Written in the Ashes (50 page)

“Do we have the men responsible?”

Synesius nodded. “A young priest named Ammonius threw the stone that struck his head. He was arrested and imprisoned yesterday evening. The council convenes to decide a punishment this evening.”

“I do hope they consider castration,” growled Alizar.

They hurried through the Caesarium gardens, passing beside Cleopatra’s crypt then beneath the
peripatos
that led to the long hall that functioned as a medical facility for both research and treatment.

At the door, Alizar swiftly unwound the tattered burnoose that covered his neck and shoulders, spilling sand and desert dust.

Once inside, Synesius led Alizar down a colonnade and up a flight of stone steps to a door wedged between two tall pillars, where a female figure was slumped, her arms wrapped around her slim waist.

Hypatia looked up. “Oh, Alizar.”

Alizar’s anger toward Cyril instantly melted as he folded Hypatia into his arms, pressing her tiny body to his chest. “Be brave, Great Lady,” he whispered as he kissed the top of her head. “Be brave.”

She sobbed against his chest, wetting the cloth. “Why Orestes?” she asked again and again through her tears. Her precious friend. Her confidant. Her devoted student.

Though he wanted to console her, Alizar knew his time was short, and so he pulled away and swept Hypatia’s golden curls back from her forehead. “I must see him,” he said. She nodded and leaned against the pillar.

Orestes lay on a cot in the center of the floor, the last remaining staves of sunlight falling across his bare, bruised shoulders. Phoebe knelt beside him, pressing the back of his hand to her cheek. When she saw Alizar, she stood up and hugged him wordlessly, and then knelt back down beside her husband. Orestes lay motionless, eyes closed, his forehead and left eye bandaged with strips of linen. His chest and shoulders were cut and scratched; another bandage encircled his ribcage. The sheets were pulled down low over his hips to let the wounds breathe.

As Alizar took in this tragic vision of his beloved friend, Philemon, the doctor, appeared from another room. He was a shrewd little man with a round, bald head and short stubby arms with elbows that never straightened completely. When he saw Alizar he gave a disinterested nod of greeting.

“Philemon,” Alizar nodded in return.

“This is a medical ward, Alizar,” Philemon chided him. “You come here, you need to
wash
.”

Alizar ignored the doctor’s strange obsession with cleanliness. “How bad is he?”

“If you wash,” said Philemon, regarding Alizar’s grimy appearance in disgust, “you can help me change the patient’s bandages.”

Alizar inhaled sharply. “How long will it take?”

Philemon frowned. “You have a dinner to attend?”

Alizar shook his head. “My slave. Like a daughter to me. Hannah. She is not well from our trek in the desert. She needs you at once. As soon as we are done here.”

Philemon nodded, and they went to work.

Later in the night, Alizar emerged from the ward where the praetorian prefect of Egypt lay, his head from the temple to the crown, split to the white skull where the stones had struck him, his left eye crushed and useless. Philemon, who tended to cluck his tongue as he examined his patients, thought it unlikely that he would survive the night. He packed his bag and set out to Alizar’s home to see about Hannah.

“Alizar?”

The alchemist turned his head.

“Please walk with me,” Hypatia said.

The doctor nodded, and Alizar let him go on ahead.

The Great Lady had composed herself a little since their meeting in the hall several hours earlier, having changed into a
tribon
of pure white and bound her hair high up on her head in a topknot, but her eyes were still wet and pained. “I am thankful you have returned from the desert safely,” she said.

He nodded, thinking it best not to tell her about the Emerald Tablet just yet. “The Parabolani were at my home. I can stay only a moment,” he said.

Hypatia bowed her head. “Understood.”

They walked arm in arm to the top of the garden and sat on the stairs of the amphitheatre that overlooked the harbor, the lighthouse glowing like a beacon of promise against the night.

“I fear our precious city is cursed,” Hypatia said.

“All the more reason for our continued diligence,” said Alizar. A long pause followed his words, bringing with it the sound of the waves lapping the seawall.

Hypatia lifted her eyes. “The council has ruled unanimously. Ammonius will be executed tomorrow morning.”

Alizar folded his hands. It was good news, but it did not seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter. Leitah’s death, the third of his prophesy, was a terrible blow, now this.

“Cyril has grown in his audacity,” said Hypatia quietly. “We must appease him somehow before he destroys all of us.”

“I know. Perhaps we should just give him what he wants,” said Alizar, his words tumbled together in a heap. All he could see behind his eyes was Leitah, slumped in Jemir’s arms; the flies that circled his precious hound, Orestes’s cracked skull and the light disappearing from the room.

“The Celestial Clock of Archimedes? Has the desert stripped you of your senses? If we give it to him he will not stop there and you know it. The entire library may fall in the name of his God. Think of the scrolls that would perish. You are even more aware than I of how much the world would lose.”

“He has written you as well?”

“Of course,” said Hypatia, a glimmer in her eyes.

Alizar took notice and sat up. “You have an idea,” he said. “Speak.”

“I have taken a new interest in Christianity,” she announced with a smile. “I am working on a treatise about the Virgin Mary that I believe will have immense influence.”

Alizar laughed heartily. “You mean you expect Cyril to read it? Nonsense. Put it out of your mind.”

Hypatia let her eyes drift across the harbor to Pharos. “They began constructing the Heptastadion bridge, Alizar, in the weeks since you have been away. We could not stop them. Pharos will fall next.”

“They found an architect?” Alizar had thought it impossible.

“Empress Pulcheria has personally commissioned it in the name of the emperor. Imperial spies told her that Pharos concealed the last of the pagans, and she wants them brought into the Christian faith by any means. They have plans to erect a church on the southern shore. Beside the Temple of Poseidon,” said Hypatia, her disbelief still outweighing her disappointment.

Alizar inhaled sharply. “How many texts are there in the library remaining to be copied?”

Hypatia laughed. “We will never save them all,” she said.

Hypatia slid her hand under the crook of Alizar’s elbow.

“You are right,” said Alizar, his heart aventine at her touch.

Hypatia squeezed his arm. “Tell me, in how many locations have you hidden the manuscripts?”

Alizar counted on his fingers. Malta, Nag Hammadi, Antioch, Crete, Ephesus, Cyprus, Cappodocia, Epidavros, and in the forbidden caves of Macedonia. “Nine,” he said.

“Have you finished the maps?”

Alizar shook his head. “No, not yet.”

“How will you conceal them?”

Alizar sighed. “I am working on it. Hypatia, I must go.”

“Of course. Certainly.”

They bade each other a swift goodnight.

Alizar rushed toward the entrance to the catacombs, his mind a flurry of thoughts. With Orestes indisposed, Hypatia was now Cyril’s final threat to power. Alizar knew he must make a plan to protect her at once.

30  

From beside the bed in the upstairs room of Alizar’s house, Gideon watched the moon float up over the wall behind the stable, then become tangled in the lower branches of the fig tree as Hannah slept in the same bed in which Naomi had died. Gideon held her hand, cursing whatever it was that was taking Alizar so long with the doctor. Jemir and Tarek paced the hall outside. Leitah’s body not even cold in the ground, they feared another corpse. In the middle of the night Gideon looked up to see the moon had lifted free of the tangled tree branches and drifted upwards toward the zenith of the sky.

Later the doctor arrived. He examined Hannah, then met Gideon in the hall. By then, Alizar had joined them. Philemon explained what his examination revealed. Gideon’s face fell, then went flush, and he made fists and stormed down the hall. Alizar set his hand on Philemon’s shoulder and thanked him for coming.

When Hannah slowly opened her eyes, it was to the sound of goat bells, and for a moment, she thought she was in her father’s pasture. She could hear him cooking over the fire, clinking spoons and pots, rummaging in his leather sacks. And then she could hear his voice calling to her, telling her it was time to awaken. But as she roused, she found she was in Naomi’s bedroom, Alizar asleep in the chair beside her.

“Alizar?”

Alizar’s eyes flew open. “Praise Zeus, Hannah. Are you really awake?” He stood at once and went to her, lifting a cup of water to her lips.

“How long was I asleep?” she asked.

“Days.”

“Days?” Hannah looked around the room, her eyes finding focus. “Where is Gideon?”

Alizar looked down. “He has gone out.”

“Out? But where?”

Alizar took her hand. “Do not worry. He will return shortly.”

“Where is he? Tell me, Alizar.”

“I do not know.”

“Where is Leitah?”

Alizar took her hand. “She is with the Goddess.”

Hannah saw the despair in Alizar’s eyes. “No. No!”

Alizar nodded.

Hannah exhaled and tears slipped down her cheeks. She wiped them with her fingers and leaned back in bed. Alizar cleared his throat. “The doctor says you still have the child. Miraculously. But then, I am not surprised.”

Hannah looked up, her eyes wet with sorrow. “I have it?”

Alizar nodded.

At twilight, Gideon returned in a drunken stupor. He stormed up the hall and flung open the bedroom door where Hannah slept, his sword drawn. Alizar immediately sprang to his feet. “Gideon, put down your sword.”

Gideon ignored Alizar and addressed Hannah, “There she is, treacherous woman.”

Hannah sat up, startled.

“Gideon, calm yourself.” Alizar went to his friend. “The girl is sick. She did not mean to deceive you. Let her be.”

“I have been deceived indeed!” Gideon raged, shoving Alizar out of his way. “Deceived. Hannah, I am glad to see you are well, but it seems there is something pertinent to our match that you have neglected to tell me.” Little drops of his spittle struck her in the face. “Or perhaps you believe me to be so stupid that I would never have guessed it of my own accord.”

Hannah drew a pillow up over her belly and clutched it to her body.

Alizar lunged for Gideon’s shoulder, but he evaded his reach. “Gideon, stop it at once.”

“Answer me, woman!” Gideon lifted his sword in the air for emphasis just as Alizar locked his arm over Gideon’s shoulder to wrestle him from the room.

“Stop it. Both of you,” said Hannah. “Gideon, I did not intend to deceive you.” Her voice trickled out of her throat as little more than a whisper.