Last Act in Palmyra Read Online Free Page B

from babyhood. Her mother was a lanky chorus dancer in a mime group I once ran into. Reckoned she couldn’t look after a child. Couldn’t be bothered, more like. I saved the scrap, fostered her out until she was a useful age, then taught her what I could. She was too tall for an acrobat, but luckily she turned out to be musical, so when I saw that the hydraulus was the instrument of the moment I grabbed the chance and got Sophrona trained. I paid for it, at a time when I wasn’t doing so well as nowadays, so I’m annoyed at losing her.’
    â€˜Tell us what happened, Thalia?’ I asked. ‘How could an expert like you be so careless as to lose valuable talent from your troupe?’
    â€˜It wasn’t me who lost her!’ Thalia snorted. ‘That fool Fronto. He was showing some prospective patrons around – Eastern visitors. He reckoned they were theatrical entrepreneurs, but they were time-wasters.’
    â€˜Just wanted a free gawp at the menagerie?’
    â€˜And at female tumblers with no clothes on. The rest of us could see we hadn’t much hope of them hiring us for anything. Even if they had done it would have been all sodomy and mean tips. So nobody took much notice. It was just before the panther got loose and munched up Fronto; naturally things grew rather hectic after that. The Syrians did pay us another hopeful visit, but we pulled down the awnings. They must have left Rome, and then we realised Sophrona had gone too.’
    â€˜A man in it?’
    â€˜Oh bound to be!’
    I noticed Helena smiling again as Thalia exploded with contempt. Then Helena asked, ‘At least you know they were Syrian. So who were these visitors?’
    â€˜No idea. Fronto was the man in charge,’ Thalia grumbled, as if she were accusing him of seedy moral habits. ‘Once Fronto ended up inside the panther, all we could remember was that they spoke Greek with a very funny accent, wore stripy robes, and seemed to think somewhere called “the ten Towns” was the tops in civic life.’
    â€˜I’ve heard of the Decapolis,’ I said. ‘It’s a Greek federation in central Syria. That’s a long way to go looking for a musician who’s done a moonlight.’
    â€˜Not to mention the fact that if you do go,’ said Helena, ‘whichever order you flog around these ten gracious metropolitan sites, she’s bound to be in the last town you visit. By the time you get there, you’ll be too tired to argue with her.’
    â€˜No point anyway,’ I added. ‘She’s probably got a set of twins and marsh fever by now. Don’t you have any other facts to go on, Thalia?’
    â€˜Only a name one of the menagerie-keepers remembered – Habib.’
    â€˜Oh dear. In the East it’s probably as common as Gaius,’ said Helena. ‘Or Marcus,’ she added slyly.
    â€˜And we know he’s common!’ Thalia joined in.
    â€˜Could the girl have gone looking for her mother?’ I asked, having had some experience of tracing fostered children.
    Thalia shook her head. ‘She doesn’t know who her mother was.’
    â€˜Might the mother have come looking for her?’
    â€˜Doubt it. I’ve heard nothing about her for twenty years. She might be working under a different name. Well, face it, Falco, she’s most likely dead by now.’
    I agreed the point sombrely. ‘So what about the father? Any chance Sophrona heard from him?’
    Thalia roared with laughter. ‘What father? There were various candidates, none of whom had the slightest interest in being pinned down. As I recall it, only one of them had anything about him, and naturally he was the one the mother wouldn’t look at twice.’
    â€˜She must have looked once!’ I observed facetiously.
    Thalia gave me a pitying glance, then said to Helena, ‘Explain the facts of life to him, dearie! Just because you go to bed with a