Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria (43 page)

The sixth day of Lent, 415

Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria

It has to be done.
 
I will rid myself of Theophania.
 
And if where I send her isn’t far enough, my second choice is somewhere so remote no man need hear her voice again.
 
She is like the mother of Nero, Julia Agrippina, who had sown the seeds that grew into her son’s imperial power, then tried to dig them up.
 
But the time is not yet.
 
For now, Mother is useful.
 
Her tongue wags on and on, driving those who listen—and so many listen for who can resist the allure of cleverly detailed slander?—closer and closer to the will of Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, which is, of course, God’s will.

And if, as Mother claims, the woman is truly a witch, her witchery would rival that of Simon Magus.

 
Sipping an eastern tea from a tiny eastern cup, I listen to the comforting sounds of Jone moving about, tidying my sleeping chamber, setting out my robes for the day.
 
How in heaven is she sister to Hypatia as well as the remarkable Lais?
 
And yet, though small and slightly sloped from her constantly hanging head and constantly lowered eyes, Jone’s mouth is plump enough.
 
The eye, when seen directly, is bright enough, the shape of the chin pleasing, the color high.
 
As for her body—who knows?
 
Devout beyond need, she wears cloth enough to shelter an elephant.
 
Beneath, she could be a sylph.
 
Or an elephant.

Speaking of cloth.
 
Complex business, all this drapery, awkward and heavy.
 
Jewels are damnably heavy.
 
As is cloth of gold.
 
Not to mention hot.
 
And as for the hat!
 
It makes my neck ache just holding it up.
 
It makes my scalp itch.
 
I’m losing my hair.
 
But once so arrayed, I am no longer a jiggling mass of sweating blue-veined fat, my unseen member hidden in folds of flesh, my tits larger than the dugs of Artemis—I am the Emperor of Egypt.
 
Mine is the voice of God in all Africa.
 
As I knew it would be.
 
Uncle knew it too.
 
And tried to stop it, which is why I was never made priest.
 
But Mother took care of that.
 
Even I would not expose my back to Theophania.

On the day God made clear my one true enemy, I set to work.
 
No more humble letters to Orestes.
 
No more petitions to Pulcheria who will grant them, giving me more and more power and more and more choice in how I use my power.

I am not a cruel man, nor am I greedy…unlike Theophilus.
 
Unlike Mother, I am not viciously insane.
 
What I am is essentially practical.
 
I suppose I might also be, like Bishop Athanasius before me, ruthless.
 
But as any good bishop knows, when it comes to the Church, what has to be done, will be done.
 
If a path was cleared on my way to the Throne of Mark due to Mother’s skill with pomegranates, what of it?
 
If my winning the election against Archdeacon Timothy, the more popular man, was achieved by Peter the Reader’s
Parabalanoi
thumbing knives near voters, what of it?
 
If driving away heretics and Jews causes them hardship and pain, I understand, even sympathize.
 
But such things should have been thought of before becoming Jews or heretics.
 
If I, as bishop, must provide an example by banishing my own mother to some barren isle, so be it.
 
Not that I mind her loss in the least.
 
I’ve dreamed of it for years.
 
Even so, the principle remains.
 
And now, if another needs removing from my city, then by Mary the Holy Virgin and the Sacred Mother of God, she needs removing.
 
The question of how I might accomplish this was answered only the night before in a meeting with Peter the Reader.
 
Strange fellow.
 
Not my favorite monk.
 
In any case, she will be carried away and left in a place from which she can never return.
 
It seems fair.
 
And practical.
 
If any complain, it will be explained that the woman is “traveling.”
 
She has traveled before, she can travel again.

“Jone!”
 
I loathe the sight of the sister of Hypatia, but in certain ways none is more useful than she.
 
“Any further news of the books I asked you for.”

Jone hangs her head.
 
“No, Holy Father.”

“No matter.
 
Without the woman, there will be as well no books.”

I see Jone allows herself to raise her eyes to my face, certain that I do not notice.
 
She is mistaken.
 
I notice.
 
There is that look in her eye again.
 
She is asking: what does he mean “without the woman”?
 
She may not know it, but poor Jone, the least of her father’s daughters, still holds some feeling for her sister.
 
It’s why she failed at collecting the books.
 
Never mind.
 
When the woman is gone, her books will be gone.
 
I might even allow her to keep some of them.
 
And when she dies, some time from now for she is yet in her prime, her work will be destroyed.
 
But as I said, I am not a cruel man.
 
I would not tell her that.

“Indeed, Holy Father.
 
If Hypatia were not there to guard them, any could enter her house and take them away.
 
But there is Minkah.”

“Pah!
 
Minkah.
 
He is one man and I am many men.
 
Neither Minkah nor any friend of Minkah’s will cause us trouble.
 
That is already certain.
 
Just think, tomorrow your house is returned to you…and what better use to make of it other than to give it over to the Church!”

“Tomorrow, Father?”

“Tomorrow.
 
Help me into bed.
 
I seem to be having difficulty lifting my right leg.
 
Look, Jone!
 
A star of good omen falls.”

~

Jone, youngest daughter of Theon of Alexandria

Looking as Cyril commands, I am sure I do not see what he sees.
 
I see a small silver dagger that hisses as it falls.
 
I am the daughter of a once famous astronomer who knew when a falling star was either good- or ill-omened.
 
I know nothing of this.
 
Yet this I do know: my feelings towards Hypatia are my own, and I nurse them as a babe is nursed.
 
To hate one’s own is one thing—but for another to hate or threaten?

Tonight, when I return to my cell, I will do as I often do: read one letter at random of all those Hypatia has sent me over the years.

~

Hypatia of Alexandria

“Nildjat Miw, see!
 
A star falls.”

My body feels as it has ever felt: bruised knees and cut feet, an aching arm, a small pain that comes and goes in one eye, the familiar gnaw of hunger.
 
Numbers are still an exquisite delight.
 
They are
Summum
, the sum of all creation.
 
Knowledge still absorbs, alchemy still beckons.
 
Life is still an unfolding, the farther we travel the more truth we can comprehend, and to understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.
 
Yet all this is as nothing.
 
I might, at will, know bliss.

Miw heavy in my arms, we pace the atrium.
 
The night is chill with the Christian’s Lent, but I am wrapped in warm white wool and Miw is wrapped in striped fur, her eyes limed in black as a cheetah’s eyes.
 
We watch a star fall as water falls, flowing down like silver.
 
Passing under the feet of Osiris, it washes over Isis, brightest star in the sky, lost for this moment in silver spray.

I am ravished by sky and star and cat and wool and cold and pain.
 
I
know
what Lais knew.
 
Nildjat Miw struggles in my arms.

“What is it, Miw?
 
Would you catch a star?”

And with this last thing I say to her, who says nothing to me, Nildjat Miw leaps from a window as Paniwi once leapt from a window, and though I look down to the street below, I do not see her.

Miw does nothing but that which suits her.
 
When it suits her, she will return.

The star has left a smear of silver, as a snail on obsidian.
 
I am as slender as the trail of silver light that has come and is gone across the open mouth of the sky.

Tomorrow morning I give a public lecture on Archimedes.
 
Tomorrow afternoon, I will continue discussing geometric optics with my Companions.
 
All know mathematics a divine discipline.
 
Into this discipline I have introduced light.
 
Light, of which visible light is only an aspect, is the formative principle of the universe, both material and spiritual.
 
Somehow, I shall prove it to them.
 
But if I do not, it is of small matter.
 
All do what they set themselves to do.

Tomorrow night I dine with Orestes.
 
This night I lie with Minkah.
 
As all now ravishes me, my beloved ravishes me most.

Where has Nildjat Miw got herself to?
 
She should be back by now.

~

The seventh day of Lent

Minkah the Egyptian

Felix Zoilus and I meet where Canopic Street passes under Mount Copron on top of which still stands the Temple to Pan—Theophilus had intended to do as he usually did: gut it, steal all worth stealing, then rename it.
 
The Temple to Pan would become the Church of Theophilus.

Cyril the Cunning has other plans.
 
My interest in Cyril’s ambitions is as keen as my interest in food once it’s eaten.
 
My interest in Cyril’s plans to achieve his ambitions interest me more than wine for word reaches me that his plans include Hypatia and those like Hypatia.
 
What that plan might be, I have yet to learn, but I shall.

I wait with Felix, as we do every morning she lectures, in sight of the door that opens onto her stables.
 
As she speaks this morning, Hypatia will soon pass this way, and I, fresh from our honeyed bed, will follow with Felix, keeping watch as she speaks.
 
Felix Zoilus surprises me.
 
He not only watches, he listens.
 
He too has resigned from the brotherhood.
 
Not I, but Felix, as strong and as skilled as ten combined, is a great loss to them.

These days, Hypatia does not speak as she once did.
 
She does not look as she once did.
 
The sound of her voice: gentle and low, reaches to the top of the circling seats.
 
Light streams from her body when I know there is no light.
 
As for her words, I have never heard the like.
 
Those come to hear her talk of numbers or of philosophers, scratch their heads—but not all.
 
Some forget to breathe.
 
And more come, and more, even as Felix warns that the grumblings of the ignorant who do not hear her, grow louder.
 
Because of Hypatia, they say, Alexandria is plagued by demons.

As if he reads my mind, Felix opens his mouth.
 
“Last night, did you see it?”

“See what?”

“The star, like a spear thrown by Osiris!”

I turn to ask him to describe it further as such things portend events, good and bad.
 
But I say nothing for walking towards us is Isidore and behind Isidore, twenty or more
Parabalanoi
.
 
This much is immediately clear.
 
They do not come to wish us well.