The Secret Magdalene Page 2

  Father signals a slave to remove my plate. “Obviously you are not yet well. Go to bed. Take Salome with you.”

  Running into our room, I fall flat on Salome’s couch. The sense of illness has quickly passed; to know it passes has made me giddy. Speaking in Salome’s Egyptian tongue against those who might listen, my giddiness makes me say, “So near to your treasures, it’s a wonder the Egyptian’s cock did not crow.”

  Salome starts at this, then throws back her head and laughs. Like Father, she is very good at laughing. Father laughs whether he understands a thing or not. Salome laughs from understanding too well. “No matter how old they grow, their snake still lifts its head. Tata told me so.”

  Of course Tata told her. Who else would do so? From Tata we have learned much that would sicken Father should he know of it. In the house of Josephus of Arimathaea—a member of the aristocratic and priestly Sanhedrin!—we have been taught of Egypt’s Isis, she who is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. We know Babylon’s triple goddess Mari-Anna-Ishtar, Canaan’s Astarte, and the Arabian goddesses: Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Al-Manat, who are maiden, matron, and crone. We know too of sublime Inanna, and powerful Demeter, and splendid Aphrodite, and the delicious Venus. If Father were to learn she taught us of these, he would have Tata’s tongue ripped out, Law or no Law. And do we not know these are all one Goddess come to us in her myriad forms for her myriad purposes? Even worse, we also know of magic and ritual power. Tata says that wise women have walked our land, and we would believe her even if Torah did not tell us so. She says there have been powerful women in Sumer and Assyria and Egypt and this must be true as well, for Cleopatra herself is only recently dead, and only the most abysmally ignorant know nothing of the seventh Cleopatra. And what of Megas, mentioned at table, whose love potions and magic spells are known throughout the Roman world?

  As for men, Tata delights to talk of them. She speaks of their seeded staffs, their cocks, and a dozen other silly names. And the poems she knows! Some I blush even to think of. This one: The king goes with lifted head to the holy lap of Inanna—and so forth and so on—is almost more than I can bear, especially now that ever since she told it to us, Salome calls Tata’s special interest a “lifted head.” But this next one stirs my blood and is my favorite. Tata says it was written by a priestess of Ur two thousand years ago. In the bed that is filled with honey, Let us enjoy our love/…My sweet one, wash me with honey.

  If Father only knew what manner of person he has given us as our bawdy nurse and slave! I bless his oversight. Tata has opened our eyes to many things beyond this narrow place. Because of Tata, Father’s world of scripture and Law is not our only world. As females we are not considered worthy of an education, though in Father we are more fortunate than other daughters: we can read and write in Latin as well as Greek, Hebrew, and the common Aramaic. Like boys of privilege, we know the Five Books of Torah by heart. Salome has taught me demotic Egyptian and what she knows of her own Egyptian gods and goddesses. So, though we have no one but Tata and ourselves, our time in Father’s house is full to the brim.

  Sprawled on Salome’s couch, I say, “Ananias has been to more lands than Father. He speaks of Megas…What do you think he meant by secret sects?”

  By now Salome sits naked on a golden stool, looking at her face in a mirror of metal, and combing out her hair. “Palestine is full of secret sects, they come and they go. They hang in their hundreds from crosses along the public roads. But the Romans remain. And the common people remain, to whom all these sects are merely an annoyance. And the rich remain. No matter what happens, there are always the rich. Since we, Mariamne, are the rich, we ought not to complain.”

  I accept that. There is a cruel truth in it. Salome is very good at cruel truths. It is now she chooses to turn from her mirror, to fix me with what she calls her evil eye. “What did you mean by speaking as you did at table, letting them hear one of our voices?”

  It was not one of our voices. But I do not say that. “I did not mean to, Salome.”

  She studies me, then shrugs her shoulders. “Don’t do it again.”

  “I shouldn’t dream of it.” She does not know how much I mean this. I would be more than terrified to hear it again.

  “Good. Now, let us play our game.”

  We do many things my father would not approve of, but the most powerful thing we do is play the game we have invented. Gathering favored stones and anointing each with Salome’s moon blood and my spittle (as yet I have no menstrual blood to offer), on each we have painted a letter of the Greek alphabet. As a weight, we have hung a golden amulet on the end of a slender chain. To play, we arrange our stones on the floor, hold the amulet over the stones, and read out the letters as they come with the swinging of the heavy gold bobble. The letters become words and the words become sentences; that is how it had begun, our voices. For in reading the stones, we began to speak what we read.

  The voices told us right away that they were not gods. Nor were they prophets. Neither were they the dark goddesses of Duat’s fiery pits or the demonic Manes who live under Rome, or Keres, the winged Furies of death. They swore they were not ba’al ‘obot, nor were they dead souls from the crevice of dust, which is Kur. But whatever they are, they speak of things neither Salome nor I understand. For instance, just after my illness, they said, “The One is coming.”

  “One what?” Salome demanded, which is how she asks most questions.

  “One who will herald a kingdom of Light.”

  It was I who had then asked, “Will the One be another voice?”

  “The One comes in body.”

  Since sickness and death took its leave of me, we have argued over what this “One” might look like, who he might be, how he might sound, and what in the world he will herald. We have never agreed on a single thing about him, save this: he will be a he. For as Salome says, of what use would the “One” be as a she? Who would listen?

  I place the stones on a fine linen cloth spread on the floor. I fill the golden bowl from Thrace with oil of myrrh and I light it. We paint our eyes with green copper paint from Sinai like the Temple virgins, the daughters of Aaron. Salome snuffs out all other lamps. She fetches the amulet from our cedar wood coffer and hands it to me. Chewing bitter doghead, we wait, and when the flames blur, and when we hear the sound of silence in our ears, we don our masks. At this point, I always realize how afraid I really am and how calm Salome is. (Though surely nothing could be as fearsome as that which was shown me as I lay ill. I have yet to speak of it, to anyone.) In less than a breath, the bobble is swinging wildly from stone to stone, so quickly we cannot keep up.

  “Slow down!” Salome pinches me. I see she is straining to read the words that come at a dizzying pace. “Mariamne, will you slow down!”

  I am about to protest that I have nothing to do with it. I open my mouth to say so, but out comes the Voice that has just spoken at Father’s table. “POOR SPIRIT THOUGH HE SEEMS, THE MERCHANT ANANIAS IS SENT TO YOU!”

  Salome snatches away my mask. Worse, she grabs a hank of my hair, pulls my face close. “Sent to us?” she says.

  “AS A TRUE HARBINGER OF COMING TIMES!”

  I slam my jaw shut in horror, hold it shut with my hand. Salome is staring at me through the masked eyes of Horus as if I have just broken out in sores.

  “ANANIAS IS COME TO TAKE YOU HOME.”

  It is very hard not to scream. I think what Father would think, what Father does think: Is there a demon in me?

  Pulling off her own mask, Salome spits out her doghead and relights a lamp. “That putrid old man? A harbinger? And I am the sister of Herod the Great.” Then, turning to face her mirror, she speaks in a voice very unlike her usual voice. “What are you!”

  Salome reaches out a hand, comes near to touching the metal surface, snatches her hand away.

  I too look into the mirror and almost swallow my tongue. The surface shows not my face but the face of something akin to a man.

  “You see it! You do se
e it! Is it this night’s voice?”

  I am thinking, by Isis and by Demeter, and by all the goddesses, have we conjured up a demon? At just this moment, the merchant Ananias walks into our rooms from off our private courtyard. How dare he? And what does he want?

  “Is what this night’s voice?” he says in that patronizing tone males reserve for females. And then, noting Salome, who has not covered her body with so much as a hand, he walks closer. Much closer. “What game do my fishes play?”

  Before he can truly see us or our room—the riot of robes and scarves and girdles and tunics falling from our clothes chests, the bottles of Father’s molded glass, the bracelets and anklets and pendants and headbands, the ointments and powders and creams, before he notes the pastes and the potions and the scrolls—there are scrolls everywhere—before he sees the word stones still on the floor, his eyes drop for one fraction of a moment to the surface of the mirror. Oh, how they widen in fear.

  “Get out!” hisses Salome.

  But Ananias is rooted, staring from the shape in the mirror to us, from us to our stones, from the stones to the bowls of water, the scrolls, the vials, back to the shape in the mirror, so stunned that Salome and her treasures are forgotten. His thoughts are pounding in my head. What kind of children are these, he is asking himself, are they full of sorcery? Do they practice kishuf, and do they conjure demons? I know he is thinking we are witches. He is struggling to control himself, to understand how he might use us.

  Salome shoves him out of our room and I slam the door.

  THE SECOND SCROLL

  The Way

  The merchant of sponges visits in Father’s house for a week now. In this time he has happened on Salome and me every day, even if we are in our private quarters or in our small courtyard filled with the scent of limes and Tata’s roses. The excuses he uses! Clever. Funny. Once even plausible.

  Salome is vexed. I too would rather Father’s fat friend had never come to our rooms, never seen what he has seen, but twice now he hints at some secret place he knows, where there are others who share our hidden interests. Ananias says they have much to teach us and would gladly do so, that there are women among them. But Salome asks why anyone would teach marriageable females. What profit is there in such learning?

  “That old man is up to something,” says she. “He may even hope to sell us into slavery.” To which I say, “He would not dare! Father would pour pitch down his throat.” “Josephus,” she replies, “would not know we were gone for at least a week. By then we could be anywhere, for are there not auction blocks everywhere?”

  I find this thought in my mind: How long would it be before Father noticed us missing?

  Tata and Salome and I are out of Father’s house and moving slowly through the sweaty crowds in the small market street. Pushing against the hot stink of poor people, I keep close my alabastron on its silver chain. There is a perfume from India in this alabaster vial, but very little. Even Father, a shipowner who owns a glass making factory, can afford only so much spikenard. As usual, Salome and I are searching for books to add to our collection, books that will teach us what we do not know, or show us something we have not seen, or make us think something we have not thought of ourselves. I do not know about other children, not knowing any other children save my cousins Martha and Eleazar, but this is what lives closest to our hearts and is our greatest joy, the seeking of knowledge.

  Among Tata’s many friends, it is Hermas, a man of far Ephesus, that we eagerly seek. Every kind of strange and fascinating religion flourishes in the city of Ephesus, every kind of fascinating person lives there. To this man goes most of Father’s money, which is, in truth, my mother Hokhmah’s money. At Hokhmah’s death, which I do not remember, Father allowed her to bequeath the whole of her dowry to me, and he administers it scrupulously. Salome’s fortune comes from her own father who is also dead, the victim of some foul Egyptian poisoner. Salome is very interested in poison.

  Today I am eagerly buying a book of Egyptian hekau in Egyptian hieratic writing. There is in this book a magical spell, a talitha kuom, which might help hold the shape in the mirror that still waxes and wanes behind the shine of the metal surface, struggling to come or to go we cannot tell, but we have decided to capture it.

  Plucking our purchase from the hand of Hermes of Ephesus, Salome turns her back on the buyers of fruits and vegetables, on the bleating of the penned sheep, on the hawkers of salted fish and fried locusts, on the beggars and the thieves and the afflicted and the incessant poor, on the loud and constant whine of haggling that goes on all around us. She stands under the umbrella of the merchant of magic and begins to read the spell aloud, and I am in agony that someone might hear. What if a spy for Tiberius lingers near?

  “Eeim to eim alale’p barbariath menebreio arbathisao’th ioue’l iae’l oue’ne’iie mesommisas,” she reads, then switches to Greek. “‘Let the God who prophesies to me come and let him not go away until I dismiss him.’ Oh, this is good, Mariamne, listen! Elpheo’n tabao’th kirasina lampsoure’ iaboe ablamathanalba krammachamarei!”

  “Is there blood involved?” asks Tata, who has not understood a word, either Greek or Egyptian. “Blood is full of power.” She is looking over Salome’s shoulder, and at the same time shielding her from anyone who might take undue interest.

  “No,” says Salome, “but there is dung and there is spittle. ‘Anoint your right eye with water from a shipwreck and the left with Egyptian eye paint with the same water. If you cannot find water from a shipwreck, then from a sunken skiff.’”

  “Dung is good, spittle is better, blood is best” says Tata. It is here that a heavy hand comes down on my shoulder. Ananias! He has come up behind us, sneak that he is. His stink is so unique, I am surprised he has surprised me. Quickly, he reaches for the scroll, but quicker yet I shove it into Tata’s basket.

  Salome moves away, followed by Tata, who is followed by me.

  Ananias follows along behind us, as we all know he will. I look hard at Tata. She is fierce and she is brave. Why does she not shoo him away?

  Neither Salome nor I have the slightest idea how old Tata is, or who her people are. All we know of Tata is what she has been pleased to tell us, and she is pleased to tell us a great deal, but none of it about herself. We do know she is a Jebusite from the blood of the Canaanites. It is written that the Hebrew are sprung from the seed of Abraham and Sarah. It is written that David captured Jerusalem. It is written that David’s son Solomon built the First Temple. But it is also written that long before David and Solomon, and long before Abraham’s god offered him the Land of Canaan, Tata’s people were here.

  When Salome first heard this, and being no more than six years of age, she asked aloud how Abraham’s personal god could offer what was neither his nor Abraham’s, but Tata’s?

  Father first stared at her, then sent her to our rooms.

  Unshooed by Tata, Ananias trots along beside us on fat legs, wheezing as he keeps up with the pace Salome has set. He looks ridiculous. And he never stops talking. “I despaired of the hope,” he is saying, “that Josephus allowed his women out of his house.” Here he wheezes, a long squeaky exhale. “But here you are and here am I, and if we could just go to the end of this street and turn left?”

  It so happens that Salome, now quite a bit ahead of us, but within earshot, does turn left, but whether to please Ananias or by mere happenstance, I do not know.

  We are moving up a steep street beyond the inner wall, each of us following Salome who now seems to be going somewhere, but where? Here the haze of cooking fires and the stench of man and his beasts, and worse, their incessant wastes, is less. We move toward the high white walls of the Temple Mount, which means that the houses crowded on either side of us grow whiter and whiter, which means richer and richer. Salome has turned right. Up ahead there is a terraced rise and on top of that a low wall and in the wall a small and private gate. I am amazed to see Salome pass through.

  Ananias is still babbling away. “Y
es, that’s it, that’s the gate. Now, do you see the third door along? Turn there.” These hills are killing him. If we can just keep moving, he is bound to collapse in a quivering heap and that will be the end of this foolishness.

  By now, my heart beats from more than Salome’s fast pace; it beats from a growing fear that we shall find ourselves slaves in some foreign land, that Salome is walking us, no, running us into a trap. I catch Tata’s eye. For once, it is she who knows my thoughts and alarm darkens her face.

  A woman who waits at the gate has taken Salome’s hand, has pulled her through into a dim passageway. I dash in after them—and come to a sudden halt. We are in a marble courtyard shaded by the sweetest of almond trees. There is a pool of water held in a shell of blue stone and near the pool sits a man as old as Father. A younger man sits at his side. With bankers’ eyes they watch us make our confused and unhappy entrance. What adult is interested in children? Every day, unwanted pagan babies, sometimes even males, are thrown on dung heaps, and only a few of these are plucked from death among the garbage so they might grow into slaves. Yea Balaam! These two must think we shall bring them some fabulous price.

  “Are these the ones spoken of?” the older man asks Ananias.

  “Yes, Heli, these are the two I promised.”

  I look at Salome and she looks at me; we both expect Ananias to name his price now, to collect the money he has earned for bringing us to this slave trader. The man, Heli, is pushing aside Salome’s head shawl. “So young,” he says, “and the other, the taller one?”

  “Younger,” says Ananias.

  “God’s ways are God’s ways. Addai, what do you think?” He asks this of the younger man still seated on the stone bench. “Does the Jebusite woman stay or go?”

  He means Tata, and finally, Tata’s wits are about her. She slips her hand under her cloak seeking the knife I know she carries there.