Secret Magdalene (55 page)

I have done what Yeshu willed. We have all done the will of Yeshu, who does what he is certain is the will of the Father. All has gone as planned. Save for the part that Jude would play. And for the soldier who would not believe.

Now that the raw red sun sits on the far edge of this day, people I have not seen before begin gathering. They have come for the bodies the soldiers leave on the crosses. Some come for a son or a brother or a father, and some come for those who have no kin here, for by Law all bodies must be gone from the crosses by the Sabbath, mere moments away. If it were not the Sabbath, most especially the Passover Sabbath, they would not be allowed this caring. If it were not the Sabbath, the bodies might hang until they rotted, and only then would the soldiers take them down, to throw them like waste into shallow uncovered pits for the scavenging dogs to take in the night. This is why Yeshu has chosen to die on this day of all days. This is why he could not be arrested sooner than the night before this day. It was planned that he be no longer than needed on the cross. It was planned that he be seen to die as he hung before the people. It was planned that he be taken away by friends and by kin. And it was needed that Pilate be in Jerusalem when Yeshu proclaimed himself king, for if he were not, none could hang until Pilate came. Only Rome crucifies and only Rome can legally put to death a seditionist. If Yeshu were arrested without the personal presence of Pilate, he would wait, like poor John under the Fortress of Machaerus, suffering agonies in the lightless cells under the Antonia, where anything could happen to him, and none would know. For Yeshu, there could be no other time to die than this Passover.

In the last of the light, and as my skin thrums like the strings of a lyre, comes finally Josephus of Arimathaea. And with him, he brings the barber Timothy. Beside them, and without protest, Eio draws a cart, and in the cart there are linen burial clothes.

Father has succeeded. He has somehow persuaded his acquaintance Pontius Pilate to allow us Yeshu’s body. I would embrace him, tell him how dear he is, but we must be about our business here.

With the help of the dauntless Simeon, Yeshu is taken from his cross, tenderly, carefully. Eloi, but the nails are cruel! Any would think my beloved dead, would swear he was well and truly departed from this world. As the dead, he is wrapped in the linen. As the dead, he is placed in Eio’s cart so that his limbs are straight. And his mother will sit with him, will touch the white cloth that covers his face, will smooth the white cloth that covers his body. Mary will weep over her son the whole of the way to the Garden of Gethsemane and the tomb of my own mother, over whom I have never wept.

There is only one prophecy left.

Yehoshua has been baptized by the prophet John of the River and been anointed as a king by Megas the Sorceress. My beloved, who is called Messiah by the people, and who has worked wonders even unto the raising of the dead, has now also been seen to be betrayed by a trusted friend, the best and closest and most trusted of friends. He has been accused by the Jewish priests and by the Jewish Sanhedrin. He has been tried by the Romans. Yehoshua the Nazorean has been crucified. And now he must fulfill the last of the needed prophesies: he must rise on the third day as Osiris, as Dionysus, as Tammuz, as all godmen rise on the third day. Even as Horus rises on the third day. Horus, the son of Isis and the son of Osiris, was born in a cave at winter solstice and his birth was announced by a star in the east and was attended by three wise men. As an infant, Horus was carried out of Egypt to escape the wrath of Typhon; as a child he taught men in the temple; as a man he walked with twelve disciples. He fed multitudes with bread and with fish, he walked on water, he raised the Dead. He was called the Lamb of God, the Messiah, the Good Shepherd. He was crucified, buried in a tomb, and resurrected on the third day.

It is Mariamne Magdal-eder who must set about fulfilling the last of this terrible plan, who must begin now to play a part that Jude was to have played, but first we must care for Yeshu. The blood still flows from the cut made by the old soldier’s blade. It is a frightful wound, deep and damaging. It was not meant that he be stabbed. It was not planned that he be wounded beyond the anguish of the Roman torture and the Roman cross, and be wounded so grievously. But no one was fool enough to discount it might happen; therefore, there is to hand all that we might use for such a wound.

But here is a thing we did not anticipate. Though all others are long since persuaded to leave us, Mary will not go. I reason with her, I plead, I demand: she will stay near the body of Yeshu. I grow frantic. Yeshu has insisted no one be told, yet his wound is grave. How can we tend it if Mary believes him dead? There is nothing for it. She must be told.

As he has ever taken such unspeakable burdens, Jude, who is as he should be, waiting by my mother’s tomb, will take yet another. Jude Thomas the supposed betrayer tells his mother Mary what has been done this Passover.

Any mother would rejoice her child was not killed, but to hear that he has caused his own death? Any mother would rejoice her child has not betrayed his brother, but to hear that it must always be thought so? Why is it that Mary does not seem surprised? Do I only imagine her quiet pride? Again and again, she gives me pause.

For prophecy, and to assure Pilate that the King of the Jews is well and truly killed, Yeshu had need of being seen taken to Josephus’s tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane, and this we have done. But he cannot stay here. It was never planned that he remain here. So soon as it is entirely dark, and so soon as Jude is entirely sure there is none to see, Eio’s cart must take him away to Father’s house. Father’s house is where he will stay until all that need be done is done.

As Timothy the barber and I muffle the wheels of the cart so that we might go quietly, Jude rolls back the stone of the tomb. And Mary, who understands now and understands quickly, so arranges Yeshu’s burial linen that it might seem cast away.

And then we leave this place.

Could the world turn blacker? Could the air turn thicker so my breath comes harder? Can I bear more? For all whom Yeshu has healed, would that he might heal himself.

He is hidden in an inner chamber of Father’s house, far from the airy central courtyard and the public rooms. There is nothing here but a bed and a lamp and thick draperies and thicker rugs to soften the sound. It is deep into the night, full halfway between the sun’s leaving and the sun’s return, and only mere moments ago did Salome’s poison wear away so that my beloved seems not dead, but sleeping.

Yeshu returns to me. But he does not return as he left. And it seems he will not stay. My friend is dying.

Father’s slaves and Father’s servants run every which way, bringing me this and bringing me that, but still he dies. I am become frantic. If Tata were here, could she save him? If Seth were here, could he? I am here. Can I?

Jude does not weep. Save when I have need of him, Jude does not move. If Yeshu is dead, so too is Jude.

Mary tends to her son’s ankles, to his wrists, to the lashes on his back, to the great gaping wound in his side. Mary does not cease in her work, and by this, has no time for weeping. Nor for speaking. All this goes on around me in a silence made dreadful by the sound of Yeshu’s breathing. Harsh, erratic, difficult, sometimes stopping altogether.

But yet he breathes.

And so long as he breathes, I will not leave him. I do not leave him. I have arranged myself so that I might rest my head on the pillow near his head. With the very best of the sponges of Ananias, I have washed his face and his limbs. I have carefully combed his red hair and his red beard. His linen is the finest Father owns. I have mixed spikenard into the lamp oil so that in this way he is soothed by the odor of God. I have done all these things, and more, and can think of nothing else I might do. So that now, by the soft light of the scented lamp, I stare at him, drink him in with my eyes, commit to memory all that I might of him. Every line so precious, every color so perfect. My beloved is as beautiful in his dying as in his living, more beautiful, for the threat of his being no more.

I sink into sleep as I watch him. I must sleep, for I start awake with the sun full on my face. In surprise and alarm, I find I am no longer in the hidden room. While I slept someone has carried me into a small courtyard where there is room for a small pool, and near the pool, room for me, and for Yeshu on a pillowed divan, and for Mary. Mary is slumped on a stool pulled close to Yeshu’s divan where she now sleeps. I would wager all I own that he who carried me sits at the courtyard’s entrance, keeping close vigil.

Jude has not slept. Jude has not slept for days now.

Slowly, slowly, I raise my head from where I rest it, afraid of what I might find.

By the full and rounded moon! Yeshu is not dead! He is awake and he stares at me just as half the night I have stared at him. I am on my feet in an instant. I would run to Jude, to Father. I would awaken his exhausted mother, but he stays me with the slightest movement of his bandaged arm. He would have me sit again. I will sit again. I will do anything he would have me do, only that he would live.

But he cannot speak aloud, cannot make sound enough so that I might readily catch his words. I must lean my ear close to his mouth. “Do you know what the Roman said to me?”

“No, I do not know. But please, do not speak. Rest.” I am so afraid. His life drains away as I listen.

“I have all eternity to rest in the Father and the Mother. Hear me, Mariamne, for I would say these things to you. As the Roman condemned me, he asked, ‘What is Truth?’ Of all that was planned, I did not plan to answer this question.” Even now, he sees the foolish joy of things, and more than all that has gone before this tears at my heart. He beckons me closer. “As I was crucified and hanging on the cross I had chosen, I thought of Pilate’s question. What is Truth, my beloved?”

Does it come to this? Do all the questions come down to this question? It is asked by Seth. It is asked by the man sent to rule the Jews by the demented tyrant Tiberius, a Roman, a soldier, a stranger. It comes again from out the mouth of Yehoshua who is so full of truths, he whose very Truth attracts all others.

What is Truth?

Yeshu cannot move, but he can turn his head, and behind his eyes I can see the light that shines there, undimmed. It is as the light that shone in the eyes of John of the River, half mad, yet wholly sane. “I will tell you all I know of Truth,” he whispers in my straining ear, “and I will be done with it. There is no one Truth: there is only Life. There is only the Kingdom that holds many Truths, as many as the sea holds fish, or the sky holds stars. Therefore, each man holds a Truth, holy unto himself. If I should live, I would ask a man to look to
me
who is outside himself for what is his. But if I should die, a man who would look for me must look within and, by so looking, would find not me, but himself.” Yeshu seeks my hand, grips it with surprising strength. “You see what I must do, Mariamne, who is as wife to me?”

I cannot breathe, cannot see, cannot live. “I see it, husband.”

And here, before me, Yeshu drops his head to his pillow and is gone from me. Back to that place where he does not sleep, nor does he yet awake by dying, but hides himself in darkness, waiting for what comes by his perfect intent that it do so.

I
do now what Jude was to have done. I do the last thing.

Deep in the darkest part of the night, Jude and I have made our way to my mother’s tomb—Jude, so that he might roll away the stone and, having done so, return to keep watch over Yeshu. And I so that I might be here when the god sun rises on this, the third day.

Now I sit just outside the entrance, alone. And at my feet is my bowl of spices, and by my side is the blooded white linen that covered Yeshu’s body. Any moment should bring not only the sun, but two, perhaps three, perhaps more, eager, wondering, frightened men. I await them not as John the Less, but as Mariamne Magdal-eder, the
myrrhophore,
the ointment bearer. I await them as she who has come to do that which women do for their dead. I await them as she who has come in all piteous sorrow and has found the stone rolled back and the tomb empty.

There is one other besides Jude who helps me this last day of Yeshu’s Last Days. More than an hour past, Eleazar is sent out into the city to find any he can of Yeshu’s disciples; it matters not which they are. I have told him he must bring them here, to the Garden of Gethsemane where they, as well as he, are sure their murdered Messiah still lies. Yeshu’s “Lazarus” knows nothing but what he has seen, and what he has seen is what the magician Yehoshua the Nazorean has caused him to see. Therefore, he does this thing in perfect innocence and with unfeigned grieving and full bursting with wonder. I have told him that no matter they will not come for fear of the Romans, or for fear of some unnamed trickery, he cannot fail me. No less than two must come. There must be at least two, so that each will believe what he sees by the other’s also seeing it.