Lindsey Davis - Last Act In Palmyra

Helena, who discovered her sense of discretion whilst she was trying to handle a wildly flaring torch, found little to say about our situation. She had money. She would, if I allowed it, subsidise our journey home. I would let her do it eventually, if that was the only way to spare Helena herself discomfort. Biting back my pride would make me pretty short-tempered, so for both our sakes she refrained from asking pointedly what plans I had now. Maybe I could extricate us myself. More likely not.

Most likely, as Helena knew from experience, I had no plans at all.

This was not the worst disaster of our lives, nor my worst failure. But I was dangerously angry about it. So when a small group of camels and ox-carts came rattling down the gorge behind us, my first reaction was to stay in the middle of the gravel track, forcing them to slow and stick behind us. Then, when a voice called out offering a lift on a cart, irrational frivolity took over. I turned round, dumping my load. The first cart stopped, leaving me gazing into the dolorous eyes of an edgy-looking ox.

'Your offer's welcome, stranger! How far can you take us?'

The man grinned back, responding to the challenge. 'Bostra, perhaps?' He was not Nabataean. We were talking in Greek.

'Bostra's not on my itinerary. How about dropping us at the caravanserai here, where I can pick up my own transport?'

'Done,' he said, with an easygoing smile. His intonation had the same overlay as mine; I was now sure of it.

'You from Italy?' I asked.

'Yes.'

I accepted the lift.

Only when we were ensconced on the waggon did I notice what a raggle-taggle company had picked us up. There were about ten of them, split between three carts and a couple of moth-eaten camels. Most of the people looked white-faced and anxious. Our driver caught the question in my eyes. 'I'm Chremes, an actor-manager. My company has been ordered to depart from Petra. We saw them lift the curfew to let you out, so we're doing a quick flit before anybody changes their mind about us.'

'Might somebody insist you stay?' I asked, though I had already guessed.

'We lost a friend.' He nodded to Helena, whom he must have recognised. 'You are the couple who found him, I believe. Heliodorus, who had the unfortunate accident up on the mountaintop.'

That was the first time I heard our drowned man's name.

Immediately afterwards I heard something else: 'Bostra might be an interesting town to visit, Marcus,' suggested Helena Justina in a speculative voice.

That young lady could never resist a mystery.

Of course we did go to Bostra. Helena knew she was doing me a favour by suggesting it. Having discovered the drowned man, I too was fascinated to have met up with his companions. I wanted to know much more about them – and him. Being nosy was my livelihood.

That first evening, Chremes took us to recover our own stabled ox, the sad beast I had taken on at Gaza, together with the shaky contraption that passed for our hired vehicle. The night was really too dark now to travel on further, but both our parties were keen to put distance between ourselves and Petra. For added security and confidence we drove on in convoy, sharing our torches. We all seemed to feel that in the desert chance encounters are important.

After we set up camp I approached the actor-manager curiously: 'Are you certain the man Helena and I discovered was your friend?'

'Everything fits from your description – same build, same colouring. Same drinking habits!' he added bitterly.

'Then why didn't you come forward and claim the body?' I sprang at him.

'We were already in enough trouble!' twinkled Chremes like a conspirator.

I could understand that. But the situation intrigued me all the same.

We had all made our tents by hanging black goat-hair covers on rough wooden frames and were sitting outside these shelters by firelight. Most of the theatricals were huddled together, subdued by Heliodorus' death. Chremes came to join Helena and me, while Musa sat slightly apart in a world of his own. Hugging my knees I took my first good look at the leader of the theatre troupe.

He was, like the dead man, broadly built and full of face. More striking, however, with a strong chin and a dramatic nose that would have looked good on a republican general. Even in normal conversation he had a powerful voice with a resonance that seemed almost overdone. He delivered his sentences crisply. I did not doubt there were reasons why he had come to talk this evening. He wanted to judge Helena and me; maybe he wanted more than that from us.

'Where are you from?' Helena enquired. She could draw out information as smoothly as a pickpocket slitting a purse-thong.

'Most of the group hail from southern Italy. I'm a Tusculum man.'

'You're a long way from home!'

'I've been a long way from Tusculum for twenty years.'

I chortled. 'What's that – the old "one wife too many and I was cut out of my inheritance" excuse?'

'There was nothing there for me. Tusculum's a dead-and-alive, ungrateful, uncivilised backwater.' The world is full of people slandering their birthplaces, as if they really believe that small-town life is different elsewhere.

Helena seemed to be enjoying herself; I let her carry on. 'So how did you end up here, Chremes?'

'After half a lifetime performing on rocky stages in thunderstorms to provincial thickheads who only want to talk among themselves about that day's market, it's like a drug. I do have a wife – one I hate, who hates me back – and I've no more sense than to carry on for ever dragging a gang of tattered strutters into any city we find on our road…'

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 Goldseemed 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.'