Hannah went into the kitchen to fetch herself another bowl, and found that Mira was stirring the pot. She did not bother to speak, as words between them were as useless as torn clothes in a snowstorm now. But Mira looked concerned. “What are you doing here?”
“I am sorry Mira, but Suhaila took my portion. I need another.”
“What?” Mira suddenly threw down the ladle and flew into the other room. Hannah followed. When she opened the door, it was to see little Suhaila writhing and convulsing on the ground.
Hannah ran to the girl and picked her up in her arms. The child vomited a little, her eyes rolling into her head, and her limbs shook until she was still. Hannah cried out, and kissed the child’s cheek again and again, calling her name. The other priestesses stood around in shock. Hannah sat down on the ground still holding Suhaila, her body still, her head lolled to one side. She tried tipping the child’s head to one side to clear her nose and mouth for breath. Then she looked up, seeing everyone just standing there. “Go and get Mother Hathora!” she said to Ursula and Renenet. “Go!”
Hannah rocked Suhaila’s limp body in her arms as tears slid down her cheeks, knowing she was gone. She kissed the child’s soft face and closed her eyes, then looked up through the window to the belladonna tree where the pink trumpet blossoms twisted gently in the breeze. In that moment, she knew. She knew at once the terrible darkness of what had happened:
Mira had tried to poison her.
They held the funeral for Suhaila the next morning in the garden. Hannah had not needed to move out of her room with Mira, as Mira had been taken to a chamber beneath the temple that was usually used as storage. She was put there because the door locked from the outside, a prison. Mother Hathora had turned the lock herself. There had been no need for inquiry. Mira herself had openly confessed to everything when Suhaila died.
Hannah cried and cried, the tears streaming down her face and stuck hot in her throat, where they threatened to choke her with sorrow. Here this sweet little girl had died in her place. It seemed no matter where she went, this curse of death followed her. Mother Hathora put her arm around Hannah’s shoulder to console her. Hannah’s entire body was wracked with deepening sobs that gurgled in her throat and made it feel as if she were drowning. “It is all my fault,” she said.
“No,” said Mother Hathora. “It is Mira’s fault, and she will be sent to the brothels to become a whore. It is her fate.”
Hannah nodded. Such a fate was shame to any priestess. It was a mark of dishonor, as well as a miserable existence. Mira would never step foot on the island again, but live her life as a servant to a bawd on the wharf, seeing as many men a night as her body could manage. Hannah did not hate her. There was no need. She knew that kind of pain intimately, and knew it would be hard for a woman as proud as Mira to stomach.
So.
Before the sun came to Pharos the next day, Hannah dressed warmly, picked up her satchel and her lyre, and snuck away silently. She had decided to go back to Alizar’s. She would face the Parabolani if need be. Anything would be better than living with the pain of remembering the feeling of the little girl’s warm heart growing cold in Hannah’s arms as she shuddered and died. Perhaps she could explain to Alizar about the quest Julian had given her. She could fulfill it, and then return to study in the library. Perhaps she could even take up her studies of music in the library with Synesius. But then there would be Tarek. She would keep her knife sharp, and her mind sharper still to deal with him. She could only hope he would not attempt to punish her after what she had done. No matter. Even that would be better than living always in the presence of the dead child’s grave. So.
Hannah slipped out of the Garden House before the ringing of the first bell with the Emerald Tablet bundled over her shoulder. A thin perspiration of mist clung to the ground in little wisps. The cold was damp and pierced to the bone.
As soon as she felt the little skiff shove off, Hannah’s eyes swelled with tears. She watched regretfully as the blue dome of the Temple of Isis shrunk from view. Was it not just yesterday that she had taken the skiff in the other direction, to the shores of Pharos?
Now she had an enormous quest before her, leading her ever deeper into the pagan world. It was overwhelming.
As the spire from the Temple of Poseidon came into view, Hannah’s tears flowed freely and unwelcome sobs escaped her throat, for Suhaila and for Julian. She thought of Julian’s eyes, the way they had filled with love for her. Julian. Not dead, but just as lost.
I may be Junkar to all the world, but I will always be Julian to you.
Promises of love, like ashes scattered to the wind. And now in the library she would forever have Synesius to remind her of him, his face shaped by the same womb.
Oh, Julian. Hannah cried softly to herself at the front of the skiff, her eyes squeezed shut. The mist settled closely to the water, blocking the sun and the horizon from view. When she opened her eyes, Hannah could see Alexandria, the many buildings on the wharf drifting in and out of view.
She trailed her fingers in the cold sea, recalling the feeling of Julian’s silky hair between her fingers. Her destiny suddenly felt like an empty shell washed up on the sand. Beautiful and hollow.
Her tears flowed into the sea, the source of all tears. As Hannah looked down into the cold grey water, she wished she had the courage to pitch herself overboard and end her life. At least then her pain would find an end.
Just then, beneath the dark water, a dark shape darted under the skiff. It reappeared beside Hannah, breaking the surface. A spray of mist, and the dolphin’s blowhole opened and closed. Hannah smiled. Greek stories said that dolphins rescued drowning sailors by carrying them back to shore. Apollo rolled on his side and looked up at Hannah with one of his ancient eyes, smiling as if to reassure her. She smiled back at him, and he disappeared in the sea.
When the skiff slid next to the wharf, Hannah leapt onto the beach where the harbor was already bustling with activity in the shadows of the towering palms. She hoped Alizar would not be angry at her return.
She made her way from the wharf down the narrow alley to Alizar’s familiar green door with its peeling paint and shiny brass latch.
It was the door that led to the only home she knew.
22
Alizar himself opened the door. “I had a dream you would come,” he said. He kissed Hannah’s cheeks and opened the door wider so that she could step through. He seemed entirely unconcerned to see her.
“I am sorry to have returned without writing you,” said Hannah.
Alizar nodded. “You did the right thing. Tell me, have you brought it with you?”
Hannah thought a moment, and then realized he must be speaking about the emerald shard around her neck. So Julian had told him. She slipped it out from her himation to show him.
“Excellent,” said Alizar. “Orestes is beside himself with glee that we might obtain the Emerald Tablet. Hypatia sails for Greece as soon as the weather clears. She has an invitation from Zophocles of Athens to speak at the Odeum and the Library of Hadrian. I have convinced her to take you along.”
Hannah followed Alizar through the atrium into the courtyard, where Aziz was lunging the grey stallion on a long rope, running him in a circle.
“The tablet is so significant?”
“Hannah, with the Emerald Tablet, anything is possible. The tablet promises immortality to those who can reveal its script. Its power is legendary. The populace would unite beneath it, we are all certain. It would be the returned symbol of Alexander the Great, of Thoth Hermes, and with it would come all the power of the gods. It may even be enough to exile the Christians from our city and leave us in peace, ushering in a new age of knowledge and scientific exploration. Master Junkar has told me of his vision, and I am eager to see you triumph.”
“You are not coming with us?”
“No. I have business here.�
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Hannah nodded, as if in a dream. “When do we sail?”
Alizar placed his hands squarely upon her shoulders. “Five days. Come, Jemir has just baked a fresh loaf of sweet bread. You must be famished and you will need your strength about you for the journey.”
Hannah’s trip across the Mediterranean faced the deep winter, a time when even rugged ships seldom sailed. Alizar had lent his ship for the journey, but Gideon required considerable convincing to sail. Even though summer voyages were considerably more dangerous because they meant confrontation with innumerable pirates—the Greeks took to pirating the way the Alexandrians took to the beaches—Gideon knew that midwinter sailing would ensure a gamble with the weather gods. Poseidon willing, they must brave a straight shot across the Mediterranean against the fierce Etesian winds. To reach Athens they might be at sea for a month or more, whereas the return trip with the winds would take only ten to twelve days. And there may be storms, and great waves. It was a risk Hannah was determined to take. If Alizar thought that obtaining the Emerald Tablet would quell the Christian thirst for blood and protect the pagans of the city, she would do anything possible to see the quest to its end.
Gideon watched intently as the gulls left the beaches and soared out over the sea toward Malta and Sicily, an indication that they would have good weather for at least a week. He sent word to Hypatia and to Hannah. They would sail at dawn.
After a goat had been sacrificed and offerings for a safe voyage had been blessed and set upon an altar in the adytum of the Caesarium, the women gathered on the docks. With her lyre tucked beneath her arm, Hannah strode out onto the wharf to meet Hypatia who was waiting beside Alizar’s massive ship where it was tethered to an immense stone ring on the quay. The Vesta was the largest ship in the harbor that day, at a length of forty-six and a half meters, a width of seventeen meters, and a bilge thirteen meters deep that could hold up to seven hundred barrels of wine, or as it happened, nearly a thousand children. Captain Gideon explained that Alizar had purchased the ship from a Roman grain merchant who had taken immaculate care of it, re-sealed the hull with tar twice a year, then lined the bilge with lead. The ship’s ribs and hull planks were expertly carved and fitted edge to edge so that the swelling of the wood would make the ship watertight. Her three iron anchors took a crew of twelve men to drop and hoist.
“She is almost sixty years old, and in finer condition than all these lateen-rigged pieces of rubbish.” Gideon patted the Vesta lovingly before walking the dock to check that the crew had scraped the hull clean of any barnacles. He smiled at Hannah, but offered her no more warmth than that before returning to his work.
It was just as well to Hannah. The yearning in her heart was not for Gideon.
Fixed in fertile darkness, the angel slept.
So.
The Vesta was a story enacted on the sea. Hannah drank in the immense beauty of the ship, the way the shirtless sailors scurried up and down the skinny rat lines to ready the sails and check the yards, how the ornamental gilded goose at the stern curved like the tip of her lyre, the way the twin figures of Isis perched beneath the bowsprit gleamed in the sun. The Vesta was a mythical dream brought to life, hardly a vessel of wear and tear, but like her captain, she also bore her battle scars. A repair made to the port hull thirteen years earlier sealed a rupture that a Roman galley called the Agamemnon had made with its sharpened metal prow in an attempt to loot her and drown her crew. The entire deck had been rebuilt twice, the sails torn and shredded by so many storms that Gideon kept five spares down in the bilge. The Vesta was a ship that had learned from her mistakes and lived to cross the Mediterranean forty-nine times, a ship with the earth in her ballast, the sky in her sails.
Hypatia discussed the trip itinerary and port fees with Gideon. It seemed that for a man to leave Alexandria, the port fee would be two silver siliqaue, but since the city thought not to send its women abroad, Hypatia and Hannah were faced with fees of twenty siliquae each. Hypatia paid the fees for both of them, and Hannah watched the precious bag of silver coins exchange hands in awe, wishing it could be used for her freedom instead.
Soon Gideon announced that the rigging had been secured and the Vesta was ready to leave her slip. “If you are sailing with this ship, ladies,” he yelled down to the dock, “you had best be aboard it.”
The Vesta slipped out of the royal harbor with practiced ease and with far less fanfare than her previous voyage, past the three-tiered lighthouse with its gleaming statue of Poseidon at the crown, and the tremendous statues of Ptolemy and his queen which stood at the harbor’s mouth. She was not a ship to be kept away from the sea for long. Rushing along under full canvas, the women shouted from the bowsprit in delight as the dolphin of Alexandria’s harbor, Apollo, caught a ride at the bow of the ship. The crewmen too cheered at the sight of the dolphin leaping and rolling in the bow waves, an omen of a safe voyage.
After a nap, Hannah awoke in the evening lulled by the creaking of the wood and ropes all around her, and the swaying of the deck. A white ship cat was curled on her legs, fast asleep. When she sat up, it opened a single steely blue eye and then leapt to the floor and vanished through a crack in the door.
Hannah rose quietly, disoriented and drowsy. Her hand felt through her hair for the hairpin her father had given her before she remembered she had lost it. She wondered where the others were, so she staggered out through the same door as the cat.
While she slept the sky had been transformed to an indigo swath; a persimmon slash was all that remained of the sun on the horizon. Hannah looked out to sea as the Egyptian flag above her snapped and fluttered. It was an altogether different world than she had imagined it would be, terrifying and enervating. The nearness of the deep ocean coupled with the sibilant wind brought to the forefront of Hannah’s mind the memory of nearly drowning in the catacombs, and it was on this new terror she was dwelling when Gideon came up the stairs with a plate in his hand.
“Even goddesses require nourishment,” he said, handing her the plate, which held a thick slice of olive bread slathered in honey and ringed with slices of white cheese.
Hannah thanked Gideon and took the bread. “Where is Hypatia?”
Gideon pointed to the bow. “She has been up there all afternoon making adjustments to her astrolabe. She is eager to check it now that the stars are appearing.” He looked at Hannah and a smile escaped him. “Two whales surfaced along side the ship an hour ago. We tried to wake you.”
Hannah gasped, still clutching the railing. “How terrifying.”
“Not at all. Whales have the largest hearts of all creatures. A whale is just an enormous wet puppy, always happy to see a sailor.”
Hannah smiled dimly. “I am afraid I am not used to the sea.”
Gideon reassured her in his slow, soft manner. “The first time I came to Alexandria from Epidavros, I was just a boy. I spent half the voyage bent over the rail, but it got easier every day we were on the water, and soon I was in love with the sea. We are very fortunate to have this weather—the swells are calm for this time of year. And would you believe that Apollo is still at the bow? He never leaves the harbor.”
Hannah let her eyes glide out across the deck to where the virgin philosopher in her long grey tribon was tinkering with a round brass instrument in her hands while gesticulating seriously to one of the crew. Hannah was struck by how unusual this sight truly was: a proud woman at the bow of a ship, dressed as only men before her ever had been, explaining the changes she was making to a captain’s most important navigational instrument so they might better understand the stars and how to chart their course. There was a divine luminescence in Hypatia that transcended ordinary beauty, ordinary femininity. She was a star fallen to earth, still pulsing with heaven’s light. “What do you know of her, Gideon?” Hannah asked, tilting her head and resting her elbows on the rail.
“Her life is glamorous and fatiguing; her inescapabl
e responsibilities are beyond what you or I could ever imagine. The events of her early years Alizar once shared with me. Her mother went mad apparently, and had to be sent away when Hypatia was just a girl. Some say the woman killed herself a short time later. Her father, Theon, raised her to be his successor. He was a stoic, a disciplined perfectionist, incredibly talented in his work as a mathematician; he created several important works of commentary on the Almagest. He single-handedly opened the doors to Hypatia’s destiny as headmistress of the library.”
Just then, Hypatia spotted Hannah and Gideon up on the deck and waved for them to come down so she could show them her progress on the astrolabe.
As the darkening sky burst into stars, they gathered together beneath the sails sharing a flagon of watered-down wine. Hypatia stood, leaning on a rope as she examined the sky with her astrolabe, while Hannah reclined along the midline of the deck where the rocking of the ship was less severe. The wind was cold but gentle for the season, the sky clear as a vase full of diamonds.
“Let your captain have a turn,” said Gideon, taking the astrolabe from Hypatia. He turned the clever instrument over in his hands and explained to Hannah the stationary position of the pole star as relative to the Earth’s axis while he made calibrations to discern the ship’s latitude.
Unfamiliar with the language of stars, Hannah set to watching the dark sea. She had hoped that the trip to Athens would help her forget Julian, but so far it had only thrust him to the very forefront of her mind. She felt thankful for the company of Gideon and Hypatia. She knew the journey ahead would be long. She felt grateful for every day that would distance her from the feeling of Julian’s embrace.
So.
The following morning, and every hour of every day thereafter, Hannah was wracked by a seasickness so severe that she could not rise from the berth. The entire world rocked and swayed and turned around her; nowhere was there a stable point on which to fix her eyes, and she could keep not a scrap of food down.
Written in the Ashes Page 25