'Have you heard of gold and frankincense? Compared with this they're as cheap as cushion dust. Falco, this potion contains thirty-three ingredients, each one expensive enough to bankrupt Croesus. It's an antidote for everything from snakebites to splitting fingernails.'

'Sounds good,' I conceded.

'It had better be,' growled Thalia, uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the lid with relish, as if it were a potent aphrodisiac. 'I'll spread it all over your lady first - then I'll tell you what you owe me.'

I declared that if mithridatium would help Helena, Thalia could smooth on the stuff an inch thick with a mortar trowel.

'Listen to it!' marvelled Thalia confidentially to her patient. 'Isn't he ridiculous - and don't you just love his lies!'

Helena, who had always found that her spirits rose with any chance, of mocking me, was already chortling healthily.

When we drove on towards Palmyra I had Thalia alongside like a spectacular outrider, galloping away in wild loops from time to time to exercise the racing camel. Jason enjoyed a more leisurely journey in a basket in the back of my cart. The Syrian heat had proved almost too much for him. He lay virtually inert, and whenever we could spare any water he had to be bathed.

'My python's not the only reptile in your group,' Thalia muttered furtively. 'I see you've got that know-all comic Tranio!'

'Do you know him?'

'I've met him. Entertaining is a small world when you've been doing it as long as me, and in some funny places too. Tranio used to appear at the Vatican Circus. Quite witty, but thinks far too much of himself.'

'He does a good tug of war. Know his partner?'

'The one with the hair like a pie dish and the sneaky eyes?'

'Grumio.'

'Never seen him before. But that's not true of of everybody here.' everybody here.'

'Why, who else do you know?'

'Not saying,' grinned Thalia. 'It's been a few years. Let's wait and see if I'm recognised.'

I was struck by an intriguing possibility.

Thalia's thrilling hints were still engaging Helena and me when our long ride reached its end. We had been driving at night, but dawn had now broken. With the stars long gone and the sun strengthening, our party was weary and longing to break the journey. The road had grown more winding, twisting upwards through more hilly country. The caravan trail finally emerged on to a level plain. We must now be at midpoint between the fertile coast far away on the Mediterranean and the even more remote reaches of the River Euphrates.

Low ranges of mountains ran to the north and behind us, serrated by long dry wadis. Ahead, disappearing into infinity, stretched flat tawny desert covered with rocky scree. To our left, in a stony valley, stood square towers that we later learned were multiple tombs for wealthy families. These kept their lonely vigil beside an ancient track overlooked by the sheltering hills. On the bare slopes, a shepherd on a donkey was herding a flock of black-faced sheep. Closer to, we began to perceive a shimmer of green. We sensed expectation among our nomad guides. I called to Helena. As we approached, the effect was magical. The haze rapidly acquired solidity. The moisture that rose off the saltpans and lakes quickly resolved into fields surrounding large swathes of date-palms and olive and pomegranate trees.

At the heart of the huge oasis, beside an energetic spring with supposedly therapeutic waters (like Thalia's dance, not for the faint-hearted), stood the famous old nomad village of Tadmor, once a mere camp in the wilderness, but now the fast-growing Romanised city of Palmyra.

Chapter LXII.

If I say that in Palmyra the revenue officers take social precedence over members of the local government a.s.sembly, you will see their preoccupations. A welcoming city, in fact one that welcomed its visitors with a tariff of taxes on goods entering its territory, continued the happy greeting by relieving them of some hefty rates for watering their caravans, and completed the process by exacting a little something for the treasury for every camel, donkey, cart, container or slave that they wished to take back out of the city when they left. What with the salt tax and the prost.i.tution tax, staying there was clear-cut too: the very staples of life were n.o.bbled.

The Emperor Vespasian, a tax collector's grandson, was running Palmyra with a light hand. Vespasian liked to squeeze the fiscal sponge, but his treasury officials had grasped that they had little to teach the efficient Palmyrenes. Nowhere I had ever visited was so concerned to strip all comers of their spending money, or so adept at doing it.

Even so, long-distance traders were coming here with caravans the size of armies. Palmyra sat between Parthia in the east and Rome in the west, a semi-independent buffer zone that existed to enable commerce. Tariffs aside, the atmosphere was was a pleasant one. a pleasant one.

Historically Greek and governed now by Rome, it was packed with Aramaic and Arabian tribesmen who had only recently been nomads, yet it still remembered periods of Parthian rule and looked to the East for much of its character. The result was a mixed culture unlike anywhere else. Their public inscriptions were carved in Greek and a strange script of their own. There were a few ma.s.sive limestone buildings, constructed on Syrian plans with Roman money by Greek craftsmen. Around these monuments were spread quite large suburbs of blank-walled mud-brick houses through which meandered narrow dirt lanes. The oasis still had the air of a ma.s.sive native village, but with signs that sudden grandiosity was liable to break out all over the place.

For one thing, the people were unashamedly wealthy and enjoyed showing off. Nothing had prepared us for the brightness of the linens and silks with which every Palmyrene of any standing was adorned. The rich weaves of their cloth were unlike any produced further west. They liked stripes, but never in plain bands of colour. Their materials were astonishing feasts of elaborate brocaded patterns, studded with flowers or other dainty emblems. And the threads used for these intricate weaves were dyed in spectacular varieties of purples, blues, greens and reds. The colours were deep and warm. The hues in the streets were a dramatic contrast to any public scene in Rome, which would be a monochrome of scarcely modulated grades of white, broken only by the vibrant purple bands that designate high status.

The men here would have looked effeminate in Rome. It took some getting used to. They all wore tunics laden with splendidly embroidered braid; beneath were swathed Persian trousers, again richly hemmed. Most men wore straight-sided, flat-topped hats. Female dress consisted of conventional long gowns, covered by cloaks caught on the left shoulder by a heavy brooch. Veils were routinely worn by all women except slaves and prost.i.tutes. The veil, ostensibly protecting the ownership of a strict father or husband, fell from a tiara or turban, and was then left loose as a frame to the face, allowing the owner to manipulate its folds attractively with one graceful hand. What could be glimpsed behind the pretence of modesty were dark curls, chubby chins, huge eyes and strong-willed mouths. The women were broad in the beam and all wore as many necklaces, bangles, rings and hair jewels as they could cram on; no wench with less than six neck-chains could be considered worth talking to. Getting them to talk might be difficult, however, due to the looming presence of jealous menfolk and the fact they all went about with dogged chaperones.

Philocrates did very quickly manage to make the acquaintance of a creature in lavish pleats of azure silk, crushed under eight or nine gold necklaces from which dangled an array of pendants set with pearls and polished gla.s.s. Her arms were virtually armoured with metal bracelets. We watched her peep at him entrancingly from behind her veil, only one lovely eye revealing itself. Maybe she was winking. Shortly afterwards we were watching him him being chased down the street by her relatives. being chased down the street by her relatives.

There was supposed to be a theatre, so while Chremes tried to find it and find out whether rude Roman vagabonds like us could appear there, I set off to discover the missing girl, Sophrona. I had asked Thalia whether she wanted to come with me.

'No. You go and make a fool of yourself first, then we'll put our heads together once you know what the situation is.'

'That's good. I had thought that with you in Syria I was going to lose my fee.'

'You can't lose what you never earned, Falco. The fee is for getting her back to Rome. Don't waste your ink on an invoice until she's off the boat at Ostia!'

'Trust me.' I smiled.

Helena laughed. I touched her forehead, which at long last was cooler. She was feeling much better. I could tell that when she gaily explained to Thalia, 'It's sweet really. Poor Marcus, he likes to convince himself he has a way with girls.'

I leered like a man who should never be allowed out alone; then, feeling fonder than ever of Helena, I set off into town.

I seemed to remember hearing that this Sophrona was i i beauteous bit of stuff. beauteous bit of stuff.

Chapter LXIII.

It had seemed best to deal with Thalia's task quickly, before Chremes called upon my services as his luckless author. Besides, I was happy to pack in some sightseeing.

If you visit Palmyra, go in Spring. Apart from the cooler weather, April is when they hold the famous processions at the great Temple of Bel. In any other month you get sick of people telling you how wonderful the festival is, with its minstrels, its palanquins of deities, and its lengthy processions of garlanded animals. Not to mention the subsequent blood-letting. Or the breakdown of social order that inevitably follows serious religion. The festival (to be regarded askance by a sober Roman, though it sounded good fun to me) must have been taking place about the time Helena and I were planning our trip. It offers the only chance of of seeing open the mighty portals that hold back the public from the triad in the inner sanctuary, so if you like gaping at G.o.ds or at fabulous stonework, April is a must. Even then it's a slim chance, due to the secrecy of the priests and the vast size of the crowds. seeing open the mighty portals that hold back the public from the triad in the inner sanctuary, so if you like gaping at G.o.ds or at fabulous stonework, April is a must. Even then it's a slim chance, due to the secrecy of the priests and the vast size of the crowds.

In August you can only wander around the immense courtyard like a water flea lost in Lake Volusinus, being told by everyone what a treat you missed earlier. This I did myself. I sauntered between the altar and the l.u.s.tral basin, mighty examples of their kind, then stared sadly at the closed doors in the immensely high and opulently decorated entrance porch. (Carved monolithic beams and stepped merlons, in case you wanted to know.) I had been told that the inner sanctum was an architectural wonder. Not much use for adding tone to your memoirs if it's shut.

The other reason for not going to Palmyra in August is the unbearable heat and brightness. I had walked all the way across town from our camp outside the Damascus Gate. I strolled from the Temple of Allath - a severe G.o.ddess guarded by a ten-foot-high lion with a jolly countenance, who sheltered a lithe gazelle - to the far end of town where the Temple of Bel housed the Lord of the Universe himself, plus two colleagues, a moon-G.o.d and a sun-G.o.d, named Aglibol and Yarhibol. The profusion of deities honoured in this city made the twelve G.o.ds of Roman Olympus look a meagre picnic party. As most of the temples in Syria are surrounded by huge open-air courtyards that act as suntraps, each of Palmyra's hundreds of divinities was baking, even inside his darkly curtained-offadyton. However, they were not as hot as the poor fools like me who had risked marching about the city streets.

The sulphurous springs were low in their cistern, the gardens surrounding them reduced to sticks and struggling succulents. The odour of hot therapeutic steam was no match for the pervading wafts of a city whose major imports were heady perfume oils. Brilliant sunlight zinged off the dirt roads, lightly poached the piles of camel dung, then wrapped its warmth around thousands of alabaster jars and goatskin bottles. The mingling fragrances of heated Oriental balms and fine oils choked my lungs, seeped into my pores and hung about the crumples of my robes.

I was reeling. My eyes had already been dazzled by tottering piles of bronze plaques and statues, endless bales of silks and muslins, the deep shine of jade and the dark green glimmer of Eastern pottery. Ivory the size of forest logs was piled haphazardly alongside stalls selling fats or dried meat and fish. Tethered cattle awaited buyers, bellowing at the merchants selling multicoloured heaps of spice and henna, Jewellers weighed out pearls in little metal scales as casually as Roman sweetsellers toss handfuls of pistachio nuts into wrapping cones of remaindered songs. Minstrels, tapping hand-drums, intoned poetry in languages and measures I could not begin to comprehend.

Palmyra is a mighty emporium; it depends on helping visitors secure contracts. In the packed streets even the busiest traders were prepared to stop and hear about my quest. We could understand each other's Greek, just about. Most tried to point me where I should be going. Once I had been marked as a man with a mission, they insisted on helping. Small boys were sent running to ask other people if they knew the address I was looking for. Old fellows bent double over k.n.o.bby sticks tottered up twisting lanes with me to check possible houses. I noticed that half the population had terrible teeth, and there was a bad epidemic of deformed arms. Maybe the hot springs were not all that medicinal; maybe the sulphuric spring water even caused these deformities.

Eventually, in the centre of of town, I found the home of a well-to-do Palmyrene who was a friend of Habib, the man I sought. It was a large villa, constructed with no windows on the outside walls. Entering through a door with an exuberantly carved lintel, I found a cool, rather dark courtyard with Corinthian columns surrounding a private well. A dark-skinned slave, polite, but firm, made me wait in the courtyard while he consulted within several times. town, I found the home of a well-to-do Palmyrene who was a friend of Habib, the man I sought. It was a large villa, constructed with no windows on the outside walls. Entering through a door with an exuberantly carved lintel, I found a cool, rather dark courtyard with Corinthian columns surrounding a private well. A dark-skinned slave, polite, but firm, made me wait in the courtyard while he consulted within several times.

My story was that I had come from Rome (no point pretending otherwise) as a connection of of the girl's. Since I hoped I looked fairly respectable, I a.s.sumed her boyfriend's parents would be eager to check any faint possibility that their prodigal Khaleed had fallen for someone acceptable. Apparently not: despite my best efforts I failed to acquire an interview. Neither the Palmyrene who owned the house nor his guest Habib appeared in person. No attempt was made to deny that Habib was staying there, however. I was informed that he and his wife were now planning to return to Damascus, taking their son. That meant Khaleed currently lived here too, probably under duress. The fate of his musical pick-up remained unclear. When I mentioned Sophrona, the slave only sneered and said she was not there. the girl's. Since I hoped I looked fairly respectable, I a.s.sumed her boyfriend's parents would be eager to check any faint possibility that their prodigal Khaleed had fallen for someone acceptable. Apparently not: despite my best efforts I failed to acquire an interview. Neither the Palmyrene who owned the house nor his guest Habib appeared in person. No attempt was made to deny that Habib was staying there, however. I was informed that he and his wife were now planning to return to Damascus, taking their son. That meant Khaleed currently lived here too, probably under duress. The fate of his musical pick-up remained unclear. When I mentioned Sophrona, the slave only sneered and said she was not there.

Knowing that I was in the right place, I did what I could, then stayed calm. Most of an informer's work consists of keeping your nerve. My insistent efforts would have caused a commotion. Sooner or later young Khaleed would hear of my visit and wonder what was up. I guessed that even if he had been gated by his parents he would try to contact his lady love. I waited in the street. As I expected, within half an hour a youth shot outside, glancing back furtively. Once he was sure n.o.body from the house was following, he set off fast.

He was a short, thickset lad of about twenty. He had a square face with heavy, fly-away eyebrows; they almost met in the centre of his brow, where a tuft of hair grew like a small dark diamond. He had been in Palmyra long enough to be experimenting with Parthian trousers, but he wore them under a sober Western tunic in Syrian stripes and without embroidery. He looked athletic and good-humoured, though not very bright. Frankly, he was not my idea of a hero to ran off with - but I was not a daft young girl hankering for a foreign admirer to lure her away from a job she was lucky to have.

I knew Sophrona was daft; Thalia had told me.

The young man kept up a rapid pace. Luckily he was heading west, towards the area where my own party was staying, so I was not too dispirited. I was starting to feel exhausted, though. I wished I had borrowed a mule. Young love may not notice draining heat, but I was thirty-two and ready for a long lie-down in the shade of a date-palm. I wanted a good rest and a drink, after which I might manage to interest myself in a bit of fun with Helena, if she stroked my brow temptingly enough first. Chasing this st.u.r.dy playboy soon lost its appeal.

The increasing nearness of my tent beckoned. I was ready to peel off from the breakneck gallop. A fast sprint through the Thirteenth District in Rome is bad enough in August, but at least there I know where the wineshops and public latrines are. This was torture. Neither refreshment nor relief was available. And all in the cause of music - my least favourite performing art.

Eventually Khaleed glanced back over his shoulder, failed to spot me, then picked up even more speed. Turning off the main track, he dashed down a twisting lane between modest little houses where chickens were running freely along with the odd skinny goat. He plunged inside one of the houses. I waited long enough for the youngsters to start panicking, then I dived after him.

Unlike Habib's friend's villa, there was a simple rectangular doorway in the mud-brick wall. Beyond lay a tiny courtyard: no peristyle columns; no well. There was bare earth. A stool had been kicked over in one corner. Wool rugs hung over an upper balcony. The rugs looked clean, but I sensed the dull odours of poverty.

I followed the anxious voices. Bursting in on the couple, I found Khaleed looking tear-stained and his girl pale but definitely stubborn. They stared at me. I smiled at them. The young man beat his brow and looked helpless while the girl shrieked unpleasantly.

The usual scenario, in my experience.

'So you're Sophrona!' She was not my type. Just as well; she was not my sweetheart.

'Go away!' she screamed. She must have deduced I had not come all this way to announce an unexpected legacy.

She was very tall, taller even than Helena, who sweeps a stately course. Her figure was more scrawny than I had been led to expect, reminding me vaguely of somebody - but certainly not Helena. Sophrona was dark, with straight hair tied fairly simply. She had enormous eyes. They were a mellow brown with immensely long lashes, and could be described as beautiful if you were not too fussy about eyes revealing intelligence. She knew they were lovely, and spent a lot of time gazing up sideways; somebody must once have admired the effect. It failed with me. It made me want to chop up her chin and tell her to stop the deplorable pose. There was no point. No one would ever train her out of it; the habit was too ingrained. Sophrona intended to be pictured one day on her tombstone with this irritating expression, like a fawn with a head cold and a bad case of jitters.

She was about twenty, disreputably unveiled. On her long frame she wore a blue dress, together with ridiculous sandals and too much soppy jewellery (all tiny dangly animals and rings of twisted silver wire worn right on her knuckles). This stuff would be fine on a child of thirteen; Sophrona should have grown up by now. She did not need to grow up; she had the rich man's son just where she wanted him. Playing the kitten had achieved it, so she was sticking with what she knew.

'Never you mind who she is!' cried Khaleed, with spirit. I groaned inwardly. I hate a lad with spirit when he has his arm around a girl I'm intending to abduct from him. If he was already trying to defend her from a stranger whose motives might be perfectly harmless, then prying her free once I had made the situation clear posed even worse problems. 'Who are you?'

'Didius Falco. Friend of the family.' They were complete amateurs; they did not even think of asking me which family, 'I see you're in love,' I told them pessimistically. They both nodded with a defiance that would have been charming, if it had not been so inconvenient. 'I believe I know some of your history.' I had been called in to end unsuitable matches before, so I came prepared with a winning approach. 'Would you mind telling the story, though?'

Like all youngsters with no sense of moral duty, they were proud of themselves. It poured out: how they had met at Thalia's menagerie when Habib had visited Rome, accompanied for educational purposes by his adolescent boy. Khaleed had been cool at first, and obediently went home to Syria with Papa. Then Sophrona had thrown up everything to follow him; boys from rich families appear so romantic. Somehow she made it to Damascus, neither raped nor drowned on the journey. Impressed by her devotion, Khaleed had happily entered into a secret liaison. When his parents found out, the pair ran off here together. Spotted and recognised by his father's friend, Khaleed had been extracted from their love nest and was now about to be dragged home to Damascus, where a suitable bride would be found for him fast.

'Oh how sad!' I wondered whether to bop Khaleed on the head, swing Sophrona over my shoulder, and make off with her. A neat trick, if you can pull it - which I had been known to do with shorter women, on my home territory, when the weather was cooler. I decided against playing the man of action here. That left me to use the more sophisticated skills of a Roman informer: blatant lies.

'I understand your problem, and I sympathise. I think I may be able to help you..." The babes fell for it eagerly. I was accepted as the cla.s.sic clever trickster without needing any alibi for or explanation of my role in Palmyra. I could have been the worst pimp in Corinth, or a foreman recruiting forced labour for a Spanish copper mine. I began to understand why slave markets and brothels are always so full. I scrounged in my purse for some of the tokens we used when we gave away free seats. I told Khaleed to look out for wall posters advertising a performance by Chremes and company; then to bring his parents as a filial treat. Sophrona was to attend the theatre on the same night. 'What are you going to do for us?'

'Well, it's obvious what you need. Get you married, of course.'

The wild promise could prove a mistake. Thalia would be furious. Even if I could achieve it - most unlikely - I knew Thalia had no intention of seeing her expensively trained product yoked to a brainless boy somewhere at the end of the Empire. Thalia dreamed only of providing Rome with high-cla.s.s entertainment - entertainment she herself both owned and controlled.

You have to do your best. I needed to gather all the parties together somewhere. On the spur of the moment it seemed the only way to ensure everyone came.

If I could have told them just what kind of night out at the theatre it was going to be, there would have been no doubt they would turn up.

Free tickets wouldn't have been necessary either.

Chapter LXIV.

It was so late when I returned to camp that Helena and Thalia had despaired of me and were already eating. Chremes and Phrygia happened to be there too. Since they had dropped in casually, the manager and his wife were holding back from tucking in, though I knew Helena would have asked them to help themselves. To spare them the embarra.s.sment of wanting more than they liked to take, I cleaned up all the food bowls myself. I used a sc.r.a.p of sesame bread to load all the remains into one pot of cuc.u.mber relish, which I then kept as my own bowl. Helena gave me a snooty look. Pretending to think her still hungry, I lifted a stuffed vine leaf from my laden dish and set it on a plate for her. 'Excuse fingers.'

'I'm excusing more than that!' she said. She ate the vine leaf, though.

'You have a crumb on your chin,' I told her with mock severity.

'You've a sesame seed on your lip.'

'You've a pimple on the end of your nose - '

'Oh shut up, Marcus!'

The pimple story was untrue. Her skin was pale, but clear and healthy. I was just happy to see Helena with her fever gone, looking well enough to be teased.

'Good day out?' queried Thalia. She had finished her dinner before I arrived; for a big woman she ate sparingly. More of Thalia consisted of pure muscle and sinew than I liked to contemplate.

'Good enough. I found your turtledoves.'

'What's the verdict?'

'She's as exciting as a used floorcloth. He has the brain of a roof truss.'

'Well suited!' quipped Helena. She was surrept.i.tiously fingering her nose, checking on my pimple joke.

'It will be Sophrona who is holding them together.' I could see Thalia thinking that if this were the case, she only had to prise Sophrona off, and her troubles were over.

I reckoned Sophrona would be difficult to loosen from her prey. 'She really means to have the rich boy. I've promised to get them married.' Best to own up, and get the storm over as soon as possible.

A lively commotion ensued amongst the women of my part)-, enabling me to finish my dinner in peace while they enjoyed themselves disparaging me. Helena and Thalia were both sensible, however. Their indignation cooled rapidly.

'He's right. Yoke them together -'

'- And it will never last!'

If it did last, they would have outwitted us. But evidently I was not the only person here who felt so cynical about marriage that the happy ending was ruled out.

Since one person present was the person I intended to marry as soon as I could persuade her to sign a contract, this was worrying.

Chremes and Phrygia had watched our domestic fracas with a distant air. It struck me they might have come with news of our next performance. If it needed two of them to tell me about the play, that boded harder work than I wanted at this stage of our tour. Since Palmyra was likely to be the end of our a.s.sociation, I had rather hoped for an easier time, zonking the public with some little number I had long ago revised, while I relaxed around the oasis. Even perhaps laying before the punters Helena's perfect modern rendition of The Birds The Birds. Its neo-Babylonian flamboyance ought to appeal to the Palmyrenes in their embroidered hats and trousers. (I was sounding like some old sham of a critic; definitely time to resign my post!) With Chremes and Phrygia remaining so silent, it was Helena who brightly introduced the subject of booking a theatre.

'Yes, I fixed something up.' A hint of wariness in Chremes' tone warned me this might not be good news.