Lindsey Davis - Last Act In Palmyra

Palmyra: the desert. Hotter than ever, at night.

SYNOPSIS: Falco, a playwright, not in the mood to play the hired trickster, finds that as usual he has set everything to rights…

Something told me that no one was ever going to ask me what happened about Moschion and his ghost.

Musa and I emerged from the arena badly shaken. We had seen Grumio collapse in shock and hysteria. As soon as the cobra retreated by stages from his vicinity, we crept forward cautiously and dragged the clown to the gates. Behind us the crowd was in uproar. Soon the python was maliciously destroying props while the cobra watched with a menacing attitude.

Grumio was not dead, but undoubtedly he would be. Thalia came over to look at him, then caught my eye and shook her head.

'He'll be gone before dawn.'

'Thalia, should somebody catch your snakes?'

'I don't suggest anyone else tries!'

She was brought a long, pronged implement and ventured into the arena with the bravest of her people. Soon the cobra had been pinned down and reinstalled in his jar, while Zeno rather smugly returned to his basket of his own accord, as if none of the chaos should be blamed on him.

I stared at Musa. Clearly he had brought the python to the arena, ready for Thalia's act after the play. Had it been his idea to take the basket on-stage as a dangerous prop? And had he also known that Pharaoh was in the ceramic jar? If I asked him he would probably tell me, in his straight way. I preferred not to know. There was little difference between what had happened today and subjecting Grumio to the delays of a trial and almost certain condemnation ad bestias.

A group of soldiers pulled themselves together. They took charge of Grumio, then, since the commander had told them to arrest all possible culprits, they arrested Tranio too. He went along with a shrug. There was hardly a case to answer. Tranio had behaved unbelievably, but there was no law in the

Twelve Tables against sheer stupidity. He had given away the precious scroll of stories, failed to retrieve it, then allowed Grumio to carry on undetected long after he himself must have known the truth. But if he really thought that his own original mistake equated with Grumio's crimes, he needed a course in ethics.

Later, while we were waiting for the convulsions and paralysis to finish Grumio, Tranio would admit what he knew: that Grumio, acting alone, had lured Heliodorus up the mountain at Petra, making sure no one else knew he had gone there; that Grumio had been walking closest to Musa when he was pushed into the reservoir at Bostra; that Grumio had actually laughed with his tentmate about various attempts to disable me – letting me fall off a ladder, the knife-throwing incident, and even threatening to push me into the underground water system at Gadara.

When Helena and I finally left Palmyra, Tranio would remain in custody, though much later I heard that he had been released. I never knew what happened to him afterwards. It was Congrio who was to become the famous Roman clown. We would attend many of his performances despite those harsh critics at me Theatre of Balbus who dared to suggest that the great Congrio's stories were rather antique, and that somebody should find him a more modern scroll of jokes.

Life would have to alter for several of our companions. When Musa and I first left the arena, Philocrates, in great pain and covered in gore from a glorious nosebleed, had been sitting on the ground waiting for a bone-setter. He looked as if he had a fractured collarbone. His nose, and probably one of his cheekbones, had been broken in his fall. He would never again play the handsome juvenile. I tried to encourage him: 'Never mind, Philocrates. Some women adore a man who has a lived-in face.' You have to be kind.

Once she had ruled out any hope for Grumio, Thalia came to help mop up the drips of blood on mis casualty; I swear I heard her trying to negotiate to buy Philocrates' comic mule. The creature would be knocking people over regularly in Nero's Circus when Thalia returned home.

I myself was temporarily in trouble. While Musa and I were hanging on to each other getting our breath back, a familiar voice stormed angrily: 'Didius Falco, if you really want to kill yourself, why not just get run over by a dung-cart like everybody else? Why do you have to attempt your destruction in front of two thousand strangers? And why do I have to be made to watch?'

Magic. I was never so happy as when Helena was berating me. It took my mind off everything else.

'May as well sell tickets for the fight, and help you pay for my funeral -'

She growled, dragging the ghost's costume up and over my head to give me air. But it was a gentle hand that wiped my perspiring brow with her own white stole.

Then we were rushed by the Habib family. They had burst from their seats to tell us what a wonderful evening we had invited them to share – and to stare hard at Helena's lanky chaperone. I left the next part to the women. Helena and Thalia must have planned it in advance, and while Helena was taking her up into the tribunal, Sophrona must have been instructed to go along with it.

Helena hugged the girl, then cried to the Habib family gratefully, 'Oh thank you for looking after her – I've been searching all over for the naughty thing! But now she's found and I can take her back to Rome with me to her proper life. I expect you realised she was from a good family. Such a talented musician, but wicked to run away to be on the stage, of course. Still, what can you expect. She plays the instrument of emperors…'

I was choking quietly.

The Habib parents had weighed up the quality of Helena's jewels, some of which she must have been buying quietly from Nabataean caravans and Decapolis markets while my back was turned. They had seen the commanding officer treating her with extreme respect, since he knew that Vespasian himself wanted her whereabouts reported on. Now Khaleed put on a beseeching look. His father was salivating over their apparent good luck. Sophrona herself, like most girls, found she could easily slip into the appearance of being better than she was.

Khaleed's mother suggested that if the girl had to leave Syria, maybe the young couple could be married first. Helena then proposed that Khaleed should spend some time in Rome improving himself among the nobility…

'Isn't that nice?' uttered Thalia, with no apparent trace of irony. Nobody but me seemed to entertain any notion that once in Rome the forceful Thalia would persuade Sophrona that her best interests lay not in settling down, but in her public career as an organist.

Discussion was avoided because of a rumpus in the amphitheatre. Denied a full programme, the angry soldiers had started to tear up benches from the ramps.

'Jupiter! Better stop this! How can we distract them?'

'Easy.' Thalia grabbed hold of the young lady. 'Now you're nicely sorted out, Sophrona, you can do something in return. Buck up! I didn't bring it all the way from Rome just to let mosquitoes breed in the water tank…'

She signalled to her staff. With a speed that astonished us they lined up around a large low carriage. Calling some of Chremes' stagehands to help them, they wheeled it to the gate, counted three, then ran out across the open space. The audience stilled, and quickly resumed what was left of their seats. The shrouds dropped from the looming item. It was a hydraulus.

When levered off its carriage, the water organ stood over twelve feet high. The upper portion looked like a gigantic set of syrinx pipes, made partly of bronze, partly of reed. The lower part was formed from an ornamental chest to which bellows were attached. One of Thalia's men was pouring water carefully into a chamber. Another was attaching a footboard, a huge lever, and a keyboard.