Somewhere beneath these flash trappings lay a small-featured young woman with a sharp wit and a big heart. She was brighter than she pretended. I can handle it, but for most men that's a dangerous girl.

She had noticed Musa gaping. Her grin widened in a way that did finally make him look uncomfortable. 'Hey you!' Her shout was raucous and brisk. 'Better not stand too close to the Golden River – and don't go near the double pool! You don't want to end up as a soggy sacrifice in the Festival of Maiuma!'

Whether or not the Petran mountain-god Dushara demands that his priests be chaste, Ione's boldness was too much for ours. Musa rose to his feet (he had been squatting on his heels like a nomad while we were held up by the customs officer). He turned away, looking haughty. I could have told him; it never works.

'Oh bull's balls, I've offended him!' laughed the tambourinist easily.

'He's a shy lad.' It was safe for me to smile at her; I had protection. Helena was lolling against me, probably to annoy Philocrates. I tickled her neck, hoping he would spot the propietary gesture. 'What's Maiuma, Ione?'

'Gods, don't you know? I thought it was famous.'

'It's an antique nautical festival,' Helena recited. She always did the heavy reading-up when we were planning foreign trips. 'Of resonant notoriety,' she added, as if she knew that would catch my interest. 'Believed to derive from Phoenicia, it involves, amongst other shameless public practices, the ritual immersion of naked women in sacred pools.'

'Good idea! While we're here, let's try to take in an evening of sacred pond-watching. I like to collect a salacious rite or two to liven up my memoirs – '

'Shut up, Falco!' I deduced that my senator's daughter was not planning a plunge at the pleasure ground. She enjoyed herself being superior. 'I imagine there is a great deal of shrieking, plenty of overpriced sour red wine on sale, and everyone goes home afterwards with sand down their tunics and foot fungus.'

'Falco?' Whether it was Helena's use of my name that roused her, Ione suddenly bolted down the last of her bread. She squinted at me sideways, still with crumbs on her face. 'You're the new boy, aren't you? Hah!' she exclaimed derisively. 'Written any good plays lately?'

'Enough to learn that my job is to provide creative ideas, neat plots, good jokes, provocative thoughts and subtle dialogue, all so that cliche-ridden producers can convert them into trash. Played any good tunes lately?'

'All I have to do is bash in time for the boys!' I might have known she was a girl who liked innuendo. 'What sort of plays do you like then, Falco?' It sounded a straight question. She was one of those girls who seem to threaten abuse, then disarm you by taking a sensible interest in your hobbies.

Helena joked: 'Falco's idea of a good day at the theatre is watching all three Oedipus tragedies, without a break for lunch.'

'Oh very Greek!' Ione must have been born under the Pons Sublicius; she had the authentic twang of the Tiber. She was a Roman; 'Greek' was the worst insult she could hand out.

'Ignore the silly patter from the tall piece in the blue skirt,' I said. 'Her family all sell lupins on the Esquiline; she only knows how to tell lies.'

'That so?' Ione gazed at Helena admiringly.

I heard myself admitting, 'I had a good idea for a play I want to write myself.' We 'were obviously going to be stuck in customs for a long time. Bored and weary after the forty miles from Philadelphia, I fell into the trap of betraying my dreams: it starts off with a young wastrel meeting the ghost of his father-'

Helena and Ione looked at each other, then chorused frankly: 'Give up, Falco! It will never sell tickets.'

'That's not all you do, is it?' young Ione demanded narrowly. After my long career as an informer, I recognised the subtle air of self-importance before she spoke. Some evidence was about to emerge. 'They say you're sniffing out what happened up on the magic mountain in Petra. I could tell you a few things!'

'About Heliodorus? I found him dead, you know.' She presumably did know, but openness is inoffensive and fills in time while you gather your wits. 'I'd like to know who held him under,' I said.

'Maybe you should ask why they did it?' Ione was like a young girl teasing me on a treasure hunt, openly excited. Not a good idea if she really did know something. Not when most of my suspects were all close by and probably listening.

'So are you able to tell me that?' I pretended to grin in return, keeping it light.

'You're not so dumb; you'll get there in the end. I bet I could give you some clues, though.'

I wanted to press for details, but the customs post was far too public. I had to shut her up, for her own sake as much as for my own chances of finding the killer.

'Are you willing to talk to me sometime, but maybe not here?'

In response to my question she glanced downwards, until her eyes were virtually closed. Painted spikes lengthened the appearance of her eyelashes; her lids were brushed with something that looked like gold dust. Some of the expensive prostitutes who serviced senators at Roman dinner parties would pay thousands for an introduction to Ione's cosmetics mixer. Long practised in buying information, I wondered how many amethystine marbled boxes and little pink glass scent vials I would have to offer to acquire whatever she was touting.

Unable to resist the mystery, I tried suggestion: 'I'm working on the theory it was a man who hated him for reasons connected with women – '

'Ha!' lone barked with laughter. 'Wrong direction, Falco!

Completely wrong! Believe me, the scribe's ducking was purely professional.'

It was too late to ask her more. Tranio and Grumio, who were always hanging about near the orchestra girls, came mooching up like spare waiters at an orgy wanting to offer limp garlands in return for a large tip.

'Another time,' Ione promised me, winking. She made it sound like an offer of sexual favours. 'Somewhere quiet when we're on our own, eh Falco?'

I grinned bravely, while Helena Justina assumed the expression of the jealous loser in a one-sided partnership.

Tranio, the taller, wittier clown, gave me a long dumb stare.

Chapter XXVI

The customs officer suddenly turned on us as if he could not imagine why we were loitering in his precious space, and shooed us off, Without giving him a chance to change his mind, we shot in through the town gate.

We had come about fifteen years too early. It was not much in the scheme of town planning, but too long for hungry performers who were gnawing on their last pomegranate. The site diagram of the future Gerasa showed an ambitious design with not one but two theatres of extravagant proportions, plus another, smaller auditorium outside the city at the site of the notorious water festival where Helena had forbidden me to go and leer. They needed all these stages -now. Most were still only architectural drawings. We soon discovered that the situation for performers was desperate. At present we were stuck with one very basic arena in the older part of town, over which all comers had to haggle – and there was plenty of competition.

It was turmoil. In this town we were just one small act in a mad circus. Gerasa had such a reputation for riches that it drew buskers from all the parched corners of the East. To be offering a simple play with flute, drum and tambourine accompaniment was nothing. In Gerasa they had every gaggle of scruffy acrobats with torn tunics and only one left boot between them, every bad-tempered fire-eater, every troupe of sardine-dish spinners and turnip jugglers, every one-armed harpist or arthritic stilt-walker. We could pay half a denarius to see the Tallest Man in Alexandria (who must have shrunk in the Nile, for he was barely a foot longer than I was), or a mere copper for a backward-facing goat. In fact for a quadrans or two extra I could have actually bought the goat, whose owner told me he was sick of the heat and the slowness of trade and was going home to plant beans.