The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene

by Frank G. Slaughter

  “Are you still afraid of me?” Gaius asked with a smile. “I am not an ogre who eats up little girls.”

  She could not help laughing at the incongruity of comparing so handsome a man with an ogre, and took the hand he held out to her. “I must hurry, though,” she insisted. “Demetrius will be worried until I return.”

  “The two purses you bear will allay his fears. Besides, you have four bodyguards, and big ones, too. They grow strong men in the desert.”

  Her fears were silly, Mary told herself, as Gaius Flaccus guided her along the corridor. And it was thrilling to be waited upon by such a handsome man. Nor could she prevent a quickening of her pulses at the feel of his strong hand upon her arm and the touch of his silk-clad body against hers in the narrow space of the corridor. How Joseph would glower, she thought mischievously, when, she told him tomorrow of her experiences in the palace of the procurator.

  The room into which Gaius Flaccus ushered her was not large, but it was luxuriously furnished. Heavy draperies hung at the windows and were pulled shut to keep out the night air so rightly feared in Herod’s unhealthy city by Romans and Galileans alike. A broad, soft-cushioned couch half filled the room, and through the open door of a large closet Mary could see rows of the rich purple and white uniforms affected by the wealthy officers of the Roman Army.

  “Is this your bedchamber?” she cried in sudden alarm.

  “Yes, but you need not be afraid,” he assured her. “See, your supper is already here.” He took a burning taper from a bracket on the wall and went about the room lighting other candles, until the chamber was ablaze with light. “There,” he said, smiling. “That should assure you of my good intentions.”

  Mary lifted the silver cover of one of the dishes arranged upon a low table and sniffed the delightful aroma. “It smells good,” she admitted reluctantly.

  “Go ahead and eat,” Gaius Flaccus urged. “If I had worked as hard as you did tonight, I would be starved.”

  Mary hesitated no longer. Everything was here that a young girl would like, including many viands she had heard of but had never tasted before. On one plate was the antecena or gustus, strips of salted and smoked fish, tender radishes on tiny center leaves of succulent lettuce, and other dainties to stir the appetite. While she ate, Gaius Flaccus poured into a slender crystal goblet a mixture of mild wine and honey called mulsum.

  Next was a large plate containing the cena, the main part of the meal. Tender slices of roasted and spiced beef were garnished with the rich and savory vegetables that grew on the fertile Plain of Gennesaret. Mary refused wine from a second flask, for her head was already light from the sweet mulsum. But she could not withstand the pastry studded with nuts making up the last part of the meal, the mensa secunda, as the Romans called it.

  While she ate, Gaius Flaccus sat on a cushion at her feet, lifting the covers from dishes as she sampled them, and pushing them aside when she was finished. Finally, when she could eat no more, Mary wiped her mouth and fingers upon a napkin of linen finer than any she had ever seen before and took a deep breath of sheer content. Perhaps it was the wine or the heady effect of his admiration that made her feel dizzy. It didn’t occur to her then that there might be another, a more dangerous cause.

  “Did you like your dinner?” Gaius Flaccus asked.

  “Oh yes. It was wonderful.”

  “And have I offended you at all?”

  She smiled. “Of course not, but I must go now. Demetrius will be wondering where I am.”

  He took her hands and pulled her to her feet. She was quite close to him, closer, she knew, than she should be. But a sense of exhilaration, a feeling of adventure, kept her from drawing away. As he smiled down at her, his broad chest touched her body and she felt the softness of her flesh give way against him. Her breath seemed to stop in her throat then, and she felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to press herself against him. “I—I must go,” she stammered, but she could not draw away.

  “Don’t I deserve at least a kiss as a reward?” He held her hands still in his. “After all, I did help you get to dance before the procurator. Both Pontius and Herod were enchanted with you, and their favor can mean much.”

  Deep inside she had known all along that Gaius Flaccus had persuaded Pilate to send for her to dance tonight. It was a part of the thrill of adventure, even of danger, that characterized the evening. Besides, the purse he had brought, plus the one she had tossed to Hadja, comprised more money than had been in the house of Demetrius for many years. And being generous by nature, Mary could not very well help feeling a warm glow of appreciation toward the handsome young man who had made these things possible. After all, she told herself to quiet her pounding heart, there could be no harm in giving him the kiss when, she was honest enough to admit to herself, she wanted him to kiss her.

  Gaius Flaccus saw that she was tempted to yield and drew her gently to him. But when she would have given him her soft cheek, he claimed her mouth roughly and his arms tightened about her. Mary had seen passion in the eyes of men when she danced, but she had never been so close to it as this. Startled by the shock of Gaius Flaccus’s mouth upon hers, his hands upon her body through the thin silk of her dress, she was paralyzed for a moment.

  It was a strange new feeling, this pounding of blood in her temples and throat, this constriction in her chest that came only partially from the powerful arm holding her so tightly, this sudden whirling of her senses that was more than the effect of wine. And without realizing what she was doing, her arms crept around his neck and tightened, while her mouth softened and grew lax beneath his.

  Gaius Flaccus had planned with cunning, but now the surge of desire set off by her momentary yielding swept away all his restraint. Mary, herself, fighting against the strong urge to yield and knowing that she must not, did not realize what was happening at first. Then, whatever response had been momentarily aroused by his ardor was swept away in a surge of revulsion and fear.

  Forcibly she broke away from the demanding caress of his mouth and pushed herself clear momentarily of his embrace, but the man who held her now was not the same one who had waited upon her so gallantly while she ate. His face, so handsome a moment before, was swollen and distorted by lust, and his eyes were wild and bloodshot, like one suddenly demented.

  While she struggled in a sudden rush of terror to break away from him, Mary screamed again and again, but the thick hangings of the room dulled the sound. Her strength was failing fast and now she realized, in a rush of utter terror, why she had been a little dizzy. The effects of the wine of mandragora she had taken before leaving home had worn off. What she felt now was the aura preceding a fainting spell.

  Mary could only resist feebly when she felt Gaius Flaccus lift her in his arms, for the strange paralysis that accompanied the fainting spells was already upon her. She could no longer move her limbs, and when she tried again to scream no sound came, for her senses had already begun to lose contact with reality.

  Mercifully, Mary of Magdala became unconscious.

  IX

  Joseph was away when the nomenclator of Pontius Pilate called to request that he visit the Lady Claudia Procula. It was late in the afternoon before his mother found him at the house of Eleazar and gave him the message, and darkness had already fallen by the time he tied his mule to a tree outside the villa of the procurator. As he was removing the nartik containing his instruments, medicines, and leeches from the mule’s back, he noticed another mule and cart tied nearby but paid them little attention, for he was concerned lest the procurator be angered by the slowness of his favorite leech in answering the summons.

  The boudoir to which Joseph was admitted was small and exquisite, as was its owner. Pilate’s wife was like one of the delicate figurines from the countries beyond the Eastern sea that were sometimes seen in the markets of Tiberias. Every line of her lovely features showed breeding, for she ca
rried the blood of the Julio-Claudian line of Roman emperors. But there was also a warmth and understanding in her eyes which had not always characterized the often-hated line. When Joseph saw that she was not angry at him for the delay, he drew a sigh of relief.

  “I was treating the sick and did not get the message of the procurator until an hour ago,” he explained.

  Claudia Procula smiled. “I should apologize for making you come to Tiberias after nightfall. I know how devout Jews feel about the city.”

  “The chazan of my synagogue might not understand,” Joseph admitted. “But I am sure the welfare of the sick comes above the niceties of the law.”

  Procula looked at him keenly. It was unusual for a Jew to let anything come between him and his beloved law. This serious-mannered young leech was certainly well above the average of the Jews with whom she had come in contact, she decided. The breeding of a pure bloodline showed plainly in his clean-cut features.

  “The trouble is here, with my left arm.” She lifted a filmy sleeve and exposed an angry red swelling in the upper part of her arm. Joseph recognized the nature of the trouble at once, for such conditions were not at all uncommon in his experience. An insect bite, a small pimple, then in a few days a painful swelling and fever that lingered for days, unless it ended by rupture of the tense red skin and expulsion of the poisons which had somehow set up such a violent reaction in the flesh.

  “Can you do anything to relieve the pain?” Procula asked hesitantly.

  Joseph ran his fingers gently over the swelling. As he had suspected from looking at it, the skin was fluctuant, betraying the poisonous suppuration dammed back beneath it. “Hippocrates once said, ‘Those diseases which medicines do not cure, iron [the knife] cures,’” he told her.

  “The knife!” she gasped. “But there will be a scar.”

  “Not as much as if it ruptures and drains by itself. And it will get well much more quickly if I incise it.”

  “Do it, then,” she urged. “And quickly. I have not slept for two nights.”

  “You will sleep tonight,” Joseph promised as he opened his instrument case.

  Testing his scalpel with his thumb, Joseph found it still of the razor-like sharpness that only the fine steel of Damascus could hold, for he honed it each morning before leaving his house. From the nartik he also took a pad of washed wool and spread out a clean towel beneath the inflamed arm. Then he nodded to Procula that he was ready. She set her teeth firmly in a soft red lip, and he plunged the blade quickly through the shiny red skin. Her gasp was more at the gush of bloodstained purulent matter that burst from the tense abscess than from pain, for the thinned-out skin had little feeling in it. Before Joseph withdrew the scalpel, he slit the skin well across the top of the swelling, laying it wide open so that it would not be sealed off again before all the poisonous material could drain out.

  “Was that so bad?” he asked as he bound a pad of washed wool expertly over the wound.

  “Oh no. I never thought anything could bring relief so quickly.”

  “If you will have your maid bring a little wine,” he suggested, “I will mix you a sleeping draught. Then you can be sure of a good night’s rest.”

  Claudia Procula ordered the wine. “And bring a tray for the physician, too, Letha,” she added. “I’ll wager you hurried to Tiberias without eating.”

  Joseph admitted that he had, and while he waited for the draught to take effect, he devoted himself to the excellent food. Under Claudia Procula’s kindly questioning he found himself telling her of his ambitions to study medicine at Alexandria and return to Judea to bring enlightened medical knowledge to his people.

  “I can remember when I was your age,” she said with a sigh. “My dreams seemed easy to fulfill then.”

  “But the procurator’s lady could want for nothing,” Joseph protested. “It is no secret that all who know her love her.”

  “You cannot know what it is to long for Rome and the things a woman who spent most of her life there yearns for, Joseph. Besides, the climate in Caesarea makes it difficult for me to breathe. Tiberias is better for me, but I am not free of it even here.”

  Joseph’s interest was aroused at once. “Do you have the same trouble in the mountains?”

  “Not as much. Once we took a trip into the desert and I was free of it altogether, but the procurator of Judea cannot live in the desert. Sometimes I can hardly get my breath at all.”

  Joseph had seen many such cases. Some burned aromatic leaves and inhaled the smoke; others threw precious and fragrant oils, such as myrrh and spikenard, into boiling water and breathed in the vapor. There was no known cure for this sometimes fatal disease, and yet people sometimes became better for no reason at all.

  Procula’s maid went to get a purse for Joseph, and while he was repacking the nartik, a child’s wail came from the adjoining room. He had heard of this child of Pontius Pilate who was never seen by the people, rumor said because it was deformed, but he had never known any real evidence before that the rumors were true. Now he sensed that there was indeed some mystery here, as rumor maintained, for a look of fear came into Claudia Procula’s eyes. Before she could speak, the door opened and Pontius Pilate came in. He did not see Joseph before he asked, “Has the leech come, dear?” Then he saw the bandage. “Oh, I see that he has. Does it feel better?”

  She managed to smile. “Much better. Joseph is still here; he was just going.”

  Pilate turned and saw the young physician. “You took long enough getting here,” he said sharply.

  “I was treating the sick,” Joseph explained. “As soon as your message reached me, I came at once.”

  The cry of the child came from the other room again, and the procurator seemed to freeze in his tracks. Watching his face, Joseph saw a look of defeat, almost of despair, come into it and realized that there was some tragedy here, perhaps something that might hold a key to the behavior of this strange, moody man who ruled Judea for Rome. Pilate’s gaze turned to Joseph. “Men have died for knowing less than you have just learned,” he said slowly.

  “No, Pontius!” Procula cried. “Joseph is a good man . . .”

  “Tell me,” Pilate snapped. “What do they say in Jerusalem and Galilee of Pontius Pilate? Are there stories that he has a child who is a monster?”

  “I do not listen to idle talk,” Joseph said quietly. “Life comes from the Most High; I do not question how He gives it.”

  Pilate stared at him for a long moment. “Perhaps you are right,” he said heavily. “Come and see for yourself.”

  The adjoining room was fitted out as a nursery, and a small boy lay asleep on a bed in the corner enclosed by a low frame. He seemed to be about three years of age, and his face was beautiful, a miniature of his mother’s with her delicate features and light-colored hair. Pilate’s hand was gentle as he drew away the light quilt covering the child’s body, but Joseph saw at once why the procurator felt so bitter about his son. The boy’s right foot was deformed, the toes drawn until they pointed almost straight downward, a typical case of clubfoot. “You have some reputation as a bonesetter,” Pilate said. “Can you make such a foot straight?”

  Reluctantly Joseph shook his head. “I am told shoes can be made with a thick sole, however,” he suggested, “so that such children can be taught to walk.”

  “The son of a soldier,” Pilate burst out. “My little Pila! Hopping like a common beggar.” His fingers clenched and unclenched. “Is this God of yours able to heal such a thing as this?” He seized Joseph by the robe and shook him. “You are a Jew. Tell me, is He?”

  “‘The Lord is merciful and gracious . . . as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him,’” Joseph stammered.

  Pilate dropped his hands. Turning back to the crib, he took the quilt and drew it up again, hiding the piteously deformed foot
. Joseph saw that his hands were tender and that he loved the beautiful child in spite of his bitter disappointment. “I fear no gods,” the procurator said slowly. “Because there are none to fear. Truth is the only God of man. But what is truth? Has this so-called Jehovah of yours the answer, Joseph?”

  “It is said of the Most High,” Joseph told him, “‘He is the Rock, His work is perfect: for all His ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He.’”

  Pilate shrugged. “Truth lies within man’s soul, not in the gods he worships. I know the Jews say this thing was done to me because I crucified some of them who broke the laws of Rome.” His voice rose in anger. “But I spurn them, just as I spurn your priests who plot to drive me from Judea and make Antipas king in my stead. I will show them yet who rules in Judea.”

  “My lord,” Procula said softly. “Joseph has a long way to go. He has given me a sleeping draught.”

  “Of course, my dear,” the procurator said quickly. “We will leave you now.” He took the purse the maid had brought and gave it to Joseph. “But see that you tell no one of what you have seen tonight, leech. I am generous with those who serve me well, but whoever betrays me dies.”

  “‘Whatever I see or hear in the life of men which ought not to be spoken abroad, I will not divulge,’” Joseph said slowly, “‘as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.’”

  “The oath of Hippocrates.” Pilate nodded. “See that you keep it then. You will profit by doing so.”

  Joseph’s heart was light as he untied his mule in the grove outside the villa. He had been well paid indeed for tonight’s work and, more important, Pilate had promised his favor in return for keeping the secret of the child called Pila and his deformed foot. The history of Pontius Pilate’s term as procurator in Judea had shown that his favor could be valuable, just as his anger could bring sudden death and the agony of crucifixion, the favorite method of execution with the Romans. But Joseph had no intention of angering the moody procurator. With such lavish patients as Pilate and his wife, he might have money enough to go to Alexandria much sooner than he had expected.