The Fortune Teller(19)
I don’t remember where I went. I just remember the deep well of grief. For days I moved in a stupor. Eventually the director’s daughter did come with food and wine. She cooked and cleaned and offered me a place to stay with her family. But I didn’t want to abandon my house, the last remaining piece of my life.
The director felt a responsibility to me. My father was a lifelong friend and close assistant. Most likely, he would have taken over the library when the director passed away. Now all that had changed.
While I mourned, Alexandria worked hard to restore order. Caesar had been victorious against the Egyptian army, so we were forced to forget our losses and celebrate Caesar and Rome’s ingenuity. The war ended by January, but the city had paid a price. The library was hardly the only casualty.
Our people accepted this fate. Hundreds of libraries had existed throughout our history, many achieving great prestige and then perishing. I grew up listening to their stories by candlelight—all true, my father insisted. My favorite was about the library in Persepolis, the great city in Persia. Their library contained the Avesta, a sacred book that, supposedly, could grant man immortality.
“Is the book in our library now, Father?” I would ask him, wide-eyed.
“Oh no, no, no.” He would shake his head gravely. “When Alexander defeated Darius III, he burned down the library out of vengeance and the Avesta was destroyed.”
My father would stare into the fire with a sad, faraway look as if he had witnessed the act himself. Alexandria’s library would be no different from those that had fallen before it. I imagined a girl, like me, being told our story far in the future.
How would the record remember us?
My father’s favorite saying had always been “Sweet is the truth.” With so much of it now gone, I could taste only bitterness. He believed that knowledge could never be lost, that other libraries would rise to fill the void. But could the same words be written? Hundreds of thousands of scrolls were lost—our recorded history wiped away in one night.
Aristarchus had tried to prove that the earth revolved around the sun, and that the universe was many times bigger than we had thought. His research was supported by the ancient Babylonian texts our library had housed, all of which had been destroyed in the fire. Every year volatile debates broke out about whether or not the earth did in truth revolve around the sun; Aristarchus’ scrolls and the Babylonian texts were the proving points. Now students would never read those theories.
How Seshat, the goddess of knowledge and the written word, must be weeping. Our library had been a House of Life, and now that life was gone.
The Hierophant
The blaring alarm jarred Semele awake. She was sprawled on her stomach, using her laptop like a pillow. She sat up with a groan and opened her eyes. Her whole body screamed in protest. A combination of jet lag and lack of sleep was taking its toll.
After dinner with Bren last night, she unpacked and faced her overflowing basket of laundry. Between cycles, she worked on translating more of the manuscript and continued well after the laundry was finished. She’d clearly fallen asleep at her computer.
She shuffled to the bathroom and would have laughed when she saw herself in the mirror if she hadn’t been so tired. A huge, angry sleep mark from her keyboard ran down the right side of her cheek to her chin. Her laptop was literally imprinted on her face. Lovely.
A shower helped revive her and gave her time to think about Ionna’s account of the fire. Semele knew of Alexandria’s history and the legends surrounding the library’s destruction. She had taken a course on ancient libraries of antiquity at Yale; it was also one of her father’s favorite topics.
The Library of Alexandria’s demise had always been plagued by controversy—debates raged over when it had happened and who caused the destruction. Many historians believed that when Caesar set fire to the ships, he caused the first fatal blow. Others insisted that only books in the warehouses near the waterfront were destroyed. Each camp cited countless historical references to back up their claims. In all the years, there was still no single narrative that historians could agree upon.
Semele ran down the list of culprits. If Caesar wasn’t responsible, then it was likely Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, who notoriously persecuted Alexandria’s librarians and burned books while at war with Roman emperor Aurelian. Less than thirty years later, Diocletian had purged the Library of Alexandria of every single magic and alchemy book and burned all the scriptures. Then, in A.D. 391, Pope Theophilus’ decree destroyed the Serapeum, where the remaining works from the library had been moved.
And between all those wars, nature had played her hand as well. Earthquakes caused major destruction over centuries, and every day the elements brought on a slower degradation. The most moderate theorists claimed that a combination of these factors caused the library’s demise.
Semele knew there wasn’t one simple answer, and yet here was an account from a person who lived through it. Just the thought rejuvenated her. She was wide awake now and couldn’t wait to get to the office.
She needed to talk to Mikhail.
*
She arrived almost late for her meeting and with no time for coffee. She hurried down the hall to Mikhail’s office. His assistant, Brittany, was sorting auction catalogs at her desk outside the imposing double doors.
“You can go right in,” she chirped, but then squinted her eyes. “What happened to your face?”