Once again, my beloved Salome and I walk under the stars, and once again, Seth and Helena of Tyre walk with us. Comes also Eio, her foal tucked under her belly, sired no doubt by Tata’s testy yellow-brown jack. And this time, Tata and Addai are here. Though Ananias is not. Our merchant of oil and sponges has gone back to Sapphira and yet another son, and he takes with him my cousin, Eleazar. I have entrusted Ananias with returning “Lazarus” to Father in Bethany, for he can no longer be with us, though his protest rivaled Philo for variety and flow. Nor yet do the women come with us. All these have left for Capharnaum to stay in or near the house of Simon Peter, and there to live with Perpetua and her mother, Sarah, who once again busies herself as suits ten women, she is that much a ruby. When I said this, Salome said she certainly hoped so, considering the entire necklace of rubies about to descend around her neck.
My Salome is, once again, a rock in a sounding sea, and her wit and seeming calmness calmed me. By her remark I was prompted to send a sum of money with Miryam so that she might give it to Perpetua, and that prompted Salome to send just as much.
All others, by which I mean the men, sorrowing Simeon and the petulant Simon Peter foremost among them, have begun the journey back to the wilderness, there to await with Jacob the Just whatever there is to await. The loss of the men was as air to me, all but one—Dositheus.
Our mournful friend does not return to the wilderness, for he would not follow Jacob the Just. Instead, he goes north to Caesarea Philippi in Ituraea with those of John’s followers who have always loved him and with Thecla who has long since taken the place of Helena. Where would he go from there? He does not know. Perhaps, in time, to Syria, for he has heard the city of Antioch might welcome such ideas as his. He knows only that a world in which the gentlest and the best, by which he means Addai, can suffer so, is insufferable. He knows only that his work in the world has killed John. It has come to this, says our old friend: it is not against human frailty and fear that one must struggle, but against the Sovereignties and the Powers who originate the darkness in this world, the spiritual army of Evil in the heavens. “It is clear to me now that man is fallen and in need of saving.”
In parting, he had kissed Yeshu and Seth, had looked long on Helena, on Salome and myself, and grievously wept to leave Addai, who wept to see him go. And then he turned his face from us, and with Thecla and his followers, was gone from this place.
At that moment, I knew Salome’s temptation; she also would seclude herself with the John in her heart. And I too was tempted. How sweet to turn away from the poor and the ill and the ignorant. How sweet to leave behind the pain one man causes another, the striving of each over each, the greed that would have one fellow fat as the Temple and all others as thin as a hovel. I would see no more that which would cause a man to forbid the thoughts of another man, even unto his death. And, by Isis of the ten thousand names, how weary I was of the cruel and brutal assumption of man over woman. In that moment, I longed for ataraxia. I longed for my studies and the company of philosophers, and I shivered in my longing, held it close as a lover. For that moment, it was all I could do to force my mind west to Phoenicia, and not south and south and south to Egypt.
But at the last Salome turned toward Seth, and toward the road he would have us take, that one running south to Scythopolis and, from Scythopolis, another we would follow west through the Plain of Jezreel. For Seth means us to travel by these to the land of the Phoenicians.
Herod Antipas does not rule Phoenicia. Nor will Pontius Pilate look for us there. But best of all is that somewhere, deep in the mountains of Carmel, we shall come to rest among the secret Society of the Carmelites.
Once more we are actors, my childhood friend and I, once more we dress a part. Stopping in the finest market in Scythopolis, a city famed as a center for the Mysteries of Dionysus, we have chosen cloth of gold and of silver. We have visited the perfumers and the hairdressers. As we once did, again we paint our faces, but we do not laugh throughout and there are no mirrors.
And now we travel away from the great highway that follows the flow of the Jordan, turning west onto the wide and busy road that climbs up into the mountainous heights where stands the town of Jezrael. And beside us, as we wend our way up, rushes a river seeking the Jordan which, in turn, seeks my Salted Sea. On our left hand is Pilate’s Samaria, and on our right hand is Herod’s Galilee, and to all who note our passing, we make great show of that which Megas is and that which both Salome and I appear now to be.
Addai, by his seeming status as a poor Samaritan, must sit in an open wagon with the servants and the slaves. And so too must Tata. But as Salome does, as Seth, as Helena, as Megas herself, I ride a horse, a fine beast, red of mane and tail, red of tossing neck and rounded rump. And I act as blooded as my beast, knowing that no man would look for a prophet, much less a messiah, among such as we.
In this world, I have presented myself as a male. In this world, I have been presented as a whore. Now I appear not only as a whore but as a sorceress. I sit my red horse and find myself proud to be thought of as such.
How odd I am. How odd my life.
Hours later and we come to the highest of high points, so that once again I look down into the Valley of Jezreel. Checkered with winter fields and ribboned with roads running every which way, the one we will travel lies already beneath our feet. This is a fine Roman road, and it leads ever west, all the way to the Great Sea. Seth tells us it should eventually take us to Efa in Phoenicia, where we could then go north to Ptolemais or south to Caesarea Maritima. But we do not go so far as Efa. In truth, only Seth knows the way we would go, or how far.
Village after village, no matter whether Samaritan or Galilean, Jew or Gentile, turns out to witness our passing. Farmers come in from their fields, artisans rise from their benches, merchants from their mats, women from their hearths, even scribes from their synagogues. For all the railing and lamentations the righteous do, for all the ink they spill spewing forth invective, when “our sort” appears amongst them, they are speechless before us. So too the Roman soldiers.
There is a place where the road curves full into Samaria, and here we pass close under the forbidding walls of a new fortress. Not one of the men who look out at us offers us less than a hungering glance, as what man would not who gazed on Megas or the night-dark Helena? Or on Salome, whose treasures have been buried for years.
But, of course, we are much too grand for such as these.
Somewhere west of the open city of Gabae, which we ride through with much inveigling from eager merchants, much wonder from the poor, and a certain lofty envy from the rich, we pass a small temple to the goddess Astarte. Not far from this, stands a caravansary, and nearby, a small border outpost. Climbing up and up beyond these, we come onto a great height and from there—Phoenicia. Father has enthused over Phoenicia all of my life. For even though they were once the Sidonians, and though they are yet pagans, did they not invent glass!
I am almost too tired to rejoice at the sight of Phoenicia; it is too late in the afternoon, yet I manage a small smile. We shall be safe here if we are careful.
Overhead the sky is an arching vault of chilled white. Helena drifts farther behind, full hooded and dozing on her horse. Riding side by side, and well wrapped in our own cloaks, Salome and I, who have barely spoken these last few miles, are now wholly silent. Even the sight of shy roebuck we startle out from the scrubby oak does not stir us. But here it is, when we would be silent, that Megas urges her horse forward. It has taken her all these many miles, and all these wearisome hours, to find the courage.
The tiny bells at her wrists and her headband ring, and her anxious breath is a white mist on the cold white air. “As you are the beloved of Yehoshua,” she asks, and she asks this of me, “I pray you will tell me of him.”
I, flushing from neck to brow, rush to protest, though I do not. Megas of Ephesus would know of such things as Cleopas knows wood. For is it not a type of truth that though we do not marry, nor think
to marry, Yeshu is truly my beloved, as I am his? And there is also this: Megas asks with such hunger I cannot resist her. I say, “And how should I start, knowing so much, and so little?”
At this, Megas reaches for me, grips my arm. There is desperation in her touch, and I remember her as she was in Taricheae, and I remember her tears. “I have come away from the goodly homes I have made in Tiberius and in Jerusalem. I have come away from all that I knew, so that I too might be near his person. And as I have found him, Mariamne, who is by him and all others, called the Magdal-eder, he has forgiven me! Therefore, what is there I might not do for the Messiah? What is there about him I would not know?”
By the moon, I am horrified. Here is another who would make of Yeshu more than a man! Here is one more who would not see who he truly is. But I remember myself. For here is also one who protects him, and without whom, he might well be taken by now. For this, I owe her nothing but gratitude, and for this, I cannot show my distress. Therefore, I begin to speak of Yeshu, moving quickly from his life to his teachings, for there is much of the former that is not mine to say, and the woman listens as if every word were balm.
Up ahead, a track leads off from the fine road we travel. Where Rome’s road is wide and smooth; this one is narrow and rough. Where Rome’s road continues west toward the sea, running along the valley bottom and beside the river Kishon, this one climbs south up the slopes of a mountain that has been on our left since coming over the pass from the Decapolis. There have been many such tracks on our way, some going up the mountain ridge, some leading further into the valley, but with a turn of his horse’s head, Seth indicates that we will take this one, though we cannot take the wagons. There is no one within sight of us on the road, no one to see what we do. In moments, Yeshu and Jude are mounted on mules taken from their traces. In a few moments more, the wagons of Megas are sent back to the caravansary to be sold. In the very next moment, we are lost to sight of the Jezreel Valley, passing under pines and cypress trees and into thickening mists. Here there are still lesser tracks leading away, and out of these Seth chooses the steepest and least prepossessing of all. It is no more than a faint mark in the steeply rising ground—any who did not know it led somewhere, would think it led nowhere at all—and I am become so embroiled in hoping my horse does not fail in his footing that I do not notice I have caught up to Yeshu on the back of his mule.
It comes, then, as a shock to hear Yehoshua’s voice speak out from the mist, saying, “Mariamne, I would speak with you.”
Yeshu and I have become the last of those who follow this narrow track up through a narrow defile. If I have thought him tired and worn before this day, I now think him near to grievous ill health. But of all that he says as we ride alone in the mist, what he says last is truly the whole of it: “Of what use my life, Mariamne Magdal-eder, if I do not speak of the Father in my own land?”
I am ashamed. While I have marveled at playing the sorceress and the whore, and have sat my horse in vanity and in pride, Yeshu has been bleeding for the poor and the sick and the “Dead.” I entwine my fingers, twist and squeeze my hands until I would crack my bones. How does Yeshu continue to look upon me? How does he call me beloved? Of all those who see me, surely he sees best that I cannot feel as others feel. Eloi! Eloi! How is it that I continue innocent, when I am surrounded by a world of pain and struggle? How shallow my cup; how empty my heart! For all my questions and all my philosophizing, where is my pity? Why am I not like Yeshu, tormented by pity? Isis knows, I have pity enough for myself. And where is my terror before the sorrows of the world?
It is in this moment that I feel the touch of Yeshu, who pulls my hands apart, saying, “How can I think so of myself and forget my beloved? As the Father is my soul, Mariamne is my heart.”
My empty heart breaks yet again.
We have come out of the mist and over a high and hidden pass, and there, lying as white as Jerusalem under the last of the day’s cold sun, is the secret Temple of the Carmelites. Far below is the Phoenician coast with its sand of gold, and everywhere before us shines the Great Sea, under whose deep and turbulent waters the sun shall sleep this night.
“You see, Mariamne?” calls Addai. “The Temple Tower!”
I see. There is a tower here, taller than the tower in the wilderness, and finer by far than the ruined tower of Taricheae. Gazing upon it, Solomon’s Song sings out in my veins: Thine head is held high as Carmel, and thine hair is like purple…
This is the tower of the Carmelites Seth names me for.
I am not worthy.
THE FIFTEENTH SCROLL
The Secret Temple of the Carmelites
Coming to a halt before the one small door in a white wall, not tall and not wide, we were met by an aged and silent man, also in white. Without words, he signaled we were to wait, then took Seth aside. There was a brief whispering, and from that moment to this, we have not seen our friend, nor have we spoken to anyone else. In the days that followed, and from time to time, we catch sight of this one or that one—there must be upward of seventy here, all white-robed and silent, though not all aged. Unlike the Essenes, but like the Therapeutae, some are women, and each goes about his or her wintry day in orchard or garden or vineyards in silence. As they will not speak, we cannot speak. And our own speech, each to each, is become nothing but whispers.
The first night, we were silently shown through bare hall and bare corridor until we came upon two small chambers and, by simple gestures, were given to understand that one was to be used for males, the other for females. Both were furnished with the simplest of bedding. We were offered water but no food, for we had arrived after the setting of the sun. It seems that here, once the sun has set, nothing else might be done but quiet prayer and quiet reading.
I find this place strange and silent and uncomfortable, but oddly wonderful. For here, before the coming of the Zealot in all his forms, is what Addai has said our settlement in the wilderness once was. It is a koinos bios, a place where lives are lived in common and in peace. Here is where, coming away from Adiabene, Seth spent all the years of his young manhood, and for the first time I understand that his bearing, the white of his clothing, his immaculate cleanliness, his love of quiet and solitude—all these were learned here.
As much as I, Salome is enraptured with this beautiful place. For not only was this mountain beloved of Elijah the Tishbite, but it was beloved of Pythagoras. This much she has learned from her poking into every ancient nook and ancient cranny available to her: that Pythagoras once studied here, and that he once meditated in a cave in the flank of the mountain overlooking the Great Sea.
And as she now spends her time, after finding this cave, sitting in it and working on her remembrances of John, and as Helena is with her whenever allowed, and as Tata and Addai remain near each to each the whole of the day and are content with nothing more than this, and as Jude finds work for his hands, mending this and making that—as all these are preoccupied in one way or another, Eio and her colt and I wander everywhere, and we are followed by a raven of formidable size, and even more formidable intelligence. I name her—whether she be female or not—Nyx, after the Greek goddess of the night.
By now, I must know the place of this place as I know the wilderness. It is smaller than the settlement, colder, silent save for the sound of bird or beast or the distant sea. It has no comforts. It has no distractions. It has no ornament. It has beauty but its beauty is as simple as air or water. Few come here. Fewer leave. But as for knowing its heart or its mind? That might take years, if not the whole of a life.
Megas, finding herself a peacock in a farmyard, sends her slaves away free men, bids them take her horses and her mules so that they might have them to make a new life, then sets herself to living as these cenobites of Carmel do. She cannot join them, for this there seems a long wait, and a testing of the will, but she can emulate them. Even so, over and over each day, she contrives to be where Yeshu might be. Salome remarks that the rebirth in Yehoshua of Megas of Eph
esus seems quite as extravagant as her life of sorcery and riches. A thing so exaggerated, and so narrowly placed on the shoulders of some other, even if the other be Yehoshua the Nazorean, surely stems from a terrible fear and an empty despair?
As I have ever said, Salome is good at cruel truths.
In these various ways, we all wait for Seth, all save Yeshu. So soon as he saw this place, Yeshu changed yet again. It seems he now lives such a brilliant interior life, it matters not what occurs around him. In the short time since we came here, I have seen him stand on the farthest point of a rocky promontory looking out over the tossing sea for three and four hours at a time. I have seen him climb down to the small coastal plain below and spend the whole of a violently windy day sitting at the water’s restless edge. I have seen him kneel at a small flat stone the Carmelites call Elijah’s Altar from one day to the next without partaking of food or of water or of sleep. This, and more, we have all seen him do. And it seems even the Carmelites, who eat little and sleep little and speak even less, have never known the like. Both Salome and I think them in danger of becoming reverent.
I intend to spend the ninth of our cold and misted mornings in the Temple. Because I am come with Seth, the shy Carmelite whose task this day is the keeping of the Temple allows me this privilege. But I think it also true that I am welcomed as a curiosity for I am friend to Yehoshua the Nazorean who astounds them. Where they strive to subdue the needs of the body, Yeshu seems simply to forget them. And then, just as they think him the most holy of men, by which they mean the most self-sacrificing, he will suddenly become almost as the Cyrenaics once were. Taking the teachings of Socrates to what many say is an illogical and foolish extreme, these lived for happiness, and what makes a man more happy than pleasure? Yeshu will “wake up” from his raptures of mind or of spirit and call for food or for drink, even for games of skill. More shocking still is his laughter. Yeshu laughs again! The death of John, the terrible trials of his teaching, the threat of Herod—these seem to worry him less and less. Time and again, his laughter will ring out through the hush of their somber halls, and I have seen some few of them stopper their ears, seen others cringe wide-eyed with fear that a demon rages throughout. They do not know what to make of him. And at these times, he will seek me out, and we will sit and talk half a day away. By this, I tell myself that I continue to know his mind.
The Secret Magdalene Page 37