Three Wise Cats (8 page)

Citus covered his eyes with his hands for a minute. “May the gods in their mercy spare you once more, Polla.” Just then the door burst open and Gracus staggered through it. He took the cats' basket out of Polla's arms and struggled back on deck once more.

Standing beside Alexos, who still battled with the tiller to keep the ship from keeling over, Gracus tore off the cover of the basket. He held the basket to the skies and shouted, “See, O gods and goddesses! Those whom you have favored for so long are indeed aboard this small ship! Grant them safe passage, I beg you!”

The wind dropped abruptly. Gracus looked into the skies as the rain began pelting down, and he laughed. Alexos pried his numbed hands free from the ship's tiller and leaned against the rail, joining Gracus in relieved laughter. “Rain we can deal with,” Alexos gasped, the water pouring down his face and running into his mouth. “The furred ones are truly in the gods' favor!” The cats began yowling, indignant at growing wetter by the second, and then scrambled out of the basket as Gracus set it on the deck. They dashed for the cabin as Polla pulled the heavy door open, and ran past her feet to the much drier interior.

“That rain was cold,” Kezia fussed, trying to lick her wet fur dry. Shivering, Abishag agreed, while Ira shook himself repeatedly. Citus untied and coiled the ropes he and Polla had used to secure themselves, and then took the blanket in which he slept out on the deck at night.

“Here, little ones,” he said to the unhappy cats. “Use your rough tongues to dry yourselves and then I shall bundle you into this blanket, for I also think you may have saved our lives by being favored of the gods.” He wrapped them well in the heavy wool, and they soon dozed off.
There, you see,
Kezia thought as she fell asleep.
Alexos, poor human, did not even think to warm us again. How could I manage without Citus?

10

T
HE NEXT MORNING brought a much calmer sea. Gracus clambered belowdecks and was saddened to find the dead body of his horse, neck broken, crumpled against the side of its stall.

“I am sorry, faithful horse,” he said to the unmoving form. “Much of the time you were very brave, a good chariot horse. Perhaps the gods needed you.”

Citus appeared beside the centurion. “We must bury him at sea; else the cook may try to boil him for dinner.”

“No, he was too good an animal for that fate,” Gracus agreed. He called to several seamen above deck. “I will pay you for your help, to have my horse buried with Poseidon and Neptune instead of suffering an ignominious end in the stew pot.”

Ira watched the carcass being slung over the side of the ship. “It is surprising he did not kill me, with those great feet of his,” he said to himself. “Ptolemy's One God must have shielded me.”

Asmodeus interrupted Ira's musings while remaining hidden in a coiled rope on deck. “No, you are alive because you are too great a warrior to be vanquished by an ordinary enemy.”

“But he wasn't my enemy,” Ira said. “After all,
you
were the one who frightened him into rearing. And you
are
my enemy!” He pounced on the pile of rope, but Asmodeus evaded him and ran for the opposite side of the ship. He dived down a rat hole and waited for the black cat to begin a vigil at the entrance. “You have to come out sometime,” Ira told the invisible rat and settled himself to wait.

Asmodeus smirked to himself. He enjoyed placing doubts and fears into their minds, causing the cats to worry.

“What an honor—to be pounced upon and devoured by the greatest warrior this poor ship has yet seen!” he began.

Ira sighed. “Don't try compliments, Asmodeus. They won't change my mind about catching you.”

“No, no, no—what I tell you are not mere compliments, but facts. You are in truth a great warrior; you marched and learned with the other soldiers strategy and planning—or perhaps not. Even with Ptolemy, you never did pay close attention to your lessons, did you?”

“I did, too!” Ira protested. “It's just that I had other important things to do. So of course the girls listened to Ptolemy more. I had to learn to pounce and to kill far more readily than the two females. They lack my instinct for the death blow,” he concluded, a bit smugly.

“And you do indeed possess that, my young cat,” Asmodeus agreed, his voice silken. “Thanks to you, I no longer have any companions with whom to pass a quiet hour or even to share a bit of bread—”

“A bit of bread!” Ira laughed. “You and your disgusting companions were destroying several bushels of grain a day, with your droppings fouling what you did not stuff into your greedy faces.”

“Well, they are all gone now,” Asmodeus snarled. He drew a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “I alone and a few frightened or injured mice are all that remain.”

“So what do you want?”

“A truce?”

“Why should I grant you a truce?”

“Because when we arrive in Tyre, I shall leave the ship and live ashore the rest of my days,” Asmodeus promised.

“You aren't going to return to our tower outside of Lepcis Magna?”

“No, and neither are you.”

“What do you mean?” Ira asked, startled.

“You cannot convince me that a warrior of your stature, of your hunting skills, would meekly consent to live out the rest of his days in a dreary tower, where nothing exciting ever happens. Unless you count the odd butterfly or beetle that sometimes becomes bewildered and lost within its walls? Or perhaps,” the rat added nastily, “you want to listen to Ptolemy maunder on and on about prophecies and religions and parchment scrolls until he draws his last breath. You will be too aged yourself by then to set forth once more to see the world.”

Unwillingly, Ira thought back to the weeks and weeks of lessons he'd endured, listening to Ptolemy's patient instructions.
Those weeks were boring
.
I'm glad Abishag listened so carefully; sometimes I got to doze in the sun instead of having to pay attention every second.

He shifted his position beside the rat hole. “A soldier must do what is right,” he replied.

“Is it right for the old cat to expect you to give up everything you have fought for during this long journey and submit to his learned knowledge once you return? You cannot convince me that you do not long to stay with Gracus, because you and he are of the same mind,” Asmodeus said craftily. “Two warriors, marching off to foreign lands and tremendous battles. Think of it! Think of the cheers that would greet you as you returned triumphant from your latest campaign, standing regally in Gracus's chariot and being admired by the crowd.”

The picture the clever rat painted became very clear to Ira's imagination. He envisioned himself and Gracus attired in new armor. The fact that he could not have borne the weight of the metal armor, even had it been made so tiny, never occurred to him. He basked in the imaginary adulation and reveled in his status as an acclaimed warrior. Bowls of heavy cream and plump doves would be his breakfast daily.

“And you would forgo all of this, for a corner in a musty tower, glad to catch a handful of warmth from a stingy fire in the dead of winter.”

Ira shivered, completely caught up in the rat's machinations.
I cannot return to that! I must stay with Gracus—he understands what a soldier needs. I cannot return to the tower. The girls will have to go without me.

He turned and left the rat hole, thinking deeply as he retraced his steps to Gracus's cabin. He didn't hear Asmodeus snicker as he watched the young cat leave.

Later that same morning, Kezia was having a fruitless search for a mouse. Although she wasn't really hungry, she was bored and wanted something more challenging than her fifth bath of the day. She was down in the hold, searching and sniffing, when she heard Alexos's step upon the ship's ladder.
Well, at least he will talk to me and pet me and tell me how pretty I am,
the little tabby thought and ran out to greet the captain.

He did see her, even in the poor light and with his limited vision. “Good morning, little lady!” he called across the sacks of grain. “I am but counting my stores—as you yourself are, perhaps?” And he chuckled, rightly assuming she was mouse hunting again. He started to move one of the grain sacks when he realized the leather thong at the mouth of it was untied. He climbed up on top of the neighboring stack of grain sacks so he could reach and retie the thong—and suddenly screamed horribly. A snake had stuck its head out of the mouth of the untied sack and was flicking its tongue at Alexos.

“I am a lady cat, but I also know how to kill snakes!” Kezia cried, and it seemed as if she flew to the stack of grain sacks. She caught the snake before it could crawl away, seizing it behind its head and holding it firmly. The snake thrashed and fought, striking her several times with loops of its hard body. It flailed itself free of the grain sack and kept thrashing.

Alexos, pale and sweating, looked around frantically for any sort of weapon. “I must not let the snake kill her!” He spotted a trident and grabbed it up. He slashed wildly at the snake, not even hearing the running feet of his men in his panic.

Kezia nimbly sidestepped the trident hitting dangerously close to her and kept her hold on the snake. Finally, after being hacked many times by the tines and with Kezia's sharp teeth penetrating its spinal cord, the snake died, and the cat dropped it at Alexos's feet. He turned a ghastly shade of green but managed to stammer out, “Th-thank you, most honored lady! You have saved me from a terrible death!”

Some of Alexos's seamen ran up just then, panting, and the captain began relating the wondrous tale of the cat's courage to his circle of listeners, who looked in awe at the tabby. Kezia purred and sat down to wash herself, for she felt she stank badly of snake. As she washed her right ear, it stung, and when she looked at her paw, it was covered in blood. Just then Alexos turned and saw her paw.

“The snake has bitten her!” he bellowed and rushed to her. Anxiously, he examined Kezia, searching for the marks of fangs. “Praise Poseidon! The snake has not harmed her—but I myself must have hurt her with the trident.” He knelt in front of her as she sat on some sacks of grain. “Forgive me, my little one. My witless attempts to help you kill the snake have injured you. My sorrow is deep.” Tears stood in his eye as he carefully washed her torn ear with wine and then tied a soft bit of cloth about her head, to hold the ear close so it could heal.

After Alexos's ministrations, Kezia crept away to the cats' basket in Gracus's quarters, where the other two found her after searching for an hour.

“Now
you
are acclaimed a warrior,” Ira said, dashing up to the basket and speaking half enviously and half in jest.