Lindsey Davis - Last Act In Palmyra

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 on-stage. 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 – '