Last Act in Palmyra (28 page)

‘His themes are love and death –'

‘Very nice.'

‘And he compares each poet he includes to a different flower.'

I said what I thought, and she smiled gently. Love and death are gritty subjects. Their appropriate handling by poets does not require myrtle petals and violets.

The city commanded a promontory above a rich and vital landscape, with stunning views to both Palestine and Syria, westwards over Lake Tiberias and north to the far snowcapped mountain peak of Mount Hermon. Nearby, thriving villages studded the surrounding slopes, which were lush with pasture-land. Instead of the bare tawny hills we had seen endlessly rolling elsewhere, this area was clothed with green fields and woodlands. Instead of lone nomadic goatherds, we saw chattering groups watching over fatter, fleecier flocks. Even the sunlight seemed brighter, enlivened by the nearby twinkling presence of the great lake. No doubt all the shepherds and swineherds in the desirable pastures were busy composing sunlit, elegantly elegiac odes. If they were kept awake at night struggling with metric imperfections in their verse, they could always put themselves off to sleep by counting their obols and drachmas; people here had no financial worries that I could see.

As always in our company, argument about what play to put on was raging; eventually, with matters still unresolved, Chremes and Philocrates, supported by Grumio, strolled off to see the local magistrate. Helena and I took a walk around town. We made enquiries about Thalia's lost musical maiden, fruitlessly as usual. We didn't much care; we were enjoying this short time alone together. We found ourselves following a throng of people who were ambling down from the acropolis to the river valley below.

Apparently the routine here was for the citizens to flock out in the evening, go to the river, bathe in its reputedly therapeutic waters, then flog back uphill (complaining) for their nightly dose of public entertainment. Even if bathing in the river had cured their aches, walking back afterwards up the precipitous slope to their lofty town was likely to set their joints again, and half of them probably caught a chill when they reached the cooler air. Still, if one or two had to take to their beds, all the more room on the comfortable theatre seats for folk who had come direct from the shop or the office without risking their health in water therapy.

We joined the crowds of people in their striped robes and twisted headgear on the banks of the river, where Helena cautiously dipped a toe while I stood aloof, looking Roman and superior. The late-evening sunlight had a pleasantly soothing effect. I could happily have forgotten both my searches and relaxed into the theatrical life for good.

Further along the bank I suddenly noticed Philocrates; he had not spotted us. He had been drinking – wine, presumably – from a goatskin. As he finished he stood up, demonstrating his physique for any watching women, then blew up the skin, tied its neck, and tossed it to some children who were playing in the water. As they fell on it, squealing with delight, Philocrates stripped off his tunic ready to dive into the river.

‘You'd need a lot of
those
to fill a punnet!' giggled Helena, noticing that the naked actor was not well endowed.

‘Size isn't everything,' I assured her.

‘Just as well!'

She was grinning, while I wondered whether I ought to play the heavy-handed patriarch and censor whatever it was she had been reading to acquire such a low taste in jokes.

‘There's a very odd smell, Marcus. Why do spa waters always stink?'

‘To fool you into thinking they are doing you good. Who told you the punnet joke?'

‘Aha! Did you see what Philocrates did with his wineskin?'

‘I did. He can't possibly have killed Heliodorus if he's kind to children,' I remarked sarcastically.

*   *   *

Helena and I started the steep climb up from the elegant waterfront to the town high on its ridge. It was hard going, reminding us both of our wearying assault on the High Place at Petra.

Partly to gain a breathing space, but interested anyway, I stopped to have a look at the town's water system. They had an aqueduct that brought drinking water over ten miles from a spring to the east of the city; it then ran through an amazing underground system. One of the caps to a flue had been removed by some workmen for cleaning; I was leaning over the hole and staring down into the depths when a voice behind made me jump violently.

‘That's a long drop, Falco!'

It was Grumio.

Helena had grabbed my arm, though her intervention was probably unnecessary. Grumio laughed cheerfully. ‘Steady!' he warned, before clattering downhill the way we had just come.

Helena and I exchanged a wry glance. The thought crossed my mind that if someone fell down into those tunnels and the exit was re-covered, even if he survived the tumble no one would ever hear him call for help. His body would not be found until it had decayed so much that townsfolk started feeling poorly …

If Grumio had been a suspect who could not account for his movements, I might have found myself shivering.

*   *   *

Helena and I made our way back to camp slowly, amorously intertwined.

Not for the first time with this company, we had walked into a panic. Chremes and the others had been gone too long; Davos had sent Congrio to wander round town in his most unobtrusive manner, trying to find out where they were. As we reached the camp Congrio came scampering back, shrieking: ‘They're all locked up!'

‘Calm down.' I made a grab at him, and held him still. ‘Locked up? What for?'

‘It's Grumio's fault. When they got in to see the magistrate, it turned out he had been at Gerasa when we were there; he'd heard Grumio doing his comic turn. Part of it was insulting Gadarenes…' As I recalled Grumio's stand-up act,
most
of it had involved being rude about the Decapolis towns. Thinking of Helena's recent joke, we were only lucky he hadn't mentioned punnets in connection with the private parts of their pompous magistrates. Maybe he had never read whatever scroll Helena had found for herself. ‘Now our lot are all thrown into prison for slander,' Congrio wailed.

I wanted my dinner. My chief reaction was annoyance. ‘If Grumio said the Gadarenes were impetuous and touchy and have no sense of humour, where's the slander? It's obviously true! Anyway, that's nothing to what I heard him say about Abila and Dium.'

‘I'm just telling you what I heard, Falco.'

‘And I'm just deciding what we can do.'

‘Cause a fuss,' suggested Davos. ‘Tell them we intend to warn our Emperor about their unkind welcome for innocent visitors, then beat the local jailor over the head with a cudgel. After that, run like mad.'

Davos was the kind of man I could work with. He had a good grasp of a situation and a down-to-earth attitude to handling it.

*   *   *

He and I went into town together, dressed up to look like respectable entrepreneurs. We wore newly polished boots and togas from the costume box. Davos was carrying a laurel wreath for an even more refined effect, though I did think that was overdoing it.

We presented ourselves at the magistrate's house, looking surprised there could be a problem. The nob was out: at the theatre. We then presented ourselves at one end of the orchestra stalls and hung around for a break in what turned out to be a
very
poor satyr play. Davos muttered, ‘At least they could tune their damned panpipes! Their masks stink. And their nymphs are rubbish.'

While we fretted on the sidelines, I managed to ask, ‘Davos, have you ever seen Philocrates blow up an empty wineskin and throw it into water, the way children like to do? Is making floats a habit of his?'

‘Not that I've noticed. I've seen the clowns do it.'

As usual, what had looked like a pinpointing clue caused more confusion than it solved.

Luckily satyr plays are short. A few disguises, a couple of mock rapes, and they gallop off-stage in their goatskin trousers.

At last there was a pause to let the sweetmeat trays go round. Seizing our moment we leapt across the pit to beard the elected nincompoop who had incarcerated our gang. He was an overbearing bastard. Sometimes I lose faith in democracy. Usually, in fact.

There was not much time to argue; we could hear tambourines rattling as a fleet of overweight female dancers prepared to come on-stage next and titillate with some choric frivolity in see-through skirts. After three minutes of fast talking we had achieved nothing with the official, and he signalled the theatre guards to shift us.

Davos and I left of our own accord. We went straight to the jail, where we bribed the keeper with half our proceeds from performing
The Birds
at Scythopolis. Anticipating trouble, we had already left instructions for the waggons and camels to be loaded up by my friends the scene-shifters. Once we had organised our jailbreak, we spent a few moments in the forum loudly discussing our next move eastwards to Capitolias, then we met the rest of our group on the road and galloped off in the northerly direction of Hippos.

We travelled fast, cursing the Gadarenes for the indelicate swine they had shown themselves to be.

So much for the Athens of the East!

XL

Hippos: a jumpy town. Not as jumpy as some of its visitors were, however.

It was located halfway along the eastern shore of Lake Tiberias on a hilltop site – fine vistas, but inconvenient. The site set it back from the lake a considerable distance, with no nearby river, so water for domestic consumption was scarce. Across the lake lay Tiberias, a city that had been much more conveniently placed at shore level. The people of Hippos hated the people of Tiberias with passionate hostility – much more real than the vaunted feud between Pella and Scythopolis, which we had been hard-put to spot.

Hippos had its water shortage and feud to contend with, which ought to have left little time for parting traders from their money or spending that money on grandiose building schemes, yet with the tenacity of this region its people were managing both. From the gate where we entered (on foot, for we camped out of town in case we needed to flee again) ran an established main street, a long black basalt thoroughfare whose gracious colonnades travelled the length of the ridge on which the town stood, giving fine views of Lake Tiberias.

Perhaps due to our own nervous situation, we found the populace edgy. The streets were full of swarthy faces peering from hoods with an air that told you not to ask directions to the marketplace. The women had the guarded expressions of those who spend many hours every day jostling to fill pitchers with water; thin, harassed little pieces with the sinewy arms of those who then had to carry the full pitchers home. The men's role was to stand about looking sinister; they all carried knives, visible or hidden, ready to stab anyone they could accuse of having a Tiberias accent. Hippos was a dark, introverted huddle of suspicion. To my mind this was the sort of place poets and philosophers ought to come from, to give them the right tone of cynical distrust; of course none did.

In a town like Hippos, even the most hardened informer starts to feel nervous about asking questions. Nevertheless, there was no point coming here unless I carried out my commission. I had to try to find the missing organist. I braced myself and tackled various leathery characters. Some of them spat; not many directly at me, unless their aim was truly bad. Most gazed into the middle distance with blank faces, which appeared to be the Hippos dialect for ‘No, I'm terribly sorry, young Roman sir, I've never seen your delightful maiden nor heard of the raffish Syrian businessman who snaffled her…' Nobody actually stuck a knife into me.

I crossed off one more possible destination for Sophrona and Habib (assuming he was the person she did the flit with), then took the long haul out of town to our camp. All the way back I kept looking over my shoulder to see if the people of Hippos were tailing me. I was growing as nervy as they were.

*   *   *

Luckily my mind was taken off my unease when halfway along the trail I caught up with Ribes the lyre-player.

Ribes was a pasty youth who believed his role as a musician was to sit around in a lopsided haircut describing plans for making vast sums of money with popular songs he had yet to compose. So far there was no sign of him being mobbed by Egyptian accountants keen to rob him of huge agency fees. He wore the sort of belt that said he was tough, with a facial expression that belonged on a moonstruck vole. I tried to avoid him, but he had seen me.

‘How's the music?' I asked politely.

‘Coming along…' He did not ask how the playwriting was.

We strolled along together for a short time while I tried to twist my ankle so I could fall behind.

‘Have you been looking for clues?' he asked earnestly.

‘Just looking for a girl.' Perhaps because he knew Helena, this appeared to worry him. It was not a concept that had ever worried me.

‘I've been thinking about what you said to us,' Ribes offered after a few more strides. ‘About what happened to Ione…' He tailed off. I forced myself to look interested, though talking to Ribes thrilled me about as much as trying to pick my teeth at a banquet without a toothpick and without the host's wife noticing.

‘Thought of anything to help me?' I encouraged gloomily.

‘I don't know.'

‘Nobody else has either,' I said.

Ribes looked more cheerful. ‘Well, I might know something.' Fortunately, six years as an informer had taught me how to wait patiently. ‘Ione and I were friendly, actually. I don't mean – Well, I mean we never – But she used to talk to me.'

This was the best news I had had for days. Men who had slept with the tambourinist would be useless; they had certainly proved slow to come forward. I welcomed this feeble reed with the bent stalk, in whom the girl could well have confided since he had so little else to offer.