Written in the Ashes

by K. Hollan Van Zandt

  The lyre.

  Hannah held the golden instrument up in the light and admired its body with a musician’s eye. It was the instrument she had been given to play the night Hypatia unveiled the Celestial Clock of Archimedes. “This is a fine lyre, Hypatia. Olivewood?”

  “Yes. It belonged to my mother.”

  Hannah’s breath caught in her throat. “Hypatia, I could not take this from you.” She thrust the instrument toward Hypatia.

  Hypatia waved her hand. “No, I insist. You need a fine instrument to accompany such an exquisite voice, and I will never find the time to learn to play. I am not musical.”

  Hannah closed her eyes, scarcely able to find the words to express her deep gratitude. To be able to play upon such a beautiful instrument was the most meaningful gift anyone had ever given her. “Thank you, Hypatia. What can I do to repay you?”

  Hypatia thought a moment. “Write a song that would fit with the theme of one of my lectures and come and play it for us in the library.”

  Hannah fingered the strings. “What would you like me to write?”

  Hypatia paused, turning her eyes up to the sky. “Sing for us of divine Love. Beauty. Truth. Sing us into the perfection of truth. That is all I could ever wish for.”

  Hannah looked out the window. Another vessel was making its way out of the harbor, gliding past the island as a flock of black-headed gulls swept past the mast. There was so much to consider. She had relished playing for the people in the Great Hall. The thought of having an audience like that every night was tantalizing. But then she thought of the Parabolani, and how they had killed the young girl in the market. As if to punctuate her thought, a peacock screamed like a woman in peril from the other end of the garden.

  Hannah returned Hypatia’s smile as best she could with her swollen lower lip. There was only one correct response. “Thank you. It would be an honor.”

  10

  The Parabolani descended on Alizar’s house, cudgels raised and led by Peter, while Hannah was away at the library. Five men in black robes with eyes that bore dark thoughts of punishment. Jemir saw them at the wall from the upstairs landing and ran to the kitchen to send Leitah out with two quick missives, but he only had time to write the one to Synesius, to keep Hannah detained. Jemir thanked Hermes that Alizar had him schooled in writing and reading in case just such an incidence as this one arose. But now he would have to speak to them. Alone.

  So.

  Hannah, still elated from her performance for a group of magistrates the evening before, poured over scrolls at the library with her tutor, unaware of the brewing storm. Synesius kept her well-enthralled in her lessons. He was a devotee of the Socratic method, and so his technique of teaching depended solely upon his student’s curiosity, which was for Hannah unending. And so Hannah’s swelling stream of questions kept him in a constant state of service to her blossoming intellect, researching the various topics that interested her so that he could prepare her lessons appropriately. He discovered that the empirical girl was never satisfied with philosophical answers alone, and so he found himself recounting stories of Mediterranean lore to help her understand the way civilization, law and politics had evolved. He took her for walks through the Museion to better understand how Ptolemy had planned it.

  It had never happened in all his teaching that Synesius had a student entirely unfamiliar with Hellenistic culture. He repeatedly found himself making assumptions about what Hannah must already know, only to discover as he was recounting a historical battle that she had never heard of Emperor Constantine, or thought perhaps that Rome was another Greek city. Rather than get upset with her, Synesius decided that this afternoon he would unroll a collection of maps so that she could see for herself how the world was laid out.

  She traced the borders of Greece, Persia, and Asia Minor, Egypt, Nubia, Britannia, Gaul and Hispania in awe of how large the world had suddenly become to her. They spent hours reviewing cities and conquests and wars until she found with her finger the little triangle beside the Red Sea called Sinai and sighed heavily, closing her eyes. “I do not think I want to see any more maps today, Synesius,” she said.

  “Certainly.” Synesius nodded. At that moment a slave appeared with the letter from Jemir on a silver tray. Synesius read the scroll and concealed his emotion perfectly. “Take this to Hypatia,” was all he said. Then he suggested to Hannah they take a walk out in the garden.

  The days were growing unseasonably warm, so much so that drought was perched on everyone’s tongues as the constriction upon the economy squeezed their meals from their hands before their mouths were fed. The years when the waters of the Nile were low, the upper delta received most of the water of the flood, leaving a mere trickle for the lower delta to irrigate the fields. The amount of fruit in the market was dwindling, as was the grain. There was an abundance of fish, but the populace was growing uneasy and restless all the same. But that particular day, concerns aside, the afternoon was lovely with a gentle angle of light and a refreshing ocean breeze that gave the merchants an excuse to close their shops early and head to the beaches.

  As they walked beneath the wide peripatos, Hannah contemplated the morning readings from The Golden Ass of Apuleius as she looked up at the magnificent columns, ten times the height of the surrounding palms, painted with colorful Egyptian designs and scenes. “Synesius, tell me why Eros abandoned Psyche. How did she displease him?” They had taken the path that led over a small bridge alongside the pond where otiose green turtles were sunning themselves on flat stones.

  Synesius explained. “She exposed him in the light. It was their agreement that he be permitted to bed her in darkness.”

  “But he fled and allowed all of those terrible things to befall her.”

  Synesius pressed his fingertips together in his scholarly manner as they walked. “She would not have become immortal had he intervened in her fate. His persistence in their separation actually led to their ultimate union.”

  “I believe he was a coward.”

  Synesius smiled and said nothing, carefully concealing his growing concern in awaiting word from Jemir as the hour passed.

  Hannah went on thinking out loud. “I do not think he loved her if he could do such a thing to her. What honor could there be in abandonment?”

  As they walked, their footsteps fell in and out of rhythm. Synesius sighed. “You cannot impose your will upon love’s course. Love determines its own course. This is the message of the tale.”

  It was an odd comment from an unwed scholar and so Hannah decided to challenge him. “And I assume you are an expert on the subject then?”

  Synesius laughed heartily, an unusual occurrence. Something about Hannah’s sincerity, however, deserved a genuine answer, not the elusive one he would give any other student. He let his eyes drift up into the sky and then across the sea. When he spoke his voice shed something of the impersonal tone he used while teaching. “When my brother, Julian, and I first came to the shores of Pharos it was with one of the Nuapar monks, Kolossofia Master Junkar, who had found Julian in Ptolemais after our parents died. I will never forget that voyage in the small skiff upon the water, and the first sight of Pharos, which, in the thick fog of morning, was not a sight at all, but the sound of the priestesses singing on the shore. My brother and I were transfixed by it, like Odysseus, begging to be tied to the mast. Master Junkar said something to us then that I have never forgotten. He turned to us with sternness and said ‘Sirens hold no promise for a monk.’ When I came to the library and began to study under Hypatia, I found her views were similar to the creeds of the Nuapar.”

  “How so?”

  “One of the other students in her lectures who often sat beside me fell in love with her, and although he tried to keep it a secret, she discovered his affections.”

  “And?”

  “She brought with her on the following day the cloth soiled with her menstru
al blood and flung the stained rag upon his writing tablet. Then she said to him, ‘That is the hideous flesh you love. Flesh that betrays us with its impurity.’ Of course he never swooned over her again.”

  “I do not believe she would ever do something so crude. Not Hypatia.”

  “Crude indeed. Hypatia would go to any length to illustrate her teaching. She cares nothing for who is offended. The story carried her reputation as far as Londinium, I believe.”

  They stopped beneath the shade of one of Cleopatra’s Needles in the east, a slender granite obelisk perched on a small knoll that overlooked the harbor where many rocking ships swayed together rhythmically on the shifting sea, the masts almost touching, but never quite reaching.

  “Do you suppose that Psyche and Eros lived in eternal love once they were reunited?” asked Hannah. Though the question was innocent, and based upon their readings of the morning, as she asked it, Hannah’s heart conjured an image of Julian. His oceanic eyes. His gleaming bronze skin. The way he moved. A little sigh escaped her lips.

  Synesius pursed his lips in contemplation. “That depends on what you mean by love. Love and desire are always mistaken for one another. The first is a praxis, one that Christ lived by example; the second, merely a fleeting sensation. Desire for another causes one to lose control of the mind, and the mind’s peace must be savored and preserved, for once it is lost, it is extremely difficult to regain.”

  “It seems to me that would be like never taking one of those fine ships out of the harbor.” As she spoke, Hannah’s hair came undone from where it was knotted at the nape of her neck and began to swirl around her shoulders in the breeze.

  “Ships that go to sea are how shipwrecks come to be,” Synesius parried.

  Hannah turned to him, her eyes aglow. “Yes, but not all ships that set out of the harbor are lost.”

  He returned her gaze as a dignified cat might regard a simple kitten. “Yes. The ones that escape a fate on the bottom of the ocean are eventually split apart from years of wear. Saltwater has that affect on wood.”

  “But better the bottom of the ocean than to rot beside a dock forever.” Hannah said, the words more for herself than Synesius. She let her eyes wander back to the surface of the sea blotched with wide swaths of green and grey, a sea that could quench the thought of thirst, but never the thirst itself. There beyond it stretched the outline of Pharos and the jagged southern cliffs where the impressive lighthouse waited for its light to be restored. And somewhere on the north shore of the island was Julian, in the Temple of Poseidon.

  Just then a messenger came running up the walk behind them. He thrust a letter into Synesius’s hands, and then departed as swiftly as he came. Synesius tore the seal on the letter and read it, then looked at Hannah and folded it up.

  Hannah tipped her head, intuiting something. “What is it, Sy?”

  Synesius tried to mask his concern. “We should go to the Lyceum across the garden. I want you to see the gymnasts and have a lesson. It would do you well to learn yoga, as a supple body produces a supple mind. Then afterwards, we can begin your arithmetic.”

  “Today? But the day is mostly spent.”

  “Yes, today,” said Synesius firmly. “And into the evening if need be.”

  So.

  Once she returned that night, Hannah found Alizar’s entire house had been ransacked. Pots were smashed, tapestries that usually hung on the walls were torn and lying scattered about the rooms. Alizar’s hounds came running and buried their noses in her hands, as if they had not been fed.

  Hannah tossed them some scraps and rushed to the upstairs room to check on Naomi. When she opened the door she saw that Naomi was still in bed, and seated beside her was Leitah.

  “Oh, Leitah! What happened?” Hannah rushed in.

  The silent girl shook her head.

  “Where is Tarek?” Hannah ventured.

  Leitah made a crude thrusting gesture with her hips and pointed out the window.

  “He has been at the brothels then?”

  Leitah nodded.

  “But Jemir?”

  Leitah shook her head. Hannah knew immediately it was the Parabolani.

  Hannah sat on the edge of the bed and placed a hand on Naomi’s warm calf. “What should we do?”

  Leitah shook her head and tears fell down her cheeks.

  Hannah reached forward and took the girl in her arms, letting her sob. That was how she came to suspect the private love of Leitah and Jemir.

  The project of cleaning the house took most of the evening. Hannah kept praying that Jemir had only been briefly detained, but she knew they may never see him again. She felt strangled with guilt. This was all her fault.

  Well after dark Tarek burst in the kitchen door. “What in Hades happened here?” he said.

  Hannah was seated at the table, eating some seed bread and hard white cheese. She broke off another piece and placed the cheese on it, and bit down, letting the nourishing flavors mix in her mouth. She felt as if she had not eaten in days. She looked haggard, her eyes red and puffy, though she had some satisfaction the house around her had finally begun to look normal again.

  “The Parabolani,” Tarek answered his own question.

  Hannah swallowed and looked up at him. Her eyes confirmed.

  Tarek sat beside her at the table, suddenly vulnerable. “Where is Jemir?”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “Leitah?”

  “Upstairs in Naomi’s bedchamber. She will not come down.”

  “Then they have Jemir.” Tarek hung his head. He looked helpless, his angular features acquiring a kind of cowardice. He reached for her bread and broke off a hunk in his hands and shoved it in his mouth. He looked like a little boy, all sad eyes and no strength.

  Hannah got up. “I will make some tea.”

  Tarek nodded. “We will wait. Jemir will come.”

  The Parabolans did not return, but neither did Jemir. Days passed. Hannah, in addition to her regular duties, helped Leitah plant herbs in the garden and attend to chores in the kitchen. There was no need for words, even if Leitah had been in the practice of speaking. They exchanged glances and soft pats on the arm, and when Leitah began to sob pushing the rag across the steps, Hannah held her and whispered soothing syllables of love. All they could do was wait.

  Jemir staggered in at dawn three days later, his face bloody, his wrists badly bruised and cut, as if they had been hanging him from his hands by a rope. Alizar’s hounds greeted him with a loud braying, then happy tongues lolling, prancing around his legs and licking his fingers.

  Leitah was the first to the garden gate when she saw him coming up from the entrance by the stable. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. He gave himself to her embrace. They had hobbled as far as the fig tree when Hannah came running down the walk to assist Leitah as she helped Jemir to the cushions at the far end of the kitchen where he could lie down.

  “How did you escape?” asked Hannah as she quickly poured Jemir a glass of wine and raised it to his lips as Leitah held his head.

  Jemir groaned. “I did not escape. I was released.”

  Just then, Tarek appeared at the door, having been awakened by the commotion of the hounds. “Not by the bishop?”

  “Apparently by the governor, Orestes. Kalimera, Tarek.”

  Tarek nodded and walked across the kitchen to pour a glass of wine. “I knew you would make it out.”

  “And?” ventured Hannah.

  “The battle has been taken to higher ground,” said Jemir as he spit a little blood into a rag lying nearby. “No one takes interest in a pawn when they can have a king, Kuklamu. The governor Orestes came and struck a deal.” As Jemir spoke, Hannah noticed that one of his teeth was missing in the front row on the top.

  “What kind of deal?” asked Tarek.

  Jemir lay back on Leitah�
��s lap, closing his eyes. “I was not informed, merely released.”

  Leitah poured a cup of water into a bowl and lifted a rag to Jemir’s face to begin to clean the cuts.

  “This is all my fault,” said Hannah, her face punctured with guilt, “what happened to you. I am so sorry.”

  “Did they find the door to Alizar’s tower?” Tarek asked seriously.

  Jemir shook his head. “No. I sealed the entrance in time.”

  “And did they learn anything from you about Alizar’s work?”

  Jemir shook his head. “That I would take to my grave.”

  Tarek then relaxed back onto the cushions and turned toward Hannah, sipping his wine, daggers in his eyes. “This trouble was all your doing.”

  “Then perhaps you should not have cursed me while I still live beneath your roof,” Hannah said brusquely, helping Leitah by dabbing at the dried blood beside Jemir’s eye.

  Tarek glared at her. “You think you will earn your freedom with a tongue like that? I will see to it that you remain a slave in this house forever.”

  Hannah cringed as Tarek stood and left the room. Jemir found her eyes. “Alizar is the master here,” he said, reassuring her, “not him.”

  “I do not see how you stand living here. You are not a slave anymore. You could go anywhere…you have your freedom.”

  Jemir coughed a little and spat again. Then he squeezed Leitah’s hand, bringing it to his lips to kiss. “This is our home.”

  So.

  11

  That evening, Alizar’s ship, the Vesta, was sighted drifting into the harbor. His timing was such that Governor Orestes thought it might be the perfect occasion for a party, and so he arranged one in the Caesarium gardens behind the Great Library. He hired acting troupes to perform for the feast, complete with strolling jugglers, acrobats, clowns, fire-eaters and magicians. The finale would be later that evening on the beach, when the new brass reflector as tall as a man was to be hung in the lighthouse. The complaints of the sailors who bemoaned that the bonfires on the beach were not bright enough would finally be assuaged, as the beam from the lighthouse would be, once again, visible for many lengths at sea.