acknowledged him. He lacked celebrity. He was a nonentity in this throng. That he was also a violent brute, I had no doubt. He could likely dismember a man with his bare hands. Yet I still felt compassion for him, and I muttered a little prayer to Cybele that he might be permitted to win this last time.
'Can you see her anywhere?' Lygdus appealed to me from the ground. 'Can you see the woman we need?'
I dismissed Flamma from my thoughts and peered into the boiling sea of Romans. 'Sorceress Martina,' I whispered into the wind, 'I know you're out there somewhere — you must be. I need your magic — I need your poison. Please, just make yourself seen…'
Lygdus lacked my patience. He threw a sticky plum pit at me, which bounced hard off my head. 'I've had enough — do you hear me, Iphicles?'
'That's too bad,' I replied, glaring at him. 'There's only one path open to us now and this is it. Since Aemilia of the Aemilii's demise, there's been a distinct lack of reliable poisoners in Rome. So we've got no choice but to keep searching for our unreliable one: Martina.'
He popped another plum between his lips.
'Perhaps you're not suited to this work, Lygdus,' I said. 'Best be on your way, then. See you at Oxheads.'
I turned on my cushion to look down at the stage and Lygdus's fury escalated. I heard him sucking his plum, planning to pelt me with a second pit. He swallowed the pulp and spat the missile into his hand.
'Throw a pit at me again and you'll regret it,' I said, my eyes on the musicians far below.
Lygdus stood up and let fly. I caught the pit in my fingers without even needing to see it. He was astounded. 'How did you…?'
I punched him hard in the groin and then remembered that, like me, he didn't have all that much left to harm down there. He went to slap me but I snatched his hand and sank my teeth into it.
'Ow!'
'Sit down and stop acting like a baby,' I said.
He plopped onto his cushion, nursing his hand. 'We've been to every event at the Ludi. Days and days of it, and never any sign of this woman.'
'Not quite every event,' I said, staring at the stage again. 'We haven't seen the pantomimus yet. So why don't you shut up — it's about to begin.'
'She won't be here. She's not even in Rome.'
'I said shut up.'
'These seats are terrible — we can barely see the stage.'
'We're here to see the audience, idiot.'
'All I can see are the backs of heads.'
'She's a freedwoman. If she's here, she'll be sitting in the seats directly in front of us slaves.'
'At least give me a better idea of what she looks like.'
What could I tell him? I had no concept of what Martina's appearance might be. In the many decades I had known her, she was either a ravishing beauty or a hideous crone. She was both, yet neither. She could change before my eyes. Sometimes the look of her shimmered like the haze on a distant road, making her features melt and fade. Sometimes, if I looked at her closely, she seemed to have no face at all. The only way to get a clear picture of Martina's appearance was by squinting at her from the corner of my eye, and even then this was unreliable. She was a sorceress, as ageless as my domina and me. She was an unknowable creature of our peripheral vision.
'Martina has a hump on her back.' This deformity was the only thing I could guarantee in her.
In truth I was beginning to despair. I feared I'd been wrong in imagining what would lure her back to Rome. In my heart I dreaded that with so much of the Imperial family's blood on her hands, Martina's desire for self- preservation might outweigh her love of entertainments.
'We were lucky not to be killed at that terrible feast,' Lygdus whined anew, 'and then we had to endure the games themselves and all that noise and smell, and then you made me attend the chariot races.'
'I didn't make you attend anything.' I pointed at the steps that would take him down and out of the Theatre of Pompey. 'That's the way out. Go.'
But he stayed where he was, settling in for a session of complaints. 'I should return to Castor,' he said, 'and beg him to let me wash his feet again. Week after week he's tried to get me to tell him the secrets I've learned about you — and week after week I lie that I've discovered nothing.'
I felt very uncomfortable. The fear of Castor exposing me was real. Lygdus held power over me and I had allowed this in the spirit of friendship. Still, I longed to corrupt him with crime so that he would become as guilty as I was and be as keen to hide it. But without Martina's magic I was stymied.
'My time spent with you has not served me well,' said Lygdus, resorting to his most well-worn phrase.
'It's starting.'
Far below us on the stage the musicians' warm-up notes ceased, and the audience took their lead. A hush of expectation fell across the huge open-air space.
'I'm bored already.' Lygdus's voice carried like a bird's cry.
I would have hit him but several freedwomen turned around to glare. I searched their faces. None were Martina. 'It's his first time at the musica muta,' I whispered to them in apology. Looks of superiority crossed the freedwomen's faces and they turned around again.
On the distant stage a single flautist among the musicians began to play the notes of a haunting tune. Then the eight men of the chorus came on from their side entrance and the crowd made polite applause. The men wore half-masks, obscuring their eyes and heads but leaving their mouths exposed. When they were arranged in their places, one of the chorus men produced a scabellum — a wooden clapper board — and held it high in the air.
The flautist stopped. The chorus spoke in one voice: 'Presenting Echo and Narcissus!'
The freedwomen swooned in front of us.
'That old story?' said Lygdus.
The chorus man with the clapper board began a rhythmic beat, keeping time like a water clock, opening and closing the arms.
The star pantomimus leaped onto the stage from the entrance at the opposite side and the crowd burst into cheers. His entire head was covered by a blank mask that removed all hint of his features. And yet it seemed that he owned the most desired face in the world, so expressive was his body in conveying exquisite beauty and grace. His limbs and torso suggested youth — perhaps he was no more than fifteen. His limbs were lean, yet muscular. His feet were brown and bare. His tunica was yellow, feather-light and brief, floating around his hips as he danced.
The acknowledgement the pantomimus gave the crowd was heartfelt, given with the simplest gestures to make him seem humble and moved. There wasn't a theatregoer in Rome who disliked the musica muta. Its players were adored celebrities. They expressed actions, feelings and passions more beautifully and intelligently than was possible with the spoken word. They never uttered a sound. Instead their audiences projected the most alluring words imaginable upon them, wholly within the mind. The great stars of Augustus's day — Bathyllus, Pylades, Hylas — had all retired, but a new generation of mimes competed in their wake, fighting for the fame and wealth that came to the very best of them. Yet they were not without controversy. Women were feared susceptible to the sensual dances and mythological themes — not that it stopped them attending. Some mimes had been known to perform at private dinner parties and intimate engagements hosted by patrician wives. Some were even said to perform naked.
As the pantomimus finished his gestures of thanks, the rest of the musicians joined the flautist in resuming the opening tune, filling the theatre with a lush, evocative score. The chorus began to recite the canticum — the text of the play. 'When Narcissus, the son of Cephisus, reached his sixteenth year,' they announced, 'he seemed both man and boy.'
The mime began to dance as the mythical youth.
'Many boys and many girls fell deeply in love with him,' said the chorus, 'but his beautiful body held a pride so strong that none of his suitors dared touch him.'
The commotion at the side of the auditorium caught Lygdus's attention before it caught mine. He made a little cry.
'See, you're enjoying it now,' I said, my eyes on the stage.
