Fires of Alexandria Read online

  Chapter Eight

  Heron set the quill next to the ink well and rubbed her temples. The silence of the workshop had become a distraction.

  She opened the ornate box to find it empty again and her hand immediately dipped to the meager pouch at her side. The coins were far too few.

  A plate of half-eaten waterfowl sat next to the ink well. Her stomach protested even the sight of it, so she drank deeply from the cup of wine instead.

  Heron stood, and the world rotated around her. A heavy pounding echoed in her head. Too heavy, in fact, to be in her head, she realized. There was someone at the front door. She straightened her tunic and went to answer it before Sepharia got a foolish notion again.

  Reaching the door, she hesitated, thinking about Lysimachus' henchmen and that no one else was at the workshop. The person at the door, pounded again, much too feebly to be thugs or the barbarian.

  The door rattled lightly again, under the insistent pounding of her caller. Heron envisioned the weak fisted priest from the Temple of Nekhbet, standing on the other side. The high priest had sold all of her equipment to an opportunistic Philo to pay for their repairs.

  She shook her head as the door rattled again. It couldn't be them. They'd been throwing dead rats over her courtyard gate since the disaster. If they truly had coin to spare, and were spiteful enough, they would have hired a Hittite assassin to take care of her.

  Whatever her fate, she couldn't ignore it by not answering, she decided.

  Sighing deeply, Heron opened the door to find a beggar in dirty, wine-soaked robes reaching out to hit the door. The old man had a gaping near-toothless mouth and reeked of urine and gutter wine.

  Heron held her arm across her mouth. "Go away, old man. I'm not giving handouts here."

  The beggar staggered on his frail, emaciated legs and Heron thought he might fall over dead on the spot. Then as if the clouds had parted and sunshine poured through, he opened his eyes and spoke in fluent Latin.

  "Greetings, Heron of Alexandria. I bring a job for your hallowed halls," said the old man, holding his hands clasped together at his waist and swaying slightly.

  "Hollowed would be more appropriate," said Heron. "I'm afraid all my workers are currently busy and cannot be pulled from their jobs for another."

  Heron hated to lie to the old man, but she was sure he had no job to offer and was probably a lunatic trying to remove her of coin, though his Greek-accented Latin made her wonder. And he had made imitation of the oration styles used at the Great Library.

  "This job would require only your great mind," said the old man.

  The request piqued her curiosity. She felt foolish for even considering the old man's request but she had to know.

  "Speak your job so I can be rid of you," she said. "And if this is a foolish attempt to gain coin, I will call my guards on you."

  The old man broke into a grin, revealing his few remaining teeth, as if he knew no one else was at the workshop.

  "I would speak to you in the privacy of your entryway," said the old man. "For this job is for your ears only."

  Heron crossed her arms, shaking her head. Maybe he really was an assassin? Could he be hiding a dagger under that urine soaked robe? She had heard of assassins with poison concealed in a glass tube that only had to be thrust into one's side. Even an old man could cut her with glass.

  "Come in, beggar," she said. "But if you think to attack me, I will use my dagger."

  The old man smiled again, mocking her bluff.

  With the door closed, the old man reached inside his tattered robe. Heron stepped backwards, expecting a weapon to be revealed.

  He pulled a coin purse from his robes and tossed it to her. Heron checked to find the amount modest, but it could pay for a few pressing needs.

  "What is this job?" Heron asked, hoping to be rid of the beggar soon.

  The old man coughed, spittle flinging from his lips. Heron stepped back again.

  "To find who burned the Great Library during the reign of Gaius Julius Caesar," said the old man.

  Heron laughed. "Where did you get this coin for such a foolish request? The Library burned a century ago and all clues vanished under the political coverings of the Roman Empire."

  She threw the coin purse back to the old man.

  "Take your delusions somewhere else. You speak the madness of gods," said Heron. "No fee is large enough to anger the Roman Empire and I have enough problems of my own making."

  The old man wavered on his feet, hesitating. Confusion wracked his form as his mouth opened and closed like a dying fish.

  "You were sent by someone else on this errand, weren't you?" she asked.

  The old man nodded.

  "Who?" she asked.

  "I am not to say, good master Heron," said the old man.

  Heron blew hot breath. The world was full of mysteries and problems and strange visitors to her doors these days. Had she believed in the gods, she might have thought they were testing her.

  She was familiar enough with all the religions, having made their miracles for them, that she knew their stories well. Each religion had its version of the testing. But typically it was a believer that was tested. She believed nothing but what was observed, true to Aristotle's theory of universals. This testing was just coincidence.

  "Then tell me why this person needs to know?" she asked. From the reason, she might deduce the requester. It had to be someone she knew. Maybe Philo wanting to trap her and finish her off for good.

  "I cannot say," said the old man, tapping his finger to his grizzled chin in a searching manner.

  Heron gave the old man a long look. "You once spoke in the Library? You are not familiar to me, but you carry its habits."

  His eyes rolled in his head and then came back center, locked onto her.

  "Once yes," he said. "But no longer."

  The old man glanced to the floor sheepishly, almost embarrassed with shame long past. It was mixed with confusion as he seemed to be searching for a word or phrase, lost in his wine-addled brain.

  Heron decided she'd wasted enough time on the old man, even if he'd once graced the Great Library.

  "Time to go," said Heron, putting her hand on his shoulder to turn him toward the door. Knowing that he was once a philosopher, calmed her concerns about him.

  The old man stood firm, clearly still trying to remember.

  "Take that coin back to your master and tell him that I am not interested, especially for a pittance," she said.

  Her words sparked the memory in the old man, for he exclaimed and clapped his hands together. She could see the philosopher of old in that instant and smiled with him at his memory.

  "That coin was only a token," he said. "The man who sent me seeks the truth of who started the fires of Alexandria. He priced that knowledge at the value of the Lighthouse."

  Heron gasped. "Surely, he is mad, this benefactor of yours."

  The old man grinned, rocking on his heels, visibly pleased he had remembered the whole of his speech.

  "The Lighthouse was built on the treasury's of kings. Eight thousand talents did Sostratus spend to build such a wonder," she said. "No man could offer those rewards unless he was a wealthy king."

  Heron paled at her own words. A king could have the funds to pay her and the motivation as well. Perhaps, relatives of the Ptolemies were plotting their revenge and sought knowledge of the fires to sway the Alexandrians.

  Others had reason as well. King Amantienmemide to the south had been beaten back by the Romans on multiple occasions and had ties to Egypt. The Parthian Kings, like Gondophares, were subject to Rome, but bristled under its watchful gaze.

  Rome's potential enemies were so numerous she dared not solidify her thinking to one, lest she be wrong and it tainted her actions incorrectly.

  But why send a beggar? It was a clue that she would have to unravel if she chose to follow through
this insanity. Heron chuckled out loud as she realized she was considering it.

  "Tell this benefactor of yours that if I am to take this job, I will need fifty talents to get started, for the appropriate bribes and research assistants," she said.

  Fifty talents was a massive sum, not compared to the size of her debts, but considerable.

  The old man nodded. "I will carry your message."

  "I need the fifty talents by tomorrow," she said. "And that trifle of coin today, as a token you said."

  The old man nodded again and tossed back the coin bag before leaving. She weighed it in her hand, smiling and thinking of what she would purchase with the coin.

  The fifty talents would not go towards bribes or research assistants as she had said. She would need the money to pay off Lysimachus. It wasn't the complete debt, but would keep him from pawing at Sepharia for another month, giving her time to come up with more money.

  Maybe she could drag out the investigation, fifty talents at a time. That way she might keep Lysimachus off her until she could figure out how to make Agog's war machine and silence the debt forever.

  Heron laughed. The non-existent gods were nothing compared to opportunity, skill, and reason.

  She left the workshop soon after with the ornate box in her hand, buoyed by her good fortune. She would stop by the Library first, before moving on to other errands.

  Walking briskly in the morning sun, cooled by breezes coming in from the sea, Heron couldn't help but glance repeatedly at the Lighthouse across the bay. The white marble structure climbed to a point, high in the sky, the statue of Poseidon resting on the dome above the fire lens.

  Heron chuckled to herself. Solve the greatest mystery of Alexandria's past and receive a reward equal to the great wonder. With that coin, she would transform the city to a place worthy of the title of the City of Miracles.

  And not the miracles of the temples. Real, practical miracles that would change people's lives and free them from the tyranny of the gods.

  Under her care, she would put to work every workshop and transform it into the greatest city on the Earth. Making Rome and its Senate pale under the glory of the Alexandria. A City of Wonder, perhaps.

  The heat of the day felt strangely buoyant, and Heron reached the Library proper in good spirits. Heron entered a side courtyard, hoping to avoid the crowds near the front. A lesser fellow of the Library recognized Heron, marking a greeting with a hearty nod.

  Other patrons recognized her as she slipped through the many hallways and they called out greetings.

  "—good Heron, it has been far too long."

  "—the Library misses your airs, Heron."

  "—were you planning on waiting until the last days of earth had come before gracing us again?"

  "—Ave, Heron!"

  "—see Levictus, I told you Heron would come back. He's probably been creating whole new schools of learning for us to study while he's been gone."

  The well wishes and genuine greetings warmed her heart. She'd been away too long from the Great Library. She wished, as some had suggested, that she was working on a new tome of learning. The last one she'd presented as a gift was Geometrica.

  Instead, she'd been busy trying to dig out from the mountains of debt her twin had left her. The constant failures of her miracles hadn't helped either.

  A scribbler with ink stained hands and an armload of scrolls, passed her on his way to the deeper halls. She thought she recognized the man, though she couldn't remember where. A hint of burnt cinnamon followed him.

  Heron passed through a narthex filled with musty scrolls in piles on a table, waiting for delivery to the storage rooms. An apprentice scurried in and scooped up an armful to disappear into a hallway behind her.

  The Inner Antechamber lay beyond the narthex, after a long walk through a narrow hall, passing through a chamber filled with sycamore trees bound in marble pots with benches between, so one could sit and quietly think.

  The space was less an antechamber and more a cathedral to light. Ebony columns circled the great chamber, surrounding a central, circular pool, sparkling in the sun shining in from above. On one side, a fresco of painted stones climbed the wall, revealing the god Apollo in his entirety, clutching a book in his hand and firing sunbeams down to earth.

  If one walked the circumference of the room, glancing at the pillars, they appeared as black trees in a sunlit forest. Only the hard marble floor, alternating tiles of gilded diamonds and black moons, gave away the true nature of the room.

  Heron ran her hand across the rough surface of the pillar, feeling the breeze swirling from the opening in the high ceiling. When it rained, she liked to come to the Antechamber and listen to the falling rain play music on the surface of the pool.

  "Greetings Heron. Giving up paying off your debts to fair Lysimachus?" The voice cut through the calming air of the antechamber, slicing her across the back.

  "If you paid me a tenth of the fees you received for the works stolen from my designs, I would be free and clear long ago," said Heron.

  Philo strolled between the pillars to stand across from Heron. Her rival fancied himself a cultured citizen of Rome, dressing in the fashions of the Empire, which was at the moment, a verdant toga of silk, bound with golden edges. His hair had been powdered with a substance that made it appear thicker and darker.

  "Jealousy of my elegant designs will get you nowhere, except under the Alabarch's rack," said Philo. "Though it looks by the thinness, he's been starving you."

  Heron ignored the later comment, and said, "Then why did you purchase my equipment from the Temple of Nekhbet? I'm sure you'll trot out the floating statue trick soon enough."

  "The Na-gun's loved my floating statue, but that was weeks ago. I had come up with the idea all on my own before," he said, glancing peevishly. "And I was just saving the temple from the ruin of your disaster, by buying up your broken things."

  "Careful, Philo. If the Alabarch runs me out of town, your muse will dry up," she said, running her hand along the pillar, using the touch to calm her urge to punch him. Heron was thankful she'd arrived at the Library in good spirits, or she might have strangled Philo before his fifth word had reached her ear.

  Philo snorted. "Lob your insults all you want. Just remember in the records of history they will remember me as the greatest to have roamed the Great Library, and you will only be remembered as a failed debtor."

  Philo sauntered away from her, taking a different passage from the room. She hadn't come to banter with Philo, though it confirmed what she'd suspected, that he'd bought her Nekhbet designs to create a miracle of his own.

  He'd been the benefactor of her misfortune so many times, she wondered if he'd had a hand in them somehow, but she'd never been able to detect a trace.

  Heron made for the bowels of the Library, the places filled with the remnants of the fires. It hadn't been the Library itself that had burnt during the battle with Caesar, but the warehouses that housed the many tomes and scrolls that couldn't be kept in the main buildings.

  The few that had been salvaged, only a fraction of the whole, had been brought to the Mausoleum. Heron nodded to the attendant as she entered. Her time spent teaching and her gifts of knowledge gave her access to the whole Library without restraint.

  "May I see the List of Accounting?" she asked.

  The attendant nodded and disappeared into the dim light, carrying a covered candelabra, revealing swirling dust motes hanging amid the shelves of burnt books. The narrow shelves crowded the busy room.

  Minutes later, the glow from the attendant's candelabra returned, and with it, a bound book, marked with the Library's seal.

  Heron accepted the book, careful not to damage the edge. The tome listed the known works to have been destroyed. Either from the memory of its scribes and scholar, or by investigating the fiery remnants.

  She set the book under the candelabra, running he
r finger along the listing, turning each page at a pace of one per breath. The attendant watched her carefully, not because she might damage the book, but because, she assumed, he'd heard of her famed memory.

  After paging through the book, she closed it and handed it back. The wide-eyed attendant opened the book cursorily as if he didn't expect the words to be there anymore.

  Heron smiled and left the way she came, the images of the words dancing in her head. She would copy them down at the workshop later when she had time and study the results. If she was to figure out who started the fires, or at least acquire enough information to keep the coin coming, she needed information about the catastrophe.

  The list would give her an idea of what was lost during the fires. It wasn't the complete accounting, but it offered the best estimate.

  Heron was familiar enough with the story of the fires to know that holes were missing in the official version.

  The facts of the battle were clear. Caesar had come to subdue Egypt and ally himself with Ptolemy XIII, but had on the basis of an evening in Cleopatra's arms, instead closed ranks with her.

  Escaping the Egyptian army, Caesar led his small force and took the island of Pharos, the location of the Lighthouse. As the Egyptians rallied to their ships, Caesar ever the opportunist, seized his chance when the east winds blew, and set fire to his enemy's fleet.

  The fire quickly spread through the harbor, leaping into the warehouses on the wharves, ending in a conflagration that claimed over four hundred thousand papyrus scrolls by the Library historian's accounting. Only a scant remainder made the list, but from the titles alone, Heron could guess at the magnitude of the loss.

  While the facts were clear: the fleet's fire, the battle with Caesar and what was lost; the rumors and untruths that erupted from the ribbons of flame and billowing smoke obfuscated the source of the destruction.

  Written accounts of the fire starting long before the fleet fire reached the land were numerous. Though they were not well kept as they proved an unpopular opinion in Alexandria. No one liked to think that someone from the city had started the fires.

  Most residents assumed that Caesar had sent saboteurs into the city to start the fires and distract its citizens from the battle, giving them a choice between fighting him and saving the Library.

  Rome had also been long known to harbor ill will towards Alexandria's place on the world stage. If Caesar removed the Library's influence, then Rome was free to continue its dominance.

  Other reasons surfaced over the decades that passed. The last remaining Carthaginians burnt down the Library in spite to keep it out of Rome's hands. The Egyptian god Ra, jealous of the Library, started the blaze with a sunbeam. The temples in the city feared the influence of the Library on its followers and had it destroyed. Or even that it had been the Archimedes' heat ray, smuggled into the Lighthouse by Syracuse dissenters.

  The last one had made Heron chuckle the first time she'd heard it. The heat ray made from reflected sunlight had been a tale that even she couldn't believe. Of course, she'd performed small scale experiments that proved it wasn't true, but that didn't keep people from speculating. It was often the most outrageous idea that traveled the furthest.

  Heron sighed, holding up her arm to block the midday sun. Her eyes hadn't adjusted from the dim corridors of the Great Library, so she did not see the men until they had grabbed her by the arms.