‘Classical allusion? Oh really!’ Helena rapped her brother playfully with the end of a shellfish spoon. ‘Marcus promised he would be all mine. He has come away to spend time with me and the little ones.’

I tucked into my foodbowl, looking like an innocent domestic treasure.

Helena then swerved neatly and started polite Smalltalk about the Great Library. Theon ignored Helena. He favoured me with a professional grumble: ‘You might think the Library is the most important institution here, Falco, but for administrative purposes, it counts less than the observatory, the medical laboratory - or even the zoo! I ought to be feted but am harassed at every turn, while others take precedence. The Director of the Museion is by tradition a priest, not a scholar. Yet he includes in his title, ’’Head of the United Libraries of Alexandria”, whereas I - in charge of the most renowned collection of knowledge in the world - am merely its curator and secondary to him. And why should the Pharos be so famous - a mere bonfire at the top of a tower - when the Library is the true beacon, a beacon of civilisation?’

‘Indeed,’ Helena humoured him, ignoring in her turn his exclusion of women. ‘The Great Library, Megale Bibliothcca. should be one of the Wonders of the World. I have read that Ptolemy Soter, who first set out to found a centre of universal scholarship here, decided to collect not only Hellenic literature, but “all the books of the peoples of the world”. He spared neither expense nor effort -’ Theon was clearly unimpressed by her research. Women were not permitted to study in his Library and I reckoned he rarely mingled with them. I doubted it he was married. Helena’s attempts at flattery met only a downcast expression of bad temper and bad grace. The man was hard going. Probably desperate, she jangled an armful of bangles and asked the obvious question: ‘So how many scrolls do you have?’