Written in the Ashes (40 page)

The sun was resting on the sea over the Bay of Corinth when they finally wandered into the deserted streets of the ruined city of Delfi. Everywhere the heads of marble gods severed from torsos lay smashed upon the ground, scattered amongst the ruins. High on the slope, the tall columns of the
tholos
at the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia still stood, though the roof had been destroyed. The travelers walked up to the broad platform and leaned their cheeks against the cold slick stone as the sun sank into the sea.

“The gateway to Delfi,” whispered Hypatia.

“What is left of it,” said Sofia, equally dismayed. “The Christians must have been here.”

Gideon nudged a stone with his boot, then lifted it to see he had found a finger from a statue of Apollo. It was all that was left of a fine statue that had stood for hundreds of years. He slipped it in his sinus pocket.

Hannah tried to imagine the Delfi that Synesius had described to her, the Delfi that had once been considered the navel of the world, the throne of the Earth Mother Gaia, and later Apollo. In her mind she saw Delfi resplendent, gleaming, full of honor, its streets teeming with young athletes parading to the stadium, officials lining up to pay their pious respects to the Pythia. There was clearly nothing left of that place. Hannah ran her hand over a splintered marble block, her heart aching for the city as though for a beloved friend. “It is just as Alizar said, only worse.”

“I fear this empire will not rest until they have destroyed our entire world,” replied Hypatia.

There was no way to look upon Delfi without feeling the magnitude of the loss. Hannah bent down to the earth and placed an offering of pink flower petals on a ruined pedestal.

The angel would have wept to see it.

In the dim twilight left to them, the foursome solemnly continued up the hill to the quiescent city and found what they presumed to be the outer wall of the Temple of Apollo, a large structure of massive girth supported by thirty or more columns too tremendous to topple, though they had been defiled by Christian zealots who had smeared them with ink and excrement, and smashed them with stones and anything else they could find to hurl. One narrow opening led into a garden maze where the mulberry trees, once prolific with blossoms and fruit, stood dead. Above them lay an amphitheatre, what might have been a gymnasium, and several paths overgrown with weeds leading between the tall temples, some of which were merely damaged while others lay toppled upon themselves, the drums of the columns scattered across the field as though a giant child had knocked them down after an afternoon of play.

“That path must lead to the stadium,” said Gideon, pointing up the slope.

But the small, intact temple just beneath the amphitheatre caught Hannah’s eye. “Look there,” she said.

The travelers whispered while they walked toward it, as though passing through a cemetery in the presence of the dead. “Do you suppose there is anyone here?” asked Sofia.

“It seems completely deserted,” said Hannah as she took several quick steps to be nearer to Gideon.

“Emperor Theodosius had the city destroyed the year of my birth,” said Hypatia bitterly. “But I understand that there are several women still in residence here, protectors of the oracle, hidden beneath the streets.”

Only the radiant temple before them stood unaffected, a paladin of light. Perched above a sloping apron of twenty or more marble steps, twelve white Corinthian columns stood in support of a wide, triangular roof. As they came closer, they could see words carved above the eaves, in the center of the marble frontispiece.

“What does it say?” Hannah whispered.

Hypatia examined the letters in the fading light, although she knew them long before they pressed upon her eyes, for the saying had been renowned in philosophical circles for a thousand years. “
Gnothi Se Auton
,” she whispered. “Know Thy Self.”

The travelers paused at the base of temple for a long time as the evening grew darker and the glowing planet Jupiter appeared in the indigo sky over the highest peak of the mountain.

They tied the horse within reach of a patch of grass, and then, in silence, they walked up the steps and came to a door.

Hannah pressed it and found it open.

Beyond the door stretched a narrow hall where a line of flickering torches had been recently lit. Before they could call out, an old woman approached from far down the hall wearing a white
himation
bordered by the Greek key pattern, which flowed in long pleats to the floor. She walked without making a sound. “Good evening,” she said with a warm smile. “I am Stella. Welcome to the Temple of Apollo.”

The travelers shared glances of supreme relief and smiled back at the crone as she led them to several simple rooms furnished with washbasins and down beds. “You may sleep here tonight,” she said. “I will have some supper brought up to you. In the morning you must go to the sacred spring and wash, and gather white narcissus as an offering to the Pythia. You may stay one night, and then you must go. The city is no place for visitors now.”

The Pythia. Hannah wondered about the regal channel of the gods. Synesius had told her the Pythia had once been of tremendous importance when the oracle belonged to Gaia, the earth mother, but was gradually replaced by the priests of Apollo when the oracle was rededicated to the Greek sun god. What role did the Pythia play now that the city lay in ruin? Hannah sat down to untangle her thoughts.

Of all the travelers, it was undoubtedly Hypatia who was the most delighted see the simple yet civilized furnishings of the rooms. While the others sat by candlelight and discussed their quest, she zealously scrubbed her arms, hands, face, and feet, then curled up like a cat on the softest bed and fell fast asleep.

25  

Hannah awoke the next morning to the flutter of shiny black wings in a patch of grey sky through the window. As she propped herself up on her elbows she could see that Hypatia was already awake, her chin resting on her hand as she sat at the base of the window looking out. “
Kalimera
,” said Hannah.

“
Kalimera
,” said Hypatia. She was worlds away, her blue eyes lost at sea.

Outside the raven cawed. “My father says a raven at dawn is a good omen,” Hannah said.

“We could use a good omen,” said Hypatia without turning her head.

The four travelers walked together silently, side by side, out of the temple and east to the site of the sacred Castalian spring.

“It is said the spring was formed where the hoof of Pegasus struck the earth,” said Gideon.

“I can feel the divinity of this place,” whispered Hannah. “Like a synagogue.”

Sofia nodded. “It is the presence of Gaia, the Earth Mother, and of the Goddess herself.”

As they passed through the pine forest, they could hear water trickling. Several paces later they found the small stream and followed it to find two thrones carved into the mountain, a rectangular pool beneath them where a great blue heron was wading. The outer perimeter of the pool was a dried-up basin that had clearly once held quite a bit more water. The stone channel out of which the water flowed was smoothed by what may have once been a great waterfall that was now nearly dry. The heron ignored his visitors, and went about searching for unsuspecting frogs.

Hannah sat at the bank before entering the water. She had read about the Oracle of Delfi in the Great Library, and the scrolls had told of ornate marble halls lined in gold, magnificent statuary set all around the entrances, and massive gardens filled with flowers brought as gifts to the Pythia from all over the Mediterranean, Persia and Africa by kings and emperors: rare orchids, lilies, roses and fragrant vines. What had happened to them? There was supposedly a temple in the east built to house all the treasures of statues, vases, precious stones, perfumes and silks, but all the temples in the east lay in ruin. Why must the Christians destroy such a sacred place? Hannah dropped her head. When she finished praying, Hannah carefully removed and folded her clothes and entered the spring, which was hardly knee deep. The others did the same. Together they raised the water to their lips in cupped palms and drank of the cool spring. It was the purest water they had ever tasted, cold and sweet.

When they emerged and dressed, Hannah walked around the wood in search of Persephone’s flower, the tender narcissus.

“Here,” said Gideon, pointing down to a cluster of the tiny white flowers growing between two rocks beside the pool. Hannah picked one, drawing the little blossoms up to her lips to inhale their divine fragrance. Such a small gift did not seem like enough. She wished she had some wonderful treasure to offer the Pythia like the ones she had read about, a gold piece, Persian silk, something more.

“I am sure the Pythia considers all earnest requests, regardless of the expense of the offering,” said Hypatia. “One of the Indian texts I encountered said that one humble tear offered to God is more precious than a thousand chests of gold.”

“I hope so,” said Hannah, “because I have nothing else.”

Stella met them at the temple gate, her eyes aglow. “The Pythia will see you now,” she said softly, leading the travelers through the long corridors of the temple and into a large hall to wait.

The hall was clean, though sparsely decorated with a few vases and sculptures set on marble pedestals before large arching windows that afforded a view of the now barren garden, and a patch of the sky between two tall hills.

Hypatia and Sofia sat before the windows to look out, a heaviness upon their shoulders. Gideon took Hannah’s hands and squeezed them once. “I believe in you, Hannah,” he said. “We will pray to the spirits here and await your return.”

“Thank you,” Hannah said, moved by Gideon’s acknowledgement. Then she turned to Stella. “I am ready.”

Stella looked to Gideon. “Your slave will speak?”

Gideon nodded. “She is more than any slave. She will speak.”

Hannah nodded in thanks.

Hypatia closed her eyes. She had never believed in oracles or omens. She had lived her life empirically, scientifically, looking to life itself for answers. If what had happened to Delfi was any sign of what was to come to Alexandria, she did not need an oracle to speak any words of wisdom, or an Emerald Tablet.

The future was already laid out before them.

Stella led Hannah through the back of the temple to the end of a long hall, where an ornamental rug hanging on the wall concealed a secret door. “The Christians never found this one,” whispered Stella as they stepped inside and descended a long flight of steps that took them beneath the earth to another door, which Stella unlocked with a brass key that was kept hidden behind a loose stone in the wall.

Once inside, Hannah gasped. The long, ornate room opened to a dais where a veiled figure was seated upon a tripod throne, perched above a fissure in the earth that leaked a cool and pleasant smelling vapor. The oracle! Hannah felt her heart leap. At last her quest was at an end. Between her and the Pythia burned the eternal blue flame said to have remained lit for a thousand years, set in a wide copper bowl supported by a marble base inlaid with opals, abalone, and rose quartz. Completely covering the floor, and even stacked three high in places, were elegant rugs brought as gifts from Asia Minor and Persia, now threadbare in spots where the knees of thousands of noblemen over the centuries had knelt before the oracle. All around the seated Pythia, and in every corner of the room, stood enormous crystals: glittering amethyst clusters as tall as children, phantom quartz points, mounds of cut emeralds and sapphires like glittering anthills set in golden bowls beside shimmering peacock feathers in tall painted pots. Frankincense burned in long smoky coils, filling the air. As Hannah looked around at the concealed treasure of the Temple of Apollo, she was overcome by the feeling that here in the inner chamber of the Pythia, beneath the surface of the earth, there was a pulse, a promising heartbeat still supporting life, even though the city lay in ruin.