Written in the Ashes (66 page)

So.

As he read the manuscript he found himself held in its powerful sway, as whoever had written it had considered the matter extensively and proffered a valid and unique argument that was not to be overlooked. Cyril was struck by the terse poignancy of the pen, for the ideas it put forward were philosophically sound, and so eloquent as to stir in him more than a dollop of envy.

As he reached the last page, Cyril let his eyes linger on the parchment. Suddenly he knew who must have sent it. It had to be the pagan whore, Hypatia. Anyone else from the library would have signed such a brilliant treatise, but she would have known that had her mark appeared he would have sent the pages to the rubbish heap behind the church. Cyril snorted. He wanted to be disgusted and angry, and for a moment he considered shoving the whole manuscript in the chamber pot, but for some reason he could not bring himself to do it. Something had come over him as he read the treatise that unnerved him greatly, though he did not know what it was.

Cyril’s hands began to shake.

Then he flipped the manuscript open and read the treatise in its entirety once again. This time, when he reached the last page, the bishop of Alexandria could scarcely breathe. He rolled the pages of parchment up into a tight cylinder and flung the manuscript onto the floor, dropping his head into his hands. He was certain, though he did not know how, that Hypatia had written the manuscript, and what was far, far worse, was that it was brilliant, and not only was it brilliant, it was original, and precisely the logic he was looking for. If only he had considered the ideas it postulated himself.

“Tarek!” he called.

The boy appeared in the doorway, his head bowed.

Cyril thrust the document towards him. “Have this copied at once.”

Tarek nodded and backed out of the room.

As he left, a dreadful knot rose in Cyril’s throat. He licked his lips and squeezed his eyes shut; a feeling as sickening to the senses as a cat’s pungent urine washed over him.

Then something altogether frightening and magnificent occurred that had never happened to the bishop in his entire adult life. Try though he did to repress it, a stubby little tear sprouted out the corner of Cyril’s eye, followed by another, and still another. Water leaking through so much armor.

Cyril wept.

He wept tears of regret while sitting on the chamber pot, his robes around his ankles, his face in his hands, as a different perspective of his tirade against the library and its headmistress flooded his mind, just as Hypatia had presumed it would.

Cyril had easily convinced himself that he was not responsible for the tragic events of the past several weeks, after all, he was at a meeting of the Alexandrian council on Antirrhodus when the Great Library had burned and he had never raised a hand to the Great Lady himself. But slumbering deep within was the truth, the truth that all his ranting against Hypatia, his instructions to the Parabolani and the priests of Nitria, and his repeated sermons about the evils of paganism had been what murdered her.

A terrible guilt settled on Cyril as he sashed his robes and slipped on his sandals. He left his bath still steaming as he flew out the door and down the steps to the church. The sentry stationed at his door looked up at him in confusion as he passed. “Is everything all right, Your Eminence?”

Cyril did not even look back to respond, nor did he slow his steps until he reached the central nave of the church of St. Alexander. He paused at the last pew, then slowly strode down to the altar where the tremendous wooden crucifix rose up from a rugged grey stone.

Bowing his head, Cyril joined his trembling hands together in prayer before his heart and dropped to his knees as the tears of repentance slid down his cheeks.

Forgive me.

Christ.

Forgive me.

The church that morning was still and empty, save for a bat crouching in the hollow rafters, so there was no one present to witness the bishop’s unusual transformation as he wept.

In the years that followed, however, rumors and conjecture spread from Constantinople all the way to Gibraltar about what had happened to Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, for he was suddenly obsessed with the concept that the Virgin Mary was the mother of God, and an ingenious manuscript that he had authored was circulating among the clergy. No one knew, of course, that Cyril had simply signed his own name to Hypatia’s work and sent it to the boy emperor’s sister, Pulcheria, for support, which he received in great measure.

Though he never again spoke Hypatia’s name, Cyril had Maximus’s statue of the Virgin Mary with the Christ child seated upon her lap, which had stood for seventy years in the square of Alexandria, moved to the gardens of the Church of St. Alexander so that he could look out of his window and remember, perhaps not Hypatia herself, but the profound awakening that her writing had inspired in him.

43  

“Alaya, come,” Hannah held out her hand.

Alaya did not move, her pudgy little arms wrapped as far around the fig tree in the courtyard as they could reach.

Hannah waited impatiently, running a hand through her daughter’s silky hair. “We have to go, Alaya.”

“Shhh, Mama,” said the girl, pressing her ear to the trunk.

Hannah went to pry her daughter’s fingers from the knobby bark, then stopped and sat on her heels instead. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

Alaya smiled. “Listening.”

Hannah tipped her head. “To the tree?”

Alaya nodded emphatically.

Hannah squatted again. “Everyone is leaving, Alaya. Not just us. Alizar, Sofia, and—”

“And Jemir? And Baby Ali?”

“And Jemir, and Baby Ali. We are all leaving the city. It is not safe here for us.”

“And Papo?”

Hannah closed her eyes.

And Papo.

Alaya nodded and let her hands fall away from the fig tree, a child’s willingness still so alive in her eyes. Hannah shifted her canvas knapsack on her shoulder and took Alaya in her arms, the lyre Hypatia had given her tied to her belt beside a woolen satchel that swung as though it held significant weight. “Come,” she said, “We have to hurry now.”

Alaya fingered her mother’s necklace. “Will Master Junkar be there?”

Hannah took a deep breath. “No, but you will see him again one day, I am certain.”

Alaya nodded and rested her head on her mother’s shoulder.

Above them, an angel circled and settled in the eaves of the sky, content to wait. A door would open. The warrior would come. The light had promised it.

Together they walked together for what Hannah knew might be the last time through the cobbled streets of Alexandria in the thin morning light, past the merchants setting up their shops until they reached the harbor. So much had happened here. Although a thin thread of nostalgia wrapped itself around her heart, Hannah longed to leave it all behind her. To take the beauty and leave the pain. To take the memories of beloved friends, and let the rest be. She quickened her steps. Leaving could not come soon enough.

Hannah searched the slips.

Not the ship with the red sails bound for Cyprus.

No.

Not the small lateen-rigged skiff bound for the Upper Nile.

There.

Hannah let Alaya down and she flounced across the dock to a dark figure bent over beside a line, inspecting something. “Papo!”

Gideon looked up, and the little girl flung herself into his arms. He closed his eyes and pressed her heart to his, feeling her warm breath on his neck. For a long time he cradled her, kissed her, and then stood up, letting her take his hand.

Hannah approached the tall sailor dressed in a sleeveless black
tunica
, his tanned shoulders gleaming, his dark eyes shining as if carved of onyx. “Do you have room for two more?” she asked, squinting back the rising sun behind him. He looked so handsome and strong. Instantly, she felt grateful to be near him again.

Gideon searched her face.

Hannah swallowed, knowing she must speak. “You were right,” she said. “He did come.”

“And?” said Gideon.

“Master Junkar belongs with the Nuapar, Gideon. And we belong with you.” She knew the words were true, and discovered that as she spoke them she found her heart felt much lighter.

Gideon smiled then, triumphantly, and swept her in his arms, swinging her around and around as Alaya stepped back, giggling and shouting with glee.

“Then we sail at once!” he said, and all but floated with them to the deck. “Come,” he said. “I have christened my new ship the
Hypatia
.”

So.

Hannah ran her fingers along the smooth wooden rail, Alaya beside her clutching her leg as the giant ship slipped free of her berth and glided across the harbor as the sun peeked one eye over the world. Hannah could almost feel her father smiling beside her. She ran her fingers through her daughter’s hair. There were things she could never undo. Hypatia was lost. The library was a ruin. The Temple of Isis was gone. But this. This she could protect.

Once the ship was underway, waves lapping the hull, Gideon came to stand beside her at the stern, his hands on her hips, looking back on what would be a clear spring day for the inhabitants of Alexandria. The outline of the city was inscribed upon the shore of Egypt as if etched in ivory, her lighthouse standing serene as if it might stand for all time. “I have something for you.”

“For me?” asked Hannah.

Gideon nodded. “Yes, from the Temple of Isis.”

Hannah felt her breath catch in her throat. “What? But how could that be?”

Gideon nodded toward a trunk fastened to the deck. Hannah walked over to it and unlatched it, and her eyes fell on the Great Book. She pulled it out and held it in her arms, smelling the pages. Her fingers traced the edges of the codex, and then she replaced it carefully and closed the lid of the trunk, questions in her eyes.

Gideon smiled. “It was saved from the burning temple by a priestess named Iris. She heard we were leaving for Greece, and asked me to give it to you.”

Hannah embraced him. So Iris had survived. “Thank you, Gideon. You are my strength in this life.”

Gideon kissed her forehead, and pointed as Alexandria’s dolphin leapt above the harbor in the wake. A salutation of goodbye. “There is one more thing,” he said, and he unclasped the gold medallion from around his neck. “When we reach the shores of Epidavros, I want you to be my wife.” He held out his treasure, the
solidus
coin stamped with the image of the rearing lion, and she lifted her hair so he could fasten it around her neck.

Hannah touched the beautiful lion, meeting his eyes with a smile. “It will be an honor to be your wife, Gideon.”

“We will marry in the olive grove beside the sea. By a rabbi if you like.”

Beside the sea. Hannah nodded thoughtfully. She knew what she must do.

She untied the satchel at her hip, reached inside it, and withdrew the white alabaster jar her father had give her.

“What is it?” asked Gideon.

Alaya too, lifted her eyes in interest.

Hannah’s lips trembled with sorrow, her thoughts drifting back in time. “It is the fields of Sinai and my father’s herd. It is the mother I never knew. It is my father’s laughter. And it is an ancient olive tree that once stood in a sunlit pasture. It is the drought that killed so many.” She looked at him, her eyes full of pain, the pain of release. “And it is Alexandria, and Hypatia, Synesius and Leitah; all those I loved so deeply.” So deeply.

Gideon waited.

Alaya, too.

Hannah clenched her jaw as she forced the lid to turn.

Once.

Twice.

She smiled then, feeling the weight of it in her hands. The weight she had carried through the years. “I want to forgive my father for dying, the men for what they did to me, even Cyril for the death of Hypatia and our beautiful library. I do not want to carry the weight of that hatred with me even another hour.” Then with the cry of a falcon on her lips, Hannah tipped the jar over the rail, letting a cloud of ashes pour out like snow. The dust of bones lifted into the sky and then settled in the white ruffles of the ship’s wake, the sea inscribing its ancient song in the ashes, washing them away.