The Book of the Dead Read online

  In daylight, the structure looked immense and dominating, with its powerful columns soaring to the skies, supporting the statues of the Nine Muses for whom it was named. At night it looked beautiful. The gold decorations were replated with silver by the moon, and the white marble seemed luminescent, as if it glowed from within. The fountain before the entrance, now still, reflected the stars in a pool black as ink. The silence concentrated the senses, so one became more aware of the spirit of the structure, the magnificence of the vision that created such a place, the feel of the night air and the scent of the plants, the stone beneath one’s feet, the solidity.

  Kaires and Sergius walked past the great bronze doors of the main entrance, now closed up for the night, to a small side entrance guarded by the night porter. He nodded them in. Sergius took one of the torches from the escort and told them to remain outside until they returned.

  Kaires looked around. It was amazing how the darkness changed things. The Museum was as familiar to him as his own home, but now he seemed to be in some huge black cave defined by the yellow circle of the torch. They passed from the atrium directly into the main Library behind. There was a strict rule of silence during the day, which he had always found oddly comforting; but the depth of it now made him feel uneasy. There was always a background noise of rustling papers, scratching pens, coughing, fidgeting, chairs being moved, surreptitious whispers and hissed rebukes. Now he could hear himself breathe. He tried to say something to Sergius in order to break the oppression, but strangely enough he couldn’t bring himself to utter a word. The Library commanded silence.

  They continued through several reading rooms and into the corridor that led to the main lecture hall. Instead of heading there Sergius turned down a side corridor that gave on to one of the little garden courts. These were one of the most charming aspects of the whole Museum complex, a series of small study rooms for those who preferred to work alone. They consisted of a number of rooms set around a square garden open to the sky. With the scent of the herbs and flowers and the playing of the fountain, they were a delightful place to work. Kaires often came, arms laden with scrolls, to spend an afternoon of uninterrupted study in one or other of them.

  The one they were now approaching, however, did not look so entrancing. One of Sergius’s men was standing, arms folded and legs astride, across the entrance. He moved aside as they approached.

  A scrap of garden with a tiny pond protected by a nymph whose statue rose above it. A few scattered benches and tables in the colonnade that ran around. The door through which they had come, and another at the opposite side leading further into the depths of the complex, guarded by another soldier. Eight rooms, two on each side of the square. The door to the first one on the left side lay open. Sergius indicated to Kaires to proceed.

  On Gallus’s orders the room lay undisturbed. A reading room on a similar plan to all the others, a place of study, of peace and quiet. And quiet it now was, but not peaceful. A sense of evil had taken over the atmosphere of the room, and the cause of it lay before them.

  The Prefect could not have unscheduled deaths occurring in the pride of the city. Like the citizens of Delos, he believed there was a time and a place for such things, and that place was elsewhere. But tonight that rule had been insolently defied.

  Zeno lay where he had fallen, his body cruelly broken. One leg was impossibly twisted under the other; his arms were splayed out, his hands seeming to clutch at something beyond his grasp. His face was turned up to the ceiling, one eye staring wide, the other a ruined mass of pulp, a savage cut having sliced into the socket, destroying its contents and presumably passing straight through to the brain. There was surprisingly little blood. Death must have come instantly, a savage, jabbing blow extinguishing the light in his eye and the fire of life at the same moment. His mouth was slightly parted, as if catching his breath, or about to speak. What had he to say?

  His tunic was clean, and well kept; the neck was slightly frayed, and a small tear had been tidily stitched, but Zeno had obviously been comfortable with it. On a chain round his neck, now fallen to one side, was an Eye of Horus, the ancient amulet to ward off injury. Suspended from his leather belt was a small pouch. Kaires carefully knelt and opened it. It contained a few coins and a small carnelian stone featuring a female likeness in profile, perhaps a goddess he used as a seal, perhaps a memento; the light was too poor to make it out clearly. Often a mistress would satisfy her vanity by giving an admirer such a token, in return for who knows what services rendered.

  His face betrayed an age that his body on the whole did not. Perhaps fifty years had left their lines engraved on his features, which must have been strikingly handsome, and would have been even now, were it not for the desecration of his eye, and the cold gaze of the other, no less horrifying. Kaires forced himself to look into it. He had heard it said that the image of a murderer was left in the victim's eyes, but if that was so, there was no sign of it left now in this milky stare.

  He had fallen heavily against the wall below a shuttered window. His left leg, twisted under him, was surely broken, perhaps betraying the fragility of age that first appearances denied. His arms were unmarked, but as Kaires lifted his head he could feel that the back of his skull was damaged; it seemed to have been fractured and partially caved in, perhaps by his fall, although the skin was hardly broken and there was little blood. He stood again and looked over Zeno’s body. What had happened to create such injuries? How had he been stabbed with such violence to make him fall so hard, twisting his leg and caving his skull? What force would have been needed to kill a man in so brutal a fashion?

  Already the flies were buzzing round his eyes and lips. Kaires turned to Sergius, who stood discreetly at the door.

  'We'd better get a move on so your men can clear up. In this heat he's not going to be very pleasant by morning. Where was the ring found?'

  Sergius pointed to the floor near to Zeno’s outstretched left hand. 'There. He must have dropped it when he fell.'

  'I wonder why Zeno’s killer didn’t take so obviously valuable an object?'

  'Perhaps they panicked, or heard someone coming.' He shrugged.

  ‘Or perhaps it had nothing to do with his death...’

  Kaires looked over the rest of the room. It was about twelve feet long and nine wide, plainly and sparsely furnished, the floor stone and the walls whitewashed plaster. On one side two large shuttered windows, below one of which Zeno now lay, opened out onto the garden on either side of the door. High on the wall opposite, just below the ceiling, were a series of small ventilation windows, which would let in enough light and air but not heat during the day – a common device in Egypt for keeping rooms cool. The only way in was from the garden courtyard, either by the door or, at a pinch, by climbing through the windows either side of it. The two end walls were solid.

  'The door and the shutters were closed... What do the vents up there open out onto?' Kaires pointed up at them.

  'On to a service alley, I believe, for the kitchens. But they’re only a couple of inches square. No one came in that way.'

  'Can you get to the alley from within the Library?'

  'Only by going through the kitchens, which are always busy. The staff there saw nothing unusual. They had been there all day and were still there when we came. No one saw anyone pass through to the study rooms, either way.'

  Off to the left of the door, next to where Zeno had fallen, was a table, across which a few rolls of papyrus were scattered. A reed pen, ink cakes and a pot of murky water also stood there. Kaires went over for a closer look. The text was the Maxims of Amenhotep; Zeno had simultaneously been making two copies in Greek, no doubt in order to earn a little extra cash. A Library label was attached to the original. Curiously, Zeno had also attached a label to one of his copies.

  To the right, against the wall separating this study room from the next, stood a low rack of shelves for storing scrolls and writing equipment, but they were currently empty. Against the wall oppos
ite the door stood a simple wooden chair. By the desk, perhaps to inspire those working within to ever greater heights, stood a bust on a plinth, looking out over the room with a certain irony.

  Homer, the blind poet.

  -0-

  They left Sergius's men to deal with Zeno's body. By the time they returned to the house it was well into the early hours of the morning. It seemed later, and Kaires was tired, but he invited Sergius in. He wanted to get a few more details from him before calling it a day. As he had expected, Hotepet was waiting up for them.

  It had taken time, but people had eventually got used to the brother and sister, Kaires and Hotepet. Even so, some still found them a little hard to place. Marriages between Romans and Egyptians were not really recognized by either society, even though Graeco-Egyptian unions were by now far from uncommon. Their mother, Paulina, had come to Alexandria with her husband during the time of Ptolemy Auletes, the father of Cleopatra. He had been a corn trader, and done very well for himself, but on a trip to the Delta had succumbed to malaria and died. Paulina, devastated, had lost the child she had been carrying. Eventually she surprised everyone by marring the doctor who had cared for her, their father, Merisu. Despite his profession he was a respected member of the Egyptian nobility, not that that counted for much in these times. He had been a good husband to her until her death a few years previously.

  Kaires and his sister were the result of that union. Hotepet, born blind, had nevertheless been well educated at home, while Kaires had followed his father's interest, medicine, and studied hard to become a doctor. At the back of his mind had always been the hope of curing Hotepet. In time he had come to realise this would never be possible. Now, at the age of twenty two, he had already earned a good reputation as a successful practitioner.

  He was a fit, good looking young man, with a dark mane of hair, olive skin and deep brown eyes. He eschewed Roman dress, preferring the simple short white kilt of the Egyptian, and was generally bare-chested, unless the coolness of the Alexandrian winter demanded otherwise. His sister, a year younger than him, had the same dark hair and skin, but her eyes were green and sparkled with life as she talked, such that many who did not know her didn't realise she was blind.

  Their family’s unique connection to both the Roman and Egyptian worlds had led to a successful career for him. In the years since Cleopatra’s death and the establishment of Roman rule Kaires had become well known not only as a doctor but also as a useful go-between. A call by the Prefect to deal with some minor ailment had led to his present position as Gallus's general facilitator, a position he often found exasperating but, he had to admit to himself, rather enjoyed. The Prefect, deeply interested in medicine himself, especially regarding the health of his soldiers, had taken an instant liking to Kaires, a feeling which Kaires reciprocated in full. Gallus had engaged him as his assistant in all matters involving Egyptian protocol, and, truth to tell, he relished the role. For the first time his family became more acceptable to the Roman elements of Alexandria. They had never really belonged as either Roman, Egyptian, or Greek, and they still didn’t - but neither did they feel so excluded as before.

  ‘Father is still fast asleep.’ Hotepet directed one of her unnervingly pointed glances at Sergius. ‘It’s a wonder all that noise didn’t wake him.’

  Sergius blushed but wisely kept silent. Hotepet poured out some wine. ‘It’s been a long night for you both. Don’t stay up too long. We all need our sleep.’ She slipped away, leaving them to it.

  Kaires felt a warm flush pass down his body as he sipped, and he could see it was doing Sergius good too. The sweetness and the spices went a long way to restoring his humour. The events of the evening were still in a bit of a whirl in his mind. He needed to try and establish exactly what had happened. Sergius was obviously grateful to be sitting down for a minute or two, so he took advantage of the moment.

  'How did you get roped in to all this? Just happened to be passing?'

  ‘Actually, that’s not far off the truth. We were close by at the Theatre – the Prefect was inspecting the new proscenium and giving the builders a rather hard time of it. Quite right, too, if you've seen what a hash they’ve made of it. Anyway one of the porters came running across from the Library to tell us there’d been an accident.'

  'Some accident. What time was this?'

  'It was just starting to get dark. By the time we got to the Library the light was quite poor. When we came to inspect the scene of the trouble we had to have torches lit.'

  'And what did you find?'

  'Much as you saw. The Library had closed down for the day. There were a few people still about in the main hall but most were packing up and leaving. The dining room was still quite busy, and most of the live-in scholars were either there or in their rooms. A few were chatting in the entrance hall. The garden rooms were emptying. A servant, whose job it was to close them all up, discovered the body and alerted a Library guard. Surprisingly, he did the right thing – sent the servant to fetch us, telling him to keep quiet about it – and stood guard outside the room until we came. Two of the scholars were still in the other rooms, and, although they were none too happy, he kept them there. He also had the names of the ones who had used the rooms earlier. Not bad considering his only experience of crime is trying to stop the scholars pinching the manuscripts… anyway, when we arrived the Prefect took one look, and saw the ring. The guard spoke Egyptian and read the cartouche. Gallus ordered the place sealed off until he could arrange a proper investigation.'

  'Which he decided was to be done by me?'

  'You seemed the obvious choice. You’re well known there but not actually part of the place. And Gallus seems to trust your judgement, for some reason. He assumes you’ll be able to sort everything out.'

  Kaires grimaced. 'Wonderful. So, Zeno was stabbed in one of the garden rooms, to which anyone has access, sometime this afternoon, by any one of the several hundred people who were using the Library that day, and I’m meant to find out who it was. Where do I start?'

  'It’s not quite as bad as that. Or maybe it’s worse, I don’t know. We talked to the scholars who were still there, and it doesn’t seem as if anyone could have done it...’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, according to Aristeon, the scholar who took the room directly opposite, Zeno’s room was in view the whole time. From the moment he entered until the moment he was found dead. And although others passed by, he’s sure no one went in. Dexios, the other one who was still there, said much the same. But we haven’t talked to any of the other occupants yet. Someone must have seen something to explain it. Maybe it was Aristeon or Dexios themselves. You need to speak to all the people involved, but it’s no use starting right now. Most will be going on the trip with you. There are a few you’ll have to try and see soon, though, before you go. Zeno’s wife and daughter, for starters. They live next to Clito’s wine shop in the Greek Quarter. Go first thing tomorrow. Then there’s the funeral – you probably ought to attend, see who turns up. You never know, you might learn something.'

  ‘True.’ Kaires closed his eyes. His temples had started to throb. ‘Tell me everything you found out from Aristeon and Dexios.’

  He took another sip of the wine and listened carefully while Sergius told him what he knew. Zeno had arrived at the library that day as usual. As he was married, he lived outside the Museum in an apartment he rented in the Greek district. He had met Aristeon in the lobby, and talked for a few minutes before going down to the archives to collect some manuscripts he was working on. Aristeon had still been there when he returned, and the two of them had walked to the garden court together. Zeno had gone into his room, on the left side of the court, and Aristeon had gone to his, immediately opposite. Over the next hour or so all the other rooms had been filled by their usual occupants as they settled down for the afternoon. Zeno’s room was always in view from the rooms opposite, and both Aristeon and Dexios were quite sure that he did not leave his room again. Mantios, an
other of the scholars, called in to Zeno's room briefly for a few minutes on his way back from the archive, but he didn’t stay long. Zeno seemed preoccupied and a bit annoyed at being disturbed. After Mantios had gone back to his own room next door, Aristeon had seen Zeno get up and close the shutters of the windows overlooking the garden, which struck him as being a little odd. Nobody saw him again until his body was discovered at dusk.

  Kaires thought for a moment. 'We’d better make a list of everyone who was in the study rooms,' he said.

  He reached for a piece of papyrus and ink cake from a cupboard. Wetting a stylus from his wine and rubbing it on the ink, he drew out a rough plan of the court. A square, with an entrance in the middle of the top and bottom sides. Single rooms on either side of the entrances. Two smaller single rooms on each of the left and right sides of the square. All of the doors to the rooms opened directly on to the central court. There were no direct connections between them; to go from one room to another it was necessary to go out into the central court first and then in again.

  He wrote Zeno’s name on the first of the rooms on the left side. Opposite, in the equivalent room on the right, he wrote Aristeon’s.

  ‘Who else was there?’

  Sergius thought for a moment.

  ‘Next to Zeno was Mantios, the astronomer. Then there’s Dexios and Thestor, the brothers. Dexios was next to Aristeon, as I said, with Thestor on the left of the bottom entrance. To the right as you come in was Haemon. I think he’s a mathematician. On either side of the top entrance were Prokles, on the left, and Chaeremon, the geographer, on the right. That’s it. No one else appeared once the rooms were all full.’

  ‘Well I suppose that’s where I start. Somehow one of them must have done it.’

  Kaires held his head, which was still throbbing. He could barely keep his eyes open.