But the four of us who traveled with Jesus had been a circle within a circle, sharing the hardships of life on the road, picking nits out of each other’s hair. And on Mount Hermon we had all slipped through time together and entered the temple of a goddess even older than Isis. Divisions between one way and another had not always been as clear as Mary B was now insisting. Sometimes you followed a path and found yourself somewhere you never imagined existed. Mary B herself had once defended the idolatrous images I’d painted in the Upper Room. We had celebrated our last Pesach surrounded by them.
What has become of us? I wanted to ask Mary, the women who had followed Jesus all the way to the cross. The soldiers had called us sorry-ass whores and made jokes about Jesus having a whole brothel trailing after him. How was it that the men who had scattered then in terror of arrest had now banded together full of zeal and purpose and we had gone forward or back (as Mary B had put it) to our separate lives? These questions remained teetering unasked at the tip of my tongue. Finally Mary rose to leave.
“Stay the night, Mary,” I urged her. “The caves are warm or you can spread a bedroll on the roof.”
“No, Mary,” she said. “My place is with the ecclesia.”
“But Mary,” I pressed her. “Where is the ecclesia? What is it really? Didn’t he tell us that whenever we ate or drank together, he would be with us? Wasn’t he here with you and me at Temple Magdalen tonight?”
She didn’t answer. It was too dark to see her clearly, but I could feel the intensity of her eyes.
“Why does his Way have to be any more complicated than that?” I asked.
“Because,” I could hear her trying to suppress her exasperation, “If that’s all we ever did, no one would remember him. No one would remember his teachings. No one would remember his story.”
“But why not? We can tell his story; we can pass it down one to another as stories always have been. I’ll tell the story. You’ll tell it. We all will. There are lots of stories about him, and we each knew him, know him in a different way. If that’s what you mean, well, maybe I will visit the ecclesia when Sarah’s a little older. I will tell the story, too.”
“Mary,” she said, her scant supply of patience exhausted. “Unless you repent of idolatry—yes, idolatry—give up being a pagan priestess, no one will listen to your story. No one will believe you. It is hard enough for those of us who know you, and, well, love you,” she said grudgingly, “hard enough for us to believe in you. Hard to believe that Jesus chose you, married you, forgave you when you defiled yourself and him.”
“He told so many stories about forgiving people, why should his forgiving me seem strange?” I said, but without much energy. It was not the first time my story could not be heard, because it wasn’t the story people had decided to tell.
“It just is, Mary. It’s a mystery. But do we want the story of his love for you to be one of the mysteries of the ecclesia? Do we want it to be an article of faith? Those are the kinds of questions you’re forfeiting your right to answer by hiding out in a whorehouse.”
“I see,” I said, and I did, but I still didn’t know what to do about it. “What will you tell the men, Mary? About Sarah.”
“What can I say?” she sighed. “That you have given birth to a healthy daughter. To Jesus’s daughter. Having seen her, I do not doubt that she is his. It’s not that she looks like him; it’s the way she looks at you, into you. Her eyes.” she paused. “And I will have to tell them that you are as stubborn as ever.”
I strained my ears, but I could hear no smile in her voice.
“Will you make a recommendation to them?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, something like, go back to Jerusalem. Let Mary of Magdala alone.”
Mary B was silent for a moment. I could hear the spring flowing in the dark making its way over and then underground out to the lake. It cared nothing for walls.
“I will make no recommendation. Of any kind,” she said at last. “I will leave for Jerusalem at daybreak. I’m needed there.”
“Will you at least tell Susanna and Salome and Martha and Lazarus about Sarah? Will you give them my love?”
“I will,” she said stiffly. “I wish I could also tell them that you will be coming to Jerusalem to purify yourself at the Temple and to make a thank offering. Oh, Mary,” she made one last appeal. “Couldn’t you do that much in memory of him?”
“Mary.”
I just said her name and embraced her, trying to banish the sudden chill of foreboding that had come over me. Crushed between us, Sarah woke and began to fuss. Mary turned without another word and slipped out the gate.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BRAWL
“BUT OF COURSE we will observe the Navigium Isidis as we always do!” Dido insisted one night as we all sat together after the evening meal. “We are her priestesses. It is our duty.”
“And the fishermen love it,” added Berta. “They have come to depend on it.”
“Not to mention the tavern keepers,” added Reginus. “People come from all over the lake. We have our reputation to maintain.”
It was true. Since the founding of Temple Magdalen, our adaptation of Isis’s spring festival, originally for the blessing of ocean going vessels carrying grain, had become a popular local holiday that rivaled Purim, with which it sometimes coincided. This year the two riotous spring rites fell about a week apart.
“You can’t process through that sanctimonious rabble outside our gates!” protested Judith. “The lot of you all tarted up, singing hymns to your almighty goddess, switching your hips and rattling the sistrum as you go. Holy Moses! You’re asking for trouble. And you can forget about the pig roast afterwards. Just forget it!”
“Liebling.” Berta laid a soothing hand on Judith’s arm. “You know we never cooked pork inside the walls. Besides, we haven’t had a pig roast since the pigs across the lake killed themselves, poor things.”
She sighed wistfully. A northern Barbarian, Berta was fond of pig. She was also being tactful by not mentioning the cause of the mass swine suicide and of the subsequent estrangement between the Gadarene pig farmers and Temple Magdalen. You see, when word got out that the Temple Magdalen whores were harboring the crazy Jewish sorcerer who had sent two thousand pigs running mad over a cliff—and worse, when a prominent priestess married him not long after the debacle—well, let’s just say we lost our connection for barbeque.
“Unclean meat or no unclean meat,” Judith shrugged, “I say we call off the party this year. People will understand. They know what we’re up against here.”
“Exactly,” said Dido. “And if we don’t carry on with our sacred rites and public obligations, people will know that we are afraid, that we have been conquered.”
Dido chose that word with purpose, for every one of us, including Judith, knew what it meant to be conquered. Never mind that the people outside our gates had also known their share of oppression nor were powerful in any conventional sense. That was not the point.
“What do you think, liebling?” Berta asked me. “You are the one they hate the best.”
I noticed Berta’s cheerful wording.
“And you are a founding priestess,” Dido added. “Speak.”
I looked at Dido’s beautiful stern face. Would it be taking the easy way out to defer to her, or would it be merely respectful to acknowledge that she had—or ought to have—greater authority than me. Founding priestess or not, I had left the Temple to wander with Jesus. Dido was the one who had reluctantly let me go and fiercely asserted that the Temple would go on without me. Yet the Temple could never have functioned as smoothly as it did without Judith, either. I suddenly felt ashamed that I had run back to the Temple so blindly, putting my friends at risk and creating conflict among them.
“I don’t want to cause trouble,” I began.
“Oh, Red, get real!” Reginus blew a raspberry. “You are trouble. You have been since I’ve known you, and from what I hear you were t
rouble long before that.”
“That is something she and our rabbi had in common,” said Judith thoughtfully. “Or maybe I should say have in common. I wonder what would Jesus do?”
There was a silence as the whores, homosexuals, idolaters and a couple of not very clean Jews gave themselves over to that famous question.
“We will process,” my voice wavered between a statement and question. “And bless the boats as usual.”
“You will go with us, liebling?” asked Berta.
“If you go, I go, but of course not with Sarah. It’s too dangerous. She can stay with her grandmother.”
“She cannot!” Miriam suddenly materialized. That’s what it felt like, as though she were a mist or a vapor that could go anywhere and take form at will. “For I will be leading the procession.”
“Mother of god!” a collective groan went up.
“Well then, the princess will stay with me,” Judith reached for her in anticipation. “We will make a lovely feast—but no pigs, right, my little lamb?”
I wondered, a little nervously, why it is that babies always make people think of succulent things to eat? But Sarah apparently approved, and she smiled and gurgled with delight as Judith gave her a smacking kiss on her round belly.
The day of Navigium Isidis dawned bright with lively, changeable breezes making crisscross paths over the water. White linen was the traditional garb for priestesses of Isis on holy days, but Magdala was a gaudy town, and the fishermen’s boats had sails in festive colors, so we were equally tricked out. We all wore ankle bells and hip wraps jangling with coins, and crowns of fresh flowers in our hair, and those of us who had cleavage (most) stuck sprigs of flowers there as well. Like any great goddess, Isis had a range of appeal. To some devotees she was a wife and mother supreme, a paragon of womanly virtue. Some women (who perhaps didn’t like being married all that much and who could blame them) took vows of periodic celibacy in her name. But our own Temple Magdalen worshipped Isis the Whore who had served ten years in the Temple of Astarte in Tyre during her long search for her murdered beloved.
As we assembled by the spring and formed our procession, I found I shared Judith’s misgivings. To the assembly of pious Jesus-proclaiming Jews camped outside we would be a waking, walking (not to mention dancing and singing) nightmare come to life in broad daylight. I doubted it would help matters that the Mother of the Savior, heading up the procession as threatened, had as her escort a Roman queer in full drag topped off with a blonde wig. But apparently someone had warned the ecclesia what to expect. When Temple Magdalen opened its gates and spewed forth its abominations, the Followers of the Way were ready.
“Listen to this saying, you cows of Magdala,” a loud authoritative voice rose over the rattling of our sistrums. “The Lord God has sworn by his holiness: Look the days will soon be on you when he will use his hooks to drag you away and fishhooks for the very last of you; through the breaches of the wall you will leave, each one straight ahead, and be herded away towards Hermon, declares Yahweh.”
Those were the days before people brandished placards and chanted crude rhyming slogans. First century demonstrators didn’t need them; they had whole scrolls of scripture by heart. Though Mary B wasn’t there to identify chapter and verse, I knew our opponents were assailing us with quotations from the frothiest (as in foaming at the mouth) of the prophets.
“I shall turn your festivals into mourning and all your singing into lamentation; I shall make you wear sacking round your waist and have all your heads shaved.” Another man started up after the first shouter finished his passage.
I thought it best to keep my eyes straight ahead, but I didn’t recognize the voice of either man. It did occur to me to wonder where Peter might be. I would have thought he would be leading the protest.
“Sing ‘I am the goddess’!” commanded Dido as we forced our way through their ranks to the path along the shore. “Loud!”
“I am the goddess, mistress of the land,” we began our more or less joyful noise.
It is I who created the unbreakable laws.
It is I who divided the earth and heaven.
As we sang and processed, more solemnly than was our custom, the followers of the way followed us or ran ahead, planting themselves among the holiday crowds, taking turns denouncing us. They were so coordinated as they popped up, now on the left, now on the right of us that I began to think they had rehearsed. We became part of the performance, as if our song was a part of a call and response duet:
It is I who charted the stars.
It is I who set the moon and sun overhead.
It is I who ordered the tides.
“She must remove her whoring ways from her face and her adulteries from between her breasts, or I shall strip her and expose her naked as the day she was born.”
And we sang on:
It is I who brought men and women together
and I who created all the mysteries.
It is I who made justice stronger than wealth,
and I who designed penalties for evil.
“I shall put an end to her merrymaking, her festivals, her New Moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts. I shall make her vines and fig trees derelict of which she used to say, ‘these are the pay my lovers gave me.”
I thought anxiously of Temple Magdalen’s vines and fig trees as I went on singing:
It is I who first created mercy,
and I who mete it out.
But mercy was the last thing on the Followers’ minds—or should I say Stalkers.
“I shall turn them into a jungle: wild animals will feed on them. I mean to make her pay for her feast-days on which she burnt incense to the Baals, when she tricked herself out in earrings and necklaces to chase after her lovers and forget me! declares Yahweh.”
But there was worse to come:
“As for Jezebel, the dogs will eat her in the field of Jezreel; no one will bury her.”
We sang bravely.
I am queen of earth and wind and sea,
queen of thunder, queen of the sun.
But they shouted louder, and in case we had missed the point, they made it more pointed.
“The dogs will eat the flesh of the whore of Magdala. The corpse of the Magdalen will be like dung spread on the fields, so that no one will be able to say: This was Mary of Magdala.”
No need to get personal, I wanted to object, but I did not miss a note:
Only I can overcome fate.
Only I can overcome death.
Just as we entered the town, someone broke from the crowd and hurtled towards me so quickly, I couldn’t see who it was till she was upon me, hanging on my neck, speaking urgently into my ear.
“Turn around! Turn around now. Don’t go on to the docks.”
“Priscilla!” Yes, it was Peter’s wife. “What’s happening?”
“There’s no time to explain now. Just call them back.”
And she turned and disappeared into the crowd.
“Dido!” I called, but she couldn’t hear me over the singing and the shouting.
What’s more, as we neared the gate of the town, the crowd pressed behind us and pushed us into the street that led to the docks. Always bustling, Magdala today was thronged for the holiday. Many people were already drunk, including Paulina (Isis, creator of mercy, mete some out quick!) who I spotted shoving people out of the way and lurching to join our procession, with a large contingent from her own household.
While many wives throughout time have viewed whores with hostility and suspicion, Paulina had always been a whore wannabe. She regarded the Navigium Isidum as the perfect opportunity to indulge her fantasies. The Temple Magdalen whores looked positively staid and matronly by contrast. We at least wore full-length tunics whereas Paulina was in Roman brothel-wear—a short filmy garment that saucily mocked the toga. If there were such a thing as pagan saints and martyrs, I would mount a campaign to canonize Lucius for suffering Paulina. But at that moment I deplored his
virtues and heartily wished he were a tyrannical husband who would keep Paulina locked in her room and perhaps beat her now and then.
“I am the goddesh,” she caterwauled off key as she smashed into our ranks. “I created the lawsh, yeah, an’ you better obey ‘em.”
“Paulina!” I grabbed her arm and pinched it hard. “Sober up!”
“Whash yr problem, Red? What’s the point of being a priestessh if you can’t have a little fun? Might as well be Jewsh.”
“See the filthy Roman whore of Babylon!” one the protesters howled, not illogically as Rome was the new Babylon. “See her dressed in purple and scarlet, glittering with gold and jewels and pearls, holding a gold wine cup filled with the disgusting filth of her prostitution!”
For those of you who recognize the passage, no, the Book of Revelations would not be written for another twenty years or so. But its muse was even now weaving through the streets of Magdala, and she certainly looked the part. Perhaps you were assuming that I inspired the lurid description of “the great prostitute.” Alas, I must give credit where it’s due.
“What did you shay about me?” Paulina wobbled in her denouncer’s direction, but I grabbed hold of her and yanked her back.
“Paulina, don’t talk to them.”
“But he shaid something about me, Red. Was it nashty or nishe?”
“Mother of prostitutes,” the man shrieked (a man shrieking is not a pretty sound). “And mother of all the filthy practices on the earth. You are drunk, drunk with the blood of martyrs, drunk with the blood of Jesus!”
“Eew, thash disgushting, Red! Red, he shaid I was drunk. I think I will have the man shcourged. Maybe crushified. Yeah. Lemme call my guards. Guardsh!”
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