Aboard the Blue Raven,
a Roman grain ship sailing the Great Sea
Winter, 409
Hypatia of Alexandria
I have lost Lais, mother, father, Jone, Rinat, Ife, my well loved Companions who grieved over my unexplained leaving.
I have lost Minkah.
To Synesius, I said I should return, perhaps in a year, perhaps less. I said I would write him, constantly. But it has been more than a year. Four years have passed and Alexandria is still a week away.
Where have I been? Wherever my cheerless whim took me. And with me came Nildjat Miw and Desher for neither could be left behind. By land and by sea, though no longer young, they went where I went.
Sailing first to Crete, then on to Athens and all the while I was as Io—seduced by Zeus, so forced by Hera to wander pursued by a gadfly. Travel is hard. What seemed a week on a map became a month on the swelling sea or over a mountainous road. I found my books in libraries, in the homes of prominent men, in schools where they were required to be read. I was feted and praised and asked to speak. And so I did speak, but not with passion and not on Valentinus or Seth, or on my own work. If not for Miw, I would have ridden Desher back to her high cold desert and there lost us both in the wind and the sand.
In once glorious Athens, I stood before thousands in the Platonic Academy of Plutarch the Younger and his daughter Asclepigenia. My subject was Euclid, the greatest of geometers. Developing a system for measuring the surface of anything, he began with points and lines. A point, he taught, has no dimension of any kind and a line is nothing more than the shortest distance between two points. “Which,” I said, gazing down at the usual rapt faces, “brings us to an interesting problem: without dimension, does something exist? And if a point does not exist, does the line a series of points makes exist? And if neither point nor line exists, what does?”
And so forth and so on. My own voice on my own ear was no more than a distant irritation.
Then came the cities of Neopolis, Pergamum, Ephesus, Tarsus, and more and more…until each was blurred in my mind as the sky is blurred by the horse-driven dust of the ceaseless, countless, barbarians who ride against the empire, both east and west.
For a time, we breathed the fetid air of Rome, a city like its theater: bloody, foolish, and filthy. It is also as its politics: dangerous, complex and personal. It has no library, no central collection for scholars—only the rich owned books which they did not read. We arrived to find it besieged and starving. The poor ate roaches. They ate dung. They gnawed on the corpses of neighbors, for the dead were as numerous as rats. And outside the Aurelian walls, the Visigoths ate and drank and pissed and shouted, taunting Rome’s despair.
As I was who I was: of no interest and no threat to the Visigoth king, Alaric allowed me past. Once in, my hosts, kin to Synesius, said the Pope of Rome would have called on the ancient gods to drive away the Visigoths, but as no one could be found who remembered the rites, no god, Christian or “pagan,” lifted a spectral hand.
We spent, my cat and horse and I, less than a week in that dreadful place. Any longer, and we should have been eaten.
Meanwhile, far to the north, the Emperor of the West, Honorius, was building a chicken coop. Invited to a private audience in Ravenna, city of marshes, I declined, pleading ill health, so was sent a sketch of the coop—an astonishing thing. As large as the triple-decked ships on which we sailed, it could have fed and housed the poor of Rhakotis. As Rome suffered, Honorius tended his chickens.
Along with the sketch came a letter suggesting I rest in his country villa. There, a mile from the camp of the Visigoths, I met a delight of a girl I shall ever call friend. Aelia Galla Placidia was half-sister to both Arcadius, Emperor of the East, and Honorius, Emperor of the West.
Deep in a winter’s night, Miw in my lap, I unburdened myself to the daughter of the man who would destroy my world. I saw nothing of Theodosius in Galla. I saw only great delicacy as she listened in silence until I had exhausted myself. And then she spoke.
“You love a man of the streets, a man of violence in the pay of your enemy, and he loves you…shall I tell you something? I love a man of violence, one who starves and kills my people, worse, he is already married. He has not said he loves me but I would flee with him at a word. We are the same you and I.”
I, in the midst of self-pity and complaint, stopped as if a cliff rose before me. “Who is it you love?”
“Athaulf, brother-in-law to Alaric, King of the Visigoths. I am safe because he keeps me safe. This villa is untouched because he decrees it so. He visits when no one sees. Should I not be ashamed? But love does not know shame.”
I am called wise. Before Galla I felt foolish. She loved who she loved and, as I did not, accepted what she loved.
And yet I did not set sail for home, but in shame and confusion traveled on.
The Imperial summons came in the Christian city of Antioch, called by its citizens “Rival to Alexandria,” but called by me “Capital of Earthquakes” for under my bare feet the ground rumbled as a stomach grumbled, hungry to be fed. I was called to appear before Theodosius II, Emperor of the East. Theodosius II, nephew of Honorius therefore nephew to Galla, was eight years old. Easy enough to again claim illness—but as the true emperor was Flavius Anthemius, the boy’s Praetorian Prefect, and as it was Flavius Anthemius who had commanded me, and as Anthemius was considered by Synesius and Augustine to be a worthy man, I accepted his demand.
The trek west from Antioch in Syria to Constantinople on the land route from Europe to Asia, was long and hard, but my way was paid, a villa was promised, Desher need not walk the whole of the stony spine of Anatolia but could at times, like Nildjat Miw, be carried in a cart bedded with finest straw. The road chosen was seldom troubled: our guard a mere contubernium. Of the eight legionaries and two servants, I knew by name only their Decanus, who was, of all things, an Ostrogoth. Tall and thin as an obelisk, his hair was as wild as Desher’s straw, his skin as pink as Ia’eh’s nose, his name Gundisalv.
Only Gundisalv spoke, and then only to grunt. Such speech soothed me as I need not reply.
We climbed up through the Cilician Gates, the high and narrow pass through the Tarsus Mountains, walking on bare rocks and early snow. Beyond that, we were to drop down again to a fertile plain, and from there ferry over the narrow Bosporus, its inlet Keras, and a “Golden Horn” thick with ships and shouting. Gundisalv conveyed all this by gesture and growling.
In all my travels, I had yet to see so desolate a land…the cold was more a chill of the spirit than of the skin, though the skin was cold enough. Huddling into myself, I dreamed of the color of number, trusting Desher to pick her way through the endless grey rocks under an endless grey sky—when, at a crossroads somewhere in Galatia, she suddenly shied, stepping violently sideways, and I, unprepared, slipped from her back. From one moment to the next the world was a rampage of color.
“Bagaudae!” shouted Gundisalv, whose first thought was to scoop me up and dump me into the wagon of straw where hid Miw—but immediately I vaulted back onto Desher, knife in my hand. A knife was not useless, but it was far from enough against bandits who’d appeared on all sides, each waving a sword.
We were only eleven. Those who would solve by theft the problem of poverty in a declining Empire, were twice our number. A thing of hair and rags came at Desher with a gladius meaning to take her down at the leg with its long narrow blade, but I was over the side of my saddle, swinging close to the ground, and caught the fellow under the ribs with my knife, so it was he, not Desher, who fell, and while falling, I swept up his sword.
Like baboons, each bared its teeth, each screamed as a wild thing. Gundisalv, cutting away at two who would unhorse him, paused only once at the sight of me fighting beside him. We were fewer but also fitter, faster, better trained, and we rode.
It was over in moments. Those who survived us fled faster than they came. And we were left with one dead and one grievously cut. This one we placed
in the wagon with Nildjat Miw who surprised me by curling herself against his blooded shoulder.
All shook their heads with wonder that we lived. To live made them merry and we jogged away as soon as they’d buried their man beneath a pile of stones as high as the belly of his horse.
Gundisalv jogged beside me, exposing black teeth in a stretch of a grin. Staring; he shook his head so that his beard became caught in his cloak and he freed it by hacking off some with his knife. For days, he had said nothing. That day? “A woman who fights. I have heard of women who fight. Far to the north on an island there are women painted blue who fight more fiercely than men. But I have never seen this, I have only been told. And there are women far to the east who come out of the mountains of snow and these women no man would want to meet even if he rides with a hundred men, but again this I have only been told. Not once have I seen for myself. But now I see you and I would cry out with the wonder of it. I saw you mount and ride your horse as the best of our riders…and such a horse! I would pay much for her. I saw you fight with knife and with sword and I, who have never seen such a thing, will never forget it. A woman warrior! I, Gundisalv, could die now and I should be happy to do so for I have seen something worth the dying.”
We rode down from the ridge on which we had been so exposed and into a defile whose sides were steep rock. Bagaudae were foolish to attack us on the ridge for in the defile our horses would have been less able to turn and to kick out and to rear. But when a man is hungry, these things are harder to see.
We were nine with one dead and one wounded. But the men were easy and talked of stopping soon and eating well, for nothing is as good for the belly as a fight well fought.
The second attack came with no screaming, no baring of teeth. There was only a silent rising up from behind rock of men made desperate by need and I saw our first battle had been only a way to take our mettle and a life or two. Having done both, we were now set upon by not twice as many as we, but four times as many. Desher moved again with the grace of youth, and I with the skill learned from observing Minkah who knew the sword as I know my knife.
And we lost one and we lost two, and I slashed at all who came near and more came and more. If they had taken our mettle, they did not take Desher’s. If I cut down one, she took another with the flash of a hard hoof. If I leapt from her back and under her belly to hamstring one who would hamstring her, she took the neck of some other between her teeth and shook him until he was senseless.
Gundisalv, hacking at a ragged creature that had hold of his horse’s long mane, yelled at one of ours to take care…but too late. Our man was pulled backwards from his horse only to disappear under a dozen of them, each slashing and stabbing at the poor thing. Up on her haunches, Desher whirled in place just as one, bolder than any and naked save for his loincloth, vaulted with admirable grace at Gundisalv, landing on his horse’s rump where he balanced on bare feet, and with one hand gripped Gundisalv’s hair, pulling his head back so he might with the other cut Gundisalv’s throat. But as he raised his sword, I hacked off the hand that held the hair, and both hand and brigand dropped away.
It was this which finally took their heart. Though we had lost half our number, they had lost more than half. It was enough. They were gone as silently as they came.
By those still living, I was lifted high in the air, and they laughed and they whistled…joyous to find life again theirs, especially valorous life. Gundisalv swore with a great clanking of sword against breast-piece that his life was now mine.
Then and there I returned to gloom. Minkah had sworn this.
~
Constantinople was as a hive of newly swarmed bees. Enormous walls, doubling its size, went up from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn, ordered by Flavius Anthemius…not against Barbarians, but against the hordes of starving brigands plaguing the Empire, east and west. I had met his bagaudae and understood his walls.
The promised villa proved pleasant, its stables suitable for noble Desher, and Miw made no complaint, not even when meeting our host, Orestes. Orestes was as handsome as Helios. And so? I had no stomach for love. In one way or another, all I loved was dead. But it was hell to work in the racket of wall building.
No matter which city, letters from my Companions awaited me, letters from Augustine, household letters from Ife, but no one outdid Synesius. In the house of Orestes were not only nine separate letters devoted to the horrors of Constantinople, a city he loathed having been forced to sit in it for three years to gain the ear of Emperor Arcadius, but also his latest book: Dion, or about His Life. Reading of his hero Dion’s adventures, all in defense of a riotous life as opposed to one of self-denial, I found myself painted into its pages. By the wrath of the father of Galla Placidia, was I that imperious, a disdainer of “lesser men”? And yet, Dion amused me. In it the ignorant desert monks were “black mantles” while those who opposed them were “white mantles.”
In the din that was Constantinople, I seldom went out, but should I, I was dogged by slavish Gundisalv who slept in the stables near Desher.
Came the day I must meet Flavius Anthemius in the Forum Tauri. By meet, I mean speak before. What occurred then, I did not know. Nor care.
For fear of her loss in strange streets, Nildjat Miw was locked away in our borrowed villa, Desher in her stall. The Forum Tauri was a straight drop down from Orestes’ hilltop villa to the Sea of Marmora. I walked it, but not alone. Gundisalv walked behind me until we found ourselves on the colonnaded Mese, as wide and busy with lives as the Canopic Way. The Mese, and all streets leading off, was littered with stolen statues, all the quicker to grow this New Rome with its seven hills. The doors, the stone columns, the marble for walls and the tiles on the floors, these were gathered from places not happy to lose them.
I walked content. Even dogged by Gundisalv, an Ostrogoth broad as a wagon, it was good to be known by no one.
I had hoped to be early, but the Forum was already crammed with craning heads. Shown to my seat as if I was tardy, as if I was rude, I took my place, Gundisalv standing behind me, and listened to Atticus, the Bishop of Constantinople. By this I knew immediately I was not there to lecture; I was there to be harangued. On the spot, I knew I would not speak but would leave both Forum and city by nightfall. There was no comfort in this and no discomfort. If I was tested, I would pass it in my way, not theirs.
“By Paul,” shouted Atticus, a small-boned man with large lungs, “we are not told that Eve suffered alone from deception, but that ‘Woman’ was deceived, meaning all women!” Here the man stared directly at me. “What else does the blessed Paul say? ‘Let a woman learn in silence.’ ‘Let no woman raise her voice in church.’ The law has placed woman in subjugation to man. ‘If women want to learn anything, let them learn from their husbands at home.’”
Ungreeted, made to appear late, seated alone, this was the creature chosen to berate me? His tone was unvaried, his form sloppy, his vocabulary limited, and as for his content…heard once in a class taught by Father, this one would fly out the door on his ear. Synesius called me high-handed? He did not miss his mark. My heart may have slowed, but my pride lived on.
I rose. I turned my head just so, only enough to catch sight of the child Theodosius II, cross-eyed with boredom. But the eyes of Flavius Anthemius were like sums I must solve. “And if the husband knows nothing?”
“What?” Atticus could not believe I would dare speak while he was speaking.
I strode forward, Gundisalv on my heels. “And if the husband knows nothing, how then shall he teach his wife? If he has nothing to teach, both will live in ignorance.”
His small face a knot of smug assumption, Atticus answered, “A husband will know enough.”
“Enough what? Who alive knows anything at all?”
Atticus was confused. “In Paul’s time—”
“…he did not say what you claim he said, nor did he write the letters you say he wrote. All these were penned by others long after his death. At Paul’s side pr
eached his wife, Thecla, more learned than the man I see before me now.”
Behind me, I heard a huge intake of breath. Three of Theodosius’ four sisters were there: Arcadia, Marina, and Pulcheria. The breather could only be Pulcheria, barely ten, but a Jone, though made of fire, not earth. Atticus proclaimed a woman not divine. He proclaimed her less than human. As a woman, did I endanger myself? Would his god strike me down? I had arrived not caring. I spoke not caring.
His neck stretched from its collar like Honorius’ prized rooster, Atticus crowed, “Blasphemy! Lies!”
“It is you who lie, and your lies are intolerant and cruel—even unto evil. Socrates taught the only evil was ignorance.”
“You call me evil!”
“I call you ignorant—and to hear the ignorant speak out with authority is a great evil. You touch people’s hearts. You reach for their souls. You repeat what you have heard. You question nothing. You expect no one to question you. Called to speak, yet I listen to insult and calumny. You tell me, Hypatia of Alexandria, that because you possess an organ that even a dog possesses I am nothing in the eyes of your god?”
Came a voice from behind, a child’s voice. “Woman, be still!”
I turned, slowly. Years before, the eunuch Eutropius lost his head by order of Eudoxia, Pulcheria’s mother. As sole master over the slow mind of Arcadius, Pulcheria’s father and Emperor of the East, Eutropius had outwitted and thus ruled the court, yet made the fatal blunder of voicing his contempt for Eudoxia, Empress of the East, a woman far from slow. “I who brought you here,” he was said to have said to her, “can throw you out.” And there went his head. I risked mine with the spawn of Arcadius and Eudoxia. “Dare not silence me, child, for in silencing me, you silence learning. You silence questioning. You silence even divinity, for all are divine, and all partake of what you call god. You have not one idea of the Christ you so love, for if you did, it would be you and your bishop who would fall silent on the instant.”