Secret Magdalene (48 page)

And when, standing where Seth once had us pause on our way to Addai, which is beside the northernmost of the Pool Towers where the sweet waters of the Gihon Spring are stored, an anxious Pharisee calls out to Yeshu, saying, “Rebuke your disciples, Yehoshua of the Nazorean. Silence the people, or all shall suffer Pilate’s wrath.” Yeshu answers him thus: “I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the very stones around us would cry out.”

Hearing this, Simon Peter and the Sons of Thunder and others like these grow immeasurably larger in their eager righteousness, blazing forth as torches, striding ahead to clear the way, each shouting louder than they had before, “Blessed be he who comes among us! Blessed is the king!”

But to the Few who
know,
these understand what Yeshu has said by this great entrance, for Yeshu could not have spoken more plainly. And to the high priest Caiaphas and all like him, and to Rome itself in the person of Pontius Pilate, it is this, “I am the Messiah who is the rightful king. Do with me as it is prophesied.”

But not yet. Not yet. Yeshu cannot be touched just yet, not before the very eyes of the people who love him, who cry out to be saved by him. Not before the youths who dance near, their faces lit with the pure freedom of it, and who would rise up in their futile fury should any come for him now—and by so doing would be beaten back as they are beaten back each time they have risen. The time is not yet.

But I know, and Yeshu knows, as does Jude, that Josephus Caiaphas of the House of Ananus waits for him as a snake waits at the hole of a mouse. Father has told us what his old friend has the day before said in a council convened solely to speak of Yehoshua. “Is it not better that one man should die than the whole nation perish?”

We all know that Caiaphas waits for Rome to rid him of this messiah, for a man claiming to be king is a traitor to Rome, and Rome protects its own.

In triumph, we walk through narrow crowded street after narrow crowded street, up to the very edge of the Temple Mount’s western wall, and everywhere it is the same. The people call out, “Hosannah! King of the Jews! Comes our Messiah to save us!” And they pull back in awe if Yehoshua should so much as glance their way.

It seems they will riot in their fevered joy and their fevered hope, and I think we cannot come on the Temple soon enough. But they do not riot; instead they press after Yeshu as we all of us come on the Temple wall. Saul of Ephraim is literally struck dumb by the size of the stones, though not so Simon Peter who cries out above the melee, “Look, master, as I remembered! They are as big as houses, each of them!”

We have stopped in that open space where we might choose to enter by the gated tunnel used by the common people, or to ascend to the Upper City Bridge above us, which is used by the rich and the Sanhedrin. And here Yeshu halts Babel, and here he dismounts as I gather up Eio and her colt, and certain men among us stand forth as shields against the press of the people. And it is here that slaves sent by Father await us, large men of Gaul with yellow hair. These will hold back the crowd so that Yeshu might be taken away through certain tunnels, clearly mapped for us by Addai, as soon as he needs to be. For all that he would do this day, is now done.

Yeshu has announced himself as the Messiah. He has created a great stir. It cannot have been missed by any and by all. It is enough.

To the people who have come this far, both followers and those caught up in the following, it must seem as if he has vanished into the stones as big as houses.

A
s planned, we sup tonight in the house of my youth.

Ananias comes to us with news. Zaccheus of Jericho comes to us as well with news. As do the brothers from Lydda, they who chanced on Eio and her colt. By these, and more, we hear that Yeshu has done what he has meant to do. From the Upper to the Lower City, there is talk of little else. From priest to slave, everyone knows Yehoshua the Nazorean has declared himself king. And from Father, who this evening attends yet another special session, we hear that the Sanhedrin is as a beehive in the paws of a bear—as bees, they swarm in anxious confusion. What shall they do? How shall they act?

Nicodemus, who Father sees seldom now, has complained of Yeshu, “The world has gone after him,” and all the others rend their clothes. No other messiah has so captured the people as this messiah, not even John of Kefar Imi whose sacrifice by Herod is fresh grief still. This crisis seems as no crisis they have ever known, worse than the murderous zealots come among them, worse than Pilate’s slaughter of the people, worse even than the thoughts of Greeks! To enter the city openly, to be followed by a great multitude waving triumphant palms, and in procession to be announced as a king come to claim his throne! From every side, they ask each other, “What does this man plan?” Father himself does not know. This is part of the plan: that so few know, though many carry it out.

Yeshu asks Josephus, “And what do they themselves plan?”

“The Sanhedrin has yet no plan,” replies my father, “other than to see you dead, and to see it done without harm to themselves.”

Yeshu asks, “Will they go to Pontius Pilate?”

“They would, save for the suspicions of Pilate. He could think it a trap. After all, for months they have petitioned Tiberius for his removal and yet now would come to him for help? They have no proof that an armed rebellion is truly planned. And Pilate might say that it is only Passover, many Jews come from many lands in many ways at Passover.”

“But if they should act without Rome?”

“Then the people would revolt not against Rome but against the Sanhedrin.”

“And if they should not act at all?”

“Then Rome might accuse them of abetting in treason, and they themselves would be tried before Caesar.”

Yeshu smiles. It is all as he said it would be. “Then they must act?”

“Indeed they—we—must. But as yet, we are ignorant of how we might do so and at the same time remain ‘innocent’ before the people who love you.”

“But a way will be found?”

“Oh, yes. A way will be found.”

On this second day, Yeshu takes his plan a step further. Today he will goad the priests and the Sanhedrin, provoke them to greater fear and therefore greater effort to do as he wills them to do. For this, he takes with him Simon Peter and the Sons of Thunder, who possess the hottest heads of us all and who will surely do something that will sting the Sadducee and outrage the Pharisee. For this he takes also Jude, who would not, in any case, be left behind; also Simeon, who though zealous, is level of head; and finally me, seen as a youth, John the Less. We seven make our unheralded way late in the day directly from Father’s fine house to the Temple Mount, and once there to the enormous Court of the Gentiles. As they do on all Holy Days, the soldiers of Pilate stand above us on the roofs of the colonnaded porticos, and below these, well back under the porticos, sit the dozens of moneychangers. Nearby, as many, if not more, sellers of animals for sacrifice have set up also their living wares.

Yeshu chooses the moneychangers because in Psalms it is written that the Suffering Servant shall take on the reproaches of those who reproach God, and if those who make profit from the Temple do nothing else, they reproach God—most especially the Father and Mother of Yeshu who do not demand blood, or coin, or priest, or even Mount or Temple.

Between the watchful bulk of Simeon on his right, and of Jude on his left, Yeshu throws back his head cloth. At this there is a sudden intake of breath from this one who recognizes him, and from that one, so that by the time he walks across the court, choked with the pilgrims of Passover, he walks through the bustle and din as a king. As a king demands, Simon Peter and Simon bar Judas and Jacob bar Judas go before to clear his way—John the Less walks behind as suits his age, for I am still young, uselessly young—and all around us there is a very Babel of tongues, and all around us the debris of hammer on stone and the scaffolds of masons, for the work on Herod’s Temple goes on and on, though it pauses for Passover.

And when Yeshu stands in the thick of those who have come to change their foreign coin for the Tyrian silver shekels acceptable to Yahweh, and when the people, come here from everywhere, are sufficiently aware of and sufficiently moved by he who walks among them, Jude hands Yeshu a whip of small cords. This he has fashioned from the discarded tethers of those poor beasts that each day die in their monstrous numbers to feed the demands of Yahweh.

It matters not which banker Yehoshua chooses; any will do. He selects therefore the nearest to hand, crying out in a voice made loud with righteous authority, “It is written: ‘My house shall be called the house of prayer!’ But you have made it a den of thieves!’’ And with this he tips over the table of this first and most astonished of the bankers, and all the fine coins stacked thereon, and all the boxes containing coin upon coin to the very sum of wealth, fly every which way, ringing with great clatter on the tiles of the Temple Mount floor.

The people become stunned with awe. No less so the bankers and the sellers of animals and the man whose “business with God” lies scattered at his feet. Who is this who would do such a thing? Who would have the nerve—and the authority? They stare at each other. They whisper each to each. And I see there is one here who has an answer; I see three there who also know. It suddenly sweeps through the crowd: who but a king would do such a thing! An instant later, as Simon Peter knocks aside a great wicker cage of pigeons so that the early evening air is full of feathers and the whirring of startled wings, those among all these come for Passover who are lame or blind or ill or in despair, and there are many and many, would fall on Yeshu to be healed. Even more suddenly, Jude and Simeon and the Sons of Thunder surround Yeshu and push him away.

Before the Temple police can act, and before the soldiers of Pilate on the roofs above us can become curious, and certainly before the Pharisee can do more than select and pick up loose stones near the scaffolds, once again we make our way to a tunnel entrance and are gone from this place.

As we knew it would be, for the second night all of Jerusalem is agog with talk of Yehoshua the Nazorean. Those who saw tell those who did not see, and in the telling the acts of Yeshu grow until the very shadows shrink at his daring. They ask themselves: what does he do? They ask themselves: what will he do next? If the people were astonished the first day, this second day they are thrilled. And eager to be more thrilled still. As is planned.

If the Sanhedrin buzzed with concern the first day, this second day they hiss with distress.

As is planned.

Tonight, while Father once again attends a special session of the seething Sanhedrin, only the most trusted of us dine at his table, and we talk of the morrow. Tomorrow shall be a day of real danger, for on this third day Yeshu will put himself in the way of not only the council but of Pontius Pilate—for naturally, the prefect is here in Jerusalem. We should not have come this Passover if he were not; for just as there is needed someone who will betray Yeshu, so too is this Roman needed.

Pontius Pilate comes here but rarely, preferring to act as the eyes and ears of Tiberius Caesar from the cosmopolitan port of Caesarea Maritima rather than in the midst of fearsome Jews whose habits and beliefs are so unlike any civilized Roman’s.

Pilate’s Jews, as well as his Samaritans and Idumaeans, have proved a horrible surprise to him, never more so than some years ago in the city of Caesarea itself, when, in their thousands, they had come to plead that he take down the Roman shields he had hung in the Jerusalem Temple. Pilate dismissed them, thought them nothing more than a nuisance, but they did not leave. Instead, they went silent and still, staring up at him with tears in their eyes. So then he threatened them, shouted out that he would set his soldiers on them if they would not go home, he would cut them down where they stood, lop off their heads, stick the heads on spikes. But at this, they then did something no Roman could have foreseen. To a man, and in silence, they threw themselves facedown in the dirt at his feet, and they bared the backs of their tender necks to his Roman swords. At sight of this, Pilate stood rigid as the Pharos of Alexandria and as staring as its great lamp. To find a people would die rather than endure the defiling of their Temple—how horrid this must have been to him. And, as well, how curious. To the eye of a Jew, this was devotion; this was righteousness. But to the eye of a Roman or a Greek or an Egyptian, it was fanaticism; it was mindless folly. And there was no answer to it; a man who has nothing to lose is bad enough, but a man who would offer up his life for an idea is terrifying. Such a man cannot be cowed, and if a man cannot be cowed, he cannot be governed. For a governor, could there be a worse man? And yet, this Passover, Pilate is here, resident in Herod’s once palace. Why is of no concern to us; it is enough that he is.

“What manner of man is this prefect?” Yeshu has asked of Father. And Father has answered, “He keeps his pride like a wasp in a bottle. And he bites his nails.” By this, Yeshu has already taken the measure of Pontius Pilate.