Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria by Ki Longfellow Read Free Book Online Page B

the wry Pappas, an astronomer who seems Theon’s mentor, “…and what are scholars without books?”
    I need not hide for my outburst, nor explain my crudity, for now follows complete chaos.   All are thrown into frustrated indecision.   There must be a new library.   How can there be a new library?   Empty a building!   Use that!   And which building would allow this?   Build a new one!   Where?   Somewhere out of the city.   A secret place hidden in the eastern marshes.   How will those who seek it, find it?   Somewhere in the city, but not marked as such.   But how to hide this from an emperor who exults in the burning of our books?   Theodosius will find them…and try again.
    It is Helladius, priest of Ammon, barrel in chest, barrel in body, barrel in voice, who is finally loudest of all. “It falls to each man here to ensure that never happens.   How, Theon, shall we do this?”   As usual, Theon does not answer, though he does look attentive.   This seems to answer for him.   Helladius bellows on.   “If we experience further threat, we must prepare for further threat.   If they would burn more temples, what can we do?   We are scholars, magistrates, priests.   They are mindless fanatics protected by the Parabalanoi. ”   Here he spits.   “Ignorant thugs!   May Ammon cast them into the lowest hells of Amenta!   May He stuff their mouths with the Stone of Sut!”   I would flinch, but as with laughter, I know the art of a straight face.   “We have learned by all this and learned grievously.   Using violence against violence saved the books, but did not save the temple.   As well, violence reduced us to the brutish level of a slavering Goth.”   All heads nod.   They remember his blooded sword.   “The new library must be as secret as the books we hide in it.   And that is not all we must hide.   Our thoughts must be muted, our ideas spoken in whispers.   The threat has not passed.   That bishop awaits us like a lion in the tall grass.”
    Theon groans at this.   They all groan.
    The man Pappas stands forth, his voice as a bell.   “The greatest minds have lived in this city.   The greatest talents have added word upon word, thought upon thought, to its store of knowledge.   And all of it, all of it, was lately available to any who sought it.   How can we bear to lose this?   How can any bear to lose it?”
    “Surely, it has not come to that?”   This is said by the occultist Paulus of Alexandria.   His own home lost to fire, yet his goods were removed the day before to the house of his Christian mother-in-law.   Paulus interests me.   Is he gifted with sight…or a spy?   If spy, then for whom?   Not for Theophilus or I should know it.   “Theodosius shows charity.   He declares we are allowed our beliefs.”
    “Are you a fool?” snaps Pappas, who I begin to admire.   “If we are allowed our beliefs, where are our temples?”
    And now, from a chair far from all these talkers, rises up Hypatia.   All throughout, as I have stood listening to this one and that, and to all at once, so too has she.   At sight of her as at speech from me, once again the silence is immediate.   She is stared at.   To run through fire for books, to stride naked, her nose in the air, past men maddened with blood…this is one to be feared.
    “You talk of a new library,” says the daughter of Theon, “you say the new library will not be as the old, it will be secret.   But how secret can it be?   Scholars will seek it, will speak of it.   How then can it be hidden?   No more than one foolish mouth, and it will be gone before the waning moon.”   All is now a rustle of togas, a scratching of beards.   As an Egyptian, I grow no beard, but if I did, I would scratch it.   Beard scratching is a way to avoid other than beard scratching.   “Shall we give them a new library to sack and to burn?”   Heads are shaking, nooooo.   “Nor can we trust them to one