too, not to mention the great cross-country highway up which the rebels had streamed on their savage spree.
`Good pasture,' said Urbanus briefly. `How do you know Britain, Falco?'
`The army.'
`There in the troubles?'
`Yes.'
`What legion?' It was the polite thing to ask. I could hardly object.
`A sensitive subject.'
`Oh the Second!' he responded instantly. I wondered if he had been hoping to get in a dig.
The Second Augusta had disgraced themselves by not taking the field in the Rebellion; it was old news, but still rankled with those of us who had suffered the ignominy imposed on us by inept officers.
Helena broke in, taking the heat off me. `You follow politics, Urbanus?'
`Vital to my craft,' he said; he had the air of a jobbing professional who would roll up his sleeves and tackle any dirt, with the same gusto as his wife cleaned their hallway.
I took back the initiative: `Urbanus Trypho is the name of the hour. I hardly expected such a successful playwright to let his wife scrub floors.'
`Our landlord is not lavish with services,' said Urbanus. `We live frugally.'
`Some of your scriptorium comrades are really struggling to keep alive. I was talking yesterday to Constrictus…' I watched for a reaction, but he seemed indifferent to his colleagues' affairs. `He reckons a poet needs to save up his cash so one day he can give it all up, return to his home province and enjoy his fame in retirement.'
`Sounds good.'
`Oh really! So after the excitement of Rome, you are aiming to go back to some valley among the Cornovii and live in a round hut with a few cows?'
`It will be a very large hut, and I shall own a great many cows.' The man was serious.
Admiring his candour, Helena said, `Excuse me for asking but I too know Britain; I have relatives in diplomatic posts and I have been there. It is a relatively new province. Every governor aims to introduce Roman society and education but I was told that the tribes view all things Roman with suspicion. So how did you manage to reach Rome and become a well-known dramatist?'
Urbanus smiled. `The wild warriors on the fringes probably believe they will lose their souls if they wash in a bathhouse. Others accept the gifts of the Empire. Since becoming Roman was inevitable, I grabbed it; my family had means, luckily. The poor are poor wherever they are born; the well-to-do, whoever they are, can choose their stamping ground. I was a lad who could have turned awkward in adolescence; instead, I saw where the good life lay. I went hotfoot for civilisation, all the way south through Gaul. I learned Latin – though Greek might have been more useful as my leaning was to drama; I joined a theatre
group, came to Rome, and when I understood how plays work, I wrote them myself.'
`Self-taught?'
`I had a good acting apprenticeship.'
`But your gift for words is natural?'
`Probably,' he agreed, though modestly.
`The trick in life is to see what your gifts are,' Helena commented. `I hope it is not rude to say this, but your background was very different. You had to learn a completely new culture. Even now you would, say, find it difficult to write a play about your homeland.'
`Intriguing thought! But it could be done,' Urbanus told her genially. `What a joke, to dress up a set of pastoral Greeks, modernise an old theme, and say they are prancing in a British forest!'
Helena laughed, flattering him for his daring. He took it like a spoonful of Attic honey from a dripping cone. He liked women. Well, that always gives an author twice the audience. `So you write plays of all types?' she asked.
`Tragical, comical, romantic adventure, mystical, historical.'
`Versatile! And you must really have studied the world.'
He laughed. `Few writers bother.' Then he laughed again. `They will never own as many cows as me.'
`Do you write for the money or the fame?' I enquired.
`Is either worth having alone?' He paused, and did not answer the question. He must have the money already, yet we knew there was public muttering about his reputation.
`So,' I put in slyly, `what did Chrysippus have to say to you the day he died?'
Urbanus stilled. `Nothing I wanted to hear.'
`I have to ask.'
`I realise.'
`Was your conversation amicable?'
`We had no conversation.'
`Why not?'
`I did not go.'
`You are on my list!'
`So what? I had been told that the man wanted to see me; I had no reason to see him. I stayed away.'
I consulted my notes. `This is a list of visitors, not just people who had been invited:'
Urbanus did not blink. `Then it is a mistake
I drew a long breath. `Who can vouch for what you say?'
`Anna, my wife.'
As if responding to a cue she appeared again, nursing a baby. I wondered if she had been listening. `Wives cannot appear in a Roman law court,' I reminded them.
Urbanus shrugged, with wide-open hands. He glanced at his wife. Her face was expressionless. `Who wants to prosecute me?' he murmured.
`I do, if I think you are guilty. Wives don't make good alibis.'
`I thought that was all wives were for,' muttered Helena, from her stool. Urbanus and I gazed at her and allowed the jest. Anna was nuzzling her child. A woman who was used to sitting quietly and listening to what went on around her, one perhaps who could be so unobtrusive you forgot she was there…
`I had no reason to meet Chrysippus,' the playwright reiterated. `He is – was – a bastard to work for. Plays do not sell well, not modern plays anyway; the Classics are always desired reading. But I manage to be marketable, unlike most of the sad mongrels Chrysippus supported. As a result, I found a new scriptorium to take my work.'
`So you were dumping him? Were you on contract?'
He humphed. `His mistake! He had not allowed it. I did think – that is, Anna thought – he might be seeking to tie me in. That was another reason to keep out of his way.'
`And would it have been a reason to kill him?'
`No! I had nothing to gain by that and everything to lose. I earn ticket money, remember. He was no longer important to me. I deal separately with the aediles or private producers when my work is performed. When I was younger, royalties on scrolls were make or break, but now they are just incidentals. And my new scriptorium is one with a Forum outlet – much better.'
`Did Chrysippus know?'
`I doubt it.'
I wondered what happened to the heaped chests of box office money, after the family paid the bills for their frugal life. `Do you bank with him?'
Urbanus threw back his head and roared. `You must be joking, Falco!'
`All bankers screw their clients,' I reminded him.
`Yes, but he made enough from my plays. I saw no reason to be screwed by the same man twice over.'
While I sat thinking, Helena contributed another question: `Falco is looking at motives, of course. You seem more fortunate than the
others. Even so, there are jealous murmurs against you, Urbanus.' `And what would those be?' If he knew, he was not showing it. Helena looked him in the eye. `You are suspected of not writing your plays yourself.'
It was Anna, the wife, who growled angrily at that.
