Last Act in Palmyra

 

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For Janet

(‘Six o'clock; first there bags a table…')

with neither gunshots nor simulated rape

– and only one insult to lawyers!

 

‘There comes a time in everyone's life when he feels he was born to be an actor. Something within him tells him he is the coming man, and that one day he will electrify the world. Then he burns with a desire to show them how the thing's done, and to draw a salary of three hundred a week…'

Jerome K. Jerome

 

‘And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered…'

William Shakespeare

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Persons in Normal Life

(Well, Almost Normal)

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Company

From the Orchestra

From
‘The Spook who Spoke'

PROLOGUE

The scene is set in Rome, in the Circus of Nero and in a small back room at the Palace of the Caesars on Palatine Hill. The time is AD 72.

 

SYNOPSIS:
Helena,
daughter of
Camillus,
is a young girl disappointed by
Falco,
a trickster, who seemed to have promised her marriage. He now claims he has been let down by
Vespasian,
an Emperor, his patron. In the nick of time
Thalia,
a high-class entertainer, and
Anacrites,
a low-class spy, both suggest ways in which Falco may escape from this predicament, but he must prevent Helena discovering what he is up to, or a Chorus of Disapproval is bound to ensue.

I

‘Somebody could get killed here!' Helena exclaimed.

I grinned, watching the arena avidly. ‘That's what we're meant to be hoping for!' Playing the bloodthirsty spectator comes easy to a Roman.

‘I'm worried about the elephant,' she murmured. It stepped tentatively forwards, now at shoulder height on the ramp. A trainer risked tickling its toes.

I felt more concern for the man at ground level who would catch the full weight if the elephant fell. Not too much concern, however. I was happy that for once the person in danger was not me.

Helena and I were sitting safely in the front row of Nero's Circus, just across the river outside Rome. This place had a bloody history, but was nowadays used for comparatively staid chariot racing. The long circuit was dominated by the huge red granite obelisk that Caligula had imported from Heliopolis. The Circus lay in Agrippina's Gardens at the foot of the Vatican Hill. Empty of crowds and of Christians being turned into firebrands, it had an almost peaceful atmosphere. This was broken only by brief cries of ‘hup!' from practising tumblers and rope dancers and restrained encouragement from the elephant's trainers.

We were the only two observers allowed into this rather fraught rehearsal. I happened to know the entertainment manager. I had gained entrance by mentioning her name at the starting gates, and was now waiting for a chance to talk to her. Her name was Thalia. She was a gregarious character, with physical attractions that she did not bother concealing behind the indignity of clothing, so my girlfriend had come to protect me. As a senator's daughter, Helena Justina had strict ideas about letting the man she lived with put himself in moral danger. As a private informer in an unsatisfactory job and with a shady past behind me, I suppose I had asked for it.

Above us soared a sky that a bad lyric poet would certainly have called cerulean. It was early April; midmorning on a promising day. Just across the Tiber everyone in the imperial city was twisting garlands for a long warm springtime of festivals. We were well into the third year of Vespasian's reign as Emperor, and it was a time of busy reconstruction as burnt-out public monuments were rebuilt after the civil wars. If I thought about it, I was in a mood for some refurbishment myself.

Thalia must have despaired of proceedings out in the arena for she threw a few harsh words over a barely decent shoulder, then left the trainers to get on with it. She came over to greet us. Behind her we could see people still cajoling the elephant, who was a very small one, along the ramp that was supposed to bring him to a platform; from this they had hopefully stretched a tightrope. The baby elephant could not yet see the rope, but he knew he did not like what he had discovered about his training programme so far.

At Thalia's arrival my own worries became wilder too. She not only had an interesting occupation, but unusual friends. One of them lay around her neck like a scarf. I had met him at close quarters once before, and still blenched at the memory. He was a snake, of modest size but gigantic curiosity. A python: one of the constricting species. He obviously remembered me from our last meeting, for he came reaching out delightedly, as if he wanted to hug me to death. His tongue flickered, testing the air.