Cassius Brown And The Lost Map of Alexandria

By the time the undergraduate reached the part about the Romans inventing concrete, Cassius Brown had counted three separate references to the internet as a primary source and was beginning to wonder whether marking essays counted as a form of self-harm. He turned the page. The student had included a photograph of the Pantheon with a caption identifying it as the Colosseum. His office at York was warm despite the radiator having been off since April. A stack of dissertations occupied most of the visitor’s chair, while an archaeological survey report lay open across two books he had been meaning to return for a fortnight. Cassius added a question mark to the margin of the essay, considered the cumulative effect of six other question marks, and picked up his mug. The tea was cold. A knock sounded against the doorframe. Harriet Denby stood in the corridor with a paper bag and the expression of somebody who knew exactly how inconvenient her timing was. “Before you say you’re busy, I’ve brought food. You’re allowed to complain after you’ve eaten it.” “Can I eat it while being busy?” Cassius asked. Harriet gave him a considering look, as though examining a doubtful restoration, and came in without waiting for an invitation. She shifted the survey report far enough to set the bag on his desk. Her office was two floors above his, and she had been rescuing him from avoidable mistakes for so long that professional courtesy had largely fallen away. One of her earrings had caught in her hair; she had evidently decided that could wait. He discovered a sandwich, an apple and two packets of crisps. “You still think I’m sixteen.” “You still eat like you’re sixteen. And before I forget, a woman from Oxford has been trying to get hold of you.” “I get messages from women in Oxford.” “I’m sure it’s a constant burden. This one knows what an erased manuscript is.” Harriet picked the essay off the corner of his desk before it acquired a smear of sandwich filling. “Dr Eleni Ward. Greek manuscripts, papyrology, appointments in Vienna and Athens. She rang yesterday, and again this morning.” Cassius looked towards his computer. He had left his email open somewhere behind six archaeological journals and a spreadsheet whose calculations he no longer trusted. “Why ring you?” “She tried you first. In fairness, so does everybody.” Harriet lifted his empty mug off a leaning pile of journals and set it where it could do less damage. “You received ninety-three emails this week and answered four. One of those was an automatic reminder asking you to answer the others.” “A productive week, then.” Cassius took a bite of sandwich rather than attempt to defend himself. There had been a time when nobody outside his immediate field wanted him to look at anything, and he sometimes missed it. His last two investigations had brought attention he hadn’t anticipated, with surprisingly little extra time to do the job that still paid his salary. Students now asked where he would be travelling over the summer as if his research included a seasonal programme of explosions. Harriet read the photograph caption on the marked essay. “Pantheon. Colosseum. Oh, dear. At least the student found Rome.” “She,” Cassius said, reclaiming the page. “And she included a map in the appendix, which is more than some of them manage. Tell me what Ward wants.” Harriet leaned against the cabinet where he kept his field notebooks. “A medieval Greek prayer book, probably thirteenth century in its present form. Earlier writing under the prayers. They knew some parchment had been scraped and reused, but new imaging has recovered more than expected. Ward thinks there’s a record concerning books leaving Alexandria.” “That’s a question for a manuscript specialist. For instance, the one standing in my office.” “She knows she can read the Greek, Cassius. What she doesn’t trust is the story of where the book came from. She wants somebody who’ll look at the physical history and tell her when the catalogue has gone beyond its evidence.” Harriet pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and placed it beside the sandwich. “I’ve put her number in your diary as well.” “What did you tell her about me?” “That you’re occasionally useful. You can complain about the wording once you’ve called her.” Harriet had a habit of treating decisions as completed long before Cassius considered making them. He put the sandwich aside and opened the email she had forwarded. It contained a polite introduction, two photographs and a short paragraph of Greek transcription. The photographs showed manuscript leaves beneath uneven bands of dark script. Below the surface writing, paler marks ran at an angle. At first glance they looked like the smeared remains of somebody else’s notes. In the second image, taken under a different illumination, lines of small, regular letters began to emerge. He read Ward’s email twice, the second time with the catalogue photograph enlarged. “She’s asking about the provenance entry, then. More than the undertext itself.” “That was my reading.” Harriet stood beside his chair while he examined the printed label on the inside of the later binding: FROM A RELIGIOUS HOUSE ON RHODES. ACQUIRED 1874. It also carried a pencil reference to an antiquarian sale. “An assertion in capitals is still an assertion,” he said. The image showed the edge of another label tucked beneath it, a few millimetres of earlier paper carrying part of a letter and a numeral. He zoomed in until the photograph broke into grain. “Has anyone asked what’s underneath?” “The conservator objects to pulling nineteenth-century paper off a much older binding merely because somebody is curious.” “Good.” Cassius sat back, though he kept the enlarged label on the screen. “If she’d said anything else, I’d have been worried.” Harriet did not attempt to persuade him that the conservator’s caution was unreasonable; on such matters they tended to agree. Harriet tried to move the visitor’s chair, discovered the dissertations occupying it and remained standing. “Ward says the text mentions an Alexandrian transfer of books, apparently copies entered against particular names. She was careful about the claim. When I asked which books, she said she’d rather you saw what she’d actually recovered.” “Which I imagine you appreciated.” “After she’d annoyed me, yes.” He read the attachments: a conference paper, photographs of the surviving leaves and the library’s imaging notes. Ward had marked uncertainties plainly and resisted the temptation to announce the discovery of an ancient masterpiece. He was beginning to think he should make the journey. “I’ll telephone her this afternoon.” “You’re eating lunch now,” Harriet said, gathering up the wrapper he’d dropped beside the keyboard. “She’s booked with the conservator tomorrow, and there’s a train at six forty-two. I looked because I thought you might ask.” “Did you also book it?” “No. I thought you deserved at least one decision in the matter.” She went towards the door and paused with her hand on the frame. “Don’t make this another adventure because the last two were. Sometimes a manuscript is only a manuscript.” “Frankly, I’d welcome that.” “I mean it.” Harriet looked at the untouched stack of marking before going. After she had gone, he looked again at the images. The surviving Greek letters meant very little to him without Ward’s transcription, but he recognised the shape of a document copied from something older: names aligned in a column, abbreviated titles, small marks beside some entries. It did not resemble a continuous literary passage. His mobile rang before he could decide whether to call Oxford himself. The number wasn’t familiar, but the voice that answered his greeting introduced herself as Eleni Ward. She sounded brisk, with a faint accent he couldn’t quite place and an evident desire to get through the practicalities. “Harriet said she might have reached you. Am I interrupting?” “I’m marking undergraduate essays. You’ve improved the afternoon.” “Should I feel sorry for you or the undergraduates?” she asked. Before he could answer, she said, “You have the images I sent?” He moved his cold tea away from the keyboard and returned to the binding photograph. “Yes. A book described as Rhodian because somebody wrote Rhodes on a label in 1874. You haven’t found anything earlier to support it?” “Not yet. The early descriptions disagree, the leaves appear to have different histories, and the book may have been substantially rearranged. I need someone to examine the object rather than repeat the auction catalogue.” “And the Greek beneath the prayers?” “An excerpt in a late antique scholarly compilation. The surviving hand may be tenth century; the writer was quoting material older than himself. There’s a reference to Alexandria, scholarly books and at least two recipients. The political context suggests the second century before Christ, but I won’t pretend we can date the record more closely on the present reading.” Cassius had taken out a pencil and was adding questions to the edge of his printed timetable. “So there are at least three dates to worry about: the original record, the compilation and the surviving copy.” “Exactly. And a fourth if the nineteenth-century dealer invented his Rhodian story. Manuscripts have owners, binders, sellers and occasionally thieves. Their travels ought to leave some evidence.” “Ought to,” Cassius said. “They don’t always.” “No. Auction catalogues, on the other hand, can make almost anything sound possible.” He heard a chair scrape at her end and somebody address her in Greek. Ward replied in a few words before returning to the call. “My name is Eleni, by the way. Could you get here tomorrow?” The question suggested she had already discussed his timetable with Harriet. Cassius surveyed the essays waiting on his desk and the calendar entry for a departmental meeting he had wanted to avoid. “Late morning, if the trains behave. Where am I going?” “The Wycliffe Research Library. Private foundation, small conservation unit. I’ll send directions and have your access arranged. Nora, our conservator, is controlling the handling and imaging schedule. I mention that because visitors sometimes arrive with plans of their own.” “I’d be disappointed if she weren’t.” Cassius asked which photographs were available and what had already been attempted. Eleni answered carefully, correcting him when he conflated the date of the surviving parchment text with that of the original quoted record. He thought he’d prefer working with somebody who disagreed promptly. Before they finished, she said, “The trustees are hoping for an unknown Aristotle. If you come expecting one too, I’m going to have a difficult day.” “What are you hoping for?” “An accurate transcription, to begin with.” Another interruption sounded at her end; this time she moved away from the receiver to answer it. “That’s more work than it sounds. I’ll see you tomorrow, Cassius.” He returned to the essays. The student had finally reached the Pantheon’s dome, although she had taken an alarming diversion through medieval Paris to get there. Cassius wrote a comment explaining the distinction between concrete and mortar. Then he saved the document and pushed his chair away from the desk. He had taught enough courses on ancient material culture to know that the age of an object was often the least interesting thing about it. A piece of parchment could have been scraped in Constantinople, written on again in a monastery, rebound in Venice, sold in Egypt and catalogued in England as something from Rhodes. That evening Cassius packed an overnight bag, cleared a narrow path across his office floor and left a note for the colleague who would cover his seminar. Harriet appeared as he was locking the office, still wearing her coat despite the warmth of the corridor. “Oxford, then?” she asked. When he admitted that it was, she advised him to take the train. “You drove six hours after that site visit in July and complained about it for a week. I don’t fancy listening to you do it again.” “The train was always the plan.” “Of course it was.” She handed him a thin folder containing catalogue notes and an early photograph of the binding. “I’ve printed these because I wasn’t convinced you’d open an attachment before tomorrow.” “You have a very poor opinion of me.” “A precise one.” Harriet fell into step beside him as they headed for the stairs. She mentioned a colleague’s damaged Syriac leaf, wanted to know if he’d booked any holiday, and complained about a meeting whose agenda had arrived after the meeting itself. Cassius was glad to talk about things whose consequences could be settled within a university building. He reached home with enough time to eat something that hadn’t come from a paper bag, check the train and look through Harriet’s notes. The early twentieth-century photograph showed a small, dark binding with the older provenance label partly exposed beneath a later pasted slip. He held it beside the new image and found that the positions no longer matched. A short tear visible in the old picture had been concealed by repair work, while the most recent catalogue described the pasted label as original to the binding. He made a note to ask Ward about the conservation history. He closed the folder, put it beside his ticket and went to bed before eleven. After setting his alarm for five forty-five, he remembered the distance to the station and adjusted it to five thirty. He left the original photograph on top of Harriet’s notes, where he could find it in the morning.