He wrote something on a slate and handed it over. ‘Go to the Chamber of Apollo and present this.’
Nicander anxiously waited in the small room. Shortly the attendant returned with a single sheet.
It was a map by Pomponius Mela in the reign of Claudius Caesar, from a time of empire and conquest. Nicander examined it carefully; he knew maps of the mercantile kind which detailed market areas but this was different. It was of the entire known world, the oikoumene. The centre was dominated by the Mediterranean, with the continents radiating out from it, the whole surrounded by a boundless ocean.
He quickly found familiar territory: Africa to the right with his birth town of Leptis Magna in tiny script, Europa to the left, Constantinople among the densely packed legends in the middle. He eagerly scanned the map, searching for Serica. It was right at the top.
Nowhere on the map, however, was there a marking to show north or south, nor any indication of distance. At the edge of the land mass, there was on one side, the burning Ethiopian Sea, on the other the frigid Hyperborean regions. Hispania was at the bottom limit.
Having found Serica was as maddening as it was enticing, for the entire region existed without a single notation, neither town nor river. The only information he could draw from the map was that by comparing relative sizes, the distance to reach the Seres was nearly as far as the entire length of the Mediterranean!
The next item that was brought was a fat roll of vellum, a foot broad, twenty feet long, infinitely detailed. An itinerarium, used within the Roman world when travelling between one town and another along public roads, it listed distances and inn stops. This particular one claimed to record every road and town that existed.
There was no pretence at scale or topography; it was simply a lengthy skein of routes originating from Rome to the furthest reaches of Empire. At one end was the outermost extremity of the west, the now-lost province of Britannia, and at the other were the last outposts of civilisation to the east, tailing off with a tantalising reference to the legendary island of Taprobane and a bewildering confusion of barbaric names beyond Scythia that had no meaning to him.
Nicander rubbed his eyes, determined to persevere.
A third item arrived, a map of the world by the famed geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria, his Geographia.
Along the base of the map and its sides was a series of numbered lines. The accompanying gloss explained that these were real-world degrees of latitude derived from observations of the sun’s altitude, the longitude degrees arbitrarily assigned to make a regular square with the latitude. The entire land mass therefore was distributed under a grid of these lines which had been said to have been taken from actual measurement and should thus at last give a true picture of distances and directions.
Finally here was both a scientific and practical map! It looked much different to the others: Rome and indeed Italia seemed impossibly small against the vast expanses of Asia and Africa and Constantinople was almost lost over to the left.
Nicander concentrated, trying to take in how it all related. The frigid regions in the north were at the top and the burning deserts at the bottom. He’d heard that the limits to the world were impassable snow and ice in the north, warming by degrees until in the far south the heat reached the point where the sea itself boiled. He could see how the mass of Africa curved down and around to connect with south-east Asia on the other side, enclosing a vast inland sea with Taprobane in the centre.
The Seres. They were over to the right, past mountain ranges, deserts and vast empty spaces. Over one hundred and twenty of Ptolemy’s longitude degrees, which when brought to real terms was a distance to be measured in thousands of miles!
The steward pointed out that in addition to this world map there were separate regional descriptions on other sheets.
Fighting weariness, Nicander took in the one of the extreme Orient. There indeed was Serica, the land of the Seres, the other side of an impassable desert. Before it was Scythia, the inner home of shadowy tribes so savage and bloodthirsty that it was said the Huns and Goths were fleeing before them to fall on softer civilised peoples.
This map divided the Scythians into the Western hippophagi, the horse-eaters and the Eastern anthropophagi, the man-eaters. The rest of the sheet was vacant space – was it because travellers never returned from there to tell the tale?
Nicander was about to give up when the literary steward entered the room holding a large, brightly coloured map. ‘I came to bring you this,’ he said with pride. ‘It is lately produced and contains all we know of our place in creation.’
It was the work of the cartographer Cosmas Indicopleustes. His map was apparently constructed on an entirely new theoretical principle. Nicander tried to show enthusiasm as the steward explained that this was based on a sensible flat earth and was in the form of a rectangle with raised corners supporting a curved heaven. And modelled after the design of the tabernacle of Moses and being divinely inspired, it could obviously be relied upon.
But it completely contradicted all other sources.
Night was drawing in as Nicander headed back, bitterly disheartened. His meagre notes offered virtually nothing on which to begin laying down detailed plans for an expedition and he’d seen little to suggest there was anything of value left to discover.
As he passed by the Nymphaeum, several prostitutes waved gaily at him but he had no taste for playful banter and trudged on, ignoring the insults that followed him.
In effect he had established three things only: that silk was indeed harvested from the silk tree, that the land of the Seres was all but unknown and that it was at a staggering distance, in an uncertain direction through barbarian hordes of unimaginable ferocity.
Now he would have to face a trusting Marius waiting for answers.
CHAPTER NINE
The seediness of their living quarters drove in on Nicander.
Marius looked up from the table. He was fashioning something in leather, his hard, capable hands sure and swift.
‘A bloody long time!’ he growled and got up to check a pot. ‘I’ve had a mess of lentils going since sundown.’
Nicander did not enjoy such crude Roman peasant fare but knew his friend had a fondness for it. He took his bowl and ate with as much relish as he could muster.
‘So how did you get along, then? Read a hill o’ books and things, I suppose.’ Marius was literate in Latin but only painfully so.
Nicander sighed. ‘Quite a few.’
‘Well?’
‘I found the subject very complicated,’ he mumbled. ‘A lot of things to take in.’
‘So hard going, then.’
‘It was, yes.’
‘I thought of a way to find out about Seres.’
Nicander bristled. ‘What?’
‘Calm down, I couldn’t spoil your fun with the books, could I?’
‘Then please tell,’ he said sarcastically, ‘just what is it that’s better than research in the greatest library on earth?’
‘Fellow down the street I know. Back with his family after a long trip. I met up with him today.’
‘This better be good!’
‘Interesting job he’s got – camel wrangler with the silk caravans as trade across Asia with the Seres. Just asked him how far, like, what direction you go in.’
Nicander sat back. So simple – so obvious!
‘Well – what did he say?’
‘Not a lot, he couldn’t. Like ’em all he only picks up on the caravan this side of the border, that’s Nibilis for him. See, the Persians don’t allow crews to go through their territory, they might learn something, so they has their own.’
‘Oh.’
‘That’s not all. He says that they’ve foreigners – Sogdians or something – taking charge of their caravans up to there, come from way into Asia and he often talks with ’em while they hand over. What they told him is that no one at all goes the whole way.’