The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (10 page)

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.

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 forget 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.

“What really happened at Pilate’s villa, Joseph?” Demetrius asked soberly. “I am sure Hadja didn’t know the whole story.”

Joseph had no alternative except to tell the truth. When he finished, Demetrius’s face was set with grief and self-accusation. “It is my fault,” he said miserably. “I should have forbidden her to go.”

“You were sick in bed,” Joseph reminded him. “And you know her spirit; she would have gone anyway.”

“None of us could have stopped her once she had decided she must dance at the villa to get money for me,” Demetrius agreed. “I suppose I exaggerated my own importance in the theater at Alexandria, wanting to impress her favorably because I love her so much. And then the less certain I was that I wanted to go back,” he continued, “the more Mary was convinced that I could never be happy elsewhere. And of course she wants to go very badly herself.” He put his hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “I wish she would marry you, Joseph. You are a fine young man and she does love you.”

“But not enough to give up Alexandria.”

“Enough, perhaps—once she has seen it and realized the heartbreaks that go with the theater. But until then. . . . How is she now, Joseph?”

“Like another person, cold and hard. I think the only thing that will carry her through all this is her determination to be revenged.”

Demetrius sighed. “A woman is never quite the same after she has known the embrace of a man for the first time, even under the best circumstances. What a terrible experience that must have been to a sensitive girl like Mary. Bring her back to me as soon as you can, Joseph. Perhaps I can help her through this ordeal.”

Joseph shook his head. “I don’t think any of us can really help her, Demetrius, as much as we love her. She must stay with Simon and his wife until we know whether or not Gaius Flaccus will try to find her. I am going to the procurator’s villa today to dress his lady’s arm. Perhaps I can learn something of his plans.”

Joseph approached the villa of Pontius Pilate with some trepidation, for he could not be sure just how much was known of his part in last night’s happenings. The
nomenclator
treated him deferentially, however, and showed him to the apartment of Pilate’s lady. Claudia Procula was in very high spirits, for her pain had vanished almost magically. “Tell me the news of Galilee, Joseph,” she begged. “I have been inside so long because of this arm that I have lost all touch with your people.”

“There is talk of a dancer who was cruelly treated in this very house last night,” Joseph said as he applied the bandage.

“What do you mean?”

“She was invited to dance before the guests of the procurator. Afterward her musicians were removed from the palace by soldiers while the girl was held against her will.”

“Was she harmed?” It was almost a whisper, and the color had drained from her face.

“The girl came here a virgin. But she is no longer.”

“Not the procurator . . . ?” she gasped.

“No. But she was brought here in his name.”

“It was Gaius Flaccus, then? . . . He promised us this would never happen again!” she cried, then she composed herself with an effort. “My husband’s nephew is a fine soldier and a favorite of the emperor. But when he takes too much wine, he sometimes becomes like an—an animal, at least where young girls are concerned. My husband will want to pay the girl and her family well, Joseph. Do you know her?”

“I had asked her to become my wife,” he said simply.

Claudia Procula gasped. “Joseph! How terrible!” She put her hand gently upon his arm. “Is there nothing we can do?”

“Gaius Flaccus sent soldiers to pursue her when she escaped last night,” Joseph explained, “but she is in a safe place. Naturally, she hates all Romans now.”

Procula nodded. “I understand her hating us. What has all this done to you, Joseph?”

“I try to remember the teachings of the Most High,” he told her. “But it is hard not to desire vengeance.”