Envoy Extraordinary

Outside the harbour the warships were disappearing into the heat haze and all the small ships were trying to get back in. Amphitrite was moving more slowly. As the heat built up round her boiler she would make a clumsy advance between her flailing paddles. But the paddles threw up so much water that this movement dampened down the fire again and she would slow to a stop. So she wove a complex and unpredictable pattern over the water in a series of clownish lunges. She was settling low in the water.

The band continued to play.

Crash. Crash. Crash.

March and counter-march, worm between the thinning ranks. The Watch on the Rhine, Entry of the Gladiators, Guardians of the Wall, the Old Cth, excerpts from The Burning of Rome and The Boys We Left Behind Us. The tenements were on fire, their. washing flaming like the rigging of ships. In the warehouses wine burnt brightly but corn only smouldered and stank.

"And now," said the Emperor, "I will address them." He climbed the harbour wall and stood for a moment fanning himself. "Will you turn them about, Colonel?"

The band fell in, the town burned, Amphitrite sank, hissing. The townspeople were outward bound for the open country. It was a scene of godlike and impersonal destruction.

Crash.

"-have watched you with growing pride. You evince in these decadent modern times the spirit that made Rome great. Yours not to reason why, yours but to obey your master's voice."

Mamillius, standing at the foot of the wall, could see the shadows of the Emperor and the Colonel on the quay at his feet. One of them was swaying gently backwards and forwards.

"Under the weight of the sun, the joyous oppression of sixtyfour pounds of brass, bearing on your shoulders the heavy fruits of your labours you have stood and endured because you were ordered to. This is what we expect of our soldiers."

Mamillius began to work his feet heel and toe as he had learned to do as a child. He looked straight before him but moved smoothly and unnoticeably away from the inspection. Soon the women and the sheltering bulk of the tormentum hid him.

"Ships, burned before your eyes. A town was laid waste by pitiless fire. Reason told you to put the flames out. The common and undisciplined dictates of humanity whispered to you that women and children, the aged and the sick required your assistance. But you are soldiers and you had your orders. I congratulate Rome on her children."

Mamillius had vanished. The women were disposed in a graceful group between the parade and the tunnel. The Colonel found he could see nothing but two swords that drifted farther and farther apart. He put his left hand cautiously under his right wrist to steady them.

The Emperor reminded the troops of Roman history.

Romulus and Remus.

Crash.

Manlius, Horatius. The Standard Bearer of the 1Xth.

Crash.

The Emperor traced the expansion of the Empire, the manly virtues which they so admirably exemp

lified. He outlined the history of Greece, its decadence; touched on Egyptian sloth.

Crash. Crash.

Suddenly the Colonel was no longer at his side on the seawall. There came one loud plop from the sea and no more. The Colonel's armour was heavy.

The Emperor talked about battle honours.

Crash.

Out of the mist, perhaps half a mile from the harbour, the imperial barge appeared again. Her oars beat very, very slowly as she made for the entrance.

The crest of the legion.

Crash.

The honour of the legion.

The point of crisis, of no return, had been reached. The movement began at the Emperor's feet where three men fell together. A wave of sick nausea swept over the parade and the ranks went down together into merciful unconsciousness. The end of the quay was piled with a hundred helpless men and a band that could hear nothing over the beating of its own devoted hearts. The Emperor looked down at them compassionately.

"Self-preservation."

Mamillius and the Emperor's guard broke from the tunnel. There were perhaps two dozen of them, men fresh from a kip in the shady garden and agreeable now to a little brisk brutality. Mamillius was flourishing his sword, chanting a bloodcurdling chorus from the Seven Against Thebes and trying to keep step to it. At the same moment the imperial

barge thumped the quay. Posthumus, dirty, dishevelled and raging, scrambled ashore. The Emperor's guard broke formation, ran forward and seized him. He threw two off and leapt at Mamillius with drawn sword, roaring like a bull. Mamillius stopped in his tracks, hands and knees pressed together, chin up. He abandoned Greek for his native tongue.

"Pax--!"

Posthumus swung his sword and the Emperor closed his eyes. He heard a gong-like sound and opened them again. Posthumus was heaving under a mob of guards. Mamillius was staggering in a circle, trying unsuccessfully to push his helmet up off his eyes.

"You rotten cad, Posthumus, you absolute outsider! Now I shall have a headache."

The Emperor got down from the sea wall.

"Who is the man Posthumus brought with him in the barge?"