Last Act in Palmyra (19 page)

‘None.'

‘Individual number of slaves? Other than for personal use,' he added, with a sneer that said he could see none of us had been manicured or massaged by a sloe-eyed, sleek-skinned bondsman in the recent past.

‘None.'

‘What exactly,' he asked us, with an expression that veered between suspicion and horror, ‘
are
you dealing in?'

‘Entertainment.'

Unable to decide whether we were daft or dangerous, he waved us angrily to a holding post while he consulted with a colleague.

*   *   *

‘Is this delay serious?' whispered Helena.

‘Probably.'

One of the girls from our scratch orchestra laughed. ‘Don't worry. If he wants to cause trouble we'll set Afrania on to him!'

Afrania, who was a creature of wondrous and self-assured beauty, played the flute for us and danced a bit. Those who were not accompanied by fastidious girlfriends found other uses for her. As we waited she was flirting lazily with Philocrates but heard her name and glanced over. She made a gesture whose grossness belied her superbly placid features. ‘He's all yours, Ione! Salting officials calls for an expert. I couldn't compete!'

Her friend Ione turned away dismissively. Attaching herself to us, she gave us a grin (minus two front teeth), then hoicked half a loaf from somewhere amongst her crumpled skirts, ripped it into portions and handed them round.

Ione was a tambourinist, and a startling character. Helena and I tried not to stare, though Musa gazed at her openly. Ione's compact form was swathed in at least two stoles, wound crossways over her bosom. She wore a snake bracelet covering half her left arm and various glass-stoned finger-rings. Triangular earrings, so long they brushed her shoulders, clattered with red and green beads, loops of wire and metallic spacers. She went in for whippy belts, thongy sandals, swoony scarves and clownish face make-up. Her wild crinkly hair flared back from her head in all directions like a radiate diadem; odd sections of the mass of untamed locks were braided into long thin plaits, tied up with wisps of wool. In colour the hair was mainly a tarnished bronze, with matted reddish streaks that were almost like dried blood after a messy fight. There was a positive air to her; I reckoned Ione would win all her fights.

Somewhere beneath these flash trappings lay a small-featured young woman with a sharp wit and a big heart. She was brighter than she pretended. I can handle it, but for most men that's a dangerous girl.

She had noticed Musa gaping. Her grin widened in a way that did finally make him look uncomfortable. ‘Hey you!' Her shout was raucous and brisk. ‘Better not stand too close to the Golden River – and don't go near the double pool! You don't want to end up as a soggy sacrifice in the Festival of Maiuma!'

Whether or not the Petran mountain-god Dushara demands that his priests be chaste, Ione's boldness was too much for ours. Musa rose to his feet (he had been squatting on his heels like a nomad while we were held up by the customs officer). He turned away, looking haughty. I could have told him; it never works.

‘Oh bull's balls, I've offended him!' laughed the tambourinist easily.

‘He's a shy lad.' It was safe for me to smile at her; I had protection. Helena was lolling against me, probably to annoy Philocrates. I tickled her neck, hoping he would spot the propietary gesture. ‘What's Maiuma, Ione?'

‘Gods, don't you know? I thought it was famous.'

‘It's an antique nautical festival,' Helena recited. She always did the heavy reading-up when we were planning foreign trips. ‘Of resonant notoriety,' she added, as if she knew that would catch my interest. ‘Believed to derive from Phoenicia, it involves, amongst other shameless public practices, the ritual immersion of naked women in sacred pools.'

‘Good idea! While we're here, let's try to take in an evening of sacred pond-watching. I like to collect a salacious rite or two to liven up my memoirs –'

‘Shut up, Falco!' I deduced that my senator's daughter was not planning a plunge at the pleasure ground. She enjoyed herself being superior. ‘I imagine there is a great deal of shrieking, plenty of overpriced sour red wine on sale, and everyone goes home afterwards with sand down their tunics and foot fungus.'

‘Falco?' Whether it was Helena's use of my name that roused her, Ione suddenly bolted down the last of her bread. She squinted at me sideways, still with crumbs on her face. ‘You're the new boy, aren't you? Hah!' she exclaimed derisively. ‘Written any good plays lately?'

‘Enough to learn that my job is to provide creative ideas, neat plots, good jokes, provocative thoughts and subtle dialogue, all so that cliché-ridden producers can convert them into trash. Played any good tunes lately?'

‘All I have to do is bash in time for the boys!' I might have known she was a girl who liked innuendo. ‘What sort of plays do you like then, Falco?' It sounded a straight question. She was one of those girls who seem to threaten abuse, then disarm you by taking a sensible interest in your hobbies.

Helena joked: ‘Falco's idea of a good day at the theatre is watching all three Oedipus tragedies, without a break for lunch.'

‘Oh very Greek!' Ione must have been born under the Pons Sublicius; she had the authentic twang of the Tiber. She was a Roman; ‘Greek' was the worst insult she could hand out.

‘Ignore the silly patter from the tall piece in the blue skirt,' I said. ‘Her family all sell lupins on the Esquiline; she only knows how to tell lies.'

‘That so?' Ione gazed at Helena admiringly.

I heard myself admitting, ‘I had a good idea for a play I want to write myself.' We were obviously going to be stuck in customs for a long time. Bored and weary after the forty miles from Philadelphia, I fell into the trap of betraying my dreams: ‘It starts off with a young wastrel meeting the ghost of his father –'

Helena and Ione looked at each other, then chorused frankly: ‘Give up, Falco! It will never sell tickets.'

‘That's not all you do, is it?' young Ione demanded narrowly. After my long career as an informer, I recognised the subtle air of self-importance before she spoke. Some evidence was about to emerge. ‘They say you're sniffing out what happened up on the magic mountain in Petra. I could tell you a few things!'

‘About Heliodorus? I found him dead, you know.' She presumably did know, but openness is inoffensive and fills in time while you gather your wits. ‘I'd like to know who held him under,' I said.

‘Maybe you should ask why they did it?' Ione was like a young girl teasing me on a treasure hunt, openly excited. Not a good idea if she really did know something. Not when most of my suspects were all close by and probably listening.

‘So are you able to tell me that?' I pretended to grin in return, keeping it light.

‘You're not so dumb; you'll get there in the end. I bet I could give you some clues, though.'

I wanted to press for details, but the customs post was far too public. I had to shut her up, for her own sake as much as for my own chances of finding the killer.

‘Are you willing to talk to me sometime, but maybe not here?'

In response to my question she glanced downwards, until her eyes were virtually closed. Painted spikes lengthened the appearance of her eyelashes; her lids were brushed with something that looked like gold dust. Some of the expensive prostitutes who serviced senators at Roman dinner parties would pay thousands for an introduction to Ione's cosmetics mixer. Long practised in buying information, I wondered how many amethystine marbled boxes and little pink glass scent vials I would have to offer to acquire whatever she was touting.

Unable to resist the mystery, I tried suggestion: ‘I'm working on the theory it was a man who hated him for reasons connected with women –'

‘Ha!' Ione barked with laughter. ‘Wrong direction, Falco! Completely wrong! Believe me, the scribe's ducking was purely professional.'

It was too late to ask her more. Tranio and Grumio, who were always hanging about near the orchestra girls, came mooching up like spare waiters at an orgy wanting to offer limp garlands in return for a large tip.

‘Another time,' Ione promised me, winking. She made it sound like an offer of sexual favours. ‘Somewhere quiet when we're on our own, eh Falco?'

I grinned bravely, while Helena Justina assumed the expression of the jealous loser in a one-sided partnership.

Tranio, the taller, wittier clown, gave me a long dumb stare.

XXVI

The customs officer suddenly turned on us as if he could not imagine why we were loitering in his precious space, and shooed us off. Without giving him a chance to change his mind, we shot in through the town gate.

We had come about fifteen years too early. It was not much in the scheme of town planning, but too long for hungry performers who were gnawing on their last pomegranate. The site diagram of the future Gerasa showed an ambitious design with not one but two theatres of extravagant proportions, plus another, smaller auditorium outside the city at the site of the notorious water festival where Helena had forbidden me to go and leer. They needed all these stages – now. Most were still only architectural drawings. We soon discovered that the situation for performers was desperate. At present we were stuck with one very basic arena in the older part of town, over which all comers had to haggle – and there was plenty of competition.

It was turmoil. In this town we were just one small act in a mad circus. Gerasa had such a reputation for riches that it drew buskers from all the parched corners of the East. To be offering a simple play with flute, drum and tambourine accompaniment was nothing. In Gerasa they had every gaggle of scruffy acrobats with torn tunics and only one left boot between them, every bad-tempered fire-eater, every troupe of sardine-dish spinners and turnip jugglers, every one-armed harpist or arthritic stilt-walker. We could pay half a denarius to see the Tallest Man in Alexandria (who must have shrunk in the Nile, for he was barely a foot longer than I was), or a mere copper for a backward-facing goat. In fact for a quadrans or two extra I could have actually
bought
the goat, whose owner told me he was sick of the heat and the slowness of trade and was going home to plant beans.

I had a long conversation with this man, in the course of which I nearly did acquire his goat. So long as he kept me talking, taking on an unconvincing sideshow freak seemed quite a decent business proposition. Gerasa was that kind of town.

Entering by the South Gate had placed us near the existing theatre, but it had the disadvantage of marking us out for hordes of grubby children who mobbed us, trying to sell cheap ribbons and badly made whistles. Looking serious and cute, they offered their wares in silence, but otherwise the noise from the packed streets was unbearable.

‘This is hopeless!' shouted Chremes, as we huddled together to discuss what to do. His disgust with
The Rope
after its failed second outing at Philadelphia had faded so quickly that he was now planning for us to repeat it while the Twins were in practice for their tug of war. However, the indecisiveness Davos had complained about soon reappeared. Almost before we dug the props out, new doubts set in. ‘I'd like you to brush up
The Arbitration,
Falco.' I had read it; I complained wittily that
The Rope
had much more pulling power. Chremes ignored me. Quibbling about the play was only half his problem. ‘We can either travel on straight away, or I'll do what I can to obtain an appearance. If we stay, the bribe to the booker will wipe out most of the ticket money, but if we go on we've lost a week without earning –'

Clearly irritated, Davos weighed in. ‘I vote to see what you can get. Mind you, with all this cheap competition it's going to be like doing The Play We Never Mention on a wet Thursday in Olynthus…'

‘What's the unmentionable play?' asked Helena.

Davos gave her a shirty look, pointed out that by definition he wasn't allowed to mention it, and shrugged off her meek apology.

I tried another ploy for avoiding the manager's turgid idea of a repertoire: ‘Chremes, we need a good draw. I've a brand-new idea you may like to try. A lad about town meets the ghost of his newly dead father, who tells him –'

‘You say the father's dead?' He was already confused and I hadn't even reached the complicated bit.

‘Murdered. That's the point. You see, his ghost catches the hero by the tunic sleeve and reveals who snuffed out his pa –'

‘Impossible! In New Comedy ghosts never speak.' So much for my big idea. Chremes could be firm enough when crushing a genius; having rejected my masterpiece he went wittering on as usual. I lost interest and sat chewing a straw.

Eventually, when even he was tired of havering, Chremes stumped off to see the theatre manager; we sent Davos along to stiffen him. The rest of us moped around looking sick. We were too hot and depressed to do anything until we knew what was happening.

*   *   *

Grumio, who had a provocative streak, spoke up: ‘The play we don't mention is
The Mother-in-Law
by Terence.'

‘You just mentioned it!' Stung by Davos, Helena had become a literalist.

‘I'm not superstitious.'

‘What's wrong with it?'

‘Apart from the off-putting title? Nothing. It's his best play.'

‘Why the dirty reputation then?' I demanded.

‘It was a legendary failure, due to the rival attractions of boxers, tightrope walkers and gladiators.' I knew how Terence must have felt.

We all looked gloomy. Our own situation seemed horribly similar. Our struggling little dramas were unlikely to draw crowds at Gerasa, where the populace had devised their own sophisticatedly ribald festival, the Phoenician Maiuma, to fill any quiet evening. Besides we had already glimpsed the street performers, and knew Gerasa could call on other entertainment that was twice as unusual and three times as noisy as ours, at half the cost.