Alexandria

LIII

Next, I wanted to see Zenon. Helena was tired, feeling the weight of her pregnancy and delayed effects of her anxiety about me yesterday. She stayed sitting on a shaded bench in the gardens, gently fanning herself, while I went up to the observatory alone. I climbed the stairs very slowly as my thighs and knees protested about yet more mountaineering. It would take me days to recover. I was hoping the astronomer would be pleasant and not try anything physical.

As I concentrated on my climb, the light was blocked out. A huge man was coming down towards me. I paused politely at a landing. The last time I squeezed past a stranger on a flight of stairs, it was Diogenes; that thought now gave me goose-pimples.

'Falco! Why, it is Didius Falco! Do you remember me?'

Not a stranger. Instead, a terrifically overweight figure; I looked up and recognised him. Worldly, sophisticated and just a touch devious, he must be the largest doctor practising anywhere in the Empire – all the more ironic since his method was to recommend purges, emetics and fasting.

His name was Aedemon. After twenty years addressing the putrefying innards of credulous Romans, he had agreed to be recalled to his home town, to serve on the Board of the Museion. At the meeting we went to, we had heard he was coming. It must be a genteel retirement for a well-respected professional. He could teach occasionally, write learned papers in staccato medical prose, revisit friends and family he had not seen for years and criticise from a distance the bad habits of his former patients.

After exclaiming over this chance meeting with genuine pleasure, Aedemon's next remark was that I looked in need of a laxative.

I felt a big grin spread across my face. 'Oh it makes a change, a wonderful change, Aedemon, to meet an academic with a practical attitude!'

'The rest are whimsical slobs,' he agreed at once. Helena and I had liked him. 'They need me to line them up and dispense wild lettuce and common sense.'

I gave Aedemon six months, then the inertia and in-fighting would wear him down – but I did trust him to have a good stint first.

We were still on the stairs. Aedemon had wedged his tremendous backside against the wall for support while we chatted. I hoped that wall was well built. 'What were you doing up aloft, doc? Do you know the starry-eyed Zenon, or did he call you for a consultation?'

'Old friends. Though his yellow bile needs correcting. I want him on a strict regime to cure that choler of his.'

'Now listen,' I said. 'I trust you, Aedemon – so tell me, please, can I trust Zenon?'

'Absolutely straight, 'Aedemon responded. 'His bodily humour means he is prone to bad temper – but equally, he is of impeccable moral virtue. What did you suspect he had done?'

'On your say-so – nothing!'

'Well you can trust him with your life, Falco.'

'He tried to throw me off the roof I reported mildly.

'He won't do it again,' Aedemon assured me. 'Not now. I've put him on a regular decoction of myrrh to cleanse his rotting intestines – and I am about to prepare his personal regime of ritual chants.'

This mystic lore hardly fitted with the pure science that Zenon had always protested, but friendship can overturn many barriers.

'He will be farting too much to lose that temper, 'Aedemon confided in me – with a rather wide grin.

As we were about to part, I asked, 'Did you know the late Librarian, Theon?'

Aedemon must have heard what had happened. Maybe Zenon had just told him. The big physician looked sorrowful. 'I met Theon many years ago. Now he was a black bile man. Morose. Irritable. Prone to lack of confidence. A sink of putrid matter clogging him.'

'Suicidal?'

'Oh, easily! Especially if he had been thwarted.'

Regularly, by Philetus, for instance.

Even without a purge or emetic, I felt inspired as I went up to the roof.

The astronomer, that man of few words, turned away on principle.

'Just one question, Zenon. Please just answer one for me: has Philetus been injecting cash into the Museion's funds?'

'No, Falco.'

'No money has been realised from selling Library scrolls?'

'You had your one question.'

'Aedemon calls you a pillar of morality. Humour me. Don't be pointlessly pedantic. Confirm the supplementary, please.'

'As I said – no. The Director has not boosted our accounts with income from his secret scroll-selling. I've been waiting to receive it – but he keeps the money himself.'

'Thank you,' I said sweetly.

Zenon smiled. I took it as encouragement for my enquiries. Aedemon's cure must already be working. Or had the celestial stars and planets foretold to Zenon that the downfall of Philetus might be imminent?

The Director was about to bring doom on himself. Just at that moment we spotted from the observatory roof a column of alarming black smoke. Zenon and I were horrified. The Great Library was on fire.