Last Act in Palmyra (5 page)

This was no place for hurrying. The twisting path angled through a rocky corridor and crossed the gorge, widening briefly into a more open space where I snatched my first breather, planning several more before we reached the uppermost heights. Helena paused too, pretending she had only stopped because I was in her way.

‘Do you want to get past me?'

‘I can wait.' She was gasping. I grinned at her. Then we both turned to face out across Petra, already a fine view, with the widest part of the gravelly road in the valley below snaking away past the theatre and a bunch of tasteful rock-face tombs, then on towards the distant town.

‘Are you going to fight with me all day?'

‘Probably,' growled Helena.

We both fell silent. Helena surveyed the dusty thongs of her sandals. She was thinking about whatever dark issues had come between us. I kept quiet too, because as usual I was not entirely certain what the quarrel was about.

*   *   *

Getting to Petra had been less difficult than I had feared. Anacrites had taken great pleasure in implying that my journey here posed intolerable problems. I simply brought us by sea to Gaza. I had ‘hired' – at a price that meant ‘bought outright' – an ox and cart, transport I was used to handling, then looked around for the trade route. Strangers were discouraged from travelling it, but caravans up to a thousand strong converged on Nabataea each year. They arrived in Petra from several directions, their ways parting again when they left. Some toiled westwards to northern Egypt. Some took the interior road up to Bostra, before going on to Damascus or Palmyra. Many crossed straight to the Judaean coast for urgent shipment from the great port at Gaza to the hungry markets in Rome. So with dozens of merchants trekking towards Gaza, all leading immense, slowly moving strings of camels or oxen, it was no trouble for me as an ex-army scout to trace back their route. No entrepôt can be kept secret. Nor can its guardians prevent penetration of their city by strangers. Petra was essentially a public place.

Even before we arrived I was making mental notes for Vespasian. The rocky approach had been striking, yet there was plenty of greenery. Nabataea was rich in freshwater springs. Reports of flocks and agriculture were correct. They lacked horses, but camels and oxen were everywhere. All along the rift valley was a flourishing mining industry, and we soon discovered that the locals produced pottery of great delicacy, floral platters and bowls in huge quantities, all decorated with panache. In short, even without the income from the merchants, there would be plenty here to attract the benevolent interest of Rome.

‘Well!' Helena let slip. ‘I reckon you can report back to your masters that the rich kingdom of Nabataea certainly deserves inclusion in the Empire.' She was insultingly equating me with some mad-eyed, province-collecting patriot.

‘Don't annoy me, lady –'

‘We have so much to offer them!' she quipped; beneath the political irony was a personal sneer at me.

Whether the rich Nabataeans would see things our way might be a different cask of nuts. Helena knew that. They had guarded their independence with skill for several centuries, making it their role to keep the routes across the desert safely open and offer a market to traders of all kinds. They were practised in negotiating peace with would-be invaders, from the successors of Alexander to Pompey and Augustus. They had an amiable monarchy. Their present king, Rabel, was a youth whose mother was acting as regent, an arrangement that seemed to be non-controversial. Much of the routine workload of government fell to the Chief Minister. This more sinister character was referred to as The Brother. I guessed what that meant. Still, so long as the people of Petra were flourishing so vibrantly, I dare say they could put up with somebody to hate and fear. Everyone likes to have a figure of authority to mutter about. You can't blame the weather for all of life's ills.

The weather, incidentally, was fabulous. Sunlight streamed off the rocks, melting everything into a dazzling haze.

We continued our climb.

*   *   *

The second time we stopped, more desperately out of breath, I unhooked a water flask I was carrying on my belt. We sat side by side on a large rock, too hot to fight.

‘What's the matter?' Something Helena had said earlier had struck a nerve. ‘Finding out that I'm acting for the Chief Spy?'

‘Anacrites!' she snorted with contempt.

‘So? He's a slug, but no worse than the other slime lovers in Rome.'

‘I thought at least you were working for Vespasian. You let me come all this way thinking that –'

‘An oversight.' By this time I had convinced myself that was true. ‘It just never came up in conversation. Anyway, what's the difference?'

‘The difference is, Anacrites when he's acting independently is a threat to you. I don't trust the man.'

‘Neither do I, so you can stop erupting.' Hauling her up here had been an inspired move; I could see she had lost her energy for bickering. I gave her more water. Then I kept her sitting on the rock. The soft sandstone made a tolerable backrest if your back was muscular; I leaned on the rock and made Helena lean against me. ‘Look at the view and be friends with the man who loves you.'

‘Oh him!' she scoffed.

There was one good thing about this argument: yesterday, when we left the outer caravanserai and entered Petra itself down the famous narrow gorge, we had been squabbling so bitterly none of the guards gave us a second glance. A man listening to his woman complaining about him can ride pretty well anywhere; armed retainers always treat him with sympathy. As they had waved us along the raised causeway and into the rocky cleft, then hurried us on under the monumental arch that marked the way, little did they know that at the same time as she harangued me Helena was reconnoitring their fortifications with eyes as sharp and a mind as acute as Caesar's.

We had already passed enough rock-hewn tombs, freestanding blocks with strange, stepped roofs, inscriptions and carved reliefs to strike a sense of awe. Then had come the forbidding gorge, along which I noticed sophisticated systems of water pipes.

‘Pray it doesn't rain!' I muttered, as we lost sight of the entrance behind us. ‘A torrent rushes down here, and people get swept away…'

Eventually the path had narrowed to a single gloomy track where the rocks seemed ready to meet above our heads; after that the gorge suddenly widened again and we glimpsed the sunlit façade of the Great Temple. Instead of exclaiming with delight Helena muttered, ‘Our journey's superfluous. They could hold this entrance against an army, using just five men!'

Emerging through the crack in the rocks, we had drawn up abruptly in front of the temple, as we were intended to. Once I got my breath back from gasping with awe, I commented, ‘I thought you were going to say,
“Well, Marcus, you may never have shown me the Seven Wonders of the World, but at least you've brought me to the Eighth!”'

We stood in silence for a moment.

‘I like the goddess in the round pavilion between the broken pediments,' said Helena.

‘Those are what I call really smart entablatures,' I answered, playing the architectural snob. ‘What do you think is in the big orb on top of the goddess's pavilion?'

‘Bath oils.'

‘Of course!'

After a moment, Helena carried on where she had left off just before we reached this fabulous spectacle: ‘So Petra lies in a mountain enclave. But there are other entrances? I had the impression this was the only one.' Dear gods, she was single-minded. Anacrites should be paying her instead of me.

Some Romans get away with treating their womenfolk like mindless ornaments, but I knew I stood no chance of that so I answered calmly, ‘That's the impression the cautious Nabataeans like to give. Now gape at the opulent rock carving, sweetheart, and try to look as if you just popped this side of the mountain to buy a pair of Indian earrings and a length of turquoise silk.'

‘Don't mix me up with your previous trashy girlfriends!' she rounded on me crossly, as a Nabataean irregular who was obviously checking for suspicious faces wandered past. Helena took my point. ‘I may buy a bale in its natural state, but I'll have it bleached a good plain white at home…'

We had passed muster. Easily fooled, these guards! Either that, or they were sentimentalists who could not bear to arrest a hen-pecked man.

There had not been, yesterday, much time for me to sort out what lay behind Helena's wrath. Nervous about how long we could keep up our act as innocent travellers, I had taken us very hastily into town along the dry dirt track that curved away past numerous cliffside tombs and temples. We noticed that although this was a desert, there were gardens everywhere. The Nabataeans possessed spring water, and made the most of conserving rainfall. For people still close to their nomadic roots, they were surprisingly fine engineers. All the same it
was
a desert; when it did rain on our journey, a shower had covered our clothing with fine reddish dust, and when we combed our hair, black grit had worked in right to the scalp.

At the end of the track lay a settlement, with many fine houses and public buildings as well as a tightly packed lower-class habitation full of small square dwellings, each set behind its own walled courtyard. I had found us a room, at a price that showed the Petrans knew exactly what a room was worth in the middle of the desert. Then I spent the evening scouting the walls to the north and south of the city. They were nothing spectacular, for the Nabataeans had long preferred to make treaties rather than physically resist hostility – a trick made easier by their custom of offering to guide invading troops through the desert, then taking the longest, most difficult route so that the troops arrived at Petra too exhausted to start fighting. (Most armies lack Helena's stamina.)

*   *   *

She was looking at me now in a way that made her considerably more attractive than most armies. She was completely wrapped in stoles against the heat, so she looked cool, though I could feel her warmth as I held her against me. She smelled of sweet almond oil.

‘This is a wonderful place,' she conceded. Her voice had dropped to a murmur. Those rich dark eyes of hers still flashed, but I had fallen in love with Helena when she was angry; she was well aware of the effect it still had on me. ‘I certainly see the world with you.'

‘That's generous.' I fought back, though with a familiar sense of imminent surrender. At even closer quarters our eyes met. Hers were not scathing at all when you knew her, but redolent of good humour and intelligence. ‘Helena, are you following the local rule of suing for peace?'

‘Better to safeguard what you have,' she agreed. ‘It's a good Petran system.'

‘Thanks.' I favour the laconic in negotiation. I hoped Helena had not heard of the Nabataeans' other political custom: sending away their won-over opponents with large quantities of treasure. The Falco purse, as usual, was not up to it.

‘Yes, you can skip the exorbitant gifts,' she smiled, though I had said nothing.

Asserting my rights, I slid my other arm around her. It was accepted as a term in the treaty. I started to feel happy again.

The sun beat down on the glowing rocks, where huge clumps of dark tulips with dusty leaves clung tenaciously. The voices ahead of us had passed out of earshot. We were alone in the warm silence, in what seemed a not unfriendly place.

Helena and I had a history of friendly relations near the tops of famous mountains. Taking a girl to see a spectacular view has only one purpose, to my mind, and if a man can achieve the same purpose halfway up the hill, he saves some energy for better things. I gathered Helena closer and settled down to enjoy as much playful recreation as she was likely to allow us alongside a public footpath that might be frequented by stern-visaged priests.

VI

‘Anyway, was it really an oversight?' Helena asked some time later – a girl not easily deflected. If she was thinking that letting me kiss her had softened me up, she was right.

‘Forgetting to mention Anacrites? Certainly. I don't lie to you.'

‘Men always say that.'

‘Sounds as if you've been talking to Thalia. I can't be held responsible for all the other lying bastards.'

‘And usually you say it in the middle of an argument.'

‘So you reckon it's just the line I use? Wrong, lady! But even if that were true, we do need to preserve a few escape routes! I want us to survive together,' I told her piously. (Frank talk always disarmed Helena, since she expected me to be devious.) ‘Don't you?'

‘Yes,' she said. Helena never messed me around playing coy. I could tell her that I loved her without feeling embarrassed, and I knew I could rely on her to be equally frank: she thought I was unreliable. Despite that she added, ‘A girl doesn't come this far across the world with a mere Thursday-afternoon dalliance!'

I kissed her again. ‘Thursday afternoons? Is that when senators' wives and daughters have free run of the gladiators' barracks?' Helena wriggled furiously, which might have led to more playfulness had our baking rock seat not lain right alongside a well-beaten track. A stone fell somewhere. We both remembered the voices we had heard, and were afraid their owners might be coming back. I did wonder if I could take us off up the hillside, but its steepness and stoniness looked unpromising.

I loved travelling with Helena – except for the frustrating series of small cabins and cramped hired rooms where we never felt free to make love. Suddenly I was longing for our sixth-floor tenement apartment, where few interlopers struggled up the stairs and only rooftop pigeons could overhear.

‘Let's go home!'

‘What – to our rented room?'

‘To Rome.'

‘Don't be silly,' scoffed Helena. ‘We're going up to see the mountaintop.'