Seeing the other mule and the cart still tied to a tree as he led his own animal from the grove, he wondered again who might be visiting the villa of the procurator in such a mean conveyance at this hour, but gave it little thought.
Then as he rode through the grove that surrounded the villa, a strange sound came to his ears. It was an odd noise, as if a man were groaning in pain. While he listened, it came again, apparently from the bushes beside the road.
Getting down from his mule, Joseph searched until he found a broken branch as long as he could span with his arms and, gripping it in both hands, approached the spot from which the groans had come.
Thieves often lay in wait for the late traveler along these roads, he knew, and a favorite stratagem was to pretend to be injured, luring the sympathetic wayfarer within reach of a long knife or a sword. It might have been wiser not to stop at all, considering the value of the purse he was carrying, but Joseph never passed by one who needed help without investigating.
Soon he made out a white form lying in the ditch. It stirred and a man’s voice implored, “In the name of Ahura-Mazda, help me or I die.”
The voice seemed familiar, and when he came closer Joseph recognized the swarthy face with its hawklike profile and graying beard and the white robes stained now with mud. It was Hadja, leader of the musicians who played for Mary of Magdala. The Nabatean appeared to be semiconscious.
Quickly Joseph knelt and ran his fingers over Hadja’s skull, noting with relief that there was no depression of the bone. A cut over the injured man’s temple showed that he had been bludgeoned, a serious injury indeed if the bone were driven down upon the brain. The blood was still wet, although sticky, so it could not have been very long since he was wounded. The pulse, Joseph noted, was slow and strong, so he judged that no mortal wound was involved.
From his belt Joseph took a small flask of wine that he carried for emergencies such as this. The Nabatean swallowed automatically when the flask touched his lips, then gulped the wine down when he realized what was being offered him.
“What happened to you, Hadja?” Joseph asked.
“Is it the leech, Joseph of Galilee?”
“Yes.”
“Praise be to Ahura-Mazda! She whom you love is prisoner in the villa.”
“Mary?” Joseph cried. “But how?”
Hadja told him then of the summons to the villa, of Mary’s dancing before the procurator and his guests, and of her great success. “Afterward,” he continued, “we were told by the tribune that the Living Flame was dining there and we were to wait, but they served us food and led us from the palace under guard.”
Gaius Flaccus! This could be the work of no other. The stories he had heard about the libertine habits of the procurator’s nephew went racing through Joseph’s brain. “Why did you leave her?” he demanded angrily.
“Two soldiers with drawn swords walked beside each of us. I tried to break away, but one of them struck me down with the butt of his sword.”
There was no point in blaming the Nabatean. Only by the rarest sort of luck had the soldier used the butt of the sword instead of the blade, leaving Hadja alive. Joseph forced aside, too, the burning rage against Gaius Flaccus that rose within him, for he must think clearly now. It had not been long since Hadja was struck down; there might still be time to save Mary if he could somehow gain entrance to the palace. But since the high walls precluded any entry by that route, there was only one way, through the gate by which he had just emerged. The guard might remember that he had just left the villa and let him in.
“I am going inside to get her,” he told Hadja.
“They will kill you.” The musician stumbled to his feet, but swayed and was forced to catch hold of a sapling to keep from falling. He could only curse fluently, calling down the wrath of the supreme sun-god Ahura himself upon all Romans and upon the tribune Gaius Flaccus in particular. “I am but a blind man who must be led,” he mourned. “Take this knife, Joseph. You may be able to slip it between the ribs of a Roman.”
Joseph took the long weapon gratefully and thrust it under his robe. When he approached the gate, the guard stopped him with his sword. “What now, leech?” he demanded. “Were you not well paid? I remember a purse hanging from your belt.”
“I left some of my medicines in the apartment of the Lady Procula,” Joseph said, adding a silent prayer that the Most High would forgive him the lie. “Her maid knows me, so it will not be necessary to disturb anyone else. The medicine is very valuable.”
The guard shrugged. “If it is worth so much, you will not mind handing over one of the gold coins from that fat purse she gave you to someone less fortunate.”
Joseph would gladly have given the whole purse, if necessary, to gain access to the building without being observed.
“See that you hurry,” the guard growled, pocketing the bribe. “I will get the lash if it is known that I admitted you again.”
Two corridors opened from the atrium, which for the moment was empty. One, Joseph knew, led to the apartments of Procula and Pilate, for he had just come that way, so he chose the other. He heard music and, cracking open a door, found himself looking into the triclinium. The course of the evening’s revelry had taken its inevitable turn. Pontius Pilate and a fat Roman were declaiming in each other’s faces, their golden wreaths askew. On the other couches, Herod Antipas and another guest were embracing a pair of slave girls. Mary was nowhere to be seen, but one couch was ominously empty and Gaius Flaccus was absent, confirming his worst fears.
Closing the door to the triclinium, Joseph hurried along the corridor until he was stopped by a closed door, which he opened. The room was empty, but a woman’s dress that he recognized as Mary’s was hanging over a chair. Throwing the dress over his arm, he started out into the corridor, but, hearing the creak of another door, drew back just in time.
While Joseph watched, Gaius Flaccus emerged from one of the rooms, then staggered across the atrium and out of sight. Joseph quickly opened the door through which the tribune had emerged and stepped inside. A glance told him it was the Roman’s bedchamber, for his sword and insignia lay on a chair. Then his eyes moved to the bed and he recoiled in horror, for a single glance revealed what had happened here. Mary was still unconscious, but the marble pallor of her skin, the signs of struggle in the room, the pitiful tatters of her clothing in a pile on the floor where Gaius Flaccus had dropped them could only mean that she had been ravished forcibly, in spite of her struggles to defend herself.
Eyes averted, Joseph covered Mary’s body with the dress he carried over his arm. A quick examination showed that she was not seriously injured, although great dark spots already showed upon her tender skin. He knew that he must act rapidly, for the tribune might return at any moment, but first he ripped a heavy drapery from one of the windows and wrapped it about Mary’s body to protect her against the chill of the night if they were lucky enough to escape from the villa. All the while his thoughts were racing as he tried to decide what to do.
Going over the walls was out of the question—they were much too high—nor could he leave the way he had come, carrying an unconscious woman in his arms. One avenue only remained then, the lake. He had no way of knowing how deep the water was at the end of the wall where it entered the lake, but he must try to wade around the end of it. And if it was too deep he must swim, bearing the unconscious girl in his arms.
His decision made, Joseph lifted Mary from the couch. Then, carrying her in his arms, he stepped through upon the close-cropped green lawn outside. Next he worked his way slowly against the wall of the villa in the protecting shadows until he came to the corner. The way seemed clear now and, moving quickly, he darted across the open space to the protection of the ten-foot wall that marched down into the lake itself. No outcry had arisen yet to show that he had been discovered, so he crept along beside the wall, steadying himse
lf against it until his feet splashed in the water and a chill shot through his ankles.
The water was icy, fed by the rushing torrent of the Jordan, which swelled to a flood during the spring months from the melted snows of Mount Hermon and the ranges to the north. The chill of it threatened to paralyze him as he waded deeper, pressing his body against the wall on his left side so as not to leave it in the darkness, in case he stepped off into a deeper spot and needed something to cling to.
Wading was difficult, for he had to hold Mary high enough so that she would not get soaked by the icy water, an accident that might bring on unwanted complications with her body shocked and exhausted as it was. The water reached his waist, then his armpits. A few more steps and he must swim. Then suddenly there was no more wall against his left side, and with a thrill of exultation he knew that he had reached the end. Turning sharply to the left around the end of the wall, Joseph felt the bottom begin to shelve up as he waded ashore on the outside. A few yards more and he was out of the water, staggering up the shore toward the path where he had left Hadja, with Mary’s unconscious body in his arms.
While Joseph was gone, the Nabatean had recovered enough to bring the mule and cart in which they had come from Magdala down to the path beside Joseph’s mule. Mary still showed no sign of consciousness when they carried her up the shelving beach and placed her on the rough floorboards of the cart, but although both were staggering from near exhaustion, they wasted no time in leaving the villa, knowing that the alarm might be given at any moment.
As they pushed along the path, Joseph explained to Hadja only that Mary had suffered one of her fainting spells and that he had found her in a room in the palace. Hardly half a mile beyond the villa, the road branched. The fork to the left ascended the hills past the great aqueduct bringing water to Tiberias and went on to Magdala, which overlooked the lake from a considerable height. The road on the right, however, followed the shore line to Capernaum and on to Bethsaida and the northern towns around the lake. They were turning into the left fork leading to Magdala, when Hadja said suddenly, “Wait, Joseph! I hear something behind us.”
Joseph stopped at once. For a moment he heard nothing except the lap of the waves on the shore close by and the wind in the trees. Then, faintly, he detected the sound which had first reached the keen ears of the desert man: the sharp ring of metal on metal. Such a sound could have many causes, but only one was likely tonight—the ring of a sword on a shield.
Hurriedly they worked the cart and animals off the road and out of sight among the trees. The terrain was rough, but a fringe of trees grew just back of the shoreline, so they did not have to go far to be completely hidden from the road. There they crouched, each with a reassuring hand on the bridle of a mule, lest the animals stir and betray their presence. By the time they had hidden the mules and the cart, the rattle of harness and the rhythmic tread of leather-shod feet were plainly audible. Shortly a party of soldiers with torches came into view, but without pausing at the fork they wheeled to the left along the upper road leading to Magdala.
The two remained in the darkness beside the cart on which Mary’s body lay until the Romans were out of sight and earshot on the heights above, then they worked the cart back to the road. Joseph wiped his face and felt it damp with a cold sweat. Had not Hadja’s sharp ears heard the soldiers in time, they would have taken the road to Magdala, he knew. Nothing, then, could have saved them from capture, for the road above was narrow, with no way of getting the animals and the cart into hiding.
“Which way now?” Hadja took a long breath. “We cannot follow them.”
“They must be going to the house of Demetrius in Magdala,” Joseph agreed. Then a thought struck him. “Do you know where Simon’s home is in Capernaum?”
“Yes. I have been there many times.”
“Good! We will hide Mary with Simon until it is safe for her to return to Magdala.”
“The fisherman is a good man,” Hadja agreed. “He will be glad to give us shelter.”
With Hadja riding one mule and Joseph leading the one drawing the cart, they set out along the shore road to Capernaum.
X
Joseph stirred and sat up, rubbing his eyes. The sun was already bright upon the floor of Simon’s house, but Mary still lay on the couch where he had placed her when they arrived around midnight. He had spent the night stretched out on a quilt on the floor where he could hear her if she stirred from her stupor.
Simon and his wife had accepted without question Joseph’s story that Mary had been dancing for Pontius Pilate and had fallen in one of her fainting attacks, especially since he had taken the precaution of slipping Mary’s rough dress over her body while Hadja rode ahead on the mule. The drapery from Gaius Flaccus’s bedchamber had been discarded in the bushes beside the road.
Hadja’s wound proved superficial when Joseph dressed it, and he had been dispatched with the mule and cart to Magdala during the night to reassure Demetrius about Mary.
The sun was shining brightly on the shore outside the house. The soft lap of water against the sides of Simon’s fishing boat drawn up on the shore with its bright sails furled about the mast, the chatter of gulls around the fish house of Zebedee nearby, and the myriads of small, intimate sounds that went with an awakening household made last night seem only a nightmare. But when Joseph looked down at the girl sleeping on the couch and saw again the dark angry bruises upon her neck and arms where she had fought against Gaius Flaccus, he knew in a sudden rush of concern that her own tragedy was very real indeed. Mary’s hair was tumbled about her face and shoulders, and some color had come back into her cheeks, but her very helplessness as she lay there set a flood of tender concern rising within him. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her, letting her awaken in a safe haven that could always be hers if she wanted it. But she could not have heard these things had he been able to say them, and so he contented himself only with bending over and kissing her upon the forehead.
When he raised his head he saw that her eyes were open, staring at him with a puzzled expression. “This is Simon’s house,” she whispered. “How did I get here?”
Joseph gave her a quick account of his finding Hadja outside the villa and how he had taken her from Gaius Flaccus’s bedchamber.
“You know what happened then?” It was barely a whisper.
“Yes. But no one else does.”
“Why didn’t you leave me there to die?” she said piteously. “There was a dagger in the closet.” Suddenly she began to weep. Great tears spilled from her eyes and ran down over her cheeks, but her face remained a frozen mask of suffering and shame.
Joseph looked away, for somehow it seemed indecent to watch while she wept for the girl who had disappeared last night, never to return. He sensed that nothing he could say would diminish her agony now. It would do no good to tell her that others had survived an equal desecration and had gone on living. He could not possibly know, as kind and understanding as he was, what the terrible experience had meant. Only a woman who had been through it all could know that. But he could see how, overnight, the gay and carefree girl who had danced and sung for the sheer joy of it had become a woman.
The change was not only in the physical bruises upon her body and the lines of suffering in her face. It went deeper than mere flesh into her very soul, a wound that would never completely heal. There was the same pale beauty, the same rich sheen to her hair, the same lovely body outwardly unchanged by the desecration it had survived. And yet the girl weeping there was an entirely different person from the gay and joyful Mary of Magdala who had loved to visit Simon and his wife here by the lake, the “Living Flame,” as Hadja called her, who had danced on the streets of Magdala.
Finally the tears ceased to flow. “No one knows what happened last night except us, Mary,” Joseph said, trying to comfort her. “I did not tell Hadja, or Simon and his wife. You must try to fo
rget it; the memory can only bring you pain.”
“Then let it,” she said with sudden anger. “Let the pain keep me from ever forgetting I must be revenged.”
“‘Vengeance is mine, and recompense,’” he reminded her. “They are the words of the Most High.”
“Where was He when I cried out to Him to save me?” she stormed. “Why did He not answer me then?”
Joseph was silent. The wife of Eleazar and most of the devout Jews of Magdala would have said God had deserted her as a punishment for her sins. But what was sinful about high spirits and courage, the impatience of youth for the conservatism of age, or the desire to be happy and share one’s happiness with others? If this were sin, then God was indeed an unfair taskmaster.
“You think I deserved it, too, because you told me not to go to Tiberias,” Mary accused, lashing out like a child in her pain and bewilderment, instinctively trying to allay the hurt and guilt she felt.
“None of those who love you could ever think or say such a thing, Mary,” he told her gently. “It is written, ‘Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.’”
“Stop quoting proverbs to me!” she snapped angrily, turning her face away from him. “Why don’t you go away and leave me alone?”
“I thought I would go to Magdala this morning . . .”
“Well, go then. Stop bothering me.”
“Do you want to tell Demetrius anything?”
“Tell him I want to die.” Her voice broke then and the tears began to roll once more, but her face still did not alter in its fixed mask of suffering. “Tell him to forget he ever had a daughter,” she whispered and, turning over suddenly, buried her face in the pillow.
Joseph found Simon’s wife and warned her to watch Mary closely, on the grounds that she might suffer another attack. Then, his heart heavy with concern for the girl he loved, he got on his mule and started up the hill to Magdala. There he learned that the soldiers had visited Demetrius during the night, seeking Mary, but had departed without troubling him when satisfied that she had not come there. The remainder of the musicians had drifted in during the early hours of the morning, but the pudgy lyre maker had been worried until Hadja arrived with the news that Mary was safe.
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