The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (3 page)

Mary’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Who was the Roman that caught me when I fell, Joseph?”

“I thought you knew. It was Gaius Flaccus, nephew of Pontius Pilate.”

“He is very handsome.”

“And very evil,” Joseph said sharply. “I hear bad things about him.”

“How do you know they are true?”

“I have been in the palace of Pontius Pilate many times,” Joseph boasted.

“Is it true that the procurator has slave girls from the East who dance naked before him?” she asked breathlessly.

Joseph blushed. “A young girl should not say or even think such things,” he scolded, shocked at her boldness. “Is it not written,
‘Let her works praise her in the gates’
?”

“I am eighteen,” Mary said spiritedly. “I do as I please.”

“You will get into trouble. Remember the law of Moses, ‘Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the L
ORD
your God gives you.’”

A strange look came into the girl’s face, and her lips tightened until the lovely softness of her mouth was a grim line. “Do not speak to me of fathers and mothers, Joseph,” she said sharply, “if you would be my friend.” Then her entire manner changed in one of those mercurial transformations which he had first witnessed back there in the street in Tiberias. “And don’t be so self-righteous, either. You can’t be much over twenty-one or twenty-two years old yourself. If you don’t watch you will be old without ever knowing what it is to be young.” And she drew her mouth down in such a typical imitation of a disapproving old man that Joseph could not help but laugh. It was in such a mood that they entered Magdala.

Joseph had been curious to see where Mary lived and, if possible, the man she admitted to living with, but he was disappointed. At the very edge of the city she slid down from the mule and thanked him very sweetly for his help, but refused his offer to take her home. He stood watching her as she moved gracefully down the Street of the Dove Sellers, looking small and fragile, but somehow confident and self-possessed at the same time. Only when she was out of sight did he turn his mule toward the house of his patient.

The streets were thronged with travelers from both north and south seeking shelter for the night at the many inns the city afforded. To the north the Via Maris passed near Capernaum, a brawling little town where a traveler might easily lose his purse and have his head broken into the bargain. And to the east, where the Roman road passed through the Valley of the Doves, the narrow defile was pocked with caves harboring not only the birds that were trapped there daily for the temple sellers in Jerusalem, but thieves and robbers as well, waiting for a luckless traveler to be caught by darkness on the road. Wayfarers from both directions usually stayed in Magdala rather than be caught outside the city at night, and the travelers had to vie for the right of way with the dove trappers, who made up one of the main businesses of the city, returning to their homes in the evening, their mules piled with cages of cooing birds.

Eleazar, the seller of cloth, was in pain. “You are late, leech,” he grumbled. “What kept you?”

Joseph busied himself in removing his leeches from the bottle, separating the lean ones from the fat ones, whose hunger had been satiated. “I was attending a girl who fainted on the streets of Tiberias,” he explained. “A dancer.”

“Mary of Magdala!” The merchant’s wife fairly spat the words from the shadows where she was watching everything with grim-lipped intensity.

“Do you know her?” Joseph bent to pick up a leech he had dropped at her explosive outburst.

“Who in all Magdala does not know Mary of Magdala for a shameless hussy?” The woman’s voice was shrill with the indignation of the completely righteous—in their own minds.

“Now, Rachel,” the merchant protested. “You do not know that what you say is true.”

“She is guilty of
abodah zarah!
All Magdala talks of it!”
Abodah zarah,
one of the three deadly sins of the Jews, was literally translated as the taking up of heathenism. By devout Jews it could be applied to anyone living according to the ways of the Greeks and Romans, who were “heathens” in their eyes. Joseph could understand how the term would be applied by the uncharitable to Mary of Magdala. He himself could even be accused of
abodah zarah
because he attended the “heathen” university at Tiberias, where Greek philosophers and scientists taught what a devout Jew would consider heresy.

Preoccupied by what Eleazar’s wife had said about Mary, Joseph was not so deft as usual in handling the swollen knee. “By the prophets!” the merchant squealed. “Must you treat my leg as a stick, to be broken across your knee?” And from the background his wife shrilled, “Most likely he has been bewitched. He is not the first to lose his senses over Mary of Magdala and the cursed demons that possess her.”

In truth it did seem to Joseph as he later lay trying to sleep that he must be bewitched. Or, he thought, one of the demons said to possess the girl might have escaped from her body into his. Whatever the cause, he could not get her out of his mind, and even in his dreams he kept hearing her voice and seeing her body spinning like a living torch in the dance. But just when he was going to take her in his arms, she was snatched away by a Greek named Demetrius, wearing the uniform of a Roman tribune.

In the morning Joseph decided to go to the house of Demetrius himself and see what was the relationship between Mary of Magdala and the maker of lyres, even if he had to pretend interest in buying one of the instruments for which he had no possible use. He was spared the pain of pretending, however, for, oddly enough, one of the Nabatean musicians came while he was at the morning meal, with the request that he wait upon Demetrius in the Street of the Greeks.

While the messenger waited outside, Joseph bustled about, dipping a fresh supply of lean and slender leeches from the tank where he kept them, and renewing his supply of medicine. When he stopped to brush his robe carefully and comb his short beard, his mother asked curiously, “What has happened, Joseph? Why are you preening so?”

“I go to the house of a Greek named Demetrius.”

“You did not make such a fuss as this when you were first called to the procurator himself. Is there a girl at this house?”

Joseph’s blush confirmed his mother’s suspicions. “Who is it?” she asked slyly. “And how soon can I expect the visit of the marriage broker?”

The question brought Joseph up short. He could not consider marriage before he realized his cherished dream of completing his studies at Alexandria, even if he thought of Mary of Magdala in that way. Which, he quickly assured himself, he did not.

“You are doing very well indeed for an apprentice physician,” his mother continued with pretended innocence. “Just yesterday Alexander Lysimachus assured me that already you know more about healing than most of the physicians of Galilee.”

Joseph easily understood her strategy. If he became interested in a girl, he might give up the wild idea of going to Alexandria. So he did not doubt that his mother would welcome the visit of the marriage broker, if it meant that he would settle here in Galilee, or even Jerusalem. “Why should I want a wife when you take such good care of me?” he said fondly as he kissed her on the forehead. And gathering up his leeches, he was out of the door before she could question him further.

The home of the maker of lyres was fairly large, although not pretentious. Most of the Greeks on this street were artisans, silversmiths, or tailors, and lived well, but the sounds that poured from the house of Demetrius were foreign to such staid occupations. From the back came the uncertain plinking of a lyre, as if a student were practicing, and behind the musical sounds was the steady obbligato of hammers tapping on wood as workmen put together resonant frames and sounding boards upon which strings were stretched.

Mary was nowhere to be seen when the Nabatean escorted Joseph through the house into the garden. It was enclosed on three sides by the inner walls of the house, while the fourth side was the edge of a cliff. And since the roof of the house below it on the hillside was well beneath the level of the shelf forming the garden, one had a sudden impression of stepping out upon a stage suspended between the blue of the sky and the amethyst green of the lake far below. It was easy to believe that Mary of Magdala lived here, for the flowers were gay and riotous with color, like herself.

“Come over here, young man.” The speaker was a plump Greek about sixty years of age, sitting on a bench close to the edge of the cliff. He held a large cithara which he had apparently been tuning, for a delicately carved set of ivory pipes lay on the bench beside him. The Greek’s eyes were deep-set in his round face and lit with intelligence and amusement, as if the owner saw only merriment in the world. Joseph felt an instinctive liking for the fat man, in spite of his soiled robe and the aromatic smell of wine that he exuded. “I was told that Demetrius wished to see me,” he said politely.

“I am Demetrius.”

“But Mary said she lived with—” Joseph stopped and crimsoned with embarrassment.

“Is there anything wrong in her living with me?” Demetrius asked.

“Of course not,” Joseph said. “I am a fool.”

“No more than almost anyone would have been under the circumstances,” the Greek said equably. “When a beautiful girl says she lives with a man, you naturally think the worst, being human. Look at me, young man. Do I look like a debaucher of the young?” Demetrius suddenly began to guffaw, holding his vast belly as if he were afraid it might come apart with its shaking. Finally he stopped laughing and wiped his streaming eyes with his sleeve. “Alas,” he added with mock sadness, “even if I longed for feminine solace, who would love a fat old man for anything but his money, of which I have next to none, anyway?”

“I did not mean that there was anything wrong in her living with you,” Joseph assured him sincerely.

“Of course you didn’t. But you must have heard other people insinuate things about her that are not true. Women envy Mary her beauty because men’s eyes are drawn to her in the street. And the men, realizing how pale and insipid their own wives are beside her, label her
meretrix
so they will not feel so guilty about lusting after her.”

“You are a philosopher,” Joseph exclaimed admiringly.

“Nay. I am but a winebibber who has known many people, most of them bad. Because I acknowledge no God who would forbid me, I do as I please, but I harm no one except myself, which is my privilege. Since I like to see people happy and gay, I let Mary sing and dance that others may share her beauty and her talent. But to you Jews that is
shefikat damim.”
He sighed. “If you try to please everyone, you please no one. But sit down here beside me, young man. Mary has gone to Capernaum to sell some lyres for me and bring back a fish for our dinner from the stall of Simon and the sons of Zebedee. What do you think of the spell she had yesterday?”

“I do not believe it is the Sacred Disease,” Joseph said promptly.

“Nor I. You have studied Hippocrates, I see.”

“All of his writings that I could obtain, sir,” Joseph said eagerly. “And those of Marcus Terentius Varro and Lucretius Carus, too.”

Demetrius lifted his eyebrows. “Your thirst for knowledge is worthy of the old Greeks, young man. There is a man in Rome, a friend of mine named Aulus Cornelius Celsus, from whom you could learn much, although he is a
philiatros,
a friend of physicians, rather than a physician. But getting back to Mary, what do you really think of these fits of hers?”

“I have seen them in some young girls before,” Joseph said. “My preceptor, Alexander Lysimachus, believes they are possessed by a demon for only a short while, but I doubt if that is the answer. Most of them grow out of it with womanhood.”

“Did she say anything yesterday when she was in the fit?”

“Only the babblings of a child. She seemed to be remembering a scene where someone was beating her.”

“I was hoping she had forgotten all that,” Demetrius sighed. “I took Mary when she was twelve years old, Joseph. Her father was a trapper of doves and a petty thief. He had beaten her many times and was on the point of selling her to a Roman, but I gave him a higher price. I adopted her legally and taught her all I know of music, philosophy, and the arts. Now the lyre is not so popular and I have been working to improve the cithara, so we have not fared very well. Mary loves to sing and dance, and since people will pay to hear her, I let her perform sometimes in the streets”

“Is it safe?”

“The Nabateans are always there. And Hadja would give his life for her.”

“You trained her well,” Joseph said. “I never heard a more lovely voice, nor saw a more graceful dancer.”

Demetrius nodded. “Few can equal her, although she is still little more than a child. As a dancer and singer in the great cities of the empire I am sure she could turn the heads of kings if she wished. But I place her happiness above everything else and so I hesitate to take her away from Magdala. . . . What would you do, Joseph?” he asked suddenly.

Joseph’s first thought was that cities were wicked and sinful. Therefore Mary would be better off away from them, perhaps married to a good and serious young man, instead, who would love her for her beauty and charm and provide for her wants and make her happy. Such a man, he thought with quickening pulse, as a young and successful physician. But his own ambition had sensed a kindred spirit within Mary of Magdala, the same determination for success in the world of music and the theater that he felt for knowledge in the field of medicine.

“One of the proverbs of my people says,
‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,’”
he told the Greek. “I doubt if Mary will be truly happy until she has done the things upon which her heart is set.”

“You have a wise head upon such young shoulders,” Demetrius said approvingly. “I have been trying to avoid the same conclusion for many months. But since we have no money for traveling, we must stay here, for the time being at least.” He picked up the cithara from the bench beside him. “Listen closely to the tones of this instrument.” When he touched the strings, the air throbbed with a melody as soft as old linen.