Read Last Act in Palmyra for Free Online

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.
    â€˜What’s the matter?’ Something Helena had said earlier had struck a nerve. ‘Finding out that I’m acting for the Chief Spy?’
    â€˜Anacrites!’ she snorted with contempt.
    â€˜So? He’s a slug, but no worse than the other slime lovers in Rome.’
    â€˜I thought at least you were working for Vespasian. You let me come all this way thinking that –’
    â€˜An oversight.’ By this time I had convinced myself that was true. ‘It just never came up in conversation. Anyway, what’s the difference?’
    â€˜The difference is, Anacrites when he’s acting independently is a threat to you. I don’t trust the man.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜I like the goddess in the round pavilion between the broken pediments,’ said Helena.
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜Bath oils.’
    â€˜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