Secret Magdalene (7 page)

“Tell me your name so I should not forget it. And tell me the name of this other, so that I might not forget his name.”

Salome finds the strength and the wit to say, “His name is John of the family of Seth of Damascus. My name is Simon of the family of Seth of Damascus. He is my brother. Why do you question him?”

I am amazed at how she sounds—like a proud youth caught in a prank.

At the name of Seth of Damascus, the eyes of this Simon narrow. “Seth of Damascus,” he mutters more to himself than to us, “how comes young kin of a Maccabee to the wilderness?” And then, with a suddenness that catches me completely unprepared, he grabs my upper arm and shakes me, glaring about the campsite, picking out faces in the intently listening crowd. “Is there a Maccabee here? Is there another who is blood to such?”

My thoughts scramble for grip. Seth is a Maccabee? Our Seth is come from the Great Family of Heroes who took back the Temple of Solomon and seized the throne of Israel for the first time since the days of David and Solomon! By all the stars, how wonderful! Is not Hanukkah observed to celebrate the rededication of the Temple by Judas Maccabeus? And yet how sad. For the Maccabee were later sought out and killed by Herod the Great. No wonder Seth is held in such high regard!

A great fuss comes among the men of the settlement as someone pushes forward from the back. I pray it is Seth, and breathe again as they make room for his coming because it
is
Seth. Right behind him walks Addai. And though my joy at their arrival is immense, I find that I am still privy to the thoughts of Simon. This Galilean is a jumble of contradictions. He is both brave as a bull, yet craven as a stoat. He believes himself a man of vision, yet longs to see. He would follow the first man who promised him what his heart desires, but he could not name his heart’s true desire. He is full of hatred, yet yearns to know love. I pity him. I am afraid of him because he would crush my pity if he knew it. To him, Addai as a Samaritan is not worth a single thought, but he knows Seth. He fears him. He wonders: Could this man lead to the coming king? Could he be that king? Should he align himself with a Maccabee? Or shun him?

I have never touched a mind so calculated and so conflicted.

“I am kin, Simon Peter of Galilee,” says Seth. “Is there reason you find fault with John and with Simon? If so, I shall answer for them.”

With a gesture, Seth requires Simon to loose his grip and I find I am as well released from Simon’s thoughts. The relief could not be more profound. As Addai gathers us up, pushes us away, my last glimpse of Seth is as he speaks to a man who has stood beyond the light of the fire, one who comes forward, and places his hand on Seth’s shoulder while all others give them room. Eloi, but I have seen him before! I have seen also the one who shadows him, as alike to his brother as one grain of millet is to another. The brothers have hair and beard of Thracian red, and I saw them last standing near to Simon of Capharnaum as he stabbed the Temple priest not once, but thrice. As I am pulled away, I hear Seth name them in greeting: Yehoshua and Jude.

When we are once more near our own tent and he is sure we are not followed nor overheard, Addai rounds on us. His voice is low but his passion high. “What you do and who you are affects more than your own skins!” Salome hangs her head. By this, I know she knows his anger is just. I too hang my head. “If you are found to be females, what would happen to Seth who has spoken for you?”

“It would not go well,” I say to him.

“Not well! It would go badly, very badly.”

He closes our tent flap, commands that we remain inside, that he will be back, and until he is, we are to speak to no one. All we are to do is to wait.

And then he is gone, and Salome and I are left gaping. Salome says “Why do Addai and Seth do this? Who are we to them that we endanger them so?”

My very thought. Indeed, why should they?

THE FOURTH SCROLL

Daughters of the Nazorean

T
hough the camp
and the caravan settle in all around us, though fires burn low and it is sure by now that everyone sleeps, Salome and I are frantically whispering. By Isis, where shall we be tomorrow? Still here, waiting for another caravan? Should we choose other than Egypt? We cannot go back to Jerusalem for Father would not take us back into his house. Perhaps north to the true Damascus? Or better yet, Tarsus! I long to see Tarsus, the city of Posidonius, the great astronomer, who devised a machine to show the workings of the sun and the planets and even the stars. Were Tarsus ever mentioned in front of Nicodemus, he would sputter. “Mysteries and abominations!”

Oh yes, I should love to go to Tarsus.

I am suggesting leaving it in the hands of a god or a goddess when Addai suddenly pokes his head into our tent, completely unexpected. “Hush and rise up. I have someone I wish you to meet.”

I shut my mouth in the middle of a hissed word. “Who?” asks Salome.

“A great teacher,” he replies, already walking away.

A teacher? Immediately we throw warm mantles over our youth’s tunics and hurry after Addai. We reach the same gate in the wall we reached the first day ever we saw this place, and enter it. Once again we are in the courtyard of the small sundial. Near the tower he stops us. “Sicarii,” he whispers, pointing up as we press ourselves to the stones. I look up. Above us, a watchman by night passes along the edge of the top of the tower. But this is not Sicarii; this is merely a zealous man. Suddenly, I am chilled by understanding—all of them are Sicarii. They are all terrorists and killers! This is why there is no easy entrance to the tower, why there are no houses or bedchambers here. This is why our camp sits high on a cliff set back from the Sea of Salt. How foolish I have been, not to have realized this sooner. These are the very men Rome would seek out and destroy.
Eloi! Eloi!
We are in a seething nest of them.

When the daggerman moves away from the lip of the tower roof, Addai edges along the tower wall, around the jutting of a small storage room, then slips through a door in a farther wall, and we slip through too. We find ourselves in a perfectly square room that is mostly a set of steep stone steps leading up to the tower roof. Here, it is darker than the moonless night. Following Addai, we move quickly through this square room of steps and into a long rectangle of a room that lies on the opposite side of our entrance. Addai holds his finger to his flat nose and stands waiting. It is not long before we know why. Seth comes in out of the dark of the evening. He does not look at us. But I look at Salome, and she agrees. He is still very angry. A moment later, Tata steps into the room. Tata? What great goings-on are these? Tata glances our way but makes no other sign that singles us out. I fully expect Ananias to enter as well, but he does not; instead comes a woman whose head is covered. The woman lights a small earthenware oil lamp, cupping her hand round the flame, and by this, I see that her skin is as black as pitch. I poke Salome, but Salome is glaring at Tata, offended that Tata betrays us by keeping a secret. But what is the secret?

The woman as black as the night guides us to a door. Behind it there are only steps hewn into solid rock. The steps lead down into rooms below, storage rooms lined with bins full of foodstuffs, things that are better preserved by the chill and the dark. By the flickering light of one small lamp, no one of us speaks, no one moves. Are we hiding? Salome and I glance at each other; she makes one of our signs:
if so, from whom?

The woman of the south walks forward, toward long-necked jars of oil and baskets of last summer’s grain. She and Seth together move a certain heavy pot and then the larger one behind it. Behind this is a wall of stone, rougher and older than all other walls. Seth moves this stone and she that stone, and then, to my utter amazement, a door opens through which he and Tata and the woman I hear them call Helena promptly disappear.

“Go,” we hear Addai say. “It will take you where only the Few may go.”

I duck my head and wriggle through the hole in the wall, Salome right behind me, to find that we go not to another room, but into a tunnel, a bore going down through the stone in which there are very narrow and very steep steps. I keep hold of Salome until we reach a bottom, far underground. It is cool down here and sounds echo. Addai shoos us along another tunnel after Seth and Tata and Helena whose light is far ahead.

We follow them, passing other chambers to our left and to our right, until we come on one that is perfectly round. Instantly my heart races with joy. I care nothing that there are stone benches here, or that lamps are placed high in the round walls, or that there is a round bath in the middle of the round room. What matters are the books halfway from floor to ceiling. Books! Here is where Seth finds books! And here I notice the ceiling. A vaulted dome, round as the heavens and full of painted stars. There is the moon and there is the sun, both shining in the sign of Pisces, the Fish. And in the middle, a sign. It seems also a fish, but a fish made of two circles. What does it mean?

In this vaulted chamber wait two others. One has the face of an actor—there is certainly an actor’s conceit written on it. But the other stands as tall as a ladder and as thin as a rung and I know him immediately. He was the ancient who pushed himself forward in the house of Heli of the Way when the Loud Voice spoke. Salome kicks my ankle. By this, I know she knows him too. We both think, Surely this cannot be the great teacher?

The old man folds himself onto one of two stone benches at the edge of the pool; the others sit here or there. There seems no ordering of class or worthiness. There is only the feeling that since the old man has seated himself, so too shall the others.

But not us.

Addai signals that Salome is to remain on her feet, that she is to continue silent. This too I must do. Then he himself takes a seat near to Tata so that my friend and I now stand alone. I am jumping with nerves. Where is the great teacher, the sage, the
tzadik
? Will he appear from one of the tunnels? In my mind’s eye, I conjure up someone greater than the magician Hanina ben Dosa or the sorceress Megas. Will he strike us dumb? Or will he answer our questions? Will he tell us whose books these are? Beside me, I feel Salome tremble.

Seth now does something very surprising. He stands, he places himself before the ancient and then he bows with his palms pressed together like an Arab. “Things have not gone well, John,” he says. “Our children have made themselves known.”

The old man’s mouth is as small as a pebble. “Nothing goes well. Though it goes as it must.” He lifts a bony hand to point at himself, but he speaks to me and to Salome. “I am John of Kefar Imi. Few and Many and many more call me John the Baptizer.”

By the moon, Addai has brought us to the madman of the river, who, by his terrible accent, is another Galilean! Salome and I are made to stand before the infamous John the Baptizer, he who so inflames Father and all his friends? I cannot help it, I gape at this rung of a man talked of in every house in Jerusalem; John the Baptizer gapes back. “Come here, girl,” he says.

Girl? He knows my sex! I creep forward until I am only a cubit away from John of the River. He is buried in his robe. Covering his head is a cloth of brown. His beard is a wild thing. I follow the hard fold of skin from his nose to his mouth.

“I have seen there is a
bat qol
within you,” says he. “I saw this at the house of Heli bar Nehushtan as I now see my own hand.” He thrusts his hand in my face. “I saw this as I see the toes on my foot.” Glancing down, I see his feet are as camel’s feet. I spend a moment fearing he will thrust his foot in my face as well, but he does not. “I know you are a Daughter of the Voice.” He plucks at my clothing, pulls me closer. “You know what is said about those who are visited by a
bat qol
? It is said they are mad and will only grow the madder.”

I think, John the Baptizer ought to know, is he not a prophet too, and a Galilean?

Seth startles me by speaking. “Socrates once said our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness.”

“Socrates was a Greek.” John has turned his head slightly in Seth’s direction, though his eyes remain on me. “But he knew a truth or two. As for you”—and here he turns his face toward Salome—“Seth believes you have the mind of a great scholar. But from what I have heard and seen, I believe you to be willful, devious, and vain, daughter of Coron of Memphis.”

I feel Salome stiffen at this, as do I. Of course she
is,
but who is he to say so?

“And I am well taken with you.”

Salome is not like me; she will not be silent. “Where are we?” she asks. “What is this place? I have heard many things about you. I have heard you do more than wash away sins, that you wash your god into souls. Are you the great teacher Addai promised us?”

Yea Balaam!
Salome’s questions are my questions! I wish her courage were my courage. In the face of this flood, the old man holds up one finger, one only, and Salome swallows what more she would say. I am amazed. I have never seen her do this, never. Over John’s face, a change has come. There is a lift in the brow, and a light in the eye that was not there a moment ago. I have seen lifts and lights like these before: they show in the face of Addai when he savors magic, in Seth’s when he debates philosophy, in Father’s when he contemplates profit. It is the light of the fanatic talking about that which he cherishes most. But this old man’s light is blinding; the very air seems suddenly charged, as if dark clouds were gathering over the hills. What he says next comes like a blow to the heart. “But even as you are Daughters of the Voice, you are also females alone in this world. What else is there to say of you? You are nothing.” Without moving, I recoil. The words that follow are not blows, but chains; they weigh me down link on link. “You have no brothers or uncles or fathers to protect you, to give you value. What man would marry you now? If you were not here, where would you be? What would you do with yourselves? There are those who would say you are not worthy of Life.”

I am rooted to the spot; I am frozen in the bone. My belly cramps like a fist. Though I have taken my eyes from his face, I know he stares straight into me as he says, “Look about you. What has become of you?”

I look about me. I am in a pit deep underground and I am dressed as a boy. My name is a boy’s name and no man claims me as his own. What has become of me? What will become of me? I do not know, and I am sore afraid. I am listening to a heartless old man, a prophet, tell Salome and me that we are not welcome in the world, not as a man is welcome. This is not the first time I have ever heard such a thing, but it is the first time I understand it. Salome and I are females. We are less than animals or slaves without Father. Or brothers. Or husbands. Oh Isis, Queen of Heaven, what shall become of us?

Salome would never cry, but I cry.

I bow my head and I cry for the small thing that I am, and will always be. Fleeing to Egypt is suddenly dust in my mouth. I cry until I feel a cool hand on my forehead, so unexpected. I open my wet eyes to find I am looking into a face no more than the space of a palm away. I jerk back in surprise. It is a woman, a stranger, dressed as a traveler, and with a pearl at her throat worth my Father’s house. As well, there is a hauteur to her I have seen in no woman, except the promise of a Salome to come.

“I have ridden a long way to see you, a very long way. And what have you seen that makes you weep? You could not be seeing what John sees.”

I only cry the harder. I am shameless in my woe. But the traveler stands before me, her hands now folded into her black cloak and on her face a look of vivid expectation. Beside her, but back a step or two, stands a clean-shaven man. This one’s brow is as arched as the smile of a lizard and his thoughts are as plain as brushed words on papyrus. He is the son of the woman before me and his name is Izates. The dust of the road clings to the hem of his cloak just as it does his mother’s, whose name is Helen. Izates is wondering why he has traveled these past days and nights, two weeks of days and nights in a caravan of merchants and murderers, to meet children. He is not sure if John’s madness is sent by God or is a demon’s touch, and he hopes he will discover the answer for himself, and soon.

From his seat, John speaks again. He holds up both arms as if he were blessing his watery flock and he talks as if he were speaking to legions, though he speaks only to Salome and to me. “Behold, Mariamne, daughter of Josephus of the tribe of Benjamin, in you there dwells a brave and manly mind. I say the same of Semne, known as Salome, daughter of the Egyptian Coron. In your actions and thoughts you are as men. I see that you are good and brave and that your souls are blessed among women. So I ask of you again, as you are a man and not a woman, so that boldness and understanding rules your mind, look around you.”

Though his voice now softens, I barely hear him.

“But, though you are men, you are yet boys. How could you see when I have set about terrifying the female in you? Seth, you should have stopped me.”

“Who could stop you? You are as the miracle worker, Empedocles, the disciple of Pythagoras, who was always yelling at the top of his voice, and by his own loudness convinced of his purpose.” Seth turns to me and to Salome saying then this astonishing thing: “You are where you intend to be, for all that occurs is intended.”

By raising an arm, the haughty traveler interrupts him. “I and my son have journeyed from Adiabene. We will hear this one speak.” She is pointing at me, and I should be driven to flee at these words, but Adiabene? Adiabene is farther east than Palmyra, farther than Babylon, farther even than the river Tigris. By the heavens! This one comes so far to see me? The woman continues to speak, but what has Seth just said? We are where we intend to be? To a Jew, prophecy is everything, and if not prophecy, the Law. I have heard no Jew speak as Seth speaks. All that occurs is intended?