At this, the woman regards Yeshu as she might regard a new husband. She has heard him; I know she has heard him. Now I think she hears more. “I know the Messiah is coming. Have we all not heard that John the Baptizer is he? I know when this Messiah comes he will tell us all things.”
Yeshu touches her brow as he once touched mine. “I am one who can tell you things of the All.”
I begin to think Yeshu’s way of saying a thing numinous. By the hour, his words move closer to the poetry of Julia of Alexandria. Just to hear Yeshu’s words from Yeshu’s mouth is worth every step I take, no matter where it leads.
But now, from out a narrow side street, one of three leading into and out of this place of the well, comes a group of men, and such a sorry group of men as I have ever seen. Even at a distance their sorrow is plain on their persons, as plain as the dust of the road on their clothes. And as these draw near us, there sounds a shout from out among them, then another. “Yehoshua! Jude!”
On the instant, Jude is off, moving quickly, and I am confused as I watch him do this. Yeshu too has turned away from the woman at the well, and he too moves toward these men. Eio brays in alarm as they leave her, and the people gape in surprise. The brothers have broken into a run, and now, finally, I too see whom they run toward. It is Simeon, the son of Cleopas. It is Joses, the youngest brother with his poor scarred face. It is Jacob bar Judas and it is Simon bar Judas, who are the Sons of Thunder. Behind these, I see the fearsome brothers from Capharnaum. And behind these, there are more.
Is Dositheus among them? Is John? Is Salome!
I too break into a run.
The house of Thecla, the woman at the well, and the house of the man who is not her husband, is small and it is humble, and I would take comfort here if I could, but I cannot. My mind will go on and on, speaking not in Aramaic or in Greek, but in Egyptian, and I wish that it would stop no matter what the tongue. I would that I had no thoughts at all for I am numb as stone, as cold as the rain. But this I wish above all: that I did not know that John is taken. Zadok the Righteous One, who walked with Judas of Galilee and who was not taken then, is taken now.
But Simeon has told us of it, and there is no untelling.
John and his followers were sleeping when the soldiers of Herod Antipas appeared, for they had come for John in the darkest part of the night. And there followed such a terrible confusion, such a loudness of lamentation, that none can tell what truly happened, save only to themselves. The tents were torn open. The animals slaughtered or scattered. Dositheus is missing. Helena of Tyre is missing. As is Jair, the second son of Jacob bar Judas. As is Joanna, the wife of Chuza. Even Jacob the Just is lost. I am stunned. Even Old Camel Knees? None can say where these are now. There is no one who knows if they remain well. Or if they do not remain well.
We all of us sit in the house of the woman at the well, huddled here and huddled there, each a miserable lump of sodden clothing, and we listen to the din of the rain on Thecla’s flat roof. The woman moves among us offering food and wine that Menahem eats from the greed of youth and Yeshu eats out of compassion, for no one else takes Thecla’s food. I cannot eat, nor can I drink. I do not know where Thecla’s man is, and I do not care. I do nothing but watch the rain. Moments ago the sky opened as a great mouth would open, and it rains now as if all the rain at once would fall. Water rushes off the limestone of the walls outside Thecla’s door and over the stones of the street before her stoop, forming quick and sudden rills that could grow into rushing rivers that might wash away the whole of Shechem. I too would wash away in the rain.
All this is as the bitterest bile. All this is felt with the deepest sorrow. The heart of the father Jacob bleeds as he sits by the hearth, bent over and rocking, back and forth, his face in his hands. Anyone could know his thoughts. Where is his son? Is Jair locked away with John in the Fortress of Machaerus, a place of hopeless horror in Herod’s Peraea, which is the Land of Moab? Is he dead?
I know his grief as I know my own. I am broken with it. Simon Magus is also taken. Simeon tells us he watched, helpless to do other, being held down on all sides by Herod’s men, as young Simon would shield John with his own body. By this, the soldiers who bound John the Baptizer were forced to bind also Simon Magus. Simeon says that John offered no resistance, nor did Simon, but that all this changed when one among the men of Herod struck John. It was then that the youth Simon had turned and fought for John of the River as the wildest Sicarii, until both were chained into a high-wheeled, high-sided, ironbound wagon brought along in the dead of night for just this purpose.
I do not weep and I do not gnash my teeth. I do not rock where I sit in Thecla’s doorway. As I did on the shores of the Sea of Salt where no thing can live—except me, except me—I long again for death. I long again for anything that will take me away from where I am now, even if it would place me in the darkest cell, just such a one that must now enclose Salome. By this thought, I have thoroughly surprised myself. Salome must be in a cell! We could go to her as we did to Addai! Surely if Yeshu could rescue Addai from the Fortress of Antonia, he could rescue John, and, of course, Salome, from the Fortress of Machaerus?
I raise my head. I look for Yeshu. He is seated by his brothers Jude and Joses. Just as he did on the salted shore of the Sea of Salt, he clasps his knees. In this same moment, he looks for me. His eyes are not shattered. Not once since he saw the Father, has the pain revisited him. Has he heard my brilliant thought? I would rise. I would go and ask to speak to him. But in the very next moment Simon Peter of Capharnaum shouts out, and by his very first word, all is swept away in what it is he demands of us. “How was it known where John slept?” He leaps to his feet. He shakes his fist at the rain. “How was it known which tent of all tents, when all tents were the same! How was it known which bed of the hundreds of beds? I would know these things!”
By way of answer, a more terrible question by far is asked by Simon bar Judas, who does not raise his head from his knees. “By this act, will the tribes rise from Ituraea to Judaea? If they do, there will be no stopping a single man without John to calm us.”
Peter slaps his thigh so hard, the sound cracks on the ear. “By all that is Holy! By the hair of all the prophets! How you have spoken!” He stares around him. He pulls back his upper lip, showing his stump of a tooth. He pounds on the shoulder of his brother, Andrew. “Have you all heard him? Do you all hear what it is he says? I tell you now that the words of this Son of Thunder contain a great and wonderful truth! I tell you now that this is how it will be!”
This proclamation, given at the top of his voice, raises heads. Even Jacob bar Judas ceases his rocking. Immediately, all save Yeshu become alert as foxes. Yeshu has closed his eyes but I know he listens to every word.
Peter stares at us, turning from each to each. He turns even to me, to me. “Think!” says he. “The Poor, the Essene, the Yahad, the Many, even the Pharisee, all of them! None will resist the Sicarii now. All will join. By this act, there can be no more argument among us. If we should see John’s arrest as good? If we should see what Herod Antipas has caused to be done as the will of God? Has not John all along told us that the Lord would act when the time came—well then! Who are we to decide how he will act? Was I alone when I heard Simon Magus prophesy? We all heard that the name of John the Baptizer would ring through the ages with a mighty sound. We all heard the voice in Simon Magus say that where John led, a people would follow. Jude, of us all, I know you hear me now.”
Jude hears him. How could he not, when such words must be sweet on his warrior ear? Peter knows this, and knowing it, is satisfied. He turns to Simeon. “Is this not a thing? Could not greater things come of it!” Simeon must also hear him; is he not Zealot? He turns to Yeshu, for now that John is arrested, it is Yeshu who heads the Nazorean. This is why such as Peter have come for him; this is why they are here in the House of Thecla.
Yeshu has known this might happen. But he had hoped, even against his own Sight and mine, that John the Immerser woul
d not fall. He must still hope that John is not fallen, but merely pauses on his way. After all, he is only so far arrested, not killed. I terrify myself with thought. If John were dead, should we hear of it? Herod could have him killed at any moment, for any reason. Who would tell us? So much happens in courts and courtyards, in private chambers, with few as witness. Have I forgotten the tunnels under the Temple, the bent-backed room under the Fortress of Antonia? John and Herod are many miles away. John the Baptizer could be dead, and we have yet to hear.
Jacob, the sorrowing father, speaks. I strain to hear him over the drum of the rain. “Yehoshua? Tell us what it is we now do.”
As he did on the day all came upon him lying in my bowl of rock, Yeshu opens his eyes, and out of them shines not the storyteller and the teacher, come out among the people to talk of the Father and the Mother and the Kingdom of God, a man these men do not understand and do not wish to, but Yehoshua the Sicarii. I hear Jude’s hope that all might be as it was, that he should once more be the warrior he was meant to be.
“Go out,” Yeshu commands them. “Go each of you to a different place. Gather the tribes. Bring them to where it is we meet near the Sea of Galilee. A week from now, I will speak with them.”
Leaving behind Pilate’s Samaria, we find ourselves looking out over Herod’s Galilee. Westward lies Phoenicia and the Great Sea. North the enormity of Syria. To the east is the heathen Decapolis and Gaulanitis, meaning they are thoroughly Greek if they are not Roman. South is, of course, Samaria. All these are hostile each to each. Galilee seems an island, for here Father’s Judaean Sanhedrin has no say, here a Herod still rules, and here Rome treads but lightly. I would think it enchanted if my heart did not bleed within me.
With us walks Thecla. I do not remember her asking if Yeshu would allow this, nor do I remember Jude protesting. Thecla gathered up some few of her belongings, bid a fond farewell to the man she did not call husband, as surprised a mild fellow as I have ever, briefly, met, and came away with us.
All morning we make our way down from the Samaritan mountains into the plain of Jezreel, and all morning I admire the land I see spread out below me.
While Samaria is more favored of water than Judaea, and is therefore greener and more fertile, Galilee is much the greener and wetter and more fertile still. In Galilee, the soil is dark and rich. I cannot help but stare at the fields on either side of the road we travel. So much grows here. Here there is wheat, and there barley. To one side an orchard of walnut trees, to the other side a tidy vineyard. And everywhere, there are orange groves. Where I would scratch in the hard dry dirt for my rosh poppies, sea salted and desert stoned, and where I would carry water to each and every one until they flowered, here whatever is sown will come up in a shout.
Galilee is a land of orchards and meadows and roads. Just as Seth said, there are so many roads leading to so many Galilean villages, and farther. Here a fine wide way leading to the Great Sea and then to Phoenicia and to Tyre and to Sidon, and there a road winding away to Ituraea and to Syria, coming on Damascus, even unto Palmyra.
Yeshu and Jude set their feet on a road that crosses the valley and then seems to vanish into the high land that rises to the north. Above us, the sky remains fat and gray with rain and Eio holds her nose to the ground when the water pours down so that she might more readily breathe. But I hold my face up to the rain. It is as if somehow I am in the delta of Egypt again, wet and rich and fine.
We are leaving the village of Harobah when a man we do not know comes running toward us, shouting out, “It is the Holy Man! Look, it is he!” In a rush, he is on us, eager hands held out to touch Yeshu, eager mouth ready to kiss Yeshu’s face, his hands, the hem of his soiled robe. Yeshu would gift him with a smile, and then would gently turn away, but he cannot, it is too late. The man falls on his knees, beats his head on the muddy ground, letting up such a cry that no one but the deaf could fail to hear, “Here is he, who raises the dead!” Out from their houses come those who are in no way deaf. Seeing them, the man calls out, “It is he! I saw it. I saw it in Samaria with my own two eyes. And there have been others, also dead who now live!”
And no matter that Yeshu hushes him, or that Jude kicks at his backside, stuck up as it is in the air, still the man shouts and weeps and bangs his head in the mud. In the end we must flee from the uproarious fellow and the gaping people he has called forth, each now standing and wondering and marveling at Yeshu. We leave them nodding and whispering among themselves. They point at us. “There is the man, there is the man!” they seem to be saying, though I am sure they do not know what man.
I see the face of the woman Thecla as she flees with us. She too marvels.
When we are well past Harobah, Yeshu laughs at such foolishness.
We pass through Kefar Imi where John the Baptizer was born, and then through Gath-Hepher where the prophet Jonah was born and is now entombed, and then a few miles farther on, we are in Japhia.
Last night, I dreamed of my mother.
Hokhmah seemed soft as water in a pool and her hair hung free as water over a fall. Beneath the black fall of her hair, her face shone white as milk and her eyes shone like the moon on still water. On her body she wore a pure white pellae, as pure as the white of her girdle, and her neck collar was as red as blood, while over the whole of her person floated a veil like a net of stars. I stood before her as she turned me this way and that, saying, “How you have grown, Mariamne.”
Waking, I cry for the Mariamne that my mother so loved, and for the mother I would have loved if only I could. I would be that Mariamne again.
I am in Yeshu’s village.
These are his neighbors; this is where he was born and where he spent his boyhood. Here it is that Anna lived, and here it is that Anna died. It is the village to which the very young Mary came, quickened with secret seed, and where she was left widowed and burdened by seven children. Somewhere near is the hillside where Yeshu and his brothers and his cousins played, and when they were older, where they lay and discussed the way of their world. That same hillside looks out over the Jezreel Valley we have this day crossed, and from it one can surely still see the city of Sepphoris and the palace of Herod. I have it in mind to find this place.
Out from Japhia, no farther than I would climb to reach my nahal, I have come to a place of grasses, green and fragrant under the hard white sky. Here there are smooth rocks and the slope beneath is gentle, while all those nearby would tumble a body clear to the valley floor. Below lies the Valley of Jezreel where Saul once consulted the witch of Ein Dor, only to have the shade of Samuel foretell his doom. Somewhere below, King Saul fell upon his sword rather than risk capture by the Philistines. Gideon attacked the Midianites. The judge and prophet Deborah led the Israelites to victory over the Canaanites. Even Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, who loved not Yahweh once walked this valley—that same Queen Jezebel whose daughter Athaliah became ruler of Jerusalem when her son was killed by the rebel Jehu of the House of David. Crazed with grief, Athaliah swore to avenge Ahaziah by destroying every descendant of David’s house. She very nearly succeeded. For the daughter of Jezebel, Salome and Tata and I have nothing but fierce admiration, for no woman but Athaliah was ever sole ruler in Judah or in Israel.
I pluck one blade of grass to weave through my fingers. Though the sky remains full with rain to come, still, I can plainly see what the brothers and the cousins saw each night. To the east Mount Tabor, to the west Mount Carmel, behind me and toward the north Herod’s splendid palace on its high hill in the city of Sepphoris. It seems splendid still, though it is no longer what it was. Sometime during our first years in Alexandria, Herod Antipas removed himself to a new palace in his new city, Tiberius by the Sea of Galilee.
“I thought I would find you here.”
I do not start. I answer, “I am here.”
Yehoshua seats himself beside me, looks out as I do across the Jezreel. And though his nearness warms me, still my mind is burdened with thoughts of Salome, with thoughts of
John, with Yeshu’s teaching turned aside by what he must do because he is who he is, with the remembrance of my mother, who stays long after my dream, and whose face, so long unremembered, is now fully the face of the dreaming mother. So too am I burdened with feelings of the flesh that I will not acknowledge, and a yearning for Mariamne as she was. But Yeshu is beside me. We are alone. We have not been alone since we left the wilderness. I can ask Yeshu if we go to rescue John as we rescued Addai. I can ask him anything, tell him anything—but one thing. I cannot tell him my name.
We sit in silence, broken at last by Yeshu. “I once came here to imagine myself David, the sweet singer of Israel who was much loved. As David, I knew that King Saul would kill me for fear that his own people would grant me his kingdom, so I would run and I would hide. But I did not run alone. Behind me ran a hundred men of my imagination, each as ferocious as I, though not one as cunning or willful or half as ambitious; for if the truth be known, I would be king! And we would hide, my men and I. We would live in caves; we would raid the towns we found. We were outlaws, we were Hapiru, kings of the desert.” There comes a faint color in his cheek. “What do you think, John? Now that I need it beyond ever I have needed it, do I have the cunning of David?”
On impulse, I lay my hand on his hand, and though he flinches, I do not take my hand away, nor does he. And with this, words I do not expect to say come from my mouth. I ask him, not in Aramaic, but in the language of the most divine poets and the most sublime philosophers, “How wouldst thou know God?”
And the man who had been Sicarii turns to me, and answers me in as perfect a Greek as mine, “Knowing God is as rain falling on the sea. What then is rain and what is sea? All are One.”
The Secret Magdalene Page 25