Written in the Ashes

by K. Hollan Van Zandt

  There were few guests outside. Most had remained inside to question Hypatia. Hannah relished the precious moments by herself. She wanted to memorize every blade of grass so that she could always remember precisely how the night had been. The lopsided moon seemed to turn an ear toward her, listening to her thoughts. She wondered who else was sitting under that moon. Perhaps Alizar and the rest of his house. Perhaps Julian. She wrapped an arm around a temple column and peered up at the sky with all the questions in her heart about this quest and where it would lead. Her third cup of wine, watered though it was, coursed through her veins and warmed her fingertips, erasing from her memory the requests of the men who wanted to buy her from Hypatia. The accompanying euphoria was unfamiliar, relaxing and sweet. She could understand how people became lost to the urges of Dionysus. Soon she was drunk on the intense Attic wine, and singing to the plants in the garden.

  “We should get her back to the inn,” said Gideon.

  “Call for a chariot,” said Sofia. “I should stay with Hypatia or else she will be cornered by her admirers till dawn. I will bring Hannah’s lyre with me when we return. She needs a warm bath and some tea.” Sofia winked.

  “It would be my pleasure, lady,” said Gideon with a bow.

  But back at the inn, Hannah was not about to let him near her. He ran the bath and found the door shut on him when he returned with her tea. He tried it and heard the lock. He laughed out loud in the hall, still holding the tray. What a fool he had been! He was beginning to realize his mistake. This proud, magnificent creature was the only woman for him.

  So.

  Hannah awoke the next morning, exhausted and embarrassed about her drunken reverie the night before. She found Sofia having breakfast on the wide balcony overlooking the mountains in the northeast and the ocean of flat red roofs that made up the vista of the city in the south.

  Sofia was intermittently tossing breadcrumbs to a one-legged pigeon and stirring her tea with a tinkling silver spoon. When she heard Hannah’s footsteps she looked up. “Kalimera,” she said. “How did you sleep?”

  “Kalimera, Sofia. Well enough. And you?” Hannah poured herself a cup of tea and sat back on the chair with her knees up in her chest, pulling her shift down over her bare feet.

  “Very well.”

  Hannah stirred her tea. “Where is Hypatia?”

  Sofia rolled her eyes. “She has received almost fifty invitations to dine with the praetors and magistrates of the city just since last night. Would you believe the sun has not even been up an hour and she is already back at the library discussing the Almagest with some fawning mathematicians? She will never escape them. Gideon has gone to accompany her.”

  Hannah smiled, blinking back the brightness of the sun. “I see,” she said. Several crows swooped past them overhead, squawking as they sailed in acrobatic circles toward the beach. It was a remarkable day. Suddenly, Hannah knew that it was time. This was just the window she needed. She excused herself from the table, saying that she wanted to meet Hypatia at the library. Sofia thought nothing of it.

  It was evening before they realized that Hannah was gone. Gideon, who had been informed by Alizar of her quest, was the only one among them who knew where she must have gone.

  “Delfi?” asked Hypatia with some offense, straightening a pleat in her tribon. “But we will have to take one of those dreadful ox carts and I despise the way they bounce.”

  “Hypatia, think of it as an adventure,” said Gideon.

  “Adventures are for young boys,” said Hypatia, frowning. “I have tea scheduled with three important magistrates and a senator tomorrow.”

  “You are coming with us,” said Gideon, “even if I have to drag you behind the ox.”

  “Us?” asked Sofia.

  24

  That evening Hannah tied the horse that she had borrowed from the inn and camped beside a winding stream that curved around a grassy bank. Though life in a city could offer baths and books, conversation and convenience, its beds could never offer a view of the stars. There beneath the sprawling limbs of a tall stand of pine, a chill biting her ears, Hannah felt most at home. She listened in delight to the sound of the stream and the wind in the branches as she reviewed the map to Delfi she had procured from the Athens library, and then snuffed out her candle.

  While Hannah slept, Gideon and the other women searched for her.

  The screech of an owl startled Hannah out of her sleep. She reluctantly opened her eyes to see the creature just overhead in a nearby tree, staring at her, its eyes like two lamps full of warning and mystery. Hannah shut her eyes again, but only for an instant before another kind of sound split the night.

  She sat bolt upright, drawing the knife from the sheath at her calf. There was a cart on the road. She could hear the snorting of the ox.

  Hannah paused, waiting. There was a sharp whinny from her horse, and then raised voices.

  Hannah flew to her feet, immediately concerned, and scrambled up the bank to where her horse was tethered. The sight in the clearing gave her such a shock she could scarcely comprehend it.

  There in the dim glow of the starlight lay Sofia, her dark hair tangled, her face contorted, the body of a man laying motionless in a deepening pool of blood beside her. Hypatia was standing beside a boulder, a knife raised in her hand, her sleeves streaked with blood, her shadow stretching behind her like a long, dark road. Gideon kicked at the corpse, its throat slit and gaping open like a macabre purse. Sofia, pale and shuddering, drew her klamys around her; it was torn across the shoulder, revealing one of her pale breasts.

  Hypatia crumpled to the ground on her knees as the soiled knife fell from her hand.

  Gideon saw Hannah first. She went to him, sheathing her knife. “What happened here?”

  Gideon shook his head. “We stopped when we saw your horse by the road. When we got out the ox driver tried to fox Sofia’s coin purse. When he drew his knife, Hypatia killed him before he knew what happened to him. It was rather impressive, lady.” He gave a nod to Hypatia.

  “Are you hurt?” Hypatia asked Sofia.

  Sofia’s lovely dark eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away and found her feet. “I am fine,” she said. “Look, we have found Hannah.”

  Hypatia did not respond. She buried her face in her fingers. The deed was done. Time would not run backward to undo it. She struggled within herself in a confusion and terror she had never known. Which act was the more condemnable, hers or the ox driver’s? She had just killed a man. Murdered him. She felt shame, yet complete justification all at once. She had violated every principle she knew, but had done it out of love.

  Hannah lifted her eyes to see a white spirit sweep over the fire, but it was only the owl, returning to the night.

  “We must bury the body,” Hannah whispered. “There will be wolves.”

  Gideon nodded.

  Sofia stared down at the ox driver where he lay on the blood-soaked ground. “I do not want to touch that beast.”

  “Yes,” said Hypatia, her eyes empty and faraway, “Hannah is right.”

  It was a strange moment for them all, discussing the body with the detached calm of four senators voting on a new law. They finally decided that without a shovel there was no way to bury the body, and since the dead are twice as heavy as the living, they really had no choice but to throw it in the river.

  By dawn they stood on the road as the night gradually paled beyond the rolling hills, their breath fogging the air.

  “I want to return to Athens,” said Hypatia. “There it will be just a bad dream.”

  Hannah took a deep breath. “Go on without me,” she said. “Please.”

  Before Hypatia could speak, Gideon broke in. “You cannot go back to Athens and neither can we.”

  Then Hannah knew. “You told them?”

  Gideon nodded. “Your quest is ours now, lady.”
/>   So.

  Hannah, riding the horse, led them out into a wide valley that wound north into the mountains. She hoped that Mount Parnassus would be visible by evening. Gideon unfolded the map, then rolled it up again. He agreed.

  By night they snared and skinned two rabbits, then roasted them over the fire. Walking would be more difficult as they entered the mountains beyond the foothills, so they ate well and slept near one another for warmth.

  On their third morning out of Athens, a cold rain fell in veils across the green valley floor before them. They came to a fork on the next hill, one side slanting off to a ledge, the other opening to a stony eastern face. There was only one choice. They picked their way across the wide field of shifting boulders toward a dent in the far-off hillside that looked like a cave, the cold rain soaking them to the skin. They had to move slowly to avoid tipping the boulders and falling into the crevices below, risking broken ankles and cracked skulls in an instant of miscalculation.

  “Let us have a song, shall we?” said Hypatia, looking to Hannah.

  Hannah smiled. There was no better way to cast out their fears.

  So.

  The sunrise on their fourth day brought clear skies as the fibrous clouds brought by the storm receded in the morning sunlight. They continued climbing west over the steep terrain above the sea, the green winter grasses emerging beneath the scraggly tufts of dry autumn brush underfoot. In the early afternoon, exhausted and somewhat discouraged, they passed through a windblown meadow where high overhead a murder of crows turned acrobatics in the air.

  Hannah trotted the horse up to the top of the next hill, where beyond a thicket of pine, she emerged at the blustery narrow pass to a view of the entire northwest mountains and the sea. Hannah smiled as the wind swirled around her, pushing her this way and that. Before her stood the crumbling grey stone peak of Mount Parnassus, home of the nine Muses. In the folds of its verdant slope lay a miniature city of white marble, a mere glint against the sun.

  Delfi.

  Hannah took a deep breath and then rushed back to collect the others, her heart pounding for the thrill of spotting their journey’s end. She hopped off the horse to give Hypatia a turn and hugged Gideon, the first real warmth she had shown him. They were nearly there.

  The climb down the ragged cliffs took ages. They traversed back and forth, leading the horse as it was too dangerous to ride. After the torrential rain, the soil was muddy and slick. Sofia, unused to such athletics, slipped on a wet leaf and shrieked, reaching out to a pile of stones to stop her fall. The stones gave way and crumbled down the hill, breaking open a nest of bees.

  Sofia screeched and swatted hysterically at the bees until she finally found her feet again and took off down the path to flee the vicious assault, and she did not stop running until she came to an outcropping of boulders further down that concealed a spring encircled by a swath of tall pines. She flung herself into the water with a splash.

  Hannah, Gideon and Hypatia exchanged quick glances and pursued Sofia at a careful distance, not wanting to draw the bees. When they arrived at the spring, out of breath from the chase, they found her standing in the shallow water, her wet black hair hanging limp around her body. “Are they gone?” she whimpered.

  Hannah looked around and nodded. “I think so.”

  The others stared at Sofia, and then, though they tried to contain themselves, began to giggle. “Sofia, your himation,” said Hypatia, pointing gingerly.

  Sofia looked down to see her expensive Persian shawl dripping magenta dye all down her arms, chest, and legs, into the bright clear water.

  Then Sofia too, began to laugh. She lifted the ends of her wilted shawl in her hands and began to howl until she found it difficult to breathe.

  Back on the bank, the others burst with laughter until they fell to the ground holding their ribs, only to look up at Sofia and laugh even harder. “If only you could see yourself,” said Hypatia, tears streaking her face.

  Then Sofia, with a devilish look in her eye, strode up to the bank and grabbed Hypatia’s arm and pulled her in. Hypatia shrieked and landed in the water with a splash, leaving Gideon and Hannah on the bank. Then it was Hypatia’s turn to pull Hannah into the water while Gideon slipped off his tunica and jumped in before anyone could drag him.

  After the fit of laughter passed, the travelers spread their wet clothes over the rocks and lay on their backs in the thin winter sun to dry. Hannah found a mound of clay beside the spring and gently applied it to Sofia’s numerous welts.

  “I must thank you,” said Sofia. “I have always dreamed of an adventure like the one had by Odysseus. You have brought it to me, and I am forever grateful, whatever happens. For now, I am fully alive, and it is wonderful, truly.” She turned and kissed Hannah, and smiled at her new friend.

  The sun was resting on the sea over the Bay of Corinth when they finally wandered into the deserted streets of the ruined city of Delfi. Everywhere the heads of marble gods severed from torsos lay smashed upon the ground, scattered amongst the ruins. High on the slope, the tall columns of the tholos at the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia still stood, though the roof had been destroyed. The travelers walked up to the broad platform and leaned their cheeks against the cold slick stone as the sun sank into the sea.

  “The gateway to Delfi,” whispered Hypatia.

  “What is left of it,” said Sofia, equally dismayed. “The Christians must have been here.”

  Gideon nudged a stone with his boot, then lifted it to see he had found a finger from a statue of Apollo. It was all that was left of a fine statue that had stood for hundreds of years. He slipped it in his sinus pocket.

  Hannah tried to imagine the Delfi that Synesius had described to her, the Delfi that had once been considered the navel of the world, the throne of the Earth Mother Gaia, and later Apollo. In her mind she saw Delfi resplendent, gleaming, full of honor, its streets teeming with young athletes parading to the stadium, officials lining up to pay their pious respects to the Pythia. There was clearly nothing left of that place. Hannah ran her hand over a splintered marble block, her heart aching for the city as though for a beloved friend. “It is just as Alizar said, only worse.”

  “I fear this empire will not rest until they have destroyed our entire world,” replied Hypatia.

  There was no way to look upon Delfi without feeling the magnitude of the loss. Hannah bent down to the earth and placed an offering of pink flower petals on a ruined pedestal.

  The angel would have wept to see it.

  In the dim twilight left to them, the foursome solemnly continued up the hill to the quiescent city and found what they presumed to be the outer wall of the Temple of Apollo, a large structure of massive girth supported by thirty or more columns too tremendous to topple, though they had been defiled by Christian zealots who had smeared them with ink and excrement, and smashed them with stones and anything else they could find to hurl. One narrow opening led into a garden maze where the mulberry trees, once prolific with blossoms and fruit, stood dead. Above them lay an amphitheatre, what might have been a gymnasium, and several paths overgrown with weeds leading between the tall temples, some of which were merely damaged while others lay toppled upon themselves, the drums of the columns scattered across the field as though a giant child had knocked them down after an afternoon of play.

  “That path must lead to the stadium,” said Gideon, pointing up the slope.

  But the small, intact temple just beneath the amphitheatre caught Hannah’s eye. “Look there,” she said.

  The travelers whispered while they walked toward it, as though passing through a cemetery in the presence of the dead. “Do you suppose there is anyone here?” asked Sofia.

  “It seems completely deserted,” said Hannah as she took several quick steps to be nearer to Gideon.

  “Emperor Theodosius had the city destroyed the year of my birth,” said Hypatia b
itterly. “But I understand that there are several women still in residence here, protectors of the oracle, hidden beneath the streets.”

  Only the radiant temple before them stood unaffected, a paladin of light. Perched above a sloping apron of twenty or more marble steps, twelve white Corinthian columns stood in support of a wide, triangular roof. As they came closer, they could see words carved above the eaves, in the center of the marble frontispiece.

  “What does it say?” Hannah whispered.

  Hypatia examined the letters in the fading light, although she knew them long before they pressed upon her eyes, for the saying had been renowned in philosophical circles for a thousand years. “Gnothi Se Auton,” she whispered. “Know Thy Self.”

  The travelers paused at the base of temple for a long time as the evening grew darker and the glowing planet Jupiter appeared in the indigo sky over the highest peak of the mountain.

  They tied the horse within reach of a patch of grass, and then, in silence, they walked up the steps and came to a door.

  Hannah pressed it and found it open.

  Beyond the door stretched a narrow hall where a line of flickering torches had been recently lit. Before they could call out, an old woman approached from far down the hall wearing a white himation bordered by the Greek key pattern, which flowed in long pleats to the floor. She walked without making a sound. “Good evening,” she said with a warm smile. “I am Stella. Welcome to the Temple of Apollo.”