Written in the Ashes (39 page)

“We should get her back to the inn,” said Gideon.

“Call for a chariot,” said Sofia. “I should stay with Hypatia or else she will be cornered by her admirers till dawn. I will bring Hannah’s lyre with me when we return. She needs a warm bath and some tea.” Sofia winked.

“It would be my pleasure, lady,” said Gideon with a bow.

But back at the inn, Hannah was not about to let him near her. He ran the bath and found the door shut on him when he returned with her tea. He tried it and heard the lock. He laughed out loud in the hall, still holding the tray. What a fool he had been! He was beginning to realize his mistake. This proud, magnificent creature was the only woman for him.

So.

Hannah awoke the next morning, exhausted and embarrassed about her drunken reverie the night before. She found Sofia having breakfast on the wide balcony overlooking the mountains in the northeast and the ocean of flat red roofs that made up the vista of the city in the south.

Sofia was intermittently tossing breadcrumbs to a one-legged pigeon and stirring her tea with a tinkling silver spoon. When she heard Hannah’s footsteps she looked up. “
Kalimera
,” she said. “How did you sleep?”

“
Kalimera,
Sofia
.
Well enough. And you?” Hannah poured herself a cup of tea and sat back on the chair with her knees up in her chest, pulling her shift down over her bare feet.

“Very well.”

Hannah stirred her tea. “Where is Hypatia?”

Sofia rolled her eyes. “She has received almost fifty invitations to dine with the praetors and magistrates of the city just since last night. Would you believe the sun has not even been up an hour and she is already back at the library discussing the Almagest with some fawning mathematicians? She will never escape them. Gideon has gone to accompany her.”

Hannah smiled, blinking back the brightness of the sun. “I see,” she said. Several crows swooped past them overhead, squawking as they sailed in acrobatic circles toward the beach. It was a remarkable day. Suddenly, Hannah knew that it was time. This was just the window she needed. She excused herself from the table, saying that she wanted to meet Hypatia at the library. Sofia thought nothing of it.

It was evening before they realized that Hannah was gone. Gideon, who had been informed by Alizar of her quest, was the only one among them who knew where she must have gone.

“Delfi?” asked Hypatia with some offense, straightening a pleat in her
tribon
. “But we will have to take one of those dreadful ox carts and I despise the way they bounce.”

“Hypatia, think of it as an adventure,” said Gideon.

“Adventures are for young boys,” said Hypatia, frowning. “I have tea scheduled with three important magistrates and a senator tomorrow.”

“You are coming with us,” said Gideon, “even if I have to drag you behind the ox.”

“Us?” asked Sofia.

24  

That evening Hannah tied the horse that she had borrowed from the inn and camped beside a winding stream that curved around a grassy bank. Though life in a city could offer baths and books, conversation and convenience, its beds could never offer a view of the stars. There beneath the sprawling limbs of a tall stand of pine, a chill biting her ears, Hannah felt most at home. She listened in delight to the sound of the stream and the wind in the branches as she reviewed the map to Delfi she had procured from the Athens library, and then snuffed out her candle.

While Hannah slept, Gideon and the other women searched for her.

The screech of an owl startled Hannah out of her sleep. She reluctantly opened her eyes to see the creature just overhead in a nearby tree, staring at her, its eyes like two lamps full of warning and mystery. Hannah shut her eyes again, but only for an instant before another kind of sound split the night.

She sat bolt upright, drawing the knife from the sheath at her calf. There was a cart on the road. She could hear the snorting of the ox.

Hannah paused, waiting. There was a sharp whinny from her horse, and then raised voices.

Hannah flew to her feet, immediately concerned, and scrambled up the bank to where her horse was tethered. The sight in the clearing gave her such a shock she could scarcely comprehend it.

There in the dim glow of the starlight lay Sofia, her dark hair tangled, her face contorted, the body of a man laying motionless in a deepening pool of blood beside her. Hypatia was standing beside a boulder, a knife raised in her hand, her sleeves streaked with blood, her shadow stretching behind her like a long, dark road. Gideon kicked at the corpse, its throat slit and gaping open like a macabre purse. Sofia, pale and shuddering, drew her
klamys
around her; it was torn across the shoulder, revealing one of her pale breasts.

Hypatia crumpled to the ground on her knees as the soiled knife fell from her hand.

Gideon saw Hannah first. She went to him, sheathing her knife. “What happened here?”

Gideon shook his head. “We stopped when we saw your horse by the road. When we got out the ox driver tried to fox Sofia’s coin purse. When he drew his knife, Hypatia killed him before he knew what happened to him. It was rather impressive, lady.” He gave a nod to Hypatia.

“Are you hurt?” Hypatia asked Sofia.

Sofia’s lovely dark eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away and found her feet. “I am fine,” she said. “Look, we have found Hannah.”

Hypatia did not respond. She buried her face in her fingers. The deed was done. Time would not run backward to undo it. She struggled within herself in a confusion and terror she had never known. Which act was the more condemnable, hers or the ox driver’s? She had just killed a man. Murdered him. She felt shame, yet complete justification all at once. She had violated every principle she knew, but had done it out of love.

Hannah lifted her eyes to see a white spirit sweep over the fire, but it was only the owl, returning to the night.

“We must bury the body,” Hannah whispered. “There will be wolves.”

Gideon nodded.

Sofia stared down at the ox driver where he lay on the blood-soaked ground. “I do not want to touch that beast.”

“Yes,” said Hypatia, her eyes empty and faraway, “Hannah is right.”

It was a strange moment for them all, discussing the body with the detached calm of four senators voting on a new law. They finally decided that without a shovel there was no way to bury the body, and since the dead are twice as heavy as the living, they really had no choice but to throw it in the river.

By dawn they stood on the road as the night gradually paled beyond the rolling hills, their breath fogging the air.

“I want to return to Athens,” said Hypatia. “There it will be just a bad dream.”

Hannah took a deep breath. “Go on without me,” she said. “Please.”

Before Hypatia could speak, Gideon broke in. “You cannot go back to Athens and neither can we.”

Then Hannah knew. “You told them?”

Gideon nodded. “Your quest is ours now, lady.”

So.

Hannah, riding the horse, led them out into a wide valley that wound north into the mountains. She hoped that Mount Parnassus would be visible by evening. Gideon unfolded the map, then rolled it up again. He agreed.

By night they snared and skinned two rabbits, then roasted them over the fire. Walking would be more difficult as they entered the mountains beyond the foothills, so they ate well and slept near one another for warmth.

On their third morning out of Athens, a cold rain fell in veils across the green valley floor before them. They came to a fork on the next hill, one side slanting off to a ledge, the other opening to a stony eastern face. There was only one choice. They picked their way across the wide field of shifting boulders toward a dent in the far-off hillside that looked like a cave, the cold rain soaking them to the skin. They had to move slowly to avoid tipping the boulders and falling into the crevices below, risking broken ankles and cracked skulls in an instant of miscalculation.

“Let us have a song, shall we?” said Hypatia, looking to Hannah.

Hannah smiled. There was no better way to cast out their fears.

So.

The sunrise on their fourth day brought clear skies as the fibrous clouds brought by the storm receded in the morning sunlight. They continued climbing west over the steep terrain above the sea, the green winter grasses emerging beneath the scraggly tufts of dry autumn brush underfoot. In the early afternoon, exhausted and somewhat discouraged, they passed through a windblown meadow where high overhead a murder of crows turned acrobatics in the air.

Hannah trotted the horse up to the top of the next hill, where beyond a thicket of pine, she emerged at the blustery narrow pass to a view of the entire northwest mountains and the sea. Hannah smiled as the wind swirled around her, pushing her this way and that. Before her stood the crumbling grey stone peak of Mount Parnassus, home of the nine Muses. In the folds of its verdant slope lay a miniature city of white marble, a mere glint against the sun.

Delfi.

Hannah took a deep breath and then rushed back to collect the others, her heart pounding for the thrill of spotting their journey’s end. She hopped off the horse to give Hypatia a turn and hugged Gideon, the first real warmth she had shown him. They were nearly there.

The climb down the ragged cliffs took ages. They traversed back and forth, leading the horse as it was too dangerous to ride. After the torrential rain, the soil was muddy and slick. Sofia, unused to such athletics, slipped on a wet leaf and shrieked, reaching out to a pile of stones to stop her fall. The stones gave way and crumbled down the hill, breaking open a nest of bees.

Sofia screeched and swatted hysterically at the bees until she finally found her feet again and took off down the path to flee the vicious assault, and she did not stop running until she came to an outcropping of boulders further down that concealed a spring encircled by a swath of tall pines. She flung herself into the water with a splash.

Hannah, Gideon and Hypatia exchanged quick glances and pursued Sofia at a careful distance, not wanting to draw the bees. When they arrived at the spring, out of breath from the chase, they found her standing in the shallow water, her wet black hair hanging limp around her body. “Are they gone?” she whimpered.

Hannah looked around and nodded. “I think so.”

The others stared at Sofia, and then, though they tried to contain themselves, began to giggle. “Sofia, your
himation
,” said Hypatia, pointing gingerly.

Sofia looked down to see her expensive Persian shawl dripping magenta dye all down her arms, chest, and legs, into the bright clear water.

Then Sofia too, began to laugh. She lifted the ends of her wilted shawl in her hands and began to howl until she found it difficult to breathe.

Back on the bank, the others burst with laughter until they fell to the ground holding their ribs, only to look up at Sofia and laugh even harder. “If only you could see yourself,” said Hypatia, tears streaking her face.

Then Sofia, with a devilish look in her eye, strode up to the bank and grabbed Hypatia’s arm and pulled her in. Hypatia shrieked and landed in the water with a splash, leaving Gideon and Hannah on the bank. Then it was Hypatia’s turn to pull Hannah into the water while Gideon slipped off his
tunica
and jumped in before anyone could drag him.

After the fit of laughter passed, the travelers spread their wet clothes over the rocks and lay on their backs in the thin winter sun to dry. Hannah found a mound of clay beside the spring and gently applied it to Sofia’s numerous welts.

“I must thank you,” said Sofia. “I have always dreamed of an adventure like the one had by Odysseus. You have brought it to me, and I am forever grateful, whatever happens. For now, I am fully alive, and it is wonderful, truly.” She turned and kissed Hannah, and smiled at her new friend.