The Count of Burdigala was amove; he seized Philip by the throat and choked him until his bulging eyes saw the stark face of Death. Then Guntram flung him down among the papers and ink to get his breath.

“D’you think I’m a fool?” Guntram roared. “Or that my spies waste their time? From Narbo is it, with tolls and levies each mile of the way? Pah! And you,” he snarled, rounding on Desiderius. “Traitor! I’ll not bore ye with all I know. It was full eighty swords of Spanish forging, the best there is this side of Damascus, that found their way into Hengist’s grasping hands-not so? Not so? And paid for in gold from a looted church! Ahhh! And you, Philip of Syria. Captain Ticilo may not be your man for speaking publicly of, but I know what he did in Massilia last year, and what Vandal galley gave him escort the length of the Spanish coast. And raided Lusitania on its way home, to such profit that it must have had advance information to guide him. What last I heard, Lusitania is part of our Gothic realms as much as this city-which means, Syrian, that these dealings were no common sharp practice or thieving. They rank as treason!” He looked at Proculus. “Be that not so, sir?”

“Beyond doubt, if there is proof,” the municipal prefect said, with stiffness. “It would merit the severest death the law can award.”

Philip had not risen from his knees; Desiderius now joined him there.

Both merchants wailed for mercy. They had been moved, they avowed nigh fearfully, to do what they did out of desperation for the losses these same pirates had inflicted upon them. If the menace could be abated, the seas cleared or rendered so that a merchantman had so much as even odds, would be their dearest wish come true. Let the Count of Burdigala but state his desires. And so forth.