Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria (40 page)

“I have told no one else.”

“Yes?”

“I have kept it a secret.”

“Would you mind telling
me
?”

“My sister has papers.”

No matter the pain in his toe, Cyril sits up.
 
I see he would hear of Hypatia.
 
I am as used to this as his screaming.

“There remains in my sister’s house one whose ear I have.
 
This one tells me Hypatia has finished a book long in the making.”

“Hypatia is forever writing books few can make heads or tails of.
 
A sane man would have no interest.”

I allow myself a quick uplift of eye and a quicker unholy thought.
 
If Cyril had used the word “slow” rather than “sane,” I would agree.
 
I am only a cuckoo in the nest, yet that nest contained birds as far above the common man as an eagle above a sparrow.
 
“This is not on mathematics or geology or astronomy or…”

“Enough of what it is not.
 
What is it?”

“Philosophy, as well as what she terms history, based on the work of forbidden books, especially one that is claimed to be composed by one called Mary Magdalene.”

“She
has
such a book?”

“She has.”

“And she has written her own book concerning what is said in an obviously counterfeit book of this woman?”

“Yes, Holy Father.”

“I need these books.”
 
With tremendous drama, Cyril points a finger fat as a cattail.
 
“And you will get them for me.
 
Immediately.”

I have long since decided Cyril need never know of the unlost library—with his bulk, the news could kill him—but once I’d decided to tell him of Hypatia’s work, I’d formulated a plan.
 
“Of course, Holy Father.”

~

Hypatia of Alexandria

Alexandria dies before our eyes.
 
It breaks our hearts and threatens our freedom, such as there is left of freedom.

Minkah calls my house the House of Hypatia.
 
Here gather bankers and businessmen, members of consortiums who own land for miles around, ship owners, wine and grain merchants, lawyers, orators, the
archontes:
holders of public office, certain of my students who are one or more of these things, come to stand or to sit or to pace, all the while talking of Cyril.
 
Some are Jews, some “pagans,” full half are Christian even so far as priests.
 
One is Timothy himself, cheated of his bishopric by Cyril.
 
All are resigned.
 
Long accepted as one more belief in our city of many beliefs, we come finally to accept Christianity taking precedence over all others by imperial decree.
 
But to accept its demand that it enter our minds and there dictate our thoughts under penalty of banishment, even death!
 
None, not even those of us Christian, find this tolerable.
 
And to have it, through such as Cyril, govern not only a people’s search for meaning, but the way a man conducts every aspect of his life—impossible!
 
Timothy, honored in my house, seems older each time he visits.
 
“If Alexandria sickens and dies, so too my Church sickens and dies.
 
Cyril is as a plague.”

From my place by our pool, I watch those who pace and speak.
 
Nildjat Miw watches fish.
 
If not for Miw, some would offer their sleek wet noses for stroking.

I have asked: why not meet in the house of Orestes or Timothy whose business this truly is?
 
They reply: Cyril’s spies are everywhere.
 
If so many are seen so often at the home of Timothy or Orestes?
 
I have replied: if the spies of Cyril are everywhere, then they are also here.
 
All smile and shake their heads.
 
Hypatia of Alexandria is beyond reproach.
 
Those who come could be attending lectures.
 
They could be students.
 
They could be anything.
 
I concede.
 
They could be anything.
 
But I do not rejoice.
 
And
 
I do not miss the look on the face of Minkah.
 
If I am witch, this can be borne.
 
If I am traitor, this threatens our house.

~

Hours ago, my “guests” left in a great clatter of voice and horses.
 
I lie awake, covered up to my chin for the night grows chill, Nildjat Miw curled round my head.
 
She growls in her sleep.
 
I neither growl nor sleep.
 
I think of my work.
 
Do I have it copied and sent to those I trust?
 
Augustine, Flavius Anthemius, Olinda, Catherine the widow of Synesius, Galla, who has wed her barbarian king and now lives in Barcelona, old Companions who hold important posts at the courts of Theodosius II and Honorius, if court the latter still has—but could my gift endanger them?
 
Do I keep hidden the one copy written by my own hand, having not yet decided what I do?
 
If I hide my work and all that Isidore found in the labyrinth, where do I hide it?
 
I think of my house.
 
There are earthquakes.
 
There are great waves.
 
There are fires.
 
Nothing is hidden from these.
 
And can any escape from Cyril’s legion of spies?

I do not toss and I do not turn, but lie still as death in my bed.
 
Miw no longer growls low in her throat.
 
As still as my cat in the night, do I mistake a slight movement along the hall, one that passes my door?
 
If so, who else but Minkah come to see that I breathe as I would know he breathes—and I think to call out, to assure him I live, to ask that he enter my bed, when my voice dies in my throat.
 
It could not be Minkah for my beloved would not make such sounds.
 
These are slight, quick, furtive.

Does a thief pad by my half-open door?
 
Or one who has come to ensure I shall never awaken again?
 
As if this were not enough, scarcely breathing, I remember my work.
 
Of all nights, on this night I neglected returning the codices to their wooden chest.
 
I did not lock my
armaria
.

Nildjat Miw does not lie still as I lie still nor does she wait.
 
Up and streaking for the door before I can even think to stop her—by the eye of Bast, if she is hurt, if she is killed!
 
Year after year, Father lay abed, hiding from a world grown dark.
 
I am not my father.
 
Before Miw is out my door, I am up and after Miw.
 
And as I go, I take up the knife kept under my pillow.

A murderer takes only my life, a thief only my goods, but an agent of Cyril might take my life’s work!

Barefoot, my hair wild from the restless tossing of my head, I make no noise as I move swiftly down cold steps of black obsidian, following Miw who follows the faint light from below.
 
If
Parabalanoi
, then he has come for Minkah.
 
But Miw does not pause at Minkah’s door and the light is nowhere near.
 
It shines out from my workroom where my work lies loose on my mother’s green table.

Knife in hand, muscles tensed for whatever comes, I slip through the arched door, guarded by Thoth and by Seshat, only to stop as if I have walked into a wall.
 
There stands my thief.
 
An open satchel in one hand, in the other a scroll—one of the Magdalene’s, transcribed by her greatest friend, Seth of Damascus—and next to, shading the flame of a small candle, Ife the African, grown old in the service of the family of Theon.

My thoughts burn to ash.

Minkah is suddenly behind me, his own knife drawn, Nildjat Miw stands on the table, her tail violently twitching, but no matter that she faces us all, no matter that she is most horribly surprised and most shamefully caught, Jone leaps for me, crying out: “I do God’s work!
 
Why does He stop me!”

Should she mean me mortal harm or merely mortal sorrow, I drop my knife, hear it clatter on the stone of the floor, remain still as my sister beats at me until both she and I are exhausted, for I will not turn my body from her blows or from her hatred.
 
And all the while Minkah holds ready his knife until Jone, without satchel or papers, but a face grown gaunt with torment, turns and runs from a house that is ever and always hers.

No more would I punish Ife than I would Jone, for Ife has ever pitied my sister and given what she could give.
 
But when I look she too is gone.

~

Minkah and I sit in the window Lais once sat in, our faces lit by the stars and then by the rising of the sun.
 
By the time it stands full above the rim of the earth, as round and as red as a pomegranate, it is decided between us.
 
My work must rest with the Great Library.
 
It must live in the caves, forever if that is its fate.
 
Only now do I know its name:
The Book of Impossible Truth
.

I have decided a further thing, a thing I must do alone.

My world dies.
 
Before it is gone forever, I must learn to Live.

~

Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria

As Bishop of Alexandria, its true Holy Father, first among many, I call for the bearers of my golden litter to halt, causing the bronze litter beside me also to halt, and the enameled litter behind the bronze.
 
I sit up with the help of a slave, and stare at the house before me.

Staring, the voice of my mother comes to my ear as the shriek of a chariot wheel, shrill with irritation.
 
“Cyril!
 
I could have fallen!”

The play we’ve just seen was not Roman but Greek.
 
Greek plays are nothing but talk.
 
Roman plays are all action: limbs lost, women raped, men buggered, buttocks bared, cocks waggled, and blood everywhere, squirting like milk from teats.
 
I should have told her it was Greek.
 
That way, she would not have come.

I ignore her.
 
Two years firmly clamped to the Throne of Mark, sending out decrees and edicts to all of Egypt and to Libya, I now ignore Theophania, sister to the deceased Theophilus and mother to myself.
 
If
she
is irritated,
I
am nearing exasperation.
 
Could I send her away, a house in Canopus, order that she never return?
 
But her voice would still reach me: letters, messengers, the gossip of others.
 
Could something more permanent be arranged?
 
Interesting question.

Time enough for that.
 
I turn to my friend, the skeletal Hierax, dwarfed in the litter beside me.
 
I know I am huge.
 
But is this not as God made me?
 
“That house, the one lit like a palace.
 
The courtyard seethes with noise and upset.
 
I recognize faces.
 
There and there!
 
And there!
 
See them?
 
Christians of influence!
 
Who lives in this house to have so many guests of import?”

Hierax is surprised I do not know, but I cannot know everything.
 
If I trust anyone, and I do not, I trust Hierax who bears scars from Orestes that will never fade.
 
Answering, he keeps his high voice flat.
 
Bothersome thing to know one is feared by all.
 
But also exhilarating.
 
“That is the House of Hypatia, Cyril.
 
She is doted on and worshipped.”

I show no surprise at Hierax’ answer, though I am surprised, and not only because I did not know the house.
 
It is how the house affects me.
 
Unless ordered to, none comes to the House of Cyril—lately the House of Theophilus, and before that the home of rich nameless Greeks.
 
None come happily.
 
No horses clatter in my courtyard.
 
No litters are strewn about awaiting their occupants.
 
No voices are raised in greeting.
 
My halls are not filled with guests, my atrium not filled with discussion and praise, the room in which I dine each night is empty of all save myself.
 
In short, I am not doted on nor am I loved.

My heart shrinks in my chest until it feels the size of a pebble, some small thing rolling at the edge of the sea, back and forth, going nowhere, meaning nothing, a stone among stones.
 
I think of Jone, whey-faced and cringing as she told me she’d failed to acquire her sister’s papers, but swore she would not fail twice.
 
Physical violence is a crudity left to others, yet at the whispered news I’d flung out my arm and slapped her.
 
The sound of the slap was meaty.
 
Jone is no more than meat.
 
And yet, could it be I am no more than Jone?
 
Hypatia is loved.
 
Jone is not loved.
 
I glance at Theophania, bitch mother and witch.
 
To think of myself as I think of Jone brings me to the point of madness.
 
Staring at the brilliant house of the brilliant Hypatia, I feel myself a homeless cur in the streets.
 
As a dog, I would howl.