Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria by Ki Longfellow Page A

flat on the ground where they can kick him as well as hit him.   But Augustine has caught the attention of the bear of a brute.   It walks forward as a bear would walk, to pick up my friend as easily as it would pick up a child, only to throw him down on the stones.   I make no sound save a moan deep in my throat.   Augustine is back up as fast as he can speak.   “I insist!   Stop in the name of Christ!”
    Near me, a woman clutches a babe.   What she says, she says to herself, but I hear.   “They do this in the name of Christ.”
    I turn to her.   “What do you mean?”   She would say no more, but I ask again, “What do you mean?”
    If she whispered before, now it’s only a breathing: “ Parabalanoi .”
    Oh, I see.   I understand.   The brotherhood.   I have heard them called angels.   We are told they bury the dead, tend to the ill, care for the widow.   We are told they are a select and loving order of Christians who do the good work of the Bishop of Alexandria.   But twice as often, I have heard them called thugs.   I have heard them called demons.   If I were ill or widowed or dead, I might bless them.   But I am alive and I do not bless them.   These are the men who killed so many at the Serapeum, these and the monks of the Nitrian mountains.
    “But what has he done?”
    “He follows the teaching of Arius.”
    By Discordia, but how Christians bicker—worse than astronomers.   They hold councils denying this and claiming that.   And now they publically punish one who thinks as the priest Arius of Alexandria taught: that the Son is not equal to the Father?   I cry out as the bear reaches once again for my Christian friend, “Come away, Augustine!   Come away!”
    “How can I leave,” he replies, “knowing God must weep.   You run, Hypatia, but I will not.”
    And with these words from Augustine, the eyes of the bear find mine.
    The man who is beaten lies still, the three who have beaten him, turn away.   And when they turn they turn as the bear turns, towards Augustine and towards me.
    “Hypatia?” says one of the three, not large and not small, but covered in blood not his own, and my name in his mouth is as dirt.   He spits it out.   “Is this the woman who thinks to teach men?”
    Those who have cowered and watched move away from me, and away from my talkative friend.   The path is clear now.   The drawbridge down, the ship on its way to the sea, and the woman with her babe flees across towards the docks of Alexandria.   If I had a babe in arms, I should be running with her.   But I do not have a babe and my friend neither moves nor speaks, but stands where he stands, facing these “angels.”   If Augustine does not leave, I cannot leave.   But what it is I can do, I have yet to determine, save pushing him off the causeway into the harbor in the hopes though he does not ride, he swims.   This is a good idea, a fine idea.   I am a strong swimmer.   We could be gone on the instant.   And as the three start towards me, I start towards Augustine with a mind to shoving as hard as I can.
    “Felix Zoilus!” shouts he who has asked in a kind of furious wonder if I teach men, “Stop her!”
    But the bear called Felix Zoilus will not stop me.   Father’s tutors have done their work.   If I must, I can be as an acrobat, tumbling towards Augustine, and if I must, kick him into the sea, following on as a maid from Minos using the horns of a charging bull to somersault over its back.   I prepare my leap, up on my toes, my thighs tensed, my balance perfect—but I am suddenly grabbed by the edge of my tunic and pulled…and this is not done by Felix Zoilus or by any of the three who have begun to move towards me.   A voice sounds in my ear.   “Run, Hypatia.   Follow the woman and run.”
    Minkah!
    “But Augustine…?”
    “Trust me, beloved.   Augustine is safe.   Now, run!”
    And instead of my shoving Augustine, I am shoved by Minkah, and I run as I am