The Secret Magdalene

by Ki Longfellow

  I expect to hear John of the River. It is always John who makes this much noise, and who presumes such obedience, but it is not. At a single word from Yeshu, the eight stop as if they were tied round the waist and had come to the end of their rope. And in this moment, though I understand nothing else, I understand now that it is Yeshu to whom they listen. It is this brother of all the brothers who leads these men. Yeshu is not only Sicarii; he commands Sicarii!

  Yeshu walks forward, shadowed by Jude. The shouting men of the long room make way for him as he comes to stand with John the Baptizer. Yeshu’s is not the face of a man confused by his thoughts or pained by his feelings; it is that of a man full in command of himself and of others. There is no hesitation, no indecision. “No one comes with me this night, but four of my choosing. One of these is my brother Jude, and another is my cousin Simeon.” There is a muffled cry from Simeon’s plump wife, Bernice, but a scornful Maacah shushes her. “I take another to guide us through the city streets, and into the Fortress of Antonia, but this one shall be neither of the sons of Judas of Galilee, for Simon and Jacob are too well known to the authorities in Jerusalem. Nor shall it be you, Peter, for you are needed here in my stead.” Peter, standing very near me, has been grinding his teeth (surely how he broke his eyetooth), but at this his face brightens. He punches Andrew on the arm with the joy of pride. Yeshua finishes what he has been saying. “That one shall be Seth as no one knows Jerusalem better than he.”

  I look at Seth, though he does not look at me. A philosopher is needed to guide them into the Fortress of Antonia? Antonia not only billets the soldiers of Rome, it is the Roman jail. If a philosopher were caught nearby, he might be beaten. Having already escaped the jail of Herod Antipas in the new city of Tiberius, if Yeshu and Jude are caught, they might be killed, for Sicarii are crucified.

  “Who is the fourth man, Yeshu’a?”

  Jacob the Just asks this. Clearly, Camel Knees expects to be that fourth man.

  “John the Less.”

  I do not gasp alone; there is surprise on every face, none more so than on Jacob’s. Unless it be in Peter’s. On the faces of some, there is dismay, on one or two, anger, on more than two, envy. I do not understand what I see in the eyes of Salome.

  “We leave in the hour.”

  Yeshu steps through a side door into a private courtyard, followed by John, Simon Magus, Dositheus, and Jude. Helena hurries after them. At this, there is a sudden and silent turning back to what is at hand. The men disappear in a dozen directions; all seem to know why. The women struggle to lift something from the floor. I am left dazed, until Peter shoves his face in mine. His breath stinks as ever. As a serpent, he hisses, “You mistake much if you think Yeshu’a loves you better than he loves me!” He pushes me aside so he might rejoin his brother in the larger courtyard, and I stumble sideways into Seth. Seth! The one man who does not shout and does not push for place and does not think with his mouth before his mind. I would take his hand, but I remember myself. Instead, I content myself with a mere touch on his dusted sleeve. “What happens here? All save me seem to know.”

  Seth enfolds me in his arms; he embraces me—Seth does this! He means to comfort me, but instead I am frightened. He is covered with the dust and the dirt of the road; he smells of an animal. I know this smell. Only the wealthy have use of horses. He has been riding, hard. “What is it, Seth? What is it that causes all this?” And suddenly I realize a thing I have not allowed myself to see. “Where is Tata? Where is Addai?” Seth holds me all the harder. All the harder, I struggle to pull away. “Where are they?”

  “If you would help them, John, you would act as a man.”

  Seth has brought his mouth close to my ear so that only I might hear him, but I am shaking my head. There is something in me that will not listen, mortally afraid of what it might hear. My mind babbles: I am not a man. I am Mariamne. What has happened to Addai and to Tata that they would need help of me? I look at the bundle the women of the Nazorean struggle to pick up. I think of the red on the clothing of Dositheus. I twist my body in Seth’s arms as if he were a sworn enemy. “Let me go! Let me go!” The long room empties, but here and there a head turns our way. Seth holds me the harder, he whispers my true name in my ear, and what he says then is like the slap of a Roman sword. “Would you betray us, Mariamne? What you see is the body of Heli of the Nazorean.”

  I freeze in his arms. “Heli?”

  “Heli is dead. Tata is wounded and hidden in a house near Heli’s house.”

  I would empty my stomach with fear. I would fall to the ground and rub dirt in my face with fear. “And Addai? Where is Addai?”

  “Addai is taken to the Fortress of Antonia. He will die on a cross tomorrow if we do not free him this night.”

  The last of five cloaked figures, I hurry through the night, retracing my child’s steps from the wilderness up to Jerusalem.

  I think of nothing but Addai and Tata. Is Tata’s wound fatal? Does she suffer? I cannot bear that she should suffer. But by the stars of Joor, why came she to Jerusalem? To set foot in Jerusalem was to risk becoming a slave again to Father, or worse. Addai is to be crucified? How could this be so? Why would the Romans take such a man? Eloi! Why crucify sweet Addai of Shechem who has done harm to no man? My heart hammers in my chest. I have no spit in my mouth. This cannot happen. To the west there is the bright star, Sopdet, blue as a northern eye, and I offer up a prayer. Lamp of Isis, keep harm from Addai, the best of all good men. Lamp of Heaven, let him hear me and know we come for him.

  All my wonder at this god and that god, and all my scorn, yet the moment I know fear, I call on a goddess. I forget in a trice that I am more than my eidolon. I forget I am my Daemon, own immortal self who does not die and cannot be harmed. I deny my own eternal witness. Nor do I remember, as Seth taught, that the Daemon of Addai does not die and cannot be harmed. In my hurry and fear, I forget everything but love of Addai.

  As we five race to Jerusalem, there is no moon, only stars to light our way. We follow no path. We climb and climb to the heights of the city that David made his own, and in which Solomon built his Temple, following the folds in the barren hills, some of which are as narrow as the streets of Jerusalem and some of which are as deep as tombs. But this time, I am not carried by the very man we go to save; I am myself a man on my own two feet, and though the pace is punishing and the climb long and hard, I have no trouble keeping up with the four ahead of me. I think if need be, I could be there before them. I could do this for Addai if it were twice the distance and twice the height. No one talks, no one does anything but stride through the night. We disturb a group of ibex, mothers and kids, who bleat in surprise to see us, then scramble away. But other than these, there seems no life here but ours.

  Away from sight of the others, Simeon with the hooked nose has given me a curved knife. He tucked it in my belt and clapped me on the shoulder. “In times like these,” said he, “no man should be without a weapon.” Since then, I have kept my hand on its hilt, making sure of it, feeling the weight of it. I try to imagine myself the Indian queen Masaga, riding a war elephant, a lance in one hand and a sword in the other. But such foolishness does not last long; I remember what Seth has told me, that John the Baptizer had gone up to Jerusalem from Jericho by the treacherous road running through the steep-walled Nahal Perat, for it had suddenly entered his head to preach on the very steps of Herod’s Temple. He caused an immediate sensation. Great crowds massed to see such a man. From the inner walls to the outer walls, they gathered from all over Jerusalem. They flocked in from the surrounding countryside: priest and merchant, beggar and farmer and vendor and peasant and scribe, all manner of men and women, and not all of them there to admire him. The great crowds caused the swift appearance of great numbers of Temple police and Roman soldiers. As John had chosen to speak in the Court of Gentiles, this meant Roman soldiers were positioned from the heights of the Royal Basilica to the tops of the colonnades, both to the east and to the west. But there were more eve
n than this, there were some who stood armed among the crowd.

  And when all had come and when there was a sea of faces looking up at him as he stood at the top of the steps leading to the inner precincts of the very Temple itself, John the Baptizer began to speak. He spoke for so long and he spoke so well, there were some who swooned, and some who surged forward to touch him, and some who merely stood where they were, spellbound. There were some who muttered among them and some who shook their fists. And finally there were some who called him king.

  A voice here and a voice there rose up out of the silent mass, calling out, “John is King of the Jews!” Like a wave in the sea, an excitement flowed over the crowd, and with it came more voices, and more, all calling, “John is King of the Jews!”

  In the midst of all, there stood one man, Stephen, a moneychanger who heard more than John. He heard a voice saying, “Stephen, disciple of John! Smite the oppressor!” Pushing through the crowd, Stephen came upon a soldier at his post and seized that which hung at the soldier’s hip, a short thrusting sword. And the soldier, who had not heard a voice saying, “Beware the disciples of John!” went down to his knees at the first blow to the neck and died at the second.

  This Stephen, the moneychanger, lies beaten and bloody in a wretched cell deep under the Fortress of Antonia. And with him lies Addai.

  Addai is there because at the death of a Roman soldier, the crowd panicked. Addai had been near John, had seen the swaying of the crowd near the bottom step, had seen it pull back as one, opening up a small space where there was then only Stephen and the dead soldier. Addai understood at once what he saw, that the new governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, would call this “inciting a riot.” He saw that even though the Romans had always hesitated to touch John for fear of the wrath of the people, this time the new governor had been handed a key to John’s downfall. With the killing of a Roman soldier and citizen, Rome could now act. And when Rome is angry, Rome kills with great passion and it kills at random.

  Immediately, Addai pushed John through the double gate into the Court of Women, the few others with John following on. These included Seth, who had come away with Addai from the building of Queen Helen’s palace when they had heard John was in Jerusalem. It had also included Heli and Dinah. All in all, they were a handful of men, and three women, one of whom was Dinah, the other of whom was Joanna, wife of Chuza, and the last of whom was Tata, her face hidden by a head cloth. Shielding John’s body with their own and following Addai’s unerring lead—for as master stone carver, Addai has intimate knowledge of Herod’s Temple—these made their way quickly into the Chamber of the Nazirites, and from there through a hidden door down into a series of enormous domed halls of unending arches under the platform of the Temple Mount. Avoiding the public Hulda Tunnel, they went deeper, entering into a maze of subterranean passageways. By secret tunnels, each torturous and sly, and most made by order of the great Herod himself, they made their way toward the west wall, and then out into the Valley of the Cheesemakers by a second hidden door that exists in the shadow of the Upper City Bridge. This bridge, and its aqueduct—one long leap from the platform high above them to the streets of Zion, the Upper City to the west—sheltered them as they ducked among the stalls of the nearby Xystus market. From there, it became a matter of moments to seek safety in the house of Heli bar Nehushtan.

  But someone must have seen them emerge from under the Upper City Bridge. Someone must have noted their course. And that someone must have reported it to the authorities, for in no more than an hour from the soldier’s murder, the Romans were at Heli’s door, loudly demanding entrance. By then, John, along with Dositheus and Joanna, had already been hidden in a safe house that stands near the Pool Tower, and there it was intended John wait for the rest to join him so that at the fall of night, all might hurry away from Jerusalem, disappearing into the wilderness as so many had done before. But Addai and Tata, Heli and his wife, Dinah, had remained behind in the house of Heli to gather up certain scrolls of the Nazorean and to take away certain treasured possessions.

  It was Tata who first barred Heli’s door to the Romans, and it was Tata who was first to receive a single hard blow from the hilt of a Roman sword. At this, my beloved Addai did what would spell his doom; as Tata fell, he wrested the sword from the soldier who held it, and raising it up, prepared to bring it down on the next Roman head he saw. Instead, three soldiers at once seized him from behind, bound and gagged him, and led him away in chains. This was not done without a terrible struggle; in the end, the Romans had overrun the fine house of Heli and of his wife, Dinah, destroying what they did not take, setting fire to the library, and leaving Tata for dead. As for Heli, he had been pushed from his own roof into the steep street below, and the fall had broken his neck. And Dinah, rushing away in grief, sought shelter in the house where John hid.

  It was then that Seth, taking horses from his mother’s new stable, delivered John, as well as the body of Heli, from Jerusalem.

  I have known little of death in my life. Too young to feel my mother’s death, I do not even recall it. A priest dying at my feet was a hideous shock, yet no more. But I feel this death; I will remember this death. Heli made me welcome in his home; he opened his library as well as his heart to Salome and to me. To think that he is gone, that it took but a moment of brute rage and a man such as Heli the Nazorean no longer breathes, that a heart such as his no longer beats. That Dinah is a widow…a terrible thing for a woman without issue.

  John the Baptizer is now a hunted man. In the search for John, more than John will die. It is not only Rome that will seek him; so too will the Herodians as a gift to the emperor who gives them their power. So too will the priests of the Temple and the Sanhedrin. These last are the ruling body of the Jews, and to remain in their place, they must answer to Rome. They will do this because they will think it better to kill one Jew than to endanger many Jews. Father is a member of the Sanhedrin.

  I do not cry. Yeshu has given me purpose. Though it is too late for Heli, and perhaps it is too late for Tata, Addai shall not die at Roman hands. Nor shall he die at the hands of my father.

  We have come over the crest of the last hill and stand now looking down into the Kidron Valley. On the far side of the Kidron rises another hill very like this hill and on the crest of that western hill lies Jerusalem. It is only moments past the sixth hour, and the dark fills up the night as water fills a sinking ship. I feel drowned in darkness. Exposed on the top of the eastern hill, which is the Mount of Olives, we scrabble down to a place where we can hide ourselves better. Here, though I can barely see them, I know new tombs and old, dug into the rubbled earth, surround us. I know some are sealed with stones and some are open and waiting. By the faint light of summer stars, it seems an ominous place.

  I grip the hilt of my knife—but what good should a sica do me here?

  Above us shines Sopdet, who is Isis, who is the Virgin, who is Inanna in Heaven, who is the Queen of Sheba, the Queen of the South, “She who is black but beautiful,” and is forever chased by the great red dragon, yet never caught. I take heart from this. Limned against the starry sky, Jerusalem lies as a lion lies, as the Great Sphinx lies, sloping up from tail to head, shadowed and silent and still. The city is sited at the crossing of no major road, is watered by no river, boasts no markets of distinction. Yet it is here; it seems as if it has always been here. This is the first I have seen of my home since I was yet Mariamne, daughter of Josephus, privileged and, I now know, isolated in my happy ignorance. To see it this night with the eyes of John the Less, a scholar taught by scholars in the Great Brucheion Library, is wondrous. I had not known I missed it or what it should feel like to see it again, but something within me keens at the sight.

  Straight ahead is the Gihon Spring Gate flanked by its two massive towers through which passes the Kidron Road, and under which flows the Gihon Spring through Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Behind this towered and gated wall is the lower city where lies Tata, but we do not go there. We are trusti
ng that Rhoda, the servant of Dinah, will nurse Tata as lovingly as Salome and I would. Rising up behind the massed and steeply terraced houses of the poor is a second wall inside the city, and behind this wall is the Valley of the Cheesemakers. Rising up again behind the markets, are the mansions of the rich, which includes Father’s house. To the north, near the Upper City Bridge, is the palace of the Hasmonaeans from whose line Seth is come, and finally, behind all these, stands the palace of Herod the Great with its three tall towers. To our left, the city wall curves round toward the Pool of Siloam and the Rose Gardens where Megas of Ephesus lives, and to our right, the Bridge of the Red Heifer leads from the Roman road to Jericho to the great wall above which is the Temple of Herod, so splendid it astonishes. The Temple is built atop a vast platform of tremendous stone blocks laid over the highest point of land in the city, the holy Mount Moriah, and somehow made absolutely flat. Heron of Alexandria would know how this was done, and so would Salome to whom he taught his applied mechanics, but I do not know. All around the edge of this platform are Corinthian colonnades that look from here exactly like those running the length of the Canopic Way. The eastern colonnade, the very one we stare into, is Solomon’s Portico. Behind this portico is the expanse of the Court of Gentiles, and in the middle of the Court of Gentiles stands the Temple itself, with all its attendant offices. Even in the moonless dark it is as white and as shimmering and as fine as milk. Deep inside this hallowed place is the Holy of Holies where no one is allowed ever to go save the high priest once every year on the Day of Atonement. There lives Yahweh, who is surely the loneliest of all the gods.

  On the southern end of the platform stands the Royal Basilica above the Hulda Gates, and on the northwestern end looms the Fortress of Antonia.