Iscariot: A Novel of Judas (20 page)

"Please, it is for the master. You see? My child is well--see how he walks now without even a limp!" she said, bidding the little boy walk inside a few steps before he ran back to his mother on two sturdy legs.

When they had gone out, Jesus said quietly, "Tell John what you hear and see. The blind see, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed, and good news is proclaimed to the poor."

Levi slammed his plate down. "Why do you not come to his defense? Why do you not come to rescue him? If you can perform miracles, why do you not cause his cell door to fall open and release

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him from that place, or do your powers not work in that way? Our own men die in the wilderness for him!"

"The kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence since the days of John, and violent people have been raiding it," Jesus said. "I do as my father wills. There will be far greater trials than this."

He was not looking at Levi, but me, as he said it. Levi abruptly got up and walked out into the courtyard.

That night, Levi took me aside.

"Leave him," he said, his eyes blazing behind a beard so grizzled that I would not have known him in a crowd.

"Haven't you heard all that we've told you?" I dropped my voice to a low hiss.

"Besides, I cannot. I am sent here by Zadok himself. Don't you know this?"

He gave a wild laugh. "Zadok no longer responds to my letters. He has abandoned John for the cause of your master. But I'm telling you, be cautious. Be warned. Nothing good will come of this."

"Zadok said he hadn't heard from you."

"Oh, I'm certain he did. He's hungry, you know, for any power he can seize.

He only wants to know if he can subjugate your master as he wanted to subjugate mine. But John will not be any man's slave but God's. And your master . . . what is he but a shadow of John grasping for popular opinion?"

"You haven't seen what he has done. But I have seen with my own eyes."

"Then ask yourself, Judas, by whose power he performs his signs. Ask yourself if these are the acts of a man who loves the law. Are you deceived, Judas? You, of all people?"

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I blinked at him. "Why do you say this? What's happened to you?"

"Ask yourself that," he said, sucking spittle from the corner of his mouth, as though it were too precious to evaporate even in the winter night.

"Why would Zadok show any interest in my master if there were any question about the source of his power?" I said, picturing him the day I had gone to his house, reclining at his table.

"Why do you think? To aid their cause! But mark me: They would have only their own men in the place of power. In the coming kingdom, do you think they care for Galilean peasants who preach against the Pharisees? They want to oust the Sadducees, but do you think they'll suffer dissenters against themselves? They have one vision for the coming kingdom, Judas, and it is not John's, and it is certainly not your master's. Beware of him, Judas. Ask yourself what source his teachings come from. I hear he doesn't even cite the sages. Do his disciples--do you--now follow the law better than before?"

I almost said: It is not the same. I follow the spirit of it. But a part of what he said niggled, like something caught between the teeth, as I thought of the broken Sabbaths, the meals taken with tax collectors and prostitutes.

"Do not be deceived."

He left me then, without a clasp or a kiss, striding away on his bare heels into the darkness.

I was deeply unsettled after that. If Levi, whose learning and mind I once trusted, could say this about my teacher--no matter how deeply changed or

calloused Levi might now be--what did that mean?

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No. I had seen what I had seen--not only in the sign of the lepers, but in my heart the night by the lake.

That night I penned a message to Zadok:

The blind see and the lame walk. The multitude grows.

I did not mention Levi.

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It was good that I sent that message then and not delayed a day. Two days later, I am not certain what I would have said.

The first thing that happened was that the Magdalene returned. She came, waiting until the end of the day after Jesus had healed enough people for them to seem like one long sea of faces to me.

There were by now a thousand gathered in the foothills of Capernaum to hear him speak. A thousand--

But still not enough.

When I saw her climbing up the hill through the crowd, I was struck by the look on her face. I had always thought her comely, but now, wearing her anticipation like a bridal veil, her hem in her hand like a girl as she hurried toward us, I wondered what it was that made me unable to look away.

And then I realized it was the very purpose in her gaze, the joy shining on her face. She was beatific.

When she had made her way through the crowd to Jesus, who was always answering a question or holding a child or taking into his arms for blessing whatever baby some peasant woman handed

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him, he laughed and kissed her as though she were his mother or sister.

I would never understand him! Why? Why must he flout propriety? Did he not see the turning heads? Did he not hear the gasps of those nearby or note the scandalized looks?

I remembered the words of Levi: Beware of him.

And yet, even as I thought it, a pang of jealousy shot through me as she took his hands and kissed them, and I wasn't sure who I envied more--her, or him.

Later that day, she came to me, having brought more coin with her for the communal purse. It was a strange thing, taking money from a woman like a fishwife taking an allowance for market from her husband, and I was conscious of her hands, so slender, as she passed the bag to me.

"Why do you return?" I said to her. "Why do you return, knowing they'll call you harlot or worse for the mere fact that you follow him, knowing others watch and judge you both--and not kindly?"

"I've enslaved myself to him," she said. "I wanted freedom once, but no longer. I want no freedom without him and his teachings. Ah, I see. You worry I come to him as a woman to a man. Do you really think it's like that?

You, Judas, who misses nothing?"

I felt the heat rise to my face. I had never heard a woman speak so bluntly, having been all my life more accustomed to the silent and passive languages of women that were a code all their own.

"No. I don't." I knew my master too well. "But the appearance--"

"You love him. Will you begrudge me the same?" She gave a bitter little laugh. "Ah, but I am not allowed the same as you, am I? Not by the teachers or the schools or the priests."

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"They could brand you a whore for the rest of your life. You would never live it down." Already, she might not.

"I don't care what they say. I care what he says. I care to be near him. I leave him only when I must because one of these days I fear I'll be separated from him for a long time. But I know I must somehow want that, too, when the time

comes, if only because he does."

I felt shamed by the beauty, the sheer purity--not of what she said, because it was scandalous that she followed a teacher and spoke alone even to me at all--but by the emotion and love pouring off of her like perfume. Would I have the same courage as her, I wondered?

That night I thanked God I had not been born a woman.

THE NEXT EVENING WE were to dine at the house of Simon the Pharisee.

I thought it a good sign, an opportunity to win back some of the vitriol that we had incurred from the others. It was an invitation and statement of equality, a truce of sorts from the Pharisaic party. Mary and Joanna and another woman named Susanna, who had come with her, had decided to stay back, as this was a Pharisee's home. I had made this request of the Magdalene myself, drawing her aside quietly on the hillock earlier that day, as improper as it was to speak to her again.

"As I think of it, I believe a cousin of mine has invited us to visit this evening, and that we won't be able to come," she said. I nearly fell down at her feet in gratitude.

Simon the Pharisee was a wealthy man, a grain merchant with a gentle demeanor, who carried himself with a sophistication I had not 172

thought to find in Galilee. As with Zadok, we were given clean robes to wear.

Thirteen of us!

His house was a quiet house of quality. The mosaics on the floor bore no improper images of man or animal but only the curved pinwheel crosses and geometric patterns that are appropriate for a home or a synagogue. Simon himself was a lean man, and I assumed he fasted more than the prescribed amount--perhaps even three times a week. As we reclined at the table, I happened to glance at our own Simon, called the Zealot. He had dined so often with Pharisees I had thought he might look as at home as the Pharisee Simon himself. But today he seemed strangely out of place.

In Jerusalem we pretended not to hear or watch what others did on their rooftops. Because of that, I used to find it disconcerting, this Galilean way of dining before the audience of those who came to watch the spectacle, to listen to the gossip and conversation, to see what graced the table of those who could afford to eat well.

But unlike the dinner at Matthew's, with the Pharisees standing outside, this time it would be the Pharisee who welcomed us, with the unwashed congregating outside. For once we would be the very vision of a visiting teacher dining at a Pharisee's table. I only prayed the rumors of this night would circulate with as much swiftness as every other rumor about my master.

How it all went wrong.

We had barely prayed the prayer for wine when a woman slipped in from the courtyard. Not only did she come into the house, but made directly for my master.

"You!" one of the servants said.

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I blinked. Hadn't I seen this woman somewhere else before? I recognized those painted eyes. Yes! At the dinner party at Matthew's house!

Where she had been known as a sinner.

I remembered all of this belatedly, as she fell down at Jesus' feet.

The air left the room with a hissing breath. Mine. Peter's. Simon the Pharisee's. But it was too late.

She touched him--laying her hands across the tops of his toes, her pale fingers caressing the arches of his foot in such a way that would haunt my dreams for weeks and months to come.

Her expression strained, as though she had fallen into concentrated prayer, but her eyes were open. She hitched a breath, and then her mouth twisted as she began to weep, her hands curling around his heels, and when she looked up at him--

I caught my breath.

Such exquisite devotion! Such pained love!

In the way the air had left, it now exploded back as she produced a glass jar from her sleeve and broke it open. The smell of expensive perfume filled the room--strong and sweet, washing down the length of the table.

Spikenard. I had smelled it before among a rare cache of my brother's imports. It was the incense of the Temple, the scent placed before God himself.

It came out in a rivulet the color of roses. Of wine. Of blood.

It was undiluted, infusing the nostrils, as exquisite nearly as the expression on her face.

I couldn't tear my gaze away--from those fingers, coated with the expensive oil, from the image of them sliding from his ankle to his toes. I hauled in an abbreviated breath, closed my eyes, but

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the scent was in my head and the upturn of her face was before my mind, and there was the perfume, as prevalent as joy, as heady as sex, devotion, as beauty.

She slid the veil from her hair.

Skin. Hair. Tears. Such unabashed tears. Such trembling in her hands and shaking in her shoulders, the hair like fine black wool with which she wiped his feet. It was unseemly. Lascivious.

And yet I had never seen anything more sublime in my life.

Simon the Pharisee had gotten to his feet in outrage--her presence defiled the entire assembly.

"Teacher!" he said.

A good man, a decent man, would have shaken the woman off. Would have sent her out with a curse. But Jesus did not.

I knew that he must condemn her--here, openly--one woman, one soul, for the sake of the kingdom.