The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  Seth glanced at Philologus and nodded. ‘He works here in this section. That’s his station there. He wasn’t here yesterday, either.’

  ‘But he’s not the only thing that’s missing,’ said Philologus. ‘Tell them, Seth. Tell them what you told me.’

  Seth’s chair scraped as he pushed it back and stood up. ‘Come,’ he said, and led them to an empty table at the end of the colonnade. ‘This is Chryses’s station. As you can see, there’s nothing on his desk and no scrolls in the niche. But two days ago I noticed him examining an unusual-looking sheet of papyrus. It was written in a combination of hieroglyphs, Greek and Hebrew, and with five different coloured inks. When I leaned over to see it more clearly, he quickly put a new sheet of papyrus on top of it, to hide it. But I had seen enough to know it was some sort of map. We have to log all the documents we receive,’ he added, ‘and keep them at our posts until we’ve finished copying them.’ He lowered his voice. ‘When Chryses didn’t come in yesterday, I went to have a look at that curious papyrus.’

  ‘And?’ asked Jonathan and Flavia together.

  ‘There is no record of a document written in three languages. And as you can see, there is nothing here. Both Chryses and the map are gone.’

  A deep booming clang made Lupus nearly jump out of his skin.

  As the sound of the gong died away he heard his own stomach growl loudly.

  ‘Midday,’ quavered Philologus. ‘And as the gongs and this lad’s stomach attest, it’s time for lunch. Seth, why don’t you take our three young friends to the refectory and hear their story? I give you full authority to pursue this matter. If you find our missing document and the eunuch, I will be very inclined to promote you to a higher level.’

  ‘To Scholar?’ said Seth, his hazel eyes wide.

  ‘Yes, to Scholar. No longer will you be a mere bookworm in the chicken coop of the Muses.’ He cackled at his own joke. ‘Take a few days. A week. A month if necessary.’

  ‘But sir,’ stammered Seth. ‘I wouldn’t know how to begin to find Chryses.’

  ‘We do,’ said Flavia brightly. ‘We’re detectives.’

  It was Philologus’ turn to stare open-mouthed. ‘Detectives?’ His voice cracked with disbelief. ‘Detectives? I’m Head Scholar in the greatest library in the world, and I’ve never heard that word.’

  ‘It’s from detego,’ said Flavia firmly. ‘It means people who uncover the truth. I read it in a scroll of the late Admiral Pliny. I don’t think he made it up,’ she added.

  Philologus stared at her for a moment. Then he slapped his thigh, gave a wheezing cackle and turned to Seth. ‘There are no rules to this game, my lad! You can either remain a bookworm in the chicken coop of the Muses or become a “detective” and a scholar. Seth ben Aaron, the decision is yours.’

  The three friends and Seth had a lunch of wheat porridge and posca in a vaulted refectory with two hundred other scribes and scholars. Long tables stretched out beneath frescoed walls showing a vast map of Alexandria on one side, and a horizontal plan of the River Nile on the other. The cacophony around them was immense, but it didn’t matter because Seth ate in sullen silence. Finally he stood, picked up his empty bowl and beaker, and gestured for them to do the same. Flavia and the boys followed him out, and when he left his eating implements on a counter at the end, they did too.

  ‘We’re not slaves, you know,’ he said, as they left the din of the refectory for a relatively quiet corridor. ‘We’re paid. Not much, but it’s enough. Especially considering the Library provides food and shelter.’ He led them past a line of red porphyry columns, then turned and started up a flight of marble stairs. ‘Three meals a day in the refectory, free access to the Museum Baths, and a small private sleeping cubicle here on the upper level. And we are well-respected. When you are promoted to Scholar you get two proper rooms and a bigger salary. This is Chryses’s cubicle,’ he said, stopping before a doorway leading off the balcony walkway of the inner garden. He hesitated outside.

  ‘This is where the eunuch sleeps?’ asked Flavia, pushing past him and entering the small, cube-shaped room.

  Seth nodded. ‘Mine is just a few doors down. It’s virtually identical.’

  Flavia studied the eunuch’s cubicle with interest. It had white plaster walls and a small high window. In one corner stood a narrow bed with a pale yellow coverlet, a cedarwood chest at its foot, a low wooden table and stool at its head. On the table were various writing implements, as well as a life-sized ornamental cat made of polished bronze.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Flavia. ‘Look at this beautiful statue.’ She picked it up and weighed it in her hands. It was smooth, cold and heavy.

  ‘Chryses is a cat-lover,’ muttered Seth. ‘Wretched idol!’

  Even as he spoke, a sleek grey cat entered the room and rubbed up against Seth’s legs, purring loudly. ‘Get away, you flea-bitten creature!’ muttered Seth, and pushed the cat away with his foot.

  ‘Don’t be cruel,’ chided Flavia. She bent down to stroke the cat, but it eluded her and disappeared back out through the doorway.

  ‘I thought you weren’t allowed to hurt cats in Egypt,’ observed Jonathan.

  ‘You’re not,’ grumbled Seth.

  ‘Is it Chryses’s cat?’ asked Flavia. ‘Who will feed it?’

  ‘It won’t starve,’ said Seth. ‘Everybody pampers it. Everybody but me. Yet whom does it want to sleep with every night? Me!’ He sighed deeply.

  ‘Do you bring work to your rooms?’ asked Jonathan, nodding at the desk.

  Seth shrugged. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘But the table is mainly for our private writings. Letters home, practice, that sort of thing. Maybe we should look through those sheets of papyrus. Anything there?’

  Jonathan bent and shuffled through the textured sheets of papyrus. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re all blank. What is your work?’ he added, ‘I mean, what do scribes do all day?’

  ‘Our work is copying,’ said Seth. ‘Copying, copying, and more copying. Every ship that comes into Alexandria is searched for scrolls. If there are any on board which are unknown to us, we confiscate them, copy them, and then give the copies back to the owners.’

  ‘You give back the copies?’ said Flavia. ‘Not the originals?’

  ‘That’s right. The original manuscripts are kept here in the Library. My department deals with religious rites and rituals. I am usually given Hebrew, Aramaic or Latin manuscripts, Chryses gets Demotic and Hieroglyphic texts and my friend Onesimus used to get the Persian and Indian scrolls. Of course if it’s a book of the Torah or the Megillot we don’t bother. We have enough copies of those already.’

  ‘Lupus,’ said Flavia, pulling back the yellow bedcover, ‘have a look under the bed, would you? I’ll search on top.’

  Lupus dutifully squirmed underneath the bed while Flavia examined the mattress. After a few moments she looked over at Seth. He was still lingering in the doorway. ‘Do you have a knife?’ she said. ‘If we want to be thorough we should look inside the mattress.’

  Seth sighed and searched in his belt pouch. A moment later he brought out a small folding knife. ‘I use it for sharpening quill pens,’ he said, opening it.

  As Flavia stabbed the mattress, Lupus scrambled out from under the bed with a yelp.

  ‘Oh, sorry! I forgot you were under there.’ Flavia gave Lupus a sheepish grin. He scowled at Flavia as he brushed the lint from his long tunic.

  ‘How can Lupus hear what you’re saying?’ said Seth. ‘I thought he was a deaf-mute?’

  ‘He’s not deaf, just mute,’ said Jonathan.

  And Flavia added, ‘His tongue was cut out when he was six years old. But he doesn’t like us talking about it. Here, Lupus!’ She held the knife out. ‘You look in the mattress.’

  Lupus’s scowl immediately turned to a grin. He took the knife and began to slash the mattress enthusiastically. After a few moments he reached inside and pulled out a handful of camels’ hair stuffing. He handed this to Jonathan.

  ‘Thanks,’ said
Jonathan drily.

  ‘I’ll help you look,’ said Seth. He moved forward and helped Jonathan pick through the stuffing.

  ‘I thought Julius Caesar burned the Library down,’ said Flavia, examining the hieroglyphs carved into the polished surface of the bronze cat.

  ‘Common misconception,’ said Seth gruffly. He bent forward to help Lupus pull out more handfuls of mattress stuffing. ‘When Caesar first arrived here in Alexandria he was trapped by the Egyptian fleet in the Great Harbour. So he ordered some of his men to sneak out and set fire to the enemy’s ships. The fleet was destroyed, but the fire spread to some of the warehouses on the docks, where duplicate scrolls are kept. Luckily, the fire never reached the Library or the Serapeum and only forty thousand scrolls were burned.’

  ‘Only forty thousand!’ muttered Jonathan, who was pulling apart clumps of camel hair and looking for clues.

  ‘Nothing here,’ said Seth, at last. ‘Any other ideas?’

  Flavia nodded. ‘We’ll have to search the chest.’

  ‘But it’s locked.’

  ‘I know,’ said Flavia, weighing the bronze cat in her hands. ‘But we can use this to break it open.’

  Seth stretched out his hand. ‘Let me have it,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind destroying a pagan idol.’ He took the heavy cat from Flavia and brought it down hard on the small bronze lock of the chest. The lock shattered and they all crowded forward as he opened the cedarwood lid. ‘Eureka!’ muttered Seth. ‘Half his clothes are gone and his travelling bag, too. But he’s left his scribe’s tunic behind. Now I’m sure of it: Chryses has run away.’

  ‘And for some strange reason,’ said Flavia. ‘He’s taken Nubia with him.’

  From behind them, Lupus gave a puzzled grunt. Flavia and the others turned to see him pointing at some graffiti on the wall beside the doorpost.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Seth. ‘Something written on the wall?’

  ‘It’s in Latin!’ said Flavia, peering over Lupus’s shoulder.

  Jonathan read it out loud: ‘My body is earth, but my strength comes through fire. I was born in the ground but I dwell in the sky. Morning dew soaks me, but soon I am dry.’

  ‘That’s his handwriting,’ said Seth, coming up behind them. ‘It must be one of his cursed riddles. He loves riddle and codes. Just like old Philologus.’

  ‘A riddle?’ said Flavia. ‘How exciting! I wonder what it means.’

  Seth shrugged. ‘That one’s easy. Schoolboy stuff.’

  ‘What’s the answer, then?’ said Jonathan.

  ‘I am a roof-tile, of course. Tegula sum. Roof-tiles are made of clay, hence “my body is earth”.’

  ‘And “my strength comes through fire”,’ cried Flavia, ‘means fired in a kiln, which is where a tile gets its strength!’

  Lupus grunted and pointed out through the doorway to the clay tiles on the sunlit roof of the inner garden.

  ‘Yes!’ said Flavia. ‘Each clay tile was “born” in the ground but “dwells” in the sky.’

  ‘And although tiles are damp with dew first thing in the morning,’ concluded Jonathan, ‘the sun soon dries them off.’

  Flavia reached out to touch the graffiti on the wall. ‘It’s written in charcoal,’ she said, sniffing her fingertip. ‘But why did Chryses write a riddle about a roof tile on the wall of his cubicle?’

  Lupus grunted again and pointed to the desk. On it a curved, broken roof-tile was being employed as a pen-rest for three ink-stained reeds.

  Lupus picked it up and turned it over, and his green eyes gleamed with excitement. He held up the tile so the others could see letters neatly inked on its curved hidden side.

  ‘Is it another riddle?’ cried Flavia, snatching the tile. She didn’t wait for his reply but read it out loud: ‘A turning post am I, where there is no race-course. A lofty park in the midst of the City. I am not Alpha, nor Omega. Neither Beta nor Delta. But something in between. And on my slopes the goat-god frolics . . .’

  ‘Another easy one,’ scowled Seth. ‘You’ve only just arrived in Alexandria but even you should guess that one.’

  ‘I know!’ cried Jonathan suddenly. ‘We saw it from the chariot this morning. Remember?’

  ‘No,’ said Flavia. ‘Give me a clue.’

  ‘It’s a park,’ said Jonathan, ‘shaped like a pinecone, like the meta of a racecourse. It’s in the Gamma District – the letter gamma comes between beta and delta – and it’s linked to the goat-god Pan.’

  ‘Eureka!’ cried Flavia. But before she could say the answer Lupus held up his wax tablet. On it he had written PANEUM.

  ‘Too easy,’ muttered Seth.

  ‘There’s something else written on the tile,’ said Flavia suddenly. ‘A hieroglyph. What is it?’

  Jonathan took the tile. ‘It looks like a little dog with an arrow for his tail. But his ears are rectangular and his nose is curved like a crescent moon . . .’

  ‘Let me see!’ cried Seth. He took the roof tile, examined its underside, then threw it to the ground with an oath. The tile shattered.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ cried Flavia.

  ‘It slipped,’ said Seth with a scowl.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Flavia. ‘The clue must mean that he’s gone to go to the Paneum, and maybe Nubia’s still with him. Come on! We don’t have a moment to lose!’

  As Jonathan followed the others up the steep path spiralling around the cone-shaped hill, he marvelled at its construction. The Paneum was a man-made mountain, an almost perfect cone, and far bigger up close than it had looked from a distance. Here were trees he had never seen before, their branches full of exotic birds. Every so often there was a marble bench where suppliants could stop and rest and enjoy the view over the city. Halfway up he froze at the sight of a satyr crouched in the shrubbery, but when he came closer, he saw it was a bronze statue.

  ‘Master of the Universe!’ gasped Seth, sitting on one of the marble benches about halfway up the hill. ‘I’d forgotten what a stiff climb it is.’

  Flavia nodded, too breathless to speak, and sat on Seth’s left while Lupus scampered off to investigate a life-sized bronze statue of a centaur nearby. Jonathan sat on Seth’s right. ‘I’m asthmatic,’ he said to Seth. ‘But I’m hardly wheezing at all after that climb.’

  ‘That is because the air here is so dry,’ said Seth, mopping his red face with the long sleeve of his tunic, ‘and the climate so favourable. Feel that breeze? Even in mid-summer it prevents the city from becoming too hot.’

  ‘The Etesian Winds,’ said Jonathan. ‘We heard how Alexander’s architect planned the streets to catch that breeze.’

  ‘Look!’ said Flavia, standing up and leaning over a bronze and marble rail. ‘You can see inside the houses. Look at that one: with the fountains, and flowers and palm trees. Where’s Thonis’s house, I wonder?’ mused Flavia. ‘Do you think they realise we’ve gone?’

  ‘It’s in the Gamma District, I think,’ said Jonathan. ‘But I’m not sure where that is.’

  ‘The Gamma Disctrict is all around us,’ said Seth. ‘The Alpha is over there, to our far left. Beyond the Museum and the Soma is the Beta District. And over there to the right, towards the Canopic Gate, is the Delta District. That’s where my family lives. It has the greatest number of Jews of any other city in the world, now that Jerusalem is no more. Our synagogue is so big that a man has to stand halfway between the front and back and wave a flag to signal the response “Amen”.’

  ‘And the Jews who live here aren’t persecuted?’ asked Jonathan in surprise.

  Seth shrugged. ‘There have been some bad riots in the past,’ he said. ‘The Greeks resent our success and the Egyptians don’t understand our beliefs. But we hold our own. My rabbi reckons there are a million of us Jews here,’ he added.

  From their left came a whoop. Lupus had clamboured up onto the back of the bronze centaur and was pretending to whip it into motion.

  They all laughed and Flavia turned her back on the view. ‘Come on! Maybe Chryses and Nubi
a are still here. If we hurry we might find them.’

  ‘All the way to the top?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘If that’s what it takes,’ said Flavia, and added. ‘If your asthma is bad then you can wait here.’

  ‘No,’ said Jonathan. ‘I’m not wheezing at all. Let’s go.’

  It was the hottest part of the day, and there was no one at the summit of the cone-shaped hill except a statue of goat-legged Pan dancing on a white marble plinth. One of his bronze hoofs was polished gold where a thousand visitors had rubbed it.

  Lupus rubbed Pan’s hoof, too, then turned to look in the same direction as the statue. He closed his eyes and spread his arms and let the cool Etesian breeze ruffle his damp tunic and hair. It felt wonderful.

  ‘Nubia!’ came Flavia’s voice from behind him. ‘Nubia! Are you here?’ Flavia had lingered on the path to look for Nubia.

  There was no reply, just the sound of the wind, and a crow cawing in a cypress tree somewhere below them.

  Lupus opened his eyes and gazed out over the two vast harbours. Here on top of the Paneum he was almost as high as the flames on the lighthouse. Although it was more than a mile away, his eyes were sharp as a rabbit’s and he thought he could see tiny dark figures silhouetted against the deep blue sky. They must be the official fire-feeders.

  ‘Nubia!’ Flavia’s voice was coming closer.

  Lupus was suddenly aware of Jonathan standing beside him.

  ‘I could live here.’

  Lupus stared in surprise at Jonathan.

  Jonathan gave Lupus a shrug. ‘It’s beautiful and clean, and I don’t suffer from asthma here.’

  ‘I couldn’t live anywhere else,’ said Seth, who had come to stand behind them. ‘I love this city.’ After a moment he said, ‘Come over here. Look towards the south.’

  They dutifully followed Seth around the base of Pan’s statue to see a huge expanse of mirror smooth water, dazzling in the afternoon sunshine. Beyond it were vineyards, then wheat fields, then low tawny mountains.

  ‘I don’t think Nubia’s here.’ Flavia arrived breathlessly beside them. ‘Is that the sea, too?

  ‘No, that’s Lake Mareotis,’ said Seth. ‘It’s a freshwater lake that leads to the Nile. It is so deep that Homer called its waters “black”. See those vineyards? They produce some of the finest wine in the Empire.’