Written in the Ashes (63 page)

Without a word, Cyril climbed into his chariot box and rode away.

Alizar sheathed his sword and returned to the mourners, still angry, but satisfied that he had defended Hypatia’s name and her memory, even if he had not been able to defend her life.

One by one, Hypatia’s students, friends and followers walked up the steps to kiss the cold marble sarcophagus that bore her name. Hannah stepped forward after Gideon. “Bless you, Great Lady, my beloved friend,” Hannah whispered as her lips brushed the stone. “God keep you now.”

39  

Three days after Hypatia’s funeral, Alizar, who had been cloistered in the walls of his tower requesting no interruptions, was jolted from his grieving by yet more upsetting news.

“I am sorry to be the one to tell you,” said Gideon, setting the small iron key on the table. “I would not have come unless I knew for certain it was true.”

“How are you so certain?” asked Alizar, a new pain in his eyes. The hound at his feet groaned in sleep.

Gideon bowed his head. “A whore called Mira confessed it all when she learned that Hypatia had been killed. Apparently she was once a priestess in the Temple of Isis. She insisted that she was following Tarek’s instructions. And then there are these.” Gideon reached beneath his
klamys
and produced the forged documents bearing the bishop’s seal that declared Tarek the sole heir of Alizar’s estate.

Alizar looked over the scrolls and nodded somberly. “You are simply doing what a true friend would do,” he said. “I thank you.”

Gideon paused at the tower door. “My loyalty is always to you, Alizar. You must let me know if there is anything else I can do.”

Alizar propped his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands. “No, there is nothing,” he said. But then, as Gideon turned to leave, Alizar called to him, realizing that the sooner he dealt with this mess, the better. “No, wait,” he said. “Send for Tarek.”

Gideon nodded and left the room.

Tarek appeared in the doorway several minutes later and stepped inside cautiously. “Gideon said you wanted to see me?”

Alizar lifted his head and Tarek saw the disappointment in his eyes.

“Tell me the truth, Tarek,” said Alizar, holding up the iron key, his voice exhausted with grief.

Tarek’s eyes opened wide. Alizar was holding the key to the Great Library entrance in the catacombs, the secret route only they shared. He stammered as a few weak words escaped his lips.

“The truth!” Alizar demanded as his fist came down on the table, shaking the stone.

Tarek recoiled. “I gave the key to a girl I favor. It was only for a tryst, just for a night, and—”

“Enough!” said Alizar. Then he shoved the bench back from the table and walked over to the east window to look out, his eyes falling upon the blackened gash in the ground where the Great Library had been. It might as well have been his heart. “So you gave her the key and the map of the catacombs. She then sold them to the Parabolani at a very good price I understand. When questioned, she insisted that she got that idea from you. Did you benefit from this transaction?” Alizar pumped his fists.

Tarek’s head fell forward. “You have always hated me!”

Alizar spun around. “Hated you?
Hated
you, Tarek? How far does your blindness reach, boy? Even after my son’s death I took you in, I fed you, and gave you a position in my house that is the envy of every orphan in this city. When my own family insisted that you played a part in my son’s death, I pardoned you. Was I wrong to do that, Tarek? Tell me the truth. The truth! Or is the truth so malleable to you that it changes every time you think on it?”

Tarek did not look up.

“I ask you again, did you benefit from this transaction?”

“I gave them to her,” Tarek whimpered. “That much is true. But she is the one who sold them. I arranged a tryst, just for us, for one night. I, I wanted to meet her in the gardens, and, and—” Tarek stumbled over his words. “I never thought she would sell them to the Parabolani, Alizar.”

“You never thought…” repeated Alizar, his voice aseptic and cold, the words hovering in the room like icicles. “But it does not matter now, does it? Even if you are lying to me, what is done is done.” Alizar took a deep breath and let his gaze drift back out to the empty harbor.

“That is not fair,” said Tarek. “Hypatia herself risked her own life by giving a public lecture against the advice of everyone who knew her, including Orestes. And you want to make me responsible for what happened.”

Alizar stood over the boy. “Not fair?”

“You are just looking for someone to blame. I am so convenient.”

Alizar took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Sit down, Tarek, before I kill you myself.”

Tarek sat.

“Let me explain the true function of an apology. It is not to admit guilt, or to accept blame. An apology is to connect yourself to the pain of others, and in feeling their pain, experience remorse for the part you played in creating it. Yes, I am very angry to learn what you have done, but I am even more infuriated to see that you seem to have no conscience about it.”

“That is not true,” said Tarek.

Alizar waited.

“It is just that
I
did not kill her. I did not burn the library. And I know you are angry, but I feel it is not justified against me. Why not save your fury for Cyril, for the Parabolani? For those who truly deserve it?”

Alizar sighed. “Do these belong to you?” He shoved the scrolls across the table. Tarek recognized them immediately, and he looked up to the ceiling without compunction, his eyes unable to meet Alizar’s. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I am not interested in punishing you. In fact, I am not even interested in you. I will do now what I should have done years ago. All the while I have been in prison you have lived here without working, without practicing any skill except spending my money and waiting for me to die so you could steal my entire estate from my daughter. I know you traded Cyril the Emerald Tablet for these forged documents.”

“The tablet was a useless pagan stone.”

Alizar held out his hand. “Give me your keys, Tarek.”

“My keys?” Tarek asked as his hand brushed the keys that hung at his chest beneath his
tunica
.

“Give them to me or may Kronos devour your soul.”

Tarek removed the string of keys from around his neck and coiled it in Alizar’s open palm.

“Now get out,” said Alizar.

Tarek looked around himself helplessly. “Get out? But, but where will I go? What will happen to me?”

Alizar did not look up. “That is your business now,” he said.

Tarek swallowed audibly as he realized that Alizar was serious. “But I am sorry,” he said. “I am sorry for what happened. Surely you realize that.”

“I realize that your apology comes because you do not find my decision agreeable to you, and you would like to alter it. And I am deeply disappointed that you feel nothing for anyone other than yourself, Tarek.” Alizar turned his back and set his hands on the window ledge. “You are not my son.”

“But I do not know what to do,” Tarek whimpered.

Alizar unsheathed his sword. “An extraordinary gift. Use it wisely. Now, get out of my house. And should you ever return, I will run you through in the name of Zeus.”

Tarek slowly backed out of the room and fled down the steps.

Alizar waited until he heard the footsteps on the stairs receding, and then he sheathed his sword.

How could it have come to this?

But then Alizar remembered his grandson asleep downstairs, a little infant completely unaware of the broken world beyond his mother’s breast, and a smile flickered briefly across his lips before it faded, as the effort to be joyful was simply too difficult to sustain.

40  

Five days after the spring equinox, beneath the shade of the sprawling fig tree in Alizar’s courtyard, the women of the house gathered to drink in the fresh air, even if the spring they had hoped for was still shrouded in a grey gown above them. The courtyard fountain sang musically, spouting a stream of water into the limpid pool of lotus flowers and golden fish while unseen larks and finches twittered in the newly leafed high branches of the fig tree. The delicious scent of fresh grass and spring blossoms filled the air. Hannah stood by the courtyard gate, tickling the muzzle of the grey stallion who had stuck his head over the fence for some affection while Alaya splashed her feet in the fountain. Sofia, relaxing on a divan in the shade, sewed the finishing touches on a pair of tiny satin slippers for baby Ali, asleep in her arms.

Hannah kissed the stallion’s nose and walked across the courtyard to sit on the low wall beside her lyre. As her fingers traced the delicate curve of the instrument she let out a sigh of gratitude-tinged sorrow that she had brought it to Alizar’s the week before the fire. It was the only piece of Hypatia she had left. Alizar had announced that morning that they he would sail for Athens within the month. He was going back to Greece permanently so that he could attend to the vineyards in Harmonia, and had invited Gideon and Hannah to join he and the rest of his staff. There was so much in Alexandria that Hannah was not ready to leave behind, yet those things were all mostly memories now. Alizar had already sold his vineyard beside Lake Mareotis, though the price he received was far lower than he might have gotten in the years before the drought. Hannah felt reluctant to go, but then there was also Alaya to consider. Hannah wanted to spare her daughter any further loss of friends. They had already lost their home, all their clothes and possessions burned in the fire. Thankfully, Alizar had been kind enough to take them all in. His house had never been so crowded as Hannah, Alaya, Gideon and Sofia had all taken up residence. Alaya seemed to adore the attention, but she often asked for Tarek who, in spite of everything, Hannah missed. She had to admit that a life in Alexandria would be miserable for her daughter without friends and family. Hannah watched Alaya playing in the fountain and smiled. Soon it would be time to teach her about the rhythm of the moon and the seasons. How she would have loved to show her daughter the old olive tree on the hill in Sinai where she had tended the sheep and the goats in her father’s pasture, where as a child she had come to befriend the moon. She wished Alaya could see the ewes giving birth in the soft green pastures of spring, and taste the clear water of the streams that ran down the rocky crags of the mountain.