Last Act In Palmyra Read online

  In August you can only wander around the immense courtyard like a water flea lost in Lake Volusinus, being told by everyone what a treat you missed earlier. This I did myself. I sauntered between the altar and the lustral basin, mighty examples of their kind, then stared sadly at the closed doors in the immensely high and opulently decorated entrance porch. (Carved monolithic beams and stepped merlons, in case you wanted to know.) I had been told that the inner sanctum was an architectural wonder. Not much use for adding tone to your memoirs if it’s shut.

  The other reason for not going to Palmyra in August is the unbearable heat and brightness. I had walked all the way across town from our camp outside the Damascus Gate. I strolled from the Temple of Allath - a severe goddess guarded by a ten-foot-high lion with a jolly countenance, who sheltered a lithe gazelle - to the far end of town where the Temple of Bel housed the Lord of the Universe himself, plus two colleagues, a moon-god and a sun-god, named Aglibol and Yarhibol. The profusion of deities honoured in this city made the twelve gods of Roman Olympus look a meagre picnic party. As most of the temples in Syria are surrounded by huge open-air courtyards that act as suntraps, each of Palmyra’s hundreds of divinities was baking, even inside his darkly curtained-offadyton. However, they were not as hot as the poor fools like me who had risked marching about the city streets.

  The sulphurous springs were low in their cistern, the gardens surrounding them reduced to sticks and struggling succulents. The odour of hot therapeutic steam was no match for the pervading wafts of a city whose major imports were heady perfume oils. Brilliant sunlight zinged off the dirt roads, lightly poached the piles of camel dung, then wrapped its warmth around thousands of alabaster jars and goatskin bottles. The mingling fragrances of heated Oriental balms and fine oils choked my lungs, seeped into my pores and hung about the crumples of my robes.

  I was reeling. My eyes had already been dazzled by tottering piles of bronze plaques and statues, endless bales of silks and muslins, the deep shine of jade and the dark green glimmer of Eastern pottery. Ivory the size of forest logs was piled haphazardly alongside stalls selling fats or dried meat and fish. Tethered cattle awaited buyers, bellowing at the merchants selling multicoloured heaps of spice and henna, Jewellers weighed out pearls in little metal scales as casually as Roman sweetsellers toss handfuls of pistachio nuts into wrapping cones of remaindered songs. Minstrels, tapping hand-drums, intoned poetry in languages and measures I could not begin to comprehend.

  Palmyra is a mighty emporium; it depends on helping visitors secure contracts. In the packed streets even the busiest traders were prepared to stop and hear about my quest. We could understand each other’s Greek, just about. Most tried to point me where I should be going. Once I had been marked as a man with a mission, they insisted on helping. Small boys were sent running to ask other people if they knew the address I was looking for. Old fellows bent double over knobby sticks tottered up twisting lanes with me to check possible houses. I noticed that half the population had terrible teeth, and there was a bad epidemic of deformed arms. Maybe the hot springs were not all that medicinal; maybe the sulphuric spring water even caused these deformities.

  Eventually, in the centre of town, I found the home of a well-to-do Palmyrene who was a friend of Habib, the man I sought. It was a large villa, constructed with no windows on the outside walls. Entering through a door with an exuberantly carved lintel, I found a cool, rather dark courtyard with Corinthian columns surrounding a private well. A dark-skinned slave, polite, but firm, made me wait in the courtyard while he consulted within several times.

  My story was that I had come from Rome (no point pretending otherwise) as a connection of the girl’s. Since I hoped I looked fairly respectable, I assumed her boyfriend’s parents would be eager to check any faint possibility that their prodigal Khaleed had fallen for someone acceptable. Apparently not: despite my best efforts I failed to acquire an interview. Neither the Palmyrene who owned the house nor his guest Habib appeared in person. No attempt was made to deny that Habib was staying there, however. I was informed that he and his wife were now planning to return to Damascus, taking their son. That meant Khaleed currently lived here too, probably under duress. The fate of his musical pick-up remained unclear. When I mentioned Sophrona, the slave only sneered and said she was not there.

  Knowing that I was in the right place, I did what I could, then stayed calm. Most of an informer’s work consists of keeping your nerve. My insistent efforts would have caused a commotion. Sooner or later young Khaleed would hear of my visit and wonder what was up. I guessed that even if he had been gated by his parents he would try to contact his lady love. I waited in the street. As I expected, within half an hour a youth shot outside, glancing back furtively. Once he was sure nobody from the house was following, he set off fast.

  He was a short, thickset lad of about twenty. He had a square face with heavy, fly-away eyebrows; they almost met in the centre of his brow, where a tuft of hair grew like a small dark diamond. He had been in Palmyra long enough to be experimenting with Parthian trousers, but he wore them under a sober Western tunic in Syrian stripes and without embroidery. He looked athletic and good-humoured, though not very bright. Frankly, he was not my idea of a hero to ran off with - but I was not a daft young girl hankering for a foreign admirer to lure her away from a job she was lucky to have.

  I knew Sophrona was daft; Thalia had told me.

  The young man kept up a rapid pace. Luckily he was heading west, towards the area where my own party was staying, so I was not too dispirited. I was starting to feel exhausted, though. I wished I had borrowed a mule. Young love may not notice draining heat, but I was thirty-two and ready for a long lie-down in the shade of a date-palm. I wanted a good rest and a drink, after which I might manage to interest myself in a bit of fun with Helena, if she stroked my brow temptingly enough first. Chasing this sturdy playboy soon lost its appeal.

  The increasing nearness of my tent beckoned. I was ready to peel off from the breakneck gallop. A fast sprint through the Thirteenth District in Rome is bad enough in August, but at least there I know where the wineshops and public latrines are. This was torture. Neither refreshment nor relief was available. And all in the cause of music - my least favourite performing art.

  Eventually Khaleed glanced back over his shoulder, failed to spot me, then picked up even more speed. Turning off the main track, he dashed down a twisting lane between modest little houses where chickens were running freely along with the odd skinny goat. He plunged inside one of the houses. I waited long enough for the youngsters to start panicking, then I dived after him.

  Unlike Habib’s friend’s villa, there was a simple rectangular doorway in the mud-brick wall. Beyond lay a tiny courtyard: no peristyle columns; no well. There was bare earth. A stool had been kicked over in one corner. Wool rugs hung over an upper balcony. The rugs looked clean, but I sensed the dull odours of poverty.

  I followed the anxious voices. Bursting in on the couple, I found Khaleed looking tear-stained and his girl pale but definitely stubborn. They stared at me. I smiled at them. The young man beat his brow and looked helpless while the girl shrieked unpleasantly.

  The usual scenario, in my experience.

  ‘So you’re Sophrona!’ She was not my type. Just as well; she was not my sweetheart.

  ‘Go away!’ she screamed. She must have deduced I had not come all this way to announce an unexpected legacy.

  She was very tall, taller even than Helena, who sweeps a stately course. Her figure was more scrawny than I had been led to expect, reminding me vaguely of somebody - but certainly not Helena. Sophrona was dark, with straight hair tied fairly simply. She had enormous eyes. They were a mellow brown with immensely long lashes, and could be described as beautiful if you were not too fussy about eyes revealing intelligence. She knew they were lovely, and spent a lot of time gazing up sideways; somebody must once have admired the effect. It failed with me. It made me want to chop up her chin and tell her to s
top the deplorable pose. There was no point. No one would ever train her out of it; the habit was too ingrained. Sophrona intended to be pictured one day on her tombstone with this irritating expression, like a fawn with a head cold and a bad case of jitters.

  She was about twenty, disreputably unveiled. On her long frame she wore a blue dress, together with ridiculous sandals and too much soppy jewellery (all tiny dangly animals and rings of twisted silver wire worn right on her knuckles). This stuff would be fine on a child of thirteen; Sophrona should have grown up by now. She did not need to grow up; she had the rich man’s son just where she wanted him. Playing the kitten had achieved it, so she was sticking with what she knew.

  ‘Never you mind who she is!’ cried Khaleed, with spirit. I groaned inwardly. I hate a lad with spirit when he has his arm around a girl I’m intending to abduct from him. If he was already trying to defend her from a stranger whose motives might be perfectly harmless, then prying her free once I had made the situation clear posed even worse problems. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Didius Falco. Friend of the family.’ They were complete amateurs; they did not even think of asking me which family, ‘I see you’re in love,’ I told them pessimistically. They both nodded with a defiance that would have been charming, if it had not been so inconvenient. ‘I believe I know some of your history.’ I had been called in to end unsuitable matches before, so I came prepared with a winning approach. ‘Would you mind telling the story, though?’

  Like all youngsters with no sense of moral duty, they were proud of themselves. It poured out: how they had met at Thalia’s menagerie when Habib had visited Rome, accompanied for educational purposes by his adolescent boy. Khaleed had been cool at first, and obediently went home to Syria with Papa. Then Sophrona had thrown up everything to follow him; boys from rich families appear so romantic. Somehow she made it to Damascus, neither raped nor drowned on the journey. Impressed by her devotion, Khaleed had happily entered into a secret liaison. When his parents found out, the pair ran off here together. Spotted and recognised by his father’s friend, Khaleed had been extracted from their love nest and was now about to be dragged home to Damascus, where a suitable bride would be found for him fast.

  ‘Oh how sad!’ I wondered whether to bop Khaleed on the head, swing Sophrona over my shoulder, and make off with her. A neat trick, if you can pull it - which I had been known to do with shorter women, on my home territory, when the weather was cooler. I decided against playing the man of action here. That left me to use the more sophisticated skills of a Roman informer: blatant lies.

  ‘I understand your problem, and I sympathise. I think I may be able to help you…” The babes fell for it eagerly. I was accepted as the classic clever trickster without needing any alibi for or explanation of my role in Palmyra. I could have been the worst pimp in Corinth, or a foreman recruiting forced labour for a Spanish copper mine. I began to understand why slave markets and brothels are always so full. I scrounged in my purse for some of the tokens we used when we gave away free seats. I told Khaleed to look out for wall posters advertising a performance by Chremes and company; then to bring his parents as a filial treat. Sophrona was to attend the theatre on the same night. ‘What are you going to do for us?’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious what you need. Get you married, of course.’

  The wild promise could prove a mistake. Thalia would be furious. Even if I could achieve it - most unlikely - I knew Thalia had no intention of seeing her expensively trained product yoked to a brainless boy somewhere at the end of the Empire. Thalia dreamed only of providing Rome with high-class entertainment - entertainment she herself both owned and controlled.

  You have to do your best. I needed to gather all the parties together somewhere. On the spur of the moment it seemed the only way to ensure everyone came.

  If I could have told them just what kind of night out at the theatre it was going to be, there would have been no doubt they would turn up.

  Free tickets wouldn’t have been necessary either.

  Chapter LXIV

  It was so late when I returned to camp that Helena and Thalia had despaired of me and were already eating. Chremes and Phrygia happened to be there too. Since they had dropped in casually, the manager and his wife were holding back from tucking in, though I knew Helena would have asked them to help themselves. To spare them the embarrassment of wanting more than they liked to take, I cleaned up all the food bowls myself. I used a scrap of sesame bread to load all the remains into one pot of cucumber relish, which I then kept as my own bowl. Helena gave me a snooty look. Pretending to think her still hungry, I lifted a stuffed vine leaf from my laden dish and set it on a plate for her. ‘Excuse fingers.’

  ‘I’m excusing more than that!’ she said. She ate the vine leaf, though.

  ‘You have a crumb on your chin,’ I told her with mock severity.

  ‘You’ve a sesame seed on your lip.’

  ‘You’ve a pimple on the end of your nose - ‘

  ‘Oh shut up, Marcus!’

  The pimple story was untrue. Her skin was pale, but clear and healthy. I was just happy to see Helena with her fever gone, looking well enough to be teased.

  ‘Good day out?’ queried Thalia. She had finished her dinner before I arrived; for a big woman she ate sparingly. More of Thalia consisted of pure muscle and sinew than I liked to contemplate.

  ‘Good enough. I found your turtledoves.’

  ‘What’s the verdict?’

  ‘She’s as exciting as a used floorcloth. He has the brain of a roof truss.’

  ‘Well suited!’ quipped Helena. She was surreptitiously fingering her nose, checking on my pimple joke.

  ‘It will be Sophrona who is holding them together.’ I could see Thalia thinking that if this were the case, she only had to prise Sophrona off, and her troubles were over.

  I reckoned Sophrona would be difficult to loosen from her prey. ‘She really means to have the rich boy. I’ve promised to get them married.’ Best to own up, and get the storm over as soon as possible.

  A lively commotion ensued amongst the women of my part)-, enabling me to finish my dinner in peace while they enjoyed themselves disparaging me. Helena and Thalia were both sensible, however. Their indignation cooled rapidly.

  ‘He’s right. Yoke them together -‘

  ‘- And it will never last!’

  If it did last, they would have outwitted us. But evidently I was not the only person here who felt so cynical about marriage that the happy ending was ruled out.

  Since one person present was the person I intended to marry as soon as I could persuade her to sign a contract, this was worrying.

  Chremes and Phrygia had watched our domestic fracas with a distant air. It struck me they might have come with news of our next performance. If it needed two of them to tell me about the play, that boded harder work than I wanted at this stage of our tour. Since Palmyra was likely to be the end of our association, I had rather hoped for an easier time, zonking the public with some little number I had long ago revised, while I relaxed around the oasis. Even perhaps laying before the punters Helena’s perfect modern rendition of The Birds. Its neo-Babylonian flamboyance ought to appeal to the Palmyrenes in their embroidered hats and trousers. (I was sounding like some old sham of a critic; definitely time to resign my post!)

  With Chremes and Phrygia remaining so silent, it was Helena who brightly introduced the subject of booking a theatre.

  ‘Yes, I fixed something up.’ A hint of wariness in Chremes’ tone warned me this might not be good news.

  ‘That’s good,’ I encouraged.

  ‘I hope you think so…’ His tone was vague. Immediately I

  began to suspect I would not agree with him. ‘There is a little problem -‘

  ‘He means a complete disaster,’ Phrygia clarified. A blunt woman. I noticed Thalia regarding her sardonically.

  ‘No, no!’ Chremes was blustering. ‘The fact is, we can’t get the civic theatre. Actually, it’s no
t up to our usual standards in any case -‘

  ‘Steady on,’ I said sombrely. ‘Apart from Damascus, we’ve mainly been playing at holes in the ground with a few wooden benches. This must be pretty rough!’

  ‘Oh I think they have plans to build something better, Falco!’

  ‘Everywhere in Syria has plans!’ I retorted. ‘In twenty or thirty years’ time this province will be a theatrical company’s dream of sipping ambrosia on Mount Olympus. One day they’ll have perfect acoustics, majestic stage architecture, and marble everywhere. Unluckily, we cannot wait that long!’

  ‘Well, it’s typical!’ Chremes gave in. He seemed even more despondent than me tonight and set off on a catalogue of miseries: ‘We have the same situation everywhere - even in Rome. The performing arts are in a steep decline. My company has tried to raise standards, but the fact is that legitimate live theatre will soon not exist. We’ll be lucky if plays are performed as readings by bunches of amateurs sitting round on folding stools. All people want to pay money for nowadays are mimes and musicals. For a full house you have to give them nude women, live animals, and men sacrificed on stage. The only play that is guaranteed success is bloody Laureolus.’

  Laureolus is that rubbish about the brigand, the one where the villain is crucified in the final act - traditionally a way of creating free space in the local jail by dispatching a real criminal.

  Helena intervened: ‘What’s wrong, Chremes? You normally look on the bright side.’

  ‘Time to face facts.’

  ‘It was time to face facts twenty years ago.’ Phrygia was even more gloomy than her hated spouse.

  ‘Why can you not get the theatre?’ Helena persisted.

  Chremes sighed heavily. ‘The Palmyrenes are not interested. They use the theatre for public meetings. That’s what they say anyway; I don’t believe it. Either they don’t enjoy entertainment or they don’t fancy what we’re offering. Being rich is no guarantee of culture. These people are just shepherds and cameleers dressed up in lush brocade. Alexander was supposed to have come here, but he must have thought better of it and passed them without stopping. They have no Hellenic heritage. Offering a Palmyrene town councillor the chance to see select Greek or Latin comedies is like feeding roast peacock to a stone.’