She tried to give them back, but he smiled and went out to check the chickens in their roost.
And so Hannah pinned her hair up and put on a flowing pale pink khiton and wandered down to the hawker’s bazaar where women, young and old, were gathered in tents by candlelight, their jewelry flashing as they laughed. Others stood beside tables attracting customers by holding up their goods and thrusting them toward the passersby.
“Nothing finer than this shawl! Finest linen in Egypt!”
“For you, madam, it matches your eyes so beautifully.”
“Pure silver. Here, try it on. Ah, see how it suits you.”
“Necklaces and bangles worn by Cleopatra herself!”
“Best prices in all of Alexandria!”
Displayed neatly on carpets and tables were reed baskets, alabaster vials of kohl, glass perfume flasks, small hinged seashell boxes filled with powdered azurite and selenite for painting the eyes, elegant garnet, amber, and turquoise beads. Colorful tunicas, pallas and himations lay folded on tables beside elegant fibulas and penannulars of different metals and shapes in Roman and Celtic styles. The women bantered cheerfully as they made their purchases, weaving in between the gabbehs, examining linen with eyes that could find a flaw even in perfect thread.
Hannah became drunk on the sight of so many beautiful things. Each time she entered a tent the merchant would rush to put a teacup in her hand so that she would stay and buy something. In one tent she met a kind Jewish woman and her three daughters, selling exquisite hand-beaded necklaces, apparently taking the night of festival to heart even if it was Shabbat. Hearing her own language spoken, Hannah felt her heart melt. It was like hearing a favorite song after an interminably long time without music.
“Yaffe, such a beautiful girl.” The plump woman smiled as she cupped Hannah’s cheek in her palm and then insisted she take a beaded bracelet as a gift.
Around the rim of the hawker’s bazaar, fortunetellers solicited their customers with promises of life’s mysteries revealed. Hannah slipped past, wanting to make her way down to the taverna, but one of the gypsy children, a crippled boy with legs that hung like seaweed between his wooden crutches, clung to her skirt and looked up at her with hungry eyes. “You want to know your fortune?”
“No, no. Thank you.” Hannah turned and walked the other way, but the child came after her, tugging her sleeve and looking up at her. “Special deal tonight for the beautiful lady. Your future revealed.”
Hannah smiled and shook her head, but pressed a coin into the boy’s dirty hand. “No one but God can reveal the future.”
“Yes,” said the boy. “But even God sends messengers. This city is not safe tonight, lady. If the doe is hunted, she must lose the dogs in the water.”
Hannah looked at the earnest boy for a moment, and then nodded.
She decided to walk along the west beach on the way to the taverna, tracing the route she and Alizar had taken the week before from the north end of Canopic Way. At the end of the street she unlaced her sandals and made her way down to the waves where the wet sand made it easier to walk. Ahead of her two lovers, drunk and tripping on the sand, were laughing and leaning on each other. Hannah could not help but watch them, though the sight of their amorous gestures gave her pause. She thought of her life in the Great Library and all the music she could make there. And though music might be a loyal companion, even Hannah knew a lyre could not warm the bed at night, or replace the laughter of children. But without her freedom, how could she find love?
Hannah turned her eyes away from the man and woman and looked to the luminous crests of the waves and the wide amber beam that stretched across the water from the lighthouse, penetrating the darkness, beckoning the ships. She tried not to let the laughter of the lovers pierce her, tried not to think of another year bringing her swiftly to the age of twenty, an age that made a man seek out a younger wife.
At the end of the beach Hannah could hear the lively banter of the crowd, a woman shrieking with laughter. The sound pierced the night. Hannah caught her breath. Her knife! She had left it tucked beneath the stable straw where she slept. Ever since Alizar had given it to her she had not been without it for a moment. She wondered if she should turn back. The boy’s warning resounded in her mind. “If the doe is hunted…” But Tarek was waiting, and she did not wish to anger him. Besides, the evening washed over her, warm and gentle. All around her, Alexandria glowed like a promise. The Parabolani were not out. She would enjoy the performance, and then return to Alizar’s before it got too late.
She reached the end of the beach and climbed over the seawall, realizing as she looked around that this was the street to the agora where she had seen Tarek that first day, the day the men had set her on the block to be sold. Somehow that moment seemed like ages ago. It could have been much worse, she knew. Much worse.
The wharf was only mildly cooler than the rest of Alexandria, which made it stifling. The pungent scents of rotting seaweed, sweat, and cinnamon wafted through the air and made it difficult to breathe. Spiro’s taverna was at the other end of the docks, and Hannah made slow progress through the thick sea of bodies. More than once a sailor leaned over to steal a kiss or request a dance.
Just one, just one, come on. Come.
You are so beautiful.
For me.
Come.
Hannah smiled politely and sidled past. Tarek was waiting for her at the door of the taverna when she arrived.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
“The crowd.” Hannah said, and then narrowed her eyes at him. Tarek was drunk already. She could see it in the way he was swaying side to side. Smell it on his breath. In just an hour. Hard to believe sometimes that a man like Alizar could look on him as a son.
“Come, Hannah.” Tarek snatched her hand, pushing past a bearded Greek sailor with arms the size of two cannons. He grunted as Hannah and Tarek entered the taverna, but let them by.
Hannah withdrew her hand from his to adjust the sleeve of her dress, glowering.
Three sailor friends of Tarek’s joined them and presented a goat-horn pipe and a lump of hashish the color of dried snake blood. Tarek filled the bowl and passed it to Hannah, who stared at his hand for a moment before deciding to try. One toke and she began to cough uncontrollably, pressing her palms to her chest. Tarek just laughed and polished off the rest.
Either from the effects of the hashish or the events that followed, Hannah took away only a single, distinct memory of the kanun player, Garzya.
The young musician curled his body over his instrument, strands of long black hair plastered to his sweaty forehead and cheeks, his eyes pinched tightly shut, his hands dancing across the strings of the kanun in a blur. The music he created was so immense that no walls could contain it. It bound the audience together in a sea of music and light. No one could take their eyes away from the handsome musician as they felt themselves moved by the intricacies of his caress, each wanting to be his instrument, even for an hour. It was so intimate that Hannah found herself unable to look at him for very long without blushing, so she looked at the table and the tufts of pipe ash spread like windblown seeds between the empty cups.
Walking home after the performance, Hannah could still hear the music echoing in her mind. His melodies had raised her vision of what was possible. The night was young yet, and she had inspiration to pick up Hypatia’s lyre and compose a new song. Tarek staggered along beside her, besotted.
As she and Tarek approached the familiar green door, Tarek caught her arm and pulled her body into his, trying to kiss her. She pushed him away, but he caught her by the hair. “I have waited long enough for you,” he snarled.
She looked him squarely in the eye. “Tarek, let me go.”
He laughed and grabbed her by the collar, the metal cutting into her neck. She shrieked as he kissed her greedily, forcing his tongue into her mouth, his cock ri
sing as he held her, his breath a vile mixture of alcohol and smoke.
Hannah struggled to break free, but he did not relinquish his grip. “Stop it, you little cunny,” he demanded. “Tonight I get what is mine.”
Hannah cried out, pushing at his arms, his chest, wielding her hands like claws. “You get nothing from me,” she said, wishing for her knife tucked in the stable straw. She knew she had been wrong to trust Tarek.
Tarek pulled her toward the darkest nook in the alley, turned her around and hoisted up her khiton from behind. “You will give me what I want,” he said. “And you will beg for it.”
She pleaded. “Tarek, stop this! You are drunk, now let me go.” She struggled to break his grasp, but his fingers held her collar firm.
“Beg, slave,” he said, and he spit in his hand and slid it to his groin.
Hannah cried out.
Tarek smacked the back of her head. “Beg!”
“No.”
He hit her again, and her hair came undone, the hairpin her father had given her falling to her feet. “I said beg, slave.”
Hannah began to cry. “Never.”
Tarek’s face reddened, and his pride smarted. “I will teach you to beg,” he said, and he pressed himself against her bare buttocks but lost his seed in his hand with a groan before he could deliver his full intention.
And in that instant his grip fell slack giving Hannah reach, her fingers searching desperately for the silver hairpin at her feet. There. Her eyes closed to slits, full of fury. Never. Never again. She turned and plunged the prongs deep into Tarek’s upper thigh, splitting muscle from bone.
Tarek screamed and released her as he fell to the ground, pulling the hairpin out of his groin and angrily hurling it into the street. “Look what you have done!” he said, indicating the wound pouring blood.
But Hannah did not look. “Do not ever touch me again,” she snarled, and then she spit on him, leaving him curled up in a ball on the street like the dog he was.
“I own you!” Tarek yelled at her. “And you owe me your life.”
Hannah turned back to him, her eyes dark and hollow. “My debt to you is paid.”
But as she reached Alizar’s door, a new menace presented itself.
Peter and the Parabolani came around the corner, sweeping up the alley toward Alizar’s house.
“There she is!” called Peter, and the five Parabolans broke into a run.
Tarek whimpered, unseen by the priests; his hands clutched his leg as his blood poured into the street.
Hannah pivoted and fled, running around the back of the house to the stable entrance, but the door was locked. “Aziz! Jemir! Leitah!” Hannah screamed to be let in, but no one heard, as they were all in the house for the party.
Then she knew where to go. The Library. She sped down one alley after the next, turning carts over behind her as she passed, angering the merchants. She could feel that Peter and his men meant to draw blood. Tonight would be their revenge.
Hannah dashed through the agora, trying to lose the Parabolani in the crowd. They easily closed on her, and more priests joined in the chase. Hannah was not as fast as they were, and she realized she was losing ground. The Christians meant to make an example of the pagans on this night of debauchery. She would be their victim.
As she ran, she could feel the same fear as the antelope running from the lion, knowing that this was the last chase, the last distance that her legs would ever carry her, and she prayed as she fled them, praying to God for her life.
When she reached the Great Library, the gates were locked. She pulled at the enormous iron handle and screamed for help, but there was no response. Behind her, the Parabolani grabbed torches from the walls and closed in.
If the doe is hunted, she must lose the dogs in the water.
Of course, the water! Hannah ran out onto the wharf that led to the harbor. The Vesta was moored somewhere in the royal harbor, a ship in a sea of ships. She had to find it somehow, but there were so many ships in the darkness, which was it?
The Parabolani saw they had her cornered on the wharf. Peter, the tallest among them, caught her in her moment of hesitation. He grabbed her khiton and pulled her backwards on the wooden boards, skinning her knees. But she found her footing, and spit in his face, which momentarily blinded him though he did not relinquish his hold on her.
And then, suddenly, she was gone.
Peter was left holding her pink khiton, and the girl was nowhere.
The Parabolans turned circles on the wharf, calling out and scanning the sea. They would have heard her plunge in, but there had been no sound.
They did not consider the angel, who smiled in triumph.
Beneath them, Hannah hung from one of the beams in the structural support of the wharf, holding her breath. And she waited until her fingers began to slip, and it was just long enough. Peter called out, “There is nowhere to run, slave! We will spill your pagan blood tonight or another.” And he gathered his men and they walked back down the docks as Hannah slipped into the sea, a large wave crashing on the beach muffling her splash.
The cold ocean enveloped her. She sank lower and fought for the surface. A wave washed over her and she sputtered for breath, the bronze collar heavy and cold about her neck. Where, oh where, was the ship?
Hannah swam toward Pharos, toward the royal harbor, but she could not make out which ship was Alizar’s from all the many moored that night.
She swam across the harbor, circling each ship, growing fatigued as the heavy collar at her throat threatened to pull her under. Finally she paused to rest, treading water. But her limbs lost strength and she began to cry out.
Then a black shape surfaced beside her in the water letting out a puff of steam and she shrieked in terror. Something brushed her foot. She struggled to remain at the surface with renewed vigor. But the creature circled her. Hannah began to cry, pleading for her life. She struggled mightily for breath, and the panic of drowning overcame her. And she sank below the water, the sleek animal dove beneath her and lifted her to the surface, then it pushed her toward the ship anchored beyond the island of Antirrhodus.
Gideon was on the deck of the Vesta, checking the lines when he leaned his head over the aft rail, torch in hand, and saw the dolphin pushing the limp naked girl in the water.
“Praise Zeus, Hannah!” Gideon unrolled the ladder so that it dangled from the stern to the sea. Then he descended and reached his hand out to grasp her wrist. The dolphin in the water looked on. Gideon nodded to him in thanks and lifted the sputtering girl over his shoulder.
Gideon knelt gently on the deck, Hannah cradled in his arms. “The Parabolani,” she coughed as she spoke. “They chased me onto the wharf.”
Gideon smiled his astonishment at her arrival, more beautiful than any siren. “Let me fetch you a blanket.”
He took her to the captain’s berth and made her some strong cinnamon tea to warm her up, though the night was plenty warm. As he wrapped another blanket across her shoulders, the story come rushing out of her about Tarek and the Parabolani, and she sputtered her tears and gradually began to calm down, and then even to laugh a little at how absurd it all must seem.
“I knew I admired you,” he said.
And she smiled, daring to feel a little proud of herself. “I thought the leviathan would eat me.”
“No, Apollo is only the dolphin that tends this harbor. He would not let you drown. I will take you to Alizar’s in the morning,” he said. “And we will discuss this with him. For now, I will ready a sailor’s bunk for you and see to it you get some clothes.”
As Gideon turned to go, Hannah stood up and touched his face with her hand, tracing the scar that ran down from his eye. Then she kissed him.
He needed no more encouragement than that. Curse modesty.
He picked her up in his arms and carried her to his bed as the
blankets fell from her shoulders.
Their night together was the first time she had ever known a man by choice, and what beauty there could be in that. And he did not disappoint, but gave her the depth of his presence; his calloused hands squeezed her buttocks, her breasts, his lips spilling gentle kisses as he ravished her, making her cry out in ecstasy again and again.
After he was spent, they slept, and at last, Hannah knew contentment in Alexandria.
When the sun rose, Hannah opened her eyes to see that Gideon was already awake beside her. A single sunbeam played in the folds of his tunica, illuminating a gold medallion, pressed with the image of a rearing lion, a Greek inscription encircling it. She lifted it in her fingertips to admire.
“I found it in a shipwreck. Dove for the gold myself off the island of Icarius.”
“What does the inscription say?” asked Hannah, her eyes lit with curiosity.
“Ah, a girl with an inquisitive mind, eh? You know what we do to women such as thee,” Gideon teased. “We feed you to the lions!” And he grabbed her, pretending to eat her arm until she kicked and squealed and howled with laughter.
“Please tell me,” she insisted.
Gideon pinned her. “You must promise not to laugh.”
“I promise.”
“It says that the lion shall piss wherever it pleases.”
“It does not!”
“All right, then.” He tucked the medallion in his tunica. “I presented it as a gift to my father, originally, as the lion is the symbol of our family crest. But when he was called to the grave, it was left again to me. If I have a son one day, I will give it to him.”
Hannah smiled, and kissed him. “Tell me what it really says.”
Gideon laughed. He wondered how any one woman could be so beautiful, so nearly perfect. He thought of the hundreds of women in his past, and as they made love again he imagined never having another but Hannah. But the thought pricked him to his senses, and he knew it would be better their love did not make two slaves of one. He shut his eyes and let himself go until their bodies were still again.
Written in the Ashes Page 17
