Academic Exercises Page 14

  I walked in and he didn’t look up. “Tea?” he asked.

  “Yes, why not?” I looked around. I hadn’t been in his rooms for some time. Mind you, nothing had changed; the same heaps of junk everywhere. I decided to assume that the offer of tea implied an invitation to sit down, so I moved a stack of books and perched on a chair. He swung the kettle arm over the fire and peered back at me over his shoulder.

  “I saw that thing you did in the Proceedings,” he said.

  “Did you now.”

  “Very good.” He pawed the lid off the tea caddy and measured out three spoonfuls. Black tea, the cheap sort. I could smell the bergamot oil they use to mask the poor flavour. “I think you’re right about Psammetichus. It makes sense of the western tradition, and it fits in with Hiero in the Summary.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Of course, you were wrong about Arcea,” he went on, with his back to me. “The foundation date is fixed by the Lelantine War.”

  I frowned. He had a point. “That’s a terminus post quem.”

  He shook his head. “Hiero lists Arceus among the dead at Limma,” he said. “If he died at Limma, he couldn’t have founded Arcea the year after, could he?”

  Six months of agonisingly hard work gone up in smoke. I could have cried. Instead, I said, “If you’re prepared to follow Hiero.”

  “You were,” he replied. “Can’t have it both ways.” He turned round, holding a teapot and two small wooden cups. He loves to make a show of poverty, although his family owns half the Neada valley. “Lemon?”

  I shook my head. “That’s what you wanted to see me about.”

  “No.” He sat down, not bothering to shift the books first; he sort of settled in beside and on top of them, like cement. “No, I’ve already written a note for the Review.” He smiled. “Sorry.”

  I made a show of shrugging. “Just as well you spotted my careless oversight,” I said. “The human race should be properly grateful.”

  He leaned forward to pour the tea. “Oh, the hell with that,” he said. “I never could be doing with slipshod scholarship, is all.” He frowned. “Did you say you wanted lemon?”

  “Not for me, no.”

  He sipped his tea and pulled a face. “No,” he went on (he starts most of his sentences with no), “it was something quite other. How are things with you, by the way? It’s been a while since we had a chance for a civilised conversation. How’s your father getting on?”

  “He died,” I said. “Last spring.”

  “That’s a shame, I’m sorry. He can’t have been out for long.”

  “Six months.”

  He shook his head. “Well,” he said, “at least he didn’t die in prison. That must be a terrible thing, don’t you think?”

  Sometimes, the best way of fighting is not to fight. I sat still and quiet. He drank his tea.

  “No,” he said eventually, “what I wanted to see you about was—” He stopped, put his cup down and folded his hands neatly in his lap. “You heard that Count Dorcellus is dead.”

  “No, actually.”

  He nodded. “The family’s deep in debt, so they had to sell up. The whole place, including the library.”

  In spite of myself, I was mildly interested. The Dorcelli are one of those old families who used to be everywhere a few hundred years ago, and haven’t done a damn thing since. Also, they were always notoriously mean-minded about allowing scholars to use their library. As a result, nobody had any idea what they’d got in there.

  “It just so happens,” he went on, looking over my shoulder, “that my uncle bought a few cases of books at the sale.” He grinned, still not looking at me. “When I say cases, that’s quite accurate. He bought four large crates, sight unseen. He’s a clown, my uncle. Still.”

  I had a feeling of being taken on a guided tour of the torture chamber. They do that, apparently, to make people confess. This is the rack, that’s the iron maiden, and over here we have the thumbscrews. “Anything interesting?” I asked.

  “Some bits and pieces.” He frowned again, then lifted his head and looked at me. “Oh, before I forget. They sent me your latest on Aeneas Peregrinus. They want to know if it’s any good.”

  I felt cold all over. They, in this context, meant the faculty board, to whom I had submitted an outline of my researches in the hope of getting funding for another five years. Through ignorance or malice they’d given it to Carchedonius for peer review. I swallowed. “What did you think?”

  “Splendid.”

  Oh, but you can’t tell, really you can’t. He always says splendid or excellent, just before he wields the knife. I waited. He made the moment last.

  “No,” he said, “I went through it all very carefully, and I’m forced to admit, I do believe you’re right. And I’ve been wrong all these years. You convinced me. Congratulations.”

  Still I waited. These are the red-hot irons, that cage thing over there is for bending your arms backwards until your elbows burst. “And?”

  “And nothing.” The smile faded. “You know I can’t stand you,” he went on. “You’re arrogant, sloppy, careless and full of shit, and the way you carry on with married women is a disgrace to the Studium. But, on this occasion, you’ve produced a piece of work of real quality. And put me in my place in the process.” He picked up his teacup and put it down again, his fingertips still surrounding the rim. “I know now that you were right about the latitude of Essecuivo, and I was wrong. I’m trying to be graceful about it, but I’m probably not succeeding. It’s not really in my nature.”

  It suddenly occurred to me to be glad I hadn’t touched the tea he’d poured for me. Bergamot oil would mask any number of unusual flavours. “Well—” I said.

  “Anyway.” He stood up, crossed to the fireplace and gave the logs a sharp poke. Little red stars got up, like flies off a turd. “I’ve written to the faculty recommending that you get your money. I had no choice,” he said. “After all, we’re scholars, aren’t we?”

  I took a deep breath. “Is that what you—?”

  “No.”

  I looked at him. People have mistaken us for each other. We’re both tall and skinny, with very similar long faces and straight noses. Two scholars. “Fine,” I said. “So?”

  He sat down again, this time carefully moving the books, like miners clearing the fallen rocks behind which their friends are trapped, until he unearthed a long brass tube. He laid this across his knees and covered it with his forearms. “One small point in your work that I’d take issue with. Very small,” he added quickly. “It hadn’t occurred to me either until very recently. It’s about the manuscript of the Discovery.”

  (The Discovery of Essecuivo, by Aeneas Peregrinus. Of course there was no manuscript.)

  “You and I,” he went on, “have both spent a large part of our adult lives trying to figure out what became of the manuscript when Aeneas died. Both of us assumed that it would have been inherited by his son. We traced every living descendant, we sorted through indices and cartularies wherever there’s a library that might have received papers or books from Dives Peregrinus or his heirs. It’s all been—” He grinned. “A complete waste of time. Oh, we’ve found books and papers. Just not the one we were looking for. Agreed?”

  I nodded.

  “We assumed,” he went on, “that, because Dives inherited the land and the money and the house, he’d have had the papers too. After all, Aeneas was planning on going back. He died suddenly. The papers would have been with the rest of his property.”

  He seemed to want me to say something. “Yes,” I said.

  “Naturally enough. It was a fair assumption. But what—” He stopped, as though he’d walked into an invisible door. “What if Aeneas and his son quarrelled about something, and Aeneas gave the papers to somebody else? The land and the money; well, he didn’t really have a choice, people didn’t just disinherit their only sons back then, so Dives got them all. But the papers—”

  A hot, bright light inside my head. �
��The niece,” I said.

  He gave me a beautiful smile. “Precisely,” he said. “His sister’s daughter, whose name we don’t even know. What if she got the papers, while he was still alive?”

  I was ashamed. I really, really should have thought of it before. But I was too excited to let that get in the way just then. “The niece—”

  “Married into the Dorcelli family,” he said quietly. “Who, being at that time wealthy enough not to need to sully their hands with trade and commerce, filed the papers safely away in the archives of their beautiful library at Touchevre and forgot all about them. Probably never bothered to look to see what was in them. Meanwhile Dives, having ransacked his father’s house searching for the old fool’s last book and failed to find it, concluded that it must have been destroyed, and told people so. Naturally, they believed him. He was, after all, Aeneas’ son.”

  Suddenly I could scarcely breathe. “Your uncle.”

  He smiled. “Bought four large crates, sight unseen. Including—” He pointed the brass tube at me, like a weapon. “This.”

  He held on to the tube. I unscrewed the cap. I could see the end of a roll of parchment. My hand was frozen solid. I couldn’t move.

  “Allow me.” He pinched the parchment between forefinger and thumb and drew it out. It was stiff and brown. It looked like a stick. “Now, then,” he said. “You’re the greatest living expert on Essecuivo. You’ve just proved that, to my satisfaction. Would you care to take a look?”

  My enemy, my one and only true enemy, holding in his hand the one and only manuscript. Would I care to take a look? I nodded. He leaned across, took my hand, opened the cramped fingers and pushed the scroll in between them. “Take your time,” he said. “I’m in no hurry.”

  You know the story of Saint Aguellinus; how, every morning since he was nine years old, he climbed the mountain just before dawn and prayed to be allowed to look into the face of the Invincible Sun. For ninety years he prayed; then, one day, his prayer was granted. The Sun, rising above the Techenis mountains, burst upon him as he prayed and spoke to him, saying, Follow me. Whereupon Aguellinus, his prayers answered, was consumed by the fire that leaves no ash and ascended bodily into Heaven—

  Me, I’m not religious. I can see the Sun any time I like. But this—

  “Go on,” he said (I’ll never forget how he said it). “It won’t bite you.”

  I unrolled it. The parchment creaked; I was suddenly terrified in case it snapped or crumbled into dust before I could read it. But it rolled out, smooth and springy, the surface hard under my fingernails. It was hand-written, of course, and of course I recognised the handwriting. I’d spent hours poring over the nine authentic surviving letters written by Aeneas Peregrinus—to his land agent, his son, the sherriff of his shire concerning the window tax.

  Concerning the True Discovery of Essecuivo, being a faithful account—

  “Go on,” he said gently. “Read it.”

  I thought; if only my father was still alive. He died, as Carchedonius so thoughtfully reminded me, only a short while ago, after ten years in prison. He’d done nothing wrong; at least, not the things he was accused of doing. But when the bubble burst and millions of angels were wiped out overnight, as suddenly and irrecoverably as snow melting, someone had to take the blame. My father, who’d done nothing wrong and therefore saw no need to leave the country with a small valise filled with precious stones, put up a strong case at his trial. He always was a good speaker, and he couldn’t resist arguing the toss, even when it was clearly not the smart thing to do. I can imagine (I wasn’t there) him arguing with Death, scoring five or six good solid debating points; the last thing he’d have seen before his eyes closed for ever was the panoramic view you get from the moral high ground.

  But if he’d lived just a little longer, and seen this—

  He’d have scolded me for not finding it earlier. The niece, he’d have said, shaking his head in that insufferable way of his, any idiot would’ve thought to investigate the niece. And he wouldn’t have said you failed me, you always were a bitter disappointment to me, because he wouldn’t have had to.

  I read the manuscript. I could have written it myself.

  That was the extraordinary thing. All my life I’d been speculating about Essecuivo, making educated guesses, extrapolating castles from grains of sand. From a tiny handful of dubious fragments of recollections in old age by men who’d heard their grandfathers talking when they were children; from observations based on ancient artefacts that may possibly have been copied more or less faithfully from things that may or may not have been smuggled back by Aeneas’ men in their sea-chests; half the time I was pretty much making it up, on the balance of probabilities, and the rest of the time I was working from evidence you wouldn’t rely on to convict a fox of killing chickens. The thing was, though, I was right. Uncannily so; even my wildest reaches and most vertiginous leaps to conclusions were borne out by the tall, thin, looped brown letters on the page. It was enough to make you weep. I hadn’t needed the manuscript, except as proof. I knew it all already.

  —But proof; oh, there’s a world of difference, isn’t there? I felt like a man accused of murder who’s made up a wild and totally false alibi, only to have it corroborated by a perfect stranger of flawless integrity. I was right. About everything; the height of the mountains (which I’d calculated based on an almost certainly apocryphal story about how Aeneas had spilt a kettle of boiling water over his hand on a mountaintop, and not been scalded), the source of the great river that washes the gold dust out of the northern heights, which province the red-and-yellow parrots come from. Every damn thing.

  “I expect you’re feeling pleased with yourself,” he said.

  I’d forgotten all about him. I’d been gazing at the illuminated capital letters. Aeneas hadn’t done them himself, he’d have hired a local scrivener or law-writer. They were typical of the period, quickly but well executed, the letters shadowed in red and embellished with leaf-and-scroll; standard decoration for title deeds, leases and contracts. Every paragraph started with one. A small touch of vanity, from a man who could afford it. “Sorry?”

  “I imagine,” he said, “that you’re feeling quite happy just now. I would be, in your shoes.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course. And you too.”

  He smiled. “Very much so. You know,” he went on, “I’ve never had much in the way of good luck in my life. When things have gone well for me, it’s because I made it happen. Not very often,” he added with a grin. “But this is something quite different. I feel—well, justified, if you know what I mean.”

  I wasn’t quite sure that I did, but I didn’t want to spoil the mood. “Splendid,” I said. “What do you intend to do?”

  He leaned across and took it gently from me. I didn’t want to let go, but I was afraid of tearing it, so I opened my fingers wide and let it slip through. “The only thing that’s missing,” he said, “is map references. Co-ordinates. But most people agree Aeneas must’ve known them, because he used them to plot his course home. Odd, don’t you think?”

  I thought about it. “I guess that was the one secret he didn’t want to commit to writing,” I said. “After all, he was planning on going back, like you said.”

  He nodded. “I’m glad we agree,” he said. Then he leaned back a little and put the manuscript into the fire.

  Anyway. Back to the real history.

  For about five years, the Company continued to thrive. True, no progress whatsoever had been made in finding Essecuivo. I don’t think anyone even tried. They were too busy.

  To begin with, the money that poured in to the Company’s coffers came from the gold miners and bullion dealers, who had, essentially, too much money and nothing to spend it on. Before long, however, the old landowning families started to invest, and then the established City merchants; and then, as the stock price kept on going up, anyone who could find or borrow the cost of a share or two. Land was easy to raise money on; canny investors
who’d already made a pile sold out and bought estates, farms, forests, only to mortgage or sell them again to reinvest when the temptation grew too great to bear. The Council started buying stock with public money—why not? Each share issue was bigger than the last, and the price kept on rising steadily.

  My father’s side of the business—making artillery—was an early diversification. It came about because the Squirrel had twelve gun-ports but no guns. One of the original clockmakers knew a bell-founder who was going through a slow patch; he leased a space in his yard and had a dozen cannon made. They happened to turn out pretty well (cannon are notoriously hard to cast), and a friend of the clockmaker who was outfitting a ship of his own asked if he could buy eight pieces just like them. Before long, the Company had bought out the bell-founder and was turning out three dozen premium demi-culverins a week.

  My father’s fellow directors, who were starting to worry, realised that there was a lesson to be learned from what was essentially a commercial accident. They had enormous sums of money at their disposal. One day, it would be needed for Essecuivo. In the meantime, however, there was no sense in it just sitting there. They looked around for good ideas, like my father’s cannon, to put money into.

  At first, they didn’t have far to look. They invested in shipyards, lumber yards and forestry—all quite logical, since once Essecuivo turned up, they’d be needing ships; lots of ships, well-built, properly fitted out, the right size and tonnage, at a sensible price. Then they figured that once they got to Essecuivo, they’d need goods to trade with. So they invested in woollen mills, sheepwalks and hill-country grazing; they bought land on the Sieva river and planted a thousand acres of lemon trees; they put money into cutlery, tinware and mining; all so as to be as well prepared as possible once Essecuivo eventually rose out of the sea, shining and inviting as the Goddess of Love.