The Secret Magdalene

by Ki Longfellow

  And I laugh like silver in the hand and I say, “Thou hast surely died and been born anew.” My laughter rings out over the valley so many have fought for, and in fighting, have died. But my laughter does not die, it echoes back and back and back to me. I have not taken my hand from the hand of Yeshu. I say, “You cannot abandon what your heart will do. You cannot return to who you were now that you know your name.”

  Yeshu lifts my hand to his mouth. He kisses my palm.

  As I am a man, perhaps I should wonder at this. Or fall into confusion and dismay. I might even start to my feet, red with insult. As I am a woman, I would do these things and more, for this could be thought to be yetzer ha-ra, an evil impulse of the flesh. But as I am Mariamne—in this moment, I am Mariamne!—I look down into the palm of my hand and there I fancy I see it shine. I do see it shine, as Yeshu shines. I lift my palm to my own mouth and I kiss his kiss.

  It is Yeshu who falls into confusion and dismay.

  It is Yeshu who leaps to his feet.

  I give him his privacy; I do not spy within. If he will tell me, he will tell me, though he cannot tell me yet. But I can feel his disquiet, know that his very blood is hot with a conflict so profound that he is inwardly speechless, and still he does not flee. At length, he quietly says, “Come. Seth of Damascus has just this hour arrived in Japhia. He travels with Izates of Adiabene and with the merchant named Ananias. Seth has asked to see you.”

  I am joyous until I note the broken light in Yeshu’s eye.

  THE TWELFTH SCROLL

  A Fool Beyond Any Fool

  How good to see the face of Seth again! Rising from the table of Cleopas of Japhia at first sight of me, my friend is as beautiful as Egypt. His mouth is a golden basket from which all good things come. His eyes are like the scrolls of the Indian Vedas. It is good to be clasped to his chest in manly welcome. It is good to inhale of him, to sink into his skin, to feel the scratch of his shaven cheek, to have my mouth so near his ear I am free to whisper, “I am afraid.”

  Seth whispers back, “Speak when we are alone.”

  I step back, only to find myself crushed against the fat bulky chest of the sweat-soiled and scent-oiled merchant Ananias, who has caused all this. Which is, of course, not in the least true—I caused all this by allowing him to hear the Voice. But to reach back and reach back and then further back to know causes is to look backward forever. If Father had not allowed Salome and me to dinner? If the merchant Ananias had never come calling. If the Temple priest, Ben Azar of the House of Boethus, had not been stabbed that morning—is it nine years ago now? If I had not fallen ill unto death the month before, which had softened Father’s heart toward females at his table? How far back is planted the seed that grows into a thing? And which the seed and which the flower? Or are all seeds flowers and all flowers seeds?

  Ananias knows I am female, but I know, as he has ever done, he will treat me as John the Less. It is in the nature of Ananias to wish to please, and by this he pleases the inner Nazorean. There is also this: he does not forget I might curse him. I might curse also his wife and his sons and every one of his camels. But in truth, he is not a cruel man and would do me no deliberate harm.

  But there is another here who knows who I am. Is he a cruel man?

  Izates, the son of Queen Helen and the stepbrother of Seth, does not rise from his place at table to slap my back or press my hand. Once I too am seated, I lift my eyes to his, and what I see there touches my heart with frost, as I am sure he means it to. Like Jacob the Just, Izates has no time for women, even though now that he is king he marries, and he marries again and again. But in his coolness toward me, there is more than this. Izates is repelled by my being John the Less; that I pass myself off as male boils his blood. And that others allow this stiffens his already stiff neck. I see him glance at Yeshu and at Jude and at Cleopas, and I see the contempt on his Assyrian face. He thinks them utter fools for being duped by me, a female, a being that ought to be and is less to a man than his horse. Or, if the man is poor, his donkey. He is offended that I sit at table, when I should instead be serving. What stays his tongue?

  Seth has taken hold of the bare upper arm of Izates; he squeezes the warrior’s muscle there, just below the golden band he wears as a king. I have my answer. It is Seth who keeps the tongue of King Izates in his mouth. There is only his loyalty to Seth that stands between disaster and Mariamne, the wayward daughter of Josephus of the Sanhedrin.

  Yeshu and I take our place at table. Mine is with Ananias, down near the foot where the wife of Cleopas would have us. Yeshu’s is at the head, placed before her husband and the King of the Assyrians, though few here know Izates is a king for he would not have them know. Cleopas faces Yeshu from the bottom of his table, as is only right.

  As the Babylonian astrologers teach of seven “lights”: the sun and the moon and the five planets, which the Jews have made their Menorah, and which Joor taught were more truly the Seven Sisters who are the Pleiades, so there are seven of us here this day.

  Cleopas, who looks very like his son, Simeon, has half a loaf of bread speared on the end of his knife and he is waving this at Yeshu. “Word has reached even here that you go about teaching, nephew, that you tell long stories in village squares. Are you now a rabbi? Is this how you fool Herod’s men? And the healing? Is it true? Have you raised a child from the dead? Nothing else has been spoken of in Japhia for two interminable days before your coming! Everywhere I go, my neighbors are saying, but it is Yehoshua these things are said of, how could it be merely Yeshu’a, he who once fetched my wood? Or he who once stole a cooling cake from my wall? Or he who had his bottom smacked by his mother, the virtuous Anna, right there in front of my door not so very long ago? Who is this Yehoshua to go pulling people out of their graves?”

  Already, I warm to this talkative uncle of Yeshu and Jude.

  Uncle Cleopas is pulling on his lip, which makes his speech less than easy to follow. “Does it matter how long they are dead? I mean to say, could it be weeks? Even years? What a terrible idea, Yeshu’a, what a terrible Egyptian idea! As it is, I expect my neighbors to open their tombs and bring decaying bodies to my door any moment now. Will they take up embalming in the hopes one such as you will pass by?”

  Though I know Yeshu now struggles with pain come again in his head, he has listened to all this as he listens to most things, easily. Cleopas means no offense and none is taken, and should he mean offense, even then, there should be none taken. But as I sit, and watch, I am an offense to myself. I blame myself for Yeshu’s pain. I blame myself for my evil impulse. I would cut off a finger, slice off my whole hand at the wrist, if it would stop his pain.

  Yeshu manages his smile. Knowing what it costs him, I shudder with my own pain. “Do not believe everything you hear, uncle.”

  “Pity.” Cleopas bites into his hunk of bread. All else he says is said between chewing. “One hears so many interesting things. Perhaps you will tell me what else I should not believe.”

  Izates now speaks, though not in answer to Cleopas. His speech seems urgent, as if more than he need hear the answer. “Tell me, Yehoshua, as you would not allow Addai of Shechem to die at the hands of Rome, I know you will not allow John to suffer at the hands of Herod or to languish in Herod’s prison. Nor will you wait for Herod to deliver him up to Rome.”

  It is as if I have been touched with a heated blade. I am alert on the instant. As are all others at the table of Cleopas, who wait for what Izates would say next.

  Izates does not disappoint. “Knowing what you will not do, would you speak now of what you will do?”

  Yeshu raises his broken eyes to Izates. But as he cannot see, still he can think and he can speak. “I will do nothing.”

  Nothing! Have I heard aright?

  “Not before speaking to all who are concerned with this business. In two days time, I shall meet with men from all persuasions who but yet hold one thought steady, the fate of John the Baptizer.”

  Izates flushes to his h
airline with thought of honor and of valor; Jude, who sits at the left hand of Yeshu, does not flush but I know he too is alive to the ends of his red, raging hair. As for Ananias, he keeps his silence for Ananias has the mouth but not the gut for such as this. And Cleopas is too old. But as for me, I am also alive. If I had a beard, I should pull on it. Something shall be done about John! And if something is done for John, could the fate of Simon Magus not be entwined?

  Says Izates, “I will go with you. Where is this meeting?”

  I know that the pain in Yeshu’s head grows. I know it is all he can do to hear the son of the Queen of Adiabene. But still he says, “You are welcome, Izates. All who love John are welcome.”

  I do not know if Izates loves John, but I do know he loves what his mother loves; Queen Helen looks for a messiah as eagerly as the lowliest peasant in the rockiest field. If Yeshu should signal me, I would be up on my feet. I would take him away from this clamorous room, for even this little gathering is clamorous when the pain is upon him. I would find a place for him where there is dark and there is quiet. But he makes no such signal. Instead he speaks again, and all must lean forward to hear. “The tribes gather near the town of Bethsaida, which is in the Tetrarchy of Herod Philip and not in that of Herod Antipas. Jude?”

  Yeshu’s twin is on his feet.

  “Would you come with me? I have need of you.”

  Jude is by his brother’s side before Yeshu has finished asking.

  I wander the village of Japhia; Eio trots behind me, her small hooves tapping out a din on the dried clay and stones of the steep and narrow streets. She causes much merriment to all who see her, for few have a friend in an ass. Both she and I ignore them. As ever, I am lost to thought and my thoughts fly hither and thither like chaff in the wind. We could be bandits now, Salome and I, caring nothing for philosophy, or for Glory, or for Osiris the Messiah. If we were bandits, or rich wives, our lives would never have come to this. I could claim the fortune of my mother Hokhmah from the Temple priests. I could be rich. But could my riches buy John or Salome’s freedom? Could it heal the blessed Addai or banish the pain in Yeshu’s head? If it could, I should spend all that I have.

  How long have I been silently weeping before I notice my tears? No wonder the sudden blushes and attempts to look away from those who buy and those who sell and those who see me pass before their door. They see a youth in white climbing aimlessly up and down their streets, followed by an equally aimless ass. What an utter fool I feel. I am as Proteus in my crying. If there is a kind or a type of weeping to be done, I, Mariamne, daughter of wet and salty shame, have done it.

  I turn onto a path near one of the larger houses, three crooked streets beyond the large shop of Cleopas, and there stands Seth. When I would be seen by no one, I am seen by the one person in all the world I would be seen by the least.

  But as he is also the one person in all the world I would see the most, I run to him. I throw my arms around him. I weep into his shoulder until his white tunic is sodden with my grief. Seth does not push me away; he makes no attempt to silence me, but stands quietly in my arms, his own arms strong about me, and allows me this moment of Mariamne as she was. And, beneath all things, is still. And when I have cried myself out, and when I stand catching my breath, and when most of my wits return to me, he says, “Now we shall talk. Unless you have said all it is you wish to say?” In answer, I hold him all the tighter. “Come away then, and you shall tell me what you will tell me.”

  And I do, leaving nothing out, not even my yetzer ha-ra.

  Being still a youth, I thought nothing of Seth’s heart.

  We are on our way before first light, Yeshu and Jude, Ananias, Izates and Seth and I. Still unburdened, Eio walks behind me. Thecla, carrying her few possessions, follows on behind Eio.

  From Japhia we take the road north to Cana and there find another road eastward toward the Sea of Galilee across the Plain of Azotis, and then through the narrow Valley of the Doves, which Yeshu tells Izates is also called the Valley of Robbers for the thieves who daily prey here, though not normally on such as us. Before this pass, the land remains rich and richly carpeted with prosperous villages; after this pass, we walk nearer each to each.

  As I go, I read what Seth has brought me, a copy of Philo Judaeus’s latest masterly effort explaining the entire world and all it contains. This copy, on Augustan Royal in a cedar box with red tabs and red wrappers, is inscribed to Simon Magus and to me! It is not easy to walk and to read philosophy at the same time, but I manage it.

  In time, we come on to the Great Highway, and I stamp my feet in its crusted dust. This is the Via Maris, the ancient way of the ancient Egyptians, set into the land long before there were Israelites and Jews and Samaritans and Galileans. On it walked the armies of Egypt when Egypt’s glory was beyond a simple man’s dreaming, and on it too walked men and women of the wondrous and ever-changing kingdoms between the two rivers, people so long past, they become the stuff of legends. I try to think myself the historian Herodotus; as in reading the latest work of Philo, trying to be a historian almost keeps me from thinking of Salome. Or of Yeshu.

  For a time, the Via Maris runs along the western shore of what the Romans are pleased to call the Lake of Tiberius but is in truth the Lake of Gennesaret, or Sea of Galilee, and when it does, there, under the sheer and tremendous face of Mount Arbel, from whose caves the great Herod once flushed with grappling hooks those hidden men who opposed him, forcing them to their deaths on the rocks below, we find the bustling city of Taricheae, which stinks of fish. As I am named Mariamne Magdal-eder by Seth, meaning “She of the Temple Tower,” this place has a tower, ruined now, that stands looking out over the harbor, alive with what must be at least three hundred long-bodied fishing boats. In the shadow of Taricheae’s stone tower, taller by far than our tower in the wilderness, I look out at the busy work of man, and suddenly I feel as ruined as this tumble of stone.

  In all this time, from Japhia to Cana to the Via Maris to the salt-fish city on the Sea of Galilee, I have kept my distance from Izates. From time to time, he casts upon me black and hateful looks. From time to time, I think him tempted to expose me for the sweet pleasure it would give his kingly stomach. But what is worse is that in all this time I have also kept my distance from Yeshu. When he would be in one place, I would be in another. When he would speak to me, I would have found something important I need say to Seth. And when we would bed down for the night, I would feign sleepiness rather than sit and talk with Yeshu as the stars faded one by one. I do this so that I might not cause pain. He does not force my hand.

  It is like to break my heart.

  But Seth is with me, and I shelter in him as a sun-struck creature would seek shade in a world of shifting sands.

  A boat awaits us, bobbing at anchor a short distance offshore, as it has done these past few days. In it, we are to cross over the whole of the width of this Galilean sea, west to northeast, from Taricheae in Herod Antipas’s Galilee to the city of Bethsaida in Herod Philip’s Gaulanitis. Once there, it is no more than an hour’s walk to the place where the tribes await Yeshu. This sea is fresh where my wilderness sea is salt; it is also less than half the size. The journey across should go swiftly.

  Eio must be brought along, for neither Yeshu nor I would leave her. But to bring her, Yeshu must pull, and Jude must push, and Ananias must aim a good hard kick at her backside. Struggling, Yeshu laughs, “An ass is wiser than a seer for was it not Balaam’s female ass who saw the Lord—Eio, will you move!—and not the sage Balaam himself?”

  To which Izates replies, looking straight at me, “Better to bring the she-ass than a woman, for a woman speaking is like the Lord opening the mouth of a donkey.”

  Both Thecla and I flush, she with fury at the insult, and me with the fear of exposure, though I would be insulted if I had the luxury of it. But Yeshu, still pulling Eio, looks only at Thecla when Izates says this thing, thinking her his only target, and says, “Could it be as Addai once said, that wo
man was God’s First Thought, and that man is an afterthought?”

  Thecla gifts him for this with her rare and handsome smile, and I would as well, and I do, but Ananias bursts into noisy back-slapping laughter at such an idea. I hear him thinking how Yeshu can say the most outlandish things and bring light where there was only dark. Izates laughs as well and as heartily, but he never takes his eyes from me, and his eyes do not laugh at all. Moments later we set sail in the boat of the fisherman Joazar who is brother-in-law to Simon Peter and to Andrew. Izates and Jude keep a tense and watchful eye on the receding western shore, the one governed by Antipas, for if so many await us in Gaulanitis, surely news of this has reached more than one important ear? Herod Antipas must know how many eyes and hearts turn east and south toward the Fortress of Machaerus where at this very moment he stands embattled against his mortal enemy, King Aretas—and where in this same moment John lies chained. No doubt Herod has doubled his military wherever he senses trouble, or at least as many as can be spared from his defense against the Arab king.

  But nothing more happens than Eio trying to jump overboard—once as we leave land, the second time as we approach it.

  And by and by, we come on Bethsaida in the land of Herod Philip, whose wife Herodias is now the wife of his half brother, Herod Antipas, a thing that incensed John the Baptizer—who denounced the “fornication” of Herodias and Herod Antipas from one end of the Jordan to the other. This place is much of a piece with Taricheae, hidden now over the sea, save for Taricheae’s distinct and distinctly ruined tower, and for it being two cities: a citadel on a high rock and a humbler village by far on the shore of the lake. The land itself is greener yet, fed by the fresh water sea and by the Jordan and by its many springs that have formed deep and quiet pools, around which stand trees that would die of thirst in Judaea. Bethsaida also smells like fish. There are people here who note our passing, and some point and some stare. We hurry by them for the hour grows late. If we linger, the Sabbath will be upon us while we yet travel, and though Yeshu cares little for the Law, there are those waiting to whom the Law is above all other things.