the island. A thin mist lay over the sea, diffusing light, making the high walls of Tyre golden, not altogether real, like an elven castle that might at any moment glimmer away into nothingness. Landing, Everard found that most dwellers had gone home. The soldier, who had a family, bade farewell, and the Patrolman made his way to the palace through streets that, after their daytime bustle, seemed ghostly.
A dark shape stood beside the royal porch, ignored by the sentries. Those climbed to their feet and hefted their spears as Everard approached, prepared to check his identity. Standing at attention had never been thought of. The woman scuttled to intercept him. As she bent the knee, he recognized Sarai.
His heart sprang. “What do you want?” ripped from him.
“Lord, I have been awaiting your return much of this day, for it seemed you were anxious to get whatever word I might bear.”
She must have delegated her regular duties. The street had been hot, hour after hour. “You… have found something?”
“Perhaps, master; perhaps a scrap. Would it were more.”
“Speak, for—for Melqart’s sake!”
“For yours, lord, yours, since you did ask this of your servant.” Sarai drew breath. Her gaze met his, and stayed. Her tone became strong, matter-of-fact:
“As I feared, of those few retainers who are old enough, none had the knowledge you seek. They had not yet entered service, or if they had, they worked elsewhere for King Abibaal than at the palace—on a farm or a summer estate or some such place. At best, a man or two said he might have heard a little talk once; but what he remembered about that was no more than what my lord had already conveyed to me. I despaired, until I thought to seek a shrine of Asherat. I prayed that she be gracious unto you who had served her through me, when for so long no other man would. And lo, she answered. Praises be unto her. I recalled that an under-groom named Jantin-hamu has a father alive, who was formerly on the steward’s staff. I sought Jantin-hamu out, and he brought me to Bomilcar, and, aye, Bomilcar can tell about those strangers.”
“Why, that, that is splendid,” he blurted. “I don’t believe I myself could ever have done what you did. I wouldn’t have known.”
“Now I pray that this may prove to be in truth helpful to my lord,” she said mutedly, “he who was good to an ugly hill-woman. Come, I will guide you.”
In filial piety, Jantin-hamu gave his father a place in the one-room apartment he shared with his wife and a couple of children still dependent on them. A single lamp picked out, through monstrous shadows, the straw pallets, stools, clay jugs, brazier that were about all the furniture. The woman cooked in a kitchen shared with other tenants, then brought the food, here to eat; the air was close and greasy. Everybody else squatted, staring, while Everard interrogated Bomilcar.
The old man was bald except for white remnants of beard, toothless, half deaf, gnarled and crippled by arthritis, eyes turned milky by cataracts. (His chronological age must be about sixty. So much for the back-to-nature crowd in twentieth-century America.) He hunched on a stool, hands weakly clasped around a stick. His mind worked, though—reached forth out of the ruin where it was trapped like a plant reaching for sunlight.
“Aye, aye, they come and stand before me as I speak, as if ’twere yesterday. Could I but remember that well what happened in the real yesterday. Well, nothing did, nothing ever does any more… “Seven, they were, who said they had come on a ship from the Hittite coast. Now young Matinbaal got curious, he did, and went down and asked around, and never found a skipper who’d carried any such passengers. Well, maybe ’twas a ship that went right onward, toward Philistia or Egypt… Sinim they called themselves, and told of faring thousands upon thousands of leagues from the Sunrise Lands, that they might bring home an account of the world to their king. They spoke fair Punic, albeit with an accent like none else I ever heard… Taller than most, well-built; they walked like wildcats, and were as mannerly and, I guessed, as dangerous if aroused. No beards; ’twasn’t that they shaved, their faces were hairless, like women’s. Not eunuchs, however, no, the wenches lent ’em were soon sitting down careful, heh, heh. Their eyes were light, their skins whiter even than a yellow-haired Achaean’s, but their straight locks were raven-black… Ever there was an air of wizardry about them, and I heard tales of eldritch things they’d shown the king. Be that as it may, they did no harm, they were only curious, oh, how curious about every least thing in Usu, and about the plans that were then being drawn up for Tyre. They won the king’s heart; he commanded they see and hear whatever they liked, though it be the deepest secrets of a sanctuary or a merchant house.… I did often wonder, afterward, if this was what provoked the gods against them.”
Judas priest! slashed through Everard. That’s almost got to be my enemies. Yes, them, Exaltationists, Varagan’s gang. “Sinim”—Chinese? A red herring, in case the Patrol stumbled onto their trail? No, I suspect not, I think probably they just used that alias so as to have a readymade story to hand Abibaal and his court. For they didn’t bother to disguise their appearance. As in South America, Varagan must have felt sure his cleverness would be too much for the plodding Patrol. Which it might well have been, except for Sarai.
Not that I’m very far along on the trail yet.
“What became of them?” he demanded…
“Ah, that was a pity, unless it was punishment for something wrong they did, like maybe poking into a Holy of Holies.” Bomilcar clicked his tongue and wagged his head. “After several weeks, they asked leave to go. Twas late in the season, most ships were already put away for the winter, but against advice they offered a rich payment for passage to Cyprus, and got a daring skipper to agree. I went down to the wharf myself to watch them depart, I did. A cold, blustery day, ’twas. I watched that ship dwindle away under the racing clouds till she vanished in the brume, and something made me stop by the temple of Tanith on my way back and put oil in a lamp—not for them, understand, but for all poor mariners, on whom rests the well-being of Tyre.”