Last Act in Palmyra (16 page)

‘One thing is sure,' I said. ‘It looks as if we have made the playwright's murderer extremely jumpy merely by joining the group.'

‘He was there,' Musa confirmed in a sombre tone. ‘I knew he was there on the embankment above me.'

‘How was that?'

‘When I first fell into the water, no one seemed to hear the splash. I sank fast, then rose to the surface. I was trying to catch my breath; at first I could not shout. For a moment I felt entirely alone. The other people sounded far off. I could hear their voices growing fainter as they walked away.' He paused, staring into the fire. Helena had reached for my hand; like me she was sharing Musa's dreadful moment of solitude as he struggled to survive down in the black waters of the reservoir while most of his companions carried on oblivious.

Musa's face stayed expressionless. His whole body was still. He did not rant or make wild threats about his future actions. Only his tone clearly told us that the playwright's killer should be wary of meeting him again. ‘He is here,' Musa said. ‘Among the voices that were going into the darkness, one man had started whistling.'

Exactly like the man he had heard whistling as he came down from the High Place.

*   *   *

‘I'm sorry, Musa.' Apologising again I was terse. ‘I should have foreseen this. I should have protected you.'

‘I am unharmed. It is well.'

‘Do you own a dagger?' He was vulnerable; I was ready to give him mine.

‘Yes.' Davos and I had not found it when we stripped him.

‘Then wear it.'

‘Yes, Falco.'

‘Next time you'll use it,' I commented.

‘Oh yes.' Again that commonplace tone, belying the compelling words. He was a priest of Dushara; I reckoned that Musa would know where to strike. There could be a swift, sticky fate awaiting the man who had whistled in the dark. ‘You and I will find this hill bandit, Falco.' Musa stood up, keeping the blanket around him modestly. ‘Now I think we should all sleep.'

‘Quite right.' I threw his own joke back at him: ‘Helena and I still have a lot of
quarrelling
to do.'

There was a teasing glint in Musa's eye. ‘Hah! Then until you have finished I must go back to the reservoir.'

Helena scowled. ‘Go to bed, Musa!'

Next day we were setting off for the Decapolis. I made a vow to keep a watchful eye out for the safety of all of us.

ACT TWO: THE DECAPOLIS

The next few weeks. The settings are various rocky roads and hillside cities with unwelcoming aspects. A number of camels are walking about watching the action curiously.

 

SYNOPSIS:
Falco,
a jobbing playwright, and
Helena,
his accomplice, together with
Musa,
a priest who has left his temple for rather vague reasons, are travelling through the Decapolis in a search for Truth. Suspected of being imposters, they soon find themselves in danger from an anonymous
Plotter
who must be concealing himself amongst their new-found friends. Somebody needs to devise a sharp plan to penetrate his disguise …

XXII

Philadelphia: a pretty Greek name for a pretty Greek town, rather knocked about at present. It had been pillaged a few years earlier by the rebelling Jews. The inward-looking fanatics of Judaea had always hated the Hellenistic settlements across the Jordan in the Decapolis, places where good citizenship – which could be learned by anybody at a decent Greek city school – counted for more than inheriting a stern religion in the blood. The marauders from Judaea had made it plain with vicious damage to property what they thought of such airy tolerance. Then a Roman army under Vespasian had made it plain to the Judaeans what
we
thought about damage to property by heavily damaging theirs. Judaea was pretty quiet these days, and the Decapolis was enjoying a new period of stability.

Philadelphia was enclosed by steep-sided hills, seven in number, though far more parched than the founding hills of Rome. There was a well-placed precipitous citadel, with the town spilling outwards and downwards on to a broad valley floor where a stream wandered attractively, doing away with any obvious need for cisterns, I was glad to see. We made camp, and sat down in our tents for what I gathered was likely to be a long wait while Chremes tried to negotiate terms for performing a play.

We had now entered Roman Syria. On our original journey between Petra and Bostra I had been working through the company play box, but on the way here to the Decapolis I had been able to give more attention to our surroundings. The road from Bostra to Philadelphia was supposed to be a good one. That meant a lot of people used it: not the same thing.

To be a travelling theatre group was not easy in these parts. The country people hated us because they identified us with the Greekified towns where we played, yet the townsfolk all thought we were uncivilised nomads because we travelled about. In the villages were the weekly markets, where we had nothing to offer that people valued; the cities were administrative centres where we paid neither poll tax nor property tax and had no voting rights, so we were outsiders there too.

If the cities despised us, there was a certain amount of prejudice on our side as well. We Romans viewed these Greek-founded towns as hotbeds of licentiousness. Philadelphia offered little promise of that, however. (Believe me, I looked hard for it.) The city was thriving in a pleasant way, although to a Roman the place was a backwater.

I sensed that this was typical. Had it not been for the great trade routes, the East would never have been more to Rome than a buffer against the might of Parthia. Even the trade routes could not alter the impression that the Ten Towns were mostly
small
towns, often in the middle of nowhere. Some had gained status when Alexander noticed them on his progress to world domination, but they had all achieved a position in history when Pompey first liberated them from the recurrent Jewish plunderers and established Roman Syria. Syria was important because it was our frontier with Parthia. But the Parthians were smouldering on the other side of the River Euphrates, and the Euphrates lay many miles from the Decapolis.

At least in the cities they all spoke Greek, so we could haggle and pick up the news.

‘Are you going to send your “interpreter” home now?' quipped Grumio rather pointedly when we arrived.

‘What, to spare him another ducking?' With Musa scarcely dry from his near-fatal dip I was angry.

Helena answered him more quietly: ‘Musa is our travelling companion, and our friend.'

Musa said nothing as usual until the three of us were in our tent. Then his eyebrows shifted upwards again in teasing wonder as he commented, ‘I am your friend!'

It carried a world of gentle amusement. Musa had the sweet-natured charm of many people in this region – and he was wielding it to notable effect. He had grasped that belonging to the Didius family conferred the perpetual right to play the fool.

To liven up Philadelphia, Chremes was planning to give them
The Rope
by Plautus. In the plot rope hardly features; the important item of interest is a disputed travelling trunk (more of a satchel in the Greek original; we Roman playwrights know how to think big when we adapt). There is, however, a protracted tug of war for possession of the trunk, to be performed in our staging by Tranio and Grumio. I had seen them rehearsing the scene already. Their hilarious performance had a lot to teach a budding playwright: mainly, that his script is irrelevant. It's the ‘business' that brings the crowd to its feet, and however sharp your stylus is, you can't write ‘business' down.

I wasted some effort in Philadelphia asking about Thalia's missing person, without luck. Nor did anybody recognise the other name I was touting: Habib, the mysterious Syrian businessman who had visited Rome and expressed a questionable interest in circus entertainment. I wondered if his wife knew that while he was acting the world traveller he liked to make friends with bosomy snakedancers. (
Oh don't worry about it,
Helena assured me.
She knows all right!
)

On my return to camp I saw Grumio practising dramatic stunts. I asked him to teach me how to fall off a ladder, a trick for which I could see plenty of uses in daily life. It was stupid to try; I had soon landed badly on a leg I had broken two years previously. It left me bruised and limping, worried that I might have shattered the bone a second time. While Grumio shook his head over the incident, I hopped off to recover in my tent.

As I lay complaining on my bed, Helena sat outside with something to read.

‘Whose fault was this?' she had demanded. ‘You being stupid, or somebody putting you out of action?'

Reluctantly I admitted I had asked for the lesson myself. After a sketchy murmur of sympathy, she rolled down the tent-flap and left me in semidarkness, as if I had been concussed. I thought her attitude was a little satirical, but a nap seemed called for anyway.

The weather had grown hot. We were taking things extremely gently, knowing we would be baked far hotter later on; you have to beware of exhaustion when you are unused to desert conditions. I was all ready for a long snooze, but as I drowsed on the verge of it, I heard Helena call out ‘Hello there!' to a passer-by.

I might have taken no notice, had not the masculine voice that answered her been laden with self-satisfaction. It was a handsome rich-toned tenor with seductive modulations, and I knew to whom it belonged: Philocrates, who thought himself the idol of all the girls.

XXIII

‘Well, hello!' he responded, evidently overjoyed to find he had attracted the attention of my highly superior bloom. Men didn't need an exploratory chat with her banker before they found Helena Justina worth talking to.

I stayed put. But I had sat up.

From my dim hiding place I heard him tramp closer, the smart leather boots that always showed off his manly calves crunching on the stony ground. Footwear was his one extravagance, though he wore the rest of his threadbare outfit as if he were in regal robes. (Actually, Philocrates wore all his clothes like a man who was just about to shrug them off for indecent purposes.) From a theatre seat he was extravagantly good-looking; stupid to pretend otherwise. But he turned into a ripe damson if you peered into the punnet closely: too soft, and browning under the skin. Also, though his physique was all in proportion, he was extremely small. I could look right over his neatly combed locks, and most of his scenes with Phrygia had to be played with her sitting down.

I imagined him striking a pose in front of Helena – and tried
not
to imagine Helena being impressed by the haughty good looks.

‘May I join you?' He didn't mess about.

‘Of course.' I was all set to thunder out and defend her, though Helena seemed to be making a brave effort to cope. I could hear from her voice that she was smiling, a sleepy, happy smile. Then I heard Philocrates stretching out at her feet, where instead of looking like a smug dwarf he would simply look well honed.

‘What's a beautiful woman like you doing here all on her own?' Dear gods, his chat line was so old it was positively rancid. Next thing he would be flaring his nostrils and asking her if she would like to see his war wounds.

‘I'm enjoying this lovely day,' replied Helena, with more serenity than she had ever shown with me when I first tried getting to know her. She used to swat me like a hornet on a honey-jar.

‘What are you reading, Helena?'

‘Plato.' It put a quick stop to the intellectual discussion.

‘Well, well!' said Philocrates. This seemed to be his pause-filler.

‘Well, well,' echoed Helena placidly. She could be very unhelpful to men who were trying to impress her.

‘That's a beautiful dress.' She was in white. White had never suited Helena; I repeatedly told her so.

‘Thank you,' she answered modestly.

‘I'll bet you look even better with it off…' Mars blast his balls! Wide awake now, I was expecting my young lady to call out to me for protection.

‘It's a paradox of science,' stated Helena Justina calmly, ‘but when the weather gets as hot as this, people are more comfortable covered up.'

‘Fascinating!' Philocrates knew how to sound as if he meant it, though somehow I thought science was not his strong point. ‘I've been noticing you. You're an interesting woman.' Helena was more interesting than this facile bastard knew, but if he started to investigate her finer qualities he would be sent on his way with my boot. ‘What's your star sign?' he mused, one of those pea-brained types who thought astrology was the straight route to a quick seduction. ‘A Leo, I should say…'

Jupiter! I hadn't used ‘What's your horoscope?' since I was eleven. He ought to have guessed Virgo; that would always get them giggling, after which you could cruise home.

‘Virgo,' stated Helena herself crisply, which should put a blight on astrology.

‘You surprise me!' She surprised me too. I had been thinking Helena's birthday was in October, and was mentally making up jokes about Librans weighing up trouble. Trouble was what
I
would be in if I didn't learn the correct date.

‘Oh I doubt if I could surprise you with much, Philocrates!' she answered. The annoying wench must think I was asleep. She was playing up to him as if I didn't exist at all, let alone lying behind a tent wall growing furious, barely a stride away.

Philocrates had missed her irony. He laughed gaily.
‘Really?
In my experience, girls who appear terribly serious and seem like vestal virgins can be a lot of fun!'

‘Have you had fun with a lot of girls, Philocrates?' asked Helena innocently.

‘Let's say, a lot of girls have had fun with me!'

‘That must be very gratifying for you,' Helena murmured. Anyone who knew her well could hear her thinking,
Probably not so much fun for them!