Lindsey Davis - Last Act In Palmyra

'Hmm. Is that what you thought when you nobbled me? I was remembering the night we had first managed to recognise we wanted each other. 'I've no objection to being thought intriguing, but I did hope that falling into bed with me was more than a desperate act!'

'Afraid not.' Helena knew how to aggravate me if I pushed my luck. 'I told myself, Once, just to know what passion feel like… The trouble was, once led straight to once again!'

'So long as you never start feeling it's been once too often… I held out my arms to her. 'I haven't kissed you this morning,'

'No you haven't!' exclaimed Helena in a changed tone, as if being kissed by me was an interesting proposition. I made sure I kissed her in a way that would re-enforce that view.

After a while she interrupted me: 'You can look through what I've done to The Birds if you like, and see if you approve.' Helena was a tactful scribe.

'Your revising is good enough for me.' I preferred to embark on extra kissing.

'Well my work may be wasted. There's a big question marl hanging over whether it can be performed.'

'Why's that?'

Helena sighed. 'Our orchestra has gone on strike.'

'Hey, hey! Things must be bad if they have to send the scribbler to sort us!'

My arrival amidst the orchestra and stagehands caused a surge of mocking applause. They lived in an enclave at one end of our camp. Fifteen or twenty musicians, scene-shifters and their hangers-on were sitting about looking militant while they waited for people in the main company to notice their complaint. Babies toddled about with sticky faces. A couple of dogs scratched their fleas. The angry atmosphere was making my own skin prickle uneasily.

'What's up?' I tried playing the simple, friendly type.

'Whatever you've been told.'

'I've been told nothing. I've been drunk in my tent. Even Helena has stopped talking to me.'

Still pretending not to notice the ominous tension, I squatted in the circle and grinned at them like a harmless sightseer. They glared back while I surveyed who was here.

Our orchestra consisted of Afrania the flautist, whose instrument was the single-piped tibia; another girl who played panpipes; a gnarled, hook-nosed old chap whom I had seen clashing a pair of small hand-cymbals with an incongruous delicacy; and a pale young man who plucked the lyre when he felt like it. They were led by a tall, thin, balding character who sometimes boomed away on a big double wind instrument that had one pipe turned up at the end, whilst he beat time for the others on a foot clacker. This was a large group, compared with some theatre-company ensembles, but allowed for the fact that the participants also danced, sold trays of limp sweetmeats, and offered entertainment afterwards to members of the audience.

Attached to them were the hard-labour boys, a set of small, bandy-legged stagehands whose wives were all hefty boot-faced wenches you wouldn't push in front of in a baker's queue. In contrast to the musicians, whose origins were varied and whose quarters had an artistic abandon, the scenery-movers were a closely related group, like bargees or tinkers. They lived in spotless tidiness; they had all been born to the roving life. Whenever we arrived at a new venue, they were the first to organise themselves. Their tents were lined up in straight rows with elaborate sanitary arrangements at one end, and they shared a huge iron broth cauldron that was stirred by a strict rota of cooks. I could see the cauldron now, breathing out coils of gravy steam that reminded me of my stomach's queasiness.

'Do I detect an atmosphere?'

'Where've you been, Falco?' The hook-nosed cymbalist sounded weary as he threw a stone at a dog. I felt lucky he chose the dog.

'I told you: drunk in bed.'

'Oh, you took to the life of a playwright easily!'

'If you wrote for this company you'd be drunk too.'

'Or dead in a cistern!' scoffed a voice from the back.

'Or dead,' I agreed quietly. 'I do worry about that sometimes. Maybe whoever had it in for Heliodorus dislikes all playwrights, and I'm next.' I was carefully not mentioning Ione yet, though she must matter more here than the drowned scribe.

'Don't worry,' sneered the girl who played the panpipes. 'You're not that good!'

'Hah! How would you know? Even the actors never read the script, so I'm damned sure you musicians don't! But surely you're not saying Heliodorus was a decent writer?'

'He was trash!' exclaimed Afrania. 'Plancina's just trying to annoy you.'

'Oh, for a moment I thought I was hearing that Heliodorus was better than everyone tells me – though aren't we all?' I tried to look like a wounded writer. This was not easy since naturally I knew my own work was of fine quality – if anyone with any true critical sense ever did read it.

'Not you, Falco!' laughed the panpipe girl, the brash piece in a brief saffron tunic whom Afrania had called Plancina.

'Well thanks. I needed reassurance… So what's the black mood in this part of the camp all about?'

'Get lost. We're not talking to management,'

'I'm not one of them. I'm not even a performer. I'm just a freelance scribe who happened upon this group by accident; one who's starting to wish he'd given Chremes a wide berth.' The murmur of discontent that ran around warned me I had best take care or else instead of persuading the group back to work I would end up leading their walk-out. That would be just my style: from peacemaker to chief rebel in about five minutes. Smart work, Falco.

'It's no secret,' said one of the stagehands, a particular misery. 'We had a big row with Chremes last night, and we're not backing down.'

'Well you don't have to tell me. I didn't mean to pry into your business.'

Even with a hangover that made my head feel like the spot on a fortress gate that's just been hit by a thirty-foot battering-ram, my professional grit had stayed intact: as soon as I said they need not spill the tale, they all wanted to tell me everything.

I had guessed right: Ione's death was at the heart of their discontent. They had finally noticed there was a maniac in our midst. He could murder dramatic writers with impunity, but now that he had turned his attention to the musicians they were wondering which of them would be picked off next.

'It's reasonable to feel alarmed,' I sympathised. 'But what was last night's row with Chremes about?'

'We arc not staying on,' said the cymbalist. 'We want to be given our money for the season – '

'Hang on, the rest of us were paid our share of the takings last night. Are your contract terms very different?'

'Too damn right! Chremes knows actors and scribes are pushed to find employment. You won't leave him until you're given a firm shove. But musicians and lifters can always find work so he gives us a fraction, then keeps us waiting for the rest until the tour packs up.'

'And now he won't release your residue?'

'Fast, Falco! Not if we leave early. It's in the trunk under his bed, and he says it's staying there. So now we're saying to him, he can stick The Birds in his aviary and tweet all the way from here to Antiochia. If we've got to stay around, he won't be able to take on replacements because we'll warn them off. But we're not going to work. He'll have no music and no scenery. These Greek towns will laugh him off the stage.'

'The Birds! That was about the final straw,' grumbled the youthful lyre-player, Ribes. He was no Apollo. He could neither play well nor strike awe with his majestic beauty. In fact he looked as appetising as yesterday's ground-millet polenta. 'Wanting us to chirp like bloody sparrows.'

'I can see that would be a liberty to a professional who can tell his Lydian modes from his Dorians!'

'One more crack from you, Falco, and you'll be picked with a plectrum in a place you won't like!'