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?”
Han
nah 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.
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.
Written in the Ashes Page 45
