Lindsey Davis - Alexandria

We sat for a long time in the steam room. Aulus was working through his unhappiness. I was content to be left alone to think.

I was not surprised when eventually Aulus took up an almost oratorical posture: 'Marcus Didius, I am trying to decide whether to say something.'

'My normal rule in such circumstances is: don't speak out.' I allowed a slow beat. 'Though unless you say what you are on about, now you'll drive me mad.'

'Heras.'

'I thought it might be.'

Being Aulus, once he decided to broach it, he went ahead doggedly. 'I knew that he was going to the zoo.' He screwed up his face. 'Actually, I knew he had an assignation. Heras was not there by coincidence. He had told me in advance, he was meeting Roxana.'

''They cannot have known I would be there with that boy''… That had slipped out under stress. Roxana would deny any prior association with Heras if we tackled her.

Thoughtfully, I drew a breath. Aulus scooped up cold water and let it trickle down his chest. I rubbed my eyes, massaging my forehead with my fingers. 'So Heras fancied her. What did he tell you?'

'He had a heavy crush.'

'You warned him off?'

'I had never seen the woman. I didn't even know Heras himself all that well.'

'But you could see the potential for trouble? A student trying to take up with a senior academic's floozy? At the very least, Roxana was going to dump him hard, and sooner rather than later.'

Aulus smiled drily. He understood. He stood on the brink of greater maturity than Heras had possessed, though close enough to appreciate his friend's innocent hopes. 'I thought he was in for a let-down. I never imagined she would even show up…' I had taught Aulus something then. 'Heras said Roxana had always ignored him, but that day he had met her earlier and she had seemed restless; Heras tried his luck; she led him on. He begged to see her. She promised to meet him at the zoo.'

'Seems amazing. I've seen her, Aulus. This is a pert, rich widow, in her middle thirties, courted by all sorts of eminent professors.'

'I agree. Heras, poor fool, believed she had suddenly found him attractive. I thought,' said Aulus glumly, 'she must have had a row with Philadelphion.'

'Then you are my kind of cynic… So choosing the zoo for a secret liaison could have been a sweet act of revenge?'

I hated this kind of affair. Roxana saw Heras as a boy – and the selfish madam was about to make him a boy with a broken heart. Deliberate cruelty. Why did she need to do that?

'Heras was aware she wanted to make Philadelphion jealous. She made no secret of that.'

'What? Did she intend Philadelphion to come across them in each other's arms, while he was doing his nightly rounds?'

'Heras just thought his luck was in, so he didn't ask. He was so happy he didn't care.'

I remembered how solicitous Philadelphion had been to Roxana when he came upon the scene. I bet he took charge of her so firmly that night so he could get her away from other people and ensure she told the story he wanted. Until now, I had been imagining he was afraid of awkward questions about the lapse of security at Sobek's compound. But his solicitations could have been more personal. Why was Roxana so annoyed with him in the first place?

'There's a lesson, my boy,' I told the downcast Camillus Aelianus. 'Stay away from fancy women.'

'Like you do, Falco?'

'Absolutely.'

All the same, when we went to Uncle Fulvius' house, I left him to talk to Albia while I bounded up the stairs to the roof, all too eager to see my fancy woman.

Late afternoon was verging on early evening. Across the bay, the Pharos was still hidden in the mist. The day's heat was just beginning to alleviate up here; it would be a wonderful night to eat out of doors with my family. Helena was relaxing in the shade. Favonia, our solemn, private one, was asleep alongside, pushing against her mother like a small dog, while Julia, our imaginative spirit, was playing quietly by herself, some long absorbing game that involved flowers, pebbles and intense conversations in her secret language. I ruffled her hair; Julia scowled at the interruption, half unaware she had done so but also half conscious that this was the father she tolerated. Father, the source of treats, tickles, stories and excursions; Father, who would kiss bruises better and mend broken dolls. Father, who in a few years could be blamed, cursed, despised for fuddy-duddyness, hated for meanness, criticised and quarrelled with, then nonetheless called upon to get her out of scrapes, pickles and the inevitable love disaster with the lying wine waiter…

Helena Justina raised a hand vaguely. Helena was doing what she liked most, apart from private times with me. She was reading a scroll. It might be from her luggage; she could have been out and bought it. Or, since she got through so many, it was just as likely she had borrowed this one from a library in Alexandria. She looked up, saw me dreaming sentimentally, then escaped back hurriedly into the scroll.

I sat nearby, content to be among my own, not disturbing them.

Mammius and Cotius came to see me next morning. Being soldiers, they had been up and about since dawn. They made sure they arrived while we were eating. They had already been fed at their barracks, but I knew the rules. I let them sit down for a second breakfast. Uncle Fulvius was never at ease with the military, so he escaped with Cassius. Pa stuck it out annoyingly. He had a way of listening in on private conversations that made my bile rise.

In return for our food and a sit-down, the lads would have told me anything. I suggested they stick to facts, however.

The centurion Tenax had sent them, following his conversation with me, because they were the pair who had responded to a request from the Great Library six months ago. Theon had called them in. 'About lost scrolls?'

Yes, but to my surprise, it was nothing to do with the eccentric old scholar Nibytas.

'Never heard of him. This was a strange upset. A heap of stuff from the Library had been discovered by a member of the public on a neighbourhood rubbish dump. The Librarian had gone incandescent. If you like volcanic explosions, it was pretty to watch. Then we all trogged along to pull the dump apart -'

Helena pulled a face. 'That cannot have been pleasant!'

Mammius and Cotius, two born sensationalists, enjoyed themselves describing the joys of Egyptian rubbish dumps. Both passed over the ordinary mass of combs, hairpins, pot shards, pens and inkwells, oil lamps – with and without oil spillage – the occasional perfect winecup, many an amphora, even more jars of fish-pickle, old clothes, broken brooches, single ear-rings, solo shoes, dice and shellfish detritus. They listed more eagerly the half-rotten vegetables and fish-ends, they spoke of bones, grease, gravy, mouldy cheese, dogshit and donkey-do, dead mice, dead babies and live babies' loincloths. They claimed to have unearthed a complete set of currency-counterfeiting implements, perhaps discarded by a coiner who had had a fit of conscience. They had barked their shins and grazed their knuckles on spars, bricks and bits of roof tile. Then there were layers of love letters, written curses, shopping lists, laundry lists, fish-wrappers and discarded pages from lesser-known Greek plays. Amongst these documents, which were clearly chucked out from private houses, had been a great jumble of tagged scrolls from the Library.

'So how had those ended up in a dump?'

'We never found out. Theon dug them back out himself, brushing off the dirt as if they were his personal treasures. He bundled them on handcarts from the Library and wheeled them back safely. To begin with everyone made a great fuss. There was supposed to be a full enquiry, but next day a message came for Tenax that the Librarian had uncovered what it was all about, so our intervention was not needed.'