Written in the Ashes (11 page)

Tarek appeared at Hannah’s side and gave her a start. He tugged her deeper into the tent. “We are too late,” he whispered. “Just stay quiet and pray they pass.”

The girl was crying and pleading with the robed men, who pushed her down on her knees into the dust in front of the barley merchant’s tent. Over her shoulder, Hannah could hear the Roman merchant sputtering prayers and complaining to the goddess Concordia. “Why here? Why in front of my shop? I have customers today. Pray, goddess, this pass.”

Hannah clutched Tarek’s hand. “That girl, Tarek. Who is she? What has she done?”

Tarek shook his head. “She is a pagan, as her mother before her. It does not matter what she has done, if anything. They will make an example of her.”

“What do you mean ‘an example’?” A cry escaped Hannah’s lips. She knew the terror within the girl’s eyes all too intimately. Then Hannah recognized one of the men from her first day in the city as the priest called Peter who had cut the arms from Hypatia’s servant. He had a menacing face, and he was taller than the rest.

Peter began to speak, calling for the attention of the people in the marketplace. A sullen-faced, yet grotesquely interested crowd gathered to witness what the priests had to say.

“This whore has been found guilty in the eyes of God for acts of black magic and sorcery! She will not renounce her heathen worship and take up the path of our Lord, Jesus Christ. God requires witnesses to her sins.”

The girl bent her head to hide her tears. “I am not a sorceress,” she said. “I am a Jew.” In response, one of the priests kicked her in the ribs with a sickening crack.

The girl crumpled.

Hannah freed herself from Tarek’s grip and crouched near the doorway, fury rising in her blood. She squeezed her fists until her knuckles whitened.

“Hannah, stop.”

Hannah clung to the rim of a clay pot, unable to turn her eyes from the beautiful girl lying in the dust just feet away. The girl turned her head and met Hannah’s eyes in a look of desperation Hannah had seen before in the other women, chained in the cage with her as they traveled into Egypt.

“Hannah,” Tarek said sternly. “Step away from the door.”

Hannah looked back to Tarek, then to the girl, fear and fury struggling in her eyes. “Is it true what they say about her?”

“I do not know. It does not matter. They accuse women of black magic here from time to time.”

“Even Jews?”

“It is not our concern.”

“Not our concern?”

“Do you want to be next?”

“Tarek, look at her. She is just a child.” Hannah remembered the road and the slave traders—their hands on her body, the way they took turns with their angry thrusts—as if it were the hour before. She shuddered.

“Hannah.”

“No.” Hannah would not look at him. “No, they cannot do this to any sister of mine.”

Hannah stepped from behind the barley merchant’s tent and into the crowd.

“And herewith this heretic chooses not to renounce her sins,” said Peter, raising his fist. “She will accept Jesus Christ the Lord or be sacrificed in his name.”

Sacrificed
. Hannah cringed.

A murmur went up through the crowd, and more people joined from the market to watch the unfolding scene, riveted by dark curiosity.

Before she could think, Hannah’s hand flew up. “Stop! You must stop. She is only a child. What kind of sorcery could she possibly know?”

The girl sat up in the dust and looked at Hannah, her dark eyes lit with hope.

The four Parabolans turned their gaze to Hannah, and immediately she felt the gravity of her folly.

“Seize her!”

Hannah turned at once, and fled.

As Tarek dashed out after Hannah, he heard the barley merchant muttering how this new bishop was going to put him out of business.

Hannah ran swiftly around the corner and down to the end of the next street, pushing through hoards of hawkers and camels, fishermen and donkey caravans. Peter and two other Parabolans were gaining on her, and they had signaled to fellows who were joining in the chase; Hannah could not count how many. It was a sea of black robes.

Peter shoved a man with his box of chickens out of the way, the flustered birds breaking free of their cages, the man falling to his rump in the street.

Tarek grabbed Hannah’s hand and pulled her along. At the next corner he opened a small wooden door and shoved Hannah through and then stepped in behind her, the narrow dip between his collarbones quickly rising and falling with breath. Hannah made such a panicked sound when she exhaled that Tarek clamped his hand over her lips and watched through the slats in the door as the Parabolans passed by. The door they had hidden behind appeared to have led them into a small kitchen. Tarek turned around as an old woman came out of the next room and began screaming at them in Egyptian, brandishing a broom.

“She thinks we are thieves. We must go,” said Tarek, and the door closed behind them with a bang. The old woman was still yelling obscenities at them and shaking her broom as they vanished into a narrow passage strewn with lines of limp laundry hung between blue doors that led to small homes stacked three high in a poorer quarter of the city.

At the alley’s end, Tarek peered out from between the houses. Five meters ahead, two Parabolans spotted him and shouted.

Tarek quickly spun back in the opposite direction and knocked into Hannah, who tripped on an uneven cobblestone and stumbled, falling crookedly on the side of her foot. She cried out. Tarek did not give her an instant to waver. He jerked her up and she began to run, limping behind him as he pushed through the lines of wet clothes, the Parabolans now so close Hannah could hear them breathing.

As Hannah and Tarek came out of the lines of laundry, Hannah felt a strong hand grasp her hair. It was Peter. She shrieked repeatedly and with such terror that a line of hounds tied to a post nearby began braying enthusiastically, and one snapped the line with a twist of his head, dragging the others along behind. As the hound bit Peter’s thigh, Hannah twisted free, a clump of her hair left in his hands.

The other freed dogs barked and snarled mere paces from Hannah’s heels. She yanked her
khiton
free from the mouth of one as Tarek found a grate in the street and pried it open with a staff left out for pulling clothes down from the line. “Get in,” he commanded.

Hannah swung her feet into the dark pit below the grate and Tarek took her hands as she lowered herself so that she was hanging onto him and dangling at a great height. “Let go!” he yelled, but Hannah clung to him, shrieking, for she was suspended twenty feet over the river of the catacombs, holding to Tarek’s arm for her life.

“Tarek!” she cried out. “Tarek, do not let go!”

A dog lunged for Tarek’s knee and bit straight through his skin to the bone and he cried out. Two Parabolans nearby were having similar struggles with the dogs that pulled on their robes and growled as they bit the flesh of hands and buttocks. Tarek shook his arm free of Hannah’s hands and she screamed as her fingers slipped and she splashed into the dark, putrid water below. Tarek clocked the dog once on the ear, giving the beast a good disorienting blow, and he plunged in after her, shutting the grate as he went.

When he came up for a breath he looked around and called out into the dark tunnel.

“Here,” she sputtered, clinging to a pocket in the slick wall where a brick was missing, her whole body trembling.

Tarek paddled over to her and said, “By Poseidon’s trident I do not know whether to save you or let you drown.”

Hannah sputtered a mouthful of water and coughed. Tarek brought his arm under her. “The current is swift here. Wrap your arms over my shoulders. I know this place like my mother’s pockets. Trust me. I will get us home.”

In the vaporous light from the grate, Tarek could see Hannah nodding, her eyes wide in terror. He pried her hands from the wall and put them around his neck.

Hannah stared into the blackness that darkened as they drifted, convinced this was the end of her life. Her breathing turned to short gasps as she dug her nails into Tarek’s shoulder, pulling him under. He yelled at her to calm down before she drowned them both.

Overhead, another grate appeared, light streaming in from the street. Above them, Hannah could hear the voices of the Parabolani and the timid weeping of a girl. Shadows shifted across the grate.

There was the swish of a blade being drawn and then a gurgling scream.

A body was thrown down and the light was gone.

Then silence.

Water dripped from the roof of the tunnel onto Hannah’s head as they floated past. She clung to Tarek’s bony shoulders with numb fingers, terrified.

She heard Peter’s voice above them, saying, “…and rid us of the evil pestilence of witches such as these…”. His voice trailed off.

A few minutes later they floated through another patch of light and Hannah began to shriek, splashing in the water.

“Hannah, stop. Stop!” Tarek turned around and saw her face and gasped. She was looking at her hands, red with blood. She touched her face again and screamed, for it too was covered in blood.

He tried to hold her still, grabbing her by the wrists so she would not sink.

“The girl! Her blood!” she cried. “What hell have I come to! Curse you. Curse this city that steals lives!” She screamed and struggled against Tarek, who fought to hold her head up out of the unctuous water.

“Hannah, you have to try to help me.” Tarek pulled up on her lower ribs to help her to the surface. “We are not far from Alizar’s landing.”

Hannah sputtered, her face blanched with panic as she went under. Tarek dove after her and pulled her up, but she was heavy as a stone and went under again, swallowing more water as she sank.

Tarek kicked off his sandals and peeled off his clothing in the current, then dove and caught Hannah’s hand. He pulled her up and fought to get her
khiton
over her head as she coughed and gasped, but she resisted, fighting him with her fists. “Hannah, the cloth is pulling us under. Do you want to die here?” She shook her head. “Then help me take it off.”

Naked in the putrid water, the struggle eased a little and Tarek began to feel his way along one of the walls for the next turn in the anfractuous tunnels with Hannah’s arms around his neck. Her grip weakened with each breath. Tarek thought of nothing other than Alizar’s house, and focused the full strength of his will that they would reach it—that they would not die in the catacombs.

So.

It was hours before they saw the torches of Alizar’s landing and the familiar footbridge. Tarek pushed Hannah out of the water and she collapsed on the stones in exhaustion, her hair strewn around her body like kelp on the beach. Tarek pulled himself onto the stones and struggled up the stairs, his knee trailing blood on each step.

Jemir came at once when he heard Tarek’s call. Hannah was barely conscious when they tried to rouse her.

“Hermes, Zeus and Apollo, what have you done to her?” asked Jemir.

Tarek shot Jemir a nasty look and spit water on the ground. “What have I done? This little cunny challenged the Parabolani in the market. She nearly got us killed.”

Jemir’s eyes went wide as a lemur’s. “If they saw you, they will come here next,” he whispered as his hands trembled. “We will all be questioned.” But it was not the being questioned he feared; it was the ruthless methods of questioning.

Jemir lifted Hannah up in his arms and she coughed, and then her head fell back. Leitah appeared on the stairs. “Call Philemon,” Jemir said to her. “Go at once.”

For days following the incident in the marketplace Hannah did not leave Alizar’s house and slept most of the day and night. Her ankle was black with bruises and throbbed in pain, her spirit even more so. Leitah rubbed a cool mint salve into the joint and bound it with a splint and a strong length of thick linen. The doctor had said the healing would be slow. He was a wise man, though Jemir noticed he counted his coins with a certain glee that seemed inappropriate to his profession. This was one doctor who would undoubtedly be immune to the inflation in the market due to the drought.

Hannah could not push the death of the young Jewish girl from her mind. She was full of sickening regret. When the tears stopped, she simply stared at the wall, absently watching the light change as the sun drew down the sky.

For a week, no one in Alizar’s house slept as they waited in terror for the Parabolani to appear. But they did not come. Hannah lay in bed sipping Jemir’s willow tea, her leg throbbing with pain. She occasionally limped over to the balcony to look out on the street below. A cot had been placed in Naomi’s room for Hannah to rest while she recovered. Sometimes she sat beside Naomi and stroked the tiny hairs on her forearms and lifted a flagon of water to her lips. To be near Naomi was the closest thing she had ever known to having a mother. Hannah found comfort in those hours. Beloved Naomi.

And so Hannah rested and played merles and talked to Naomi. More weeks passed that way until one morning, something unusual occurred. A golden butterfly with dramatic black edging around its wings floated across the balcony and through the doors. It lilted around the room aimlessly for several minutes then settled on Naomi’s throat, opening and closing its delicate wings.