Academic Exercises Read online

  From start to finish, recreating the manuscript took me seven weeks. I then put it up in the rafters in the roofspace above the Great Hall kitchens; there’s a flaw in the chimney lining, and smoke gets in there. Also, the air up there is very slightly damp and greasy. I’ve noticed that old manuscripts are often a bit clammy to the touch; the True Discourse hadn’t been, but I needed a provenance. It had to be something to do with the niece—after all, that had been what actually happened, and the manuscript tradition is in itself a valid subject for scholarship—but I couldn’t think of a convincing way of explaining how I’d got hold of something from the Dorcelli auction. After all, the auctioneer’s clerk would have records of who’d bought what, and my name would be conspicuously absent from it. That meant I’d have to invent a fictitious middleman, or else suborn a dealer in old manuscripts as an accomplice, which I was very reluctant to do. Instead, I decided to work backwards from a passing reference in the Ancusi diaries, which I’d known about for years but never gone into properly; Ortygia Ancusa, about a hundred and seventy years ago, talked about visiting the Dorcelli and expressing interest in some old maps and charts, which Lollius Dorcellus gave her as a gift. Ortygia was an amateur Essecuivo scholar (not a very good one). My theory would therefore be that the bundle of old maps that Lollius gave her included the True Discourse. It works, because Ortygia died of pneumonia not long after the visit, so wouldn’t have had time to go through the papers she’d been given and recognise the True Discourse for what it was. The papers would’ve been bundled away in the house archive and forgotten about. I’d been given permission to go through the Ancusi papers several years ago, but never got around to it; I happen to know, however, that the bulk of the archive is stored in a loft directly above the main kitchens.

  All right, answer me this. If the person you loved the most in the whole world died, and you somehow managed to catch that person’s soul in a bottle; and suppose you then went round all the graveyards, digging up the newly-buried bodies, carefully choosing a part here and a part there; and suppose you could stitch all the bits together so skilfully that it didn’t show; suppose you’d built a body that looked so exactly like the person you’d loved that even you couldn’t tell them apart; and you sucked the soul out of the bottle and blew it into the composite body’s mouth and brought it back to life—

  Well?

  I confess I was looking forward to meeting Carchedonius again, though I didn’t go out of my way. I didn’t have to wait too long. He was there as a guest when I was awarded the Imperial Medal. I wasn’t surprised to see him there. I’d insisted his name was on the guest list.

  He was standing in a corner. That was what he did, at any kind of social gathering. I walked up to him and smiled. He gave me a long, grim look.

  “Congratulations,” he said.

  Not quite what I was expecting. “Thank you.”

  I was prepared for anger (prepared? I was looking forward to it) but not to that degree of intensity. It took me a moment to decode it. He wasn’t angry with me. He was absolutely furious with the entire world.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you,” he said. (He was wearing his green-with-age black Matriculation gown, over a shirt with frayed cuffs and flogged-out black boots that would’ve been very expensive twenty years ago. The rest of us were in frock-coats and lace ruffs. I think he was trying to look genuine.) “You’re lucky.”

  I frowned. “Am I?”

  It was rather frightening, watching him keep the anger down. I could see, it wanted to flow into his arms and hands, but he was keeping it bottled up in his head. “Oh, I grant you, it was a masterly piece of scholarship. You followed a clue the rest of us had overlooked, and it led you straight to the prize. I’m not for one moment suggesting you didn’t deserve the medal.”

  I was puzzled by that. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, you did. You do. If you look at the nomination papers, I’m the fourth signature from the top.” He paused to take a very deep breath; I could see him exploding, if he wasn’t careful. “What I never anticipated was that there could possibly be a second manuscript.” He gave me a three-second glare. “Now that’s luck.”

  I could’ve burst out laughing. Instead, I nodded my head towards the door. “Come outside,” I said. “I need to tell you something.”

  He shrugged and followed me. Outside, it was dark and just starting to spot with fine rain. “Well?”

  I told him.

  For a moment, I was sure he was going to attack me. I was worried. As a boy I learned fencing—good at it, though I hated it—but that’s as close as I’ve ever got to anything in the way of physical violence. I’m taller than he is, but he’s got arms like a bear. No idea why, since he’s been a scholar all his adult life.

  “You faked it.”

  I nodded.

  “I see.” I could almost hear him think. He was having trouble keeping his mind clear, because of the anger. “And of course I can’t tell anyone, because then I’d have to explain how I know.”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  Suddenly he went blank. “I examined it,” he said. “My first thought was, it’s a fake, he’s got someone to forge a copy for him.” Then he frowned; puzzled. “But it’s perfect,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Who did you—?”

  “I did. Myself.”

  “Good God.” He raised both eyebrows. “Seriously?”

  “Of course. You don’t think I’d be stupid enough to trust an accomplice.”

  “The capitals,” he said. “You can’t fade red carmine.”

  “I used Theogenes’ recipe for pink.”

  I could tell from his face he’d never have thought of that. “Congratulations,” he said. “I’m impressed. I never imagined you had a creative streak.”

  “Hardly that. That’s the point. I didn’t invent anything. I just copied.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve always wanted to be able to draw and paint, that sort of thing. But I’m useless at it. You could be an artist.”

  “I’ve never wanted to be anything else but what I am.”

  I’ve never seen so much contempt on a human face. He moved his head so he didn’t have to look at me. I felt I had to defend myself, even though I’d so obviously beaten him. “It’s not so different from how all the classics survived,” I said. “The original is lost, but someone made a copy. If you look past the immediate deception, the end product is as authentic as the Gigliami Codex. In a thousand years it’d be just a footnote in the manuscript tradition, if anyone ever knew.”

  The blank look was back. “Last month I was offered the chair at Euphrosyne,” he said. “It’s more money, and I’d be head of department. I think I’ll accept.”

  I was stunned. Euphrosyne. I imagine there must be people up there who can read—a few of them, clerks and customs officials—but Euphrosyne, after the Studium. It’d be like starving yourself to death over the course of thirty years. “Why?”

  “Because you’ve won,” he said. Then he turned and walked away, and I’ve never seen him since.

  Who was it said that the only thing sadder than a battle lost is a battle won? Not my period, so I’m not going to bother checking the reference. Anyway, it’s garbage. Once you’ve got past the initial frisson of guilt, victory is wonderful.

  I had every reason to be pleased with myself. Faced by a reverse which would’ve broken most men in my position, I’d rallied and struck back. I’d routed the enemy, and my cause had been just. As a result, I was feted and lionised; promoted to the vacant Gorgias chair of commercial history, elected to Chapter, honorary doctorates from a slew of provincial universities; rock-solid tenure, more money, better lodgings, reduced teaching duties leaving me more time for research. True, the victory I was being rewarded for wasn’t quite the victory I’d actually won, but you don’t have to go too far back to find precedents of the very highest quality. After all, everybody says it was Palaechorus who defeated the White Horde. Garbage.
He was a thousand miles away at the time, busily breaking down the Sueno bridges so the Aram Chantat couldn’t get across. He saved the Republic, no possible doubt about that, but not in the way the man in the street thinks he did.

  The only negative aspect to total victory is that once you’ve achieved it, the war is over. Having spent my adult life trying to recreate the lost manuscript of Aeneas Peregrinus, I was in the depressing situation of having succeeded, totally. The question now what? was written across the top of every new day, and I found it rather hard to answer. Of course, I didn’t have to do anything. That’s the point of being the Gorgias professor. You don’t have to teach or publish, all you’re called on to do is lounge around looking wise, maybe as a special favour explaining to selected admirers just how very clever you used to be. Gorgias professors are usually men in their mid seventies. At that time, I was thirty-seven.

  “The duke,” she said, “would like to meet you.”

  I bet he would, I thought. Who wouldn’t? “It’d be an honour,” I said. I didn’t specify who for.

  “Fine,” she said briskly, “I’ll set something up. He wants to move quickly, so make sure you’re available.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” I said. “I’ll have finished the paper for the General Conclave by this time next week, and then I’d better get something down for the Alixes Lecture, but after that, I should be—”

  “No,” she said. “This is important.”

  I’d have engaged her in a discussion of the true meaning of the word important, but just then we heard her husband’s voice down below in the entrance hall. Her room has a balcony, and there’s a hundred-year-old grapevine on that wall. I hate climbing.

  The duke came to see me. Appreciate the significance. He came to me. An honour. One I could have done without.

  I was in my rooms, as usual. For some reason, I was spending a lot of time there, in the book room, at my desk, just sitting. I had one oil-lamp—the habits of a lifetime of frugality die hard—and Diodorus’ General Discourse open in front of me. In theory I was chasing down a reference, but really I think I was doing what the wild boar do in the woods; building a nest where I could curl up during the hours of daylight and not be seen.

  There was a bang on the door, and before I could get up, it flew open and two kettlehats came bursting in. I assumed they were there to arrest me. Naturally I froze. But they stopped and took up position on either side of the doorframe, and the duke came in.

  It wasn’t so long ago that everywhere you looked, there was a portrait. As a scholar, I can tell you that ninety per cent of them are copies of the Treblaeus portrait, which used to hang in the atrium of the House chapel. I could also be very interesting about the subtle changes in the iconography of the mass-circulation portraits—the significance of the white rose in the top left field, or the changes in the political undercurrents that led to the wren perched on the windowsill quietly metamorphosing into a robin. The duke himself was, of course, an artefact, a thing created, reinvented, adapted and updated, until by the time I met him there’s a plausible argument for saying that he was pretty much a forgery of himself. Bear in mind, this was just after the Secession debate but before the White Glove scandal. The duke had lost about a third of what he’d owned or controlled at the height of his ascendency, but he was still the second richest and third most powerful man in the Republic. People like that are generally too big to fit inside rooms like mine, even if they are only five feet tall.

  No, you don’t see that in the portraits, but it’s true. What the Invincible Sun had in mind when he made him that way, I have no idea. In the paintings you see what’s essentially the perfect human being; classical proportions, perfect muscle tone if it happens to be a Classical or post-Mannerist portrait, and the face of an emperor off the old coinage, back when the die-cutters really knew what they were doing. Naturally people assume that in real life he looked nothing at all like that. Not true. The portraits are for the most part surprisingly accurate; authentic, genuine copies of the original. Except that he was five feet tall, which meant, when I rose to greet him, he just about came up to my shoulder.

  “Please,” I said. “Sit down.”

  He didn’t move, and I realised that the only other chair in the room was piled up with books. I grabbed them and spilled them on the floor. It was the gesture of an idiot. He sat down. I looked round for something to offer him, but both decanters were empty, which was probably just as well.

  I sat down opposite him, with the desk between us, for all the world as though he was a student in a tutorial. Just like a student, he sat there still and quiet—I hate it when they do that; I’m not one of your natural showmen. I never really know where to start.

  I cleared my throat. “What can I do for you?” I said.

  He looked at me. His nose really was quite thin at the bridge, as in the Corolles portrait. Treblaeus, of course, got round that by painting him three-quarter face; how to lie and tell the truth at the same time. “Allow me to congratulate you,” he said.

  What the hell was I supposed to say to that? “Thank you.”

  He slid his elbows out onto the arms of the chair. It should have been a magnificent gesture denoting confidence and power, but the chair was my father’s, and he was a big man. Therefore, the arms were a bit too wide apart, and made the duke look like a chicken. Of course, there’s never a mirror when you need one. “As you may know,” he went on, “I’ve been a keen amateur student of the Essecuivo question for many years. I’ve read your work on the subject. I find it impressive.”

  The Invincible Sun leans down out of the clouds, pats you on the head and says well done. That’s nice, and you hope he’ll go away quickly. But the duke had settled in my chair like a besieging army. I kept my face shut. He peered at the books on the shelf opposite, then looked back at me. “The manuscript,” he said. “A triumph.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ve taken the liberty of bringing it with me.”

  Now that really did knock me sideways. When I discovered it in the Ancusi archives, quite naturally they went berserk. The thought that something like that, something worth such a very, very large sum of money, had been sitting in their damp loft for three hundred years drove them wild. They moved it to the jewellery safe, hired forty armed guards and immediately opened negotiations with the Treasury with a view to making sure this priceless treasure stayed in the Republic. I believe the discussions stalled at two hundred thousand angels. Meanwhile, apart from me and scholars with my personal accreditation, nobody was allowed near it.

  Almost nobody. He wiggled a fingertip, and a third kettlehat I hadn’t even noticed sprang forward holding a silver-gilt tube. It was a real work of art, embossed with Essecuivo personified handing a cornucopia to the Spirit of the Republic. He must’ve had it made specially, probably overnight.

  The kettlehat made a show of pulling on a pair of brand new white cotton gloves. Then he brushed all my books and papers off the desk onto the floor—the duke gave him a dirty look for that, but I don’t see what else the poor man could’ve done—opened the tube and laid my manuscript out on the desk.

  Not the first time it had been there, of course. In fact, I’d grown used to seeing it there, while I was making it, and I had to tell myself, this is the first time it’s left the Ancusi, this is a special moment. It felt strange, though; like being formally introduced to your son and having to pretend you don’t know him.

  “Now then.” The duke put his hand inside his coat and produced a pair of gold-framed pince-nez. I was stunned. As soon as he put them on, he changed out of all recognition. “Ah yes.” He’d thrust his hand out over the parchment; he was touching it, no white cotton gloves. I was appalled. How dare he. Not appalled enough, mind you, to say anything.

  He looked up at me. “No map reference,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Which I confess I found rather strange.” He took the pince-nez off and put them down on the manuscript.
I twitched, but kept still. I could see the kettlehats watching me. In their line of work, of course, you have to be able to interpret the smallest warning signs. “Because in the Navigation, Aeneas explicitly states that he calculated the co-ordinates of Essecuivo in order to plot his course home.”

  Not true, in fact. He implies, but doesn’t state. For some reason, I didn’t put him straight.

  “Therefore,” he went on, “you would expect to find detailed map references in the manuscript.”