Last Act in Palmyra (26 page)

For a moment I stood watching her. She pretended not to notice. I loved to make her shy. ‘One day, lady, you shall have a villa crammed with Egyptian carpets and fine Athenian vases, where marble fountains soothe your precious ears, and a hundred slaves are hanging about just waiting to do the dirty work when your disreputable lover staggers home.'

‘I'll be bored. Eat something, Falco.'

‘Done
The Birds?
'

Helena shrieked like a herring-gull, confirming it.

Exercising caution I sat, ate a small quantity, and with the experience of an ex-soldier and hardened man about town, waited to see what would happen. ‘Where's Musa?' I asked, to fill in time while my disturbed guts wondered what unpleasant tricks to throw at me.

‘Gone to visit a temple.'

‘Oh why's that?' I queried innocently.

‘He's a priest,' said Helena.

I hid a smile, allowing them their secret over Shullay. ‘Oh, it's religion? I thought he might be pursuing Byrria.'

After their night of whatever it was (or wasn't), Helena and I had surreptitiously watched for signs of romantic involvement. When the pair next met in public all they exchanged were sombre nods. Either the girl was an ungrateful hag, or our Musa was exceedingly slow.

Helena recognised what I was thinking, and smiled. Compared with this, our own relationship was as old and solid as Mount Olympus. Behind the two of us were a couple of years of furious squabbling, taking care of each other in crazy situations, and falling into bed whenever possible. She could recognise my step from three streets away; I could tell from a room's atmosphere if Helena had entered it for only half a minute several hours before. We knew each other so closely we hardly needed to communicate.

Musa and Byrria were a long way from this. They needed some fast action. They would never be more than polite strangers unless they got stuck in to some serious insults, a few complaints about table manners and a bit of light flirting. Musa had come back to sleeping in our tent; that would never achieve much for him.

Actually neither he nor Byrria seemed the type to want the kind of mutual dependency Helena and I had. That did not stop us from speculating avidly.

‘Nothing can come of it,' Helena decided.

‘People say that about us.'

‘People know nothing then.' While I toyed with my breakfast, she tucked into her lunch. ‘You and I will have to try to look after them, Marcus.'

‘You speak as if falling for someone were a penalty.'

She flashed me a smile of joyous sweetness. ‘Oh that depends who you fall for!' Something in the pit of my stomach took a familiar lurch; this time it had nothing to do with last night's drink. I grabbed more bread and adopted a tough stance. Helena smiled. ‘Oh Marcus, I know you're a hopeless romantic, but be practical. They come from different worlds.'

‘One of them could change cultures.'

‘Who? They both have work they are closely tied to. Musa is taking an extended holiday with us, but it can't last. His life is in Petra.'

‘You've been talking to him?'

‘Yes. What do you make of him, Marcus?'

‘Nothing particular. I like him. I like his personality.' That was all, however. I regarded him as a normal, fairly unexciting foreign priest.

‘I get the impression that in Petra he is thought of as a boy with promise.'

‘Is that what he says? It won't be for long,' I chortled. ‘Not if he returns to the mountain fastness with a vibrant Roman actress on his elbow.' No priest who did that would stand a chance of acceptance, even in Rome. Temples are havens of sordid behaviour, but they do have some standards.

Helena grimaced. ‘What makes you think Byrria would abandon her career to hang on
any
man's elbow?'

I reached out and tucked in a loose strand of hair – a good opportunity to tickle her neck. ‘If Musa really is interested – and that's a debatable issue in itself – he probably only wants one night in her bed.'

‘I was assuming', Helena asserted pompously, ‘that was all Byrria would be offering! She's just lonely and desperate, and he's intriguingly different from the other men who try to nobble her.'

‘Hmm. Is that what you thought when you nobbled me?' I was remembering the night we had first managed to recognise we wanted each other. ‘I've no objection to being thought intriguing, but I did hope that falling into bed with me was more than a desperate act!'

‘Afraid not.' Helena knew how to aggravate me if I pushed my luck. ‘I told myself,
Once, just to know what passion feels like
 … The trouble was,
once
led straight to
once again!
'

‘So long as you never start feeling it's been
once too often
…' I held out my arms to her. ‘I haven't kissed you this morning.'

‘No you haven't!' exclaimed Helena in a changed tone, as if being kissed by me was an interesting proposition. I made sure I kissed her in a way that would re-enforce that view.

*   *   *

After a while she interrupted me: ‘You can look through what I've done to
The Birds
if you like, and see if you approve.' Helena was a tactful scribe.

‘Your revising is good enough for me.' I preferred to embark on extra kissing.

‘Well my work may be wasted. There's a big question mark hanging over whether it can be performed.'

‘Why's that?'

Helena sighed. ‘Our orchestra has gone on strike.'

XXXVII

‘Hey, hey! Things must be bad if they have to send the scribbler to sort us!'

My arrival amidst the orchestra and stagehands caused a surge of mocking applause. They lived in an enclave at one end of our camp. Fifteen or twenty musicians, scene-shifters and their hangers-on were sitting about looking militant while they waited for people in the main company to notice their complaint. Babies toddled about with sticky faces. A couple of dogs scratched their fleas. The angry atmosphere was making my own skin prickle uneasily.

‘What's up?' I tried playing the simple, friendly type.

‘Whatever you've been told.'

‘I've been told nothing. I've been drunk in my tent. Even Helena has stopped talking to me.'

Still pretending not to notice the ominous tension, I squatted in the circle and grinned at them like a harmless sightseer. They glared back while I surveyed who was here.

Our orchestra consisted of Afrania the flautist, whose instrument was the single-piped tibia; another girl who played panpipes; a gnarled, hook-nosed old chap whom I had seen clashing a pair of small hand-cymbals with an incongruous delicacy; and a pale young man who plucked the lyre when he felt like it. They were led by a tall, thin, balding character who sometimes boomed away on a big double wind instrument that had one pipe turned up at the end, whilst he beat time for the others on a foot clacker. This was a large group, compared with some theatre-company ensembles, but allowed for the fact that the participants also danced, sold trays of limp sweetmeats, and offered entertainment afterwards to members of the audience.

Attached to them were the hard-labour boys, a set of small, bandy-legged stagehands whose wives were all hefty boot-faced wenches you wouldn't push in front of in a baker's queue. In contrast to the musicians, whose origins were varied and whose quarters had an artistic abandon, the scenery-movers were a closely related group, like bargees or tinkers. They lived in spotless tidiness; they had all been born to the roving life. Whenever we arrived at a new venue, they were the first to organise themselves. Their tents were lined up in straight rows with elaborate sanitary arrangements at one end, and they shared a huge iron broth cauldron that was stirred by a strict rota of cooks. I could see the cauldron now, breathing out coils of gravy steam that reminded me of my stomach's queasiness.

‘Do I detect an atmosphere?'

‘Where've you been, Falco?' The hook-nosed cymbalist sounded weary as he threw a stone at a dog. I felt lucky he chose the dog.

‘I told you: drunk in bed.'

‘Oh, you took to the life of a playwright easily!'

‘If you wrote for this company you'd be drunk too.'

‘Or dead in a cistern!' scoffed a voice from the back.

‘Or dead,' I agreed quietly. ‘I do worry about that sometimes. Maybe whoever had it in for Heliodorus dislikes all playwrights, and I'm next.' I was carefully not mentioning Ione yet, though she must matter more here than the drowned scribe.

‘Don't worry,' sneered the girl who played the panpipes. ‘You're not that good!'

‘Hah! How would you know? Even the actors never read the script, so I'm damned sure you musicians don't! But surely you're not saying Heliodorus was a decent writer?'

‘He was trash!' exclaimed Afrania. ‘Plancina's just trying to annoy you.'

‘Oh, for a moment I thought I was hearing that Heliodorus was better than everyone tells me – though aren't we all?' I tried to look like a wounded writer. This was not easy since naturally I knew my own work was of fine quality – if anyone with any true critical sense ever did read it.

‘Not you, Falco!' laughed the panpipe girl, the brash piece in a brief saffron tunic whom Afrania had called Plancina.

‘Well thanks. I needed reassurance … So what's the black mood in this part of the camp all about?'

‘Get lost. We're not talking to management.'

‘I'm not one of them. I'm not even a performer. I'm just a freelance scribe who happened upon this group by accident; one who's starting to wish he'd given Chremes a wide berth.' The murmur of discontent that ran around warned me I had best take care or else instead of persuading the group back to work I would end up leading their walk-out. That would be just my style: from peacemaker to chief rebel in about five minutes. Smart work, Falco.

‘It's no secret,' said one of the stagehands, a particular misery. ‘We had a big row with Chremes last night, and we're not backing down.'

‘Well you don't have to tell me. I didn't mean to pry into your business.'

Even with a hangover that made my head feel like the spot on a fortress gate that's just been hit by a thirty-foot battering-ram, my professional grit had stayed intact: as soon as I said they need not spill the tale, they all wanted to tell me everything.

I had guessed right: Ione's death was at the heart of their discontent. They had finally noticed there was a maniac in our midst. He could murder dramatic writers with impunity, but now that he had turned his attention to the musicians they were wondering which of them would be picked off next.

‘It's reasonable to feel alarmed,' I sympathised. ‘But what was last night's row with Chremes about?'

‘We are not staying on,' said the cymbalist. ‘We want to be given our money for the season –'

‘Hang on, the rest of us were paid our share of the takings last night. Are your contract terms very different?'

‘Too damn right! Chremes knows actors and scribes are pushed to find employment. You won't leave him until you're given a firm shove. But musicians and lifters can always find work so he gives us a fraction, then keeps us waiting for the rest until the tour packs up.'

‘And now he won't release your residue?'

‘Fast, Falco! Not if we leave early. It's in the trunk under his bed, and he says it's staying there. So now we're saying to him, he can stick
The Birds
in his aviary and tweet all the way from here to Antiochia. If we've got to stay around, he won't be able to take on replacements because we'll warn them off. But we're not going to work. He'll have no music and no scenery. These Greek towns will laugh him off the stage.'

‘
The Birds!
That was about the final straw,' grumbled the youthful lyre-player, Ribes. He was no Apollo. He could neither play well nor strike awe with his majestic beauty. In fact he looked as appetising as yesterday's ground-millet polenta. ‘Wanting us to chirp like bloody sparrows.'

‘I can see that would be a liberty to a professional who can tell his Lydian modes from his Dorians!'

‘One more crack from you, Falco, and you'll be picked with a plectrum in a place you won't like!'

I grinned at him. ‘Sorry. I'm employed to write jokes.'

‘About time you started doing it then,' someone chuckled; I didn't see who.

Afrania broke in, softening slightly. ‘So Falco, what made you venture here among the troublemaking low life?'

‘Thought I might be able to help.'

‘Like how?' jeered a stagehand's wife.

‘Who knows? I'm a man of ideas –'

‘He means filthy thoughts,' suggested another broad-beamed female whose thoughts were undoubtedly much grimier than mine.

‘I came to consult you all,' I carried on bravely. ‘You may be able to help me work out who caused the two deaths. And I believe I can assure you that none of you is at risk.'

‘How can you do that?' demanded the leader of the orchestra.

‘Well, let's take this slowly. I'll not make rash promises about any man who can take life in such a cruelly casual way. I still don't have any real idea why he killed Heliodorus. But in Ione's case, the reason is much clearer.'

‘Clear as mud on a bootstrap!' Plancina declared. There was still much hostility, though most of the group were now listening intently.

‘Ione thought she knew who killed the playwright,' I told them. ‘She had promised to reveal the man's name to me; she must have been killed to stop her giving him away.'

‘So we are safe so long as we all go around saying “I've absolutely no idea who killed them!” in loud voices?' The orchestra leader was dry, though not unbearably sarcastic.

Ignoring him, I announced: ‘If I knew whom Ione was meeting on the night she died, I would know everything. She was your friend. One of you must have an idea. She will have said something about her movements that evening, or at some other time she may have mentioned a man she was friendly with –' Before the jeers could break out I added hastily, ‘I do know she was very popular. There must be some of you here she had banged her tambourine for on occasions, am I right?'