Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria (44 page)

“Felix,” I hiss.
 
“Prepare!”

Though Felix is huge, his brain is not.
 
Yet this day it works wonderfully well.
 
Before I have done so, he slips his sword from his scabbard, his knife from its sheath, and is waiting beside me, steady and true.

“Isidore,” say I, “I thought we should never meet again.”

Once the favorite of Theophilus, once almost a bishop, he looks as he ever did, as calculating as one of Hypatia’s counting boards, yet now there is an arrow of madness there, buried to its shaft in his eye.
 
Where once this man could be spoken to, such a gift has left him; he listens only to a voice of rage, the one he mistakes for a god.
 
“This, I assure you, Egyptian, will be the last we meet.”

And I am suddenly suffused with fear.
 
Not for myself.
 
What do I fear from death?
 
But these, come to kill me, to kill Felix Zoilus, what can it mean?
 
Our deaths mean nothing, but one thing—Hypatia will be alone.

I, who have never run, would run now.
 
I would have Felix run.
 
But before I can move or cause Felix to move, before another useless word is exchanged, Felix Zoilus has cut off Isidore’s head.
 
Even marred by surprise, his is a handsome face.
 
But there are many more behind him and I am not entirely sure we can behead them all.

~

Hypatia of Alexandria

As is done week after week, year after year, a stable lad prepares my chariot.
 
Nuri is eased first behind the wooden yoke at the end of the center pole, to be secured by a leather band around his great chest and through which the leather reins pass over his muscled shoulders.
 
Then Nomti is placed on the far side of the same pole.
 
All is ready.

From the house of Hypatia on the Street of Gardens to the Agora, there is a grid of small busy streets to traverse.
 
Today they are empty of those who usually walk them or work them—and where is Minkah, where Felix, who think I am unaware of them; where is Nildjat Miw who comes each day for years?
 
All this I ask until my chariot turns into the Street of the Pot Makers.

 
I know immediately who the men are who face me.
 
None are Imperial soldiers who dragged Zenobia through the streets of Rome clad only in chains of purest gold.
 
None are the Emperor Aurelian who freed the warrior queen, though by her actions she had caused him to raze the splendid Bruchion of Alexandria, destroying even the translucent tomb of Alexander.
 
These are Cyril’s private army, the monks from the Mountains of Nitria, each hidden in his robe of black.
 
But here they show their faces: ignorant, brutal, half mad faces made hideous with noxious belief, thwarted ambition, repressed sexuality.
 
How ironic these call themselves Christian, that they name themselves after one who would not recognize them.
 
If the man they love stood here speaking of what truly was and truly
is
, they would no more hear him now than any who listened then.
 
They would not hear the companion he loved whose worth is forgotten: Mariamne Magdal-eder, the Magdalene.

And there is the one who swore I would one day meet the maker he claims for me.
 
And I do, in the form of Peter the Reader.

I have no illusions.
 
There will be no golden chains.
 
There will be no emperor to bestow upon me a villa where I might live out my days in peace and beauty.
 
Peter and his men have come to do me great harm.
 
Synesius is gone, as is Bishop Theophilus, as is Flavius Anthemius.
 
There is only Minkah.
 
And Felix Zoilus.
 
But they are not here.
 
Someone has prevented their being here.

Waiting, I find even now though I have died so that I might Live, thoughts rule my mind.
 
To possess understanding—how glamorous this is.
 
How threatening.
 
Men who do not know me, adore me for it.
 
They fear me for it.
 
The love and the fear is in them all, students and strangers, for there are few who do not know of the woman, Hypatia.
 
Letters reach me addressed by no more than the words:
To the Philosopher, Alexandria
or
To the Muse, Alexandria
.
 
Even more than the love, the fear in them isolates me—for none know what they fear.

Those who love me, do not understand what they love.
 
Because they cannot understand, the love they feel does not touch me.
 
I am alone.
 
Even Father could not reach me.
 
I have only Minkah who is not here and will not come in time.

Those who hate, understand even less.
 
They cannot touch me.

Yet here they are now, the haters: the ignorant, the fanatic, those without questions, those who follow, those who believe the answers given by others.
 
In these, a true thought is as alien as the stars.
 
With pity, I watch them come, each trapped in the darkness of a shadowed mind.
 
There is no way out for any, no way home.
 
Even now, I could try to reach them, I
have
tried, but they hide in their secondhand faith, and they do not know they could
know
, do not
hear
their Christ who tried as I to reach them.
 
In this, they are untouchable.
 
Yet I see they mean to touch me.
 
In this time and in this place, they mean to bring me down, to reduce what I am to what they are.
 
Or so they believe.
 
And as they do this thing, they will be filled for a long red moment with the fierce joy of understanding something.
 
They will understand they are penetrating me.
 
It will arouse them.
 
It will heat their loins far beyond their secret longings in the deep of the night.
 
It will make them show their teeth and they will howl like wolves under the moon.
 
And they will know what lies beneath my skin, how my sinews glisten in the sunlight, how my heart beats in its red cave as any heart beats, how my blood flows like the Nile.
 
I shudder, as human as they.
 
There will be blood enough they might swim in it like fish.

And when I am penetrated, laid open like the carcass of a sacrificed lamb, they will look inside and they will ask each of each: where is the soul this one spoke of?
 
Where is the Glory?
 
There is no glory here.
 
Then, running through all like lightning forks in the sky, there will come sudden shame.
 
They will look away from each other.
 
They will grow pale, dropping the bloody shards of the pots they have used on me, dropping the lids of their eyes like someone caught stealing food.
 
They will try to hide that they wipe my red life from their hands.
 
And then, under cover of night, they will burn what they will think they have made of me.
 
And when I am nothing but charred bone and ash, they might forget this day.
 
But I doubt it.

In my chariot, I stand motionless, wearing the white
tribon
of a philosopher, calming my heated horses by a steady hand on their reins, and I wait for them.
 
I could, even now, attempt flight, but there is no room to go other than forward.
 
My horses would suffer their fury.
 
I could seize my skilled knife, leap among them as I leapt among the bandits of Galatia, taking with me at least Peter with his twisted mouth and twisted heart, and probably more.
 
Is Isidore among them?
 
Is Euoptius the brother of Synesius?
 
He is, though he hides himself behind others.

Even in bliss, I know fear.
 
I am afraid I will die screaming.
 
I am afraid I might betray myself with a piteous word.

I have always understood my world.
 
Almost alone of my kind, I understood it.
 
But my body will betray me.
 
My body is sorely afraid.
 
It twists and it turns, seeking a way to escape what will happen here.
 
And there is regret.
 
I look down at my feet, innocent of sandals.
 
Nildjat Miw is not here.
 
Miw knew as Paniwi knew when her mistress was dead.
 
I marvel at that.

And all the while I know peace and I know beauty and I know love.
 
I know I cannot be destroyed, that I am as much a part of this as they are part of this.
 
This is our great act and we share it as all do who eat and are eaten.
 
If these men could hear me, if they could hear their Christ, the Light that lived within Lais, and that now lives in Hypatia, would light their way out of the cave they call faith.

But they cannot hear me.

Cyril’s demons see me now and when they do, they growl and their hands tremble.
 
They are also afraid.
 
But their fear is nothing.
 
Not compared to the excitement that runs like poison through their veins.

Yes, with this death, I might scream.
 
But it is my body that screams, not my spirit.

I step down out of my chariot, quietly tell Nuri and Nomti to turn back for home.
 
And then I will wait, as I have so often done to speak with those who would ask me questions, or wish to honor me with small gifts.
 
As Nuri obeys, I lean over to whisper this last true thing in her anxious ear.
 
“Do not tell Minkah what you see here.
 
He could not bear it.”

~

Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria

God’s will be done.

Come to witness this needful act, I, Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, protector of the Church, hide in a curtained litter hidden behind a stall that sells pots.
 
How hard my heart beats at first sight of the chariot of Hypatia, at her horses.
 
How splendid they are.
 
When the time comes, I will claim these beasts.
 
And then I raise my eyes to the face of Hypatia…could there be a thing more beautiful?
 
How sad that all has come to this.
 
It need never have happened.
 
If she had visited me instead of Orestes!

As arranged, Peter the Reader walks ahead of the monks of the Nitrian Mountains.
 
As arranged, they will seize her.
 
By week’s end she will live in the distant cave we have prepared for her.
 
For all the years she lives, she will be under guard by day and by night.
 
There will be no more lectures, no more secret teaching, no more error with an Egyptian.

And yet she will have books and ink and paper.
 
She will be allowed out on certain nights to study the stars.
 
But she will never return to Alexandria.

God and I have decreed it so.

If any are looking, they might see my eye peeping out from my curtain.
 
They might see it widen in alarm.
 
If any could hear my thoughts, this is what they would hear: why does Peter smash a pot on the stones of the street?
 
Why does he then stoop down to seize, as do others of his kind, the sharpest shards?

There is a long cold moment of disbelief.
 
It stops the questions I would ask, no, would shout.
 
I cry out before Hypatia does.
 
“No!
 
This is
not
what we planned!”
 
Who hears me?
 
I would rush forward, would stop what is now become so feverish, so vicious, so perverse, so dreadful I can no longer lift my eyes to see, but I am too fat, too short of breath.
 
I mean to leap from my litter, but fall instead, helpless and sprawled on stones, my tremendous body shaken with sobs, my face melting with tears that creep into the creases of multiple chins.

~

Minkah the Egyptian

Felix Zoilus is dead.
 
If not for Felix, I, Minkah, would also be dead.
 
In truth, if I do not find Olinda the physician, I shall bleed out here in the streets of Alexandria.
 
But I have no time for myself.

Where is Hypatia?

The life of Felix was taken in order to take hers.
 
As was mine.

Where is Hypatia!

Running, stumbling, leaving a thick trail of red any jackal could follow, I am horribly answered.
 
That a god allows it banishes forever all gods from my heart.