They found her in the Kom el Shoqafa catacombs, standing serenely by the circular staircase with a papyrus scroll in her hand. It was Apollonius’ Conics. She was going to write her commentary on the scroll for her students. She looked down at the potsherds, strewn about her feet.
Those broken shards had been there for centuries; but no one knew how the pots got into the catacombs or why they were smashed. Some speculated that Marcus Antonius brought them after Cleopatra’s suicide.
She was going to trace them by their symbols and give a series of lectures on religious artifacts; that’s why she was really there, systematically cataloguing her finds.
As one of the keepers and scholars of the Alexandrian Library, that would one day be called, One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, she had the right to access such a prominent place, but these monks did not. Four of them, hooded in brown cloth cloaks, stood on the stairs above her.
She saw them but didn’t run. The catacombs were a sort of home to her, lending needed quiet in times of deep thought. She could have easily slipped away and hid in one of the many anterooms, and they never would have found her. She stayed, knowing that the inevitable could not be delayed. Their faces were hidden in the shadows but she knew their minds.
Her thoughts never wandered; such is the equanimity of a scholar, mathematician, and a Platonist philosopher. But in this moment her mind reluctantly strayed as she thought about her daughter, and how this day would change the girl’s destiny, how her fury would wage war on rationale.
Hypatia dropped the scroll, willing to succumb. Fighting the monks would make it harder for her daughter. Fighting them would teach her only child that hate rules the mind, that wrath and emotional frenzy lead the way.
They do not, she thought.
“I will not fight you,” she said to the monks.
One monk ran quickly past her down the stairs, snatching a handful of the broken tiles. Another monk, standing just a few steps above her, seized her delicate wrist, yanking her arm upward, causing Hypatia to trip on her white, linen shift.
How many times did she reprimand her daughter for walking barefoot on the streets? And now, looking down to see her naked feet stumbling, she felt a pain in her heart. Morning would come and she would not see it. Her child would be orphaned.
“I will not give you power by resisting,” she said again, climbing the steps to her death.
“There is nothing you can take from me that I haven’t already given freely. The soul is the beginning and the end. All else is transitory.”
At the top of the stairs two monks stood so close to her, that she could feel their hateful breath on the back of her neck. She immediately forgave their ignorance.
Two led the way as they reached the doorway to the street. The monk who had her by the wrist suddenly turned and struck her across the face. Another spat on her, kicking her to the ground, dragging her across the unevenly paved road by her hair.
They descended upon her with the broken tiles, shredding her face and arms. Still, she did not fight them or utter a sound as they beat her. The monks ripped her flesh apart, convinced of their righteousness. They believed they did this thing to save humanity from evil.
The largest of the monks tied her hands to a rope and mounted his dark, agitated horse. The scent of her blood unnerved the beast. The other three monks mounted their animals too, as she lay on the ground quietly praying to the One God who would give her stillness of mind, vanquishing the grief in her heart.
Distant screams rose with the sunrise. Terrified onlookers retreated into their homes. No one dared tried to save her as the monks tore through the streets with Hypatia’s flesh grated into pieces.
Just as Hypatia died, her spirit left her body the way a crane elegantly glides from the Earth, soaring silently to freedom. She blessed her beloved child and sent her the strength to live a life of forgiveness and harmony.
The horrific screams in the street bled into a young woman’s dream, who was sleeping restlessly in her bed. She awoke suddenly and sprang from beneath the covers, running to the terrace balcony. She looked down and past the eucalyptus trees near the gates. A bloodied lump of a thing was being dragged, then dumped, in front of her house. Whatever it was lay motionless on the ground beside her mother’s hibiscus bushes.
The young woman looked up beyond the plaza and saw a hooded monk on horseback. He arrogantly threw his hood back and glared at her with malevolence. He frightened her with his barefaced, fanatical vehemence. His horse reared as he flung the rope to the ground. The other monks joined him and they galloped away, toward the sea, unfettered.
People cautiously gathered near Hypatia. The young woman continued to stare at the bloodied shift, no longer white, trying to understand what it was. Her mind refused to recognize it.
The house servants ran from the house in hysteria to surround what remained of their mistress’ body. It wasn’t until the young woman’s grandfather, Theon, appeared and fell to the ground in agony, did she see.
Her mother, Hypatia of Alexandria, was dead.
