Bright Dark Madonna

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  “Frankly, I have never heard of men fighting to claim paternity of a whore’s daughter.” Dido, as always, injected a note of reality. “Usually they fight to deny it.”

  “That has possibilities, too,” Reginus persisted. “We could all point fingers at each other.”

  “Sarah is my son’s daughter,” Ma proclaimed. “No one will deny it. Look at her. Just look!”

  You may be surprised to know that I myself was not struck by my daughter’s resemblance to her father, expect for the intensity of her gaze. To me she was darker—and wilder. Though I come from the bright-haired Celts, Sarah reminded me of the older peoples that had lived in the Pretannic Isles from before anyone’s memory. But I was not about to gainsay Ma.

  “That is also what they want to believe,” said Dido.

  “They want Jesus’s child,” agreed Judith. “They want his heir.”

  “Perhaps they will not trouble with a daughter?” asked Berta hopefully.

  “They will want me to marry James,” I sighed. “So that I can have a son next time. They will want to enforce the levirate. But don’t I have the right to refuse, Judith?”

  “I don’t know,” she frowned. “I am not learned in the Law.”

  “I know what, honey,” said Reginus. “I’ll marry you.”

  “No, I’ll marry you,” said Timothy. “At least I’m Jewish.”

  “We’ll both marry her,” said Reginus, taking Timothy’s hand. “Bigamy would put her way beyond the pale.”

  “Is James really so bad, Mary?” Judith wanted to know. “I hate to say so, but marrying him is the obvious thing to do.”

  “I don’t want to marry anyone,” I insisted. “No offense, Reginus, Timothy. If I did, I’d definitely marry you two. As for James, he’s longwinded and earnest. All he cares about is getting control of Jesus’s lineage, creating a royal, priestly dynasty.”

  “She is a princess,” Ma said, as she had when she re-named Sarah.

  “So what do we do?” asked Berta. “Ignore them and hope they’ll go away?”

  “We could tell the truth,” I said.

  “That’ll never work,” grumbled Reginus.

  At that moment, Sarah woke up and started to whimper and root for my breast.

  “Give the darling to me when you’re done feeding her,” said Judith. “I’ll swaddle her clean and fresh. It doesn’t do for our princess to be wet and uncomfortable.”

  “What is the truth?” Dido raised one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows, as Sarah latched on to my nipple and quieted again.

  “I have given birth to a daughter. I will raise her myself.” I looked at my friends gathered around me, standing ready to do anything from changing her diapers to committing bigamy. All new mothers should be so lucky. “With help from all of you. I will raise her here at Temple Magdalen.”

  “If only that were so,” Ma spoke in a tone that raised the hair on the back of my neck, and I sensed her angels around her. “Ah!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked her. “Ma? Please! Tell me what you mean.”

  But she would not say more, and when Judith took Sarah from my arms to go and swaddle her, Ma followed her.

  “Wait!” I called after them and started to get up. “Don’t take her out of my sight.”

  “Red,” Dido restrained me. “Sarah will be all right. You get some rest.”

  “I can’t, Dido. You don’t understand,” I started to weep again. “They took her from me when I was asleep.”

  The others left the room, and Dido and Berta held me and rocked me.

  “That was then,” they whispered. “This is now. Judith will bring her back to you when she’s swaddled. You’re safe here. Sarah is safe here.”

  But outside the crowd was growing.

  By the next day, I decided I’d had enough rest; it was time to be up and get some sunlight—if there was any. It was hard to keep track of time in the inner chamber. So I gathered up Sarah, and went out to the courtyard where the morning hymns to Isis were about to begin. Sarah, of course, being a real live goddess, distracted everyone’s attention. All the young whores and the children ran to us, vying to hold her. You might think all the commotion would have startled Sarah, but she gazed calmly at everyone, as if she were looking from some lofty vantage point. Her face was already losing its newborn wrinkles; her skin was dark, smooth, almost polished looking.

  Then Miriam cut a swath through the younger women and girls, and wordlessly reached for Sarah. I felt a curious reluctance to hand her to her grandmother that was more than possessiveness, which I’ll admit to. I had an irrational sense that to hand her over to this angel-attended older woman would be to hand her over to fate. I held Sarah closer and she squirmed restlessly and seemed to reach towards Ma, though she was still too tiny to make such a gesture.

  “Let me hold her during the hymns to Isis. Please.”

  Ma managed to sound both humble and imperious at once, and I overcame my resistance. Ma installed herself with Sarah on her lap next to the statue of Isis, all three of their faces strangely alike in serenity. When the singing started, Sarah opened her mouth but not to scream. Her face didn’t scrunch up, her eyes remained wide, and Miriam afterwards swore that Sarah sang, too—at three days old.

  She was an extraordinary child; of course she was.

  As soon as the hymns were over, I was ready to go scoop up Sarah from Miriam’s lap, but just then Judith came in through the gates, closing them resoundingly behind her. When she saw me, she gestured for me to follow her. We went out behind the kitchens where a few hens strutted and scratched in the dirt.

  “Well,” she said. “I spoke with them, the men.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Peter, James, Andrew, a few of the others. I told them what you said; I told them the truth.”

  “And?” My heart was beating very fast; I felt hot though it was a chilly morning.

  “They didn’t believe me, except maybe for John. I think he’s always had a soft spot for you. He tried to speak up once or twice, but the others wouldn’t hear him.”

  “I don’t understand. Didn’t believe what? That I won’t give her up?”

  “They didn’t believe that she is a girl. James was especially insistent.”

  “I know he would have preferred a male heir. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about the levirate any more. He’d be off the hook. But still why would they doubt you? Don’t tell me: someone’s had a vision or heard a voice.”

  “They didn’t say so.” Judith pursed her lips and looked angry.

  “What exactly did they say?”

  “They said a woman’s word cannot be taken in evidence.” She almost but not quite spat. “As if that little bit of marshy land where they’ve planted themselves between our gates and the lake is a court of law. Ridiculous!”

  “I’m not sure I understand.” Now I felt cold, and my breasts were beginning to leak. “They don’t believe that she’s a girl, because…because a woman said she was? What would convince them?”

  She shook her head and looked grim. I hadn’t seen Judith this angry since the day she showed up with her children, near starving, claiming that Temple Magdalen’s land had belonged to her family before the tax collectors had run them off.

  “They want me to bring her outside so that they can see for themselves.”

  I did not speak for a moment, picturing Judith unswaddling Sarah and displaying the tiny vulnerable folds of her sex as proof of her gender. I felt a sudden and absolute rage that surprised me with its force.

  “That is not happening. Ever.”

  Then something more dreadful than indignity occurred to me.

  “It’s a trick,” I almost shrieked. “You know it is, Judith. They want to get her outside the walls and take her. Son or daughter, they want his child. They hate me; they’ve always hated me. They think I’m not fit to raise her. They want to take her away from me. Don’t you see?”

  “Calm down, Mary,” she said. “You don’t suppos
e I agreed to their demand!”

  “I’m sorry, Judith. I know you wouldn’t, but what can we do? Should we send out Reginus and Timothy? I mean Timothy’s from around here. The fishermen all know his family.”

  “Oh Mary, honestly. To them Timothy is an abomination. He commits unnatural acts with a former slave from Rome, acts that are forbidden in the Law. He might as well go out and talk to them with bloody meat and milk dripping from his chin. No, I was thinking, well, that we might send out your mother-in-law.” She sounded a little doubtful. “Perhaps she could reason with James at least.”

  “She ran away from James,” I pointed out. “And I’m afraid she has become a heathen.” I told Judith the story of Miriam’s vow to follow me and to take my goddess as her goddess and so forth. “Not to mention, she might be nuts.”

  “That is not a respectful way to speak of your mother-in-law,” Judith said without much heat. “Still, don’t you think it’s worth a try?”

  “Maybe. If she’s willing,” I said, feeling a kind of sick desperation as I remembered her maddeningly incomplete prophecy.

  “If she’s willing,” Judith agreed.

  We found Ma still sitting by the statue of Isis, rocking Sarah and crooning to her. Miriam looked, for an instant, as heartbreakingly young as she had when Jesus, back from the grave, held out his arms to her, finally able to embrace her after all those years of being, well, an ungrateful brat, to put it bluntly. So I didn’t immediately snatch Sarah up, but stood silently while Judith explained what was happening and what we wanted her to do.

  Ma didn’t answer right away or even look at us. If I didn’t know her so well, I might have thought she hadn’t heard or understood—but I saw the breezes playing around her head, lifting her cloak, and I knew she was consulting the angels.

  “It won’t do any good,” she announced at last. “But it won’t do any harm, either. I will go out and speak to them, if you wish. Here.” She rose. “Take the baby.”

  And she handed me my own daughter as if I were a serving maid. But no matter, Sarah was in my arms again. I bent my head and kissed hers, breathing in her sweet milky scent.

  “Fear not, Maeve of Magdala.”

  I looked up, and Ma had turned on her way to the gate to look back at me.

  “Nothing will go according to plan,” she said pleasantly. “It never does.”

  How I was supposed to be reassured by that pronouncement, I don’t know, but strangely I was.

  When Miriam walked out of the gate, the crowd suddenly hushed, and the fact that I noticed the silence told me how much commotion there must have been for days.

  “Judith,” I turned to her. “Keep Sarah safe away from the gates. I’m going to the roof.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she whispered.

  “I won’t let myself be seen,” I whispered back. “I have to know what’s going on.”

  I climbed to the tower roof, covered my head and crouched, looking down at the extraordinary scene below. The usual suspects were in the forefront, to be sure, but there must have been at least a hundred more people not just standing but camping out. There were cook fires and even crude shelters, just as there had been at John the Dipper’s camp by the river. Really, I thought, Peter ought to forget about Sarah and start dunking people in the lake. I wished Ma would tell him so.

  Word traveled through the crowd that something was happening. They all stood, craning their necks, trying to get a glimpse of the Savior’s mother. From my vantage point, I could only see the back of her, but Peter and James’s faces told some of the story. Wariness replaced relief with consternation not far behind. Peter tended to get red when he was excited while James, I noted, got paler. Although I could hear their voices; even pick out whose was whose, I could not get the words. But I caught the shift from interrogation to exhortation. The men’s gestures grew more and more agitated, but when they started to advance on her, I became alarmed. What had we been thinking to let her go outside the gates alone? Confirming my fears, James and Peter each took hold of one of her arms, while they went on stabbing the air with their free hands. I stood up and was about to shout at the men, distract them at the very least, when suddenly Peter and James stumbled backwards and might have fallen if those behind them hadn’t caught them.

  I wished I could see Ma’s face; to judge by the crowd’s response it must be terrifying. It would not be too strong to say that they cowered before her. When she began to sing, it was as if the rocks sang or the sea or the wind or maybe a bird of prey piercing the sky with its cry. Every word rose, clear and sere.

  I am Miriam

  my name means bitterness

  and I have mourned,

  mourned beyond comfort,

  for the Lord God has dealt bitterly

  with his handmaiden.

  I am Miriam

  my name means rebellion

  and now I say no,

  no one shall take from me

  the daughter of my son.

  I am Miriam

  my name means bitter rebellion

  and I am who I will be.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and when people began to make signs to ward off evil or contagion of madness, I could not entirely blame them. Peter recovered himself and began to advance on Miriam, praying loudly—and if he had the papal paraphernalia his successors enjoyed, he would no doubt have brandished a crucifix at her. Just as I was about to run to get help for Miriam, a woman at the edge of the crowd caught sight of me.

  “Look, up there. It’s the whore! It’s the baby stealer!”

  As the crowd lifted up its collective countenance, Miriam must have made her getaway. No one looked in her direction again while I stood there transfixed, not having the sense to duck or retreat, until someone hurled something in my direction. It grazed my cheek and skittered over the roof, too light to be a stone. I bent and saw that it was a dry fig. I laughed, maybe a little maniacally, at how fitting it was to be pelted with figs as I had once tossed a whole apronful at my beloved when he was teaching at the Temple. Crouching again, I peered over the wall again to see Peter, to his credit, calming the crowd. I gather he decided they should pray for me, for soon a pious caterwauling began.

  “Red.” Dido found me and crawled towards me so as to keep out of sight herself. “What are you thinking? Get down from here at once. Your daughter is crying for you.”

  Crying for me! Nothing else mattered. My daughter needed me. Not Ma, not Jesus, not James, not Peter. No one but me. I scrambled after Dido as fast as I could.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HOLY HUBBUB

  I STAYED AWAY FROM THE ROOF for the rest of the day and narrowed my focus to Sarah, giving myself over to the illusion that as long as she was in my arms and we were within the walls of Temple Magdalen, we would be safe, all would be well. My friends, though less sanguine, were at a loss for what else to do. We were fresh out of suitable emissaries.

  And then Paulina showed up at Temple Magdalen, hopping mad. Literally. She could not keep still, even to admire Sarah, who was, perhaps, not at her best, howling with a late afternoon bout of colic. Or maybe it was just the effect of Paulina’s agitated presence.

  Like Peter, Paulina was getting red in the face, but the two patches on her cheekbones were rather becoming, especially with her black hair. She appeared quite youthful and fetching for a Roman matron and mother of three. She had always looked ripe and voluptuous, even when I first met her as a nineteen-year-old technical virgin. And she had always had a terrible temper. When I was her slave, the air around her used to hum with the hairbrushes and hand mirrors she threw. She had pulled hair, slapped faces, ordered beatings, and once had someone’s tongue cut out. Life had tempered her temper a bit and true love had mellowed her some, but she could still work herself into a fury. Preoccupied with Sarah, I didn’t pay her much attention, though I rather enjoyed her rage, the way you might enjoy hearing thunder in the background.

  “Three days!�
�� she said for the hundredth time. “Three days ago she was born, and no one sends word to me? After I just saved your life—again! How many times is it now?”

  “Probably about as many times as you nearly got me killed,” I said, trying to coax Sarah back to the breast.

  “Give that baby to me,” ordered Paulina. “She’s not going to nurse now; she’s got gas. I’ll walk her.”

  Defying conventions of her class, Paulina had nursed all her babies herself and proved to be a very good mother, despite—or perhaps because of—having lost her own mother at the age of four, not to death but to exile for adultery. Now Paulina expertly took charge of Sarah, holding her upright, facing out, her arm applying just the right amount of pressure to Sarah’s belly. She bounced her gently as she continued to pace.

  “And what on earth is that rabble doing outside. I had to have an armed escort to get through. I couldn’t even tell what language they were speaking. They were gabbling like hysterical chickens about to go to the block. And some of them were fainting and twitching and even frothing a bit. I do hope they’re not diseased. What is going on?”

  “Oh, it’s just the Holy Spirit coming upon them,” I said. “They’re speaking in tongues.”

  “What tongues? What are you talking about? Who are they?”

  “Didn’t you recognize Peter?”

  “Should I know him?” Paulina was momentarily disconcerted; knowing the right people was one of the things she did best.

  “He’s one of Jesus’s best friends. They’re calling themselves apostles now. Anyway, they are hell-bent on carrying on his work, even if they don’t agree what it is.”

  “Oh, well, my dear. You know I was fond of your Jesus, but I never did understand how he could tolerate all those hangers on—or how you could.”

  I just shrugged. I wasn’t going to get into it with her. I didn’t have the energy. It looked like Sarah was winding down, and getting sleepy again. I just wanted to hold her and drift off myself, but as long as Paulina was here there was no hope of that.