Wayward Son (24 page)

The night before departure, Cain improvised an Egyptian senet board from a piece of wood in Ahiram’s workshop and taught Tanith how to play over goblets of sweet white wine. To his astonishment, she beat him on the very first try.

“Beginner’s luck,” he murmured with a slight smile.

“Nonsense, my sweet,” she countered, but her liquid brown eyes softened the retort. “You too are an inspiring teacher, that’s all.”

After a few more games, they strode to the large stone terrace of Ahiram’s estate, which enjoyed a panoramic view of the water separating the island city from the mainland. Large flowerpots contained a profusion of lilies, poppies, camelias, and roses, affording the terrace a riot of color in the daytime and a gentle mosaic of scents by night. A gigantic full moon, just gliding from copper into gold, hung in the eastern sky. Cain drew Tanith close.

“Where are we headed together?” he asked her.

“I do not know our destination,” she whispered as his arms encircled her. “It is the journey that matters.”

CHAPTER 29

The Voyage from Tyre to Cyprus, circa 1230 BC

FAVORED BY A STEADY southeast wind, they made the 125-mile journey from Tyre to the large island of Cyprus in only three days. Ahiram’s oarsmen were grateful for the respite, although the captain, ever mindful of discipline, ensured that they were kept occupied with shipboard maintenance tasks.

On the second day out, the first mate was supervising a small detachment of marines on a cargo inspection. Discovering a faulty seal on one of the grain containers, he opened the amphora only to confront the beady eyes of a pair of rats, who scurried across the deck in search of a new hiding place. Cain, looking on, made a mental note to suggest that Ahiram acquire a cat or two in Cyprus. As he well knew, the Egyptians had used these animals for centuries to protect their grain from rodents. In fact, cats were so prized in Egypt that they were mummified, buried lovingly with their owners, and sometimes even worshipped.

Cain thought it strange, but in all his travels as a seafaring trader he had never visited Cyprus. After he admitted this to Tanith, who had been to the island often with her father, she assumed with alacrity the role of storyteller and guide.

“Cyprus is very ancient,” she told him the next day as they sat under an awning at the stern of the ship. “It is said that the island had water wells seven thousand years ago, when villages first sprang up. The Greeks have been colonizing there for several centuries now. We Phoenicians share stories with them about our greatest goddess, Astarte. The Greeks call her
Aphrodite
. Like the Greeks, we believe that she was born on Cyprus.”

Cain smiled. From their exploration of Tyre, he knew that Tanith was a fervent devotee of Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of love, fertility, and war. When his companion shyly lowered her eyes, Cain decided it would be diplomatic to change the subject.

“What were you sketching so busily this morning?” he inquired. One of Tanith’s many accomplishments was her talent as an illustrator. Since she favored marine subjects, she had plenty of inspiration on her voyages. Opening a protective metal tube that lay beside her on deck, she showed Cain a sketch of a smiling bottlenose dolphin. The likeness was uncanny. The unfinished shape was so vibrant that it looked as if it might leap from the papyrus roll onto the deck.

“But we haven’t seen any of these so far on the voyage, have we?”

“No, but all my past sightings of them are engraved on my memory since they are so graceful.”

Cain stretched out lazily on the deck in the warm sunshine.

“Tell me a story,” he murmured.

“There is a famous tale about dolphins told by the Greeks. It’s about a poet and musician named
Arion
. I wonder if you have ever heard it?”

“No, please go on.”

“Well, Arion, who lived once upon a time in Corinth in Greece, decided he would enter a poetry competition in Sicily. So he traveled westward and, lo and behold, won the contest. The Sicilians awarded him rich prizes, and these were loaded onto the ship that would bring him back to Greece. But fate had other plans.”

She was a natural storyteller, Cain thought. A woman like Tanith should have the chance to beguile her children with bedtime tales and lullabies.

“And then what happened?” he urged.

“You know yourself that life at sea can hold many surprises. The greedy sailors plotted to kill Arion and steal his new riches. They gave the musician a choice: either kill himself with his own dagger and be buried on land at their next port of call, or throw himself into the water, where he would surely perish. You know that the Greeks have a horror of remaining unburied.”

Cain thought fleetingly of Pharaoh, reflecting dryly that the monarch had neglected to accord him any choices—not even unpalatable ones.

“And then,” Tanith continued, “how do you think Arion answered them?” Cain furrowed his brow in curiosity and gestured for her to tell him more.

“Even under such pressure, he remained calm. All Arion requested was permission to sing one final song. He took up his lyre in praise of
Apollo
, the god whom the Greeks revere as the patron of poetry and music. The song was so beautiful that a school of dolphins collected around the ship. I can picture them, Cain. Did you know that dolphins sometimes kiss each other on the beak?”

Cain shook his head in disbelief.

“Well, they do. They love both music and humans, which perhaps amounts to the same thing. If Arion saw such a kiss, maybe the sight made him leap into the water. Because, according to the story, that’s exactly what he did after the song’s final notes.”

“So he drowned among the dolphins?” Cain asked.

“Not at all, my dearest. One of the dolphins offered its back to Arion and saved him. His rescuer took him to the southern tip of the Peloponnesus. And then, through the blessings of Apollo, the dolphin was transformed into a constellation. On clear nights, you can see her in the sky.”

“Before the dolphin set him on her back, did she drag him by the hair, by any chance? And by the way, how do you know that the dolphin was a she?” smiled Cain.

Tanith shrugged her shoulders casually, just as the lighthouse on the coast of Cyprus hove into view. “How do you know she wasn’t?”

***

They stayed in Cyprus four days. Cain and Tanith spent time sightseeing, while Ahiram supervised cargo off-loading and purchased a consignment of copper ore, for which Cyprus was famous. Copper, the principal element for the durable alloy bronze, was highly prized for weapons manufacture in Asia Minor and on Crete, the next two stops on the ship’s itinerary. In his negotiations, Ahiram also ensured that the suppliers would provide him with an even larger quantity of ore on the return voyage, for delivery back in Tyre.

By now it was past midsummer. There was no time to waste, since the sailing season in the Mediterranean would end in early October. Ahiram planned to spend the winter months in Greece with his ship in dry dock, then set out the following spring for the westward excursion to Spain and then past Gibraltar into the open ocean, northward to Britain. With luck and hard work, he could figure on making the return journey to homeport in Tyre by the end of the following season. It was an ambitious itinerary, but Phoenician mariners lived ambition as an article of their faith. After all, Phoenicians had circumnavigated Africa before Ahiram was born.

Their next port was Patara in Lycia, located near the mouth of the yellow-hued Xanthus river on the southwest coast of Asia Minor. The water owed its peculiar color to the golden tint of the alluvial soil. Here Ahiram moored his cargo ship in the harbor, transferring the goods for trade to a barge for delivery upriver in the town of Xanthus. During the transfer, Cain admired the speedy, well-coordinated teams of dockworkers as they passed the amphoras from hand to hand to the tune of sea shanties sung in chorus.

It was in Lycia that the travelers first heard of a lengthy war unfolding hundreds of miles to the northwest. The Greeks, it was said, had united under the leadership of a Mycenaean king,
Agamemnon
, to lay siege to the wealthy city of Troy on the coast of the Aegean Sea. Two Lycian chieftains named Glaucus and Sarpedon had allied their troops with the Trojans. Cain and Tanith speculated on the outcome of the struggle. They suspected they would hear far more about the conflict after they arrived in Greece.

“What is said to have been the cause of this war?” Ahiram wanted to know one evening, as they sat together enjoying some of the local wine.

“Some are blaming it on the abduction of a Greek queen by a Trojan prince,” Tanith replied. “The queen, named Helen, was the wife of Agamemnon’s brother. Prince Paris was the son of Priam, the Trojan king.”

“You don’t really believe that story, do you?” Cain asked teasingly.

“Why not? Are women not worth fighting for?” Tanith answered with a smile.

“Some are, and some are not.” Cain answered with measured deliberation, as if he were methodically assessing the issue. “But from what they are saying about the gold and horses of Troy, I am willing to bet this war is being waged for wealth, and not for a woman.”

“Nevertheless,” Tanith rejoined, “you have to admit that the Greek version makes for a good story.”

***

They covered the two hundred nautical miles to Crete in a single week, coasting the large island of Rhodes en route, as well as the smaller islands of the Dodecanese. After mooring the ship at a stone quay in the harbor of Heraklion, Ahiram and Cain once again directed the off-loading of trade goods for the marketplace. After three days, their business was concluded. With large amphorae of Cretan wine placed on deck for delivery in Athens, the crew prepared to set sail. This time, however, the winds were less favorable. The oarsmen would have to pitch in for much of the voyage if the ship were to reach Athens by the autumnal equinox.

The first part of their route lay across the open water of the Sea of Crete. Then they would be able to island-hop in the Cyclades, with Santorini, Sikinos, Sifnos, and Serifos in sight for much of the time. The final stretch would take them west of Kithnos and Kea, thence to
Cape Sounion
, the tip of the Greek mainland. From there it would be an easy stage to
Piraeus
, the port of Athens.

Late one afternoon, they were halfway to Santorini when Baltsar, one of the oarsmen, slumped forward at his bench. Cain hastened to his side, thinking that perhaps the man had succumbed to a hangover from the sailors’ revelry in port. When he questioned Baltsar, however, he discovered that the man had barely been ashore at Heraklion, preferring to remain shipboard.

“Do you feel any unusual aches or pains?” Cain asked.

“Yes, some painful swelling that I’ve never felt before,” Baltsar replied.

“Where is the swelling, man?”

When Baltsar raised his bare arms aloft, Cain felt a wave of dread. The swollen lymph glands in the armpits were a sure sign: the plague. He remembered the rats in the grain amphora shortly after they had set sail from Tyre. They had acquired cats in Cyprus, but the felines had obviously not been able to control the situation. Now the rodents were apparently spreading the disease.

Baltsar pointed also to his neck, where the swellings were painfully apparent. Knowing that there was only a slim chance that the oarsman would recover, Cain patted his shoulder and ordered him to his bunk for a night’s rest. One of the other marines would take his place.

Before the evening meal, Cain sought out Ahiram and confided his suspicions. The captain accepted the news with stoic calm. When Cain pointed out that many more crewmen might already have been infected, Ahiram quietly reassured him. They could stop at any number of the islands, he said, if they needed to replenish the crew. Cain decided not to touch on the possibility that the plague, no respecter of rank, might not limit itself to the crew. Instead, he objected that acquiring fresh recruits would be difficult if word got out that the Phoenicians were piloting a “plague ship.”

Captain Ahiram put his foot down. “We have made a large investment in this voyage,” he said sharply. “We must stick to our schedule. If there are problems with the crew, my young friend, I will handle them.”

Seeing that Ahiram would tolerate no dissent, Cain backed down.

Overnight, two more oarsmen became ill. One could not stop vomiting blood, while the other had developed a rash of lurid red spots on his skin. As rumors circulated among the men, the afflicted crew members were ostracized by their fellows. Cain spoke urgently to Tanith.

“There is no cure,” he said. “We will have to find a way to isolate these men.”

“How is that possible on a ship this size, Cain?”

“We could leave them ashore at Santorini. Ahiram has the resources to pay for their care on the island, or for their burial there.”

Tanith shook her head. “These men have families. We cannot abandon them on a foreign shore.”

“You have to remember the risks of contagion. The plague is the master traveler of trade routes. Within a week, most of the crew could become infected. Who knows if you and I are immune? And your father…”

Tanith broke in. “Panic is a more dangerous enemy than any plague. Let us keep our heads. When we land at Santorini, we will see how things stand.”

***

At Santorini the situation became even more urgent. Now six crewmen lay ill, and Melita, the faithful maidservant who had tended Tanith since childhood, had died. Baltsar’s illness had progressed to the point where his skin was actually decomposing, causing excruciating pain. Ahiram faced a cruel dilemma. On Cain’s advice, he discreetly inquired if the afflicted men could be cared for on the island. But he needed replacement oarsmen. How was he to hire them if the plight of the “plague ship” became public knowledge? Somehow, aided by Cain and Tanith’s persuasive powers and a full purse, the necessary brokering was accomplished. The Phoenicians, now reinforced by half a dozen Greek mariners, weighed anchor a few hours after their arrival.