While I was mulling this plan, Tingis staged a spring fair in honor of some moon goddess. Pronax and I enjoyed the storytellers, the musicians, the games, and the sports. One fellow asked people to guess which of three walnut shells a chick-pea was under. I discomfited him by guessing right three times running, having learnt that trick from Hippalos.
I also astounded all of Tingis by winning the archery contest. I had learnt to shoot among the Scythians, and the Moors are even worse archers than my fellow Hellenes. I let them put a wreath on my head and made a little speech of thanks, first in Greek and then in bad Moorish, which mightily pleased the Moors. I also had to listen to a longwinded ballad improvised in my honor by the local bard, who twanged his lyre and sang about the tall, gray-bearded stranger who came from far, unknown lands to carry off the prize, as Odysseus had done at the court of King Alkinoos.
Afterwards, when Pronax and I were wandering the grounds, we stopped before a tent with several people lined up in front of it. Over the entrance, a pair of posts upheld a wooden board on which was written, in Greek letters:
SRI HARI
THE GREAT INDIAN YOGIN
SEES ALL KNOWS ALL
SPEAKS WITH GODS AND SPIRITS
CASTS HOROSCOPES
I said: "Let's have a look at this fellow. I'll speak to him in prakrita, and if he's a fake I shall know it."
After a wait, the people in front of me had taken then-turns and departed. The flap of the tent was drawn back, and a voice said: "Come in!"
I entered, with Pronax behind. A small man was holding back the tent flap, but in the sudden gloom I could not tell much about him.
The tent was lit by a pair of huge, black Etruscan candles in candlesticks at the ends of a low, "narrow table placed athwart the tent. At the rear rose a piece of canvas, about four feet wide and seven high, on which was painted the elephant-headed god Ganesha sitting on a flower.
Behind the table and before the painting, on a pile of cushions, Sri Hari sat cross-legged. He was a tall man with a graying red beard and a huge red turban On his head. He spoke:
"Welcome, my beloved son. How can I serve—"
"Hippalos!" I roared, and hurled myself across the low table with my hands clutching for his throat.
My eye caught a metallic flash in the candlelight as Hippalos snatched up a short sword, which lay on the floor in front of him, hidden by the table top. As I threw myself upon him, he whirled the sword up for a slash at my head. The blow would have split my skull like a melon had it not been too hasty to have much force, and had it not been stopped by my wreath.
Then we were grappling on the floor, tearing and kicking. One candle and then the other fell over and went out. I got a hand on the wrist that held his sword arm. When he persisted in trying to stab me, I sank my teeth into his arm until I tasted blood. Then he dazed me with a blow on the side of the head and a kick in the belly and tore himself loose.
I grabbed the sword, which he dropped. As he bolted out the rear of the tent, I plunged after him, tripping and stumbling in the dark. By the time I found the back door to the tent, Hippalos had vanished.
I turned back into the tent, where there was now some light, since the doorkeeper had tied back the flap of the front door. Hippalos' next clients were peering in.
"That's all for today," I said. "A demon invoked by Master Hari got out of control and carried him off. You had better go away, lest the demon return for more victims."
They went, fast. I turned to the doorman and cried: "Gnouros!"
"Master! Is good to see you!" We threw ourselves into each other's arms, kissing and babbling.
"Let's light the candles and close the door," I said, "and you shall tell me everything. Where is Astra?"
"Is dead, master."
"Oh," I said.
"You bleed!"
"Just a little scalp cut."
I sat down on Hippalos' cushions and wept while Gnouros lit the candles and bandaged my head. He and Pronax tidied up the tent, which looked as if a whirlwind had been through it.
A dull gleam from the floor caught my eye. I picked up the little bronze statuette of Ganesha, which I had given to Hippalos. It had served as a model for the painting at the back of the tent. I must have grasped it during our struggle in the dark and broken the chain by which it hung from Hippalos' neck.
When the tears stopped flowing, I asked: "How did she die? Did he kill her?"
"Nay, master. She kill herself."
"Oh?"
He told me the story. Astra had fallen madly in love with Hippalos, for reasons that were plain to me now after old Glaukos' talk on the needs of women. For the first month or two of their elopement, all was love and kisses. They settled in an apartment in Gades.
Then Hippalos' cruel side, of which I had had a glimpse in India, reappeared. He began by tormenting Astra in petty ways, playfully threatening to abandon her, to sell her, or to feed her to the fishes. From this he passed to physical torment, poking, pinching, and finally beating. When she wept and pleaded, he told her: "You're only a burden to me. If you really loved me, you would slay yourself."
So, when he was away on a voyage, she hanged herself.
"By Herakles, why didn't she come back to me?" I asked. "Why didn't you urge her to?"
"I did. I said you- would do no worse than beat her little. But she said she could not face you, because she had done you so big wrong. She was ashamed. And when he acted like he hated her, she had nothing to live for."
I now have cursed little to live for myself, I thought. "Death take him! Why did he quit his job with Eldagon ben-Balatar? How did he come to be here?'
"When we were sailing from Peiraieus to Gades, he bribed harbor masters to write him if they saw you sailing west after him. One day he got letter, and away we went. We fled to Balearic Islands, and then Master Hippalos had idea of dressing up as Indian wise man. So now he is King Bocchus' big wizard. We came down to Tingis for fair, to make money from stupid people."
"I suppose he's bolted back to his royal master's castle, eh?"
Gnouros shrugged. "Maybe so. We go kill him, yes?"
I could have reproached Gnouros for not having avenged his mistress by slaying Hippalos himself, but I forebore. He was a dear little man but no fighter—one of those natural-born slaves of whom Aristoteles wrote. In any case, a slave who attacks a free man, whatever the reason, has little chance of living when the other free men get their hands on him. Perhaps there is something to this idea of some radical philosophers, that slavery is inherently wrong.
BOOK IX — Bocchus the Mauretanian
Next morning, through a drizzle, I climbed the winding road to King Bocchus' castle. Behind me marched Pronax and Gnouros. At the gate, a squad of wild-looking Moorish soldiers, in vermilion-dyed goatskin mantles and spotted catskin turbans, surrounded me. The instant I said who I was, they swarmed all over me, grabbing my arms and legs and taking away my Indian sword. "El" I cried. "How now?'
"You are fain to see the king, yes?" said the most ruffianly-looking of the lot, whom I took to be the duty officer.
"Yes, but—"
"Then you shall see him. His audience starts any time."
"But why this rough treatment?"
"We hear you are a dangerous man, so we take no chances. Come, now."
Hippalos' work, I thought. They hustled me into the courtyard. After a wait, they took me into the throne room. This was tiny compared to that of the Ptolemies, but a larger room than one finds in most Moorish houses, which are mere hovels. A fire crackled on a hearth in the middle of the floor. The smoke was supposed to go out a hole in the roof but did not.