Poisoned Honey: A Story of Mary Magdalene (5 page)

This was a sobering thought. I was quiet for a moment. Then I said, “If I could choose a husband myself—”

“Hush!” exclaimed my grandmother. “You must put that thought out of your mind, Mariamne. Put it right out.” She sounded almost as stern as my mother. “You’ll make yourself miserable, thinking that way.”

“I was only going to say, I would choose a man like Abba, but young.”

“Ah, well.” Safta’s face mellowed. “My son Tobias is a dear man. The Lord blessed me when he gave me such a son. Tobias is not at all like his father, may the man rest in peace. Or like your uncle Reuben.”

“Or like Alexandros,” I added. It was true—my brother was more like our uncle than like our father.

My grandmother’s advice made sense, so I tried my best to behave even more modestly. It wasn’t easy. The very next day, my cousin Susannah sent a servant to invite us to meet a
visitor. And what a visitor! She was a foreigner, a wise woman named Ramla of Alexandria, Susannah’s servant told my mother.

Overhearing from the rooftop, I ran down the stairs to join my mother at the courtyard gate. Alexandria was in Egypt. I’d heard things about Egypt that were hard to believe. Egypt was a vast land, they said, with a single enormous river, as wide as our lake and so long that no one knew where it began. At the mouth of the river, where it met the Great Sea, they said there was a lighthouse ten times as tall as the one at Magdala, with a beacon brighter than the sun. The Egyptian kings had tombs the size of Mount Arbel.

Not only that, but the people worshiped outlandish gods, stranger than those of the Greeks and Romans. One god had a jackal’s head. One goddess had the form of a hippopotamus. All this made me wildly curious to meet Ramla of Alexandria.

But my mother sent the servant back with a polite refusal. “Of course we can’t go,” said Imma. “It isn’t seemly for Jewish maidens to show interest in Gentiles. Especially a Gentile who trafficks with the occult.”

“Oh, surely not the
occult
, Tabitha,” protested my grandmother. “Our Susannah is a good, pious young woman, and she’s receiving the Egyptian in her home.”

“Still, Susannah is a married woman, and she doesn’t
have to be as careful as a maiden. We can’t have it rumored that Mariamne’s family is careless about the company she keeps.”

Ordinarily, I would have begged my mother to reconsider, and even burst into tears from disappointment. But with an effort, I turned and walked quietly back up the stairs. I was proud of my self-control, and that almost made up for missing the Egyptian wise woman.

A few weeks later, my family decided on a match for me. He was a young man named Nicolaos, of a family of dyers like Susannah’s husband, Silas. On the next Sabbath, Imma pointed him out to me in the synagogue.

I could hardly believe my luck! Of all the young men I’d noticed, I liked the way Nicolaos looked the best. He had fine dark eyebrows that met in the middle, and curly dark hair with a short beard to match. Watching him talking with his older brother, I noticed that an endearing crease appeared in his cheek when he smiled.

Since I’d been on my best behavior lately, my mother was more relaxed with me. She chatted on, pointing out a woman sitting with Eleazar bar Yohannes. “That’s Chava, Eleazar’s widowed daughter-in-law. She must be glad that we didn’t accept Eleazar’s offer. Everyone knows that Chava wants him to marry her niece, that girl beside her.”

I peered over at Chava, whose long face reminded me of
a sheep’s. Her niece, a girl about my age, looked like a younger version of Chava. Maybe that girl wouldn’t mind marrying old Eleazar. “Why doesn’t he offer for her, then?”

“She has only a small dowry. Our family can afford much more, and of course, our sardine business would have been a profitable connection. And the girl herself is no great beauty.” My mother gave me a glance, hesitated, and finally spoke again. “I shouldn’t say this to you, and I don’t want you to let it go to your head. Nicolaos’s older brother told our people that Nicolaos thought you were quite pleasing to behold.”

“Imma!” I hugged her, dizzy with excitement. This was such a new idea to me, that I was a maiden that a young man could be pleased—
quite
pleased—to behold.

“There, now.” My mother seemed glad, but she disentangled herself and said, “As the proverb goes, ‘Like a gold ring in a swine’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.’”

If I hadn’t been so excited, I might have resented that proverb. Pigs were disgusting, filthy animals. Gentiles like the Romans raised them and ate them, but Jews would have nothing to do with them. Pigs stank. They snuffled and rooted through garbage with their snouts.

Imma straightened her head scarf, then mine. “Shh. The lector’s going to read.”

I folded my hands in my lap and tried to listen while the
lector read from the Scripture scroll in Hebrew. But my skin tingled all over; my head buzzed. I could hardly pay attention, even when the lector translated the passage into Aramaic so that the congregation could understand.

Then a verse of a psalm sounded faintly through the buzzing in my head: “The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.” That was important. I needed to pay attention.

Gazing around the congregation, I was sure that most of them were not paying attention, either. They looked discontented, or worried, or even bored. I wanted to shout, “Listen! The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord!”

Of course, if I did shout out this good news, I would only disgrace myself and my family. Nicolaos’s family would surely not want me for his bride. Nicolaos … Nicolaos thought I was quite pleasing to behold. The tingling crept over my skin again.

Soon after that Sabbath, a first meeting between Nicolaos’s family and my family was arranged. One afternoon, we put on our best robes, as if we were going to the synagogue, and Imma carefully chose earrings for me and draped my shawl. We walked up the main avenue and through a maze of lanes to the dyers’ neighborhood.

As Nicolaos’s family welcomed us to their rooftop and seated us under the awning, I noted Nicolaos from the corner
of my eye. I dared not look straight at him; I had to keep on behaving modestly, at least until we were betrothed. Nicolaos’s mother sat down beside me and struck up a conversation. I tried to pay attention, although everyone else on the rooftop seemed small and far away compared with Nicolaos.

Across the rooftop, my father and uncle were talking to Nicolaos and his older brother, Thaddaios. Nicolaos seemed to be paying as little attention to them as I was to his mother. I was aware of him looking at me, then quickly looking away again.

I really have no idea what I said to Nicolaos’s mother that afternoon, and no one told me what Nicolaos said to Abba and Uncle Reuben, either. But both sides must have been satisfied because the next day the marriage contract was drawn up, and shortly after that, we celebrated the betrothal. If I thought it was exciting just to be in the same room with Nicolaos … well, to stand right next to him! His eyes were hazel, I discovered, with long lashes. To look into those eyes … to drink from the same cup as we pledged our troth!

I felt my body glowing, so that I was afraid everyone in the room could see. Nicolaos’s hand shook, and he sounded breathless as he pronounced the words. For just an instant, I noticed my brother’s eyes on me, and I wished I didn’t have to share this private moment of my life with him.

But then a cheerful thought flashed through my mind: after my wedding a year from now, I’ll hardly have to see Alexandros at all. That made me feel almost kindly toward him.

Back home, my grandmother hugged me and whispered, “The Lord has blessed you, my dear. You and Nicolaos looked just like the devoted lovers Rachel and Jacob in the old story.”

Two years before, when my cousin Susannah became betrothed to Silas, a screen had seemed to come between us, even before she left our family compound for her husband’s house. Susannah was on one side of the screen, with all betrothed girls and married women. I was left on the other side.

But now I, too, had stepped through the screen of betrothal. The next time Susannah visited our house, she was eager to talk to me. Handing little Kanarit over to our grandmother, she sat down on the steps beside me. “Are you going to live with your in-laws before the wedding?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “They suggested that, but Abba didn’t want me to leave before I had to.”

Susannah’s eyes twinkled as she gazed at me. “Maybe
you
wouldn’t have minded, though. Do you feel warm all over when Nicolaos is near? Yes, I know how it feels.” She leaned
close to me, whispering, “And the man feels the same way-even more so!”

“How do you know?” I asked in wonder.

Susannah giggled. “Silas told me. He says when he desires me, he feels as if he’s on fire … there.” She glanced down below the belt of her tunic, bit her lip, and burst out laughing. “Oh, Mari! I’m so happy for you.”

As we talked on, Susannah showed me amulets that she’d bought for herself and her little girl from Ramla, the wise woman from Egypt. “I wish you could have met her, Mari. She’s so … so different! She has a man as companion, and sometimes he seems to be her servant—her bodyguard, her musician—but sometimes he seems more like a husband. Oh—and guess what? Ramla has a bird, a parrot, that she talks to, and the bird
talks back
!”

“Really?” This was so amazing that for just one moment, I forgot about being betrothed. I also remembered something I hadn’t thought about for a long time. “I used to talk to a sparrow,” I mused. Susannah gave an astonished laugh, and I corrected myself quickly. “I mean, I used to pretend that the sparrow talked to me.”

Then I forgot about the sparrow as Susannah turned the conversation to weddings, and to what happens in the bridal chamber when the bride and groom are alone.

Although my family’s business was sardines, we also owned farmland on the plain of Gennesaret, north of Mount Arbel. We had a wheat field, a vineyard, and an apricot orchard. At harvest times, the whole family would camp out in the countryside to work—and play. Harvest was the happiest season.

During the year of my betrothal, Nicolaos’s family invited me to their apricot harvest. Abba escorted me to an orchard on a neighboring hillside and left me with Nicolaos’s mother, Lydia. I would spend the next several days with them.

“Welcome to our family, Mariamne,” she said. She had a wide, generous smile and a soft, generous way of hugging. She showed me the tent where I’d sleep with the other unmarried girls.

As the days went by, the harvest proceeded much as it did in my family’s orchard. The men knocked ripe fruit from the branches with poles. Women and girls gathered the fallen fruit into baskets and carried them down to the tents. There, other women pitted the apricots and laid them out to dry on cloths.

That whole week, I was in a constant flutter with Nicolaos so near. We couldn’t be alone together, of course, but I often felt his gaze on me as I carried a basket out of the orchard. Any ordinary remark from him, such as “Let me lift that heavy basket for you,” or “It’s hot for this time of year, isn’t it?” sounded like love poetry. We found many chances to “accidentally” brush against each other, gasping at the slightest touch.

I was a little shy with all these strangers at first, but Nicolaos’s relatives were so welcoming that I soon felt at ease. I was glad to find out that Nicolaos’s family, like mine, stayed up in the evening to tell stories. I thought this was the best way to listen to stories: tired after the day’s harvesting, sitting in the shadows around the campfire.

The first night, Nicolaos’s older brother, Thaddaios, told a story he’d heard from his father, who had remembered Herod the Great’s reign. In old King Herod’s day, Galilee was part of the kingdom of Greater Judea. But King Herod
kept his power by pleasing the Romans, and there were many Jews who opposed him. The rebels hid in caves on the sheer north face of Mount Arbel.

Here, Thaddaios pointed to the bulk of the mountain, even darker than the night sky. Light flickered from a watch fire on the summit.

“Herod lowered his soldiers on ropes from the top of the cliff. They seized the rebels and hurled them off the mountain to their death. And their wives and children with them.”

I shuddered, feeling with the rebels the panic in their bones, which were about to crack like sticks on the rocks below.

“But there was one rebel, a real hero, who threw his own family off the cliff,” an uncle put in. “Herod thought he had this man cornered; he tried to make him surrender. But the rebel threw off his wife, then his daughters, then each of his three sons. Then he spit at Herod and leaped off himself.”

“Thank the Lord that he didn’t give
me
a ‘real hero’ for a husband,” said Lydia dryly. There was laughter, especially from the other women. “Anyway,” she added, “these are peaceful days around our lake, thank the Lord even more for that.”

One of the young men spoke up. “Yes, we’re as peaceful as oxen plowing the fields ahead of the farmer’s whip. We
peacefully pay and pay the taxes, like nanny goats giving milk.”