Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria (18 page)

“If neither Theon nor Hypatia are included, what then would you have of me?”

“I have work meant for you alone as you alone of the brotherhood are unsuspected.
 
As soon as all is arranged, I will send for—”

“Cyril!”

The room comes to a halt, all turning as one towards the source of this unnerving shriek.
 
Theophania, whom all fear, arrives triumphant.
 
The mother of Cyril is beautiful in a way that Lais is not.
 
If her hair is red or yellow or brown or black, who could say?
 
It is ever one or the other of these.
 
Her nose is as finely made as a hunting dog’s, her neck like a white ibis, her eye paint as striking as ancient paintings on tombs, her form as curved as an amphorae.
 
How she birthed such as Cyril has long been a source of inspired, though thoroughly brutish, talk.
 
She is enveloped in so fine a linen the hard nipples of her breasts can be clearly seen, as can her pubis: black, not red or yellow or brown.
 
And this is the sister of a bishop?
 
Every man here lowers his eyes, not so they would not see, but so they would not be caught looking.
 
I do not lower my eyes.
 
If she would display, I would admire.
 
Not for nothing do I relish my reputation.

Straight through a pack of the wolfish brotherhood, she rushes towards Cyril, and once there, pinches his fat arm with her slender fingers.

“Ouch!”

“You have been through my things!
 
I
know
it was you.
 
You will come, and you will come
now
to give me back what you stole from me.”

All wait to hear what the boy stole, but all wait in vain for Cyril is gone from here before Theophania can pinch him again, or say more to his mortal shame.

Left on her own, his mother pretends to suddenly note where she is.
 
How prettily she blushes, how charmingly she spins on her slippered heel, how gracefully she floats away.
 
And how murderously furious the face of Theophilus, her brother.

I am entirely amused.
 
Especially as he has forgotten to tell me what it is he plans I do since I am “unsuspected.”

~

Jone, youngest daughter of Theon of Alexandria

“Daughter!
 
Attend!”

Mortifying!
 
Father now calls on me, the one he scarce thinks of from one year to the next.
 
I am Jone.
 
I am she who killed the mother.
 
I am nothing in this house, until I am…and only because Minkah is gone, faithful Minkah.

I hate Father.
 
I do.
 
I hate him.
 
He does not call for Lais, oh no!
 
How can poor helpless Lais be expected to fetch him this and fetch him that?
 
Lais is so terribly ill.
 
And if she were not so ill, she should still not be intruded upon for Lais has her poems which I am not allowed to see and her trances which I
do
see and think them nothing but a sickness caused by that which grew in her stomach.
 
As for Hypatia, never!
 
Hypatia works
with
him, not
for
him.
 
Hypatia is much too grand to bring him fruit or wine or to find a brush or a seal or some other thing he has dropped and cannot get out of his own bed to find.
 
Besides, she has a student in her workroom, one who pays.
 
He could send for the Jewess, the one who scribbles for Hypatia, but does he?
 
Not once.
 
Is she not paid?
 
Of course!
 
A servant!
 
Hypatia should hire another servant.
 
Ife can’t do everything.
 
And I will not.
 
I have my own work to do, important work.
 
I have texts to read and to comment on for school.

What does he call for now?
 
God, give me patience.
 
You ask me to honor my father and my mother.
 
I have no mother.
 
And what father I have does not honor me.
 
But I will obey.
 
I will obey the command of the Father who is in Heaven by tending to the man who is called my father on earth.

For the fifth time this day, I open Father’s door.
 
“What?”

Father is in bed.
 
What a surprise.
 
He peers at me.
 
Is he trying to remember my name?
 
“See here?”
 
He’s waving a large sheet of paper covered with his messes.
 
From what I can see, it’s a triangle in a circle in a triangle in some other shape he has a name for, although I do not.
 
“I want you to fetch the twine off the shelf…I think Minkah keeps it on a shelf.
 
Then I would like you to stand over there, as far from me as you can.”
 
Oh, I can do that.
 
“Wait.
 
First you take one end of the twine.”
 
I take one end of the twine.
 
“Then walk there, no, no, not
there
, there.”

I move from one place to the other, and no place I choose will do.
 
There is twine looped around the back of a chair, strung up between one image of some pagan idol and another pagan idol.
 
We are making what seems a spider’s web.
 
I will scream.
 
I will scream down this house.
 
Help me Father, for I have sinned.

“For the sake of Thoth, girl, will you stand still!”

“Thoth!” I scream so hard I hurt my throat.
 
“
Thoth
!
 
I do nothing for the sake of demons.”
 
And with that I am away from his room which smells like sour wine and sweat and sick and bad teeth and something male I cannot even imagine.
 
He calls, “Stop!” but I do not stop.
 
He calls again, “Come back, you!
 
Come back!”

I will not come back.
 
Not once this day has he called me by name.

~

Minkah the Egyptian

For three days, my “master” has trembled under his covers.
 
The attacks against the houses of the pagan poet Palladas, of the pagan priest Helladius, of the astronomer Pappas, of the occultist Paulus—if Paulus is a spy, this is wise on the part of Theophilus—of Meletus the Jew, terrify him.
 
Even the Christian Didymus the Blind is “warned.”
 
Having come to his senses through no effort of mine, Theophilus attacks as well the House of Theon.
 
The dung thrown against our walls could feed a field.

What Theophilus would have his spy, Minkah, do, isn’t much.
 
I need not dirty my hands with dung.
 
I am to report on what is said and done by these men in response.
 
Emboldened by the rise of the Emperor Eugenius, yet strongly discouraged by the
Parabalanoi
, will Alexandria’s “pagans” attempt a return to the old ways?
 
I could tell Theophilus without spying: some will, but most will not.
 
My “brothers” do what they do well…and should a man have the stones to stand up, few remain standing against harm done to their child or a child of their child.

Compared with much I have done, this is nothing.
 
How is it, then, that violence towards a man means less to me than deceit?
 
Overt violence takes a kind of courage.
 
Spying on the unsuspecting requires nothing more than low cunning.
 
For how long now have I been anything other than deceitful?
 
Who here knows I am in the pay of Theophilus?
 
I pretend to care for Theon when I do not.
 
I act the humble Egyptian when I am not.

Grooming Ia’eh, my nerves sing.
 
That I had someone to speak to, but by only a single word—
Parabalanoi
—I should be driven from the company of Hypatia, of Lais, of learning, all I have learned to love.

Ears pricked forward, Ia’eh nibbles my shoulder.
 
Each morning, after I have exercised Ia’eh and groomed her, she expects a date.
 
I rest my head on her neck, inhale her warm scent, a joy beyond price.

“In time,” I croon to the white mare of Lais, “you will run again with beauty on your back.
 
But for now, you must content yourself with me.”

As I say this, I make my decision.
 
By what comes of it, I will learn who Minkah is.

Lais is alone.
 
She who has endured so much does not lie in her bed as does Theon who had managed to endure little by his avoidance of whatever he might avoid.
 
Lais sits on a couch by her window and on her knees is her writing tablet.

Turning her face, I am yet again stunned by her beauty.
 
I have read the Greeks.
 
They say that beauty never palls, never ceases to have its effect.
 
There is something in man that reacts to beauty as it reacts to nothing else.

If I had not spent my life learning control of my senses, I should fall on my knees before her.
 
Not as I would humble myself before Hypatia, but as I would revere an unworldly thing: a Dryad found in the forest, an Oread from the mountains, Oceanids in waters of salt or Naiads in sweet.
 
There is a scent of magic to Lais.

“Minkah!
 
What a pleasure to see you.
 
Sit.
 
Visit with me.
 
My friends are afraid to come, fearing I will be weakened.
 
But they are wrong.
 
I would be strengthened.”

Lais has lifted her pen from her paper, has set aside her tablet.
 
I wish it would not, but my heart sinks to know she means to do nothing more than hear me.
 
She knows I have come to speak with her.
 
What else does she know?
 
I am here now and I will follow the destiny my decision has driven me to.

“I am not what I seem.”

“I know.”

“I am
Parabalanoi
.”

“I know.”

“But I did not enter your house sent by the brotherhood.”

“I know.”

Her answers, not immediately heard by me, locked as I am in the words I have been saying, come through.
 
“You know?”

“Yes, Minkah.
 
I know.”

“How do you know?”

And now she laughs.
 
Her laughter is not meant to hurt or to threaten, but comes from her delight in what we say and how we say it.
 
“Oh, Minkah, I know because I have watched you.
 
I know because you tell me in so many ways.
 
No poor Egyptian would act as you have acted in this house.
 
I know also because my poems tell me.”

I cannot respond to this last.
 
I do not understand it.
 
“Does Hypatia know?”

“I think not.”

“Will you tell her?”

“It is not for me to do so.
 
If she would learn, it must be by your telling her as you tell me.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“I think not.
 
In this house, what you pretend to be you
are
.
 
What you are in this house, you become outside this house.
 
But you have come to speak with me.
 
What would you say?”

I am dumbstruck.
 
She speaks to the center of things.
 
“It is not the house, Lais.
 
It is you, it is Hypatia, who have changed me.”

“Ah, but it
is
the house for a house is those who live within it.
 
Father has changed you as well.
 
Though you love him not, Theon loves you.”

She knows this too.
 
I am seen by Lais.
 
I squirm in my skin.
 
It is terrifying to be seen.
 
I clench my fists until I am pained.
 
“Yet I remain
Parabalanoi
.
 
I remain sworn to an oath.”

“Yes.”

“Theophilus orders me to report on the friends of your father who do not know what you know.”

“Oh, my friend!
 
What shall you do?”

“I don’t know.
 
Knowing nowhere else, I come for your advice.”

“What are you moved to do?”

“If I do not spy, I will be killed.”

“And if you do?”