Secret Magdalene (53 page)

And Yeshu, appalled and turning, gifts Simon Peter with a gaze like to burn, saying, “The cup the Father gives me to drink, shall I not drink it?”

So by Peter’s foolish act of foolish violence, the many soldiers of Pilate that come with the few Jews of the Temple, rush forward, some to take Yehoshua the Nazorean, but most to cut down those who follow Yehoshua. By the flaring light of the torches, by the heart-rending sounds of fear and pain, I watch Saul of Ephraim put himself between Yehoshua and Pilate’s men, only to be knocked to the ground and there set upon by a dozen Syrians. I watch as the Sons of Thunder would urge Yeshu away, and when he will not go, they would pull at him. I watch as those who are not Sicarii, Ananias and Eleazar and all the women and children, gather themselves up, and flee.

Is Norea safe? Is Mary? Am I?

Suddenly, there are two huge men of the north, their eyes made pale and dreadful by torchlight, who would run me through as I stand, and I seem as stone for all that I move. But Simeon the Zealot places himself between me and these, and though one has reached me, and grips my mantle with his fist, by the love of Simeon, I have time to wrest away, leaving only the long white cloth as a ghost in the dawn, before I too, as all the others, even Simon Peter, even Simeon himself, have fled.

Where is Jude? It is planned that we meet under my mother’s apple tree. It is planned that together we will then do all that must still be done. I have come, breathless and numbed. He is not here. Must I act alone?

Below me, the torches move away. Like a snake of fire, they descend back down to the Valley of the Kidron. With them goes my heart, but not my sense. This is as it was meant to be. This is what Yeshu wills. I will wait for Jude…but I cannot wait long. The sun comes; even now the eastern sky opens so that Ra may pass through, and with it comes Yeshu’s “death.” In two hours, perhaps three, Yeshu will have caused Tiberius’s prefect to condemn him. No matter that the Roman does or does not believe him guilty, Yehoshua will have forced his hand. This I do not doubt, not for a moment. Pilate is a proud man, he is hasty to act and regrets at leisure. As prefect, he has made many mistakes with the Jews. He is afraid he will make his last mistake. All say he is terrified of Tiberius—though who is not terrified of this cryptic and unpredictable emperor? Ananias has told me that a certain man once visited Tiberius; before his eyes this man broke a glass cup, but a moment later, passing his hands over it, made the cup seem whole again. It is an easy trick, one Addai taught me early on, but Tiberius was appalled—not even an emperor could control this!—and before another moment passed, he put the man to death. My beloved is like that man who visited Tiberius Caesar. Pilate will fear he cannot control him.

But when it is done, I must be ready. Where is Jude?

I can wait no longer.

Yeshu and his tormentors have reached the Gihon Spring Gate. In moments, they will have disappeared inside the city walls. There is much that I must do. I am up and running back down to the garden gate I have so lately fled. There is no one here. If any have fallen at Yeshu’s arrest, they have crept away, or been taken. Like unmelted snow, my mantle lies where it was thrown, but I cannot bear to touch it.

Above the rooftops, the sun is moments old. And I am on the steep and narrow street that climbs past Father’s north wall and up to the Upper Market. It goes also to Herod’s palace where Yeshu will soon stand before Pilate. But I have no time to think of that now. Here is Father’s side door; the very one I hid behind as Josephus forbade Salome and Ananias to ever again enter his house. In moments, Josephus of the Sanhedrin will be called to his last special session, and before that happens, I must speak to him. As planned. It is left to me to persuade my father to do what only he can do—or we fail. But as I open this small door, the door that Father seldom used, I am stopped by a strong grip on my shoulder and I whirl in place. Though not before I have the knife of Simeon in my hand.

It is Jude. He has come!

He says nothing. There is a madness deep in his eyes, and though I am wholly afraid, I reach inside and find his center holds. But only because he, like me, must do what is planned. Or he must try to. Without word, we enter the house of Josephus.

At sight of Jude, Father would call his Germans to seize him. He would drive him from his house. But as Simeon the Zealot did for me, I do for Jude. I step between them, crying, “No, Father! Hear me!”

“Daughter, I have accepted much from you. This I will not accept!”

Behind me, Jude makes no sound or movement, but I am desperate in mine.

“Father, you must hear me! We have no time to argue or to reason! As you love me, hear me! As you love me, as you love Yehoshua, know what I will tell you is true. All that Jude has done has been done for his brother. Can you think for one moment, this could not be true?”

“Not be true? I have had word of it. His own wife has told me!”

“Father! If you drive him away, you will kill Yeshu.”

“Kill Yehoshua?
Me?
It is
this
one, this—”

“Listen to me! Yeshu will be crucified this very morning.”

“You think I do not know this? I am summoned to the council. Caiaphas examines your Yeshu as we speak.”

“Yes. And he will send him on to Pilate, and Pilate will do as Caiaphas wants and Yeshu wills: he will order him crucified. This will all be done in as much secrecy as can be managed, so that the people will not hear of it and, in hearing, come for him.”

“You know this? And yet you do not fill your mouth with ashes?”

“I know this, Father, for it is what Yeshu
intends.
He intends to hang on their cross. He intends to be seen to die on it.”

“You are insane. You are making me insane.”

Would that Yeshu had told him beforehand, but for Josephus to know was to risk his worry and his hindering, and perhaps his undoing with the Sanhedrin. Josephus must hear me, and he must understand me! It was planned that someone of standing and wealth come for Yeshu’s body so that it might not be thrown into a ditch for the dogs, as is the fate of most who are crucified. For all that Megas is wealthy, for all that I am rich in my own right, it could never be any who is female. All along, Josephus has been in the mind of Yeshu. Josephus of Arimathaea must go to Pontius Pilate and beg to have the body, and he must succeed in his petition and be granted it! My father must make all the arrangements to have it taken to our tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jude was to have gone here and there in Jerusalem, to warn of Yeshu’s trial and dying so that it might not be the secret the authorities hope it will be. He cannot now do these things, for who will heed a betrayer? Therefore, he will do what I would do—he will gather the medicines to tend to his brother and he will wait for him in my mother’s tomb. And I will alert those who will alert others.

It takes time, perhaps too much time, but in the end Father hears me. And when he does, he looks long and hard at Jude Thomas. Father shakes his head at the wonder of it. Who knows another such man?

And there is one last thing I must do: follow Yeshu on his way to Golgotha and to stand beneath him so that when his time comes, I will be ready.

W
hat I need do is done. I have gathered the witnesses.

What Yeshu does, is almost done. And now it is gone the second hour. As has been agreed, I stand near the Hasmonaean palace, the bulk of which looms at my back, shading me from a sun grown fat with the day. Near to hand is the Gennath Gate, that which is closest to the palace of the Great Herod and I wait. Yeshu shall pass by here, this is certain, for it is the surest and fastest route from where Pilate this day governs, to Golgotha, the Place of Skulls where Timaeus hangs as he has hung since this time yesterday, slowly dying on his cross. With me are the women, every one of them. With these women, I too am a woman. I am Mariamne Magdal-eder, and I dress as becomes a Jewish woman of the Law, and I comport myself as becomes a Jewish woman of the Law. My head is covered, as is my face, and my eyes do not flash with understanding. No male stands near me. The males who have followed Yehoshua the Nazorean have fled the city. It seems they hide themselves in the hills beyond. I have nothing to say about this. I think nothing. I stand with the women, and every part of me is intent on what I must do. If the men have fled, they have fled. What they would do so soon as Yeshu was taken was never our concern. I have only one concern, and it consumes the whole of me: Yeshu is coming. And I will be his rock.

There is a disturbance to the west. The gates of Herod’s palace open. As it has already begun for Yeshu, it begins for me.

Comes now Yehoshua and comes those who surround him, at the very first sight of which Mary sways against me, her breath gone shallow and ragged. Behind me, Miryam would choke on the sobs that convulse her. Megas stumbles into the road, and would fall but for Maacah. Around me are sent up the wails of the children and the keening of the women. But I do not wail and I do not keen. Mariamne Magdal-eder does not weep and she does not cover her eyes and she does not cry out to God in her anguish. She does nothing but watch Yeshu. Before him and behind him march Pilate’s soldiers, but they are only six in number, which can only mean that another thing is as Yeshu said it would be. Neither the prefect nor the Sanhedrin mean to make a show of this killing, nor do they expect most to notice, and Pilate will not give them cause by sending out more than six men. But I am here and the women are here, and more come now, and also comes now men of the city appearing in the doors of the houses, from out of the side streets. Some stand on their roofs. Others throw open their shutters for all inside to see out. There come more and more of them, from all over Jerusalem.

There will be those who see this.

He who is dearly beloved of me has been scourged. He has been spat on. The white of his linen tunic is splashed with the blood of his body, redder than his hair is red. My beloved is bent double by the weight of the
patibulum
he carries, which is the crossbeam they will hang him from, and around his neck he wears a sign on which has been crudely written
KING OF THE JEWS
. Yeshu cannot see for the blood in his eyes. I think about his eyes. I think about his sight. I think about what he has seen and what he has felt since last I saw him. He breaks my heart. I cannot watch. And for one moment and only one moment, I turn my face away, and in this moment there is a quick intake of breath behind me, and I am jostled by someone who pushes past.

Veronica has run out into the road. She pulls the cloth from her head, the one she must wear by Law. She exposes her beautiful black hair. Jude’s wife hurries to her brother-in-law’s side so that she might cleanse his face with the soft blue head cloth, so that she might wipe away the blood and the sweat and perhaps even the pain. And I know, as all the women know, Veronica carries within her body another child by Jude, and I know too that she carries within her soul the burden of his betrayal.

My beloved lifts up his face as he feels her touch, and I see him smile. He cannot see her through the swelling and the blood, but he smiles. Then, abruptly, a soldier nearest shoves Yeshu with the hard flat palm of his hand so that my beloved falls forward to his knees, and another rips the blue head cloth from Veronica’s hand, and yet another grips Veronica’s hair and by it propels her away from Yeshu, so that she stumbles on the cobblestones and would also fall, but she does not. She does not fall, for now, from out of the gathering shocked and silent crowd comes a big man with a rage as black as a Cyrenian, his white teeth set on edge.

Yehoshua’s cousin Simeon has not run away.

He has not hidden himself in the wilderness. He is here, and he catches Veronica before she would hit the stones, and when she is once more safely away from the soldiers who surround Yeshu, he lifts the hundredweight of crossbar from Yeshu’s back and places it on his own. And when a soldier would stop him, Simeon the Zealot says, “Let me be about my business.”

I have followed every cubit of the way. Every step Yeshu has taken I have been witness to. Every movement of his body, of his head, of his hands. Simeon carries his crossbeam but speaks not. Here and there someone from the crowd would call out the name of Yehoshua but is hushed. Now and again someone offers Yeshu drink. He does not take it. He does not look around. He does not speak. Our last walk is made in this strange silence. Only the leather of our sandals sounds, the loose rock underfoot, the breath of so many on the chill morning air. Only the crows cawing on Golgotha, what care they what men do? And though Yeshu is beaten so that he might be weakened and, by weakening, die quicker on the cross, he is yet strong enough to do this thing. I see that he is strong. By the act of Simeon, he is spared using the strength he will need to endure what he must soon endure. I bless Simeon as I bless Veronica as I bless Jude.

And I follow.

Out from the Gennath Gate, the road leads west past the limestone quarry from where the great stones were cut for the Temple Mount. The earth is raw here, it is wounded. But we take this road only until it comes on a rutted path that wends its way to the top of a rise above the quarry, and on this rise Timaeus awaits us. As do all others crucified with him. Every moment we have walked, I have felt them above us, and now that we climb the slight rise to meet them, I feel them more palpably still. Their presence hangs in my mind as their bodies hang slumped on the crossbeams.