Keith Taylor is an Australian writer who has an avid interest in early British history. He has written a series of historical fantasy novels set at the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire in Britain which began with Bard (1981). Here, though, he travels back further in time to explore scientific intrigue and treachery at the time of the Greek mathematician and inventor, Archimedes, who lived from around 287 to 212 BC.
The master had been at court the night before. He entered the workshop with such careful steadiness, it was clear he had done his share of drinking. Not that I’m one to raise an eyebrow if a man punishes the wine bowl. Still, this one was moderate as a rule, so I guessed there had been something out of the ordinary in last night’s feast.
He held up a hand. The saws and mallets stopped at once. I swept shavings off his favourite chair and offered him a hair of the dog, some watered Chian wine. He accepted it, taking three measured swallows.
‘Chaire, my good Phanes,’ says he. ‘How my head aches!’
And still he was here, a scant hour past dawn. Something was up besides the sun, no question.
‘I drank like a fool of a boy last night,’ he confessed. ‘The excitement of proving at last, by pure mathematics, my laws of leverage and mechanical advantage. I fear I claimed that if I had a place to stand and a lever long enough, I could move the world!’
I reckoned he could. He was the greatest man I ever knew. Mind, I’d been using his principles to make levers and windlasses for over a year. He’d also devised a compound pulley block that I’d worked with until I understood it better than he. I didn’t care if they lacked rigorous proof on paper, so long as they were useful. I’m not a mathematician.
‘Was that bad, sir?’ I asked.
‘Several men laughed, and the Roman ambassador tapped his head, I believe. The licence of wine. My royal cousin’s pride was offended. He challenged me to prove my words by launching the Syrakosia single-handed.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I agreed, to shorten the tale. Else the king had looked foolish before dignitaries from Athens, Rome and Carthage.’
No, that wouldn’t do. Archimedes wasn’t rich, you see. He depended on his cousin’s favour.
The Syrakosia? She was the hugest ship ever built, a whim of King Heiron’s. I’d seen her take shape; light of the Sun, I’d worked on her! If Archimedes was worried about launching that marine monster single-handed and losing Heiron’s favour, it seemed to me he was worried for nothing.
‘Sir, I’ve been working with your ideas for months. We can contrive a tackle that’ll launch the Syrakosia at the touch of a lever. Simple.’
It was simple, too. Once you knew how. Believe me, friends, except that it was a morning after for him, he would not have worried for a minute. We’re talking about the man who discovered how much silver a cheating goldsmith had mixed into a golden crown – without melting it down or cutting off the smallest bit, it’s true. He could have done anything.
‘It must be begun now,’ Archimedes said.
‘It’s as good as done, sir. The ambassador from Rome will not be tapping his head when we’ve finished.’
I watched him leave the harbour-side warehouse we had fitted out as our marine workshop. You know, most great men I’ve seen, kings and lords and such, don’t look great. Archimedes did. He was only a finger’s length shorter than I, strong and straight at fifty, with a bearded face that made me think of statues of Zeus. Being a gentleman, he had to pretend he thought all useful, down-to-earth knowledge sordid and vile, fit only for slaves, and it’s true he had an endless passion for things like the movement of stars or the exact proportions of a circle, but I can tell you he loved engineering, too. He was delighted when the king ordered him to devise war machines to defend the city. It gave him a perfect excuse to spend time in the workshop.
I handed over to my foremen, and went to walk along the ramparts of the harbour-wall. Soldiers let me pass freely; I was known to them all as Archimedes’ master-carpenter, and easy to recognize, a towhead six-and-a-quarter feet tall, muscled like a bull, with moustaches down to my collar-bones.
There on the ramparts, I looked over a couple of the war engines Archimedes had designed. These were massive timber cranes meant to sink attacking ships. The long arms were made to swing out over the water, holding huge lead weights that could then be released, to drop through the enemy hulls and smash them. I’d tested the idea, using worthless old tubs with reinforced decks. It had worked. The cranes were certainly strong enough for what I had in mind now.
I stood there rubbing my chin and thinking for a while. Then I visited the construction docks, down by the Great Harbour. Complete now, the Syrakosia lay there, ready for launching. Splendid she appeared, indeed, with her immense size, lead-sheathed hull and three masts, each tall as a tree – if you weren’t a sailor or craftsman.
For one thing, she was just too huge. A ‘twentier’ galley has so many oars that their best arrangement will still be clumsy. Worse, it had been Heiron’s whim to make her a grain transport, war galley and royal pleasure ship all in one. I ask you! If you want a grain bottom, you build a grain bottom. If you want a warship, you build a warship. Try to combine both in the same hull, and the result won’t be much good for either function. Then she had other useless adjuncts, like a suite of sybaritic cabins and an immense fish-tank.
Still, you don’t say to a king that his pet project cannot work, even if you are Archimedes, much less if you are a slave. Our concern was to launch her. I felt certain those two cranes would serve the purpose. Control them together from a single windlass, through a couple of Archimedes’ compound pulley-blocks, and they could lift and pull her forward so that she glided down the slipway at the movement of one man’s hand. Let’s see the Roman ambassador smirk then!
You know the cold feeling that goes over your skin when you’re being ill-wished, or a ghost is walking nearby? I suddenly felt it. Glancing around, I saw nothing out of the way, just a dark Punic sailor who’d also stopped to gawk at the Syrakosia, scratching his head. Thanking his gods he would never have to row in her, I supposed. But the chill on my skin remained.
I forgot the misgiving with the hour. I’d work to do. After discussing things with the master, I had the cranes unclamped, mounted on wheels, and dragged down to the quayside. My workmen braced and blocked the wheels under my direction, so that an earthquake would hardly move them, and left the machines there until next morning.
With the dawn I was down by the construction dock. The cranes needed placing in exact positions. I’ll ask you, friends, what could go wrong? I am not careless, and my workmen were picked experts in siege work and leverage.
Well, something went wrong. We had barely touched the first crane when its whole ponderous height lurched to one side. One of the big wooden wheels came off and rolled into the sea. I grabbed a lever and sprang to jam it under the carriage. It made cracking noises; so did my muscles. Sweat popped out of my skin.
‘Help me, you Persian-sired bastards!’ I yelled. ‘Take the strain on those dexter ropes or she’ll fall! Right. Now pull for your rascal lives! Charicles – uh! – chocks under the wheels, now!’
If the men hadn’t hauled strongly on those ropes at once, I’d have been a red smear on the quayside. Charicles was quick with the wedges, and other men slid baulks under the axle until the wobbling crane held steady. I stared at its top-heavy, ungainly height with relief. Had it fallen, it would have smashed like kindling, and probably killed men.
Well, the sweating and swearing was over now, with no broken backs. I went looking for the cause. It wasn’t far to seek, and it hadn’t been mischance. Some dirty maggot had cut through the linch-pin, sticking it back together with wax to make it look sound! The other wheel on that side had been treated the same way. Luckily, it hadn’t come adrift with the other, as it had surely been meant to. I tested them all before we went further, and examined both cranes from base to tip, climbing them myself.
Nothing else was wrong.
It seemed too purposeful for idle mischief. Did someone want Archimedes to fall from his cousin’s favour? That could be anybody from Rome, Carthage, or – closer to home – Zancle. Yes, and there were plenty of possible culprits in Syracuse itself, and they needn’t be acting for political reasons. Some courtier might want Archimedes removed so that he could advance himself. It occurred to me, too, when I thought a bit further, that this might not be meant to discredit Archimedes, blazing sun to my mechanical planet though he was. Hades. Someone might dislike me.
I wondered if he was persistent or a quitter.
When I told the master what had happened, and what I suspected, he turned out to be having one of his high-flown moods; poring in ecstasy over a letter from some astronomer in Egypt. He barely listened to me. After warning me absently to have an eye to my safety at work, he was lost again in this Alexandrian’s notions of the harmonic movements of the planets, or some such.
I took care, right enough! From that moment, the machinery we worked on was guarded night and day. I looked it over for effects of sabotage each morning and afternoon. Then I heard a piece of gossip from Calluella, a servant in Archimedes’ house who sometimes shared my bed. Fine girl, Calluella. Freed and married long ago, I believe.
She told me the master had nearly been killed at the theatre.
Once she ran out of excited chatter, it turned out to have been less fearful by far. The master had been watching a tragedy by Lysander, a local talent, in company with Heiron’s court. The huge awning that was supposed to unfurl, neatly and obediently, to shade them all from the sun, had come away from its fastenings all together in a massive roll. It crashed down less than an arm’s length from Archimedes. It also broke someone’s shoulder and knocked five or six folk flat. Even though it hadn’t come near the king, he’d been highly displeased. The slaves whose duty it was to roll and release the shade-cloth were still screaming.
‘That’ll be me,’ I said, ‘if anything bad happens at the launching. I wonder . . . Calluella, if you hear of any other accidents like that happening near the master, be sure to tell me – quickly.’
‘If you desire me to take all that trouble,’ she said, ‘you had better love me again – slowly.’
Tarnus the All-Competent, but she drove a hard bargain.
The next morning, Archimedes sent for me again. There was nothing of the dreamy savant about him this time, and the movement of planets was far from his mind. He told me about the falling shade-cloth, and I listened like a schoolboy, pretending it was news to me. You don’t let your master guess how much slaves hear, or how much we talk among ourselves. Funny that masters rarely think of it; perhaps they don’t want to. For certain, we don’t want them to. Not even a master as good as Archimedes.
‘You recall the event of the wheels on the siege crane, good Phanes?’ he asked, looking more like Zeus in the dignity of judgement than ever. ‘The linch-pins were deliberately broken, you said.’
‘They were, sir.’
‘Interesting.’ He stroked his beard. ‘Something very like it was done to the sun-awning at the theatre. The lacings that held it to the base had been cut, and on the inner side, so that it looked in perfect working order. Until it was untied to roll down over the framework. It almost struck me down. It may have been intended to do so.’
Noises of astounded horror from the awed Phanes. I felt glad the master had become aware he might be in danger, mind you.
‘I should like you to attend the king’s banquet with me tonight,’ he said. ‘My royal cousin demands it. He’s greatly preoccupied with the launching of the Syrakosia. Our good names are at stake, to be sure. We had a part in building her.’
Right. Archimedes had devised, according to the king’s enthusiastic whims, and I had built. The king had foisted a Corinthian named Archias upon us, in the belief that he was a shipwright, but I’d found him about as much use as the giant fish-tank I’d had to instal amidships. Naturally he took all the credit and complained about the idle mischief of his subordinates.
He was present at the king’s banquet. Even if he’d been missing, I’d not have liked it, for I’d been summoned to Heiron’s board before. This time, as previously, I was welcomed in the way of a performing dog or valued chariot-horse, and questioned with great condescension about the siege engines and the ship. Well, there was one who didn’t condescend, and he was the Roman ambassador, Tetricus. Haughty as Priam and cold as stone, that one, and didn’t even condescend, just addressed me as though I was not even alive, showing in every gesture and word how Romans think of slaves. Instrumentum vocale, they call us – the tool that talks.
The Carthaginian, Hartho, was more hearty, but I didn’t take to him, either. I reckoned there was treachery under the bluff surface. It didn’t seem to fit that any of them would be behind the mishaps we’d suffered, though. Our king was firmly on the Roman side, and they had broken the Carthaginians’ fleet years ago; they had nothing to worry about in naval matters. Carthage? Right enough, they would like to remove Archimedes from the king’s favour and gain his services themselves, but then it wasn’t likely they would try to injure him. Even if they did, Romans or Carthaginians, they’d take more effective measures than dropping a rolled awning on the man, surely?
Archias? A little man, jealous of Archimedes, might try to injure him. I could believe that. I could also believe he’d try such a half-baked method. He wouldn’t try to spoil the Syrakosia’s launching, though. That would redound to his own discredit.
I looked over that noble gathering. Lysander the playwright was talking to Tetricus about the ceremony to honour Poseidon that would be held at the ship-launching – and holding forth about some sculptures he’d made for the occasion. Hartho was ogling a flute girl, while Archias flattered the king until he nearly yawned with boredom. All much as usual, and I couldn’t say which of them, if any, was guilty. I only knew that I’d paid for eating the rich viands prepared by the king’s Persian cook. In full.
Archimedes asked my opinion later, and I’ll say this, he listened with care, as one man to another. I hadn’t a thing to give him but speculation, though, not even sharp suspicions. It would have pleased me to think Archias the one, but only because I did not like him.
‘You do well to have our launching mechanism guarded day and night,’ Archimedes told me. ‘Let that continue. For the Syrakosia herself, assign two dozen, Phanes, between sunset and dawn, and let them patrol her in four watches, six men to a watch; one of your trusty workmen and five soldiers. The ordinary quayside guards will do by day.’
I protested. I had to. ‘Master, I can think of a dozen places in that ship that need watching all hours! The incendiary missiles for the catapults – all that sulphur and naphtha – it shouldn’t be left aboard if we think someone means harm!’
‘Excellent, Phanes.’ He sounded happy, on my oath. ‘Have it removed, and take any other precautions you think are required. But my express command is that the guards’ numbers be as I’ve stated.’
He knew something, or had divined something I couldn’t perceive. I had worked for him long enough to know the signs.
You’ll conceive the care I took and the sleep I lost, sweating. I understood Archimedes’ order to leave the ship all but unguarded by day. Nobles of the city and visiting dignitaries were all over her, making comments and wagers, and we couldn’t bar them, or question them. We knew pretty well which ones were out-and-out spies, but that wasn’t a matter for concern. A spy couldn’t learn much aboard the Syrakosia, except that as a fighting ship she’d be useless. He was welcome to that intelligence for me. I was perturbed for Archimedes’ honour and my precious skin.
He himself was often aboard, talking to the men who came to see around the curious vessel. I wished I knew what he was up to. Did he suspect someone? If so, whom? And why?
He arrived at dawn on the day of the launching. First he wandered the length of the upper deck, then moved around below the vast, lead-sheathed hull, peering and frowning. I had plenty to occupy me, or I’d have joined him to learn what he was about, but the next time I saw him he was walking the deck with Lysander. The playwright looked worn out but cheerful. Taking leave of Archimedes with a laugh, he set out – I supposed – towards his home. I noticed him stumble as he went.
‘He’s about early, sir.’
‘He confessed he spent the night in revelling and has not yet been to bed.’ The master shrugged. ‘He assures me he has made large wagers on the complete success of the launching. It would appear he found no dearth of men to accept. So much for the power of Archimedes’ name.’
There were plenty of brothels among the harbour area. The noble Lysander was known to be active among them, too.
‘Well, he’s at the right end of those bets, sir.’
‘He will be if we make haste!’ Archimedes’ eyes were bright and intent. ‘Phanes, bring caulkers with mallets, wood and oakum, this minute, and join me beneath the hull. I have things to show you. Run!’
I ran as ordered, and had three caulkers on the spot a little later. Archimedes’ face was pink, but he’d found his stately manners again, and only by a clipped, curt way of speaking did he show any part of his colossal anger.
‘Observe, my Phanes.’ He pointed to the ground below the great launching-cradle. ‘Wood shavings and scraps of lead, both spiriform – the castings of a drill or large awl. Here, here, and again here. What does this suggest to you?’
It didn’t suggest anything at first. One finds all kinds of refuse underneath the hull of a ship that has just been built. Then I looked closely, and saw how the wood and lead shavings were entwined together.
‘Hades, master! Someone has been drilling holes in the bottom of the twentier – since her hull was covered in lead!’
That meant long after any honest drilling could have been necessary, for the lead covering had been the final stage, a thin hammered sheath to repel barnacles and worms.
‘Just so.’ Archimedes bent low and pointed. His finger quivered with passion. ‘See here, and here as well! Those specks of white powder are salt. Someone has drilled those mischievous holes, plugged them with hard salt, and then smeared paint on the outside, paint grey as lead, to hide his work.’
I didn’t know if the paint had been necessary, but I saw the purpose of the rest. ‘Once the twentier is launched and takes the water, the salt will start to dissolve –’
‘And the harbour will enter by half a hundred jets. Yes. Find the holes and plug them, my invaluable Phanes; no time is to be lost. The launching takes place in a few hours.’
I asked no more questions. We worked like desperate ants, first finding those holes, then ramming dowel wadded around with oakum into them, until it fitted tightly. Jerry-work, yes, but it would save the launching from disaster. Once it was over – this I swore by Tarnus and the Earth-Mother – the master was going to explain to me how he had known.
Well, the ceremony went off finely, with the king and his priests making sacrifice to Poseidon, and the whole city gasping in awe as Archimedes turned his windlass – alone – and the immense bulk of the Syrakosia obediently took to the water. Then she lumbered about the harbour, moved by her multiple banks of oars, hurling six-talent balls and smoking masses of sulphur from her catapults, with the Tyrant of Syracuse beaming on the quayside. The city looked upon Archimedes more than ever as a wonder-working magician, and I stopped sweating for the first time in days.
Back in the workshop, I asked, ‘How did you know?’
He was beaming more broadly than King Heiron had done. He had immortal qualities and a mighty mind, but for all that, he enjoyed being right as much as the next vulgar clod – and I was the only one he could really tell.
‘Partly, it was knowing the king’s court, and those who frequent it, but chiefly logic and ratiocination. Pure, strict reason clarifies all things, Phanes, in life as in mathematics. It all proceeded from the first two events.’
‘The crane and the awning, sir?’
‘Yes. Both partook of the banal and petty, yet both showed a knowledge of mechanics. Agents of another nation who wished to disgrace me would try to make me appear guilty of treason; who wished me merely slain, would use a dagger. I therefore posited that the culprit was one individual man, with some of an artisan’s or engineer’s cast of mind. It was at any rate a strong working hypothesis.’
I nodded.
‘I hypothesized further. His acts with the crane and the awning amounted to little more than schoolboy malice.’ Not to me they didn’t, by all the gods! That crane had almost killed me. ‘Poorly conceived acts. Yet it appeared both were aimed at me. Again I took this for my working hypothesis.’
‘Then you were on the lookout for one man, sir, acting for himself, just for his own gain?’
‘Until further knowledge contradicted the idea. And someone in court circles. Nothing certain was likely to emerge unless he went further. Therefore, I had the ship lightly guarded. No guard at all would make him suspicious, while, if he could not evade the slight precautions I did take, he was not worth troubling about.’
‘But how did he drill so many holes in the Syrakosia without being seen?’
‘How do you suppose?’ Archimedes asked, a bit shortly. ‘I have tried to teach you to think with your mind like a civilized man, not with your hands like a Celtic barbarian. Did I waste my time?’
I thought about it, talking as I reasoned my way through. ‘He couldn’t have stolen aboard at night. The guards would have seen him. All right, then. He must have come aboard openly, during the day, and that means he’s a noble or courtier whom nobody would question. He could hide the salt, and a drill or big awl, under his clothes. Then he could conceal himself in any of fifty places until nightfall. Six men patrolling that whole vast ship wouldn’t be likely to catch him!’
‘They did not catch him. They heard him, however, more than once. The scoundrel crawled under the floor-timbers of the bilge and went to work. Obviously, it held no water because the ship had yet to be launched. He had easy access to the hull and was out of sight. He could cease working whenever he heard the tramp of feet approach.’
‘Yes!’ I grew enthusiastic. ‘I see it, sir! He’d need strong, tough hands to work all night drilling so many holes in ship’s timber. Very strong. The thin layer of soft lead on the outside would be nothing. To go aboard unquestioned he’d have to be a noble or functionary. Noble rank, but artisan’s hands. There’d be few men with both.’
‘So it seemed to me. By then I had suspicions of one particular man, but they were still no more than speculation. I questioned your guards by the first light of dawn this morning. Most of them believed the ship to be haunted, but when they described the sounds they had heard (and the parts of the ship from which they emanated) I believed I knew the name of the ghost, and the generality of what he had been doing. When I examined the area beneath the hull, it became certain.’
‘I admire your thinking, sir,’ I said, truthfully. ‘My own wits must still be in my hands, though. I’m no closer to knowing who did this.’
Archimedes stroked his beard. ‘You do not know all, yet. How do you imagine he left the ship?’
‘Wriggled out through one of the oar-ports and climbed down?’ I hazarded. And there was another clue. To leave thus unobtrusively, and to hide and work under the floor-planks, too, he’d have to be a lean man.
‘I believe he did. Afterwards, he rushed home, hid his tools, washed and donned fresh garments. Then it was that he did something utterly foolish, and confirmed his guilt to me. He literally placed the proof in my hands, Phanes. See.’
Archimedes showed me his right palm. It carried a smear of grey paint.
‘Dark care sits behind the horseman, does it not? He hadn’t yet seen, from the outside, the holes he drilled in our ship. The morning was still too grey and he in too much of a hurry when he escaped. He fretted that a casual glance would discover them if they were not concealed in time. That risk – slight, I think – preyed on his mind. He could not endure it. So he performed the astonishingly silly act of coming back to the Syrakosis at dawn, this time with a small pot of paint which he smeared on the holes as camouflage. He did this while pretending to examine the steering-paddles and keel.’
‘Indeed, that was stupid,’ I said feelingly. ‘A few dozen holes over that immense ship’s bottom? As you say, matter, they’d likely have gone unnoticed, except that you were already on to the fellow.’ I shook my head. ‘I wonder at him, whoever he is. His first large, bold, well-conceived stroke of villainy, and he doesn’t know to leave well enough alone.’
‘Whoever he is? Do you say you do not know even yet? Think!’
His voice cracked like a whip. It was an order. I stopped and thought.
‘You said he was there at dawn, examining the ship. Only one man – Lysander?’ I said, unbelievingly. ‘He didn’t spend the night among the whorehouses? He was tired, because –’
‘I am afraid so. You grow less than coherent, Phanes. Discipline, if you please. It’s good for the mind.’
‘Sir, I’ve never looked closely at his hands, but he’s a playwright, not a workman! Isn’t he? If he hadn’t the strength for that job, then he couldn’t have done it, no matter how guilty he looks. Lysander?’
‘Who is familiar with machinery. The machinery of the stage. Who was present at the theatre when the awning fell, because a play of his was being performed. Who, besides being a playwright, is an architect and sculptor, used to cutting stone. Who evidently fancies he could take my place as the king’s master of ordnance.’
Archimedes sighed again.
It fitted, it all fitted. Even Lysander’s lean figure and the wagers he had placed on the success of the launching, in order to make himself seem innocent. Huh! And he’d won them, too, now! Not that it would compensate a man of his conceit for failure.
‘This morning I became certain. He allowed me to understand that he had caroused all night and not yet returned home. Yet his clothes were too fresh for that. More damning still, his knuckles were skinned, his hands, tough as they are, were so sore that he winced when I clasped them – and left a trace of grey paint on mine. When I looked into his eyes and told him I knew all . . . his face changed. He might as well have confessed.’
‘But you have proof, sir!’ I burst out. ‘You can tell the king!’
‘No. I think we may leave it to his own mind. Dark care sits behind the horseman.’
I wouldn’t have been so lenient. Well, I’m not Archimedes, and he proved right about Lysander’s mind. The dramatist came less and less often to court, pleading ill health. Within a month he fled Syracuse altogether. He ended up in Rhodes, I think, or was it Epirus? I never heard of any more plays by him, but he seemed to prosper well as a builder – as the artisan he didn’t wish to be. And maybe that’s justice.