Lindsey Davis - Last Act In Palmyra

'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!'

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 Bostra 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.