by Mike Ashley
She shook her head. ‘You are very observant.’
‘I am a pavement maker,’ he said. ‘A putter-together of unconsidered fragments. Now . . . about this letter . . .’
IN THIS SIGN, CONQUER
Gail-Nina Anderson and Simon Clark
Simon Clark has established himself as a writer of effective supernatural horror with his novels Nailed By the Heart (1995) and Blood Crazy (1996). His interests are wide and varied, and in the following story he teams up with art historian and writer, Gail-Nina Anderson, to explore a locked-room mystery set in the library at Alexandria during the reign of the Emperor Constantine.
Upon taking the city of Alexandria on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast in the year 642, the Arab General Amr sent a rather prosaic message to the Caliph reporting: ‘I have taken a city of which I can only say that it contains 4,000 palaces, 4,000 baths, 400 theatres, 1,200 greengrocers and 40,000 Jews.’ Little here illuminates any of the splendours of Alexandria, burial place of Alexander the Great, capital of the Pharaohs under the Ptolemy dynasty, the site of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the fabled Pharos lighthouse, and home to one of the greatest libraries of the ancient world.
ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT – AD 331
A LETTER WRITTEN BY
THEOCRITAS AMUN-ARTEN, PHYSICIAN
I am frightened.
Tonight, the statues of old Egypt have come alive and climb the walls to leap from roof to roof across this great city. A man lies dead in the next room. If his murderer is not identified, and more importantly the map not found, by the time the sun rises in six hours time we are to have our throats cut on the library steps.
You are the focus of my love, dear one. I thank all gods of all faiths that chance brought us together. Now my feelings flash from anger to sorrow to despair. Because, in this life, we are to be parted. At this moment I feel rage for I’ll never again see your throat suddenly flush as pink as a rose, nor take a Sybarite’s delight at the drip of the oil from your fingertips.
I do not know if you will be permitted to claim my body for burial. The best I can do is write you this letter in the hope it will somehow find you. I write because I know how I felt when my father died in Rome. I became obsessed with the nature of his illness and those hours of suffering he must have endured so far from his family here in Alexandria.
I want you to know that I am surrounded by my friends who have, like me, made this lovely library their second home. There is young Marcus, who you know well enough by now; the beautiful Marcus, you tease, with the eyelashes fit for a girl. He’ll turn heads in the marketplace no longer.
He has begun to grow a beard but it’s as red as copper. His hair, as you know, is black so he’s completely perplexed. Earlier he said to me, ‘Theo, you’re a physician. Have you any explanation why although my hair is black my whiskers are red?’ I laughed and told him I don’t know everything. He smiled and said, ‘One day you will, Theo, one day you will.’
Seated beside me, eating olives, and spitting the stones into a cup is Chrysippus, a court scribe. You’ve met him at the festival; a big bald man, forever eating or forever wondering where his next meal is coming from. He waddles like a tipsy elephant. He is also the most generous man I’ve ever met. These, and my other companions sitting on the benches opposite me, are not great men but I will be proud to die with them in the morning.
There . . . I have described my friends. How, I wonder, would they describe me? I recall Chrysippus did so once in a letter to his brother. My good friend, Theocritas Amun-Arten is a physician, [Chrysippus wrote]. He is a kindly man with oh-so weary eyes and the face of our favourite uncle. He walks with his eyes hard down to the street stones, always preoccupied with some new medical case he must treat.
If we dine out, Theo has a great, nay, insurmountable, fondness for duck roasted in a pot with honey, beer and apricots. His main passion is also his vice which has the power to leave him exhausted and sorrowful. Theocritas Amun-Arten is a man who, one can so readily believe, has been commanded by the gods to find a cure for every disease known to man. So he drives himself too hard. And yet he has worked so many, many miracle cures. But still this gentle, softly spoken man will blame himself, curse and beat his chest until bruised if he loses so much as a single patient – no matter of which caste, creed or race.
Now, as I write this beneath the reading lamps, hanging by their long cords from the ceiling spars, Marcus is saying we shouldn’t sit here and meekly wait to have our throats stuck like goats, but we should find the murderer and the map that General Romulus believes is so important. Chrysippus spits olive stones as he speaks: ‘Find the murderer . . . impossible . . . the man was murdered in a locked room . . . he was alone . . . there is no murder weapon . . . it’s as if a ghost walked through the walls . . . killed him . . . then disappeared with this miserable little map that’s more valuable than all our lives.’
‘So, you’re just going to sit there and wait for the blade?’
‘No, I’m going to sit here . . . eat olives . . . drink Librarian’s wine. There is nothing in the room or on the body to tell us who the murderer is, or where the map has gone.’
Marcus looks at me, his young doe eyes show more regret at losing life, than actual fear. He has a wife and baby; they will starve.
He speaks to me. ‘Theo. You are an intelligent man. Is there no way of learning who killed the scribe and stole the map?’
‘All I can say is, I imagine an unsolved murder is like an illness that still has no diagnosis. You must carefully examine the patient and look for the individual symptoms, no matter how minor, or seemingly unimportant, then you must collect them together and arrange them into some order that will help you identify the illness.’
‘You mean,’ began Chrysippus in his slow, elephantine way, ‘that if we list . . . everything that is in the room with the victim . . . it will somehow, magically, tell us who the murderer is?’
I smiled regretfully. ‘Not exactly, Chrysippus. But we could begin by noting certain peculiarities.’
‘Such as?’
‘The colour of the soles of the man’s feet.’
‘Why should that be important?’
‘Those who arrived here barefoot look at your soles. They’re the colour of chalk, because Alexandria’s streets are covered in a chalky white dust. The murder victim’s feet are smeared black.’
‘And that means?’
‘And that means . . .’ I shrugged. ‘Even though the victim never appeared to leave the room in which he was locked, he must actually have walked across an area of ground that was covered with some rich black material.’
Marcus added, ‘Then there were the dried lotus blossoms on the floor. They weren’t there when the man was locked into the room.’
‘Theo, would these clues tell us who murdered the scribe and where the map is hidden?’
I shrugged helplessly. ‘I can’t say. What it does tell us, is that though everyone in the library believes that the scribe was locked into the room, that he never left the room, then was found murdered, in actual fact he had, during that time, been somewhere else.’
Around me are the faces of my friends. They are looking at me. And I see expressions that trouble me more than the fear I saw before.
They are looking at me and they are seeing hope. A hope that I can find the murderer – and the map – before sunrise, and so spare them the executioner’s blade.
You, my love, might be curious to know what circumstances pitched me into this evil circumstance. I had been attending to Praxicles – you will recall he’s the carpenter who lives in the same street as your mother. I did intend to come straight home; however, I’d had word from Librarian that he’d recovered documents relating to some medicinal remedies I’d been rather anxious to obtain.
As I hurried along Canopic Street toward the library, I saw the statues come to life and begin to stream across the rooftops, and, with a shiver, I knew there’d be blood on the streets by dawn.
T
he statues of ancient Egypt come to life?
It sounds fantastic doesn’t it? And our old saying can actually strike fear into the hearts of visitors to our city. The truth is much more mundane. Whenever there is a threat of civil unrest the monkeys that nest amongst the ancient statues flee for their safe haven. The old temple of Amun. I hurried there too, for different reasons though. Because the temple was a place of worship no longer. For two centuries it had been one of the finest library museums you could find.
As I climbed the library steps the light from the great lighthouse on Pharos had already begun to burn out across the sea, with the fiery magnitude of a sun. High above my head I saw the flitting shapes of the monkeys leaping onto the library roof, until they covered it completely like a seething, living thatch.
Surprisingly, the library’s iron doors were locked and it was only by dint of hammering and shouting that I managed to summon one of the library servants. It was an omen I should have heeded.
‘Why are the doors locked so early?’ I asked.
The servant made a bored gesture to the rooftops. ‘They’ve come alive again, so Librarian ordered the doors locked to keep out the mob.’ The man clicked his tongue in disgust as more monkeys scrambled, chattering and screaming, onto the roof. ‘One day those filthy apes will be the death of someone in here. I’ve told Librarian a hundred times that the filthy brutes will bring the roof down on –’
‘Mosse, if you please . . . I need to copy some documents.’
The servant gave a careless shrug. ‘Go right in, Theo . . . it’s a circus in there anyway.’
‘Why?’
‘Some stupid Roman’s got himself locked in one of the reading rooms. Librarian and the rest of you book-flies are trying to open the door.’
I hurried into the body of the building anxious to make my copies and return home but cynical Mosse thought I was curious to see what was happening in the reading room and called after me, ‘It’s the Isis reading room, Theo, you can’t miss it, all the book-flies are clamouring round the door and cackling like geese. I ask you, have they no homes to go to? Don’t they have friends they can get drunk with, rather than swarming round here? Leave the place to the filthy apes to roost in I say, but no they . . .’
His voice faded behind me as I hurried through this fabulous maze of shelving piled high with the cream of books from around the world. Above me, the monkeys had climbed in through the windows to cling to the top of the columns or sit on the shoulders of stone gods. They chattered restlessly, their gemstone eyes glinting down at me in the lamplight.
I intended to hurry by the dozen men clustered around the Isis door but Marcus saw me.
‘Hey, Theo. Guess what? Some –’
‘Some Roman has got himself locked in the Isis room. Yes, Mosse told me. He’ll dine out on that for a week. Why he despises all Romans so passionately God only knows.’
‘I am ordering you to break down the door,’ demanded a stranger, his face as red as raw meat. ‘My assistant is inside there with a document that . . . that men would die for.’
Librarian, tall, calm, dignified, tried to soothe him. But this red-faced man, who despite the heat wore a woollen cloak, speckled brown and white like the breast of a thrush, would not be placated. ‘Break down the door – break it down, I tell you! I order it in the name of General Romulus.’
The babble stopped dead. Even the monkey hordes high above our heads seemed to fall silent at the sound of that dreadful name.
Librarian’s face turned white. ‘You did say, General Romulus?’
‘You heard correctly.’
Librarian nodded grimly. ‘Break down the door.’
Romulus’s reputation was as fierce as it was terrible. Wherever there was rebellion and civil unrest Emperor Constantine knew who would quell it: ruthlessly, completely, utterly. When the citizens of Rome herself rioted because of famine, Romulus turned the streets into freshets of blood that foamed and swirled and gushed in Babylonian flood. Survivors whisper that Romulus then bared his chest, drenched his hands in the blood and painted his breast, throat and face, until he looked like the son of the barbarian he is.
So, Librarian argued no longer.
We broke down the door.
There, in the centre of the room, lying face down, was the body of a grey-haired man of about forty. His name, we later learnt, was Diomedes, he was Roman, an assistant to the red-faced man, and most clearly, he’d been beaten around the head until his soul had eagerly fled its body.
What terrified the red-faced man was the loss of some precious map that had just been located within the library. Face redder than ever, he searched the room for the map. It wasn’t a long search because apart from a table, a rope and a pair of broken stools the room was quite bare. Then he tugged at his dead servant’s clothes like a man skinning a goat, in the hope the map would be concealed in there.
It wasn’t.
Clutching his head as if Athene herself threatened to burst from his forehead, he crouched on the floor and whimpered. When Librarian tried to console him the man shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. I had the map in my hand. A map drawn on a rabbit skin. I remember the colour of the inks, the tear in the top right-hand corner. Now I’ve lost it.’
‘But it’s only a map, my friend.’
‘Only a map . . . only a map! General Romulus has had me searching for the filthy thing for five years. And now I’ve sent word to his headquarters that I have it in my hands.’
Even as he spoke we heard the sound of feet on the marble floor. This wasn’t the hesitant, self-absorbed step of the book-fly. This was the muscular rhythm of the soldier.
With a moan the red-faced man gritted his teeth and stood up as General Romulus entered the reading room. He was dressed as if ready for battle, complete with shining breastplate and scarlet-plumed helmet (however, incongruously, his teeth were polished a brilliant white, like those of a rich man’s wife). He was accompanied by his German bodyguards; a ferocious body of men with huge blond beards, blue eyes and legs like tree trunks. Their armour was scarred and dented from years of hand-to-hand combat.
We quickly left for the main body of the library, leaving Librarian and the red-faced man with the general.
I will, my love, spare you a detailed description of the general’s rage at the theft of the map. How he screamed at the two men. How he slapped them, and even kicked at the unfortunate corpse of Diomedes.
Then out he marched to where we nervously stood.
His upper lip glistened with sweat; his ferocious eyes stabbed at us. ‘You know what’s happened. One of my servants has been murdered. And a map, a very, very valuable map, has been stolen. Therefore, I have decided to execute you all, so I shall be certain of punishing the murderer, the thief, and any tight-lipped witnesses who aren’t being so helpful as they might.’
I saw the hands of the bodyguard go to their swords.
‘But,’ continued the general, ‘I need that map, and as you were the only ones in the library when the murder took place, one of you must know where it is. So, this is my promise to you. If, when I return in six hours’ time, the map has been found you will be free to go to your homes. If it remains missing, I shall suspect an Alexandrian insurrection is brewing. I need no reason, but what better reason could there be for taking you out onto the library steps and personally cutting each and every one of your skinny throats? Understand? Find the map . . . you live. No map: you die.’
After leaving a number of his bodyguard to ensure we didn’t escape he marched away into the night.
You can, my love, imagine our fear, and the wild plans that we made and then discarded. ‘Escape from the library,’ Marcus suggested.
‘How? There are no windows at ground level, the doors are locked; the place is as secure as a prison.’
‘Overpower the bodyguards?’
‘What a stroke of genius,’ grunted Chrysippus. ‘After all they are only gigantic Germans armed with swords and axes. Theo, you ter
rorize them with a roll of papyrus while I knock them out with a couple of Virgil’s odes. My God, Marcus, those men could shake us to death with one hand; don’t you . . .’ He stopped and sighed. ‘I’m sorry Marcus. I didn’t mean to be so rude . . . forgive me. It’s just . . . why is it so difficult to admit that I’m afraid of dying?’
I said nothing. I watched our German guards. They were fascinated by the monkeys scurrying to-and-fro in the massive vault of the roof. At first they roared with laughter at their gymnastics. Then they brought out bows and arrows, thinking what sport it would be to shoot them. They managed to bring down one slow-moving female, shot through the heart, with her baby, which died in the long fall to the marble slabs.
The monkeys’ fury erupted. Fragments of statues lying in niches, birds nests, scraps of papyrus rained down on our heads. The guards in turn swore back in their guttural subterranean language. They fired more arrows, which did not find any new victim. All the book-flies retired to the peace of the Isis room and left the beasts to battle it out.
‘Well, Theo,’ said Marcus, gazing down at the body of the scribe, looking even more dishevelled after its post mortem abuse, ‘you believed there might be a way to learn who murdered the man and perhaps even find the map.’
I shrugged. ‘Theoretically I believe it may be possible, but I don’t know if I am the man to do it.’ I looked up from the body. Librarian, Marcus, Chrysippus and the rest watched me hopefully. Even the red-faced man looked eager for me to continue.
I was their only hope, my love. If I failed there would be no harm done. After all, we would be leaving this world in the morning. Yet still I felt reluctant to shoulder that burden, the responsibility of their flickering hope.
I sighed. ‘I’ll do my best.’ I looked at each of the men in turn. ‘Do you all consent to my examination of you all, and do you pledge to answer all my questions truthfully?’
They all nodded vigorously, clutching at me as the slimmest chance for survival.
