Written in the Ashes

by K. Hollan Van Zandt

  5

  It was announced to the hall that the meeting of the clergy would be delayed an hour because the bishop was bathing, which was not uncommon, but this particular morning the announcement veered slightly from the truth, as he often suffered from acute constipation. When he finally arrived, red in the face from an hour of strain, the oblong stone table was surrounded by impatient faces stamped with scowls, which was for most of them a natural angle of repose.

  “Heirax, your report.” Bishop Cyril took his seat at the head chair of the great table and cleared his throat. The room was deep within the bowels of the church of St. Alexander, and lacked, above all amenities, light. The stones in the wall drank in what little the candelabras provided and refused to spit out so much as a spark for the rest of the room. One of the clergy who had traveled all the way from Britannia loved this church that reminded him so much of home, but as for the rest they took no notice, for their duty involved attending to matters of law, not architecture.

  Heirax cleared his throat. “The Parabolans have circulated over ten thousand treatises on Hypatia of Alexandria. It has been established further that this heretic remains a threat to our church establishment, as an order was sent to her home to disband her private meetings, and was ignored.”

  “I expected as much,” said Cyril. “Continue.”

  “I have held counsel with the Parabolani, Your Eminence, and they inform me that the pamphlets we have circulated mostly end up being used to wrap fish or diaper small children. The populace has simply never seen such an issue before, and perceives the documents as useful paper instead of information. You realize that most of them do not have access to parchment of their own and cannot read besides.”

  Cyril spread his small, fat hands on the table, grunted, and then stood so that he could pace the length of the room to engage his mind. Forced to sit for extended periods he always became agitated, tending toward unnecessary fulminations that seldom reflected the gravity of the discussion at hand.

  “Then perhaps we can supply a small paper merchant in the market who could distribute parchment to the populace so that it is not so rare a commodity when it comes time to spread ideas of importance.” The speaker was a young priest called Ammonius, who had a face the others agreed was too handsome for the work of God, though he was an effective preacher.

  “No,” said Cyril wryly. “I will not have this church gifting the whole civilized world with parchment.”

  Peter the Reader shifted in his seat. His legs were longer than the others and so his knees pressed uncomfortably against the staves below. “I have another idea, one I have considered thoroughly.”

  “Speak it then,” said Cyril, his mouth a thin line where lips should be.

  “The populace of Alexandria is well-acquainted with sorcery. Many of them are pagans with secret altars in their homes. Were we in Rome, the charge against a sorceress might be taken seriously, but here in Alexandria, it is far too ordinary.”

  “You propose another charge?” asked Heirax.

  “No,” said Peter. “I propose we punish the pagan women practicing sorcery. Denounce them publicly. We must educate the citizens of Alexandria that there will be no tolerance for heathens in our midst.”

  Cyril smiled, and his whole face became lit with the deviousness of a small boy who has cornered a helpless dog with a stick. “Yes, very good. We shall try them publicly. Gather them in a great mass and imprison them.”

  “With all due pardon, Your Eminence,” said Peter, his voice unusually high in pitch for a man of such height and angularity of frame, “imprisoning the women of Alexandria would be altered in an instant with a pardon from Governor Orestes. They would walk free and we would look the fools.”

  Cyril returned to his chair, still standing. The mention of the governor unsettled him. “You have a better idea?”

  “We must try them one at a time,” said Peter. “Some will renounce their sorcery and take a vow of Christ, and those will be freed. Those who do not take the vow, or who otherwise prove to be involved in witchcraft, must be made an example of.”

  Heirax opened the codex before him and read aloud. “Exodus. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’.”

  The clergy at the table immediately turned to discuss the matter with one another.

  Heirax sat back in his chair and looked at bishop Cyril, who nodded, then raised his voice to speak. “Heirax, the High Counselor of this chamber, has spoken the righteous word of God, and reminded us of our true duty as the keepers of His law. I decree that witchcraft is a pagan abomination punishable by death in this city, and that any woman thought to be a witch will be brought to trial before the people. If she confesses to her sins and renounces her evil doing and takes up the path of the gospels of our lord Jesus Christ, she shall be forgiven. But if she does not confess, or refuses to renounce her sins, she shall be killed in a manner befitting a sorceress of black magic, by stoning or slitting of the throat.”

  There was silence around the table then, until Ammonius stood and brought his hands before him. Some twenty-odd members of the clergy joined him, facing the bishop. “Praise Christ, our Lord.”

  “Sit down, Ammonius,” barked Cyril. “This campaign will go on until the pagans are vanquished, and the witch Hypatia is dead. Alexandria is a Christian city, and we shall make it known to every pagan in that heathen library of theirs. Now go. Leave me to discuss the matter with my Parabolans. Heirax, summon the appointed leaders at once; I have a headache and I am tired of looking at you.” Cyril turned his head.

  “As you wish, Your Eminence.” Heirax stood. “Peter, will you gather your men from the square?”

  “Consider it done,” said Peter, who rose to his full height. The gesture always disturbed the bishop further, as his own height was enough of a concern for him that he had special lifts put in his shoes for when he delivered his sermons from the dais.

  With Peter out of the room, Cyril’s eyes flicked to his High Counselor, Heirax, who was gathering his robes about him. “See that Peter sits on the other side of the table from me from this point forward. And I demand you leave me at once and return only when you have something interesting to report.”

  Heirax nodded and stepped out of the room with the other clergy, all the while facing the bishop, never turning his back.

  6

  Alizar’s ship sailed at dawn as planned. Hannah felt she would miss him, and contemplated his kindness as she went about her morning chores. There was no question the house felt different without him.

  Jemir opened the window in the kitchen a little wider to let in the song that lilted down from the balcony. It had never occurred to him how quiet Alizar’s house had been before. He closed his eyes and let himself be swept up in the sweetness of her voice, as if it were an antidote to all that privately ailed him. Later, when Hannah came in and plopped down onto one of the cushions on the floor, he felt his heart warm with affection.

  “You sing beautifully.”

  Hannah’s cheeks blossomed. “I did not realize you could hear me all the way in here. I am sorry. I will sing more softly.”

  “Kuklamu, if you sing softly you will offend the gods who gave you that voice.”

  Hannah turned her eyes down to the floor in modesty, her eyelashes brushing her cheeks.

  Jemir threw her a rag. “You know what today is?”

  Hannah caught the rag in the air and began wiping down the table. She did not know.

  “You go to the Great Library and the Museion. Alizar has arranged that you will have a tutor.” Jemir could see by the expression on Hannah’s face that the shepherd’s daughter had no idea what a rare privilege this was, especially for a slave—and a female slave at that. Maybe she had not heard the stories of what marvels the library housed. Jemir saw at once his opportunity to build the anticipation for her. She would think he was describing a dream. It did not matter.
The library might very well be a dream of the gods.

  Hannah took up a long wooden spoon from the table and turned it over in her palms as she wiped it clean.

  Jemir started with something he knew that any girl would love to hear about: the butterfly enclosure. Thousands of blue and yellow and white spotted butterflies with elegant seashell wings collected from all over Africa and Europe. “You put honey on your finger and they land there.” Jemir held out his finger in the air and looked up at an imaginary butterfly that circled and then alighted.

  Hannah smiled, almost happy. Jemir stopped short. It was the first time he had ever seen her smile, and it changed her face completely. Her beauty was amplified a thousand fold.

  So.

  He cleared his throat and continued. “There are enormous lions in cages, one even that lived in the great Coliseum in Rome and ate a hundred men, or maybe it was two hundred. But now the lion is old and has bad hips. The keepers cut the meat into bits for the elderly beast.”

  Jemir hunkered next to Hannah and waved his hands through the air. He wanted her to feel the greatness of it in his words. He wanted the legendary size of the library to come alive for her right there in Alizar’s kitchen.

  She laughed at his impression of the lion.

  “Then there are the docks in the harbor with the manuscripts piled higher than any building in the city, even Alizar’s tower. Imagine. Forty men side by side, all writing translations of the most famous literary and scientific works in the world. Homer. Aristotle. Pythagoras. Plotinus. Euripedes. Archimedes. Erostosthanes…” Names that would mean something to Hannah once she learned their contributions.

  Jemir explained that the fragrant lecture halls had been frequented by the greatest minds of the last three centuries. Mathematicians, philosophers, astronomers, rhetors, physicians, poets. Ptolemy penned his Almagest in the garden beneath one of the tall obelisks called Cleopatra’s Needles, crumpling the pages he disapproved of and tossing them into the manure pile behind the elephant enclosure.

  Hannah’s eyes danced with some newly aroused feeling.

  “The gardens were even planted by Cleopatra herself in honor of Caesar, or perhaps Mark Antony, no one can remember anymore. She and Antony were both buried beside the pond. It is said that the vine covering her golden tomb that appeared there one year after her death has lived these hundreds of years as a symbol of Cleopatra’s love for Egypt. When the vine blooms, women from all ends of the Mediterranean come to collect its pretty purple flowers and crush them into potions for love.”

  Hannah hugged her knees to her chest and rocked. “This is Alizar’s gift to me?”

  Jemir nodded. He had to tell her one more thing, and in the telling, confess his secret love, a love an entire empire shared with him. “Did you know there is a woman who runs the Great Library?”

  “A woman? How could that be?”

  “It is because she is a star descended to earth. Hypatia, The Great Lady, Virgin of Serapis, daughter of renowned astronomer and mathematician Theon of Alexandria. She is the most brilliant philosopher alive, a hermeticist said to alone hold the secret teachings of the Chaldean Oracles. She is a friend of Alizar’s house. Her mind and her beauty are the envy of everyone in Egypt. And so, as you can imagine, she has hundreds of friends, and more than a few enemies.”

  “Enemies?” As Jemir spoke Hannah remembered the woman holding the torch who had come running from out of the gates when they first arrived in Alexandria. Could it have been Hypatia?

  “People cannot abide purity, kukla. It offends the poor and the rich at the same time.” A lightness entered Jemir’s features as he sighed, and for a moment Hannah could see him as a youth, before the deep lines had settled around his eyes and beside his mustache.

  Realizing he had become lost in his infatuation with Hypatia, Jemir quickly regained his composure, excused himself, and went outside to check on the bread in the oven.

  When Tarek strode into the kitchen and asked Hannah if she was ready, she leapt to her feet. “Jemir was telling me about Hypatia,” she said as Jemir came back inside, set the bread down to cool, and busied his hands with a cloth, wiping down the windowsill.

  “Oh, I see.” Tarek rolled his eyes. Every servant in the house knew about Jemir’s affections for Hypatia. Years earlier, when Tarek was a boy spying on the servants, he had seen Jemir writing pages of poetry that he tucked away behind the spice jars whenever anyone came in. Tarek showed the poetry triumphantly to everyone he could think of. After that, Jemir’s fondness for Hypatia was no longer a secret. When Jemir had confronted him about the missing pages, Tarek insisted he had no idea they belonged to him. Jemir snatched the pages out of his hand and said, “Who else spices your food?” He wielded the words the way he drew a sharp knife up the belly of a small fish.

  Tarek took Hannah’s elbow and lead her down the hall toward the cistern stairs. She stopped to tie her sandal to get out of his grip. “Why are we going this way?”

  “I am taking you the secret way. The Parabolani are out.”

  Hannah cocked her head. “The what?” This city was full of a thousand new things to learn.

  “The Parabolani, the bishop’s henchmen. He originally recruited them under the auspices of feeding the poor and planting city gardens. Now he uses them to dispose of anyone who threatens his way to power.” Tarek slid a large iron key into a lock on a tall wooden door and popped it open. The door swung open easily for its size, as if it were in constant use.

  Hannah thought immediately of the men she had seen the first day she entered Alexandria, the ones who cut the man’s arms from his body and lit him on fire. “They wear black robes,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Tarek. “They wear their hair shorn to the scalp, dress in black robes, and walk together in threes. If you see them, hide and hide well.”

  So.

  Hannah followed Tarek down the carved limestone steps and through a chthonic passageway lit by flickering torches. Soon she could hear running water and the squeal of rats in the walls.

  A slow river loomed before her, the brackish water dank and deep.

  Tarek strode over to a plank barge tethered to a stone post. Beside him a footbridge arched over the water leading to a stairway on the other side. Taking a torch from the wall, Tarek unleashed the barge, sweeping the long pole up in his free hand. Then he leapt onto the barge, which rocked precariously in the dark water. “Jump,” he said.

  Hannah just stared at the tenebrous tunnel.

  “I suppose you expect to float upstream?” asked Tarek.

  Hannah eyed the barge. Then she took a deep breath and walked to the water’s edge.

  “Come on.” Tarek leaned the pole on the barge and extended a hand.

  Hannah glanced at him. Then she leapt, light as an antelope, without touching the hand floating in her direction, and settled herself on the front of the barge with her legs tucked beneath her.

  Once underway, Hannah tugged the hem of her himation up over her nose in disgust at the miasma of rotting city refuse dumped in the tunnels. Tarek steered the barge around corner after corner, until beside a wall lit by sunlight pouring from a grate in the street above, the hairs on the back of Hannah’s neck began to tingle and she sat up, uncertain as to why.

  “This is where the poor secretly buried their dead a hundred years ago when the cost of purchasing tombs in the necropolis was raised. Quite illegal.” Tarek made the enthusiastic announcement as though he were commenting on a fine frieze decorating a palace wall.

  “Ick.” Hannah wrinkled her nose, glowering at the honeycomb walls where all sizes of skeletal feet stuck out the ends. Some still had bits of rotted cloth clinging to the twisted toes.

  Not soon enough, they floated past the stacks of tombs and turned several more corners before coming to an area in the underground river where seven wide slats of light streamed in from grates overhea
d.

  “We are beneath the theatre district now. Sometimes valuables fall into the catacombs here. I have found coins and jewelry when the water is clear enough to see to the bottom, usually after the annual flood. Once I even saw a whore pissing through the grate.” Tarek smirked with pride at this memory.

  Hannah winced. The noxious assault on her nostrils was making her ill. For a moment she thought she could use the catacombs as an escape—she would just have to steal the barge—but the labyrinth continued and she became convinced she would get lost and end up dead in the sewer.

  Soon there was torchlight on the walls ahead.

  Hannah wanted to look presentable, so she undid her dark hair and let it cascade down from her shoulders to the small of her back. Then she began to pick through the tangled curls with the silver hairpin that her father had given her. A few moments later, she looked up from the knots in astonishment.

  A pair of twin sphinxes illumined by two torches sat side by side at the base of a wide set of four stone steps. At the top were two tall burnished doors with ebony and brass handles carved to look like vines. Hannah started to stand, but Tarek allowed the barge to float past. She looked back at him in confusion.

  “Oh, that is just the zoological entrance.” He waved his hand to show insignificance. “One of the lion cages is on the other side of that door… Ptolemy’s idea, in case his soldiers were followed into the catacombs.”

  The barge drifted a bit further before the roof of the tunnel dropped to a hand’s width above the water, preventing further passage. Beneath it, the river silently drifted into the dark sea. In the torchlight, clusters of barges tethered to posts clunked together, rocking in the gentle current.

  As soon as Tarek had the barge secured and they leapt off, he produced a string from under his tunica and applied the key at its end to a small lock in one of the doors. It opened with a noisy creak. They ascended a flight of narrow steps and then rounded a corner toward a rectangle of daylight, emerging through a small, unassuming door in a magical garden. Above them stood a tall stone obelisk carved top to bottom in hieroglyphics.