Last Act In Palmyra mdf-6 Page 34

  'Oh yes. I think it was on a murderer that day.'

  It did not seem the moment to tell Musa that according to Grumio he was the murderer himself. Instead I amused myself remembering Grumio's absurd theory that Musa was some high-powered political agent, sent out by The Brother on a mission to destroy.

  Musa applied his contract killer's skills to clearing up a pile of lion dung.

  Helena and Thalia set off back to our tent. I dallied behind. Musa, who had been grappled by the cub again, looked up long enough to meet my eyes.

  'Helena has recovered, but she was very sick. Sending Thalia with her mithridatium helped a lot. Thanks, Musa.'

  He disentangled himself from the fluffy, overactive little lion. He seemed quieter than I had been dreading, though he started to say, 'I want to explain – '

  'Never explain, Musa. I hope you'll dine with us tonight. Maybe you'll have good news from Shullay to tell me.' I clapped his shoulder as I turned to follow the others. 'I'm sorry. Thalia's an old friend. We let her have your section of the tent.'

  I knew that nothing had ever happened between him and Helena, but I was not stupid. I didn't mind how much he cared about her, so long as he honoured the rules. The first rule was, I did not expose Helena by letting other men who hankered after her live in our house. 'Nothing personal,' I added cheerily. 'But I don't care for some of your pets!'

  Musa shrugged, smiling in return as he accepted it. 'I am the snakekeeper. I have to stay with Zeno.'

  I took two strides, then turned back to him. 'We missed you. Welcome back, Musa.'

  I meant that.

  Returning to Helena I happened to pass Byrria. I told her I had been to see the big python, recommended the experience, and said I was sure the keeper would be pleased to show her his menagerie. Well, you have to try.

  Chapter LXVI

  That night I was sitting outside our tent with Helena and Thalia, waiting for Musa to turn up for dinner. We were approached by Chremes and Davos, together with the long, gawky figure of Phrygia, apparently on their way to dine at one of their own tents. Chremes stopped for a discussion with me about an unresolved problem with my play. As we talked, with me paying as little attention as possible to the manager's fussing, I overheard Phrygia muttering to Thalia: 'Don't I know you from somewhere?'

  Thalia laughed gruffly. 'I wondered when you would ask!'

  I noticed that Helena applied herself to a tactful chat with Davos.

  Phrygia looked tense. 'Somewhere in Italy? Or was it Greece?'

  'Try Tegea,' stated Thalia. She had on her sardonic look again.

  Then Phrygia gasped as if she had been poked in the side with a spindle. 'I need to talk to you!'

  'Well I'll try and fit you in some time,' Thalia promised unconvincingly. 'I have to rehearse my snake dance.' I happened to know she claimed never to rehearse her dance, partly because of the danger it entailed. 'And the acrobats need a lot of supervision…'

  'This is cruelty!' murmured Phrygia.

  'No,' said Thalia in a tone that meant to be heeded. 'You made your decision. If you've suddenly decided to change your mind after all these years, the other party deserves some warning. Don't push me! Maybe I'll introduce you after the play…'

  Chremes had given up trying to interest me in his troubles. Looking frustrated, Phrygia felt silent and allowed her husband to lead her away.

  I was not the only one who had overheard the intriguing snatch of conversation. Davos found some excuse to dally behind, and I heard him say to Thalia, 'I remember Tegea!' I felt Helena kick my ankle, and obediently joined her in pretending to be very busy laying out our meal. As usual Davos was being blunt. 'She wants to find the baby.'

  'So I gathered,' Thalia returned rather drily, tipping her head back and giving him a challenging stare. 'A bit late! Actually, it's not a baby any more.'

  'What happened?' Davos asked.

  'When people give me unwanted creatures, I generally bring them up.'

  'It lived then?'

  'She was alive the last time I saw her.' As Thalia informed Davos, Helena glanced at me. So Phrygia's baby had been a girl. I suppose we had both already worked that out.

  'So she's grown up now?'

  'A promising little artiste,' Thalia said grittily. That too was no surprise to some of us.

  Seeming satisfied, Davos grunted, then went on his way after Chremes and Phrygia.

  'So! What happened at Tegea?' I tackled our companion innocently when the coast was clear. Thalia would probably have said that men are never innocent.

  She shrugged, pretending indifference. 'Not a lot. It's a tiny Greek town, just a blot on the Peloponnese.'

  'When were you there?'

  'Oh… how about twenty years ago?'

  'Really?' We both knew exactly where the conversation was leading. 'Would that have been about the time our stage manager's wife missed her famous chance to play Medea at Epidaurus?'

  At this, Thalia stopped playing at being unconcerned and burst into guffaws. 'Get away! She told you that?'

  'It's common currency.'

  'Common codswallop! She's fooling, Falco.' Thalia's tone was not unpleasant. She knew most people spend their lives deluding themselves.

  'So are you going to give us the real story, Thalia?'

  'I was just starting out. Juggling – and the rest!' Her voice dropped, almost sadly. 'Phrygia play Medea? Don't make me laugh! Some slimy producer who wanted to get his hand up her skirt convinced her he could swing it, but it would never have happened. For one thing – you should know this, Falco -Greeks never allow women actresses.'

  'True.' It was rare in Roman theatre too. But in Italy actresses had done mime plays for years, a vague cover for striptease acts. In groups like ours, with a manager like Chremes who was a pushover for anyone forceful, they could now earn a crust in speaking parts. But groups like ours never took part in the ancient Greek mainland festivals.

  'So what happened, Thalia?'

  'She was just a singer and dancer in the chorus. She was drifting about with grand ideas, just waiting for some bastard to con her into believing she would make the big time. In the end, becoming pregnant was a let-out.'

  'So she had the baby – '

  'That's what tends to happen.'

  'And she gave it away at Tegea?'

  By now this was fairly obvious. Only yesterday I had seen a tall, thin, slightly familiar twenty-year-old who I knew had spent her childhood fostered out. I remembered that Heliodorus was supposed to have told Phrygia that her daughter had been seen somewhere by someone he knew. That could be Tranio. Tranio had appeared at the Vatican Circus; Thalia had known him there, and he presumably knew her troupe, especially the girls if his current form was indicative. 'I suppose she gave it to you, Thalia? So where is the child now? Could Phrygia need to look in somewhere like Palmyra, I wonder…'

  Thalia tried just smiling knowingly.

  Helena joined in, saying quietly, 'I think we could tell Phrygia who her baby is now, Marcus.'

  'Keep it to yourself!' commanded Thalia.

  Helena grinned at her. 'Ooh Thalia! Don't tell me you're considering how you can cheat Phrygia.'

  'Who, me?'

  'Of course not,' I weighed in innocently. 'On the other hand, wouldn't it be a nuisance if just when you'd found your valuable water organist, some tiresome relation popped out of the rocky scenery, dying to tell the girl she had a family, and keen to whisk her off to join quite another company than yours?'

  'You bet it would!' agreed Thalia, in a dangerous tone that said she was not intending to let Sophrona meet such a fate.

  Musa turned up at that moment, allowing Thalia to shrug off the Phrygia incident. 'What kept you? I was starting to think Pharaoh must have got out!'

  'I took Zeno for a swim at the springs; he didn't want to be brought back.'

  My mind boggled at the thought of trying to persuade a giant python to behave himself. 'What happens when he gets his own ideas and starts playing up?' />
  'You grab his neck and blow in his face,' Musa told me calmly.

  'I'll remember that!' giggled Helena, glancing teasingly at me.

  Musa had brought with him a papyrus, closely written in the angular script I vaguely remembered seeing on inscriptions at Petra. As we sat down to eat he showed it to me, though I had to ask him to translate.

  'This is the letter I mentioned, Falco, from Shullay, the old priest at my temple. I had sent to ask him if he could describe the man he saw coming down from the High Place just before we saw you.'

  'Right. Anything useful?'

  Musa ran his finger down the letter. 'He starts by remembering the day, the heat, the peacefulness of our garden at the temple…' Very romantic, but not what I call evidence. 'Ah. Now he says, "I was surprised to hear somebody descending from the High Place so rapidly. He was stumbling, and falling over his feet, though otherwise light of step. When he saw me, he slowed up and began whistling unconcernedly. He was a young man, about your age, Musa, and also your height. His body was slim. He wore no beard. He wore the hat…" Shullay found the hat later, cast aside behind rocks lower down the mountain. You and I must have missed it, Falco.'

  I was thinking fast. 'It doesn't add much, but this is very useful! We have six possible male suspects. We can certainly now eliminate some of them on Shullay's evidence alone. Chremes, and also Davos, are both too old and too heavy to fit the description.'

  'Philocrates is too small,' Musa added. He and I both grinned.

  'Besides, Shullay would certainly have mentioned if the man was quite so handsome! Congrio may be too slight. He's so weedy I think if he had seen Congrio, Shullay would have made more of his poor stature. Besides, he can't whistle. That leaves us,' I concluded quietly, 'with only Grumio and Tranio.'

  Musa leaned forwards, looking expectant. 'So what are we to do now?'

  'Nothing yet. Now I'm certain it has to be one of those two, I'll have to identify which one we definitely want.'

  'You cannot interrupt your play, Falco!' Thalia commented reprovingly.

  'No, not with a rapacious garrison screaming for it.' I applied a competent expression that probably fooled no one. 'I'll have to do my play as well.'

  Chapter LXVII

  Rehearsing a half-written new play with a gang of cocky subversives who would not take it seriously nearly defeated me. I failed to see their problem. The Spook who Spoke was perfectly straightforward. The hero, to be played by Philocrates, was a character called Moschion – traditionally the name of a slightly unsatisfactory youth. You know the idea – trouble to his parents, useless in love, uncertain whether to turn into a wastrel or to come good in the last act.

  I had never decided where the action should take place: some district no one ever fancies visiting. Illyria, perhaps.

  The first scene was a wedding feast, an attempt to be controversial after all those plays where the wedding feast happens at the end. Moschion's mother, a widow, was remarrying, partly in order to allow Tranio to do his 'Clever Cook' routine and partly to let the panpipe girls wander around deliciously as banquet entertainment. Amidst Tranio's jokes about rude-shaped peppered meats, the young Moschion would be complaining about his mother, or when nobody had time to listen just muttering to himself. This portrait of dreadful adolescence was, I thought, rather finely drawn (it was autobiographical).

  Moschion's grumbles were halted by a shock meeting with the ghost of his dead father. In my original concept the apparition was to have popped out of a stage trapdoor; in the amphitheatre, where this effect would be impossible, we planned to tow on various chests and altars. The spook, chillingly realised by Davos, would conceal himself there until needed. It would work, so long as Davos could avoid getting cramp.

  'If you do, don't let it show, Davos. Ghosts don't limp!'

  'Stuff you, Falco. Order someone else about. I'm a professional.'

  Being a writer-producer was hard work.

  The ghost accused the widow's new husband of having murdered her old one (himself), leaving Moschion in anguish about what to do. Obviously the rest of the play concerned Moschion's frustrated efforts to get the ghost into court as a witness. In the full-length version, this play was a strong courtroom drama, though the garrison was getting a short farce where Zeus nipped on in the last scene to clear everything up.

  'Are you sure this is a comedy?' queried Philocrates haughtily.

  'Of course!' I snapped. 'Have you no dramatic instinct, man? You can't have spooks leaping about with lurid accusations in tragedy!'

  'You don't have ghosts in tragedy at all,' Chremes confirmed. He played both the second husband and also the funny foreign doctor in a later scene where Moschion's mother went mad. The mother was Phrygia; we were all looking forward to her mad scene, despite Chremes uttering disloyal thoughts that he for one would not be able to spot any difference from normal.

  Byrria played the girl. There had to be one, though I was still slightly uncertain what to do with her (man's eternal predicament). Luckily she was used to minimal parts.

  'Can't I run mad too, Falco? I'd like to dash on raving.'

  'Don't be daft. The Virtuous Maid has to survive without a stain on her character so she can marry the hero.'

  'But he's a weed!'

  'You're learning, Byrria. Heroes always are.'

  She gave me a thoughtful look.

  Tranio and Grumio doubled up as various silly servants, plus the hero's worried friends. At Helena's insistence I had even devised a one-line part for Congrio. He seemed to have plans for expanding the speech: a typical actor already.

  I discovered that one of the stagehands had been sent to buy a kid, which was to be carried on by Tranio. It was certain to lift its tail and make a mess; this was bound to appeal to the low taste of our anticipated audience. Nobody told me, but I gained the definite impression that if things were going badly Tranio had been ordered by Chremes to cook the cute creature live on-stage. We were desperate to satisfy the raw ranks from the barracks. The kid was only one distraction. There was also to be lewd dancing by the orchestra girls at the start of the evening, and afterwards a complete circus act that Thalia and her troupe would provide.

  'It'll do!' Chremes pompously decided. This convinced all the rest of us that it would not do at all.

  I wore myself out drilling the players, then was sent away while people practised their stunts, songs and acrobatics.

  Helena was resting, alone in the tent. I flopped down alongside, holding her in the crook of one elbow while I stroked her still-bandaged arm with my other hand.

  'I love you! Let's elope and keep a winkle stall.'

  'Does that mean,' Helena demanded gently, 'things are not going well?'

  'This looks like being a disaster.'

  'I thought you were an unhappy boy.' She snuggled closer consolingly. 'Kiss?'

  I kissed her, with half my mind on it.

  'Kiss properly.'

  I kissed her again, managing three-quarters of my attention. 'I'll do this, fruit, then that's the end of my glorious stage career. We're going home straight afterwards.'

  'That's not because you're worried about me, is it?'

  'Lady, you always worry me!'

  'Marcus -'

  'It's a sensible decision which I made some time ago.' About a second after the scorpion stung her. I knew if I admitted that, Helena would rebel. 'I miss Rome.'

  'You must be thinking about your comfortable apartment on the Aventine!' Helena was being rude. My Roman apartment consisted of two rooms, a leaky roof and an unsafe balcony, six storeys above a neighbourhood that had all the social elegance of a two-day-old dead rat. 'Don't let an accident bother you,' she added less facetiously.

  I was determined to haul her back to Italy. 'We ought to sail west before the autumn.'

  Helena sighed. 'So I'll think about packing… Tonight you're going to sort out Thalia's young lovers. I won't ask how you plan to do it.'

  'Best not!' I grinned. She knew I had no plan
. Sophrona and Khaleed would just have to hope inspiration would strike me later. And now there was the additional complication of

  'So, Marcus, what about the murderer?'

  That was a different story. Tonight would be my last chance. I had to expose him, or he would never be brought to account.

  'Maybe', I reflected slowly, 'I can somehow draw him out into the open in the course of the play?'

  Helena laughed. 'I see! Undermine his confidence by affecting his emotions with the power and relevance of your drama?'

  'Don't tease! Still, the play is about a murder. It might be possible to work on him by drawing succinct parallels – '

  'Too elaborate.' Helena Justina always pulled me up sanely if I was flitting off into some rhapsody.

  'We're stuck then.'

  That was when she slipped in cunningly, 'At least you know who it is.'

  'Yes, I know.' I had thought that was my secret. She must watch me even more closely than I realised.

  'Are you going to tell me, Marcus?'

  'I bet you have your own idea.'

  Helena spoke thoughtfully: 'I can guess why he killed Heliodorus.'

  'I thought you might! Tell me?'

  'No. I have to test something first.'

  'You'll do no such thing. This man is deadly dangerous.' Resorting to desperate tactics, I tickled her in various places I knew would render her helpless. 'Give me a clue then.' As Helena squirmed, trying not to give in, I suddenly eased off. 'What did the vestal virgin say to the eunuch?'

  'I'd be willing if you were able?'

  'Where did you get that from?'

  'I just made it up, Marcus.'

  'Ah!' I was disappointed. 'I hoped it might be from that scroll you always have your nose in.'

  'Ah!' Helena said as well. She put on a light voice, avoiding particular emphasis. 'What about my scroll?'

  'Do you remember Tranio?'

  'Doing what?'

  'Being a menace for one thing!' I said. 'You know, that night soon after we joined the company in Nabataea, when he came looking for something.'