‘He what?’ cried Flavia later that evening. ‘He almost dropped you from the top of the scaena?’
They had practised all day long, with only a short break for lunch, then dined with the governor as usual. Now they were meeting by lamplight in the girls’ room, alone for the first time that day.
‘Yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘For a moment I thought he was going to drop me. If you hadn’t looked up . . .’
Lupus was giving Jonathan a look of disbelieving horror.
‘You didn’t betray our plan did you?’ whispered Flavia.
‘No, of course not. But he knows we’re up to something.’ Jonathan paused and took a breath. ‘Flavia, I think Narcissus is up to something, too. He said that by noon tomorrow, everything would be different.’
‘He said what?’
‘He said that by noon tomorrow everything would be different. No. That everything will have changed.’
‘What on earth can he mean by that?’ mused Flavia.
Lupus sheepishly raised his hand.
‘Yes, Lupus?’ whispered Flavia. ‘Do you know something?’
Lupus gave a queasy smile and nodded. He wrote on his wax tablet:
CASINA IS THE GREAT GREAT GRANDDAUGHTER OF ANTONIUS AND CLEO. NARCISSUS GOING TO ANNOUNCE THIS AFTER THEY PERFORM DEATH OF CLEO. THEY WILL THEN TAKE OVER THE WORLD.
‘What!?’ gasped Flavia and Jonathan together.
OR MAYBE JUST CLAIM CLEO’S JEWELS, he added with a shrug. I’M NOT SURE OF THE EXACT PLAN
They all stared at him.
Then Nubia looked at Flavia. ‘That is why Casina wears coin of Cleopatra.’
‘And that’s why she resembles Cleopatra,’ breathed Flavia. ‘Great Juno’s peacock! Why didn’t we realise it before?’ She looked at Lupus. ‘When did you find out about this? Recently?’
He waggled his hand, then nodded.
‘And when did you say he’s going to make the announcement?’
Lupus pointed to the part of this tablet where he had written: AFTER DEATH OF CLEO
‘After the pantomime?’
Lupus nodded.
‘I suppose it doesn’t matter then,’ said Flavia slowly. ‘Because our pantomime is first on the programme. And by then, if everything goes according to plan, we’ll have the object of our quest.’
It was the first day of the new governor’s festival, and the theatre of Volubilis was filled with an excited throng of people. Like the theatre at Sabratha, it had a monumental three-story scaena, with hidden peepholes for cast and crew waiting backstage.
Nubia stood at one of these peepholes, next to Flavia and Lupus, who each had a peephole, too. Jonathan was up above them, double-checking the winch that would lift Narcissus up for the final scene in the Death of Cleopatra. Nubia stepped back and looked up at him. He waved down at her and gave her a thumbs-up.
Nubia put her eye back to her spy-hole. She could see Aufidius sitting in the front row beside the other magistrates. They had their own armchairs and slaves to fan them. Glycera and their three children sat in the row directly behind him, with other wives and children of dignitaries. In the rows behind them sat rich merchants and their families, with slaves and freedmen further back and higher up.
‘Some of them have been here since before dawn,’ said a voice behind them. Nubia turned to see Casina, whose face was white as parchment. ‘Not the magistrates,’ she added, ‘their seats are reserved.’
‘Are you all right?’ Nubia asked her. ‘You look most pale.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Casina.
‘You do not look fine. You looked terrified,’ said Nubia.
The singer gave a false laugh. ‘Just a bit of stage-fright,’ she said. ‘It will pass as soon as we start.’
Nubia was nervous, too, but her fear was more than stage fright. They were about to execute a complicated theft of a valuable jewel.
She glanced around. To her left and to her right – at the stage doors – stood soldiers acting as guards. She knew there were also guards standing at each of the vomitoria, or exits, to keep the crowd moving. The world grew suddenly dimmer and Nubia looked up to see a small cloud pass before the sun.
‘Look!’ hissed Flavia from her peephole. ‘It’s Mendicus. He wants to sit in the magistrate’s seats.’
Nubia and Casina both put their eyes to the peepholes.
‘Behold!’ said Nubia. ‘Aufidius tells them to let him stay.’
‘That’s nice of him!’ said Flavia. ‘He’s letting him have a cushion at his feet.’
A shape blotted out Nubia’s peephole and a moment later she heard the distinctive sound of the herald’s bronze staff striking marble.
‘Honoured Magistrates, Esteemed Citizens, Residents of Volubilis!’ began the herald. ‘Respected Visitors, Women and Children . . . Welcome! Welcome to our festival in honour of the goddess Minerva, patroness of our new procurator, Gnaeus Aufidius Chius. It is he who has sponsored these games.’
Nubia heard the crowd cheer and clap.
‘He prays,’ continued the herald in his huge voice, ‘that this festival will find favour with the goddess of wisdom and warfare, and with all of you, also! This festival is for your edification, education and enjoyment.’
The crowd cheered again and Nubia heard a woman cry ‘Narcissus! We want Narcissus!’
‘Narcissus can edificate me any time!’ quipped another female voice from the back rows, and the crowd laughed.
‘And now,’ blared the herald, ‘I have great pleasure in introducing the great Narcissus and his troupe of musicians, all the way from Alexandria. Today they will perform a double bill beginning with . . .’ here he paused for dramatic effect: ‘“The Death of Nero!”’
As Nubia followed Hanno and Barbarus out from behind the scaena, the roar of the crowd struck her as forcibly as the blast of heat from the glassmaker’s furnace. She could physically feel a wave of adoration and anticipation washing over her. She followed the two musicians down the six marble steps to the circle of the orchestra, aware of Flavia and Lupus coming behind her.
Nubia stared around in wonder. She had been used to practising in an empty theatre, and now the cavea was packed with people of all ages and colours and backgrounds, their happy expectant faces the only thing they all had in common.
Hanno and Barbarus were looking at her with encouraging smiles, so Nubia took a deep breath and lifted her flute to her lips. In a single heartbeat the theatre was silent, and she could hear the pure notes of her flute thrown back to her from the giant shell full of people. It was like listening to someone else, and it sounded so wonderful that she almost laughed with pleasure. Then Hanno began to buzz his aulos, Barbarus to strum his cithara and Flavia to jingle her tambourine. Lupus patted a goatskin drum on a strap round his chest and kept beat with his iron-soled right shoe. As Nubia looked out over the audience she could already see hands twitching, feet tapping and heads nodding to the rhythm.
She glanced at the back of the proscaenium. A small square table stood there, laid out with masks, garlands and other props. Her sharp eyes caught the gleam of green: the governor had put Nero’s Eye on the table as requested.
Still playing her flute, Nubia turned back to look at the governor. His face was cheerful and expectant. Behind him Glycera was consoling her youngest son, Marcus, who was crying. Mendicus sat happily on a cushion at the governor’s feet, holding Marcus’s toy lyre.
A fresh burst of applause welcomed Casina as she came down the steps and took her place before the musicians. Once again, the applause ceased the moment the Egyptian girl began to sing. Her pure voice soared above the music and filled the whole world.
‘Help me, Polyhymnia,’ Casina sang the words which Flavia had written, ‘Inspire me to sing, and these to play, and him to dance, the Song of Nero. Some called Nero a monster, others a saviour. Which was he? Tell us, O Muse! Reveal the Truth!’
Nubia turned and tried to smile at Flavia but it was difficult to play the flute and smile at the same time.
The crowd gave the loudest roar yet as Narcissus leapt onto the stage.
Because Nubia and the others stood to one side of the proscaenium, they could see him perfectly. He wore a short white tunic over flesh-coloured silk leggings. A toga of purple silk billowed out behind him as he ran to centre stage. He wore a mask of a handsome young man.
‘Nero was an artist in his heart and in his soul,’ sang Casina, ‘Accomplished at lyre and cithara.’
On stage, Narcissus used his hands to perfectly mimic someone playing a lyre. From the front row came the sound of one person clapping enthusiastically. Nubia turned her body a little as she played. She saw the lone clapper was Mendicus the beggar. Governor Aufidius patted him benevolently on the shoulder and leaned forward to say something in his ear. Mendicus stopped clapping and picked up the toy lyre.
Casina sang: ‘Not content with the blessings of the Muses, Nero claimed the gifts of an athlete, too. Skilled at racing chariots was he, and once he rode a chariot pulled by ten horses, ungelded stallions all!’
Now Narcissus mimed stepping into an invisible chariot. The music was still joyful and quick, but Nubia picked up the pace even more as Narcissus burst from the stalls. Beside Nubia, Lupus had pushed aside his drum and was using wooden sticks on the marble lip of the stage to make the sound of horses’ hooves. The crowd laughed and cheered and clapped. In the front row, Mendicus had risen to his feet and was jumping up and down like an excited child. With his shaven head, bulging blue eyes and potbelly, he looked like an oversized toddler.
Nubia turned back to watch Narcissus. His whole body leaned forward, his left hand twitching imaginary reins, his right wielding the whip. She could almost see the wind tugging his hair. The music they were playing was racing music, with an urgent jingling beat that conveyed a sense of speed and excitement. Nubia had composed this piece by remembering the time she had ridden on the back of a chariot in the Circus Maximus in Rome.
Suddenly, Narcissus took the imaginary turn too sharply and mimed being thrown out of the chariot. Lupus clashed the cymbals a fraction of a second too early, but it didn’t matter. The whole crowd gasped, then cried out in alarm as Narcissus tumbled violently over and over, finally coming to a rest at the very precipice of the stage.
For a moment a perfect hush fell over the theatre. Was he really injured?
Then Narcissus leapt to his feet, and the real crowd cheered as he bowed to an imaginary one.
Nubia brought her flute to her lips and gave a nod and the music began again.
‘Nero won many crowns,’ sang Casina, ‘and many wreaths of laurel.’ As she sang, Jonathan tossed garlands down from his hiding place behind a column on the second story of the backdrop.
Narcissus ran back and forth, so that the garlands fell onto his upraised arms like hoops on a pole. As the last garland fell, he positioned himself beneath it so that it landed neatly on his head, only a little askew.
‘He won many crowns,’ Casina was singing, ‘not just for his prowess at racing chariots, but for song, dance and even pantomime.’ As she sang this last phrase, Narcissus bowed. As he bent his masked head, the garland fell. He deftly caught it on the toe of his bare foot, then kicked it out into the audience.
The audience cheered as he spun out the other garlands, making sure some reached the poorer patrons at the back of the theatre, as well as the rich ones at the front.
Nubia sighed. They had stayed up late the night before weaving those garlands. Abruptly a scuffle broke out in the second and third rows on the left. Finally Mendicus emerged, waving his trophy – a tattered garland. ‘It’s mine,’ he exulted, ‘I won the crown again!’
As the guards moved forward to restrain him, the beggar pulled the garland onto his head and sat quickly at the governor’s feet, then gave them a look of such triumphant defiance that Nubia almost giggled into the mouthpiece of her flute.
‘Nero was always generous,’ sang Casina, as Narcissus tossed away the last garland, ‘caring for his subjects as a mother cares for her child.’
Nubia glanced at Hanno and raised her eyebrows. That was their cue to change to a minor key. Together they played a chord so poignant that it made the tiny hairs on her neck prickle as she heard it resonate back.
This key change marked the next movement of the piece. Flavia stopped jingling and Lupus slowed down the beat.
‘As a mother cares for her child,’ Casina was singing, her voice low and full of yearning. ‘A mother, a mother, a mother . . . Nero’s mother: Agrippina. A mother cares for her child but this mother had no care for her little boy.’
Narcissus was at the little marble table near the scaena, his back to the audience, his shoulders slumped in the very picture of a rejected child. Nubia had seen him rehearse this many times, but even so a lump came to her throat and she had to look away. She saw Mendicus sitting in the front row, his head down and his shoulders shaking, weeping as if his heart would break.
‘Agrippina was evil,’ sang Casina, and her tone was ominous now. ‘She was cruel, devoid of that natural softness which all women have. She was a Medea, one who would kill her own offspring, just to spite her enemies.’
Nubia knew Narcissus’s posture was changing and that he had taken off one mask and replaced it with another. The audience gasped when he turned to suddenly face them. It was a mask of evil female beauty and Nubia did not like to look at it.
‘Agrippina, mother of Nero,’ sang Casina. In the blue sky, a small cloud passed before the sun, dimming the bright day. ‘Agrippina plotted and poisoned and killed, and finally had to be removed, as the surgeon cuts away the tumour, or lances the boil, or burns the leprous flesh.’
In the front row, Mendicus moaned audibly. Nubia knew without looking that Narcissus was writhing in an obscene dance, moving back towards the table.
The crowd cheered as Narcissus turned to show them the Nero mask again.
‘Nero Caesar,’ sang Casina, ‘did the gods’ bidding. Just as Orestes obeyed Apollo. It was the bravest thing he had ever done: to rid Rome of that Harpy. She fed on scraps of decayed rumour and poisoned men with her vomitings. Nobody understood what a great sacrifice it was for him to sacrifice her. Even though she had only ever given him bad things. The only good thing she ever gave Nero was his life. His life and an emerald.’
An excited murmur rippled through the theatre as Narcissus lifted the emerald from the props table, and Nubia turned just in time to see its green flash as the sun emerged from behind the cloud. The audience buzzed with excitement.
But now there was a commotion in the front row. Aufidius and another magistrate were holding back Mendicus, who was struggling and twisting, his arms stretched towards the emerald. ‘The Seeing-thing!’ he cried. ‘It’s my Seeing-thing!’
The guards started towards him, then one of them cried out and Nubia saw their eyes turn in disbelief toward the proscaenium. A she-leopard had appeared from stage right and she was pacing directly towards Narcissus.
Women screamed and men yelled as the leopard padded across the stage. Narcissus dropped the emerald on the table and backed towards the scaena, his eyes behind the smiling mask wide with terror.
Flavia tried not to smile. This was part of their plan.
‘Don’t be alarmed!’ came a man’s voice, and her Uncle Gaius strode out onto the stage, right on cue. ‘Nissa is not fierce. She is tame.’ He looked at the audience and gestured for them to stay seated. ‘Nobody move!’ he continued, in a voice full of authority. ‘She is tame and perfectly harmless, but like most animals, she dislikes panic or noise.’ He pointed at Narcissus, who stood visibly trembling. ‘You! Play dead.’ He turned to Flavia and her friends: ‘You! Play calming music.’ He gave Flavia a quick wink. ‘Nissa likes calming music.’
Flavia suppressed a grin as Nubia played a soft deep tune on her flute. Lupus pattered a soft beat. Flavia jingled her tambourine.
The leopard turned towards Flavia and snarled.
‘Back, creature!’ cried G
aius cheerfully. ‘I will need a chair or table.’ He looked around and pretended to spot the table for the first time. ‘There. A table!’ He went to the table and tipped off the masks and the other props. Flavia knew this was the moment for him to switch the gemstones. For a moment he had his back to the audience.
Flavia jingled her tambourine again, and again Nissa snarled and turned cold, green eyes towards her.
But now Gaius was brandishing the table with the legs pointing towards the leopard. ‘Back, beast!’ he cried. ‘Back against the scaena!’
Flavia jingled softly and the leopard slashed out at her uncle.
The flute music stopped. ‘Flavia!’ hissed Nubia. ‘Behold that is not Nissa. It is Ungula!’
‘What?’ gasped Flavia.
‘I hear claws scratching on marble. You were telling me Nissa has no claws. It is Ungula, the fierce one.’
Up on stage Gaius was driving the snarling leopard towards the tall stone scaena.
‘Ungula the man-eater?’ said Flavia. ‘The one who hates tambourines?’
Nubia nodded and Flavia squealed and dropped her tambourine in horror.
The tambourine clattered onto the ground and once again the leopard lashed out.
‘Whoa! Kitty!’ cried Gaius, jumping back just in time. ‘Whoa!’
A ripple of laughter ran through the audience and Nubia began to play a soft and soothing melody. Casina began to sing ‘la-la-la’ in a tremulous voice.
‘We’ve got to warn him!’ hissed Flavia. Lupus nodded but Casina, still doing her la-la’s looked at Flavia with a frown.
‘That’s not the tame leopard!’ cried Flavia. ‘It’s a man-eater! You must warn my uncle!’
Casina stopped singing la-la. ‘You know that leopard?’ she gasped.
‘Yes, but it’s the wrong leopard. It was supposed to be a tame one. Please, Casina. Sing a song to warn him! We don’t want the people to panic.’
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 215