The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (18 page)

Matthat breathed deeply. “I have never seen her do this dance before. You can almost smell the rain upon the hills of Galilee again.”

Finally, the music faded away and the lovely flame-haired figure on the stage slowly sank to the floor with her arms outstretched before her while the crowd broke into a great thunder of applause. Men leaped to their feet and threw empty wineskins and the dried leaves in which sweetmeats had been wrapped into the air, shouting their approval. Mary remained in the center of the stage, bowing, waiting patiently for the tumult to subside. There could be no doubt in Joseph’s mind that, as Flamen, she had achieved the triumph for which she had longed. Idolized by the populace of Alexandria with one of its most important citizens, the
gymnasiarch
Plotinus, her slave, she could want nothing more.

When the tumult subsided, the music began another melody. Joseph glanced up at the box of the
tribunalia.
Plotinus was leaning forward, his eyes fixed upon the figure on the stage.

“How can you be so calm, Joseph?” Matthat asked.

Slowly Joseph shook his head. “Flamen is more beautiful than Mary of Magdala ever was,” he admitted. “But the woman dancing there is not the same. An evil spirit has laid hold of her.”

The dance ended, and Mary ran from the stage. But the crowd shouted again and again for her, and she was forced to return many times before they would let her go. When finally the great curtain began to rise slowly from its slot in the floor, Joseph stood up. “I want to speak to her,” he said. “Do you know how to get behind the scenes?”

“Of course. Albina sometimes dines with me after a performance.”

Behind the great stage, everything seemed to be confusion as they sought Flamen’s dressing room. Scantily clad women hurried past, scenery was being moved for there would be another performance tomorrow, and musicians were leaving the theater with their instruments under their arms. At the entrance to a short corridor leading to the dressing room of the principal dancer, a picture of a torch had been painted on the wall. Beneath it stood a Roman soldier in polished harness with the
gymnasiarch’s
personal crest upon his helmet below the eagles of Rome. He had a drawn sword in his hand, and as Matthat and Joseph approached, he held the blade across the passage, barring them from approaching.

“I would speak to the dancer Flamen,” Joseph said courteously. “We are old friends from Galilee.”

“No one visits Flamen except by permission of the
gymnasiarch,”
the soldier said, bored, as if this happened all the time. “On your way.”

“B-but—”

“Did you not hear the guard, Jew?” a harsh voice asked behind him. Joseph turned to see Plotinus standing only a yard away. At close range, the
gymnasiarch’s
face was even colder and more forbidding than it had been from the box.

“I heard him,” Joseph said in the same courteous tone. “If you would send word to Flamen that Joseph of Galilee is here to see her, I am sure she would admit me. We are old friends.”

“Flamen would have no Jew as a friend,” Plotinus said contemptuously. “I know this fellow Matthat is a thieving merchant of stolen jewels. Do you think to sell something to her by such a trick?”

“We have nothing to sell,” Matthat protested, and Joseph added, “I tell you, I knew her in Galilee.”

“Silence, Jewish dog!” Plotinus snapped, reddening with anger. “Dare you insult Flamen by insinuating that she would even have heard of your cursed country?” He was wearing a mailed glove, and a sudden murderous light flared in the cold eyes. It did not for the moment occur to Joseph that Plotinus would strike him, and so he was totally unprepared for the smash of the mailed fist against his temple. There was a sudden sharp pain as the metal cut through yielding skin, then darkness engulfed him.

At first Joseph thought he was back in his own quarters, where he lived with Bana Jivaka in the Rhakotis section of Alexandria. It was night, for an oil lamp burned in a bracket on the wall and the room was just like that in which they lived, one of thousands of such rooms in the many-storied tenements making up the Greek Quarter. And yet something was different about this one, a distinctive touch in the draperies at the windows, the colorful cushions of the couch on which he lay, and the faint perfume in the air.

Something moved in the far corner, and he made out a graceful feminine figure in a white silken robe. For one thrilling moment he thought it was Mary, but as the girl came into the circle of light cast by the lamp he recognized the dark skin and cleanly-etched features of Albina, the Egyptian dancer who was the daughter of Achillas, the thief.

“Have you decided to wake up?” Albina’s fingers touched his forehead, and he realized that a bandage partially covered his head. Now he began to remember what had happened until Plotinus had felled him.

“Was I unconscious long?” he asked Albina.

“Almost six hours by the water clock. I saw Plotinus strike you in the corridor leading to Flamen’s dressing room, and Matthat and I brought you here while you were unconscious.”

“Who bandaged me?”

“Your friend, the physician of Malabar. Matthat went for him. He assured us that you were only stunned and would awaken later, so we thought it best to let you stay here.”

“But it is night.” He started to push himself up on his elbows, but the room began to reel. Albina stooped quickly and put her arm about his shoulders, lowering him gently back to the cushions. “It is almost morning,” she said, “but what difference does that make?”

“Have we spent the night here alone?”

“Most of it.” She smiled. “I do not mind. Why should you?”

“But your reputation?”

She shrugged. “I am a dancer in the theater. Everybody thinks we are courtesans, whether we are or not, so we soon stop worrying about what they think. You must lie still now.”

“Did Ma—Flamen know I was looking for her?” he asked.

Albina shook her head. “Plotinus is insanely jealous. He posts a guard before her dressing room when she comes to the theater and no man can enter it, not even the director. You should not have tried to see her at the theater, Joseph. Plotinus might have killed you if Matthat and I had not taken you away. He can do almost anything he likes here in Alexandria. They say even the governor obeys his orders.”

“But I have been seeking her for weeks,” Joseph protested.

“Then it is true what you said about Galilee?”

Perhaps, Joseph thought, he had said too much already. If Mary did not wish it known here in Alexandria that she was part Jew, he owed it to her as a friend not to reveal the secret. “I may be wrong,” he said lamely, but he was too honest to lie.

“I am one of the few who knows that Flamen has Jewish blood,” Albina explained. “We were very close when she first came to Alexandria. I was the principal dancer then, and she was one of the chorus, but she soon stood above me.”

“Most people would hate her for it.”

The dancer shook her head. “Flamen is a great artist, the greatest I have ever known. No one could hate her for the gift the gods have given her. But she has no soul; that I could not forgive her.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Woman was meant to fill a great need of man, Joseph. In her arms he can find release from the cares of the day, and she can give him strong sons and daughters so that his line may not die. But a woman who stirs up men’s passions, not to satisfy them but deliberately to use them for her own gain, is dishonest.”

“Then it is true that she does not give herself to these men who follow after her?”

A look of pain and disappointment came into her fine dark eyes. “You love her, too, don’t you, Joseph?” she said softly.

“I have loved her for many years,” he explained, “but not as the woman who danced tonight. She was a girl then, lovely and unspoiled. Now . . .” He did not finish the sentence. The thought of what Mary had become brought pain.

“It is hard to believe Flamen was ever thus,” Albina said. “But you love her, Joseph, so I will tell you what I believe—that Flamen has been mistress to nothing but her own greed for gold and power.”

“It is not greed that drives her,” Joseph said, “but the desire for revenge.”

“What need for revenge could be that strong?”

“She was cruelly ravished years ago by a man—a Roman,” he explained.

“And she hates all Romans as a result? Yes, I could understand that. Any woman could. And you continued to love her even through that, Joseph? You must be a saint.”

Joseph shook his head. “A wise man among the Jews once said,
‘A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.’”

Albina smoothed the bandage upon his head with gentle fingers. “I have never known many Jews, Joseph. And no man like you. If Flamen treats you as she does the others—?” She took a deep breath. “Why do I find it so hard to tell you that I would be happy to bear you strong children? And to comfort you in my arms against the troubles of the world? I am a dancer and people believe me a prostitute, but I have lain with no man for his gold or ever will. Still no good man would want to marry me because of this.”

“I think you are wrong, Albina.” He put his hand over hers. “Many men would want you for what you are, not what people think you to be.”

“Men like you might, Joseph,” she agreed. “But I have seen no other one. I would save you the sorrow I know Flamen will bring you, but if you must see her, I will tell you where she may be found. She dwells on the shore of Lake Mareotis outside the wall of the city and beyond the Serapeum, where many of the rich have villas. I have been told that Plotinus keeps soldiers always on guard there, but if you walk along the shore you can enter the garden between the water and the walls.”

“How do you know this?” he asked.

Albina smiled. “You forget that my father is a thief. But take care that you are not taken for one yourself when you go to seek Flamen. The guards would make short work of you.”

Joseph suffered no ill effects from his wound by the mailed fist of Plotinus. In a few days the slight headache which followed it was gone and the cut in his scalp had healed so that he no longer needed a bandage. Late one afternoon he set off for the villa where Albina had told him Mary lived, but he was not yet sure of his way through the teeming quarter of Rhakotis, and so darkness was already falling when he reached the line of elaborate villas on the shores of Lake Mareotis to the south of the city.

The shores of the large inland body of water formed by the mouth of the Nile were very fertile, and the luxurious villas of the Romans and the rich
hetairai
who favored this sunnier side of the city were almost hidden by trees and vines. Fruit gardens and vineyards flourished and flowers grew everywhere, although it was early winter, for there was not a day in the year that something did not bloom in Alexandria. Some of the streets led down to the water itself, where boat landings had been placed to facilitate traffic back and forth between the city and the luxurious gardens on the eight islands outlined in the early dusk against the reddish tint of the sky from the setting sun.

From the Agathadaemon Canal a regular line of ferry boats crossed the lake to the islands and on to the mainland beyond. The glassy water was dotted with the masts and bright sails of the Nile boats that plied the great river and unloaded food for Alexandria and goods to be shipped to other parts of the empire upon the Mareotis quays. Across the water moved an endless procession of grain barges bringing corn for Rome and Alexandria from the rich delta in the interior. Small galleys, graceful pleasure boats with lateen sails, and light skiffs scurried about seeking to reach their moorings before darkness fell completely.

On winter days the winds often blew from the Great Sea, bringing a damp cold miasma to the city that did not help the health of the inhabitants, but tonight was the kind the pleasure-loving Alexandrians adored. A soft warm breeze flowed down the Nile Valley toward its mouth, bathing the city in a pleasant warmth and wafting over it a fragrant aroma from the flowers and spice groves on the lake shore. Tonight a great crowd would be promenading along the waterfront, and a small army of people would be marching back and forth across the Heptastadium. And in the crowded native quarters people would lie outside the houses on mats and cushions while lovers huddled close in the shadows. But here on the lake shore, there was peace and quiet.

True to what Albina had told him, two Roman soldiers guarded the door to Flamen’s villa, identified by the same picture of a torch that marked her dressing room. Joseph knew better than to approach them after his painful experience in the theater. Instead he walked along the street before the waterfront homes and counted the villas until he came to a path running down to the water. Returning then near the water’s edge along the shore in the dusk, he had no difficulty in locating Mary’s home.

Pines, maples, and spice trees grew down to the water’s edge, where stately white ibises stalked in haughty silence. A flock of ducks, disturbed by his passing, rose into the air with a whirring of wings and, as he turned along a path leading through the luxuriant garden that grew between the villa identified by the torch and the lake itself, a group of flamingos stared at him haughtily before moving aside for him to pass.

Joseph considered whether he should announce his presence in some way, but decided not to do so, hoping to surprise Mary and Demetrius. As he moved closer to the house along a winding graveled walk, a shadow suddenly darted from behind a tree and a brawny arm encircled his neck, bringing him up, choking, on his toes. “What do you seek in the garden of Flamen besides death, stranger?” a deep voice inquired. It was familiar, even after five years.

“Hadja!” Joseph croaked, for the Nabatean’s massive arm was pressing on his windpipe. “It is I, Joseph of Galilee.”

The pressure was released suddenly. “Praise be to Ahura-Mazda!” Hadja cried, embracing Joseph and threatening to crush his bones again. “Why do you come through the garden like a thief?”