Alexandria

XVI

By arrangement we met Albia, who was being towed through the gardens by]ulia and Favonia.

'Aulus has gone to play as a student.'

'Good for him!' enthused his sister, heaving Favonia on to one hip in the hope that close proximity would help with controlling her.

'He's a tough boy,' I reassured Albia. I put Julia into a sophisticated wrestling hold. She made a good effort at the extrication move, but as she was still not quite five, I managed to win by sheer strength. 'Aulus won't let a little spot of education ruin him.'

Helena flapped at me with her free wrist, bangles jingling. 'He's ferreting around on your behalf, I take it?'

'Under cover with the scroll beetles. We can't all take our ease, staring at elephants.'

The zoo did have elephants, a couple of them cute babies. There were aviaries and insect houses. They had Barbary lions, leopards, a hippopotamus, antelopes, giraffes, chimpanzees – 'He's got a horrible bottom!' – and, most marvellous of all, an absolutely enormous, highly pampered crocodile. Albia was honestly entranced by everything. My infants pretended to be offhand throughout, though the marked improvement in their behaviour as they stared at the animals told its own story. Julia's favourite was the smallest baby elephant, who tossed grass with a bad aim and trumpeted. Favonia lost her heart to the crocodile. 'I hope it doesn't indicate her future choice in men,' murmured Helena. 'He must be thirty feet long! Favonia, if he munched you, it would just be like eating a sweetie for him.'

We were still stuck looking down into the crocodile pit, unable to tear our lovelorn Favonia away, when the Zoo Keeper came by. 'His name is Sobek,' he told my daughter gravely. 'A god's name.'

'Will he eat me?' Favonia demanded, then shouted the answer to her own question, 'No!'

Setting down the child, Helena murmured, 'Only two, and already distrusting everything her mother tells her!'

Philadelphion went into an educational lecture. 'We try to make him eat only fish and meat. People bring him cake, but that is bad for him. He is fifty years old and we want him to live healthily to a hundred.'

Noting his patience, Helena asked, 'Do you have a family?'

'Back home in my village. Two sons.' So he had a Greek name, but was not Greek. Had he changed it for professional reasons? Uncle Fulvius had told me that the different nationalities lived peaceably together, most of the time, but at the Museion it was clear which culture ruled.

'Your wife looks after them?' It sounded like chit-chat, but Helena was probing. Philadelphion duly nodded.

Favonia and Julia both tried to climb the fence on the edge of the crocodile's deep pit while we urgently instructed them to get down. 'Will Sobek escape?' squealed Julia. She must have noticed that inside the fence the zoo staff had a long access ramp to the deep pit, protected by metal gates.

'No, no,' Philadelphion assured us. As my two excitable girlies bounced about on the fence, he helped me lift them down. 'There are two gates between Sobek and the outside. Only I and members of my staff have keys.'

Helena told him how we had once met a traveller who told us about the crocodile at Heliopolis, a tame beast in a temple, which was covered with jewels and regularly fed sweetmeats by pilgrims until he had become so fat he could hardly waddle.

'Also called Sobek,' Philadelphion replied. 'But we keep ours in more natural conditions for the purposes of science.' He wooed the girls' attention with facts about how fast the gigantic crocodile could run, what good mothers the females were, how rapidly the babies grew once they broke out of their eggs and how Sobek knew his wild companions lived on the shores of Lake Mareotis.' He yearns for them. Crocodiles are sociable. They live and hunt together in large groups. They will co-operate to herd fishes against the shore so they can catch them -'

'Will he run back to the lake if anybody lets him out?'

'No one will be so silly as to let him out,' Helena told Julia.

In his pit, Sobek lay down on his belly with his powerful legs crouching, as he basked with his snout up at right angles against a wall. His body was in shades of grey, his underbelly yellower; his great powerful tail had darker bands around it. All were covered with scaly hide, patterned in rectangles, with crenulations running along his spine and tail. He looked as if he knew what we were thinking.

Philadelphion took us into his office, where they had babies, a couple of months old, which had been snatched as eggs while their scaly mother left their nest to cool off. The children were thrilled by the little squeaking monsters. The smiling staff, Chaereas and Chaeteas from the necropsy yesterday, supervised very closely. 'Even this young they could bite you badly. Their jaws are tremendously powerful,' warned Philadelphion. Julia snatched her arm, with its colourful bead bracelets, back close to her body; Favonia waved a hand at the little snappers, daring them to grab her. 'Yet crocodiles have weak jaw muscles in some ways. They cannot chew; only rip off pieces of meat then swallow lumps whole. A man can sit astride even a large one like Sobek, and hold his mouth closed from behind. But a Nile crocodile is extremely strong; he would writhe and twist his body, rolling over and over again, to throw the man off or drag him under water and drown him.'

'Then would he eat the man?'

'He might try to, Julia.'

Two little human jaws dropped, showing a variety of white baby teeth.

Philadelphion suggested that Chaereas and Chaeteas who were, as he drily remarked, good with young animals, should look after the girls so he and I could talk. Whether he intended to include Helena was uncertain, though not to her. She came to play with the boys.

Albia stayed behind to practise her Greek on the staff. She probably thought they were gentle, helpful, harmless fellows. Unlike me, she had not seen Chaereas and Chaeteas hauling on the dead Librarian's dead flesh to expose his ribcage yesterday.

Mint tea was served. I jumped straight in and asked Philadelphion if he had had any success with identifying the leaves Theon ate.

'I consulted a botanist, Falco. His tentative identification is oleander.'

'Poisonous?'

'Very'

Helena Justina sat up. 'Marcus, the garlands!' She explained to Philadelphion: 'Our host, Cassius, had special garlands made for the dinner party; they had oleander wound in them.' She must have noticed the varieties; I can't say I did at the time.

Philadelphion raised his eyebrows in an elegant gesture. 'My colleague told me it would certainly be possible to murder someone with this plant, though you would somehow have to persuade them to ingest it. He thought the taste would be very bitter.'

'Try it?'

'Not brave enough! Taken in sufficient quantities – not unmanageable amounts – it acts within an hour. It works well. I am told it is a favourite choice of suicides.'

'Was Theon's dinner garland found with his body?' I asked.

Philadelphion shook his head. 'Perhaps – but not sent to the necropsy.'

'Someone cleaned up Theon's room and may have thrown it out. Know anything about that?' Again he signalled a negative.

I could see one flaw. Neither Theon, if he felt despairing, nor a potential murderer could have known in advance what foliage would be in our garlands. Cassius had made his selection only the afternoon before the dinner. 'Would Theon know anything about plants? Would he recognise these leaves or be aware of their toxicity?'

'He could have looked them up,' Helena pointed out. 'After all, Marcus, the man did work in the world's most comprehensive library!'

'We have botany and herbal sections,' confirmed the Zoo Keeper, favouring my wife with one of his very handsome smiles. Unlike Theon, I decided, he was a ladies' man. Leaving the wife back home in the village must have advantages.

I stretched my legs and asked about that morning's meeting. 'You are not the only expert with surgical implements, Philadelphion! Your colleagues had the knives out a few times at the academic board.'

'They were on good form,' he agreed, settling down as if he enjoyed gossip. 'Philetus has a good grasp of essentials – essential being defined by him as that which enhances his own grandeur. Apollophanes devotedly seconds whatever Philetus thinks, regardless of how low it makes him look. Nicanor, the Head of Legal Studies, hates their ineptitude, but is always too wily to say so. Our astronomer has his head in the stars in more ways than one. I try to maintain balance, but it is a lost cause.'

In view of how scathing he had just been, that last comment should have been ironical. Philadelphion failed to see his own bias, and was not one for self-mockery.

'What was Theon's usual role?'

'He argued with Philetus, particularly recently'

'Why?'

Philadelphion shrugged, though gave the impression he could have made a good guess. 'Theon started to seize upon pretty well every subject that came up, as if he wanted to disagree with Philetus on principle. I would imagine he had told Philetus what his grievance was. But unlike most of us, who tend to seek support in numbers at the board, he would approach Philetus privately.'

Helena said, ''He spoke to us of his regret that the Director was viewed as his superior even though he, Theon, held such a famous post.'

'Call it more than regret!' Now Philadelphion was more frank. 'We are all senior men and loathe bending the knee to Philetus, but for the Librarian it is bitterly galling. A previous Director of the Museion – Balbillus, who was in post about ten years ago – took it upon himself to have his title expanded to include oversight of the united Alexandrian libraries.'

'He sounds Roman?' I suggested, narrowly.

'An imperial freedman. Times have changed since the Ptolemies,' Philadelphion acknowledged. 'Once, the post of Librarian was a royal appointment, and not just that – the Librarian would be the royal tutor. So originally the Librarian had prestige and independence; he was called 'The President of the King's Library'. Through schooling his royal charges, he could become a person of great political influence, too – effectively chief minister.'

I could see why the Roman Prefecture would want to change that. 'Knowing how things had worked in the past, Theon felt he had been deprived of status.'

'Exactly, Falco. He suspected he was not taken seriously enough, either by his colleagues here – chiefly by Philetus – or even by your Roman authorities. Forgive me; I cannot put that more delicately'

It was my turn to shrug. 'As far as Rome goes, Theon did himself down. The Great Library of Alexandria carries enormous prestige in Rome. Its Librarian is automatically held in reverence – which I can assure you the Prefect of Egypt upholds.'

The Zoo Keeper appeared not to believe me. 'Well, his reduced position was a long-standing grievance. It wore him down. And I believe there was administrative friction too.'

Since he had nothing to add, we moved on. 'I gained a good impression of Timosthenes at the meeting – he is in charge of the Serapeion, isn't he?' Helena asked. I won't say she thought I was flagging, but she lifted her stole over her shoulder and smoothed down her shimmering summer skirts like a girl who has decided it is her turn.

'Up on the hill, over towards the lake. It is a complex devoted to Serapis, our local ''synthetic'' deity.'

'Synthetic? Someone deliberately invented a god?' Privately, I thought it must have made a change from counting the legs on millipedes and producing geometry theorems. 'Tell us!' Helena prompted, apparently as full of glee as our girls had been at the crocodile pit.

I doubted he approved of formal female education, but Philadelphion liked lecturing women. Folding her hands in her lap, Helena tipped her head on one side so a gold ear-ring tinkled faintly against her perfumed neck as she encouraged him shamelessly. 'Noble lady, this was a deliberate attempt by the Ptolemy kings to conjoin the ancient Egyptian religion with their own Greek gods.'

'Far-sighted!' Helena's clear smile included me. She knew I was exuding bile.

Philadelphion apparently missed the moment between us. 'They took the Apis bull from Memphis, who represents Osiris after death, and created a composition with various Hellenistic deities: a supreme god of majesty and the sun – Zeus and Helios. Fertility – Dionysos. The Underworld and afterlife – Hades. And healing-Asklepios. There is a sanctuary, with a superb temple – and also what we call the Daughter Library. Timosthenes can tell you the exact arrangements, but it takes scrolls for which there is no room at the Great Library; duplicates, I imagine. The rules are different. The Great Library is only open to accredited scholars, but the Serapeion can be used by members of the public.'

'I imagine some scholars look down on public access,'' I suggested. 'Timosthenes' ideas for open lectures were quickly shouted down at the board meeting.' Philadelphion produced one of his airy shrugs. I did not have him down as a snob and I thought he was just avoiding controversy.

Time was pressing. Helena gave me one of those meaningful looks that husbands are taught by their wives to act upon. We could not abandon our two infants for much longer; it was unfair both on Albia and the zoo staff. But Philadelphion was in a good mood to talk. As the race for Theon's post hotted up, such a moment might not happen again, so I slipped in a last question: 'Tell me who is in the running for this shortlist for the librarianship. I presume you yourself must be a favourite?'

'Only if I can keep myself from wringing the Director's neck,' Philadelphion admitted, his tone still pleasant. 'Apollophanes thinks he will walk away with the prize, but he has no seniority and his work lacks prestige. Aeacidas – whom you may have noticed yesterday, Falco – is pushing to be considered, on the grounds that literature is the most relevant subject.'

'He is not a member of the Academic Board, though?'

'No, Philetus has a low opinion of literature. When the rest of us want to be mischievous we point out to the Director that Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, was by tradition the senior Muse… Nicanor could get it. He's pushy enough – and rich enough. He can afford to smooth his own path.'

'Is his wealth the proceeds of his legal profession, or a private income?' Helena enquired.

'He says he earned it. He likes to make out he is sublime, in court or on the teaching rostrum.'

'How about Zenon?' I asked.

'We haven't had an astronomer in charge since Eratosthenes, as far as I recall. He believed the earth was round and calculated its diameter.'

'You have had some great minds here!'

'Euclid, Archimedes, Callimachos… None of them would have counted for much with Philetus!'

'And what about Timosthenes, my wife's favourite? Will he stand a chance?'

'None! Why is he her favourite?' Philadelphion was probably thinking that Timosthenes was nowhere near as handsome as him.

'I like a man who is intelligent, organised and speaks well,' Helena answered for herself. From loyalty or absent-mindedness, at that moment she took my hand.

Her attitude may have been too much for the Zoo Keeper. He acquiesced when I said we should recapture our children. I thanked him for his time. He nodded, like a man who thinks he has had a lucky escape from something he had expected to hurt a lot more.

I had not quite got his measure. Either this fellow was unusually open by nature, and keen to assist the authorities, or we had just witnessed a clever bout of wordplay.

Helena and I agreed one thing had come out clearly: Philadelphion believed the Librarian post should be his, on merit. Would he have had enough ambition to kill Theon to make the post available? We doubted it. In any case, he seemed to expect the appointment would go elsewhere, either through his colleagues' manoeuvring or the Director's favouritism. Besides, he seemed too liberal to commit murder. But that could just be the impression the wily Zoo Keeper intended us to have.