The sound the mare makes, her hooves on stone, drowns any sound I might make. As they keep to the exact middle of each street, so I keep to the deepest shadows. From time to time we come on a drunk or a thief or a ragged bundle. The latter might be dead. It might be alive. None of these bother a woman on a horse who can outrun them, or an Egyptian whose knife is plainly seen.
We go on in this way until well past the new city walls Theophilus has built. Where does Hypatia go?
Isidore, of course—my good friend and fellow Parabalanoi, who met her this day where she and I found Nildjat Miw. Though not there long, they remained long enough.
I bear what I must, but if Isidore is included in those she “entertains”—this I could not bear. The thought he might be what I will never be steals away my soul. I am a lowborn Egyptian, Hypatia a highborn Greek. But Isidore of Pergamon, though born to wealth and elevated by Theophilus to high position, is not worthy of my darling. I clench my jaw and I follow.
Hypatia dismounts in front of what was once the Serapeum. The steps remain. The platform. But now, dimly seen by starlight, what was once one of the greatest temples in the world is a half built church, ugly, as well as enormous beyond need. None could miss it as the work of Theophilus.
As I thought, out from the pillars at the top of the marble steps, steps Isidore, Isis curse him.
He beckons. Bidding Desher remain without reins to bind her, or lad to guard her, Hypatia rapidly mounts the steps.
As soon as they disappear through the doors, I am up the steps after them.
Hypatia of Alexandria
Isidore signs me to silence, then turns to enter a building I would never set foot in, bare or sandaled, save for a gift I am promised. If he promises me again what he gave under dry palms in the Oasis of Siwa, my gift to him will be his own death. Strapped to my forearm is the knife I now wear wherever I go.
There is a moon in the depths of this night as thin as a single lash, as dim as dawn sensed through closed eyes. I stare at the hinted moon. All I am left of trust is my trust in Desher and in Nildjat Miw and in Minkah and in the waxing and waning of the moon.
“Hypatia!” Isidore hisses his concern that I tarry. “We should not be seen.”
I turn to follow.
Theophilus builds a thing that takes my breath away in horror. A church that is no more in plan than any Roman basilica—a functional civic hall—yet he uses as entry the great silver doors of the Serapeum! Following Isidore, I hurry first through a maw of a forecourt, then down the gullet of a porch, to find myself in a long central corridor under windows tall and arched. No roof covers this carcass. All is lit inside as it was outside, by the stars and by the sly blink of a moon.
A temple stood here that once was mine, but is no longer. Here my father was the pride of Alexandria, but is no longer. Theon of Alexandria is not welcome in this place. Hypatia of Alexandria is not welcome in this place. And where once I knew every silvered hall, every golden statue and white marble staircase, every entry and exit, the width of the widest chamber and the soaring height of the painted dome, now I am entirely lost. My heart doubles its beat, my feet slow their pace. Faced with a second corridor, half the width of the one I travel, I hesitate. It crosses the first at a perfect right angle. Glancing to the left and to the right, this second corridor disappears on either side into blackness. It seems a crucifixion and I the crucified.
Where am I? Where do I go? In the belly of this monster, I know fear. “Isidore!”
“Hush!”
Isidore’s black robe and black hood make him impossible to see, but not impossible to hear. He waits at the ending to this cold corridor beside the beginnings of an altar. Unfinished, this altar is where each line of perspective leads. It is the focus of all Theophilus erects here…and his finest insult. I would stamp my feet in fury. I would rend my cloak in sorrow. I would take my knife from its case and carve a star within a circle on the wood that once formed an altar to Isis. Duat, the underworld within, must be remembered…even here. More insult surrounds me. The Serapeum’s columns are stolen, its carved wooden panels, its shaped masonry, even its roof tiles of bronze shining as Pharos. That I could rip each from its place, grind all to dust.
“Look only at this, Hypatia.” Isidore is pointing at the old temple paving. “To house the bones of John the Baptizer, Theophilus demanded a holy sepulcher. Still his favorite, it was I who designed this sepulcher. Come! See what I have found.” So saying, he lights a lamp, then kneels to touch a stone here and one there, and by this, a section of the floor rises as the hatch of a ship—but without effort.
Immediately Isidore sets off down wide stone steps into pure darkness, and I follow, lost in both wonder and thought. Isidore has said, “still his favorite”—is he no longer? What has occurred between our bishop and his priest?
Countless stories are told I never hear, each day events unfold among countless people I will never know. A neighbor prospers, wives are beaten, husbands cuckolded, a drunk dies in the street, an emperor falls, all holds interest, some sadden, some elate…but what does any of it matter in the face of the eternal mysteries? Where are we, why are we here, where have we come from and where do we go? And yet, if Isidore is not favored by Theophilus, what is he?
Descending, it is not as it was rushing down and down to save the books, for nowhere was as deep as this. It is not as it was swinging by ropes from a reeking cave of bats and beetles and crickets into a cave deeper still, for no human hand carved out that vast dark place where Minkah and I left the poems of Lais. But these are well defined steps, each fashioned with skill from solid limestone that was not placed here, but was bored into, and this done so long ago the center of each and every stone is worn away by generations of feet.
Who, before us, used them?
Striding about in the village of Rhakotis, a place old, isolated, as well as exceedingly unimportant, Alexander laid out in barley flour where his streets should be, his temples, his palace, his docks, his canals, his public buildings, the quarters that would house the people who would come here. And with voice alone told where the causeway would be, that great joining of Pharos and land which would result in the two greatest harbors on the north coast of Egypt.
Dinocrates of Rhodes designed Alexandria from the scattering of flour. The Greek Pharaoh Ptolemy made Alexandria glorious. Did either know of these steps delving deep under the covering sands? How old are they? Certainly older than Alexandria and older than Rhakotis—no more then than a fishing village and no more now than the Egyptian District—they must first have been carved in the Egypt of Rameses. What I have thought legend is fact. Long before Alexander and long before his city, this place was alive with Egyptian ships and Egyptian secrets.
What Isidore has found has surely been found before…else why build the Serapeum so far from the palace? Why build it in humble Rhakotis? It follows, then, that Ptolemy I Soter has gone before me, and all the Ptolemies come after: Ptolemy II Philadelphius, Ptolemy III Euergetes, and on and on until Cleopatra VII. Pharaohs, emperors, priests of Serapis, the greatest of scholars; only these would have been allowed. My heart, which had slowed in its beating, beats faster again. No dream of loss causes this, but dream of gain. The world below awaits me even if desecrated and robbed. That it exists is excitement enough.
Isidore turns. “Wait here. There are lights to light.” Moving away, his lamp fades. I am left uneasy, silent and still in an utter lack of light. If Isidore means me harm, this is his moment.
There comes a series of faint sounds on the steps behind me. Rats? Spiders? Scorpions? Lizards? Large lizards? I have nothing but the comforting handle of my comforting blade. One moment passes, two, three, a dozen…and then, finally, a lamp is lit, then another, and another, and I find—Seker, god of light, protector of spirits who wander the underworld!—that I have waited in a cave. No, not a cave, a vast round domed room. Every surface is carved in fantastical ways, ancient gods stand in innumerable niches, the walls are painted mor
e brightly than the walls and the columns of the city of Thebes, the dome is made of blue glass. And now I see what Isidore intends as a gift! Herodotus would know what I see just as I know. Deep under the thick platform on which the Serapeum stood, deeper than the chambers that housed the library, is carved out of limestone bedrock a labyrinth of baffling and intricate passages.
Isidore beckons me forward, and quickly returning my knife to its sheath, forward I go. Together we enter the labyrinth. No matter the cost, what could keep me away? Would Lais have hesitated? Lais would have gone forth in awe, imbuing all that she passed through with awe.
Entering the doorway around which leering faces loom, I remember Herodotus facing his own Egyptian labyrinth in the place he called The City of the Crocodiles. “…from room to room and from court to court, all was an endless wonder to me, as we passed from a courtyard into rooms, from rooms into galleries, from galleries into more rooms and thence into yet more courtyards. The roof of every chamber, courtyard, and gallery is, like the walls, of stone. The walls are covered with carved figures, and each court is exquisitely built of white marble and surrounded by a colonnade.”
Stunned by the sight, touching this strange object and that, I ask, “Who else knows of this, Isidore?”
“Wait. This is not all.”
Not all? My heart beats in the tips of my fingers. My mind seems larger than the head that contains it. What more could there be?
For what seems forever, we follow the pattern laid on the floor, framed by the stone walls and roofed by a ceiling of arched stone, and the farther we go, the more I know we circle for a time to the right, and then for a time to the left, and as we circle we draw ever closer to a center. I understand this pattern. If one could see it drawn on paper it would seem looped as a thumbprint. Sound echoes here, the air is wet, the farther we go the more the walls drip with seeping water. Unlike the dry desert caves found by Minkah, this place was dug deep into a spur of ridged rock between the Great Green Sea and Lake Mareotis. Throughout there are canals and small streams. The stone beneath our feet is a mirror of black water.
And then we come on the heart of the thing.
In the exact center of the small space in the middle of the labyrinth stands a great chest on a tall ebony table. The chest is bound in bronze.
Isidore gazes as I gaze. “Open it.”
And so I do. No gold glitters, no jewel burns, no bones molder. Instead, I find scrolls, and beneath scrolls, codices. I can scarcely breathe, scarcely reach out to touch with the tip of one trembling finger.
“No one has seen this but me. The steps were found three days ago. So soon as they were, I forbade all to enter until where they led could be searched. I searched alone. And then I came looking for you.”
I would thank him. I would touch him. I would dance here in a labyrinth hidden for years. That it exists is not known to my father, nor is it known to my father’s friends. If such as these have no knowledge, who was it who did? Whoever and whenever, I behold now the books I have looked for, asked about, sought knowledge of, always failing to find them. These are the books of those who followed a certain Jew they thought a man, not a god. They contain, or so it is secretly said, his teachings, lost now to any called Christian.
“Why, Isidore? Why come to me and not Theophilus? Why show me and not him?”
In answer, he takes up the first scroll. He unrolls it so that its title shows: Gospel of Mary. He takes up a codex: Gospel of Judas. He then takes up a bundle of scrolls, tied with rotted twine. The twine has recently been broken, recently retied. In his hands, it easily breaks again. Of those that tumble back into the chest, he hands me one. This one I unroll and this one I begin to read. “These then are the thoughts of Mariamne, daughter of Josephus of the tribe of Benjamin. In the waning of my earthly days, I recount the life of the Daughter of Wisdom, who came in time to be known as the Magdalene.”
When I look up, Isidore says, “Theophilus would burn these before he would read them.” Do I hear less than love in his mouthing the name Theophilus? “And if not Theophilus, a host of others. Whoever placed them here, kept them safe. They are not safe now. This is to become a place of pilgrimage.” I am not mistaken, I do hear it. Something has caused a change in Isidore’s love for Alexandria’s bishop. “When the temple was destroyed, water began seeping in from the great cistern. Already mold begins to grow and whole sections are lost. I cannot keep them and I will not destroy them. You must take them away.”
He holds open the satchel he carries, a satchel whose meaning is now clear to me. I do not hesitate. As if it were the day of the Serapeum, once again I gather up books to take them away. But this time I celebrate. They are safe and they are mine.
~
Minkah the Egyptian
I do not follow Hypatia home. Holding close her papery prize, she rides Desher, hides her knife…safe in a city where more love her than do not love her. I follow the priest, who does not turn north to the stolen house of Theophilus where he has lived in rooms of his own these past ten years, nor towards some other place his faith provides its priests, but turns instead south on narrow streets towards the narrow-necked Port of Lake Mareotis.
As a shadow among shadows behind the purposeful Parabalanoi, I know what few know, but all would discover if such things mattered to other than those involved: though once Theophilus loved Isidore as Isidore loved Theophilus, no love flows now. Five years have passed since the Bishop of Alexandria would have made Isidore the Bishop of Constantinople, dragging him up to the height he himself has attained. One year since Theophilus expressed his first doubt about Origen. Ever the politician, the moment the Christian philosopher became officially condemned by the church, Theophilus abandoned him. But Isidore did not abandon his beloved Origen of Alexandria, Egyptian and philosopher. Love between priest and bishop has turned to loathing. If there is one thing Christians cannot abide of each other, it is to disagree over doctrine.
Isidore does not stop at the docks of laden and unladen boats come from over the lake. He does not stop at a shuttered inn or pass through a darkened door, but takes a rutted path at the end of a modest street leading him out to the reeds, thick as bundled straw, tall as a camel’s hump. They seem impenetrable, but are not. Growing along the edge of the lake for many miles west and more miles east, as well as in a rank of rustling green two hundred cubits wide from north to south, many a path winds through them, entering a perilous world harboring brigands of many kinds…just as the island of Pharos has long harbored brigands of only one kind: pirates.
I am careful here. Among these reeds are clearings and in the clearings reeded huts and in the huts, men and women one would be wise to avoid by day as well as by night.
The priest knows his way. The path he follows branches here and there, but he ever chooses the one that leads to the left. He walks and I follow behind until he comes on a clearing not large enough for a hut, and here waits a man robed in black from head to foot. I know the robe as well as I know the man. This is not merely a single Origen-loving monk from the Mountains of Nitria who rebels against the Bishop of Alexandria. This is Peter the Reader.
When last I saw him, he stood in the house of Theophilus. He will never do so again. Theophilus, suddenly an enemy of Origen, called a synod to condemn for heresy Peter and his monks for none would deny Origen. He allowed no one a defense. All so condemned live now in caves high in the mountains of the southern desert rather than walk the streets Theophilus walks, or where his Parabalanoi walk. Peter once led the brotherhood. But for Peter, my life would be different. I would not have it different. Praise accursed Peter whose monks are men of fierce heart, stout will, and of bloody mindedness unto murder in the name of their god. Of discernment, reason, learning: virtually none are possessed of any. Yet all love Origen. Or not. He is difficult to follow. They believe anyway. Hypatia teaches her Companions that to believe without understanding is common among men of any faith…what is “faith” but belief without proof?
I
t astounds me. I believe nothing. I do what I do so I might live. Peter does what he does in the belief that none deserve life who deny his faith. Does Isidore hold now with such madness? Has his rift with Theophilus driven him to this? If so, proud Isidore has fallen far.
He and Peter the Reader push their way towards the lake, and when they are swallowed by the night-black reeds, I follow. Waiting at the edge of the lake is a boat of reeds and in this boat Isidore and his Nitrian friend paddle out across the water—to where, I neither know nor care. But this I do know. Theophilus, who once loved Isidore, now loves a priest called Timothy. Timothy is not Parabalanoi though he will soon be what Isidore was, Archdeacon of Alexandria.
I have seen all I need for the moment. When I wish it, I will learn more.
~
Hypatia of Alexandria
My body begs for sleep, but my mind runs as Desher runs—tirelessly. When dawn comes, I have not slept for even an hour.
Isidore calls these books, gifts. I call them miracles. It is as if Lais has walked through my door, as if she holds Paniwi in her arms, as if she sits down beside me to say, “I am here, Miw. What would you have of me?”
Under my hand, given me by the surprising grace of a man with whom I have known both trust and terrible doubt, are copies of Egyptian books I have heard of but never before seen: The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, of the Egyptians, of Truth, The Apocryphon of James, the Tripartite Tractate, a handful of letters from Saul of Tarsus, a few from the poet Valentinus, and more and more. And in them I see how desperate the need for release from the stifling Law of the Jews. And in them I find a turning away from what is called the Dominion of Evil which is the Suffering World and a putting away of the impoverished heart seeking an End Time where the righteous will live and the heretic die. I cannot find the battle between this bishop and that to impose his unquestioned faith on all. What is here is a heroic attempt through myth to proclaim the divine nature in All.