“One of the sons fell sick, and then another ran off with a snake-dancer from Liburnium. To make things worse for Menacius, he had just caught a deal with the Office of the Mint for no less than seventy copies of the Regulation of the Coinage. A very good sum he stood to make from that too, no doubt, but to win the deal he had to agree to a tight delivery schedule. Now, with only one scribe, he was in a terrible state. Being a man of family, he had gone to see Joseph and poured out his tale of woe. Joseph, who was a fellow good with his hands and clever to boot, thought about it for a time and then struck upon a solution.
“If there were not three sons, then make one son do the work of three. Their strength came from their handwriting being steady, firm, and clear. So he struck, so to say, upon this.” Mordius opened a small leather bag and removed a tiny object, pressing into the Prince’s hand.
Maxian turned over the little piece of lead in his hand. A square bolt, no more than a little finger’s bone in length. Flat at one end with two notches, one on each side, bumpy on the other. He looked tip in puzzlement at the Briton, who was grinning broadly.
“A bit of lead?” Maxian asked. The Briton nodded, taking it back. With one scarred hand, he cleared a space on. the tabletop. Then he carefully took the bit of lead and dipped it in his wine cup. Even more carefully, he then pressed the bumpy end into the tabletop.
“Look,” Mordius said, moving his hand away. Maxian leaned over and squinted down at the table in the poor light. “An alpha,” he said. A tiny, almost perfect, letter was scribed on the tabletop in dark wine. The Briton nodded.
“Joseph and his sons made hundreds of them from lead scrap, all of the letters of the alphabet, even all the numbers. Each little peg was scored at the flat base, so that they could slide into a copper slat to hold them straight. Seventy slats per frame, each frame made of wood with a backing. Each frame a whole page of printing.” The Briton paused a moment, watching Maxian’s face closely.
Maxian stared at him in dumbfounded astonishment. After just a moment fear replaced astonishment, and then a universe of possibilities unfolded before him. He sat back stunned, unable to speak. Mordius reached out, turned over the wine-cup, and then filled it. The Briton pushed it toward
Maxian’s hand, which of itself moved, took the cup, and brought it to his lips.
After a time, Maxian could speak. “And then what happened then?”
The Briton shrugged. “There were troubles, of course. Papyrus was no good to use with the frames; the scrolls kept splitting when they were pressed against it. None of the inks used with a brush or quill would stick right to the lead and they smeared anyway. The frames were awkward and really no faster than a trained scribe to use. Joseph and Menacius and their families labored for weeks to solve the problems. That was what had led Joseph to the mill and the weavers. He was looking, for something that would make a better writing surface than papyrus. His sons had found that there were fine-grained woods that would hold the ink and fine linens that were flexible enough not to split when the frames were pressed upon them.
“By this time I was a partner in the enterprise, though they kept the details to themselves. The deal that I struck was for the right to use the frame-scribe for my own business and to export books made with it to the north. A scroll is like gold there, there are so few, so I knew that my fortune was assured. One copy of Plato or Sophocles could become a thousand copies, each easy to transport and worth a hundred times its own weight in silver.
“Only a month ago one of Joseph’s sons came to me at the warehouse and bade me come and visit the shop that night. His father had finally solved the last puzzle. They were determined to make a clean copy of the Regulations that very night and do the rest of the lot over the following days. The deadline was very close and I know they must have been overjoyed.
“But when I arrived that night, the shop was shuttered and dark. I knocked and knocked, but no one came to the door. At last a neighbor saw me in the street and told me that they had all gathered for a late-afternoon meal and none had gone out. Fearing that something was wrong, I forced the door-no easy task at a jeweler’s shop!-and went inside. I was back out again in minutes, gagging at the smell and the sights I saw within. They, of course, were all dead amid the clutter of their meal.“
Maxian, unbidden, felt a great pressure upon him, seemingly from the air all around him. For a moment he was back in the dim kitchen in Ostia, dragging Dromio onto the table, pleading for his friend to hold on just a little longer. Trembling, he drank again from his cup. The eyes of the Briton, hooded, were on him. ‘ -
“I have seen much the same,” the Prince said, his voice weak. “Like loaves of bread.”
“The neighbor saw me, of course,” Mordius continued, “and ran out of his house. I gasped something about them all being dead and the smell. He thought it was the plague and ran off shouting. Within minutes half of the neighborhood was in the street with buckets and torches. The vigiles came, but could not reach the house for the press of the crowd. The shout of plague,, plague was like a drumbeat. They burned it, the whole house and the ones on either side, to keep the plague from them. I fled, knowing that I would be next on that pyre.
“I went back a few days ago. There was nothing left, only the burned-out shell of the house and, in the ashes, a few of those, unmelted. I took that one as a souvenir, but nothing else. I account myself lucky that my visits were few and I knew little of their work. I am alive.”
Maxian stared at the little lead token on the table. He scratched his beard. That odd feeling was back, tickling at the edge of his perception. “No one else now, save you and I, know of what they had devised. No other scribes, no officials?”
Mordius nodded. “I thought the same thing. But these Jews are a secretive lot and they do not talk to strangers, particularly Roman ones. Someone killed them, but who I cannot say. There would have been many who cursed their r names, if they had been successful, but now they are unknown.“
“What are you going to do?”
The Briton snorted, putting his cup down. “Leave. Go back to Britain and dig in the fields, I suppose. Fight with my father and my half brothers. The city has a cold feeling to it now, more so that I’ve told you. No good will come of this, I fear. Thank you for the wine.” The gangly foreigner stood up, bending his head to avoid the low timbers of the ceiling.
“Thank you for telling me this,” Maxian said, standing up straight. He dug in his purse and brought out two solidi, which he pressed into the Briton’s hand. Mordius raised an eyebrow at the weight of the coins, then bowed. “My lord.” Then he was gone, out into the sunshine in the street. Maxian stood by the table for a long time, looking down at the little lead slug. Finally, he picked it up and put it in his purse before going out himself.
As Maxian entered the great suite of rooms that formed the office of the Emperor of the West, an unaccustomed sound echoed over his head. The courtiers and supplicants who crowded the chambers arranged in front of the octagonal chamber that housed the secretary were nervous, shuffling their feet and talking in low tones. Passing by the pair of Praetorians at the doors of the octagonal room, he was startled to realize that one of the voices, raised in anger, was that of his brother, the Emperor. In the octagon, the Secretary was absent and all of the scribes were warily watching the half-open set of double doors that led into the inner chambers.
“ Maxian stopped and made a half turn. The nearest of the Praetorians turned his head a fraction, his eyes questioning. Maxian nodded at the doors to the waiting rooms. The two guards immediately closed them with a heavy thud. At this the scribes looked up, then hurried to resume work. Maxian walked among them, idly looking over the papers and scrolls that littered their desks. After a moment he found the senior man. Dredging at his memory, he recovered the man’s name.