Last Act In Palmyra mdf-6 Read online

  'And what play actually won then?' Helena demanded.

  'Some trifle called The Revellers, now unknown to man.'

  'Sounds fun. One of the people in my tent has been revelling too much lately, though,' Helena commented.

  'This play is not half as obscene as some Aristophanes,' grumbled Tranio. 'I saw Peace once – not often performed, as we're always at war of course. It has two female roles for wicked girls with nice arses. One of them has her clothes taken off on-stage, then she's handed down to the man in the centre of the front row. She sits on his lap for starters, then spends the rest of the play going up and down, "comforting" other members of the audience.'

  'Filth!' I cried, feigning shock.

  Tranio scowled. 'It hardly compares with showing Hercules as a glutton, giving out cookery tips.'

  'No, but recipes won't get us run out of town,' said Helena. She was always practical. Offered a prospect of wicked women with nice arses 'comforting' the ticket-holders, her practical nature became even more brisk than usual.

  Helena knew The Birds. She had been well educated, partly by her brothers' tutors when her brothers slipped off to the racecourse, and partly through grabbing any written scrolls that she could lay her hands on in private libraries owned by her wealthy family (plus the few tattered fifth-hand items I kept under my own bed). Since she had never been one for the senators' wives' circuit of orgies and admiring gladiators, she had always spent time at home reading. So she told me, anyway.

  She had done a good job on the script; Chremes had accepted it without change, remarking that at last I seemed to be getting on top of the job.

  'Fast work,' I congratulated her.

  'It's nothing.'

  'Don't let having your adaptations accepted first time go to your head. I'd hate to think you're becoming an intellectual.'

  'Sorry, I forgot. You don't like cultured women.'

  'Suits me.' I grinned at her. 'I'm no snob. I'm prepared to put up with brains in an exceptional case.'

  'Thank you very much!'

  'Don't mention it. Mind you, I never expected to end up in bed with some learned scroll-beetle who's studied Greek and knows that The Birds is a famous play. I suppose it sticks in the mind because of the feathers. Like when you think about the Greek philosophers and can only remember that the first premise of Pythagoras was that nobody should eat beans.'

  'Philosophy's a new side to you,' she smiled.

  'Oh I can run off philosophers as well as any dinner-party bore. My favourite is Bias, who invented the informers' motto -'

  'All Men are Bad!' Helena had read the philosophers as well as the dramatists. 'Everyone has to play a bird in the chorus, Marcus. Which has Chremes given you?'

  'Listen, fruit, when I make my acting debut, it will be a moment to memorise for our grandchildren. I will be a Tragic Hero, striding on through the central doorway in a coronet, not hopping from the wings as a bloody bird.'

  Helena chortled. 'Oh I think you're wrong! This play was written for a very prosperous festival. There is a full chorus of twenty-four named cheepers, and we all have to participate.'

  I shook my head. 'Not me.'

  Helena Justina was a bright girl. Besides, as the adaptor she was the only person in our group who had read the entire play. Most people just skimmed through to find their own parts. Helena soon worked out what Chremes must have me down for, and thought it hilarious.

  Musa, who had been silent as usual, looked bemused -though not half as bemused as when Helena explained that he would be appearing as the reed warbler.

  So what was I playing? They had found me the dross, needless to say.

  In our performance the two humans who run away from Athens in disgust at the litigation, the strife and the hefty fines were played by handsome Philocrates and tough Davos. Naturally Philocrates had grabbed the major part, with all the speeches, while Davos took the stooge who puts in the obscene one-line rejoinders. His part was shorter, though more pungent.

  Tranio was playing Hercules. In fact he and Grumio were to be a long succession of unwelcome visitors who call at Cloud-cuckoo-land in order to be chased off ignominiously. Phrygia had a hilarious cameo as an elderly Iris whose lightning bolts refused to fulminate, while Byrria appeared as the hoopoe's beautiful wife and as Sovereignty (a symbolic part, made more interesting by a scanty costume). Chremes was chorus leader for the famous twenty-four named birds. These included Congrio hooting, Musa warbling, and Helena disguised as the cutest dabchick who ever hopped on to a stage. I was unsure how I would confess to her noble father and disapproving mother that their elegant daughter with the centuries-old pedigree had now been witnessed by a crowd of raw Scythopolitans acting as a dabchick…

  At least from now on I would always be able to call up material to blackmail Helena.

  My role was tiresome. I played the informer. In this otherwise witty satire, my character creeps in after the ghastly poet, the twisting fortune-teller, the rebellious youth and the cranky philosopher. Once they have come to Cloud-cuckoo-land and all been seen off by the Athenians, an informer tries his luck. Like mine, his luck is in short supply, to the delight of the audience. He is stirring up court cases on the basis of questionable evidence and wants some wings to help him fly about the Greek islands quicker as he hands out subpoenas. If anyone had been prepared to listen, I could have told them an informer's life is so boring it's positively respectable, while the chances of a lucrative court case are about equal with discovering an emerald in a goose's gizzard. But the company were used to abusing my profession (which is much mocked in drama) so they loved this chance to heap insults on a live victim. I offered to play the sacrificial pig instead, but was overruled. Needless to say, in the play, the informer fails to get his wings.

  Chremes deemed me fit to act my role without coaching, even though it was a speaking part. He claimed I could talk well enough without assistance. By the end of rehearsals I was tired of people crying 'Oh just be yourself, Falco!' ever so wittily. And the moment when Philocrates was called upon to whip me off-stage was maddening. He really enjoyed handing out a thrashing. I was now plotting a black revenge.

  Everyone else hugely enjoyed putting on this stuff. I decided that perhaps Chremes did know what he was doing. Even though we had always complained about his judgement, the mood lightened. Scythopolis kept us for several performances. The company was calmer, as well as richer, by the time we moved on up the Jordan Valley to Gadara.

  Chapter XXXIX

  Gadara called itself the Athens of the East. From this Eastern outpost had come the cynic satirist Menippos, the philosopher and poet Philodemos, who had had Virgil as his pupil in Italy, and the elegiac epigrammatist Meleager. Helena had read Meleager's poetic anthology The Garland, so before we arrived she enlightened me.

  '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.

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sp; 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!

  Chapter 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 co
nsumption 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.