Written in the Ashes

by K. Hollan Van Zandt

  “Come, dress yourself. Alizar will be wondering where you are. We best head back,” he said, standing abruptly and throwing her some clothes. Hannah smiled, aware that she had unsteadied him. So, the fierce captain could not resist her. Beauty was his weakness.

  They took a small oar boat to the docks, then slunk through the polished alleyways of the Brucheon. Gideon tethered her to him, pulling her near whenever a Parabolan passed them. But the priests were not looking for a girl clad in a sailor’s kilt and shawl, and so they found their way to Alizar’s door without incident.

  “What do you plan to say to Alizar?” Hannah whispered.

  “Leave that to me.”

  Gideon pushed open the little green door. But when Hannah passed the threshold she caught her breath. A voice in the atrium. Could it be? She paused and waited, clutching Gideon’s arm, but there was nothing.

  Then she heard it again. The voice she knew the way she knew the fields and the sky. The voice that had been calling inside her heart these many moons apart. She flew through the atrium and out into the courtyard.

  And there he was.

  16

  “Abba?” Hannah asked, blinking her eyes at the impossible apparition of her father sitting cross-legged beside the fountain, talking to Alizar.

  Kaleb stood weakly with the help of a cane and held out his arms. “Hannah.”

  For a moment Hannah could not move, so deep and sudden was this new shock, but then she went to him, and father and daughter fell into a long embrace that was followed by a greeting that had no words; Kaleb placed his hands on either side of Hannah’s cheeks, kissed them several times, and professed how she was more beautiful than he remembered, while Hannah touched her father’s heart, kissed his hands, and wept.

  They each noted what had changed with the other, eyes moving up and down. Hannah touched the cane her father carried in concern, and then swept her hand up to his beard, his pale gaunt cheeks. She met his sunken eyes and her breath stopped short.

  He was not well.

  Alizar, seated on the divan with his legs crossed at the knee, nodded in satisfaction at their reunion. Although he had not thrown his usual banquet party, still guests had come, many unexpected, such as the humble shepherd who knocked at the little green door, pleading in Aramaic to see his daughter, “Hannah. Hannah. Have you seen my daughter?” Alizar had shown him in, and they had waited all night for her return.

  “Abba, how did you find me here? I thought you were dead, but then I knew, something in me knew you were alive.” Hannah hugged him, kissed him again and again, this new joy melting through her.

  Kaleb smiled, thinking of Alizar’s house that had been swarming with guests when he arrived in the night, some standing, reclining on divans with glasses of wine, and arguing loudly about the city’s politics and the emperor’s bedwetting. Yes. He had known where to find her, but only because of this. He reached out and handed her the hairpin that Tarek had thrown into the street. He had found it there, and known where she lived.

  So.

  Hannah took the hairpin from his hands, washed it of Tarek’s blood in the fountain, and proudly nestled the swan back into her hair. Alizar and Gideon nodded to one another and left father and daughter alone to speak. Hannah, supporting her father’s weight, helped him to a comfortable chair. “Abba, have you not slept?”

  Kaleb shook his head. “No, I did not sleep as the party only ended the hour before you came. Arguing is a favorite sport of the Greeks, you know. I am surprised they have not put it in their Olympics. But Hannah, I do not need anything except to look in your eyes and know you are alive. I am so grateful to Yahweh who guided me here.”

  Even still, Hannah got up and fetched him a cup of water. He looked fatigued or ill, she could not tell which, and it worried her.

  “The slave traders were clumsy,” Kaleb explained. “They were clumsy with their knives and clumsy with their trail. I knew I would find you. I sold most of our herd for the money, not knowing how long I would need to travel the road. I had it sewn into the hem of my shawl, but the shawl was stolen from beneath my head while I slept. I am so sorry. I know now it would have meant your freedom.” Kaleb sighed, eyeing her bronze collar, the heavy loss embedded in his eyes. Hannah took his hands, kissing his knuckles, telling him it did not matter. He went on. “One of the merchants in the market remembered you. ‘Hard to forget a pretty girl like that,’ he said. The barley merchant, I believe he was.” Kaleb turned to face her with a wince and a grunt, his hand moving to his ribs.

  Hannah hugged him. “Abba, you are hurt. Where? We can get a doctor. What is it?”

  He shooed her away with his outstretched hand and took some breaths in and out of his mouth, the pain spreading, and then receding. “I am all right. I have come this far. I have found you. I am all right.” He looked up and cupped her cheek. “How I love you. You the little thing that cried out to me, and to think I did not want you. How I love you. How lucky I have been.”

  Hannah held her father close, smelling him, hearing him, stroking the dark fur on his arms. He patted her hand, and then turned to face her, his expression deeply serious. “Hannah, there are things I must tell you now. Things that since I have found you, you must know.”

  “No, Abba. Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow or the next day. You are tired, and Alizar can send for the doctor. We must make you well. And you need sleep.”

  “No,” said Kaleb, his happy eyes creased with pain. “I must tell you now. I have walked a century, and I only made it this far with my heart set on finding you. You must be quiet and listen to me.”

  Hannah promptly knelt on the smooth flagstone cobbles of the courtyard before her father, resting her head on his knees the way she had since she was a girl.

  Kaleb tugged at a worn canvas bag over his shoulder, set it on his lap, and uncinched the leather straps. Then he reached in and pulled out a smooth white alabaster jar, and thrust it toward her. “For you,” he said.

  Hannah reached out and caressed the cool glossy surface of the jar. Then she turned the lid. Inside was crumbled sand, bits of bone. Suddenly Hannah recoiled her fingers. “These are ashes.”

  “Yes. Your mother’s ashes. Your father’s. And your grandmother’s. Maybe sisters and brothers, I do not know. I have kept it all this time. I must tell you the truth now.”

  “Abba, I do not understand.”

  Kaleb rested his forehead in his hands. “You were just a baby. I was traveling with the herd when I found a camp that was still smoldering from a fire. Robbers. Clearly the people were wealthy, as they were traveling with Roman soldiers among them. I found helmets and several swords. Hannah, even the ashes of this camp were made of gold. Everyone was killed. The robbers had tied the family to their carts and lit them on fire. I was picking through the rubble, looking for anything useful that was left, and then I heard a cry.”

  A tear swept down Kaleb’s cheek. He brushed it away. Hannah said nothing, her eyes like two huge holes, disbelieving, her hands feeling the weight of the smooth alabaster jar on her lap, cold as death itself.

  Kaleb lifted his head. “There was a baby hidden in the deep roots of the olive tree. Its mother must have hid her child there and covered it completely in a brown woolen blanket. The raiders had not seen it.”

  “And it was me?” Hannah could hardly believe his words.

  “Yes, it was you. I thought I would carry the child to a woman I knew in the meadows on the eastern flank of Sinai who was childless. She and her husband had been wanting a baby. And so I carried you, and you never slept but only cried, and I never slept even a wink. When I reached the woman’s house, I stood for a long time in the field, holding you. I could not let you go. I tried. I told myself to call out to her, that she would be a good mother to you, but instead I turned away and I took you with me. I found a wet nurse near my father’s fields.”

  “And t
he tree. The old olive tree.”

  Kaleb assented with a nod. “I kept the herd nearby, always thinking perhaps someone would come looking for you, but to tell you honestly, I hoped they never would. I wanted you for myself. A daughter from God.”

  Hannah rested her head on her father’s knees. She looked up, the realization in her eyes. “I am not a Jew.”

  Kaleb sighed. “I raised you as one of my people, and I think for that you are as much a Jew as any born by blood.”

  “Abba, all these months I wanted only to be with you.” Hannah wiped her eyes, flowing with tears. “I have always wanted only to be with you. I do not care what story you tell me or who I am. You are my Abba. We must never be separated again.”

  Kaleb stroked his daughter’s head. “I am sorry I lied to you. But I did have a wife once, and she died giving birth to our son, leaving me alone in the world. Somehow I thought it would be better if you had a different story, a story that made me your Abba. But I thought all this time on the road praying to find you that if I found you, you must know the truth. You cannot be in this world and not know who you are.”

  Hannah shook her head. “I am part of you. That is all I want to know.”

  Kaleb smiled and patted her arm, then winced against a wave of pain.

  Hannah sat up ,saying, “Abba, you look unwell,” her words tinged with concern. “I will call Alizar. We must get the doctor at once. Philemon is a good doctor. He saved my life when I was ill.”

  And though Kaleb tried to protest, Hannah ran into the house. But she found that Alizar had already called for Philemon, thinking himself what Hannah had thought, that her father did not look well.

  Jemir and Leitah followed Hannah outside to the courtyard, and they helped her father into the house to lie down on the pillows in the kitchen, which was the nearest room. The other slaves in Alizar’s house bustled to and fro bringing meals, bringing cool rags. Hannah never left his side.

  Kaleb lived fifteen days, and then he shut his eyes, content that he had found his daughter. In that time, Hannah never left him, even for a moment. She told him everything that had happened since they were separated, and he listened. She lifted water to his lips, cradled him. She wept and cursed. But Kaleb seemed remarkably happy. He had found her. He had brought her the ashes of her family. He had told her who she was. With open arms, he embraced his own death, and consoled her about it.

  “I want to go now. It is time for me. I can feel it. I regret I lost the money that would have freed you. This is the only pain I take with me. But Alizar has promised me you will be free one day, and that you have a home here. You must know I am so proud of you for your work in the library. And to think of you singing for these people with your heavenly voice, I can see it is God’s work. You have made your Abba so happy.”

  But Hannah just cried and held his head in her arms and pleaded with him to stay.

  “You must let me go,” he said. “I will watch over you, I promise.” It was as if he thought he was just walking into the next room.

  That morning, Kaleb called to Alizar to thank him. Then he asked Hannah to bring the Rabi.

  When she returned with the Rabi, Kaleb was gone. Hannah fell upon her father’s body. “Abba,” she wailed, trying to rouse him, but he would not move.

  Her gentle nudging turned to frantic tears. She threaded her fingers into her father’s hand and pleaded softly, her cheek pressed to his heart, praying to hear the rhythm return.

  The Rabi stepped forward to say his prayers over them, as the time had come.

  Hannah knelt at her father’s bedside, weeping in sorrow and confusion, taking in the new story of her life, realizing she had been orphaned by the world not once, but twice.

  Outside in the courtyard there was only the sound of the fountain and Hannah wailing, and the birds rustling and twittering in the branches of the fig tree.

  Jemir clucked his tongue, shaking his head. “Her father comes all this way to die. Just to die. So sad.”

  Alizar took a seat on the large wooden table beneath the fig tree, resting his boots on the bench, his elbows on his knees. “Naomi and now Hannah’s father. Two deaths,” he said. Then he looked up into the branches of the tree. “Make no mistake. There will be another.”

  Leitah lifted her eyes like a doe in the forest. Jemir set his gaze intently on Alizar. Tarek was not there to hear the prophesy, as Alizar had sent him away from the house to a punishment of hard labor in the winery after learning what he had done to Hannah.

  Gideon spoke to Alizar about Hannah’s safety. They should send her away. As long as Peter and the Parabolani hunted her, she would be in danger. Alizar agreed, though he saw in Gideon’s eyes another unspoken reason for such a discussion. Gideon was in love with the girl, and not about to admit it. So why did he want her sent away? There could be only one reason: this was a man making a desperate grasp at his own freedom. And so Alizar consented to the arrangement that would carry Hannah off to another world, knowing Gideon would come to regret his decision. Though how deeply that regret would pain him, Gideon would not know until it was too late.

  So.

  Part ii.

  The Emerald Tablet

  17

  On a glassy morning when the birds were quiet, Gideon and Hannah set out for the docks in the harbor. However, where there should have been the island of Pharos with its lighthouse and temples, a thick wall of marine mist whorled as it brushed the surface of the water, obscuring the lighthouse from view. The Breath of Nereus. What had Alizar said about it? That it concealed the workings of the gods? Hannah sighed. So be it. The Greeks and their mad gods.

  She touched the bottom of her haversack to find the white alabaster jar that held the remnants of her family, all except for her Abba, who had been buried in the Jewish necropolis beneath a mulberry tree in the far eastern corner nearest to Sinai. Alizar made certain he was tucked under the first patch of earth to be illuminated at sunrise. Hannah traced the bronze slave collar at her neck with one finger. She was a Jew. She was a Roman, a gypsy, a pagan, a slave. A slave with a life that pulled her like the tide. She had no idea who she was now.

  Hannah had wrapped her arms around Gideon’s neck, and he kissed her for the last time. Still grief’s captive, her lips held little warmth. All the better for him. Her beauty, however enchanting, was not a sea he wished to drown in.

  The boatman pocketed Gideon’s coins and lit a torch at the front of the skiff so any approaching ship would not plow blindly into them. The erratic orange flame licked at the mist and danced across the surface of the mirrored sea, the only color in the endless expanse of grey, just as the dip and lift of the oars in the water was the only sound in the silence.

  Hannah gathered her woolen shawl tightly around herself and hugged her knees up to her chest. She was still unused to the way the ocean’s dampness burrowed into her bones. The cold of the desert was never so penetrating. She looked back to the dock, but it had already been swallowed in the mist. Gideon was gone.

  Hannah felt lonely, suddenly. The cold fog did nothing to reassure her, yet somehow it was apt. Beside her skiff the silver dolphin surfaced for breath. His presence was an omen of good fortune, she knew now, and so she whispered words of thanks to him in Aramaic for helping her to Alizar’s ship. Still the sea unsettled her. Only when the bottom of the skiff scraped against the strand did she exhale.

  So.

  Standing on the beach with her things at her feet, she scanned for the little path that Alizar had said would take her to the Temple of Isis. Not seeing it, Hannah began to walk the length of the beach. Beneath the lighthouse, a sheer cliff rose up from the sand and sea caves. Beyond it, the beach was choked with bramble-bushes. She startled a flock of cormorants, and they swept out across the harbor like displaced black parentheses.

  There was only one choice.

  Hannah re-pinned her fibula, gathered up the e
nds of her himation and began to pick her way through the bushes toward the escarpment. Thorns slashed her calves and drew streaks of blood. Twigs that snapped back at her tangled in her hair and snagged the fringe of her shawl.

  She laughed in spite of her melancholy. The priestesses might think her some wild child spit up on the beach by a pack of wolves. When she finally got through the last of the brush, Hannah set her things down and went to work on rescuing her appearance. She combed the twigs out of her long thick hair and plaited it down her back. Then she picked the thorns from her shawl and moistened a corner with spit, dabbing at the stinging scratches on her legs.

  Then she saw a thin dusty path just beyond the thicket snaked between the palms. It seemed to come from the west and wind its way uphill, so Hannah tied the lyre to her satchel, strapped the satchel to her back, and prepared to climb.

  As she wound her way up the first knoll, the landscape became barren and rocky, speckled with low lying ground cover that clung to patches of dirt, the succulent leaves turning from green to pink at the tips and sprouting luminous purple flowers that seemed even more vivid in the mist. When Hannah paused to rest, a black lizard with golden eyes darted beneath a rock at her feet.

  The path gradually became steeper and Hannah had to use her hands to pull herself up the white jagged stones that jutted out from the slope like milk teeth from gums. When she finally clamored to the top, the lapis blue dome of the Temple of Isis appeared from behind the mist, nested like a robin’s egg against the back of a rounded hill of dry grass. Hannah paused. Before her was a new life.

  A barren hill stood between the lighthouse and the temple, blocking the lighthouse beam from the rest of the island, forming a quaint rural backdrop for the little cloister with its white lime-washed walls and tall trellises overgrown with jasmine and pink bougainvillea. There was a palpable peace that seemed to seep up from the ground and encircle everything nearby, perhaps from so many women dreaming under one roof.