Last Act In Palmyra Read online

  ‘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 onstage. 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.’

  Helena obviously remembered exactly what I was talking about. ‘You mean, the night you came back to the tent tipsy, brought home by Tranio, who annoyed us by hanging about and grovelling in the play box?’

  ‘Remember he seemed frantic? He said Heliodorus had borrowed something, something Tranio failed to find. I think you were lying on it, my darling.’

  ‘Yes, I wondered about that.’ She smiled. ‘Since he insisted that his lost object wasn’t a scroll, I didn’t feel I needed to mention it.’

  I thought of Grumio telling me that ridiculous story about his lost ring with the blue stone! I knew now I had been right to disbelieve the tale. You would never hope to find so small an item in a big trunk crammed with many sets of scrolls. They had both lied to me about it, but the famous gambling pledge that Tranio gave away to Heliodorus should have been obvious to me long ago.

  ‘Helena, do you realise what all this has been about?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Sometimes she irritated me. She liked to go her own way, and refused to see that I knew best.

  ‘Don’t mess about. I’m the man of the household: answer me!’ Naturally, as a good Roman male, I had fixed ideas about women’s role in society. Naturally, Helena knew I was wrong. She hooted with laughter. So much for patriarchal power.

  She relented quietly. This was a serious situation, after all. ‘I think I understand the dispute now. I had the clue all along.’

  ‘The scroll,’ I said. ‘Your bedtime read is Grumio’s inherited humour collection. His prized family asset; his talisman; his treasure.’

  Helena drew a deep breath. ‘So this is why Tranio behaves so oddly sometimes. He blames himself because he pledged it to Heliodorus.’

  ‘And this is why Heliodorus died: he refused to hand it back.’

  ‘One of the clowns killed him because of that, Marcus?’

  They must both have argued with the playwright about it. I think that’s why Grumio went to see him the day he stopped Heliodorus raping Byrria; she said she overheard them arguing about a scroll. Various people have told me that Tranio tackled the bastard as well. Grumio must have been going spare, and when Tranio realised just what he had done, he must have felt pretty agitated too.’

  ‘So what happened at Petra? One of them went up the mountain to make another attempt to persuade Heliodorus to relinquish it, actually meaning to kill him?’

  ‘Maybe not. Maybe things just went too far. I don’t know whether what happened was planned, and if so whether both clowns were in on it. At Petra they were supposed to have drunk themselves unconscious in their rented room while Heliodorus was being killed. One of them obviously didn’t. Is the other lying absolutely, or was he really made completely drunk by his roommate so that he passed out and never knew his companion had left the room? If so, and the first deliberately held back from drinking to prepare an alibi - ‘

  ‘Then that’s premeditation!’ Helena exclaimed.

  It seemed to me that if Grumio were the culprit but Tranio still regretted giving away the pledge, that could make Tranio willingly cover for him at Petra, and might explain Tranio’s feeble attempt to make Afrania lie about his own alibi at Gerasa. But Grumio had a whole crowd of people to vouch for him when Ione was killed. Had Afrania been lying to me all along, and was Tranio Ione’s killer? If so, were events at Petra the opposite way around? Did Tranio kill Heliodorus, and Grumio cover up?

  ‘This is all becoming clearer, but the motive seems extravagant.’ Helena was looking worried for other reasons. ‘Marcus, you’re a creative artist.’ She said it entirely without irony. ‘Would you be so upset by losing a batch of rather old material that you would go so far as to kill for it?’

  ‘De
pends,’ I replied slowly. ‘If I had a volatile temperament. If the material was my livelihood. If it was mine by rights. And especially if the person who now possessed it was an evil-mannered scribe who would be bound to gloat about using my precious material… We’ll have to test the theory.’

  ‘There’s not going to be much opportunity.’

  Suddenly I reached the end of my tolerance. ‘Ah cobnuts, sweetheart! It’s my debut tonight; I don’t even want to think about this any more. Everything will be all right.’

  Everything. My ghost play; Sophrona; finding the killer; everything. Sometimes, even without grounds for optimism, I just knew.

  Helena was in a more sober mood. ‘Don’t joke about it. It’s too grave a subject. You and I never make light of death.’

  ‘Or life,’ I said.

  I had rolled to pin her beneath me, carefully keeping her bandaged arm free of my weight. I held her face between my hands while I studied it. Thinner and quieter since her illness, but still full of searching intelligence. Strong, quizzical eyebrows; fine bones; adorable mouth; eyes so dark brown and solemn they were making me ferment. I had always loved her being serious. I loved the madcap thought that I had made a serious woman care for me. And I loved that irresistible glint of laughter, so rarely shared with others, whenever Helena’s eyes met mine privately.

  ‘Oh my love. I’m so glad you’ve come back to me. I had thought I was losing you - ‘

  ‘I was here.’ Her fingers traced the line of my cheek, while I turned my head to brush the soft skin of her wrist with my lips. ‘I knew all that you were doing for me.’

  Now that I could bear to think about what had happened with the scorpion, I remembered how one night when she had been tossing with fever she had suddenly exclaimed in a clear voice, ‘Oh Marcus?, as if I had entered a room and rescued her from some bad dream. Straight after that she had slept more quietly. When I told her about it now, she was unable to recollect the dream, but she smiled. She was beautiful when she smiled that way, looking up at me.

  ‘I love you,’ Helena whispered suddenly. There was a special note in her voice. The moment when the mood between us altered had been imperceptible. We knew each other so well it took only the faintest change of tone, a slightly increased tension in our bodies lying together. Now, without drama or prevarication, we were both wanting to make love.