Farmers who went out to till the fields during the day crowded the roads leading to Sepphoris in the late afternoon, driving before them mules heavy-laden with produce for the markets. The camels were slowed to a walk as Joseph and Hadja threaded the crowded streets past the magnificent group of palaces forming the center of Herod’s government and the quarters of the Romans. Before a villa of white stone second only in magnificence to Herod’s own residence, Hadja stopped the animals. “This is the palace of Gaius Flaccus,” he said. “The Lady Claudia Procula should be here, and perhaps the procurator himself. The Living Flame had sent for them before I left.”
Carrying the nartik containing his medicines and instruments under his arm, Joseph was ushered past two soldiers guarding the gate and into the broad cool atrium forming the center of the house. Almost immediately Claudia Procula came across the room to him, her hands extended in welcome. “Mary and I have been praying that your journey would be swift, Joseph,” she said. “We will all feel better now that you are here.”
“I came as quickly as I could,” he said, bowing courteously.
“Pontius and I were glad to know Mary had sent for you. We knew that if anyone could help Gaius Flaccus it would be you.”
“Gaius Flaccus?”
“But you knew he was ill, didn’t you?”
Joseph shook his head. “I knew only that Mary needed me.”
“He is desperately ill,” she said. “I know you have every reason to hate Gaius Flaccus, Joseph. But Mary has forgiven him for what he has done to her, and I know you will save his life if you can.”
“She has forgiven him?” This seemed to be a day of surprises.
Procula nodded. “The teachings of Jesus do seem to change people entirely, even though heard secondhand.”
“Is Mary a follower of the Teacher of Nazareth?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes. And there are more in Galilee who follow Him than you would believe possible. If only I had the courage to admit what in my heart I know is true, I would be among them.”
“Perhaps we had better go to the sick man,” Joseph said a little dazedly. “I have heard words from your lips that I find hard to understand. And yet I know that the Lady Claudia Procula speaks only that which is true.”
“Thank you, Joseph,” she said gratefully. “May God give me strength to speak it to others as I have to you.”
IV
The accident which had felled Gaius Flaccus, according to the story Procula told Joseph, could have happened to anyone. His horse had fallen during a chase after a stag, but the wound on his leg had seemed minor. Then a few days later the skin around it turned red and the limb began to swell. Chills and fever followed quickly, and for the past several days he had been raging in a delirium.
Claudia Procula did not enter the sickroom with Joseph, but he did not notice, for he saw only the woman kneeling in a corner of the room, her eyes closed, her lips moving in prayer. It was a picture he knew he would never forget, for this was a new Mary of Magdala, a little thinner than when he had seen her last, her skin somewhat paler, but the copper-tinted glory of her hair still undimmed, and her face even more beautiful in sorrow than he had ever remembered it before. For now there was a quality of peace and serenity in those well-remembered features, an impression of confidence in some power he could not see.
When Mary opened her eyes and saw Joseph, her face lit up and color flowed into her cheeks.
“Joseph!” she cried, and his heart leaped with what he heard in her voice. “I knew you would come.” She took him by the arms and kissed him on the cheek, holding tightly to him and leaning against him for a moment, as if she needed the strength and assurance of his presence.
Seeing her again and remembering the light that had come into her eyes at the sight of him, Joseph knew that her love still burned as warmly as did his own. “It is good to see you again, Mary,” he said quietly. “Were you praying for Gaius Flaccus when I came in?”
“Yes. Do you find it so hard to believe?”
“We learned as children the admonition of the Most High, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But were I in your place,” he admitted, “I don’t think I could find it in my heart to pray for him.”
She smiled. “Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.’”
The man on the couch gritted his teeth and cursed. Two slaves stood by, and now they leaped to hold him. But Joseph waved them back and put his hand on the sick man’s forehead. As if consciousness of the soothing gesture had penetrated his fevered mind, Gaius Flaccus quieted a little. His skin was hot and dry beneath Joseph’s fingers, the pulse at his wrist racing and full, as if trying to burst the very skin beneath which it beat. The stertorous rasp of his breathing filled the room, and as he babbled and cursed in the delirium, his fingers picked constantly at the bedclothes and at his body, as if searching for unseen vermin.
A passage from the writings of Hippocrates came into Joseph’s mind:
When in acute fevers . . . the hands are moved before the face, hunting through empty space, as if gathering bits of straw, picking the nap from the coverlet, or tearing chaff from the wall—all such symptoms are bad and deadly.
Joseph laid his ear against the hot skin of the sick man’s chest. He listened in several places and finally heard in the lower left side the sign he had been seeking, a dry sound as of leather rubbing together that betrayed a deep-seated pleurisy. And when he examined the abdomen, the grave light in his eyes deepened, for at the slightest touch Gaius Flaccus flinched with pain, even through his delirium.
In the left groin, above the injured leg, a large angry swelling seemed almost ready to burst with its own tension. Below this the entire limb was fiery red in color and the tissues boardlike to the touch. The skin wound seemed innocent enough in itself when Joseph removed the bandages. It was only a shallow cut, but the edges were ragged and discolored, and a thin serous discharge poured from the wound, in itself a far graver sign than a heavy flow of suppuration would have been.
His examination finished, Joseph rebandaged the cut and washed his hands carefully, for he knew from experience that inflammations such as this were easily transferred from one person to another, entering a cut or an abrasion as rapidly as they had invaded the original wound. He had often wondered just why this could be but had not yet found the answer, although it was true that the physician Marcus Terentius Varro had written several hundred years before: “Perhaps in swampy places small animals live that cannot be discerned with the eye, and they enter the body through the mouth and nostrils and cause grave disorders.”
This might well explain how some diseases were contracted, he was prepared to admit. But here it seemed obvious that whatever was causing the trouble had entered the wound, for it was the center of an angry inflammatory process. Was it possible for the tiny animalcules spoken of by Varro to enter the body through breaks in the tissues? he wondered. If so, this was a strong argument for the strict cleanliness in handling wounds that Hippocrates had advocated and that Joseph himself had always practiced rigorously.
“It is hopeless,” Mary said in a low voice. “I can see it in your face.”
“The poison has invaded his entire body,” Joseph admitted. “I could hear the rubbing of inflamed membranes inside his chest.”
“Can you do nothing?”
“The pulse is bounding, indicating an acute plethora. I will bleed him and wrap the lower body in hot fomentations. Sometimes that helps to quiet the delirium.”
While Mary sent slaves to bring sheets and hot water, Joseph opened his nartik and removed a slender steel nail, the blade used to puncture veins. Then he showed one of the slaves how to squeeze Gaius Flaccus’s arm above the elbow, distending the already bulging vessels. Quickly he plunged the blade with one stroke
through the skin and the wall of the vein, turning it to separate the edges of the tiny opening. A thin stream of blood, dark and unhealthy in color, poured into the small bowl held by a slave. He kept the wound open until a full goblet had been drawn off, then removed the nail and bandaged the arm snugly.
Next Joseph wrung out sheets dipped in hot water and wrapped the sick man’s limbs and lower body in a cocoon-like sheath of damp warm cloth. When this was finished, he managed to coax Gaius Flaccus into drinking a mixture of wine with poppy leaves, and shortly afterward the tribune quieted down and slept naturally for the first time in days.
Mary and Joseph ate the evening meal together in a small chamber outside the sickroom. Although she was technically a slave, he noted that the entire household treated her with deference, and she was obviously very much respected and liked.
“You have changed since you left Alexandria, Joseph,” she said when the meal was finished. “Are you happy in Jerusalem?”
“How could I be happy when you are a slave?” he asked.
“Would it help if I told you that I don’t mind being a slave anymore?”
“But you still belong to another man.”
She put her hand on his. “My body may be owned by Gaius Flaccus,” she said simply, “but you know that my heart is yours. It has been since one afternoon in Tiberias so long ago.”
He smiled. “When you reminded me that I was not a physician but only a leech? And that I owed everything to my uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, besides?”
“You were a good leech,” she said warmly. “Just as you are a good physician and a good man. The people need men like you, Joseph. You must try to be happy with your work.”
“Just being here and seeing you has made me happy for a little while at least,” he admitted. “But I wish we were back in those days at Magdala.”
“I was at the house in Magdala for a few hours last week. I—I felt almost like the girl I used to be before all this happened.”
“Has it been so bad, then?”
She shivered involuntarily at the memory. “Sometimes I thought I must kill myself, in spite of my promise to you. But Claudia Procula has been very kind. Pontius Pilate is troubled very much these days, but I think in his way he feels sorry for me, too. You never really know with him, he is so moody most of the time. Lately, though, Gaius Flaccus has been drinking more than usual, and there have been times—” She stopped, and her hands went unconsciously to her throat. Joseph noticed then a dark bruise marring the white skin of her neck, near where the slow pulse beat in the hollow of her throat.
“He choked you!” he cried indignantly. “I can see the marks.”
“I could hardly swallow for several days,” she admitted. “Claudia Procula took me home with her until it was better. And while I was gone he went on this hunting trip.”
“To think that I was living in comfort in Jerusalem while you were suffering such tortures because you sacrificed yourself to save me,” he reproached himself bitterly. “How can I ever make it up to you, Mary?”
“I am the guilty one,” she insisted. “It was on my account that you came so close to death in Alexandria. But I was another person then, Joseph. Something evil had taken hold of me.”
“You were possessed by a demon. It was not your fault.”
Mary shook her head. “Demetrius was right when he said, ‘The demons that possess man are born within himself.’ As a child I hated my father because I could not have what I wanted so desperately—toys, happiness, clothes like other children, and all the things a girl loves even when she is little.”
“You were right to hate him. After all, he would have sold you into slavery.”
Mary shook her head. “God is right in telling us to honor father and mother, Joseph. Nothing is gained by hating anyone. I had to become a slave myself to understand that I could never really forgive my father without God’s help, no matter how hard I tried. I know now that I carried that burden of hate with me as a child and even when I had grown up to be a young girl,” she went on. “What happened with Gaius Flaccus in Tiberias only made me hate more intensely, until my whole life was dominated by it.”
“You might never have become the toast of Alexandria,” he reminded her, “if your desire for revenge had not driven you on to achieve success.”
“Another person lived in Alexandria, Joseph,” she said earnestly. “And that person died months and months ago. Until I woke up in the catacombs there in the Necropolis and they told me you had gone to the theater to try to help Philo and the others, I had thought only of myself and my desire for revenge. But something came to me there in the theater. I felt as if the Most High approved what I was doing at last because I was helping Philo and the others escape. A load of sin and guilt was suddenly lifted from my soul that day. I have been a different person ever since.”
“‘He who finds me finds life’ are the words of God,” Joseph reminded her, “and the Scriptures also say, ‘To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.’”
“I am sure I found the Most High again because I was willing to sacrifice myself for those whose lives were almost lost because of me,” she agreed. “But I didn’t really understand what had happened until I learned of Jesus.”
“Tell me about Him,” Joseph begged.
Mary’s eyes began to glow with a warm light. For a fleeting second Joseph felt a spasm of jealousy toward this man he had never seen, who seemed to have such a power over all who heard Him. “We were passing through Capernaum one day,” she said, “and were held up by the crowd while the soldiers made a path for us. The people hate me because I live with Gaius Flaccus, but they are afraid to curse him, so they revile me because I am a Jewess and call me a fallen woman.”
“But that is not true—”
“It would have done no good to tell them the truth. That day they were shouting ‘Harlot!’ and ‘Adulteress!’ at me because they knew the soldiers could not reach them through the crowd. I know Jesus did not hear them or see me, for I could barely see Him. But somehow His words came to me as clearly as I hear you now, and He seemed to be speaking to me alone.”
Nicodemus had said much the same thing, Joseph remembered. What strange power was it this Teacher possessed that men could not forget the things He taught, when they forgot so easily what they learned as children from their parents in the synagogue?
Mary’s words recalled his thoughts. “I heard Jesus say: ‘Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you!’ . . . It was strange, Joseph,” she added. “I had cringed when they called me ‘harlot’ and ‘adulteress,’ but now I didn’t mind any more. It seemed as if He had given me strength to bear the insults and ignore them. . . . If you could hear Him you would know what I mean. And Simon says—” She stopped suddenly, as if she were about to reveal something that should be kept hidden.
“What is it, Mary?” he asked. “Or would you rather I did not know?”
“I promised Simon I would tell no one, but I know he wouldn’t mind your knowing. He says Jesus is the Messiah.”
“But if the Nazarene is truly the Expected One,” Joseph protested, “the good news should be proclaimed from the housetops.”
“I think Simon wants Him to get a much larger following before they reveal the truth.”
Joseph shook his head soberly. “Judas the Gaulonite also claimed to be the Messiah,” he reminded her soberly, “and Sepphoris was the center of his rebellion. But two thousand Jews were crucified here by the Romans and the whole city sold into slavery. That will happen again if the Galileans are foolish enough to follow another false messiah.”
V
A few hours after Joseph’s arrival, the condition of Gaius Flaccus changed sharply for the worse. He slept for a short while under the effect of the drug and awoke in a frenzy o
f delirium, fighting the slaves who tried to hold him on the couch and cursing at the top of his voice, while the rasp of his labored breathing filled the villa. When the frenzy was at its height, his head suddenly began to bend backward and his whole body became rigid and taut, while his arms and legs jerked in a continued spasm. Joseph looked at him and shook his head hopelessly. “The disease has reached the brain,” he told Mary. “A convulsion like this means only one thing.”
“Is it—the end?”
“Before very long. You had better send for Pontius Pilate and Claudia Procula.”
“She was coming back with the procurator after the evening meal. They should be here soon.”
Gaius Flaccus was in the throes of another convulsion when Procula came in alone. The color went out of her face at what she saw, and her hand flew to her throat. “Is he dying?” she asked in a whisper.
“I have given him a sedative drug,” Joseph exclaimed. “But the inflammation seems to have reached the brain. When that happens, it is—” He stopped, reluctant to say the fateful word.
“Then we can only pray to the Most High,” Mary said quietly.
To Joseph’s amazement, Claudia Procula knelt with Mary in one corner of the room and began to pray. Joseph himself dropped to his knees then and fumbled for some prayer from his childhood suitable for the presence of death. It was this scene that met the eyes of the procurator of Judea when he came into the sickroom.
The two kneeling women made a lovely sight with their eyes uplifted to the ceiling, lips moving in a whispered prayer, each supremely beautiful in her own way, yet so markedly different. Claudia Procula was tiny, exquisite, and richly dressed, like a figurine shaped by the hands of a superb artist. Mary’s gloriously colored hair was plaited and bound about her forehead. Her face was pale, but the inner fire that had always characterized her shone through the translucent skin. By comparison with Pilate’s lady, she was roughly dressed, and yet her beauty was far more striking than that of the Roman aristocrat whose ancestors were emperors.
The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene Page 26