have been included in our list of suspects. Something told us that being forgotten was his permanent role. Being constantly overlooked could give him a motive for anything. But maybe he accepted it. So often it is the people who have who think they deserve more. Those who lack expect nothing else from life.
Such was our visitor – a miserable specimen. He had appeared around a corner of our tent very quietly. He could have been lurking about for ages. I wondered how much he had overheard.
'Hello there! Come and join us. Didn't Chremes mention to me that your name is Congrio?'
Congrio had a light skin covered with freckles, thin straight hair, and a fearful look. He had never been tall to begin with, and his slight, weedy body stooped under burdens of inadequacy. Everything about him spoke of leading a poor life. If he was not a slave now he probably had been at some stage, and whatever existence he snatched for himself these days could not be much better. Being a menial among people who have no regular income is worse than captivity on a rich landowner's farm. No one here cared whether Congrio ate or starved; he was nobody's asset, so nobody's loss if he suffered.
He shuffled near, the kind of mournful maggot who makes you feel crass if you ignore him or patronising if you try to be sociable.
'You chalk up the advertisements, don't you? I'm Falco, the new jobbing playwright. I'm looking out for people who can read and write in case I need help with my adaptations.'. 'I can't write,' Congrio told me abruptly. 'Chremes gives me a wax tablet; I just copy it.'
'Do you act in the plays?'
'No. But I can dream!' he added defiantly, apparently not without a sense of self-mockery.
Helena smiled at him. 'What can we do for you?'
'Grumio and Tranio have come back from the city with a wineskin. They told me to ask whether you wanted to join them.' He was addressing me.
I was ready for bed, but put on my interested face. 'Sounds as if a sociable evening could be had here?'
'Only if you want to keep the caravanserai awake all night and feel like death tomorrow,' Congrio advised frankly.
Helena shot me a look that said she wondered how the town-and-country twins could tell so easily who was the degenerate in our party. But I did not need her permission -or at least not when this offered a good excuse to ask questions about Heliodorus – so off I went to disgrace myself. Musa stayed with Helena. I had never bothered to ask him, but I deduced that our Nabataean shadow was no drinking man.
Congrio seemed to be heading the same way as me, but then turned off on his own. 'Don't you want a drink?' I called after him.
'Not with that pair!' he responded, vanishing behind a waggon.
On the surface he spoke like a man who had better taste in friends, but I noticed a violent undertone. The easy explanation was that they pushed him around. But there could be more to it. I would have to scrutinise this bill-poster.
Feeling thoughtful, I made my own way to the Twins' tent.
Chapter XVI
Grumio and Tranio had put up the uncomplicated bivouac that was standard in our ramshackle camp. They had slung a cover over poles, leaving one whole long side open so they could see who was passing (and in their case commentate rudely). I noticed that they had bothered to hang a curtain down the middle of their shelter, dividing it precisely into private halves. These were equally untidy, so it couldn't have been because they fell out over the housekeeping; it hinted instead at aloofness in their relationship.
Surveyed quietly at leisure they were not in the least alike. Grumio, the 'country' twin who played runaway slaves and idiots, had a pleasant nature, a chubby face, and straight hair that fell evenly from the crown. Tranio, the taller 'townee', had his hair cut short up the back and swept forwards on top. He was sharp-featured and sounded as though he could be a sarcastic enemy. They both had dark, knowing eyes with which they watched the world critically.
'Thanks for the invitation! Congrio refused to come,' I said at once, as if I assumed the poster-writer would have been asked too.
Tranio, the one who played the boasting soldier's flashy servant, poured me a full winecup with an exaggerated flourish. 'That's Congrio! He likes to sulk – we all do. From which you can immediately deduce that beneath the false bonhomie, our joyous company is seething with angry emotions.'
'I gathered that.' I took the drink and joined them, relaxing on sacks of costumes alongside the walkway that ran through our encampment. 'Almost the first thing Helena and I were told was that Chremes hates his wife and she hates him.'
'He must have admitted that himself,' Tranio said knowingly. 'They do make a big thing of it.'
'Isn't it true? Phrygia openly laments that he has deprived her of stardom. And Helena reckons that Chremes frequently wanders from the hearth. So the wife is after a laurel wreath, while the husband wants to stuff a lyre- player:'
Tranio grinned. 'Who knows what they're up to? They've been at each other's throats for twenty years. Somehow he never quite manages to run off with a dancer, and she never remembers to poison his soup.'
'Sounds like any normal married couple,' I grimaced.
Tranio was topping up my beaker almost before I had tried it. 'Like you and Helena?'
'We're not married.' I never explained our relationship. People would either not believe me, or not understand. It was no one else's business anyway. 'Do I gather that inviting me tonight is a shameless attempt to find out what she and I are doing here?' I taunted, probing in return.
'We see you as a Hired Trickster,' grinned Grumio, the supposedly dopey one, unabashed as he named one of the stock characters in New Comedy. It was the first time he had spoken. He sounded brighter than I had expected.
I shrugged. 'I'm trying my hand with a stylus. Finding your playwright's soused body got me pitched out of Petra. It also happened at about the time I ran out of travelling funds. I needed work. Your job was the soft option: offering to scribble for Chremes looked easier work than straining my back lifting barrels of myrrh, or catching fleas driving camel trains.' Both twins had their noses deep in their winecups. I was not sure I had deflected their curiosity about my interest in the playwright's death. 'I've agreed to replace Heliodorus provided I'm not asked to play a tambourine in the orchestra and Helena Justina never acts on a public stage.'
'Why not?' queried Grumio. 'Does she come from a respectable family?' He ought to be able to see that. Maybe pretending to have a few brains was just a pose.
'No, I rescued her from slavery, in return for two bags of apples and a nanny goat:'
'You're a take-off merchant!' giggled Grumio. He turned to his friend, who was wielding the wineskin again. 'We're on to a scandal.'
Ineffectively shielding my cup from Tranio, I rebuked the other quietly: 'The only scandal Helena was ever involved in was when she chose to live with me.'
'Interesting partnership!' Grumio commented.
'Interesting girl,' I said.
'And now she's helping you spy on us?' Tranio prodded.
It was a challenge, one I should have been waiting for. They had brought me here to find out what I was doing, and they would not be deterred. 'We don't spy. But Helena and I found the body. Naturally we'd like to know who killed the man.'
Tranio drained his winecup in one gulp. 'Is it true you actually saw who did it?'
'Who told you that?' Not to be outdone, I quaffed my drink too, wondering whether Tranio was just nosy – or had a deadly earnest reason for wanting to know.
'Well, everyone's keen to know what you're doing with its now – assuming you were just a tourist in Petra,' Tranio insinuated.
As I had started to expect, my refill came immediately. I knew when I was being set up. After years as an informer, I also had a clear idea of my limit for drink. I set down my overflowing cup as if I was carried away by
