The Priest's Madonna (32 page)

It occurred to me then that perhaps the book of visions would help to jolt Bérenger from his habits of mind, like a stick of intellectual dynamite. Imagining another Marie Madeleine, one whose love for God could be both spiritual and physical, might help to soften his rigidity and strengthen his faith. The book became, in my mind, the panacea I sought for the ills my loved ones faced: it would restore Bérenger’s faith, assuage Madame’s anguish, and confirm my own fledgling belief in the integrity and holiness of the natural world and of ordinary human experience.

I tried to put myself in the mind of the priest as he was deciding where to hide the book for the second time. If he had claimed that Jeanne Catherine’s body had withstood the ravages of worms, he must have wondered about her son’s corpse, buried in the crypt. Would his body be free from the effects of decomposition as well, even years after his death? The priest must have opened the child’s casket—how could he have left such a question unanswered? And regardless of the state of the boy’s body, what better hiding place could be found than within one of the caskets in a secret tomb? Even savage revolutionists would not likely go to the extent of prying up the flagstones of the church floor to find the tomb. And even if they did, they would surely hesitate before lifting the lids of the coffins.

Still, he must not have felt that his hiding place was completely secure, for he had gone to the further trouble of asking the favor of his friend and hiding the flask in the baluster. I imagined the poor tortured man, bent over the baluster in the dead of night, cutting away the slab of wood from the capital, then meticulously drawing the map of the sanctuary, with the knight’s stone clearly delineated. When did he scribble that verse from Job? As a last fevered thought before he rolled up the parchment like a cigarette and stuffed it inside the flask? And what was he thinking of as he did? The tomb itself ? The terrifying madness of his patroness? The visions?

That night, when the house was quiet and everyone was asleep, Bérenger and I slipped out together, leaving the door ajar to avoid its creak, and walked to the door of the church. We each carried an unlit lantern. Bérenger handed me his when we arrived and told me to wait a moment, then disappeared into the darkness of the garden. When he returned, he was carrying a shovel, a hammer, and a pry bar.

Gently he pushed open the church door, then closed and locked it behind us.

“What are those for?” I asked in a whisper. A match flared in the darkness: Bérenger’s face appeared, lengthened by shadows. He lit his lantern, then mine. I fought the urge to touch his cheek, suddenly shy. We had not touched all day.

“The book must be hidden somewhere in the tomb. Where else but in one of the caskets?”

It startled me that he had come to the same conclusion as I had, even with half the knowledge—for I had still not told him of Madame and her story. Reflexively I offered another idea. “It could be somewhere beneath that mound of dirt in the tunnel.”

“Possibly. But the caskets are the more likely place, don’t you think?”

I shrugged, affecting nonchalance. “Perhaps.” I hesitated, considering whether or not to tell him what I knew.

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked. “If we find it?”

He gave me a surprised look, as if he had expected I already knew. “Why, I’ll finish what the old priest started. What he didn’t have the strength to do.”

“Burn it, you mean?”

But Bérenger did not answer me: he was grunting beneath the weight of one of the planks of wood covering the hole.

I continued, my words gaining force as I spoke. “But you can’t really believe that the Church would be threatened by such a thing. Even if the Austrian were to get his hands on it and publish it, what lasting effect could it possibly have?”

“It wouldn’t topple the Church, of course. But it would be one more corrosive element, one more thing for the freethinkers to use to undermine the Church’s authority, to cast her in the mud.”

“But what about your own doubt? Your estrangement from God? Everything you said last night?”

“What about it?”

I was silent.

“Marie,” he said softly. “It has occurred to me that perhaps God has set this task in front of me as a test. A chance to prove my loyalty. If I can find this heretical book and destroy it, then he’ll come to me, he’ll finally grace me with his presence.”

“A test. Like you’ve thought of me. As a test.”

He gave me no answer.

“Why would God concern himself with an old book full of a crazy woman’s delusions?”

“Everything concerns God, Marie. Every last thing.”

His resolution wounded me. It was clear that our passion last night was not likely to be repeated tonight, nor ever again, perhaps. Not only that: I saw how despite our most valiant efforts, we could never truly be intimates, not in the way I had envisioned for us, united in thought, married in mind. He clung to the rotting vine of the medieval Church; I stood before the same vine, pruning scythe in hand.

“Will you help me, Marie?” he asked.

“Of course,” I lied.

We descended the steps once more, myself in front with the lanterns, while Bérenger staggered behind me under the burden of the tools. I managed to convince him that we should begin with the older rooms, reasoning that Jeanne Catherine’s confessor would have wanted to hide the book as deeply below ground as possible. As we passed through the first room, I quickly surveyed its contents again, singling out the few smaller caskets, the ones that appeared to belong to children. One, stacked atop two other larger coffins, bore a tarnished brass plaque boasting the name of Berthelot, but I did not stop, for fear of drawing attention to it. I followed Bérenger through the second room, then down the steep stone staircase to the lowermost room of the crypt. Our lanterns cast a brighter light than the candle had, diminishing the room’s ominous quality. The rust-colored walls, the stacked and scattered bones, the stone sarcophagus, and the mountain of earth were all illuminated. I wondered once again whether the earth had slid naturally by some disturbance, a mild earthquake perhaps, or whether the dirt had been piled there by human hands.

Bérenger set the shovel and hammer on the floor, keeping hold of the pry bar, and stood before the sepulcher. He muttered a few phrases in Latin and made the sign of the cross, then wedged the pry bar beneath the lid, knocked it in with the hammer, and leaned on the bar with all his weight. The lid did not budge. He repeated this several times, up and down the length of the casket and along both ends, until finally, his forehead glistening, his face red with effort, he broke the seal with a pop.

I rushed to him as he slid the lid aside. The must of centuries assaulted us; we both reeled. Bérenger covered his nose with his arm; I used my blouse. We stepped forward again. The lantern cast a warm light over the contents: a skeleton, with a few scraps of colorless cloth still draped over the ribs and pelvis. Just beneath the left hand was a simple gold band, presumably having dropped from the finger when the flesh fell away. Beside the right hand lay an ornamental dagger of intricately carved jet. At its feet was a collection of smaller bones, the skull elongated, the rib cage broad, the four legbones tiny: a lapdog, buried with its master. Next to the lapdog was a small effigy of a ram with garnets for eyes and nostrils, and rubies lining its golden horns like knots in the branches of a tree.

“Dear God,” Bérenger whispered.

I thought of Childeric’s tomb, the cloisonné bees, the gold and garnet bull’s head. “How old do you think this is?” I asked.

“I couldn’t say, truthfully,” he replied. “Sixteenth century, perhaps?”

We stood together, both wanting to handle the treasures, neither of us daring.

“Such a piece of art, Marie, would be worth thousands of francs,” whispered Bérenger. “At the very least. And the dagger—” He finished the thought with an awe-filled silence.

We opened several more caskets that night—I held the lantern as Bérenger pried open the lids—and found treasure after treasure: a golden bracelet studded with sapphires; rings of gold and silver, bearing jewels of varying weights and sizes—polished jet, luminous amber, a diamond cut in the shape of a star; a necklace of pearls the size of knuckle bones. And the weapons! Swords fashioned most commonly from iron but occasionally from silver or copper and set in hilts of arabesquing brass, shaped and hammered gold; daggers, the leather of some sheaths still partially intact; shields, emblazoned family crests; dirks with handles of engraved horn; sabers, cutlasses, rapiers—all manner of blades, lavishly and plainly decorated. Occasionally, a casket contained nothing other than bones, though almost always we found at least one artifact that had been buried with the owner: a ring or bracelet with the women, a sword or dagger with the men.

We touched nothing, not at first. We were too awed by the enormity of what we’d found, too cowed by the age and the contents of the coffins. My thoughts of the book of visions, of Jeanne Catherine and her unfortunate son, even of our kisses, were all but forgotten.

In the city, Miryam made her way to the rooms her family always rented. She stood before the entrance shyly, unsure how she would be received. Her father came to the door, embraced her, and ushered her in, praising God for returning her, and her whole family gathered around her—her mother, sisters, grandmothers and aunts, uncles and cousins. She wept with relief. When she told them of the exorcism of her demons, her parents knelt in grateful prayer, her mother holding fast to Miryam’s hand. They led a joyous feast that night.

But though Miryam rejoiced at the homecoming, she could not celebrate with a whole heart. She sang the songs absently, for her thoughts were with Yeshua. After the lamb was eaten and the bones burned in the fire, after the table had been cleared and the dishes all washed, after she had sat around the fire with her father and uncles, telling them of her travels and the miracles that Yeshua had worked, they had finally all fallen asleep, made drowsy by the four cups of wine and the festivities. She remained awake, looking out the window onto the empty street.

Was Yeshua that savior that the Lord had promised to his people Yisrael? Was it he whom the prophets—Mosheh, Daniel, Yeshayah—spoke of? It was written: a star would come forth out of Yakov, a new king to rule the world. Yerushalayim would be rebuilt in a troubled time and an anointed one would come, but would eventually be cut off, left with nothing. Was this, then, Yeshua?

Yeshua had prophesied, too, made puzzling, troublesome statements that Miryam could not pretend to understand. He had declared his coming would bring anguish, fire, dissension, and war—not the unity of nations, as Yeshayah had foretold. Sometimes he spoke as if he were the Lord himself, declaring himself to be present in the heartwood, in the soil beneath a stone. And his statements about the Kingdom, the coming end, were changeable and various: sometimes he spoke of an end like the one foretold by the prophets: the destruction of the Temple, war and calamity, and then the reigning of the Prince of Peace over the living and the resurrected dead. At other times, his vision of the kingdom was more ill-defined and yet more illuminated: a kind of inner dwelling, a place of peace that existed now, out of the sight of men, a place that demanded the renunciation of all else in order to be found. Away from him only hours, she was already losing sight of him. Who was he? What did he offer the world?

Finally, just before the cock crowed that dawn, she fell asleep on the floor next to the window. She did not wake until several hours later, when it was too late.

S
HE HURRIED TO Gulgulta, having heard on the street of Yeshua’s capture. When she arrived, he was already close to death. She called to him, shrieked until her voice broke, but he remained motionless, pinned against the sky like a skinned calf. She wrapped herself around the cross and shimmied toward him, splinters gouging her thighs and hands. When she reached his feet, she clung there, nuzzling them, kissing away the blood that snaked from his wounds. Her arms trembled with the exertion, but she held on, praying for God to topple the cross, to restore him to life.

A pair of hands grabbed her hips and pulled her down. On the ground, she cursed at the soldier who had pried her off. “He’s done nothing!” she screamed. “Take him down! Take him down!” He swatted her across the mouth with the back of his gloved hand. Her lip split. She broke for the cross once more, but the soldier knocked her to the ground. Pain shot through her wrist.

“Try that again and I’ll beat you to death,” the soldier growled. She spat in his face. He moved off.

She stared at Yeshua. He was so still, his belly flat and unmov ing. Then, suddenly, he gasped, straining at his bindings. She cried out, looking around for someone to cut him down. He was dying. How could they let him die?

A short distance away, Yeshua’s mother knelt, staring mutely at her son. Miryam went to her, knelt beside her, took her hand.

A while later she saw Kefa peering in their direction from the city wall. “Coward,” she murmured. He stayed several minutes, then disappeared.

Late that afternoon, Yeshua’s spirit rattled through him one last time, then departed. His corpse slumped. Finally, the guards took it down. A council judge and another well-dressed man stepped forward, giving orders.

“Where will you take him?” Miryam asked.

“There is a new tomb in a small garden near here. We’ll lay him there,” one of the men said.

“Whose tomb is it?”

“His now,” the well-dressed man said, and Miryam gathered that it had once belonged to the man himself.

They laid Yeshua’s body on his mother’s lap. That Miryam cradled it, letting her fingers travel over the wounds: the blood-encrusted holes in the wrists and at the ankles and the scabs at his forehead and temples where the thorny crown had been placed. Miryam of Magdala watched her, filled with sympathy. To be the mother of such a man.

Someone brought a bucket of water. Miryam of Magdala dipped the hem of her cloak in it and gingerly wiped Yeshua’s wounds. When she was finished, the men lifted Yeshua and placed him in a cart. As they did, Miryam offered a ladleful of water to the other Miryam, saying “Drink, mother.”