Secret Magdalene (8 page)

What is John saying? “You, Mariamne, daughter of no one, and you, Salome, daughter of no one, you are Daughters of the Nazorean.”

Helen of far Adiabene steps between John and me. She lifts up her chin, holds up a hand, and by so doing commands the very air to attend her. She looks directly into my eyes. “Did Issa not walk with me? And is the word not my word? I came to hear this one speak, John, and I
will
hear it speak. I am Helen, Queen of Adiabene, and I would hear through the Voice that is within this child that you, John of Kefar Imi, are the One.”

I stand as if held up by rope. Queen? The Queen of Adiabene’s voice sounds in this round room with its domed ceiling as God’s voice must have sounded in the heavens over Moses. But John has caught her in the white light of his regard. “Woman,” he says, “on this earth you are a queen, but before God you are one soul among many.” John of the River is not shouting, but the authority of his person shines forth as I am told the great beacon of Alexandria shines forth, and before it Helen lifts a hand to her face, seems almost to shield her eyes. “You will not demand of God what is God’s to give. You will not command the voice God chooses to use.”

Salome, who has been standing all along, trembling with what I have thought is rage, sits down on the bare stone of the floor and on her face there is nothing but rapt attention.

John has turned to me, and in his turning, I feel my knees weaken. Will he speak to me as he has spoken to a queen? But no, his voice when it comes is soft and it is mild. “As Seth tells me you are the Magdal-eder, you will speak as you will speak. That is the privilege of prophets.”

Magdal-eder? I shake my head. I do not will the Loud Voice. It tempts my illness, makes room in my blood for fever. I would put it away forever, would swallow it, would spit it out! Yet something rises in me; pushes up from my chest. And I do
not
will it to come. “
COME I THROUGH THE MOUTH OF THIS CHILD
!” My arms begin to raise themselves as if another owned them. “
THE ONE WHO COMES IS HERE
.
THE ONE WHO COMES IS THE VOICE THAT CRIES IN THE WILDERNESS
.
WHO WILL HEAR
?”

“It is as I knew it would be,” cries Helen. “This long journey is fulfilled.”

Now I understand. I am thought to be proof that John the Baptizer is the messiah of the Nazorean. I could not be more dismayed.

Seth speaks. “I think, John, they would do well for a time in Egypt.”

Queen Helen gives out a great sigh. “If it is not one land that calls to you, Seth, it is another. You would break my heart.”

And this from her son, Izates: “Get yourself to Egypt, brother, before I break your nose all over again. We endured you three years on top of a mountain. We endured you following John. But there will be no suffering you until you see Egypt.”

A thought from Salome flies through my head and I catch it.
All that occurs is intended. Did we not intend Egypt, Mariamne, and does it now not come to pass?

I
look up. The night seems no more than an Ethiop’s hand across the face of Glory. The moon is an Ethiop’s eye. I think Cicero right when he says, “Beyond the moon are all the eternal things.”
Oh Isis!
I am going to Egypt!

I lie here awake, buried in thought. If what occurs is intended, Salome would have been born a male and I should be a great philosopher. Or a great mathematician. Seth once named mathematicians, and I was astonished, not for how many there were, but for how many were women. If I could truly be anything I intended to be, I would be a philosopher and a mathematician and a magician in one huge person and I should laugh as I strode up and down the halls of the Great Academy I would found and name with my true name: Mariamne of Jerusalem. That is, if intentions were more than wishes. It is a fact that no one would intend to be born a cripple or blind or poor or one of those wild people who live farther west than Italia. Surely no one would intend to be born a savage Celt? And yet Salome and I intended to go to Egypt, and here we are, going to Egypt.

“Mariamne,” whispers Salome, “are you awake?”

“What?” She has surprised me. I thought her well asleep an hour ago.

“What do you make of John?”

I think for a moment and then I say, “I think he is either full of wonder or he is full of camel dung. Either way, I will find out.”

Salome answers immediately. “You will find he is full of wonder.”

I come awake to a world that shines. When shall we leave? How shall we travel? What shall we do when we get there? We pester Addai and Tata with questions the whole of the morning. But it is not until the woman from the south appears and whispers to Tata who whispers to Addai that they finally answer us. We shall go tonight! And we shall go with only three others. Tata looks at Addai and I understand something I do not want to understand. Salome is first to cry out. “But you are going with us, are you not, Tata?”

Addai’s voice is firm and it is flat. By this, I know his heart bleeds. “You will go with Seth and with two who follow John.”

Two who follow John? Who are these? The sun seems to have stumbled in the sky. Salome cries out, “But John of the River? Are we not to know John?”

Tata takes Salome in her arms, smoothes her hair as she did when we were very young. Addai says, “In time you will know all that you will know. But for now, know this, I trust my chosen daughters with Dositheus as I trusted him with my own daughter.”

“Dositheus!
Who
is Dositheus?”

“You met him last night. With John.”

“That man! But he has the face of an actor!”

Addai smiles. “And why should he not, as he is an actor.”

An actor! If I have thought the work of Addai beneath notice, what is there to say about a man who would stomp about on a stage making faces and shouting? But wait—Addai has a daughter? Addai has a wife?

Before I can ask this, Salome asks and, as Tata packs our few things, receives this in answer.

Once, long ago when he was yet young, Addai dwelt in the city of Shechem in Samaria. As his father had been a stonemason, so too he was a stonemason. As his father had been a lover of the Law, so too was he. And all was well with Addai and his wife, until came the day she would birth their child. Abihail died that day. If this was not grief enough, the babe was a girl, and a cripple. Addai named her Jael and cared for her tenderly. It was Jael who shook his faith as harvesters shake an olive tree, for by the beliefs he held, if Jael’s twisted body was not God’s doing, then a demon was in her. Addai knew no demon lived in his innocent child. Therefore, God had cursed Jael. But why?

Jael grew into a maiden as brave as Esther, as loyal as Ruth. But she was shunned by those around her, for who would not shun she who was cursed by God? And the father Addai saw all this and was helpless before it. He could not stop it and he could not endure it and he would not have his child endure it. So he gathered up his daughter and he left Shechem. He did not curse his god nor did he curse his neighbors, for such a thing was not then and is not now in Addai, but he put them both behind him.

Salome and I have averted our eyes from the faces of the ill and the crippled and the poor. Have not Father and his friends always said it is the Law that no one but the pure in body might enter the Temple? When they said such things, did I think anything of it? I think of it now.

Addai and his daughter wandered throughout Samaria and west to the Plain of Sharon. Then came they unto Galilee and the city of Sepphoris for there was work there, and in Sepphoris he met his fellow Samaritan, Dositheus of Gitta, who had gone to be an actor. When he came out of Galilee, his new friend went with him, for each had grown fond of the other.

A man who does not stay in one place is mistrusted. If he is not Hapiru, a roving brigand or a bandit or a misfit, he is surely an exile. But like traveling philosophers and cooks, traders and healers and high-class prostitutes, Addai and Dositheus were welcomed. For three years Addai found work for his capable hands and Dositheus acted out battles and romances and the agonies of the gods near village wells. If neither of these skills were wanted, Addai would perform his “tricks” of magic. There was always a warm meal at the end of the day.

It was not a terrible time, it was not a time of hardship, but they traveled as aimless as clouds. And though Jael grew stronger in mind and in spirit, she grew daily weaker in body. Then one day, when the sun beat down like a woman beating a rug and Jael could stand to be carried no farther, they found themselves on high badlands looking down into the forested green valley of the Jordan River. And there they saw John the Baptizer for the first time. And here John singled Jael out from all the hundreds who were there that day and he cried out, “Behold! Many and many are mistaken. There is no demon in this child!”

A miracle occurred: The eyes of these thousands were opened. They saw there was no demon in the daughter of Addai.

And then John said, “Behold! Many and many are mistaken. This child is blameless. Where is the curse?”

A second miracle! The people opened their eyes and saw God might wager with his own self-doubt, which the prophets call Satan, but he would not curse one without blame. Addai and Jael and Dositheus followed John until Jael died three years later, and Addai and Dositheus have followed John ever since.

I wonder at a father losing his only beloved daughter, and then I think of Josephus of Arimathaea, and I stop my wondering as pity for Father fills my heart.

There are still hours to fill before the coming of the night, and of Seth’s coming to take us away. But if Addai has a tale, so too does Tata, which greatly surprises Salome and me. She has never spoken of herself before. Not to us.

“My mother,” Tata begins, “was the daughter of a poor man and her father was the son of a poor man whose father was even poorer, if that is possible. For so long as there has existed peasants and kings, my family has owned nothing but the rich pride of poverty. But for my mother, this was not enough. My mother did what is seldom done in a poor family, and never by a woman; she fell in love. Love is a luxury that even the rich can ill afford, being far more costly than rubies or spikenard or gold. Having none of these, my mother paid in the coin of her own life. And with mine. When she was fifteen, she fell in love with a Roman soldier, and that is all that need be said of him, that he was a soldier, that he made good use of my mother’s love, that he moved on. All that can be said of my mother was that once having birthed her babe, she sold it for money to send to her family, and then, I am reliably told, she died of a broken heart. Or shame. Or both. She did not see her sixteenth year.”

Tata pauses here. I glance over at Addai for his reaction, but there is none. He sits quietly, his beard splayed out over his barrel of a chest; his clever hands idle in his lap. I glance back at Tata. There is nothing about Tata that I usually see, no quick pride or fierce humor. There is only a simple seriousness.

“I was sold to a woman named Euodia who was a sacred harlot, a Temple prostitute, a divine whore, which to the Jews is called a
zonah.
From the moment I could walk and talk, Euodia set about teaching me all she knew. And though women like my mistress were no longer allowed publicly in the Temple, I grew up secretly servicing men in the name of a god, the very men who barred us from that god’s house. In all else save this and the art of healing, Euodia was ignorant. Those who shared this life with us were as ignorant as she, all but Theodora, a woman of Cyprus, who taught me everything I have taught you, and one other, a woman from far to the east, who taught me all I have never taught you, and will never teach you, for you have no need of such skills.”

Tata tosses her head. Salome and I live for what she might now say.

“I should have lived an honored life for mine is an ancient and honorable profession. But not now, not here in Judaea where the female has fallen so far, where the goddess is driven from her place. Here, what I did until the day I came to your house was done in secret, but it was done and is done by many. There is much in and about the Temple that is not freely spoken of, and some things that are not spoken of at all.”

Tata pauses again. This time I see she struggles. She is coming to something it will be hard for her to say. I suddenly wonder how hard it is going to be for me to hear.

“And now I shall tell you how I came to be in your father’s house.”

Suddenly, Salome inhales so sharply and so loudly we all start. Her eyes have grown round with understanding. Tata smiles at her, but there is no humor in the smile.

“Salome with her quick fox mind sees what I am about to say. I came because Josephus bought me from Euodia.”

I blurt out, “Father bought you for us?” I say it in order not to hear the truth, because of course Father did not buy Tata for us.

“For himself.”

Oh yes, it is very hard to hear this. How much more will Father hurt me?

“The visits of Josephus became so frequent, Euodia offered me to him for a great price, an impossible price, and he paid it. I came to your house as your father’s bedmate and I remained so until the day I left. If you had chosen to obey Josephus, Mariamne, and live with his brother-in-law, I confess that I should have stayed until I thought you settled, for I love you as my own child—you and Salome
are
my own children—but I should then have found my way here no matter the cost. I am, after all, the daughter of an unusual woman.”