Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria (45 page)

Those who will destroy beauty, who would trample on wisdom, hold the shards of pots in their hands and on their faces such lust as I have never seen, not even in the worst of my miserable times.
 
My beloved has walked towards them, has reached them, and it is my fate to watch as Peter slashes at her, a deep and fearful cut across her breast, and then more and more take courage from his blind and twisted fervor, so they too might have their share of this sickness.

My own madness makes a Felix Zoilus of me.
 
Screaming, I cut my way through those who push forward so they too might join in this shame, this outrage, this ungodly thing.
 
I kill five, ten, a dozen…and none can stop me.
 
But I alone am not enough.
 
Dozens more face me, as behind them their fellows drag what they have done into a church so they might finish in private what they have begun in public.
 
I sink to my knees to weep at my loss, at my failure—and I find that I stare at Cyril, sprawled as well on the stones of the street, his face as bloodless as mine.

I have not saved my beloved.
 
She did not save herself.
 
But I am Minkah, feared even by
Parabalanoi
, and I can cut down her killer.
 
Cyril sees in my eyes what I saw in the eyes of Peter the Reader, and is thrashing to be away as his bearers heave him into his litter before I can lift myself from the street.

No matter.
 
It is fitting I die here, my blood mixed with her blood.
 
In the morning they will wash us away.
 
We shall flow together through the gutters of Alexandria until we reach the sea.
 
And from there?
 
Who knows?
 
Perhaps a greater adventure than this.

~

Hypatia of Alexandria

Poor Cyril.
 
His horror breaks my heart.
 
I hear the words that pass through his head, words he himself heard when they came from the mouth of Theophilus:
Who would kill such as you?
 
You are a gift from God.
 

Later, his black mantles will burn my shard-scraped bones in a place called Cynaron.
 
Later still, Orestes will flee this city that descends into madness.
 
And when word reaches Augustine, he too will know madness.
 
Demons will appear to him.
 
Jone will wander away to become crazed under the sun.
 
There will come a day she will cry out to die.
 
I cannot see farther, but may her god grant her wish.
 
As for Cyril—who weeps now for the hell he believes awaits him—he will find a way to distance himself from all that has happened here by his doing, and when he does, he will remove my books from libraries everywhere and burn them all.
 
But before the burning of books, he will burn Peter the Reader.
 

Though he does not yet see me, I stand beside my Egyptian, and I wait.

As I knew she would, Lais is come for us, and we three turn, and we go.

In Grateful Acknowledgement

Without the sweet patience and constant dedication of my publisher and partner Shane Roberts, without the wise guidance and encouragement of my agent Susan Lee Cohen, without the insight of my Random House editor Allison McCabe, without the savvy suggestions of my daughter Sydney Longfellow and my lifelong friends Nancy Scott Mandl and Worth and Nancy Howe, and… without being curled up on his couch as Ray Lynch spoke of mathematics all through the night, this book would be so much less than it is. That it is anything at all, I owe to these and to gnosis.

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