Secret Magdalene (17 page)

“Old Camel Knees?”

“Our brother, the lately bald Jacob. Since childhood, Jacob has exceeded all others in zeal for the Law, his knees are a camel’s knees for praying. Now he goes shaven until the Temple is once again God’s. But I cannot shun the theater. Did Jude and I not provide the stage building?”

I know this theater in Sepphoris. Years ago, Father had business there, and how I begged to go along, and how surprised I was when he agreed to take Tata and me. Now I know that to take Tata was the entire point.

Yehoshua has gone silent. Jude seems asleep. I too am silent, but I know Yehoshua’s mind teems with ideas and with questions, that his nerves thrill to them. There is something he wants to ask of me. This is why he found me this morning, why I have met his family, why he is here now. But he does not know how to ask, where to begin, and I cannot help him for I am as confused as he. It is as if I have known him all my life, yet I know him not at all. He does not know my real name. He wants to question me but is afraid of my answers. Yehoshua of Galilee does not know his way.

How could I have thought him the Perfected Man of the Nazorean? He is more than most men; he has wit and he has humor, but perfected? I smile into Eio’s mane of soft brown bristles. I am almost drifting away to sleep, when Yehoshua’s voice comes again, and I begin to hear the music in it.

“When we were young, my brothers and I, we were poor, without influence, and filled with anger. Being young and angry, we asked angry questions. Being Nazoreans, we asked
these
questions: if God is the King of the Israelites, how is it that we are answerable to an earthly king? If the Israelites must have an earthly king, why a son of the Arabian Herod who is not of us? We would stare at the towers and arches and porches of Herod’s palace and ask how it was that a few men were rich beyond need and many men poor beyond pity?” Here Jude growls, and it is nothing if not unnerving, though it proves he is not deaf. “Simeon’s father, our uncle Cleopas would ask the wisest question of all, why do ten priests or more stand between a man and God?” Yehoshua lowers his gaze. He has been looking out over the Sea of Salt as if he were looking out over Herod’s palace. Now, he looks at me. “In time I discovered that all our questions had the same answer, these things were so because we allowed them to be so. Men of resignation had made all this. The fearful poor, resigned to their poverty, made this. The wealthy, who would not lose their wealth, made this. The priests, eager to keep their lucrative place at Temple, made this. All these have made evil run smoothly. But as I was young and not yet resigned, I had only one choice, only one path to follow—”

Listening, Jude becomes rigid in his place.

“And I have followed it ever since. I would not allow these things to be so. Even if men must die, they shall not be so.”

I look at him; I do not lower my eyes. “You are Sicarii. You keep the company of Sicarii. Is your cousin John a daggerman?”

For a moment, I think Yehoshua will not answer, but I am wrong. “Though I did once, I no longer know John. Is he madman or priest or king?” Yehoshua turns his face from me, and from his twin. “But I have had such dreams.” His hand clutches at his robe, twists the cloth. “Shall I tell you them? Will you hear me? You confuse me, John the Less. I am confused by you.” I am silent. I can only listen, as Jude is doing. “But know that I have had such strange thoughts, and I have had such strange feelings, and once, just before coming here, I saw something. What I saw was beyond thought and beyond form and when it came, it spoke aloud as Job’s Voice from the Whirlwind. My mind flew away at the sound of it. It terrifies me yet. Tell me, as I know you have walked with God, is it common, these thoughts? Is it common to see and to hear such things? They do not seem common. No other before you talks of them. No other knows them as you know them.”

Is it common? Have others seen what I have seen, but do not speak? Have I walked with God? Or does every man hear his own god? For Jews, it seems one man’s god has became the god of a tribe, and then he has become the god of a whole people, and now he thinks to become the God of gods—or his people think to make him so. I shudder. Yea Balaam! I have no answers, I have only questions.
This
is my trade. I am by trade a questioner!

Yehoshua’s voice has risen from a whisper to almost a shout. “Not since Moses has a man seen him face to face. No one speaks as you do. Not even the prophets. For the prophets do not know God. They know only what they say are God’s wrathful demands, and they are afraid. Are they all like Moses? Are they all like John? Have they been to the mountaintop, but not to the Promised Land?”

Yehoshua falters. Does he suddenly hear himself and, hearing, stumble at the sound? Has he been speaking blasphemy? I reach into him. He wonders if I am a spirit, an unclean thing? He wonders if he dallies with a demon. The cords in his neck work as if he would choke, and when comes at last his voice, it is a great half-strangled “Enough!” Though Yehoshua shouts at himself, I flinch. “All this can wait. The hour comes to be about my business.”

He leaps up and once again I am startled. He has broken open the moment; it is smashed as my juggled pot.

Jude is also on his feet. Eio struggles up under me and I lose my balance, but Jude has caught at my arm and I do not fall. He is not gentle. There is in his eyes some of what I see in Simon Peter’s eyes.

Just as he did hours ago, Yehoshua strides down the path.

“Stay here. Do not follow Yeshu.” So saying, Jude strides off after him.

My mouth drops open. Jude speaks!

Of course I do not stay.

Before I am John the Less, I am Mariamne. What business do they speak of? I would discover this because it is my nature to do so.

I know another way into the settlement. Not by going back down the
nahal,
but by climbing farther up. In moments, I am back in the tunnels I have not seen since the night Seth and Salome, Helena of Tyre and Dositheus and I, set out for Egypt. I have no light, but all I need do is go down. Long ago, Addai instructed us to follow any tunnel that goes down.

How much can a day hold? Coming up by way of the steep and narrow stairs from the circular room where first I met John the Baptizer, I stop in the shadow of the tower doorway. There is a confusion of shouting; I do not understand what I hear. It is all bathed in the hard white light of noon; I do not understand what I see. At the far end of the long room stands John of the River, and beside him Simon Magus, pale as the moon. Near Salome, cowers Helena, her face covered with her head cloth. Near an inner wall are Dositheus and several men of the Nazorean. The hem of Dositheus’s clothing is stained red. Near John and Simon Magus there are women: Mary’s daughters, and Joanna, wife of Chuza, among them. I see even Dinah of the Way, a woman I have not seen for many years. Why is she here? Why are there women in the meeting room claimed by the elders of the Poor? And why do they lean over something that does not move? What is it they look on? A bundle? Tumbled baskets? An animal, sick or dying, perhaps already dead? Looking on are Yehoshua’s brothers and Yehoshua’s friends and Yehoshua’s cousins. What is happening?

Perhaps I can understand what occurs if I can understand the shouting.

“All will go!” shouts one in the center of the long room. “Suicide!” shouts another. “If all else are cowards, I will do what needs be done!” shouts a third, and this third man is Simon Peter of Capharnaum. He breaks from the crowd with two others, and then his brother Andrew appears among them with four more, and these eight run straight at the door I stand in. I clamp myself to the stone of the tower wall. All eyes follow their flight, meaning all eyes turn in my direction. In this single instant, my gaze locks with Salome’s. There is horror in her eyes, and when she sees me, there is pity, a terrible pity. I understand her horror but not her pity.

At this moment, Seth steps forward. He fills the doorway these eight would use. If they would pass, they must run him down. He will be trampled and I will be trampled because I have already stepped out in front of him, but for the ringing voice of command that now sounds out over all else: “Stop!”

I expect to hear John of the River. It is always John who makes this much noise, and who presumes such obedience, but it is not. At a single word from Yeshu, the eight stop as if they were tied round the waist and had come to the end of their rope. And in this moment, though I understand nothing else, I understand now that it is Yeshu to whom they listen. It is this brother of all the brothers who leads these men. Yeshu is not only Sicarii; he commands Sicarii!

Yeshu walks forward, shadowed by Jude. The shouting men of the long room make way for him as he comes to stand with John the Baptizer. Yeshu’s is not the face of a man confused by his thoughts or pained by his feelings; it is that of a man full in command of himself and of others. There is no hesitation, no indecision. “No one comes with me this night, but four of my choosing. One of these is my brother Jude, and another is my cousin Simeon.” There is a muffled cry from Simeon’s plump wife, Bernice, but a scornful Maacah shushes her. “I take another to guide us through the city streets, and into the Fortress of Antonia, but this one shall be neither of the sons of Judas of Galilee, for Simon and Jacob are too well known to the authorities in Jerusalem. Nor shall it be you, Peter, for you are needed here in my stead.” Peter, standing very near me, has been grinding his teeth (surely how he broke his eyetooth), but at this his face brightens. He punches Andrew on the arm with the joy of pride. Yeshua finishes what he has been saying. “That one shall be Seth as no one knows Jerusalem better than he.”

I look at Seth, though he does not look at me. A philosopher is needed to guide them into the Fortress of Antonia? Antonia not only billets the soldiers of Rome, it is the Roman jail. If a philosopher were caught nearby, he might be beaten. Having already escaped the jail of Herod Antipas in the new city of Tiberius, if Yeshu and Jude are caught, they might be killed, for Sicarii are crucified.

“Who is the fourth man, Yeshu’a?”

Jacob the Just asks this. Clearly, Camel Knees expects to be that fourth man.

“John the Less.”

I do not gasp alone; there is surprise on every face, none more so than on Jacob’s. Unless it be in Peter’s. On the faces of some, there is dismay, on one or two, anger, on more than two, envy. I do not understand what I see in the eyes of Salome.

“We leave in the hour.”

Yeshu steps through a side door into a private courtyard, followed by John, Simon Magus, Dositheus, and Jude. Helena hurries after them. At this, there is a sudden and silent turning back to what is at hand. The men disappear in a dozen directions; all seem to know why. The women struggle to lift something from the floor. I am left dazed, until Peter shoves his face in mine. His breath stinks as ever. As a serpent, he hisses, “You mistake much if you think Yeshu’a loves you better than he loves me!” He pushes me aside so he might rejoin his brother in the larger courtyard, and I stumble sideways into Seth. Seth! The one man who does not shout and does not push for place and does not think with his mouth before his mind. I would take his hand, but I remember myself. Instead, I content myself with a mere touch on his dusted sleeve. “What happens here? All save me seem to know.”

Seth enfolds me in his arms; he embraces me—Seth does this! He means to comfort me, but instead I am frightened. He is covered with the dust and the dirt of the road; he smells of an animal. I know this smell. Only the wealthy have use of horses. He has been riding, hard. “What is it, Seth? What is it that causes all this?” And suddenly I realize a thing I have not allowed myself to see. “Where is Tata? Where is Addai?” Seth holds me all the harder. All the harder, I struggle to pull away. “Where are they?”

“If you would help them, John, you would act as a man.”

Seth has brought his mouth close to my ear so that only I might hear him, but I am shaking my head. There is something in me that will not listen, mortally afraid of what it might hear. My mind babbles: I am not a man. I am Mariamne. What has happened to Addai and to Tata that they would need help of me? I look at the bundle the women of the Nazorean struggle to pick up. I think of the red on the clothing of Dositheus. I twist my body in Seth’s arms as if he were a sworn enemy. “Let me go!
Let me go!
” The long room empties, but here and there a head turns our way. Seth holds me the harder, he whispers my true name in my ear, and what he says then is like the slap of a Roman sword. “Would you betray us, Mariamne? What you see is the body of Heli of the Nazorean.”

I freeze in his arms. “Heli?”

“Heli is dead. Tata is wounded and hidden in a house near Heli’s house.”

I would empty my stomach with fear. I would fall to the ground and rub dirt in my face with fear. “And Addai? Where is Addai?”

“Addai is taken to the Fortress of Antonia. He will die on a cross tomorrow if we do not free him this night.”

T
he last of five cloaked figures, I hurry through the night, retracing my child’s steps from the wilderness up to Jerusalem.