Written in the Ashes (65 page)

Without a thought to where she was going, Hannah climbed the stairs to the tower where the others had been and stopped at the closed door. She let her fist float in the air above the caduceus, and then she lowered it and turned away, and walked halfway down the steps. Then she turned and walked up again. Then down.

Up.

Down.

Then up.

Here her journey had begun. Here at the steps, sweeping. Here where she had discovered Alizar’s wife, Naomi, pale and asleep behind the door.

Downstairs the baby wailed as if just awakening, and Hannah could hear Sofia croon to him. Voices of love.

Hannah turned back to the door, and this time, she let her knuckles graze the wood.

“Come,” said Alizar.

Hannah pushed the door and stepped inside. “Alizar, I am sorry to disturb you,” Hannah began, but she lifted her head to see that no one was in the room. Strange. She was certain she had heard him.

That was when she noticed that the stairs to the roof had been lowered, a square patch of sky at the top.

Of course, the roof.

Hannah lifted the edge of her lavender
himation
embroidered with a lotus hem and ran up the stairs, beginning her speech again. “Alizar, I am sorry to disturb you, but I just wanted—” Her breath fell short at the last word she uttered, for there before her, framed by the orange disk of the sun, stood Alizar and another man she would have known anywhere.

Julian.

Alizar nodded to her, his eyes full of some deep, unnamed pain. Before Hannah could fully understand why, he excused himself. “I was just telling Master Junkar that there is a scroll downstairs that I want him to look at. I will go see if I can find it.” He bowed his head and swept past her, his long blue robe swishing down the stairs.

Hannah looked back at him, then to Julian.

He took three steps toward her to close the distance between them so they could hear each other over the wind that whipped against their clothes.

“It is good to see you again,” he said.

“I did not realize you were here,” said Hannah, her voice coming out colder than she intended. So Gideon had been right, he had come.

Julian sighed. Why was she not happy to see him? He reached forward to take her hand, leading her to the west parapet where the sun sat upon the horizon like a golden hen on her nest. There, Hannah withdrew her hand and pulled her shawl tighter around her body, her eyes full of concern.

“Hannah,” Julian began, his deep green eyes lit so that she could see the flecks of gold that spun within them, the same little flecks she knew so well in her daughter’s eyes. Their daughter. Unsettled, she looked away.

Julian sighed. “Have you not heard?”

Hannah straightened. “Heard?”

Julian closed his eyes. “The Parabolani also invaded Pharos.”

Hannah stiffened and drew in a sharp breath. “Does Alizar know? What happened?”

Julian gently squeezed her arm to comfort and brace her. “The temples were all destroyed.”

Hannah froze, her heart breaking. “And the monks? The priestesses?”

“We have an informant in the Church of St. Alexander who got word to us as the attack was launched. The battle occurred on the beach. Some escaped.”

“But where did they go?”

“I do not know. We will attempt to live our tradition in secret wherever we can rebuild.”

“And the priestesses in the Temple of Isis?”

“The Parabolans struck there first with their torches. I am so sorry.”

Hannah shook her head, disbelieving. “But surely some made it out.”

Julian took a breath and met her eyes. “We attempted to reach them. I do not know who escaped, but I fear it was very few.”

Hannah set her hands on the wall, bracing herself, suddenly flooded with a new despair. Mother Hathora, Iris, the little children, all lost? Could this be? “Why have we not heard this?”

“I came to inform Alizar just now.”

“So that is why he looked so grave. But why did you not send another? Do you not belong with Master Savitur?”

Julian sighed. “The man and the master war within me. The man had to see you again.”

Hannah closed her eyes and turned away, shaking her head.

Julian stepped forward. “What is it?”

“Gideon was right.” Hannah swallowed against the tears that wanted to break free.

Julian looked confused, and waited for her to continue.

Hannah looked back to him. “Julian, Gideon is to be my husband.”

Julian staggered a little toward the parapet. “This is what you want?”

She nodded.

He turned to go.

“No, please,” Hannah reached for his arm. “You must know I have thought of you so often through the years. Gideon has been generous to me, yes. But it is not his eyes I see when Alaya looks at me every day.”

Julian smiled. “She is my daughter, I know. I knew in the garden.”

“Yes,” said Hannah. “She is.”

Julian thought for a moment, then reached into his pocket and held out to her the little silver treasure. “I have kept it for you. You should have it now.”

Hannah smiled in spite of her heavy heart. “My hairpin,” she said, her voice quavering as she took it from his open palm. “My father gave it to me.” She pressed the sleeping swan to her lips, and ran her finger along the glossy silver feathers. “I thought I had lost it.”

“Not lost,” said Julian, his voice tinged with sadness. “Never lost.”

“How did you know really?” Hannah looked up into his eyes. “How did you know Alaya was yours?”

Julian smiled. His smile of light. The sun would be envious if it knew. “When I met her in the garden she told me her name, the same as my mother’s, and I calculated the years since the marriage rite of my coronation. Then looking at her, I saw you, and I knew.”

Hannah nodded and looked away, her eyes drifting off beyond the city walls over her shoulder to the harbor in the west. To the harbor where Gideon was preparing his ship. The line of the anchor might have tangled in her bones, for she felt pulled by the bond that had been forged between them over the years, in comfort and in trust.

Julian felt her thoughts. “I should not have come,” he said. “I can see it was unfair to indulge myself this way.”

“No,” she said. “No, I am grateful you came.” She touched his hand and then she withdrew her fingers, warm from his skin. “It feels like such a long time ago. I had to fulfill the quest you gave me pregnant with the child. Looking back I am amazed that she lived. Daughter of a warrior. You were right, the shard of the tablet protected us.” Hannah removed the necklace and coiled it in his hands. “That quest made me who I am,” she said, closing his fingers over the shard. “I am sorry I failed.”

“You did not fail,” said Julian. “The Emerald Tablet was secured by Alizar in the crypt of Cleopatra the night the library burned.

“Yes, but Alizar said the crypt was destroyed.”

“Master Savitur had foreseen this, and he retrieved it. Now it is safely hidden and restored to its full magic. Its time will come again. You did not fail, but succeeded magnificently. And we thank you.”

Hannah felt stunned at this news. So the tablet itself was safe. Alizar’s etching would not be all that remained in the world of its magic. There was yet more mystery to the tablet than she had ever envisioned. So her quest had been a success in the end. Without Julian standing before her, she would never have known.

Julian smiled at her, the beautiful goddess from his dreams. She was more beautiful than the images his mind had conjured of her. He was grateful to see her, and knew the rightness of coming in his heart, even if he could not stay.

Feeling their time was drawing to a close, Hannah took Julian’s hands. “I want you to know I am forever indebted to you for rescuing Alaya from the fire. I do not know how to tell you how grateful I am, how grateful we all are.”

Julian nodded. “It was my honor.”

Hannah scanned the horizon, searching that swift hard line at the edge of the world for words, then looked back to him, her eyes welling with tears.

Julian turned and set his palms on the parapet, more touched than he remembered by her beauty. “I never expected this.”

“Nor I,” said Hannah, remembering their hours in the lighthouse together like it was only moments ago.

“I must go.” Julian turned to her then, and took her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers, kissing her deeply, knowing it was all they would ever have.

“Forgive me,” he said, stroking her cheek. “I needed to see you one last time.”

Hannah smiled. “As did I,” she said, “need to see you. Where will you go?”

“I will join Master Savitur and the remaining Nuapar monks in the Celtic Isles. We have a fortress there built long ago. If it has survived the years we will reclaim it.”

“Will we never see you again?”

“You will see me.”

Hannah nodded, allowing herself to look into his eyes until, unable to restrain herself, she kissed him one last time, her whole body trembling. Julian lifted her in his arms as the years between them scattered like ashes as they kissed passionately, the sun warming their faces.

“I will always be inside you,” Julian promised.

“You always have been, Master Junkar.” Hannah said clutching him, drinking in the scent of his robe for the last time, her tears wetting the cool cotton.

“May I say goodbye to Alaya?”

Hannah nodded and pulled away. “Yes. She would like that.”

And they descended the steps to Alizar’s tower together, their fingers touching until the last stair when they each gave a squeeze, and let go.

42  

“…And do not disturb me,” Cyril said wryly.

The young priest whom Cyril was addressing ducked his head out of the room and left the bishop to his morning bath. As Cyril removed his night cap and set it on a nearby table, he chuckled to himself. Victory had come so easily it had actually surprised him. Word arrived that morning that Orestes had departed from Alexandria for Constantinople, and so with Hypatia gone as well, Alexandria had at last been cleansed of heretics. Cyril looked down at the leaves in his hands that had arrived from the Great Library several days earlier and laughed. He did not actually plan to read them. His Eminence had far better uses for the writings of heathens.

Cyril waddled over to his chamber pot, dropped his robes to his ankles, and took a seat. But as he waited for his morning release, much to his disappointment, he was met with the familiar uncomfortable curse of constipation. Though he grunted and groaned and clenched his jaw with a mighty force, nothing would budge his reluctant bowels. Not wanting to rise from the chamber pot to enter his bath without having relieved himself, and for lack of something better to do, Cyril angrily fanned himself with the pages of the manuscript. After a few drawn out minutes, his curiosity finally got the better of him, and he began to read with the thought that the pagan drivel would be, at least, entertaining if little else. He searched the leaves for the author’s signature, but it had been left unsigned, so Cyril flipped back to the front page, ignoring the title of the treatise completely.

He merely glanced through it at first, but found that, much to his dismay, with every page he became only more drawn into the arguments presented, arguments that struck him as an intelligent discourse of the most current heated debate within the church: the question as to whether the Virgin Mary was the mother of Jesus the man, or Jesus the son of God. The consideration was that if she were merely the mother of Jesus the man, the Virgin Mary would find her place in the background of the church’s religious pantheon with perhaps only a few mentions of her contribution to Christianity. However, if it stood to reason that Mary was the mother of Christ, then this placed her at the pinnacle of honor in the Christian faith. Mother Mary would then be considered the mother of God, a title that no merely mortal woman could take on.

Cyril had not yet taken a position on the matter, but he realized that the coming debates in Ephesus would decide the matter and thereby alter the course of Christianity, and he longed to participate with an erudite speech prepared to impress.