Alexandria

by Lindsey Davis

  'In what way?'

  ''A sceptic'

  'Nothing wrong with that,' replied Zenon. Night had drawn in. There had been one small oil lamp burning up here where he wrote his notes; now he pinched the wick. It prevented my note-taking, and it stopped me seeing his face. 'Questioning - especially to reassess received wisdom - is the foundation of good modern science.'

  'So I'll ask you again: what did you think of Theon?'

  My eyes adjusted. Zenon had the quicksilver intelligence of a drover selling rustled mutton, just far enough outside the Forum Boarium to avoid notice from the legitimate traders. Any minute now he would halve his price for a quick sale. 'Theon did a respectable job. He worked hard. He had the right intentions.'

  'And?'

  Zenon paused. 'And he was a disappointed man.'

  I scoffed quietly. 'That seems common around here! What caused Theon's disappointment?'

  'Administering the Library was too great a struggle - not that he lacked the energy or talent. He faced too many setbacks.'

  'Such as?'

  'Not my field of expertise.' That was a cop-out. I asked if the setbacks might be caused by colleagues, specifically the Director, but Zenon went celestial on me: he refused to dish the dirt.

  I tried another tack. 'Were you friends with Theon? If you saw him eating a meal in the refectory, for instance, would you take your bowl alongside?'

  'I would sit with him. And he with me.'

  'Did he ever talk about his private life?'

  'No.'

  'Did he talk about being depressed?'

  'Never.'

  'Were you after his job? Are you up for consideration now he's dead?' Perhaps the wrong wind blew in from the desert just then. As I probed his own ambition, the astronomer took umbrage suddenly and flared up: 'You have made enough insinuations. If I had been Theon's enemy, you would now find out, Falco! I would hurl you off the roof!.'

  I was glad I had stepped back from the edge. 'How painfully normal to find suspects offering threats!'

  That got to him. Maybe too much starshine had invaded his brain. At any rate, Zenon snapped. It was quite unexpected in an academic. In a trice the man was on me. He leapt behind my back, locked his arms around my chest and marched me back to the head of the steps.

  He would have made a good bouncer in a rowdy tavern where the stevedores are massive, over by the quays where the grain ships were loaded. If he tipped me downstairs it would be a long, hard fall. Probably a cracked skull and a premature entry ticket to Hades.

  I co-operated just long enough. I was fit. I had recently spent the long days on shipboard catching up on exercise. Recovering myself, I dropped forward abruptly, pulled him off his feet, bucked him right over my head and dumped him on the ground. I made sure I did not pitch him down the staircase.

  Zenon got up, winded, yet barely embarrassed. I watched him brush down his tunic, one-handed. I think he hurt the other wrist when he landed. He was hiding the pain from me.

  I wondered if I had made an enemy. Probably. Since there was no point holding back, I snapped, 'I want to see those budget figures you whipped away in the meeting this morning.'

  'Not a chance,' replied Zenon, as mildly as if he was refusing a tray of pastries from a street-seller he saw regularly.

  'The Emperor runs this Museion now. I can get a warrant from the Prefect.'

  'I await your subpoena,' the astronomer retorted, still calm. He went back to his observation chair. I stood at the top of the stairs for a moment, then I left him.

  Those figures must be worth scrutiny. There was no chance I would ever see what was suspicious. Zenon was too relaxed about it. I guessed he had had that accounting document fixed up and fiddled to look clean, straight after he noticed my interest at the Academic Board meeting.

  XX

  I was ready for a rest. Help appeared to be at hand. When I left the Museion complex, I saw Uncle Fulvius' palanquin waiting to collect me. Aulus was standing beside it. 'Olympus, I'm whacked. Transport is welcome!' I said. Then distrust cut in. 'Nothing wrong, I hope? What's up?'

  Aulus chuckled as he tucked me into the curtained conveyance. 'Oh, you'll find out!' He was staying behind. He had palled up with a group who were going to see Aristophanes' Lysistrata.

  'It's all about sex!' I said, as if warning a prude.

  I did not tell him it was about men being refused sex by stroppy wives. A twenty-eight-year-old unmarried man was too young to find out that could happen. Well, he wasn't going to hear it from me.

  Aulus deserved a hiding. When he came across the bearers, they must have told him why Helena had sent the litter to speed me back home. Aulus, that jester, could have warned me.

  The bearers deposited me at my uncle's house, though they made no attempt to move off again. I assumed Fulvius and Cassius needed the palanquin for another evening out with business cronies. All I wanted was a quiet night, with a good dinner and a peaceful woman to hear the story of my day and tell me what a clever boy I was.

  The house was one of a group, arranged on a series of levels. There was no central atrium in any of them; all the buildings in the complex opened on to an enclosed courtyard that was shared communally. We came in through an outer gate with a porter then the bearers dropped me in the yard outside my uncle's personal doorway. For private outdoor space everyone used their flat roofs. Indoors, all the internal rooms opened off the stairs, as if whenever they ran out of space they just built upwards. I went up the doglegs slowly, aware from a hum of activity that everyone was gathered near the top. As I reached it, the salon door opened and young Albia slipped out. She must have been on the alert for me. She was about to speak, perhaps to give to me a chance to flee... Too late, the door whipped fully open. My children burst out: Julia was playing at crocodiles, with her arms stretched out ahead of her like snapping jaws. She was grappling Favonia, who was acting as some animal that roared and head-butted doors open.

  'Come here nicely and give your father a kiss -'

  Neither stopped. Julia twisted madly as she tried to subdue her sister, while Favonia sturdily kept on roaring.

  I had been spotted from within. Ahead lay a warm glow of lamps, a blur of conversation. I heard a familiar voice, loudly deriding my commission on the Theon death: 'Murdered in a locked room? You mean Marcus has convinced himself someone got a trained serpent to slide in and stab the man, using an ivory-handled dagger with a strange scarab on its hilt?'

  Helena spoke calmly: 'No, he was poisoned.'

  'Oh, I get it! A trained ape crawled down a rope from the ceiling, bringing a curiously carved alabaster beaker of contaminated borage tea!'

  I exploded. Albia winced and held her head in her hands. I strode in. It was him all right. That voice and attitude could not be disguised: wide-bodied, grey-haired and well into a winecup but still capable of obnoxiousness, without the grace of slurring. He was tanked up and tearing into it - but he did stop when he saw me.

  'Uncle Fulvius has a new house guest, Marcus!' Helena cried brightly. 'Just arrived tonight.'

  'When are you leaving?' I snarled at him.

  'Hades!' Albia, at my heels, hated trouble.

  'Don't be like that, my boy,' he whined. Marcus Didius Favonius, also known as Geminus: my father. The curse of the Aventine, the dread of the Saepta Julia, the plague of the antique auction porticoes. The man who abandoned my mother and all his offspring, then tried to snare us back to him two decades later, after we had learned to forget he existed. The same father I had strictly forbidden from coming to Alexandria while I was here.

  And there was more.

  We were going to a party. It was diplomatic, at the Prefect's residence, the kind no one can escape. Fulvius had accepted for me, so failure to show would be remarked upon. We were all going. Helena, Albia and me, Uncle Fulvius and Cassius - plus Pa. There was no chance that bastard would plead weariness after long travel, not when there was free food, drink, company and entertainment on offer, in a place where he could sho
w off noisily, try to sell the wrong people dubious art, be indiscreet, upset the top man and amaze the staff - and above all, cause me irreparable embarrassment.

  XXI

  Tiberius Julius Alexander, the previous Prefect of Egypt, helped the Flavians acquire the Empire nearly ten years ago. He then made sure Vespasian rewarded him with a really worthwhile sinecure back in Rome. Helena thought he led the Praetorian Guard, though it cannot have been for long, because Titus Caesar took that over. Still, it was good going for a man who was not just Jewish by birth but Alexandrian. Provincials usually struggle more.

  Prefect of Egypt was not part of the senatorial lottery for governorship of provinces, but in Vespasian's personal gift. Private ownership of Egypt was a serious perk for an emperor. The intelligent ones took great care in appointing their Prefect, whose main job was to ensure that the corn flowed, to feed the people of Rome in their Emperor's name. Another vital task was gathering in tax money and the gemstones from the remote southern mines; then again, the Emperor would be loved at home because of his stupendous spending power. Vespasian's huge building programme in Rome, for example - most famous for its amphitheatre, though it also included a library - was financed partly from his Egyptian funds.

  The current Prefect was a typical Vespasian man - lean, competent, a measured judge and very hard worker. I had heard no rumours of him being anything but ethical. His ancestors were new enough men for him to suit Vespasian's family, the equally new Flavians. He had a good past curriculum; a wife who was never named in scandal; health; courtesy; a brain. He went by three names, none of which I bothered to learn. His full title was Prefect of Alexandria and Egypt, which stressed that the city was mysteriously separate from the rest, sitting like a bunion on the north coast. You don't find a governor of 'Londinium and Britannia' - and if you did, a man of this intense superiority would still think the posting a cruel punishment. But the Egyptian job made him purr.

  When we arrived at his bash, the Prefect headed a formal receiving-line, where he greeted Fulvius and Cassius like wholesome commercial visitors and seemed strangely taken with Pa. My father knew how to ingratiate himself. Helena and I were received with practised indifference. His Excellency must have been briefed by his bright-eyed boy assistants, but he could not remember who I was, what I had been sent to do for the Emperor (if anything), what his centurion had got me to take on at the Library instead, who my noble wife's noble father was and whether it mattered a green bean - nor indeed whether he had already been introduced to us last week. However, after thirty years of such bluffing, his act was oiled. He shook our hands with his limp, cold fingers and said how nice it was to see us here and do please go on in and enjoy the evening.

  I was determined not to enjoy it, but we went on in.

  The surroundings made up for everything. This was one of the Ptolemies' palaces - of which they had a glorious clutch, all opulent and intended to intimidate. Halls and doorways were graced with huge pairings of pink granite statues of gods and pharaohs, the best of them forty feet tall. Anywhere that could be approached by a wide flight of steps was. Marble pools of awe-striking dimensions reflected the soft glimmer of hundreds of oil lamps. Whole palm trees served as house plants. There had been Roman legionaries on guard outside, but in these halls where Cleopatra once walked, we were attended by discreet flunkeys in Egyptian kilts, characteristic head-dresses and glinting gold pectoral adornments on their oiled bare chests.

  Everything was done to the highest diplomatic standards. The usual enormous trays of peculiarly concocted morsels. Civic canapés: a cuisine unknown anywhere outside the lukewarm ambience of large-scale catering. Wine that was all too familiar: from some unhappy Italian hillside which even though it was in our fine home country failed to get enough sun. This mediocre vintage had been carefully transported here - our dross, imported to this city whose own superb Mareotic wine was deemed fit to grace the gilt tables of the very rich in Rome. Always insult the people you are ruling. Never take advantage of their wonderful local produce, lest it seem you are rotting with unpatriotic enjoyment of your overseas tour.

  Fulvius and Cassius soon went off to canoodle with businessmen. Traders always know how to angle for invitations. There were plenty here. We shed Pa - or rather, he shed us. It might be his first night, but he already had someone to see. My father possessed the knack, which my late brother Festus also mastered, of making himself seem an habitué of any place he found himself. In part, Pa was sufficiently insensitive never to worry about whether he was welcome; the rest was winning over startled locals with sheer weight of personality. Strangers took to him eagerly. Only his close relatives shrank away. Fulvius was one exception. The first time I ever saw them together I knew that Fulvius and Pa met on equal, equally shady terms.

  I managed to identify the Prefect's admin staff. Most were clustered around Albia. They probably all kept mistresses locally, but a polite girl from home with flowers in her hair was a treat. She was telling them about the zoo. None had been there; they just assumed they would get around to it later. Who goes out to work in a foreign province and ever sees the sights? Each of the plump women for whom they bought flowers and fancy necklaces was after sex with some clean, virile youth, exciting because he was foreign and because he would be off home by the time they were bored with him. Going out to the zoo when they could be eating pastries in their apartment love-nests and complaining about the weather was beneath such cultured Alexandrians.

  As for these young men on the brink of their public careers, they were at least more impressed by an imperial agent than their master had been. One even winked, as if my presence in Alexandria was some insider secret. 'Only a fact-finding mission,' I bluffed - and even that was pushing it.

  'Are you making progress? Can we smooth your path? Remember, we are here to help. 'The old lies were flowing. Every time a new boy came out on detachment, the well-thumbed bureaucrats' lexicon must be passed on, along with the inkwells and the petty cash for bribes.

  'I am bogged down working on your suspicious death.'

  'Oh you landed that!' Gaily he pretended not to know.

  'I landed that.' I was grim. 'Actually you could speed my task; something would help me incredibly -' I saw Helena flash approval of my diplomatic phrasing, though she looked suspicious. 'I need to see the financial budget of the Museion, please.' I nearly choked on 'please'. Helena smiled wickedly.

  The golden bureaucrat pursed his lips. I knew what was coming. It was too difficult. To know where to lay hands on a document was far beyond the vague, floppy-haired senatorial brats who came out to the provinces. For them, this was a twelve-month posting that would clinch their next move up the ladder. The one I was talking to only wanted to survive it without getting Nile mud on his white tunic. He was here for a year of sun, wine, women and collecting exotic stories, then he would go home to the next elections, taking the lifetime patronage of the particular Prefect he had served and sure of a bench in the Curia. Daddy would have a rich bride waiting; Mummy would have ensured the selected heiress was, or could pass herself of as, a virgin. The new wife would face a marriage, whether short or long, full of dreary stories about Sonny's triumphal experiences in Egypt, where according to him he ran the place single-handed, fighting off local ineptitude and graft, plus the obstructions of all his Roman colleagues. Probably with Barbary lion hunts and a narrow escape from a rhinoceros thrown in.

  Think again, highborn aide-de-camp. Who really ran Egypt for Rome were the centurions. Men like Tenax. Men who acquired geographical knowledge, legal and administrative skills, then used them. They would resolve disputes and root out corruption in the thirty or so old Ptolemaic local districts, the nomes, where appointed locals supervised local government and taxation but Rome was in overall charge. No twenty-four-year-old son of a senator could safely be let loose on embezzled land, sheep-stealing, house burglary or threats against a tax collector (especially if the taxman's ass was stolen or he himself had gone missing). How could this th
umb-sucking juvenile decide whether to believe the word of the witness with the scar on his thigh who smelt of sweat and garlic or the word of the man with one leg and a scar on his cheek who smelt of sweat and horses - both speaking only Egyptian, looking shifty and signing their names with just a mark?

  'I'll check, Falco. That request might be a smidgeon tricky.'

  See what I mean? Useless.

  I gave the sign that he need not bother. Quickly, he sidled out of reach.

  Somewhere must be a tribune, who was nominally in charge of finance. Better still, I knew from experience, in a small accounts office off a poorly decorated corridor, plying his abacus furiously, would lurk an imperial freedman who could find me what I needed.

  'You're tired.' Helena had read my expression. Before we came, I had been allowed to go out to the baths, which enlivened me, but the effect was temporary. On the way here I had given her the gist of my afternoon's investigations so she knew my head was whirling with facts to digest - not to mention our joint experiences at the Board meeting and the zoo. Plucking a triangular cheese tart from a passing tray, she fed it to me. Tiny shreds of onion invaded the gaps in my teeth. That would give me something to play with if I was bored.