Bia and Nuri I leave near a seeping spring. Nuri’s basket on my back, two lanterns and a sealed jar of water fastened to its strapping, the weight is far from light, but I can walk and I can carry, for days if I must. Looping the curl of rope over my shoulder, covering my hair with a scarf, I wear a youth’s rough tunic, thick riding boots, and a girdle round my waist. In this, I keep all else I will need.
For one moment I am Isidore: afraid to stay, afraid to go. Bia shakes her head, snorts down her nose. Chided, I slowly walk east as the sand becomes gravel becomes rough stone becomes dung. It grows darker and darker still, and even with care, I must occasionally slip on the droppings of bats, or snap the bodies of beetles. I am alone and I hesitate to be alone, but I do not stop. I arrive at a place where I must pass beyond the little light that dares come this far. One last look at Bia and Nuri, nose to tail, asleep and I enter a tunneled darkness of twisted stone.
By lantern-light, I come on a rock that seems as a broken-backed slave on a block. Then a raven of a rock, turning its black head full round on its black neck. Father would rejoice at sight of a raven: ravens lead towards revelation.
It is a revelation that my world has come to the hiding of books. It is a revelation that I, Hypatia, lover of Mind, seek revelation.
The path of the raven is no path at all. It is a series of ledges, some that rise, some that fall. I come upon rocks that appear to move or to breathe or to change in some subtle way. I stumble in darkness, fall into what I cannot see, grasp blindly for handholds. But I hear. Sighs as if crowds attend who regret my choice, the rip of cloth as I tear my tunic against a jut of stone, the rapid chee-chee-chee of I cannot imagine what, the sound as if something large has rolled over, disturbed in its sleep. My lantern shows me nothing but what is directly before me, and only so much of that.
Then an outcrop of rock, sharp and deeply ridged, set at the edge of an abrupt drop into deeper darkness. There is a ledge I must reach by squeezing between rocks.
Though not the rock Minkah used, it is one like. As he did, I loop my rope round it, then about my waist, gripping the rope with one hand above me and the other below. Slowly I ease myself down, slightly loosening my grip so that the rope slips through my hands a little at a time. I know my knots…yet suddenly the rope loses its hold—and I fall into an abyss, but only far enough to break my jar of water and to send a jolt of hideous pain up my arm.
Though no one sees and no one hears, I hide my pain and the unease fed by darkness. I will not grow confused by anxious imaginings nor will I wander sightless. This is the world blind Didymus knew. He would not be afraid. I must be as Didymus who saw without sight.
Though my water jar fell on stone, my basket and lantern fell on sand. By lantern light, I see there are no jars here as tall as a man, no gentle niches packed with smaller jars, no paintings on walls. There is nothing but rock and more rock as dark as Ket’s dark water.
This is not the cave I seek. The storm and Bia have led me to another. And I cannot climb back. I must believe this cave goes on, no matter its twists and turns, and somewhere there will be a place for my books. As for me, I will find my way back to the sun or I will not. Closing my eyes in the quiet and the dark lit by only one lantern, I cradle my arm and I breathe. In the dark behind my eyes, I imagine that Lais is with me. If Lais is with me, all is well.
My eyes open to a way through rock as if the rock was once one and, by some tremendous agency, became two. This is the way I take, and as I do the crevice becomes narrow, until finally I come on a place so narrow, I must push my basket of books before me, only to follow on when they are safely through.
Another crevice yawns open beyond the first. But the way is forked. Which shall I take? There seems the slightest sense of movement, a flow of air leading to the right and down. I go right. And down.
Yet again I stand at the edge of a precipice. My lantern, its oil growing low, shows me I need no rope to make my way down, for this wall does not drop but slopes, is not black or grey, but the color of amber. It glows in my lantern light. Foothold by handhold by foothold, I make my down and down, until I am abruptly stopped by my girdle snagged in a slice of amber rock and no matter that I move this way or that, it will not loosen. I cut it away—a feat which comes so suddenly I fall a second time, dropping my knife. This time a part of me I would not hear whispers: you are lost, daughter of Damara, and you will not be found…and with this, I lose my slim grasp on certainty and with it my grip—and fall again.
I land hard on my hands and my knees…and my arm, which before hurt as a tooth, hurts now as the thrust of a knife. In agony I curl where I fall. Rising on blooded legs to stand on blooded feet, my tunic no more now than a rag, I find this new place faintly glows as if a half moon brooded behind gated clouds. Where is my knife? I search in the silvery half light, but do not find it.
One by one, I have in some way or another been stripped of everything vital. What I was I am no longer. It seems that the farther I go the less I become. This is a world never found in my books, a place no myth has told me of, no poem. Nothing that my eyes see or my ears hear or my mouth tastes touches on the world above. I stand amid tortured columns of color, some rising from the floor of this cave beneath caves, some dropping down from the roof, some that both rise and fall and all are the color of roses, of the sea over white sand, of sulfur, of lemons, of oil on water, of the uncurling frond of a fern.
I am hurt. My water and food are gone. I have lost all save for the books I bring here, for it is here I see I will leave my paper ships, where the work of Valentinus, of Seth and his Magdalene, of unnamed poets, of my own, will rest, just as I will rest…for I know no way to ascend from this place which is more beautiful and more terrible than the abode of the dead. Formed between a column of faintest smoke and a column of a shell’s pink heart, there is a small cavern the color of the eye of Nildjat Miw. It is just the size to contain all that my baskets hold. Kneeling on surprising sand as white as milk, I read the words of the Magdalene one last time. On aged paper, brittle and dry, the voice is yet fresh as linen. I wonder, she writes, could not the visible world be God speaking to itself?
Having hidden what I have come to hide, I might choose now to die or to walk away as if I knew where I might go. If I have accomplished this, if I am in a place I can never leave, a place where my bones will keep company with my words, and if I am never to know what I have come here to know, this is as it must be. Lais would accept what must be. In this, at least, I can be as Lais. But I will not simply lie down. I will live until I die.
I walk. My arm aches as it first ached. The cuts to my feet are like hungry mouths. I carry only my rope for rope is all that is left me. I make my way up and up, climbing if I cannot walk, crawling if I can do nothing else. I do not become used to the dark; there is no gradual sightedness. I do not sleep but I dream and the dream I dream is of caves.
In dark perfection, my mind spins endlessly on. Not as blind Didymus, trusting in a faith “other than himself.” Not as Augustine, afraid yet suffused with love of his god. I am plagued by imagining. Goddesses rise and fall before me. Miw threads through my legs. Desher runs ahead. Numbers appear on my skin, burning. Shapes trip me up. Paper folds and unfolds. My hands shake. I cannot remember when last I carried my rope. Food means nothing; it is thirst that torments. I stumble often now. When I stumble I fall more than I do not fall. To rise becomes harder. I find less and less reason to go on. And in great weariness, great despair, great pain, I begin to know myself. The world above calls me wondrous. The world above is illusion. This is the true world for here nothing is. Nothing distracts. I am nothing but fear and doubt. If I survive, what do I survive for? The world I have known fails. All that I have valued fades. All that I love is dying. By my life, what has my life meant? What did it serve? I have left nothing behind to mark my place. I have given comfort and solace to no one. Synesius died calling out to me. I did not answer. Minkah loved me. I sent him out into the cold. I thought Isidore unworth
y of me and forced his leaving. My father gave me all he could give. In return, I grew ashamed of him. Jone was as a leper. Did I gather her in and offer healing? I killed Lais who I called my own heart. All I have done is learn only to learn this one last true thing. I know nothing. All Valentinus taught, all the Magdalene once said, all I believed of Lais, is no more than a hope born of need that the world has meaning. Here, in this last place, I am become numb to meaning. My heart is broken by truth. Yet, I am fully awake. I am fully aware. Even as I feel the gathering dark, there is a shine to the dark as ebony shines. And it beckons as the dazzling darkness.
Once again, I fall and I will not rise for this is as the Void of Hermes Trismegistus. Here I will be found by death, small and meek and helpless. I am not supple in my understanding nor am I subtle in my dying. There will be no escape. No transformation. I do not become silver. I will not be rescued.
My mind, my prideful mind, plagues me to the last. I see without light that I am as a carcass hung on a hook, a corpse left to rot in a hole hastily dug. And my mind rages, it rages. I cover my head with my arms. I am unbound and undone and I cry aloud for how sad my plight, how lonely my end. I can fall no farther. There is no pain greater, no sorrow deeper. I am lost to myself, lost to all those I have loved.
I am not Lais. Let me therefore be what I am. I am nothing, Inanna! Let me go! And with this great crying out, I understand as my life falls away that there is left only a giving over, a shedding, an emptying out. I let go the hold on that which I knew as purpose and desire and the force that drives a life. I let go the me of me. I do not think to do this, but rather surrender, and it is done. I am snatched away from me and suddenly I fall out of myself, and then I fall into myself—completely.
I do not imagine Nildjat Miw. And yet she is here, every hair, every claw, every drawing in and letting out of breath. Miw sits before me as a sphinx sits, perfectly still, perfectly attentive.
“Cat!” I say, surprised into imbecility.
Miw opens her mouth, yawning so great a yawn her rasped tongue curls and her white teeth gleam. And when she is done with this, she speaks…and have I not always understood her speech by tone or by gesture for her words are her own and I do not share them. Not so now. Her language is my language. “Over the years,” I hear my cat say, “you have passed through six gates.” The heat of Miw, the scent of her strong breath, passes over me. “This is the seventh gate. The seventh gate is the last gate. Welcome, Mistress, to the Great Below.”
And then she is twice her size, three times her size, she is as a lion, and in each of her eyes there is the silver crescent of a moon, as molten as the silver in my crucible and their silver flows into mine. In this moment, I am not in body, yet remain entirely myself as my body remains entirely itself…which is what I have made of it. Just as the world and all it contains is what I have made of it, and I am not dead, and I am not let go. In this endless instant of grace, I find I contain All, that I am All, that I AM.
From deepest despair, I am raised to heights unimaginable by intellect.
Everywhere I am embraced by warmth and by light and from the light comes a snaking out of numbers and of stars and of souls that go on forever and forever and forever and in the exact middle of the wheeling snake of light, Hypatia who is not lost but found, and is not tormented by demons for demons there are none, and of torment there is none, and of levels of hell there are none. There is only an infinity of light and the Light is perfect safety and perfect love.
In this same endless moment, I imagine I raise my arms in revelation and my left hand is suddenly gripped and pulled upward. I know this hand as I once knew my own. It is Lais whose laughter sounds in the Light, causing the numbers to scatter and the stars to spin and the souls to sing…and I laugh with Lais. Mathematician, philosopher, woman, human, Hypatia is free of mind. If nothing is, then nothing matters, and if nothing matters, where is fear? There is only bliss.
In bliss, I “think” to look along the length of my left arm, and there is the hand of my beloved pulling me up and up and out of Nildjat Miw’s Great Below.
Only when Minkah hands me a cloak, do I notice I am once again naked before him.
The sixth day of Lent, 415
Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria
It has to be done. I will rid myself of Theophania. And if where I send her isn’t far enough, my second choice is somewhere so remote no man need hear her voice again. She is like the mother of Nero, Julia Agrippina, who had sown the seeds that grew into her son’s imperial power, then tried to dig them up. But the time is not yet. For now, Mother is useful. Her tongue wags on and on, driving those who listen—and so many listen for who can resist the allure of cleverly detailed slander?—closer and closer to the will of Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, which is, of course, God’s will.
And if, as Mother claims, the woman is truly a witch, her witchery would rival that of Simon Magus.
Sipping an eastern tea from a tiny eastern cup, I listen to the comforting sounds of Jone moving about, tidying my sleeping chamber, setting out my robes for the day. How in heaven is she sister to Hypatia as well as the remarkable Lais? And yet, though small and slightly sloped from her constantly hanging head and constantly lowered eyes, Jone’s mouth is plump enough. The eye, when seen directly, is bright enough, the shape of the chin pleasing, the color high. As for her body—who knows? Devout beyond need, she wears cloth enough to shelter an elephant. Beneath, she could be a sylph. Or an elephant.
Speaking of cloth. Complex business, all this drapery, awkward and heavy. Jewels are damnably heavy. As is cloth of gold. Not to mention hot. And as for the hat! It makes my neck ache just holding it up. It makes my scalp itch. I’m losing my hair. But once so arrayed, I am no longer a jiggling mass of sweating blue-veined fat, my unseen member hidden in folds of flesh, my tits larger than the dugs of Artemis—I am the Emperor of Egypt. Mine is the voice of God in all Africa. As I knew it would be. Uncle knew it too. And tried to stop it, which is why I was never made priest. But Mother took care of that. Even I would not expose my back to Theophania.
On the day God made clear my one true enemy, I set to work. No more humble letters to Orestes. No more petitions to Pulcheria who will grant them, giving me more and more power and more and more choice in how I use my power.
I am not a cruel man, nor am I greedy…unlike Theophilus. Unlike Mother, I am not viciously insane. What I am is essentially practical. I suppose I might also be, like Bishop Athanasius before me, ruthless. But as any good bishop knows, when it comes to the Church, what has to be done, will be done. If a path was cleared on my way to the Throne of Mark due to Mother’s skill with pomegranates, what of it? If my winning the election against Archdeacon Timothy, the more popular man, was achieved by Peter the Reader’s Parabalanoi thumbing knives near voters, what of it? If driving away heretics and Jews causes them hardship and pain, I understand, even sympathize. But such things should have been thought of before becoming Jews or heretics. If I, as bishop, must provide an example by banishing my own mother to some barren isle, so be it. Not that I mind her loss in the least. I’ve dreamed of it for years. Even so, the principle remains. And now, if another needs removing from my city, then by Mary the Holy Virgin and the Sacred Mother of God, she needs removing. The question of how I might accomplish this was answered only the night before in a meeting with Peter the Reader. Strange fellow. Not my favorite monk. In any case, she will be carried away and left in a place from which she can never return. It seems fair. And practical. If any complain, it will be explained that the woman is “traveling.” She has traveled before, she can travel again.
“Jone!” I loathe the sight of the sister of Hypatia, but in certain ways none is more useful than she. “Any further news of the books I asked you for.”
Jone hangs her head. “No, Holy Father.”
“No matter. Without the woman, there will be as well no books.”
I see Jone allows herself to raise her eyes to my face, certain that I do
not notice. She is mistaken. I notice. There is that look in her eye again. She is asking: what does he mean “without the woman”? She may not know it, but poor Jone, the least of her father’s daughters, still holds some feeling for her sister. It’s why she failed at collecting the books. Never mind. When the woman is gone, her books will be gone. I might even allow her to keep some of them. And when she dies, some time from now for she is yet in her prime, her work will be destroyed. But as I said, I am not a cruel man. I would not tell her that.
“Indeed, Holy Father. If Hypatia were not there to guard them, any could enter her house and take them away. But there is Minkah.”
“Pah! Minkah. He is one man and I am many men. Neither Minkah nor any friend of Minkah’s will cause us trouble. That is already certain. Just think, tomorrow your house is returned to you…and what better use to make of it other than to give it over to the Church!”
“Tomorrow, Father?”
“Tomorrow. Help me into bed. I seem to be having difficulty lifting my right leg. Look, Jone! A star of good omen falls.”
~
Jone, youngest daughter of Theon of Alexandria
Looking as Cyril commands, I am sure I do not see what he sees. I see a small silver dagger that hisses as it falls. I am the daughter of a once famous astronomer who knew when a falling star was either good- or ill-omened. I know nothing of this. Yet this I do know: my feelings towards Hypatia are my own, and I nurse them as a babe is nursed. To hate one’s own is one thing—but for another to hate or threaten?
Tonight, when I return to my cell, I will do as I often do: read one letter at random of all those Hypatia has sent me over the years.