'Maia told me.' Helena was covering her ears against the din. I saved my breath.
There seemed no chance of acquiring a table, then a group of Italian diggers decided they would leap up and knock hell out of some Britons. The management had organised a party of big Gauls to keep the peace; they were of course eager for a ruckus, so all three lots went outside in good order and held their fight there. Impressed, I manoeuvred Helena to a free space, just beating a friendly set of Spanish hearties. They tried chatting to my girl on principle, but took the hint when I lifted up her hand and pointed to a silver ring I had given her.
'My daughter,' Helena explained, miming heavily that she had a baby, 'is called Laeitana.' This went down well. They had no idea what she was saying; they were from the south. Baeticans don't give an as for Tarraconensis. That my child had been named for a wine producing area near Barcino in the north had no effect. But Helena had made an effort and they made us share their flagon. Helena noticed I looked flushed. I blamed my tooth.
Drink was being sold at a furious rate, though there was no sign of imminent dancing. I climbed on a bench and looked over heads; I saw nobody I recognised.
'Where are my brothers and Larius?'
'Who knows? I found Gloccus.'
'What?'
'Later!'
'Pardon?'
'Forget it.'
'Forget what?'
There were so many men crammed in, it was hard to see what this bar looked like. I could tell how it smelt, and that we'd be lucky if the animal fat in the lamps failed to set the joint ablaze. If Noviomagus Regnensis lacked street lighting, there was no chance they had organised a patrol of firefighters. Once, when I was an efficient operator full of good sense and energy, I might have wandered through the back kitchens to locate a well and buckets in advance… No. Not tonight, after a death and several drinks.
A plate of grilled meat snacks passed itself to our table. It sat there a while. No one seemed to own it, so I tucked in. I could not remember my last meal.
The crowd heaved and reordered itself into new configurations. Through the press I glimpsed the Camillus brothers, squashed and red-faced. Helena waved. They started the long process of inching over to us, but gave up. I mouthed at them, Where's Larius?' and they signalled back, Virginia? Then somewhere in the thick of the drinkers at the far end of the room a stillness fell. Excitement was transmitted through the hubbub, bringing silence. Eventually new sounds became audible through that silence: a shimmer of a tambourine, shaken with infinite restraint, and the faintest ripple of snare drum. Someone shouted to the people at the front to sit. Helena saw men climbing on a table near us. She flashed a glance at me. One minute we were both on our feet, the next standing up on the narrow bench.
That was how we stayed, clinging to each other for balance. That was how, in that dirty, noisy, disreputable hovel by a gatehouse in a half-built town, we were taken halfway to Olympus the night we saw Perella dance.
LVIII
all the best performers are no longer young. Only those with experience of life, of joy and grief, can wring the heart. They have to know what they are promising. They have to see what you have lost and what you yearn for. How much you need consoling, what your soul seeks to conceal. A great mature male actor shows that although the girls scream after the ingenues, they are nothing yet. A great female dancer, in her prime, encapsulates humanity. Her sexual power attracts all the more because in popular thought only young girls with perfect limbs and pretty features are exciting; to prove that nonsense is a thrill for both men and women. Hope lives.
Perella revealed almost nothing physically. Her dress seemed entirely modest. Her severe hairstyle emphasised the bones of her pale face. She wore no jewellery- no tacky anklets, no twinkling metal disks sewn in her garments. When she entered that dire den, her casual poise almost insulted the audience. They thrived on it. Her matter-of fact floating walk asked no favours. Only the respect with which her musicians waited for her gave a hint. They knew her quality. She let them play first. A double flute, eerie with melancholia; a drum; a tambourine; a small harp in the pudgy, be ringed hands of an incongruously fat harpist. No cliched castanets. She played no instrument herself.
At what point in her past history she had been taken up to dally with spies, I dared not contemplate. They must have approached her because she was so good. She would be able to venture anywhere. She had neither fear nor grand airs; she was dancing here as honestly as she must ever do. The only fault for her palace employers would be that she was so good, she would always attract attention.
She began. The musicians watched and responded to her; she tempered her movements perfectly to their tunes. They loved that. Their enjoyment fuelled the excitement. Perella danced at first with such restraint of motion it seemed nearly derisive. Then each fine angle of her outstretched arms and each slight turn of the neck became a perfect gesture. When she burst forth abruptly into frantic drumming of her feet, whirling and darting in the confined spaces available, gasps turned to stricken silence. Men tried to fall back to give her room. She came and went, within the free area, flattering each group with their moment of attention. The music raced. It was clear now that Perella was in fact clad alluringly we could glimpse white leather trunks and breast-band under sheer veils of Coan silk. What she did with her supple body was more vital than the body itself. What she said through her dance and the authority with which she said it- mattered most.
She came nearer. The entranced crowd parted for her. The smiling musicians slipped to their feet lightly, tracing her progress through the room so they neither lost sight of her nor left her insecure and unattended. Her hair came loose, a deliberate part of the act no doubt, so she swirled it free with a deep toss of her head. This was no slim and devious New Carthage beauty with a tumbling sheen of oiled, inky locks, but a mature woman. She might be a grandmother. She was aware of her maturity and challenging us to notice too. She was the queen of the room because she had lived more than most of us. If her joints creaked, nobody would know it. And unlike the crude offers purveyed by younger artists, Perella was giving us because she had nothing else to give the erotic, ecstatic, uplifting, imaginative glory of hope and possibility.
The musicians strove to a high climax, their instruments at breaking point. Perella twirled to an exhausted halt, right in front of me. Applause burst all around us. A hubbub rose; men called feverishly for drink to help them forget they had been overcome. Congratulatory grins surrounded the dancer, though she was left alone respectfully.
She saw who I was. Perhaps she had stopped here deliberately. 'Falco!'
Helena teetered dangerously on the bench edge; I could not leap down and seize the dancer, I had to hold on to Helena. A Roman does not allow the well-bred mother of his children to tumble face first on a disgusting tavern floor. Helena probably relied on that; she kept me with her on purpose. 'Perella.'
'I have a message for your sister,' she said.
'Don't try anything! Following my sister is a mistake, Perella '
'I'm not after your sister.'
'I saw you at her house-'
'Anacrites sent me there. He realised he went too far. He sent me to apologise.'
'Apologise!'
'A stupid move,' she admitted. 'That was him, not me.' That was him dead then, I thought.
'And what are you doing here?' I demanded accusingly.
'Earning my fare home. You know the bureau: mean with expenses.'
'You're still following my sister.'
'I don't give two sleeve-pins for your bloody sister-'
A draft hit us. The noise dimmed for a moment as men sank their noses into beakers thirstily. The crowd in the outer door had moved to allow somebody admittance. It was someone whose manner always made men move aside for her. My sister walked in.
A woman screamed.
