Written in the Ashes (51 page)

“That is not how it seems to me,” he ranted, turning to the windows. “As a woman carrying a bastard child with no other suitors, I am sure I make a fitting end to your otherwise miserable prospects.” He paced furiously. “Well, you have lied to the wrong man.”

“Gideon, your words are hurtful. Let me explain.”

“Curse your feeble explanation, whatever it may be.”

Hannah closed her eyes against the barrage of words that pierced her like so many small knives. “It is not what you think,” she said. “Please sit down.”

“I prefer to stand,” said Gideon, arms crossed, still facing his body to the window. He turned his head to look at her, if he saw her at all through the asperity of his rage. “If you feel you can make a statement out of all this that does not merely mock my manhood I should like to hear it. It is well within my civil rights to dispose of you outright.”

Hannah lifted the pillow off her belly and set it beside her. There would be no hiding now. If anything, the truth would be a gift, a lifted burden, and a way of somehow putting the past behind her. “This babe—still in my womb by some miracle—may be yours, Gideon. But it may be the child of the Sacred Marriage rite of the Nuapar. I do not know. I was wrong in not telling you. I am sorry.”

Gideon would not look at her. His eyes examined the courtyard below, flitting over the stones as she spoke. Gradually his breathing slowed and his eyebrows settled over his eyes, and he returned to himself. Alizar saw that any danger had passed and swept out of the room, leaving them.

“Gideon?” said Hannah.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“I do not expect you to accept this news. It would be too much for any man, I understand. We will call off the betrothal and I will return to the Temple of Isis on Pharos.” Hannah swallowed the words, knowing that she would do exactly that, regardless of how much she did not wish to return to the island and the cold judging eyes of the women there.

Gideon looked at her then, his glassy eyes moist with some new feeling. “Is that what you wish?”

Hannah looked down at her belly, to where the warrior child still clung to life in her womb. She looked up. “No.”

Gideon stepped toward the bed, sheathed his sword, and stood over her. “Do you love me?”

Hannah closed her eyes.

“Tell me the truth, woman. I must hear it.”

Hannah looked up with as much courage as she could muster and met his dark eyes. “I have known one great love in my life, with a man who sacrificed his entire world for me. When we were separated, I knew a grief deeper than I ever imagined possible. When we were reunited, my heart soared to a height in the sky higher than any hawk or eagle has ever seen. That man was my father.

“It is true I think of Julian. Do I love him? Yes. But that night fades in my mind even as I long for it. What kind of fate would I know to selfishly pine for a man who is already wed to an entire order of men who require his guidance? The man I lay with in the tower is dead to all who knew him. And I would be well off to mourn him as such, and I know this. I cannot make a life of that. I feel my father’s staff in my path if I try to go a direction that I should not consider, and I feel he would want me to be with you, Gideon.” She shifted in the bed, bending one knee beneath the sheet. Hearing her own words she learned how she truly felt. “I can only be honest with you, and say that I will love you. If you will let me.”

Gideon sat on the bed, placed his hand on her calf, and met her eyes. “If what you say is true, I will accept this child.”

Hannah’s lower lip trembled, and she squinted her eyes to remain free of the tears that wanted to come. “You are a generous man.”

“Beauty is common, Hannah. Any woman can be beautiful. But you. You have the heart of a lioness. I fear you. And I would worship you.” He lifted her fingers and kissed them.

Hannah lifted her other hand and stroked Gideon’s cheek. “Thank you for bringing me here out of the desert.”

He laughed. “I love you, Hannah of Sinai.”

Within her womb, the angel smiled.

Gideon cleared his throat. “These words I say to you I have never said to anyone else. And if I had a friend who confessed to me he said such things to a woman, I would laugh at him and tell him to come to his senses. How wrong I would be. For these are my senses, and I have lived an entire life without them.”

Outside, a peacock screamed, and a cat in heat responded with a yowl as if the two species might somehow alleviate their mutual desire.

“I feel you must tell Mother Hathora,” said Gideon. “At least that.”

Hannah wanted to protest, but she knew he was right. “All right then. I shall.”

He thought a moment. “I can understand why you do not wish to go back. As a boy on Pharos I longed for the sea spray in my face, and adventure, and a life of my own with the touch of a beautiful woman in it.”

“Women.” Hannah corrected him.

“Women,” he smiled.

Hannah’s lips spread into a smirk, her dark blue eyes shining like lotus flowers in the twilight. The smile faded abruptly, though, for there in the door was Alizar, looking haggard and grave.

“Gideon, it is dawn. Ammonius, the priest who stoned Orestes, will be dead within the hour. Cyril is clearly on a warpath, and I must protect Hypatia. We must take the tablet and act now.”

Hannah protested. “No, you must not go. It is too soon.”

“I am sorry, Hannah,” said Alizar, resolute. “Pray to Hecate that our crossroads know her favor.” And in exhaustion, Alizar slipped from the doorway, an open space where all his hope had been.

Hannah and Gideon shared a glance, and then Gideon rose and followed Alizar as Hannah clung to the sheets in terror, knowing in her heart she might never see them alive again.

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“I said I was not to be disturbed,” barked Cyril, jolted from his desk where he was furiously composing a letter. Ink spilled across the wood in a thin dribble that bled to the floor, where half a dozen crumpled balls of parchment lay scattered like dead mice.

The priest at the door, his face speckled with pockmarks, nodded curtly and stepped out.

Cyril set his stylus against the page as the door burst open and Alizar and Gideon stepped into the room.

Cyril did not even look up. “There is a war on, Alizar, and I suggest before you speak you strongly consider your position, for I have within my possession the evidence of your treason.”

Alizar swept to the desk. “I am on the side of men and peace,” he growled. “You, clearly, are on the side of your own ambition.”

Cyril pushed his chair back and met Alizar’s eyes with his own fierce gaze, and for a moment, there was a flicker of fear deep within them, and then it was gone. “I am on the side of God, and I suggest you explain why you have burst into my church before I have you arrested, and on this grave morning where a boy I loved like a son has just been executed.”

“You know why we are here,” said Gideon, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

Cyril smiled. “Ah yes, perhaps for these.” He gestured across the room to the
pythos
filled with documents stolen from Alizar’s tower. “But they are mine now.”

Alizar looked to Gideon sharply, and Gideon lowered his hand to his side, but without shifting his ready stance. Alizar chose his words carefully, trying to suppress his rage. “I come here in the name of peace in Alexandria to speak to you about this massacring crusade you are on. Your Eminence, I have lived in Alexandria since before your father was born. We are a city of tolerance, founded by Ptolemy, for all religions, views and people to prosper. If it is your popularity you are so concerned for, then you should consider the shoulders of the past you are standing on, and the people who built Alexandria to be what she is. If you cut this city from her roots she will whither and die and you will rule a necropolis. Orestes is no threat to you now. Hypatia is a figurehead in the library with no real power. I want an accord of peace in the city.”

“I did not realize you were planning on staying, Alizar, or I would have offered you a chair, but seeing as how you have so rudely interrupted my mourning, and interjected it with your own speeches of grandeur at such a sensitive time, I will have you both imprisoned like the dogs you are. Guards!” Cyril rose.

Gideon and Alizar pressed the desk, guided by the instincts so honed from years of trained fighting, that Cyril was indeed resting at a point of weakness where, if pushed, he may break. Alizar drew his sword. “I demand you cease your campaigns against both Orestes and Hypatia,” he said. “At once. I want an ordinance of peace drawn up. There shall be no more bloodshed.” Then Alizar set his sword on Cyril’s desk for effect.

Gideon lifted the chest that concealed the halves of the Emerald Tablet and set it on Cyril’s desk.

Cyril glanced at the chest and then met Alizar’s eyes.

“If you cease your Parabolani and accept our proposal of peace, we will sink this chest in the sea and all it contains.”

“Open it,” said Cyril.

Gideon opened the chest and withdrew the burgundy linen concealing the twin halves of the Emerald Tablet. He began to unroll the cloth.

Alizar would not relent. “For every stone you throw one comes back to strike you. Eye for an eye, is it? Surely you see that clearly today. As you know I respect the Christian faith, but do not respect any action that punishes the innocent. Children have died. Women. It is preposterous, and it must end. It can end. Right here. We can draw the treaty together.”

Alizar grabbed a sheet of Pergamon parchment and set it before Cyril with a stylus just as Gideon finished unrolling the cloth to reveal a wooden doll with nails for eyes and stones for teeth.

Alizar and Gideon stared at the doll, then at each other, and realized at once that the Emerald Tablet had been stolen.

“Seize them!” Declared Cyril.

Five enormous armed guards, priests of Nitria with skin as black as river stones, entered the room and immediately drew their swords.

Cyril continued, pushing the paper aside. “I would see this city cleansed of sorcery and black magic and traitors against God to make peace for those who live under Christ’s teachings. And you come to me, pull a sword and a wooden doll, and speak of peace? What do you know of peace?”

“Call off your men, Cyril. My sword is not drawn, and neither is his. The tablet has been stolen from our possession. We had no idea of this.” Alizar nodded to Gideon and they both sheathed their swords.

Cyril laughed. “You see, Alizar, there is no need for a treaty of peace. God’s will is peace, and I am his instrument.”

Alizar looked back at Gideon, but as he turned his head, Cyril pulled a dagger from where it was strapped just beneath his desk and thrust it into Alizar’s ribs. Gideon drew his sword and went straight at Cyril, but the Nitrian priests seized him from behind. Alizar gasped for breath, his hand pressing his side where he had been stabbed.

Cyril wiped his dagger on his robe and set it on the desk. “Your friends will die, Alizar, and you will watch them die, but not by my hand. No. By the hand of their own evil faith. For vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

Fear filled Alizar’s eyes as he felt his folly. It had been useless to come; he had been driven by anger and exhaustion. The bishop had his own indignant convictions. Gideon stood beside his friend, his jaw set, his whole body ready to spring against the guards and turn the room as he knew in a moment he could.

Cyril clenched his fists and came to stand over Alizar. “I hope you live,” he said. “Because I think you should watch the fate that the prefect Orestes and his whore Hypatia have chosen for themselves from a private little tower where I should have sent you years ago. Take them!”

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