Academic Exercises

by K. J. Parker

  Pause. My cue. I nodded.

  He leaned back in the chair. It made a sort of soft creaking noise. Like I said, my father was a big man and he used to tip it onto its back legs. There’s only so much abuse tenons and wood glue can stand. I prayed to the Invincible Sun without moving my lips. “I’ve been studying Aeneas—in an entirely amateur capacity, of course—for twenty years,” he went on, “during which time I evolved a theory of my own about the circumstances in which this book was written, and the reason why it wasn’t with the rest of Aeneas’ papers at his death. Would you care to hear it?”

  “Oh yes.”

  He smiled. I’d said the right thing.

  Shortly after his return from Essecuivo (the duke said), Aeneas quarrelled with his son Dives. The cause of the disagreement was Dives’ refusal to marry the daughter of a neighbouring landowner, a match desirable for dynastic and territorial reasons but not to Dives’ taste, since his affections were engaged elsewhere. This quarrel is evidenced by passing references in the letters of the neighbouring family, which had lain in obscurity for centuries until the duke, whose tenants the family were, recognised their importance. (He had brought along transcripts for me to see; he’d even had them notarised, so I’d know they were genuine) As a result of the quarrel, Aeneas took legal advice from the leading lawyer of the day (whose files the duke had been allowed to see, since the lawyer’s descendants acted for him in property transactions) and was told that although he couldn’t prevent his son from inheriting all his land and real property, because of a complex entail I didn’t really understand, he was at liberty to disinherit him with regard to movable goods, ready money and choses in action—

  Choses in action (the duke seemed disappointed that I needed to ask) means valuable but insubstantial assets—debts, promises to pay, the benefit of contracts, that sort of thing. Aeneas’ principal chose in action was, of course, his knowledge of the whereabouts of Essecuivo. Not only was this knowledge valuable as a potential resource, it had immediate value in that Aeneas had entered into a partnership with six leading merchants (exhibit three; a notarised copy of the agreement) for the exploitation of Essecuivo and division of the profits. Aeneas was to get sixty-six per cent of the net, but he hadn’t put in any money. Instead, he’d agreed to disclose the map reference.

  From what he knew of his partners, so he told his lawyer, he didn’t trust them to honour the agreement. They were perfectly capable, if they contrived to find the co-ordinates from some other source, of cutting him out and keeping all the profits themselves. Furthermore, they would have no scruples about suborning Aeneas’ clerks, servants or even family members in order to get the information they needed.

  Therefore (the duke went on) Aeneas had a very good reason for not committing the co-ordinates to paper, or at least not in any document liable to be read by anyone he couldn’t absolutely trust—into which category his son no longer fell. On the other hand, it would have been the height of folly to rely on his memory alone. He had to write it down, but in such a form that only he would be able to read it. In other words, he’d have written it in code.

  (I wanted to object at this point, but I got looked at and decided not to.)

  As I myself had proved (the duke went on) Aeneas gave the manuscript to his niece; a silly, frivolous girl, according to the traditions of the family she married into; just the sort of featherbrain who’d let her cousin Dives look at or even take away the manuscript if he asked her nicely enough. And yet, where else would the co-ordinates be but in the book itself? Aeneas had written it principally as an aide-memoire—not for publication, since the information it contained needed to be kept secret, because of his agreement with his partners. Therefore the coded information must be in the text somewhere.

  And that, the duke said, was as far as he’d been able to go without the manuscript itself; except for one final fragment, which he’d come across two years ago in the library of the Connani.

  (I couldn’t help myself. “The Connani let you look at their archives?”

  He frowned. “Of course.”

  “Scholars have been trying to get access for centuries.”

  He looked at me down that long, thin nose. “Well,” he said. “They’re quite particular about that sort of thing.”)

  He’d found a letter—notarised copy herewith—from Manius Connanus to a friend of his I’d never heard of, some long-forgotten country squire, in which he mentioned in passing that his cousin Orthosius had lent the services of one of his clerks, a specialist in illuminated lettering, to none other than the celebrated Aeneas Peregrinus—you know, the bounder who came back from abroad with all that money. For some unexplained reason, Peregrinus was obsessed with finding a clerk of unimpeachable integrity and discretion, bribe-, blackmail- and threat-proof; Orthosius’ man had been with the family for fifty years, and Orthosius owed Aeneas rather a lot of money. In exchange for a day of the clerk’s time, Aeneas forgave Orthosius the debt. What an odd thing to do, can you credit it &c.

  “And that,” the duke said, his voice suddenly urgent, “was the clue I’d been looking for. Suddenly it all made sense.”

  I was still reeling from all of that. Fury at the thought that there was all that wonderful Aeneas material out there, and the selfishness and arrogance of the aristocracy had kept me from knowing it even existed; pure unalloyed lust at the thought of the paper I could write, if only I could persuade the duke to leave those notarised copies with me. “Excuse me?” I said.

  “The capitals,” the duke said impatiently—surely I’d figured it out for myself, a clever fellow like me. “The red illuminated capital letters at the start of each paragraph.” He scowled at me, the way my tutors used to do when I was being particularly slow on the uptake. “I don’t need to remind you of all people of the intense interest in numerology in educated circles at that time.”

  He was quite right, of course. In Aeneas’ day, it was the latest fashion. Society necromancers would tell you your fortune by adding up the numerical value of your name—A is one, B is two and so on—adding it to your birthdate, subtracting your eldest child’s middle name, multiplying by the distance in miles between your birthplace and the Golden Temple—whatever it took, in fact, to arrive at an auspicious number which would enable the soothsayer to give you the fortune you wanted in the first place. I believe they still go in for it now in the country.

  And yes, just the sort of thing Aeneas would’ve been interested in. He had a superstitious streak (black cats, magpies, all that nonsense) and just enough of the scientific mindset to make him an easy touch for all the astrologers, alchemists, metaphysicians and other chancers who passed for scientists in those days. Now I came to think of it, he owned Priscian’s True Mirror, Stellianus’ Many & Diverse Arts and a couple of other numerological texts; they’re mentioned in an inventory made just before he sailed. Of course, the duke must’ve known that.

  Even so. “Excuse me?”

  He sighed. “I believe,” he said, “that if you were to find the numerical values of the illuminated capitals in the manuscript, taken together they’d prove to be the co-ordinates of Essecuivo—hidden, you might say, in plain sight. Why else would he hire a scribe specialising in illuminated capitals, at extraordinary expense, insisting on a man of flawless integrity?” He paused, watching me like a terrier beside a hayrick. “Well?”

  The true horror of my position broke in on me like the dawn. For one thing, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was right—in which case, he’d pulled off a coup of scholarship I’d have gladly sold my soul for a few weeks earlier. As a scholar, I could feel the excitement bubbling up inside me, in spite of everything. I was also acutely aware that the illuminated capitals in the manuscript, so painstakingly created using only the finest and most authentic materials, had been chosen by me—not exactly at random, but the effect was bound to be the same.

  “Well?” he repeated.

  At that moment I longed for a counterargument. All through my academ
ic life, I’ve had a special knack of being able to come up with quibbles, objections, plausible doubts, even when I know the hypothesis I’m arguing against is rock-solid correct. It’s a gift to which I owe my rapid advancement, a weapon I’ve used unsparingly against better men who happen to be marginally less mentally agile than me. And now, at the moment when I needed it most, it deserted me.

  I did my best. I called into question the reliability of the sources, the value of hearsay evidence, the timings, the prosopography, certain fine points of semantic interpretation. The duke fended off each attack with the calm patience of a master, supporting each refutation with arguments and citations that made me all the more convinced that he was perfectly correct. After half an hour of this sorry performance, he’d backed me into a corner and I could dodge and weave no longer. I surrendered as gracefully as I could, and he actually smiled at me.

  “Thank you,” he said. “As you know, I place the highest possible value on your opinion. If, as you say, you feel that I have made out a case to answer—”

  I nodded heavily. He nodded back. We understood each other.

  “In that case.” He picked up his pince-nez and fitted them solidly to his nose. “I suggest we proceed. Would you happen to have a pen and something to write on?”

  A voice, a calm and beautiful voice, spoke to me in the back of my head just then. It said; Have no fear, the numbers he comes up with will turn out to be a meaningless jumble, whereupon he’ll sadly conclude that his theory was wrong after all, he’ll go away and never bother you again. It was the sort of voice, speaking in the sort of quiet, calmly reassuring way, that you instinctively trust. I passed him a pen (I very nearly gave him the goose-quill I’d used for my forgery; it was nearer, in the drawer of my desk) and an inkwell and a whole half-sheet of brand new pressed-linen paper. He wrote very much in the manner of a time-served clerk or scrivener, not looking down at his hand as he moved the pen, peering down at the figures through the top half of his pince-nez. But he pressed too hard, and bent my best Capo Latto nib.

  Then he did the calculations; first in his head, then by writing out the alphabet with a number next to each letter. He’d made one mistake the first time. He wrote the result at the bottom of the page. I have to admit, it did look remarkably like a map reference; the right number of digits, and the appropriate order of magnitude. That gave me a twinge in the pit of my stomach, but I thought, So what? So much the better. He’ll be happy, and go away, and when he gets home and looks at a map and sees there’s no such place, he’ll be in no hurry to advertise his failure. No more will be said about it, and everything will be fine.

  “Would you have such a thing,” he asked, “as a map of the world?”

  I stared at him. Of course, in the circles he was used to moving in, it was probably a perfectly reasonable request. I’ve been to great houses where they have such things painted on walls, with the stars and constellations on the ceiling to match. “I’m afraid not,” I said.

  He frowned, then his eyebrows shot up. “The map room,” he said.

  Oh, I thought. The Studium does, of course, have as fine a collection of maps as you’ll find anywhere. I floundered. “It’ll be locked up for the night,” I said. He didn’t need to remind me that I was a senior member of the faculty. He just looked at me briefly. “I’ll go and get the key from the porter,” I said.

  You will never have seen the map room. I’d been in there maybe a dozen times, looking up various points to do with my researches. I always think it looks like a giant haberdashery, the walls covered in shelves filled with rolls and bolts of cloth. You take down your roll and spread it out on a twelve-foot table, with heavy ivory and ebony ornaments to keep it from curling back up again. They had a map of the world; in fact, they had sixty-six of them, all subtly different. That’s the thing about learning and scholarship. The more you learn, the less you actually know.

  He chose Aurunculaeius’ Sixth Projection; a mildly unorthodox choice, but the one I’d have made myself, in his position. I didn’t ask him why, mostly because I was afraid he’d tell me that I’d argued strongly for it in a paper about three years earlier. For some reason, Aurunculeius chose to mark his latitude and longitude lines in red, and they’ve faded a bit over the years. It makes them a trifle hard to follow over the green and brown land, but against the blue sea they’re still reasonably clear.

  “Here.” He was pressing a fingertip on the middle of the Southern Ocean.

  There’s nothing there, I didn’t say; because he’d have pointed out that we were, after all, looking for an undiscovered country. So, naturally, it’d be an empty spot in the middle of the sea. I felt another of those twinges. Why couldn’t it have been slap-bang in the middle of the Cian mountains, or the Great Central Desert? But no, the voice told me, that’s perfect. He’s found himself a plausible spot on a map, he’ll go away now. He might even give you money. In any event, it’s over and you’ve survived.

  “I wish,” he said suddenly, “your father could have lived to see this moment.”

  I felt as though I’d been punched in the head. “You knew him?”

  He shook his head. “Only very slightly,” he said. “I visited him twice, when he was in the Citadel.”

  News to me. But of course he’d have been wonderfully discreet, money would’ve changed hands, the right people would’ve looked the other way. I didn’t say anything.

  “I needed to ask him a few questions about the Company,” he went on, and suddenly I remembered. He’d bought it, hadn’t he? For a ridiculous amount of money. Presumably it hadn’t been a mere whim; he’d been planning it for years, meticulously researching every relevant issue. And so, reasonably enough, he’d been to see my father.

  “I liked him,” he said. “I believe he was an honest man.”

  He could have said it to make me like him; but why bother? I felt as though my heart had stopped. “Thank you,” I said.

  He didn’t need my thanks, and he was too well-mannered to say so. “He would have been pleased to know that Essecuivo had been found at last,” he went on. “It mattered to him, even in that dreadful place.”

  Had it? I’d never thought to ask him about it, or even wondered if he’d had an opinion. My father as idealist, dreamer, believer in wonderful lost lands beyond the sea. Not the man I knew, but—it occurred to me then for the first time—I didn’t really know him all that well. Only as someone performing the office Father; not as a person, not as a man. But the duke had met him twice, and probably understood him better than I did.

  “I have a copy of the Sixth Projection at home.” (Well, he would.) “First thing tomorrow, I’ll cross-reference with Carchedonius on tides and currents.”

  That threw me for a moment, until I realised he was talking about Carchedonius the book, not the man. Actually, Carchedonius on tides and currents (properly, A Discourse On The Practicalities of Sailing To Essecuivo) is a fine piece of work; he’s taken every last scrap of evidence about Aeneas’ voyage and compared it to what’s known about tides, currents, prevailing winds and all that sort of thing in all the areas where Aeneas might possibly have gone. If I wanted to know whether the freak storm could conceivably have blown Aeneas to the spot on the map the duke’s finger was pressed against, Carchedonius is where I’d look.

  All I could think of at that moment was how to get rid of him. “I’ll have a look at it myself,” I said, and realised that it didn’t sound right; however, I couldn’t face trying to rephrase, and he didn’t seem to be listening. I wondered if he’d notice if I simply backed quietly out of the room, and decided not to risk it.

  Again, in my hour of greatest need, the little voice came to me. It said, There still isn’t a problem. The mad nobleman’s got what he wanted, and he’s pleased with you. In the morning, Carchedonius will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Aeneas’s ship couldn’t have reached this arbitrary intersection of lines, because of the prevailing nor’-easterly trades, or some such nautical gibberish. The duke
will then conveniently forget that he ever did anything so undignified as make a mistake, and it’ll all be over, and you’ll still be Gorgias professor. For now, though, play along. Pretend to be enthusiastic. There’s still time for him to give you money.

  “Of course,” said the duke, “you’ll have a copy of Carchedonius. We’ll go and look it up right now.”

  So we did that; and, as was only to be expected, my enemy betrayed me. Not only was the arbitrary intersection a feasible destination, it was also, on the admittedly limited evidence available, a strong contender. If Aeneas, sailing on his original course, had been caught up in the prevailing south-westerly trade winds, which can reach gale force at that time of year, he’d have been blown at that spot on the map like an arrow from a bow.

  The duke smiled, and closed the book. My input wasn’t required, so I sat still and quiet. I’d decided I didn’t want any money, even if he offered.

  “Excellent,” he said at last. “Well, I think we have everything we need. Can you be ready to sail in, say, three days?”

  I was not at home to the little voice for quite some time after that. I felt, not unreasonably, that it hadn’t advised me well. Indeed, I might have been forgiven for suspecting that it had deliberately led me on, encouraging me to make matters worse for myself. But it kept on whispering quietly, and on the second day I grudgingly allowed it to say its piece.

  True, said the voice, you’ve let yourself in for a long sea voyage, which is never pleasant and can be extremely dangerous. But think; you’ll be sailing with the second richest man in the Republic; a man who, like you, has never previously set foot on a ship in his life. You can at least be moderately certain that all the proper preparations will have been made, that the ships and crew will be of the highest quality, and that for the passengers at least, the journey will be made in circumstances of comfort and quite possibly luxury. He’s agreed to pay you three hundred angels, which is nice, together with a pro rata share of the treasure (ah well, never mind). And, when you get there and there’s nothing to be seen except empty blue ocean, it won’t be your fault. It’s a nuisance and a dreadful waste of time, but the chances are you’ll survive and come home none the worse.