Alexandria

by Lindsey Davis

  'You have such a jaded view of underlings,' Albia tutted.

  'That's because I have known so many.'

  Mammius and Cotius seemed to feel they were being got at. They stuffed a few last chunks of bread into their fists, saluted and made off.

  My father had eavesdropped without interruption, but now he just had to weigh in. 'Seems you were brought here to dig out a swamp of corrupt practices.'

  I served myself a new slice of smoked ham, a task that required silence and concentration lest I cut myself on the very sharp thin-bladed knife. While I was at it, to prolong the activity I did slices for Helena and Albia. Aulus held out his bread too.

  'All right,' agreed Geminus patiently. He recognised my delaying tactics. 'You weren't brought here for that. I believe you. You came on an innocent holiday. Problems just float up to you, wherever you take yourself.

  'If I attract problems, it's inherited, Pa ... What's your interest anyway?' As usual when talking to my father, I immediately felt like a surly teenager who thinks it is beneath his dignity to hold a civil conversation with anyone over twenty. I had been one once, of course, though I did not have the luxury of a father to be rude to at the time. Mine had run off with his lady love. When he reappeared, renaming himself Geminus instead of Favonius, he behaved as if all those intervening years never happened. Some of us would not forget.

  Pa produced a sad smile and his personal brand of annoying forbearance. 'I just like to know what you are up to, Marcus. You are my boy, my only surviving son; it's natural for a father to take an interest.'

  I was his boy, all right. Two days in the same house and I understood why Oedipus had felt that burning urge to strangle his kingly Greek papa even without recognising who the bastard was. I knew mine too well. I knew that behind any interest he took there must be a suspicious motive. And if I ever met him in a chariot at an isolated crossroads, Marcus Didius Favonius, known as Geminus, might disappear, complete with his chariot and horses, and no need to waste time on dialogue first...

  'Settle down, Pa. I don't know what you're wheedling for. I'm here because Helena Justina wants to see the Pyramids -' She favoured us with her own little knowing smile. 'You go and get on with whatever tricks you are up to with Fulvius. Don't fret about any convoluted Egyptian schemes that have been going on at the Library. I can sort out a few book fiddles. Their days are numbered.'

  'Is that so?'

  Pa consulted Helena with a sceptical look. Her word was law with him. He had convinced himself that a senator's daughter was above practising deceit, even for the usual family reasons.

  'That's right,' she confirmed. She was extremely loyal - and hilariously inventive. 'We expect to have the full facts any day now. A report for the authorities will be cracked out straight away. Marcus is on to it.'

  Helena had just imposed a time constraint, though I did not know it yet.

  XXXVIII

  Aulus and I went to the Museion together. When we first left my uncle's house, we found Mammius and Cotius were still in the street, giving a shake-down to the muttering man who always lurked outside. On the excuse of routine public order enquiries, they had him pinned against a wall and were scaring him silly. 'What's your name?' 'Katutis.'

  'A likely tale! Pat him down, Cotius -' We grinned and quickly walked on.

  By now the familiar route to the Museion seemed much shorter. I said little on the way, planning my next moves. I had a number of lines I was eager to pursue, and a job in mind for Aulus. As we walked through a colonnade together he suddenly asked, 'Do you trust your father?'

  'I wouldn't trust him to squash a grub on his lettuce. Why do you ask?'

  'No reason.'

  'Well, let's have a pact: I won't dwell on any deplorable relatives you may have - and you can keep your high-class disapproval away from mine. Geminus may be an auctioneer, but he has never actually been arrested, even for passing off fakes - and you are not a praetor yet. You won't be either, until one day you trudge your noble boots back to Rome and levitate yourself like a demigod, up through the cursus honorum to the dizzy heights of the consulship.'

  'You think I could make consul?'Aulus could always be sidetracked by reminding him he had had political ambition once.

  'Anyone can do it if enough cash is spent on them.'

  He was a realist. 'Well, Papa has no money at present, so let's go and earn some!'

  At the Library, we found Pastous, looking anxious.

  'You asked me to preserve the papers Nibytas was working with, Falco. But the Director sent across this morning and asked for everything. I'm told he wants to send personal effects to the family.'

  'What family did Nibytas have?'

  'None I know of.'

  'You let those notebooks of his go?'

  Pastous had discovered a liking for intrigue. 'No. I claimed you had taken everything. I decided that if they were so urgently in demand, they must be significant...'

  'Is the stuff here?' Everything off the table where the old man worked had been secreted in a little back room. 'I want Aelianus to go through it. 'The noble youth pulled a very ignoble face. 'If you have free time, Pastous, maybe you can help. You don't need to read every line, but decide what Nibytas thought he was doing. Aulus, just give us an overview, as rapidly as you can. Pull out anything significant, then the residue can be dispatched to Philetus. Jumble it up a bit to keep him busy.'

  Before I left them to it, I asked Pastous to tell me what he knew about scrolls being found on rubbish dumps. It was clear the assistant was uneasy. 'I know that it once happened,' he admitted.

  'And?'

  'It caused much unpleasantness. Theon was informed, and he managed to reclaim all the scrolls. The incident made him extremely angry'

  'How had the scrolls got there?'

  'Junior staff had selected them for disposal. Unread for a long time, or duplicates. They had been instructed that such scrolls were no longer needed.'

  'Not by Theon, I take it! What do you think of the principle, Pastous?'

  He stiffened up and sailed into a heartfelt speech. 'It is a subject we discuss regularly. Can old books that have not been looked at for decades, or even centuries, justifiably be thrown out to increase shelf space? Why do you need duplicates? Then there is the question of quality - should works that everyone knows are terrible still be lovingly kept and cared for, or should they be ruthlessly purged?'

  'And the Library takes what line?'

  'That we keep them.' Pastous was definite. 'Little-read items may still be requested one day. Works that seem bad may be reassessed - or if not, they are still needed to confirm how bad they were.'

  'So who ordered the staff to clear the shelves?' asked Aulus.

  'A management decision. Or so the juniors thought. Changes are always happening in large organisations. A memo comes around. New instructions appear, often anonymous, almost as if they fell through a window like moonbeams.'

  What Pastous said seemed all too familiar.

  Aulus had less experience than me of the madness that infects public administration. 'How can such things happen? Surely someone would have double-checked? Theon cannot have allowed such important and controversial instructions to be given to his staff behind his back?'

  Four days had passed since Theon died. In an organisation, that counted as eternity. His loyal staff, once completely tight-lipped, were already prepared to criticise him. Pastous himself seemed more confident today, as if his place in the hierarchy had changed. He admitted to Aulus, 'Theon had not been much in evidence. He was going through a bad patch.'

  'Illness?'

  The assistant gazed at the ground. 'Money worries, it was rumoured.'

  'Did he gamble on the horses?'

  I had asked this before, when we first met Pastous, and he had avoided the question. This time he was more forthcoming. 'I believe he did. Men came here looking for him. He disappeared for a few days afterwards. But if there was trouble, I assumed he cleared it up, because he was back at
his post when a civic-minded member of the public came to report finding the dumped scrolls.'

  'So how did Theon tackle that?'

  'First priority was to reclaim them. Afterwards, he confirmed that Library policy was to keep all scrolls. And I think - though of course it was done very discreetly - he had a terrific argument with the Director.'

  'Had Philetus sent the scrolls to the rubbish dump?' Pastous answered my question only with a weary shrug. Staff had given up any hope of loosening the Director's grip. Philetus was stifling their initiative and their sense of responsibility.

  Aulus could always be relied upon to give delicate subjects a big thumping push. 'Was there any crossover between Theon's personal money worries and Library finances? I mean, did he -'

  'Certainly not!' cried Pastous. Fortunately, he liked us enough now not to flounce off in horror.

  'That would have been a terrible scandal,' I remarked.

  I was thinking it was the kind of scandal I had come across too many times - the kind that could have fatal results if it got out of hand.

  Leaving Aulus and Pastous to wade through the morass Nibytas had bequeathed to us, I decided to try to tackle Zenon once more about the Museion's accounts.

  He was in the observatory on the roof again. He seemed to hide up there as often as possible, tinkering with equipment. Remembering how he went for me last time, I made sure I kept his sky-scrutinising chair between us. He noticed.

  'Getting anywhere, Falco?'

  I sighed dramatically. 'In my dark moments, my enquiries here seem particularly futile. Did Theon kill himself or was he killed? Did Nibytas die of old age? Did young Heras die by accident and if not, who killed him, was he the real target or did they intend to murder someone else? Are any of these deaths linked, and do they have any connection to how the Museion and the Great Library are run? Does it matter? Do I care? Would I ever let a child of mine come here to study in this crazy home of warped minds, with its once-fine reputation apparently now hanging in tatters due to incompetence and maladministration on a monumental scale?'

  Zenon looked slightly taken aback. 'What maladministration have you found?'

  I let him wonder. 'Tell me the truth, Zenon. The figures are a mess, aren't they? I am not blaming you - I imagine that however hard you struggle to impose sound business practice and prudence, still others - we know who - constantly thwart you.' He was letting me talk, so I pressed on. 'I haven't seen your accounts, but I hear that at the Library things have got so bad, even penny-pinching measures like clearing out old scrolls have been attempted. Somebody is desperate.'

  'I wouldn't say that, Falco.'

  'If funds are tight, you need a concerted effort to economise. This can't be co-ordinated properly during a full-blown disagreement about holdings policy. What? - The Director sneaks in behind Theon's back to clear out old scrolls he reckons are not worth keeping. Theon violently disagrees. The spectre of the Librarian on hands and knees in a rubbish dump, retrieving his stock then wheeling it back here through the filthy streets in handcarts, is quite unedifying.'

  'There is no financial crisis calling for the Director's measures,' Zenon protested.

  'It was all pointless, anyway,' I growled. 'Savings would have been minimal. Tossing out a few scrolls and closing a few cupboards would never achieve much. Staff still have to be paid for. You still have to maintain your building - not cheap when it is a famous monument, constructed on a fabulous scale, with four-hundred-year-old irreplaceable antique fittings. All that happened was that the staff ended up depressed, feeling that they work for a declining organisation that has lost its prestige and energy.'

  'Calm down,' said Zenon. 'All that was just Philetus trying to upset Theon.'

  'Why?'

  'Because Theon refused to be pushed around by a fool.'

  'He objected to short-sighted policy?'

  'He objected to the whole current regime. What can we do? Do you have the power to overturn it?' asked Zenon, clearly without much faith in me.

  'Depends on the root cause. One man's ineptitude can always be altered - by removing the man.'

  'Not if he is in a post for life.'

  'Don't give up. Under Vespasian, incompetents who thought they were fireproof have nevertheless found themselves uplifted to occupy absolutely meaningless positions where they can do no harm.'

  'It will never happen here.' Under the current Director's stifling rule, Zenon, like Theon before him, had become a black defeatist. 'In Alexandria we have our own ways.'

  'Oh that old excuse!''We are special. Everything here is different!'''

  'The Museion is in decline. Fewer true intellectuals come to Alexandria than in its heyday. Little new scholarship occurs. But Philetus represents the future.'

  I kept trying. 'Look - ever heard of Antonius Primus? When Vespasian was aiming to become Emperor, Primus was his right-hand man. While Vespasian himself remained safely here in Alexandria, it was Primus who brought the Eastern legions through the Balkans to Italy and defeated their rival, Vitellius. He could have argued he took all the risks and did all the work so he deserved huge recognition. But Primus had no judgement, success went wildly to his head and he was driven by misplaced ambition - any of that sound familiar? He became a liability. It was dealt with. It was - I can tell you, Zenon - dealt with extremely quietly. Who has ever heard of him since? He just disappeared from the scene.'

  'That will never happen here.'

  'Well not if you all keep caving in!' Zenon's defeatism was making me depressed too. 'I suppose Theon was pretty demoralised by those attempts to get rid of unwanted scrolls?'

  'Theon was upset, certainly.'

  'You and Theon were on friendly terms, you said. So what do you know about his personal gambling debts?'

  'Nothing. Well, he sorted it all out.'

  'He paid off the men who were hounding him?'

  'I never heard it got that bad...' Zenon was oblivious to gossip -or that was what he wanted me to think. 'He had a temporary cash problem - could happen to anyone.'

  'Did you ask Theon how he solved it?'

  'No. People keep their debts to themselves.'

  'Not necessarily - not if they are friends with the man who controls the Museion's enormous budget!'

  'I resent your insinuation, Falco.'

  He would resent my next question even more, because by now I had lost my temper. 'So is the Museion bankrupt - or merely run by a bunch of monkeys?'

  'Get off my roof, Falco.'

  This time, the astronomer was so sad at heart he did not even try to manhandle me. But I knew it was time to leave.

  'How do you feel about being on the list for Theon's job?' I called back at him, when I was at the head of the stairs.

  'Vulnerable!' Zenon retorted with feeling. When I cocked my head in enquiry, even this buttoned-up near-mute lost his laconic style: 'The rumour machine in the refectory says what happened at the zoo two nights ago was a bungled attempt to reduce the number of candidates! Of course,' he added bitterly, 'there are people here who would maintain that murdering academics is ethically more acceptable than getting rid of scrolls! The written word must be preserved at all costs. Mere scholars, however, are untidy and expendable.'

  'So the Library appointment led to Sobek being on the loose?' I scoffed. 'No, I see that as a messier-than-usual end to a love triangle. Besides, I hope any expensively educated scholar intent on murder would do it in an elegant manner - some allusion to classical literature - and an apt Greek quotation pinned to the corpse.'

  'There is no scholar at the Museion,' complained Zenon, 'who could bring off a murder. Most need a scale diagram and instructions in three languages even to lace their shoes.'

  I gazed at him, both of us silently acknowledging how practical he was. He could certainly have worked out how to sneak away some goat's meat and lure Sobek from his pit. Moreover, unlike the unworldly men he was deriding, Zenon had no qualms about violence. I skipped down the stairs before he could make an
other of his attempts to throw me headlong from his sanctuary.

  XXXIX

  I went to see Thalia. As I was setting off for her tent, I noticed the Director leaving the Library. He was in the company of a man I recognised: the same man who had come to see my uncle and whom I also had spotted yesterday, walking through one of the colonnades here.

  Philetus and the businessman had definitely been together, though they immediately parted company. I nearly followed the trader, but I had yet to discover enough about him to feel ready. So I went after Philetus.