Poisoned Honey: A Story of Mary Magdalene (10 page)

As if I hadn’t spoken, she went on, “Tobias said, ‘I’m very displeased, Imma. This isn’t the marriage I imagined for my darling Mari.’ And I said, ‘I know, Tobias, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Perhaps you could speak to them.’”

At the thought that my father was still trying to protect me, tears stung my eyes. I ached for him to be with us again, a shield between bad fortune and me. But I also saw a ray of
hope. If Abba appeared to Alexandros, too, he might frighten my brother into obeying him. “Did he say he would speak to Alexandros?”

“Mm … did he?” said Safta vaguely. “I can’t say that he did. He wanted me to tell him the old story of Miryam’s Well.” She smiled fondly. “Tobias loves to listen to my stories.”

During the weeks before the fever, my wedding to Nicolaos had glided toward me like a sailboat. Now my wedding to Eleazar rushed at me like a boulder bouncing down the cliffs of Mount Arbel. The thought of my wedding day made me feel like screaming and running out the gate. I wondered if Esther in the story had felt like this as her cousin Mordecai delivered her to the king of Persia’s palace.

The only thing that steadied me was the way my family treated me now. They didn’t speak directly of the sacrifice I was making, but they were respectful and gentle with me.

The night before the wedding, my mother took me aside. “Do you understand, Mariamne, that you must submit to your husband?”

“Yes, yes,” I said, looking at the floor. “I won’t argue with him. I’ll control myself.”

Imma sighed. “Pay attention,” she said sharply. “This is
important. I’m talking about the marriage bed. A wife must not refuse her husband, whatever he wishes to do.”

The strange tone in Imma’s voice made me look at her. She seemed distressed, as if she were commanding me to jump off a cliff. “What will he do?” I asked. That was a willfully ignorant question; after all, I’d had a good idea what Nicolaos would have done.

“It will be unpleasant,” Imma went on without really answering me. “Try to think of it as bitter medicine. When we had the fever, Safta gave us medicine, and we drank it down, didn’t we?”

I nodded. I remembered the vile taste of that herbal brew, even though I’d been delirious at the time.

“Yes,” said Imma. “So just remember that you’re doing your duty as a wife, and surely the Lord will reward you. As the saying goes, ‘A good wife makes a good husband.’” The tender tone in her voice made me tremble. If my mother felt sorry for me, my sacrifice was even greater than I’d thought.

The morning of the wedding, Susannah came to take part in the preparations. She and Imma, Safta, and Chloe all helped me dress. I sat numbly on a stool while my grandmother combed my hair over my shoulders. The locks hung down to my waist.

“Look how Mari’s hair shines!” exclaimed Susannah. “It’s like polished acacia wood against the white robe.”

“Yes, how proud we are of our bride!” said Safta. “She’s as beautiful as Queen Esther.”

My mother set the pointed headdress on my head. “Mari is a good, good daughter,” she said, “and that makes her beautiful in my eyes.”

Chloe lifted a veil bordered with flowers over my headdress. “Wear this with my loving wishes, sister.” She
looked at me with awe, as if I were indeed a queen and she my grateful subject.

“There, now,” said my mother, pushing bangles onto my wrists and ankles. “The wedding litter is waiting in the courtyard.”

At her words, something roused in me, and I clutched the stool with both hands.
No. No!
I felt as if I’d been sleepwalking and awakened to find myself teetering at the edge of a cliff.

“Mariamne,” said my mother. “Come … it’s time to go.”

“No!” I burst out. I would not,
could
not marry that hideous, smelly old man. “Don’t make me go!”

“You have to go.” Imma grabbed my arms and pulled me off the stool. “You are betrothed in the sight of the Lord. Think of your family’s honor. Do you want your mother to be ashamed that she ever bore such a willful, wicked daughter? Do you want to dishonor your dead father, may he rest in peace?”

I collapsed at Imma’s feet, hugging her ankles. “I
love
my family!” I sobbed. “Just let me stay—even as a servant in this house! As a slave!”

“Oh, Mari,” said Chloe in a shocked tone. Susannah stared with one hand over her mouth.

My mother glared down at me for a moment, but then she said briskly, “Talk is useless. She needs something to calm her down.” Prying my hands away, she went into the kitchen shed.

But Safta stooped beside me and laid her cool hands on my cheeks. “Mari, Mari, Mari. Shh, little lamb. It’s a terrible shame, but try to see the bright side. I predict that this marriage will be only the hard shell of a sweet almond for you.”

Surprised, I lifted my tear-streaked face. “What do you mean, Safta?” Was she hinting that I’d come to love Eleazar bar Yohannes?

“What I mean,” said my grandmother cheerily, “is that old men don’t live forever. Did you know that my own sister’s first husband was older than our father? He died before they even had children.”

“Mother-in-law!” exclaimed my mother, reappearing with a cup of dark liquid. “What kind of talk is this?” She held the cup to my lips.

I sipped cautiously. It was strong and sweet, and I drank it down.

Ignoring Imma, my grandmother went on, “She was left with her bride-gift, and then she married a younger man, someone almost as nice as your father.”

At the mention of my father, my eyes filled with tears again. Abba! How could he have died and left me to pull the family out of debt and disgrace?

Safta squeezed my hand with both of hers. “Take heart, Mari.”

Gulping a last sob, I nodded and stood up. As the honeyed
wine rose to my head, it seemed that perhaps Imma was right. The honor of my family was at stake. Eleazar could be worse. And perhaps Safta was right, too. Maybe I wouldn’t have to put up with my old husband for long. But aside from that, how could I have forgotten my higher purpose? Like Queen Esther, I was saving my people from disaster.

They wiped my face and straightened my crumpled robes. I left my family’s house with my bridal jewelry jingling.

On my wedding night, I didn’t sleep well. You may think I mean because of my husband’s attentions, and indeed that was unpleasant. I tried to take my mother’s advice. Lying with this stranger, this old man, I told myself, was only a cup of bitter medicine.

But the worst part was afterward, when Eleazar fell asleep and I lay awake. I longed to creep out of my husband’s bed and somehow find myself back in my cot next to Chloe.

Eleazar’s bedchamber felt strange, even in the dark. His snores echoed from the walls, and the stuffing in his mattress smelled—not bad, exactly, but different from mine. I couldn’t sink into sleep the way I used to at home, as if I were sinking right through the bed into the dream world. I lay on the surface, trying not to wiggle and wake my husband.

Thinking again about my mother’s advice, something disturbed me. My mother had spoken as if the wedding night
would naturally be “bitter medicine” for the bride. Did that mean that she, too, had lain sleepless and miserable on her wedding night? Could lying with my father have been bitter medicine for her?

I’d known, of course, that my father was several years older than my mother, but I’d never wondered what she’d thought of that. Now I remembered her remark, after my first
mikvah
, about young love—she hadn’t been talking about my father. Somehow, it made me feel even worse, the possibility that young Tabitha, my imma, had been as unhappy about marrying Abba as I was about marrying Eleazar.

The next morning, I did my best to find my place in Eleazar’s household. I helped him dress; I followed him downstairs, intending to set breakfast before him. As I peered into the unfamiliar pantry, Chava appeared at my elbow.

“Good morning, Daughter-in-law,” I said politely. Strictly speaking, Chava was only my husband’s daughter-in-law, not mine, but it seemed friendlier to greet her that way.

Chava squinted at me as if she couldn’t imagine whom I was talking to. Then she replied, “Good morning, Father-in-law’s wife.” Reaching past me into the shed, she nudged me out of the way, filled a plate with bread and olives, and took it to Eleazar.

Eleazar didn’t seem to care, or even notice, who brought
him his breakfast. He ate quickly and went out the gate, leaving me to wonder why Chava was so unfriendly to me. Maybe she thought I wouldn’t be willing to do my part in the household work? To show her that I was, I followed her around the house, watching her polish brass and swat flies and cut up meat for a stew. But each time I tried to help, Chava waved me away.

So it went until noontime, when Eleazar returned. Of course I knew that the master’s feet must be washed, but I expected that one of the serving women would do it, as Yael did in our household. Then, when Eleazar sat down on a bench, I realized that none of the servants were in the courtyard; Chava had managed to send them away just as Eleazar walked through the gate.

I supposed then that Chava would wash Eleazar’s feet, since she’d been taking chores away from me all morning. But after greeting Eleazar, she busied herself with something in the kitchen shed.

Eleazar looked at me as if he was trying to be patient. “Wife, bring the basin,” he said. I opened my mouth to answer that I didn’t know where it was kept, but Chava handed it to me. With a prim expression, she also gave me a pitcher of water and hung a towel over my arm.

I knelt in front of Eleazar and untied his sandals and set
them aside. The sandals smelled as if he’d been walking in the gutter. As I placed the basin under his feet and poured the water, I tried not to stare at his toenails. They were as yellow as chicken feet. I poured more water over his hands, offered the towel to dry them, and dried his feet.

Chava then stepped forward to serve Eleazar his midday dinner of stew and bread. He looked pleased, and as he ate, he said, “Wife, listen to Chava. She knows how the household should be run.”

After all had eaten and taken midday naps, Eleazar left again. Chava brought out a handloom and began to thread it. The other women of the family appeared in the courtyard. The wife of Hiram, Eleazar’s half brother, came out with her two smaller children and a nursemaid. And there were two women I had only glimpsed at the wedding: Eleazar’s widowed cousin and her slow-witted daughter, who was carrying a spindle and a basket of wool.

This felt a little more comfortable to me. In my family, too, the women gathered in the courtyard in the afternoons to do handwork and chat. I fetched my embroidery basket and took out a partly worked scarf. As I stitched, I gazed around the compound. Two smaller dwellings formed the second and third sides of Eleazar’s courtyard, and the private
mikvah
and the livestock shed made the fourth.

The women began to gossip among themselves. At first, I
asked a question or made a remark now and then. But each time I spoke, the slow-witted girl laughed. Chava raised her eyebrows, looking at us as if we were two of a kind. She exchanged knowing smiles with Hiram’s wife and the cousin. Following Chava’s lead, the other women ignored me or replied in an off-putting way.

I gave up on trying to join the conversation. Poking my embroidery needle back and forth, I ached to be in my family’s courtyard with Chloe and our grandmother. I was no more part of this family, I thought, than was the lizard on the courtyard wall. Even the slow-witted girl seemed to be at home here, busily spinning her wool. I noticed glumly what a nice, even thread she was able to spin, though her mouth hung open and she breathed noisily.

It dawned on me that Chava might have told the other women something to make them dislike me. Recalling how I’d come here thinking of myself as Queen Esther, I felt hot with anger and shame. Instead of the queen in Eleazar’s house, it seemed, I was the new hen in a flock of chickens. Chava, the chief hen, led the others in pecking me.

That was my first day in the house of Eleazar bar Yohannes. Each day that week went on in much the same way, except that one afternoon Chava’s niece, Daphne, came to visit. As Chava and her niece embraced, their sheeplike faces looked almost attractive.

The other women smiled at Daphne and included her in their chatter, and I wished for some friendly company of my own. Why didn’t Chloe visit? When it was Nicolaos I was going to marry, she’d been so eager.

The afternoon before the Sabbath, Hiram’s wife brought news from the market about a storm on the lake the previous night: “They say several fishing boats went down.” Forgetting to ignore me, she asked a direct question. “Did your family lose any boats, Mariamne?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I was worried. As part of their sardine business, my family owned boats. They rented the boats to fishermen, and the fishermen turned over a portion of their catch in payment. Each boat was an expensive piece of property, protected by good-luck herbs tied to the mast and lucky pebbles in the ballast. Losing even one of those boats would hurt the business.

I was seized with longing to find out what was happening with my family. They seemed so far away although they were only on the other side of town. I beckoned to the servant by the gate. “Go quickly to the house of Alexandros bar Tobias and ask if they lost any fishing boats in the storm.”