Orestes let his eyes sweep out the window and across the harbor to the island of Pharos. The Christians had almost completed their new church on the west shore. Through his one good eye he could see the white lime-washed walls glowing in the winter sunlight. They had completed the restored Heptastadion bridge across the harbor just before the previous year’s flood, and begun shipping jungle hardwoods to Alexandria from the upper Nile to complete the church, harvesting what stones they needed from the fallen Serapeum. “You know, it is more beautiful than I expected it would be. I have to give them that,” he said.
Hypatia scowled. “With the empire’s purse at their disposal, how could it not be beautiful? They could have built an entire city for what he allotted. No church should ever be wed to government. Our freedoms will become extinct.”
Orestes’s face fell, the deep creases beside his mouth deepening, his one good eye, black as the iron sea, moistening. “Indeed.”
Hypatia lifted a cup of tea to her lips and took a slow sip.
“Have you considered my offer?” Orestes asked, bringing the subject around to the reason for his visit. He wanted her to be accompanied everywhere by a bodyguard, and offered to personally pay the guard’s salary.
Hypatia leaned back in her chair. “No, I must refuse,” she said, feeling a little guilty. Her chariot was the last pleasure that she allowed herself. Since the trip to Greece, she had given far greater consideration to the austerities that Plotinus had recommended in his writings. Though she had long ago ceased eating meat, she had now given up milk, cheese, and eggs, rarely even seasoning her simple meals; she had given up drinking wine entirely and no longer slept on a mattress, but lay on the hard floor without even a pillow. She had been attempting to purify her soul of all bodily associations and had come to despise the workings of her womb, only to be delighted that with her strict new regiments, her monthly blood had ceased altogether. Her mounting obsession with purification had prompted her to discard her grey philosopher’s tribon in favor of a pure white one, a fashion that many of her students were now adopting. Orestes wondered if she was not taking things a bit to the extreme, but what could he do? It was Hypatia’s nature. She seemed to be the living embodiment of Plotinus’ philosophy, and her students adored her even if she offended the masses with her eccentric elitism.
“Hypatia,” he pleaded. “You must be more careful.”
“Orestes, you worry in vain. Things are precisely as we need them to be. Cyril will read my manuscript and his thoughts toward the library will soften. Christ’s mother will offer us an opening into the hearts of the Christians; I have seen it in my visions. An alliance will be possible. I am certain of it.”
“You are playing with fire, my dear,” Orestes warned. “Am I not enough of an omen for you?” He slowly stood from the settee and took three slow steps across the room, dragging one leg, and lifted the Celestial Clock of Archimedes from Hypatia’s desk. “Let me take it,” he said.
“Take it?”
“Yes. If anything were to happen. We must conceal it outside of Egypt.”
“But Orestes, you must think the library will not stand! Alizar has convinced you.”
“You must trust me, Hypatia. I have only your interests in mind. We are the last bastion, and the soldiers will not stand with us if the Christians turn against the library.”
Hypatia stroked the instrument in Orestes’s hands with affection. “Will you put it on a ship?”
“I know a certain priest in Greece who would be an ideal guardian. He is a friend of Synesius.”
“A Christian?”
“A trustworthy fellow.”
Hypatia sighed with frustration. “Take it if you must.”
Orestes set the instrument in its fitted brass case, a covering that would travel with it for the next thousand years. “We will give it to Gideon to carry. He has confided to me that he longs for the sea. This would be a good opportunity. I have a magnificent ship that I confiscated from a pirate. I think I will give it to him in thanks.”
Hypatia nodded. “Now you must leave me to my work. I have a public lecture in three days.”
Orestes’s remaining eyebrow shot up, the other side of his face covered by a bandage worn so as to not frighten people with the discomfiting scar where his eye and brow had been. “Why a public lecture all of a sudden?” he asked.
Hypatia smiled. “Lent.”
Orestes was now thoroughly confused. “Since when do you observe a Christian holiday?”
Hypatia did not answer him directly. “I am speaking about the Virgin.”
Orestes shrugged. “You are divinely mad, you know. A shame I am not Alizar. He is the only one capable of restraining you.”
Hypatia smiled, unaffected. Then she picked up her stylus. “So you will attend?”
“I would like to,” he said. “But you have forgotten the meeting of the city council on Antirrhodus and Alizar’s pardon.”
She laughed, realizing her mistake. “Then come afterward with good news,” she said.
“I will.” Orestes turned back at the door. “Take the Nuapar guards with you in precaution, Hypatia.”
Hypatia nodded, unconcerned.
36
Hannah awoke from a vibrant dream and sat up. “I know what happened,” she said.
“When?” asked Gideon, rubbing his eyes.
“To the Emerald Tablet. These years it has been haunting me. I know now.”
Gideon, who had been perturbed at such an early arousal, sat up, all irritation discarded.
“Gideon, I want you to try and remember something. When you escaped from the Church of St. Alexander, when Alizar was captured, who in the house was there when you returned?”
“Leitah and Jemir, certainly.”
Hannah nodded. “Yes. But what of Tarek?”
“I cannot remember.”
“I remember that I returned from Pharos to find everyone packing. Tarek was readying the barge down in the catacombs. But how would the Parabolani know that you would return to Alizar’s house and not to your ship in the harbor?”
“Cyril probably sent men both places.”
“Gideon, it was Tarek. I know it in my blood. He stole the Emerald Tablet. He knew that Alizar had been imprisoned before you even told him, do you recall?”
“Surely Tarek would have used the tablet for his own aims if he had such lofty ambitions.”
“The tablet pieces were not out of our sight except for when we returned to Alizar’s and found the house had been raided, do you recall? We separated and searched the house. We left Tarek to unpack the camel.”
“The chest was there, with him.”
Hannah nodded. “Yes.”
Gideon shook his head. “Tarek hates Cyril as much as you or I. He is a foolish boy, but I do not think him capable of what you suggest.”
“Gideon, you described once what you found in place of the tablet.”
“Yes, when we opened the chest and unbound the cloth I pulled out a strange wooden doll with nails for eyes.”
“I dreamed of it last night. I saw this doll once in Naomi’s room. It was the night the Jews were attacked by Cyril’s men. I rummaged through a chest of things that once belonged to Naomi’s son in order to find some clothing to wear to join the men in the street. I found a doll there made of heavy black wood, like iron, with nails for eyes.”
“You think Tarek took the tablet and substituted the doll. But what would he do with the tablet if he did not use it for personal gain?”
“But that is just it. How do we know he did not use it for personal gain?”
“You are right. We cannot know.”
“We must search Tarek’s room, Gideon. If I am right, he has collaborated with the Christians and Cyril has the tablet and is just waiting for the moment to use it against us.”
“Go to S
ofia. I will find Tarek and make him speak.”
Hannah rushed to Alizar’s. Alaya had begged to go with her, but she thought it best to let her daughter stay with Synesius, as Gideon had gone to find Tarek. She found Sofia in the upstairs bedroom, seated on the settee, sipping coffee.
“Hannah, so good to see you. What brings you here so early in the morning?”
“Sofia, do you have a key to Tarek’s room?” Hannah knelt beside the chest containing the few possessions that had belonged to Sofia’s brother, Theon. When she opened it, the chest was empty. No doll, no boyhood clothes. But it did not matter. Sofia could have cleaned it out when she took the room for herself and Synesius the month before when they returned to Alexandria from Cyrene so Sofia could birth the baby in her father’s house.
“Whatever for?”
Hannah took Sofia’s hands. “I believe he has betrayed Alizar.”
“Wherever did you get such a notion?”
“Do you trust me?”
Sofia nodded. “Tarek stayed at the brothels last night. He has a new girl there. Come with me.”
When they opened the door, they found Tarek’s room to be in complete disarray: clothes were strewn about, and dirty plates and cups were stacked on every available surface.
“What are we looking for?” asked Sofia.
“I am not sure, but I feel we will know when we find it.”
They searched for the better part of an hour before Sofia found the hollow in the bedpost beside the wall by knocking on the wood. When the sound changed, she shoved the bedclothes to the floor and called Hannah over. “Listen.” Sofia knocked to reveal the hollow sound in the wood.
Hannah’s hands searched the bedpost until they found the ornate carving of the falcon at the top of the post to be loose. She twisted it and it came away. Sofia reached inside the post and withdrew a roll of documents. They replaced the post and retreated to Sofia’s bedroom, where they locked the door.
They spread the documents out on the bed, and almost immediately, Sofia found the cause for Hannah’s intuitive notion. These were forged documents naming Tarek as Alizar’s adopted son, heir to the entire estate. They had been notarized by scribes at the Tabularium, and by bishop Cyril himself.
“This can mean only one thing,” said Hannah.
“Tarek has betrayed us all.” Sofia stood, her thoughts racing, the full expanse of the issue now realized. But as she crossed the room, a warm liquid trickled down her leg and pooled at her feet. “Praise Zeus,” she said. “The baby has chosen this moment to come. Send for the midwife, Hannah.”
Hypatia rode up in her chariot to the public lecture hall as evening settled in Alexandria like a dove on her roost. There had been no rain all month, and the air was cool and dusty, reminding her of the years of the long drought that had finally broken during the previous winter. Hypatia’s horse snorted and pawed the ground. She patted the mare’s silky white shoulder and turned to climb the steps. Orestes would have been infuriated with her to find out that she had ridden to the lecture hall unaccompanied, but Orestes would not be in the audience tonight; he had gone to the meeting of the Alexandrian government on the island of Antirrhodus in the middle of the harbor. The city’s politicians, bishop, magistrates, senators and prefects would be occupied for most of the evening, and they had required the presence of most of the Nuapar guards. Hypatia wondered if anyone would even attend her lecture. She had taken the liberty of distributing pamphlets the previous week, but doubted that they were even glanced at, as the people were awaiting several political decisions and appointments that would change the face of the city if they passed. Hannah had suggested she cancel the lecture, but Hypatia had made up her mind to deliver her speech. “The people need this message now more than ever,” she had insisted, forgetting that in five years she had not had a single discussion with a human being outside the Great Library. “People want bread, not philosophy,” Alizar had said to her once. She had dismissed his thought with a wave of her hand and a laugh, incapable of imagining how anyone could possibly live without intellectual and spiritual sustenance.
Once inside, Hypatia was delighted to discover that the lecture hall was already nearly full of faces. They turned to look at her as she entered, recognizing the city’s famed thinker by her elegant white robes and long, curling blonde hair pinned on top of her head. As she stepped up to the dais, several people whispered and hissed.
“Devil’s concubine,” someone said.
“Witch,” said another.
Hypatia coolly dismissed the words as though she did not hear them. Her thoughts burned bright as newborn suns in her mind, suffusing all else. Once she shared her vision, the people would forgo their judgments. Eager to sway the crowd, she quickly thanked everyone for coming and began her lecture.
She began by illustrating the ideals of purity and virginity as embodied by the Virgin Mary. Her words were infused with love. For the first half of her lecture, she held the audience’s attention easily. However, as her speech turned toward philosophy, things changed quickly.
What Hypatia did not realize was that most of the people in the audience had not come to hear her speak, but only to lay eyes on the elite lady whom their bishop had taught them was in allegiance with the devil. Most of them had lived in Alexandria all their lives and had never seen Hypatia. They supposed that her purity was a demon’s disguise of black magic.
“…For the truth is that Christ can be found within each one of us. His birth demonstrates a metaphorical birth into a spiritual life through the purified heart.” Hypatia’s voice became emphatic. “You see, Mary was not merely the mother of the man we call Jesus, but the mother of Emmanuel, God with us, Christ everlasting. She came to show us that Christ is not separate from us. He was sent to teach us by example. When the mind, through contemplation, fasting and focus upon eternal concepts, has been cleansed, then the Self is made pure, and Christ through each of our hearts can be born again on the Earth and we too can live close to God.” Hypatia paused. Although gnostic teachings had gone out of fashion in Alexandria the century before, the orthodox had taken root more deeply than she ever imagined.
“Heretic!” A man at the back of the lecture hall suddenly stood up and pointed angrily at Hypatia.
“Sorceress!” screamed another.
Hypatia tipped her head, confused. Had they not heard her words? She had just delivered the essence of the Christian faith. Could they not recognize the truth for what it was? Eager to make herself clear, Hypatia began again, her smile dimming slightly.
“You mistake me. What I mean to profess is how each of us can become purified in our own lives. Each of us can become Christ-like, not Christ himself. He was an example to us. We do not have to simply worship his teaching. Jesus himself told us ‘Greater works than these shall ye do’.” Hypatia opened her mouth to go on, but a stout, middle-aged man in the front row rose angrily to his feet and shouted at her.
“How dare you speak of Christ, you pagan whore!” Then he turned to the audience behind him. “This witch speaks the devil’s words! We should not be blinded by her clever tongue!”
The audience began to stir uneasily.
Then there was a loud bang in the foyer as the doors to the lecture hall were thrown open. The torches that stood in the back of the hall blew sideways in the sudden gust of wind as twenty priests in black robes swept into the room: the Parabolani, followed by priests of Nitria who had come from the southern desert at Cyril’s behest. As they walked down the isles, they unsheathed their swords and raised them like silver crosses to the night.
Hypatia watched as the men began to stream down the isles, led by Cyril’s interpreter, Peter the Reader.
“Seize her!” he yelled, and the crowd sprung to their feet.
Hypatia, having never known a moment of doubt in herself or her teaching in all the occasions she had stood before an audience, suddenly stopped
. She backed away from the dais slowly, seized by newfound terror, her eyes growing wide as she recognized her mistake.
All thoughts except one vanished from Hypatia’s mind immediately.
Flee.
Sofia clung tightly to Hannah’s hand as she smoothed Sofia’s hair back from her damp forehead with the other. “Breathe deeply,” she said as Sofia clenched her teeth and groaned.
The midwife worked calmly. “We are very close now.”
Sofia’s labor had gone on throughout the entire day and into the evening. Hannah had not realized until now how easily Alaya’s birth had been by comparison. Sofia’s pelvis was so narrow, and the baby’s head so large, that her efforts to push the child from her womb were thus far ineffective.
The midwife sighed and wiped her forehead with the back of her sleeve. “Rest a moment, Sofia,” she said. “Take a breath.”
Sofia nodded, the pain so great that her lips quivered uncontrollably. She looked up at Hannah fearfully from where she was squatting on the floor beside the window in Alizar’s tower, where she had decided to birth the child. Hannah squeezed her hand. “Be brave. The baby is almost here.”
The midwife bent down and began to rummage through her bag. She carefully withdrew a short silver knife and concealed it inside her sleeve so that Sofia would not see. If necessary, she would cut the mother to free the baby, but not yet. These births where the child was turned with its spine against the mother’s spine never went as well as the others. She did not want anyone to be alarmed just yet.
Written in the Ashes Page 40