Unburning Alexandria (5 page)

"So much for being inconspicuous," Marcellinus muttered.

"This vessel is indeed very ordinary," Flavius replied. "But Josephus was sure he saw you on the bow." Flavius nodded to Josephus, who smiled nervously and nodded deferentially. Flavius turned to Synesius. "We were hoping you were returning to Ptolemais."

"I have the honor of accompanying Marcellinus to Alexandria on behalf of Augustine."

Flavius started to speak but sipped his wine instead.

"Is the Bishop's presence urgently needed in Ptolemais now?" Marcellinus inquired. "I assume that is so, otherwise you would not be making this visit."

"Yes," Flavius replied. "The Nitrians are at large again. They burned three homes, just yesterday."

Marcellinus sighed. "Too many fires, too few men of God to put them out."

Synesius shook his head. "I am needed in Alexandria."

Marcellinus stroked his chin and addressed Synesius. "Alexandria is the jewel. But neither can we afford to lose Ptolemais to the heretics. . . . Go with your worthy priests to Ptolemais tonight. And then come to me in Alexandria."

* * *

Synesius touched one of the alabaster columns of his home in Ptolemais and looked down at the harbor. "I never tire of looking at this." He drank deeply of his wine.

Flavius and Josephus nodded. "The Romans rebuild well. The elders say it is even more impressive now than before the great earthquake," Josephus said.

"I am sure that is true," Synesius replied. "If catastrophe does not destroy you, it makes you stronger."

"Perhaps, then, we are blessed," Flavius said quietly. He lifted his cup to the harbor. "To the most beautiful Ptolemais of all."

Synesius emptied his cup. He looked down at the mosaic on the floor. "Paul of Tarsus visited the Ptolemais on the Galilee. Perhaps that makes it more beautiful than this. . . . No, Paul was blind to one of the most inspiring beauties of this life – Paul was blind to the beauty of women. . . . Yet Paul was martyred by Nero, and that deserves our unquestioning faith. We will be martyrs soon, too, if the Nitrians and the Donatists and the other lunatics have their way."

Flavius and Josephus had no response. Synesius's servant refilled his empty cup. "Bring me Benjamin," Synesius commanded.

* * *

Benjamin arrived in the very small hours of the morning. Synesius's priests had left an hour earlier.

The two were alone on the mosaic.

"I saw someone who claimed to be your father, in Carthage." Synesius spoke plainly, still under the influence of the wine.

"Yes, I know."

"And you know, I assume, that he looks to be not even five years older than you?"

"Looks can deceive," Benjamin replied, smiling.

"This is a source of mirth for you? I assure you–"

"I apologize," Benjamin interrupted. "Truly. . . Yes, Jonah is my father. And he indeed is my age. And I know he explained to you how that could be, and he gave you . . . instructions about how you could prove that."

"Perhaps this very conversation is sufficient proof."

"I would follow his instructions."

Synesius considered. "Tell me about the Nitrians in Ptolemais."

"Very strange," Benjamin replied. "I thought their worst venom was reserved for Christians who disagreed with them. But they seem to burn indiscriminately now. They burned my father's house again."

"Why? What was left for them to burn?"

"I do not know. Perhaps they wanted to destroy what my father had buried under the house – more scrolls."

"And did they succeed?"

"I have the scrolls."

"Good," Synesius said. "And is your father safe?"

Benjamin nodded.

"Good," Synesius said again. "But none of us will be safe – none of us that we love will be safe – until we destroy the destroyers."

"Flavius told me that your soldiers are ready."

"Yes," Synesius replied. "If your information about where they are hiding is correct, we can scour the Earth of them – or, at least, our earth here in Ptolemais – before sunrise."

"My information is correct."

Synesius nodded. "Will you come with us?"

"I will."

* * *

The Nitrians, surprised, fought ferociously. They brought down four or five Romans for each one of themselves. But the Roman numbers eventually smothered the Nitrian caterwaul. The Nitrian leader, mortally wounded but still conscious, was brought to Synesius.

"You have accomplished nothing," the Nitrian rasped.

"You are barely more than a boy," Synesius said. He felt ill. He felt inhuman, unChristian. The Nitrian was 15, 16 years at most. Their leader. He was the oldest of this group. "Tell me who else of your kind I can talk to – to stop this bloodshed – and God will forgive you."

The boy's sneer cracked the blood that was caked near the corner of his mouth. He coughed and his body shuddered. His voice was barely audible. "We do not need your forgiveness. The Engineer–" He coughed again, in savage spasms. He coughed and died.

Synesius put his hand over the boy's heart and said a prayer.

Benjamin stepped forward. "I did not understand his last word."

"Nor I," Synesius replied. "Not Greek. Perhaps a Latin tongue of which I am unfamiliar. . . . It does not matter. I must go to Alexandria now and let Marcellinus know the insanity he will be facing."

Flavius joined them. "He may already know."

[Alexandria, four days later, 413 AD]

Synesius spotted the Pharos Lighthouse, gleaming in the distance.

His trip from Ptolemais had taken longer than he wanted, but now he regretted that it had not taken just a little longer, still. It was late afternoon, and the magnificent light of the Pharos required the pitch of night for its best effect.

The sun was setting behind his back when his ship docked in the harbor. God help him, he knew there were matters before him that concerned many lives, but he could think only of Hypatia. Her eyes of coal shone through him even when she was not at hand. He could feel her gaze in every part of his being. He could not leave her to the Nitrians. But she was stubborn. Devoted to Alexandria, far more than a daughter to a father's memory, than a scholar to a wondrous tome. What really kept her here? What secret of Alexandria, what chasm in her soul?

Synesius and Josephus left the ship. "Go to Marcellinus," Synesius said. "Tell him what happened in Ptolemais. I will join you later."

Josephus nodded, started to walk, then turned back, nervously, to Synesius. "Where are you going?" His voice quavered a little more than usual.

"The Library."

Josephus nodded again, involuntarily raised an eyebrow, and left.

Synesius was not happy about Josephus being the one to first inform Marcellinus, but he had waited long enough to see Hypatia. Too long, given that the Nitrians had already infected Alexandria. He walked quickly towards the Library. From this distance, it was alabaster in the setting light, like the pillars of his home. Valiant white against the surging darkness.. . . . Synesius did not feel good, either, about leaving Flavius back in Ptolemais as the ranking Church official. He was sure not all the Nitrians were dead in Ptolemais. But he had to focus now on how many were alive here, in Alexandria, and what those demented boy-fanatics might have planned for Hypatia.

The pastels on the wall of the Library now coalesced into shapes and patterns. He had been here many times with Hypatia. "The sky is glass," she once had remarked to him, "the clouds its colors, those hues on the wall what is left when the sun in its absence shines through the glass."

She sometimes spoke as if she inhabited some other realm, and he–

She was standing in front of the Library. He put his hand over his eyes. Had his mind conjured her into being, right here in front of him, looking at the same Library wall, her back to him now? Had his need to see her somehow plucked her out of Plato's perfect realm, and brought her here before him? He took his hand from his face. He was trembling. She was real. He walked a few steps forward.

"Hypatia!"

She turned around and spoke his name. He could listen all day to the way she said that.

They exchanged trite pleasantries about the nature of his trip. But she could see that something was disturbing him.

He told her about the Nitrians. She already knew about their savagery and the peril they posed to her. His warnings fell not on ears that could not hear but which were fixed on other things. She scoffed and turned from him and looked again at the Library. Synesius followed her gaze. The Library looked older now than he remembered it. Almost as if the walls were weary beneath the pastel façade.

She spoke of Theon, her departed father. The great Librarian had succumbed to a fatal fever – the less charitable among Synesius's brethren had said it was an act of God. That was only three years ago, in 410 AD. Just a few months before he first met Hypatia

Her father was wise indeed. But Hypatia was wiser still, and her eyes and her voice were sheer beauty. When Hypatia looked out at the sea, it was if she was seeing for miles and centuries. When she looked at you, she was seeing your very soul. How could someone so wise not heed what he was telling her? How could eyes that saw so deeply not see that her wisdom and beauty were the very source of the jealous hatred the Christian fanatics had for her? He mustered his strength and told her again.

He begged her to leave with him. Marcellinus could wait a little longer – Synesius's ship might have encountered adverse winds on the trip it had just made. "There is nothing here for you now. Just memories and scrolls. And the scrolls are dwindling."

But she was stubborn beyond belief. That unbending nature was impossible to overcome. Why could she not understand what he was telling her? The reason, somehow, was not that she knew less than he but more.

She spoke of her devotion to the Library, but Synesius knew it was more than the scrolls that kept her here. He lowered his head in acceptance of her decision. He told her he would spend the night in quarters provided by Marcellinus and return to Ptolemais in the morning.

She smiled about what his relationship with Marcellinus, the Emperor's Secretary of State, said about his growing importance. If only it were enough to convince her. He reached into his robe and extracted a small bundle of scrolls.

Synesius knew it would take far more than a scroll, by whatever hand, to deflect this wondrous woman from her fate. He touched another scroll inside his robe – the thin scroll with weighty words which Jonah had given him in Carthage. Synesius wondered if it offered any hidden insight into what was compelling Hypatia to stay in Alexandria.

* * *

He watched her walk back to the Library. He watched a long time, as she receded, and his imagination gradually supplanted his perception. But he was aware that imagination had been assisting from the outset in everything that transpired between him and Hypatia. What she looked like under those diaphanous robes, which showed him so much yet not enough in this sinking sunlight. What she might truly feel for him. . . .

He was aware that his own life, even when he was not regarding Hypatia, was becoming entwined with the stuff of fantasy almost beyond comprehension. He touched the Jonah scroll again. A man who claimed he could travel through time, as any other man might walk through a city or sail on the sea. Other than desperation to protect Hypatia, what drove Synesius to entertain any belief in this Jonah and not dismiss him as a lunatic? Faith? Synesius had faith in angels – would he deny that they had the power to move through time? Faith could be applied to anything. It could save you. But it could also propel you to insanity, as it was doing to the Nitrians.

Synesius could no longer see Hypatia. He turned and began slowly walking towards the quarters of Marcellinus. How to defeat evil, save good, and save what he loved in the process? His only assets were his understanding, ever cloudy in these matters, and a scroll said to prove that a man could become an angel and travel through time.

Chapter Two

[Hotel de Vie (formerly Monticello), NY 2061 AD]

The pines outside her window were beautiful. They reminded Sierra of the pine trees in the backyard of her parents' little cottage on Sea Street in Quivett Neck, just a few feet from Cape Cod Bay. But she had been free to leave that place, even as a child – to walk to the water whenever she pleased. Here in Hotel de Vie she was a prisoner–

Heron stuck his head through the mottled ivy doorway. "I'm taking the fastrain to the city." He looked at his watch, a 20th-century analog model. "I'm meeting someone at the Millennium in 41 minutes. . . . Don't look so angry – I'm keeping you here to save your life."

She turned her head away, denying him the civility of a response. She walked to the window after he was gone, and followed his passage through the grounds outside. As always, he had something to say to several legionaries, Roman soldiers trained somewhere by Heron, and employed by him throughout time to do his dirty work.

These ones were armed to the teeth with sleek new guns – "I always take care to arm them with weapons appropriate to their time, just as I do with their garb," Heron once had boasted to her. "But for some special jobs I cannot resist giving one or two of them a laser, whatever the epoch," he had admitted a split second later. "Lasers leave no traces identifiable to people in the past who are not already familiar with them. And eyewitness accounts of bolts of light are usually dismissed as over-active imagination, or in ancient times, as the act of some god." Sierra knew that their presence here, in any case, made any escape unlikely.

A small, deep part of her was glad to be back here, some 19 years on the calendar after the time she had first become involved in this insane business, just a few short years that seemed a lifetime in her own lifetime. The ancient world had been around for a long time in 413 AD – in 150 AD, as well, even in 399 BC – the three times of her visits, although visit was too insignificant a word for it. Even in those ancient times, the lands near the Aegean and the Mediterranean had been densely populated for millennia. Here in the Catskills of New York – anywhere in the New World – dense population was a matter of several centuries, at most. The air was fresh to her – or maybe it was just good to breathe in something close to her own time.