'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 classic 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-class 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 embarrassment of wanting more than they liked to take, I cleaned up all the food bowls myself. I used a scrap of sesame bread to load all the remains into one pot of cucumber 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 surreptitiously 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 association, 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. 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.

'That's good,' I encouraged.

'I hope you think so:' His tone was vague. Immediately I began to suspect I would not agree with him. 'There is a little problem -'

'He means a complete disaster,' Phrygia clarified. A blunt woman. I noticed Thalia regarding her sardonically.

'No, no!' Chremes was blustering. 'The fact is, we can't get the civic theatre. Actually, it's not up to our usual standards in any case -'

'Steady on,' I said sombrely. 'Apart from Damascus, we've mainly been playing at holes in the ground with a few wooden benches. This must be pretty rough!'

'Oh I think they have plans to build something better, Falco!'

'Everywhere in Syria has plans!' I retorted. 'In twenty or thirty years' time this province will be a theatrical company's dream of sipping ambrosia on Mount Olympus. One day they'll have perfect acoustics, majestic stage architecture, and marble everywhere. Unluckily, we cannot wait that long!'