Wearing nothing but my heated skin, which Helladius feigns not to notice, I run down from the hill on which stands the temple, racing for home through the unhappy streets of my unhappy city hauling, like Claudian the poet, Plotinus in the sling on my back.
I am followed every step of the way by the Egyptian who carries his works of romance. And though there is pooled blood on the granite of the streets and more blood splashed up the sides of walls, even to a fearsome height on the Pillar of Diocletian, no one dares touch Hypatia of Alexandria or the Egyptian youth who follows her.
~
Cyril, nephew of Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria
Crammed between Uncle Theophilus and my mother Theophania, I try out this name and that: Cyril, Archdeacon of Alexandria, Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. This, of course, I do in my head while Mother and Uncle enjoy the attack on the Serapeum from our light-bodied wagon, one drawn by four fleet horses that can leap away at a word—mobs, after all, can turn on anyone, even those who incited them. I look at my uncle when I think this. As Alexandria’s bishop, Theophilus fills the poor and the ignorant with tales of eternal torment in unimaginable hells. He promises God’s love by doing His Will. It is, of course, my Uncle’s will—but I think God will be pleased.
We three are cloaked, our wagon hidden. “Those we fight, Uncle, are they demons?”
“Not all, boy, some merely need correction.”
I am not as my mother’s brother, afraid of his own mobs. If these were mine, I should stand for all to see they were mine.
Mother is ever eager to see harm done to any, although not to her brother…for his power is the source of her own. And I do hope she would have no harm done to me. But as I am not entirely sure, I keep a close eye out. I, Cyril, would see only those destroyed that God would see destroyed. Demons are clever. The trick is to become more clever than they. Now that I am fourteen, I think I might be the equal of demons.
A woman runs by, her mouth a black hole of shrieks, her hair a torch straight up from her head, her clothing aflame, her face, her arms, her legs crackling like a roasted goose. Is she Christian or pagan? Mother does not care, but I do. If the woman is Christian, demons must pay for her torment.
Uncle taps our driver’s shoulder. “We’ve seen enough.”
He lies. We leave because his mob comes too close for his comfort. Our driver whips the horses away.
Poor old Mother. How furious she must be to miss the rest of the burning, the screaming, the terror.
There are two truths I hide in my heart. One. I am superior to both. Two. Neither can live forever.
Hypatia
Oh, my city, my city.
I have not cried this day, not within the burning Serapeum, not when I ran home through the streets past vile sights, vile sounds, vile deeds committed by both Christian and pagan alike, not even when I found Father would not speak, nor would he rage, nor would he remain with those who defend the temple, but had instead thrown the books he had saved across the floor, and himself across his bed.
I turned away from a father who would not be seen in this way.
Alexandria is not Rome, a cesspool of Herculean struggles to dominate by right of the sword. It is not Athens, once lit with minds like suns, though nothing more now than a handful of Greeks amid a handful of stones. It is not Constantinople, newly hewn from the ancient Greek city of Byzantion, where struts an emperor who would force all men to believe as he believes…if he believes—one can never be sure what truly furnishes the mind or the heart. It is not even Egyptian, set many miles away from the River Nile which is and has ever been Egypt’s soul.
It is Alexandria! A city like no other city, however old that city might be and however famed…and it lies, as said Dio Chrysostom, “—at the conjuncture of the whole world.” I think it possible no city to come will be as Alexandria is now.
Seven centuries past, the great Alexander stood here, feet planted firm on a spit of hot white limestone between the Great Green Sea and a sweet water lake fed by the distant Nile. In his hands he held the Persian Darius’ golden casket, and in the casket the work of Homer, a man he thought a god. Rising before him shimmered the island he had dreamed of. “As Alexander was sleeping,” wrote Plutarch, “he saw a remarkable vision…an island in the stormy sea off Egypt…they call it Pharos.” Could the dreamer of Macedonia know this city would be his greatest, that it would feed the world? Could he imagine his young body, embalmed in honey and encased in beaten gold, would lie in a rock crystal vault and that his friend from youth, his mentor, his most valorous general, the Greek Ptolemy, would become again Pharaoh, founding a dynasty that lasted until the seventh and greatest of the Cleopatras?
In Alexander’s city which is my city, I am accustomed to walk among scholars from Britannia, to nod at Buddhist monks and Indian Brahmins, to laugh with women from Cathay, debate men from Palestine, even, on occasion, hear men of the north—whose eyes are like holes in their heads through which flows the blue sky—speak of medicine or metallurgy or war. All the knowledge in the world is gathered here. Here there are schools that teach all one might know, and here are found all the plays, the poems, the works of philosophy and astrology, the geography, the cosmology, the mechanics, the mathematics, alchemy which is the art of separating and joining together: the precious ideas, the secrets, the mysteries!
But now? Alexandria becomes food for the flames of brutal ignorance.
I have left Ife, once maid to my mother but now housekeeper, to tend to the scorched Egyptian with spears of aloe. I have left Plotinus scattered over my workroom floor much as Father left Pythagoras and Diophantus. I have not washed but covered my ashy nakedness with an old tunic of linen, and then I have gone looking for Lais so that I might finally weep…for Lais loves our city as much as I.
My sister is where I thought she would be, sitting in her room on the wide ledge of her second story window looking out over the Royal Quarter. The poets and playwrights she has rescued are stacked neatly in a book bucket, save one, and that one she holds. It is the poet Telesilla who once, when all the males of Argos were killed by the King of Sparta, chopped off her hair, dressed as a warrior and led the women of Argos against him. Because of Telesilla, Herodotus predicted the female would conquer the male.
The body of Lais is warm and it breathes, but the whole of my sister is not here.
I sit myself beside her, awaiting her return.
Socrates could remain unmoving for hours, unspeaking, eyes open yet unseeing, or if seeing, not seeing what all else saw, as his ears were unhearing, his skin unfeeling, his tongue untasting. Plato called what came over Socrates “the Rapt.” I would not know what to call what comes over Lais. At such times I have carefully watched and wondered. I think she leaves us, that she does this at will, that some inner part enters what the Egyptians call the Dazzling Darkness. I do not know if her body continues to see or to hear or to feel what I see and hear. I do not know if when I speak she understands what I say. This only I know: I cannot remember a time when my older sister did not go where I could not go, and return as if washed in the shine of the moon.
It frustrates and shames me. At times it humbles and angers me. I have told her so. She tells me her gift could be mine, indeed it already is if I would only allow it. I have tried to allow it with all my might. For this, I have achieved nothing but headaches.
Below us, rioting continues in the streets. All around I hear the shouts and the screams of those who cannot take comfort in a sister’s bliss. South of the wide Canopic Way, another fire of many fires burns a third of the way up Strabo’s pinecone of a mountain, on the top of which sits the Paneium. Is the path that spirals round the manmade mountain filled with the feet of Christians hurrying up to burn the Temple of Pan? Or is it a signal from defender to defender? I become frenzied. If I were Telesilla, I would cut my hair and go there directly. If I were Telesilla, I would carry a sword and a shield so I too might defend with my life those who defend the books. But up from our streets com
e not merely hideous sounds, but hideous smells. I am afraid. I am only Hypatia and I am afraid. What, besides our precious books, burns?
Is Father also afraid? I push away this biting thought, cleave closer to Lais, holding tight about her waist. Even as she is enraptured, some part of her remembers me, holding me as I hold her. Lais is all to me: sister, brother, teacher, mother, but Lais walks in unearthly gardens I cannot imagine, and I wait outside beside an earthly gate I cannot open nor can I climb.
In her room, lit by only one lamp, Lais quivers in my arms, and I know she returns. I have waited for this and am quick with my questions. “How can you see this, sister, how can you hear this, how can you know what burns, and not feel your own heart burning?”
My demands are as they would be, for I am yet young and the assumptions of youth are cruel. Her answer is as it would be, for this is Lais. “What was so, will be so again, Miw.” She calls me “Miw” which means cat, just as she calls our little sister Jone “Panya” which means mouse. I watch as she rises, as she lights candles, one by one. “What seems lost, is never lost. Though it appears not, life is as the Goddess Ma’at, harmonious.” And here she turns and I see the fire in the streets reflected in her eyes. “As my Miw forgets nothing, remember now that birth and death are as a play watched over by the sisters Uadjet and Nekhebet. To live is to act a play, a clever ever-changing never-ending play, and no actor is ever other than hero…”
“Hero?” My voice is as an ill-played flute. “But the Christians of Bishop Theophilus mean to burn the work of minds so much greater than their own.”
“So it seems. But each is hero to himself. In life’s play no theme is neglected. To us, for now it seems tragic—”
“But it is tragic, Lais! The books! The books are burning!”
“And to those who burn them, life seems triumphant. Who is to say which play is the truer? Ours or theirs? All are true.”
“We are the truth. We are the lovers of wisdom.”
“And the others?”
“They are the haters, the ones who fear.”
“Do they? Or do they merely fear we will hurt what they love?”
“But what do they love? How do blood and pain and horror and burning come from love?”
“What they love is not this life, Miw, but the one that follows. If you were they: poor, ignorant, suffering, without privilege of any earthly kind, might you too not listen to this new faith which promises so much after death?”
As ever, my sister astounds me. Not Father and not Father’s friends who are all Alexandria’s greatest living scholars speak as she does. Lais is no scholar. She seldom reads other than poetry. She attends no lectures save, on occasion, mine. She is an authority on nothing others count as reasoned or logical or organized into one system or another. They would not see her thoughts as worthy or even as sane. My sister is theodidactos; God-taught. Lais writes poems and only I am their reader. I take them in as I take in breath, and by so doing, I realize I know nothing. In their reading, I am reminded over and over that Lais knows something I do not know and do not know how to know.
Gazing out over a proud Alexandria whose face is red with fire and whose ears are filled with screams, I press my head against hers. If I press hard enough, I too might understand…although the “understanding” of Lais often seems cruel to those who cannot understand—a truth I daily feel.
Is it because my head rests against hers that I remember the words of the Jewish rebel Akiba ben Joseph, who lived far away and long ago? “The paper burns, but the words fly away.”
Until this moment I had not noticed the tablet that rests in my sister’s lap. Leaning over, I read:
I am the Luxurious One
Losing all to gain All.
I am She, alone, who wanders in Darkness.
The deeper I fall, the closer come I to Light.
Lais frowns at her words. “I have not finished this…”
My sister, who cannot or will not speak ill of any, does not or will not speak well of herself. But I can. “Beauty is never finished.”
As reward, Lais kisses my mouth.
~
My shutters are closed not for the noise—though the noise is as great today as it was yesterday—but for the smell. I cannot bear the stench of burning.
The siege of the Serapeum goes on. The killing there and in the streets is as great as it was. Do I act as if it is no more than any other day? Do I return to my work on the Elements of Euclid? The papers cover my desk. The tools I use are scattered nearby. At the far end of this same desk sit the laboratory apparatus’ invented by the Alexandrian alchemist, Maria the Jewess. Near these, open and inviting, is a book inspired by Maria and by her student, a certain Cleopatra. All copies of the Cheirokmeta were to be destroyed by order of the Emperor Diocletian—but no emperor has ever destroyed all he believes he destroys.
I am ravished by the secret art. There is an alchemy of the material which fascinates in its turning of one physical thing into another. And there is a truer alchemy that is not material at all but a transformation of the spirit, the reunion of the self with the Absolute by seeking states of consciousness that transcends the material. In the Great Work, all is symbol. The seven planetary metals are the seven gates one must open to transmute the body into spirit. More than three thousand years ago words were written on a Sumerian tablet: “The first gate he passed her out of, he restored to her the covering cloak of her body. At the second gate, he restored to her the bracelets of her hands and feet. At the third, he restored to her the binding girdle of her waist. At the fourth, he restored to her the ornaments of her breast. At the fifth, he restored to her the necklace of her neck. At the sixth, he restored to her the earrings of her ears. And at the seventh gate he passed her out of, he restored to her the great crown of her head.”
Each gate is a threshold, each a test. And each gate passed through awakens the soul.
As a daughter of Hermes, Thrice Great, he who produced the books of the Hermetica, alchemy absorbs me, its meaning is inexhaustible. I am not entirely a fool. I know Lais is as I am, a construction of flesh and of blood, of sinew and bone, that there are parts to her not perfect. But her slightest flaw is as perfection in someone else. She is a manifestation of the purest spirit, a “great miracle.” Lais and the work of Hermes Trismegistus have of late been all to me. I have hoped to undergo the fourfold way of the Emerald Tablet: become Materia Prima, know formless chaos and a time of darkness, dying to myself so that I might be reborn…not as Lais, for Lais is Lais—but as Hypatia, transformed. Thus, my long alchemical nights. Until, that is, the attack on the Serapeum. All that I labored over before the riot is precisely as it was when I left it, my bone ash vessel, my heating element. Yet nothing is as it was when I left it.
I cannot work. I cannot think. I have bathed, but without notice. I have dressed, but without care. I have eaten, but without pleasure. I have made a place for my rescued books, but without order. The wet of the city’s heat is still weeks away, yet my skin is slick with sweat as I pace from desk to bed to door to desk.
Already three have made their way to our house in the Royal District. The first was a student of Father’s sent by his fellows, all wishing to know when and where he shall teach them next. Noting that books from the Serapeum are strewn on the floor and that his great teacher hides under his bedding, this one will return to his friends without answer. Next was a local scribe who took refuge in the kitchen, sending out the bravest of our kitchen servants to announce that he wished to collect on his bill, no doubt expecting to be first in a long line. And last was Didymus the Blind come to see how Father fares in his woe.
I too would see Father, so walk with Didymus who walks as ever with a student assigned to guide him through his day.
Didymus, in his eighth decade, senses immediately that he fares much better than Father in his sixth. Though blind, he misses nothing, not that Father lies abed while his friends and fellows continue to risk their lives for the temple or th
at he covers most of his head. Nor does he miss the presence of someone new at Father’s side. When last I saw him, Minkah the burnt Egyptian to whom I am savior, sat on a stool in the courtyard, a plaster of aloe slathered on his head. Now, I am surprised to learn, he is allowed a room near our stables. Somehow, this one has charmed my father.
Didymus would send for a physician but by exposing an arm, Father waves that away. Didymus would send a musician. At that, Father groans. “The son of the woman Sosipatra, diviner of magical secrets, foretold the fall of the Temple. We are doomed, old friend.”
“Even so, we must act.”
“Act? And how shall I act? I gave my life to my students. I gave my life to those I would study and write commentary on. The only true home I have ever known is gone, its beauty defiled, its wisdom carried away by flames, its sanctity defiled by vilest ignorance. I was head of the greatest library on earth. And now? There is no library. And who am I if no one reads me or hears me? No, Didymus. I cannot act. All I can do is hold to this bed and these walls. Will they take these too?”
“In that case,” says Didymus, “I will send an astrologer.’
This makes Father lift his head.
Didymus, having sent for one called Beato of Sais, does not wait for him. The pagan Egyptian astrologer, like the pagan Greek mathematician, is friend to Didymus the Blind, but Didymus is a Christian, and a wise Christian in the city of Theophilus. It would not be wise to be discovered in the same house as an astrologer.
At word an astrologer comes, Jone sneaks by me, half hiding behind a tapestry, gift to our father from his friends. There she sits and pretends to read Euhemerus’ Sacred History. Trailed by Paniwi, Lais is also attracted by an astrologer. Paniwi is Lais’ cat, a wild brown thing with darker brown ears and tail. Paniwi bites and growls and brings dead offerings to Lais, scarcely bothering with anything as trivial as a mouse. Paniwi captures rats. She waylays snakes. She leaps, her long thin body twisting in air, for birds. Twice Lais found a huge red spiky lizard lovingly arranged on her pillow. Once she discovered a half-grown vulture. All this is why the cat is named Paniwi, “the bringer.”