Last Act In Palmyra

by Lindsey Davis

  Chremes talked almost too readily. I wondered how much was a pose. ‘When did you actually leave Italy?’ Helena asked.

  ‘The first time, twenty years ago. Five years back we came east again with Nero’s travelling sideshow, his famous Greek Tour. When he tired of receiving laurel chaplets from bribed judges and packed up for home, we kept on drifting until we floated into Antiochia. The real Greeks didn’t want to see what the Romans have done to their stage heritage, but so-called Hellenic cities here, which haven’t been Greek since Alexander, think we’re presenting them with masterpiece theatre. We found we could scrape a living in Syria. They are drama-mad. Then I wondered what Nabataea was like.

  Worked our way south - and now thanks to The Brother we’re working north again.’

  ‘I’m not with you?’

  ‘Our offer of culture was about as welcome in Petra as a performance of The Trojan Women to a family of baboons.’

  ‘So you were already departing even before Heliodorus was drowned?’

  ‘Seen off by The Brother. Happens often in our profession. Sometimes we get driven out of town for no reason. At least at Petra they produced a passable excuse.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘We were planning a performance in their theatre - though the gods know the place was primitive. Aeschylus would have taken one glance and gone on strike. But we were going to give them The Pot of Gold-seemed appropriate, given that everyone there has plenty. Congrio, our poster-writer, had chalked up details all round the city. Then we were solemnly informed that the theatre is only used ceremonially, for funeral rites. The implication was that if we desecrated their stage, the funeral rites might be our own… A strange people,’ Chremes stated.

  This sort of comment normally produces a silence. Adverse remarks about foreigners make people remember their own folk - temporarily convincing themselves that those they have left at home are sensible and sane. Nostalgia seeped into our circle gloomily.

  ‘If you were all about to leave Petra,’ Helena asked thoughtfully, ‘why had Heliodorus gone for a walk?’

  ‘Why? Because he was a constant menace!’ Chremes exclaimed. ‘Trust him to lose himself when we were set to leave.’

  ‘I still think you should have identified him formally,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh it will be him,’ Chremes insisted airily. ‘He was the type to inflict himself on an accident, and at the worst possible moment. Just like him to die somewhere sacrilegious and get us all locked in an underground dungeon. Having dozy officials argue for years about who caused his death would have struck Heliodorus as a fine joke!’

  ‘A comedian?’

  ‘He thought so.’ Chremes caught Helena smiling, so added instructively, ‘Someone else had to write the jokes for him.’

  ‘Not creative?’

  ‘If I told you exactly what I thought of Heliodorus it would sound unkind. So let’s confine it to, he was a shabby, shambling dissolute with no sense of language, tact or timing.’

  ‘You’re a measured critic!’ she answered solemnly.

  ‘I try to be fair!’

  ‘So he won’t be missed?’ I enquired quietly.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be missed! He was employed to do a certain job, which nobody else can undertake —’

  ‘Ah, you mean no one else wants it?’ I was speaking from experience in my own career.

  ‘What was it?’ Helena asked, with the light, careless inflection of a girl whose close companion needs to earn a crust.

  ‘He was our jobbing playwright.’

  Even Helena sounded surprised by that. ‘The man we found drowned had written plays?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ Chremes was shocked. ‘We are a respectable troupe with a fine reputation; we only perform the established repertoire! Heliodorus adapted plays.’

  ‘What did that entail?’ Helena Justina always asked the direct question. ‘Translations from Greek to Latin?’

  ‘Anything and everything. Not full translations, but pepping up turgid ones so we could bear to speak the lines. Modifying the story if the cast did not suit our company. Adding better characters to liven up proceedings. He was supposed to add jokes, though as I told you, Heliodorus wouldn’t recognise a funny line if it jumped up and poked him in the eye. We mainly put on New Comedy. It has two painful disadvantages: it’s no longer new, and quite frankly, it’s not comic’

  Helena Justina was a shrewd, educated girl, and sensitive to atmosphere. She certainly knew what she was risking when she asked, ‘What will you do about replacing Heliodorus now?’

  At once Chremes grinned at me. ‘Want a job?’ He had an evil streak.

  ‘What are the qualifications needed?’

  ‘Able to read and write.’

  I smiled diffidently, like a man who is too polite to say no to a friend. People never take the hint.

  ‘Marcus can do that,’ Helena put in. ‘He does need a job.’

  Some girls would be happy just to sit under the stars in the desert with the love of their heart, without trying to hire him out to any passing entrepreneur.

  ‘What’s your trade?’ Chremes asked, perhaps warily.

  ‘In Rome I am an informer.’ It was best to be frank, but I knew better than to mention my imperial sponsorship.

  ‘Oh! What are the qualifications for that?’

  ‘Able to duck and dive.’

  ‘Why Petra?’

  ‘I came east to look for a missing person. Just a musician. For some unaccountable reason The Brother decided I must be a spy.’

  ‘Oh don’t worry about that!’ Chremes reassured me heartily, in our profession it happens all the time.’ Probably when it suited them, it could be true. Actors went everywhere. According to their reputation in Rome, they were not fussy who they spoke to when they got there and they often sold much more than tasteful Athenian hexameters. ‘So, young Marcus, being whipped out of the mountain sanctuary leaves you a quadrans short of a denarius?’

  it does, but don’t put me on the payroll before I’ve even heard your offer and its terms!’

  ‘Marcus can do it,’ Helena interrupted. I like my girlfriends to have faith in me - though not that much faith. ‘He writes poetry in his spare time,’ she revealed, without bothering to ask whether I wanted my private hobbies publicly exposed.

  ‘The very man!’

  I stood my ground, temporarily. ‘Sorry, I’m just a scribbler of lousy satires and elegies. Besides, I hate Greek plays.’

  ‘Don’t we all? There’s nothing to it,’ Chremes assured me.

  ‘You’ll love it!’ gurgled Helena.

  The actor-manager patted my arm. ‘Listen, Falco, if Heliodorus could do this job, anybody can!’ Just the sort of career proposal I look for. It was too late for resistance, however. Chremes raised a fist in greeting and cried, ‘Welcome to the company!’

  I made one last attempt to extricate myself from this lunatic jape. ‘I still have to look for my missing person. I doubt if you’re going where I need to be - ‘

  ‘We are going’, pronounced Chremes elaborately, ‘where the desert-dwelling populace barely recognise their sophisticated Greek heritage and are overdue for some permanent theatre-building, but where the founders of their paltry Hellenic cities have at least provided them with some auditoria that purveyors of the dramatic arts are allowed to use. We are going, my fine young informer - ‘

  I knew it already. I broke in on the long-windedness: ‘You are going to the Decapolis!’

  Leaning against my knee and gazing up at the mysterious desert sky, Helena smiled contentedly. ‘That’s convenient, Chremes. Marcus and I already had plans to travel to the same area!’

  Chapter XIII

  We were going to Bostra first, however, for we had to pick up the rest of the theatre group. That meant we were travelling right past the region where I wanted to search for Sophrona, well east of the Decapolis towns. But I was used to making journeys backwards. I never expected a logical life.

  Trekking to Bostr
a gave me a clear idea of what I would say to Vespasian about this region if I ever reached home safely and had the chance. This was still Nabataea - still, therefore, outside the Empire, if Helena and I really wanted to frighten ourselves by thinking about how remote our location was. In fact, even on the well-maintained Nabataean roads, which had once belonged to the great Persian Empire, the trip turned out to be a dreary haul and took a good ten days. Northern Nabataea ran up in a long finger beside the Decapolis, making geographical neatness yet another reason for Rome to consider taking over this territory. A straight frontier down from Syria would look much better organised on a map.

  We were heading into a highly fertile region; a potential grain basket for the Empire. Given that Rome was keen to gain control of the incense trade, I reckoned it would make good sense to shift the trade routes eastwards to this northern capital, ignoring the Petrans’ insistence that all caravans turn aside and stop there. Running the country from Bostra instead would provide a more pleasant centre of government, one with a kinder climate and closer links with civilisation. The people of Bostra would be amenable to such a change since it would enhance their current back-row status. And the uppity Petrans would be put in their place.

  This wonderful theory of mine had nothing to do with the fact that the Petrans had bounced me out of town. I happen to believe that when you take over any new business, your first task should be to change the personnel so you can run things your own way, and with loyal staff.

  The theory might never be implemented in my lifetime, but devising it gave me something to think about when I wanted to stop reading comedies.

  Leaving behind us the harsh mountain barrier that enclosed Petra, we had first climbed through the sparse local settlements, then reached more level ground. The desert rolled easily to the horizon on all sides. Everyone told us it was not real desert, compared to the wilderness of Arabia Felix -ironically named - or the terrible wastes beyond the River Euphrates, but it seemed barren and lonely enough for me. We felt we were crossing an old, old land. A land over which varied peoples had rolled like tides for centuries, and would continue to do so in war or peaceful settlement as long as time lasted. A land in which our present journeying was insignificant. It was impossible to tell whether the little crooked cairns of stones beside the road that marked the graves of nomads had been set up last week or several thousand years ago.

  Gradually the rocky features diminished; boulders gave way to stones; the stones, which had spread the landscape like acres of roughly chopped nuts on a cooking board, turned into scatters, then were lost altogether in rich, dark, arable soil supporting wheat fields, vineyards and orchards. The Nabataeans conserved their meagre rainfall with a system of shallow terracing on each side of the wadis: wide shelves of ground were held back by low walls some forty or fifty feet apart, over which any surplus water ran off to the terrace below. It seemed successful. They grew wheat as well as barley. They had olives and grapes for oil and wine. Their eating fruit consisted of a lush mixture of figs, dates and pomegranates, whilst their most popular nuts - amongst a handsome variety - were almonds.

  The whole atmosphere was different now. Instead of long nomad tents, hump-backed as caterpillars, we saw increasingly pretty houses, each set within its garden and smallholding. Instead of free-ranging ibex and rock-rabbits, there were tethered donkeys and goats.

  Once we hit Bostra we were supposed to be meeting up with the remainder of Chremes’ company. The group Helena and I had met in Petra were the chief members of the troupe, mainly actors. Various hangers-on, with most of their stage equipment, had been left behind in the north, which did seem friendly, in case the rest found a hostile welcome in the mountains. As far as the murder was concerned, I could virtually ignore them. It was on the first group that I needed to concentrate.

  Quite early in the trip I had asked Chremes, ‘Why did Heliodorus really go for that walk?’ The scenario was still bothering me.

  ‘It was like him to wander off. They all do it - minds of their own.’

  ‘Was it because he wanted a drink, quietly, on his own?’

  ‘Doubt it.’ Chremes shrugged. He showed a distinct lack of interest in this death.

  ‘Someone went with him anyway. Who was it?’ A long shot, since I was asking the name of the killer.

  ‘Nobody knows.’

  ‘Everyone accounted for?’ Needless to say, he nodded. I would check that later for myself. ‘Someone else must have fancied a tipple though?’ I pressed.

  ‘They’d be out of luck then. Heliodorus never reckoned to share his jar.’

  ‘Might the companion have had his own jar - or goatskin -that Heliodorus had his eye on?’

  ‘Oh yes! That makes sense.’

  Maybe the playwright had had an acquaintance nobody else knew about. ‘Would Heliodorus have made friends with anybody in Petra, anybody outside your group?’

  ‘I doubt that.’ Chremes seemed fairly definite. ‘The locals were reserved, and we don’t mix much with merchants - or anyone else. We’re a close-knit family; we find enough squabbles among ourselves without looking outside for more trouble. Besides, we hadn’t been in the city long enough to make contacts.’

  ‘I heard him going up the mountain. I felt he knew the person, he was with.’ Chremes obviously realised where my questions were heading. ‘That’s right: what you say means he was killed by somebody from your group.’

  That was when Chremes asked me directly to keep my eyes and ears open. He did not exactly commission me; that, with a fee at the end of it, would have been too much to hope for. But despite his initial reluctance to involve himself, if he was harbouring a killer he wanted to know who it was. People like to feel free to insult their companions or let them pay all of the wine bill without having to worry that it could annoy the kind of man who shoves his travelling companions face down in cold water until they stop breathing.

  ‘Tell me about Heliodorus, Chremes. Did anyone in particular dislike him?’ It had seemed a simple question.

  ‘Hah! Everyone did!’ scoffed Chremes.

  That was a good start. The force with which he said it convinced me that every one of the group from Petra must be a suspect for killing the playwright. On the journey to Bostra, therefore, Helena and I had to think about all of them.

  Chapter XIV

  Bostra was a black basalt city built in this blackly ploughed land. It flourished. It had commerce, but it generated much of its own prosperity. There was a fine town gate in distinctly Nabataean architecture, and the King owned a second palace here. To Romans it was alien in flavour - yet it was the kind of city we understood. Irascible donkey-drovers cursed us as we tried to decide where we were going. Shopkeepers looked out from ordinary lock-ups with calculating eyes, shouting at us to come in and see their merchandise. When we arrived, near evening, we were greeted by the familiar scent of woodsmoke from baths and ovens. The tempting odours from hot-food stalls were spicier, but the reek of the leather tannery was as disgusting as any at home, and the stuttering lamp oil in the slums smelled just as rancid as it does all over the Aventine.

  At first we were unable to find the rest of the company. They were not at the caravanserai where they had been left. Chremes seemed reluctant to make enquiries openly, from which Helena and I gathered it was likely there had been trouble in his absence. Various members of our group set off to look for their colleagues in the city while we guarded the waggons and luggage. We set up our tent with Musa’s silent help. We ate supper, then sat down to wait for the return of the others. It was our first chance to talk over our findings so far.

  During the journey we had managed to survey individual members of the group by judiciously offering lifts on our waggon. Then, when Helena grew weary of my efforts at controlling our temperamental ox, she hopped off and invited herself into other transport. We had now made contact with most of them, though whether we had also made friends was less certain.

  We. were considering everyone for possible motive
s -females too.

  ‘A man did it,’ I had explained cautiously to Helena. ‘We heard him on the mountain. But you don’t have to be cynical to know that a woman may have provided his reason.’

  ‘Or bought the drink and devised the plan,’ Helena agreed, as if she herself regularly did such things. ‘What sort of motive do you think we are looking for?’

  ‘I don’t believe it can be money. No one here has enough of it. That leaves us with the old excuses - envy or sexual jealousy.’

  ‘So we have to ask people what they thought of the playwright? Marcus, won’t they wonder why we keep enquiring?’

  ‘You’re a woman; you can be plain nosy. I shall tell them the killer must be one of our party and I’m worried about protecting you.’

  ‘Load of mule-dung!’ scoffed my elegant lady with one of the pungent phrases she had picked up from me.

  I had already seen what the theatre troupe was like. We were dealing with a fickle, feckless crowd here. We would never pin down any of them unless we set about it logically.

  It had taken most of the trip just to work out who everyone was. Now we sat on a rug outside our tent. Musa was with us, though as usual he squatted slightly apart, not saying a word but calmly listening. There was no reason to hide our discussion from him so we talked in Greek.

  ‘Right, let’s survey the tattered cast list. They all look like stock characters, but I’m betting that not one of them is what they seem…’

  The list had to be headed by Chremes. Encouraging us to investigate might exonerate him as a suspect - or it might mean he was cunning. I ran through what we knew about him: ‘Chremes runs the company. He recruits members, chooses the repertoire, negotiates fees, keeps the cash box under his bed when there’s anything in it worth guarding. His sole interest is in seeing that things run smoothly. It would take a really serious grievance to make him jeopardise the company’s future. He realised that a corpse in Petra could land them all in jail, and his priority was to get them away. But we know he despised Heliodorus. Do we know why?’