Poisoned Honey: A Story of Mary Magdalene (15 page)

“That’s it,” I said quickly. “What if madness does run in the family? Could it be dangerous for me to imagine so much?”

Ramla put out her hands in a calming gesture. “It’s not imagining, in itself, that causes madness. Your poor grandmother has let the unseen world master her. To protect yourself, you must disguise yourself when you step into the spirit world. Then any spirits you meet there will be afraid to harm you. And they will not follow you back into this world.”

“Follow me?” I repeated with a shiver. I hadn’t thought of that.

“Oh yes. They can do all kinds of mischief if you let them out. And they’re harder to get rid of than ghosts, which can be driven away with wormwood and gall.”

Ramla’s warning frightened me, and I wondered if it wouldn’t be better to give up dealing with the unseen world entirely. But she insisted that it was perfectly safe as long as I took sensible precautions. “You wouldn’t go on a journey by yourself, would you? Of course not—you’d go with the men of your family, or with a bodyguard, as I do. The words of disguise are a kind of bodyguard, except they fool unfriendly spirits into thinking that
you
are powerful.”

“Can they be fooled so easily?” I asked.

“More easily than you think, my dear Mariamne. That is why I wear the moon headdress and moonbeam robes when I do readings. If I stepped into the spirit world as myself, the spirit powers would not obey me. But when they see me dressed like the goddess Isis, they tremble; they do my bidding.”

That made sense; I remembered how grand Ramla had appeared the first time I saw her.

After Ramla taught me the words of disguise, I left her and went to see Susannah. I found my cousin sitting cross-legged at her loom while Kanarit plucked at her robe and the baby slept fretfully in a basket nearby. Kanarit stopped bothering her mother and tried to climb into my lap, but I put her off with a kiss. “It’s too hot for cuddling. Sit by me here.”

I chatted a few moments with Susannah, and then I began to praise the Egyptian wise woman, as I’d promised. “I
feel so grateful that you introduced me to Ramla,” I said. “She’s helped me so much! And of course, she also helped you.” I nodded toward the baby’s basket.

Susannah, shoving the shuttle through the threads, glanced at me unsmiling. “I wouldn’t say she ‘helped’ me with the baby. Surely that’s close to blasphemy. It’s the Lord who forms the child in the womb.”

I stammered something, startled at her tone. Susannah added, “To tell the truth, I suspect Ramla is an imposter. Did I tell you that before you and the others came to my house for the readings, Ramla got me to talk quite a bit about all of you? Foolish me, I didn’t think anything of it at the time; she was very clever about seeming interested in a kindly way. But later it dawned on me that she’d learned enough to have special advice ready for each guest.”

Ramla, an imposter? Taken aback, I tried to remember that afternoon more exactly. Surely it couldn’t be a trick that Ramla had looked into my heart?

“And you?” Susannah went on coolly. “How has the Egyptian helped you?”

I hesitated, afraid now that Susannah might disapprove of the magic Ramla had taught me. “She … she explained to me how to soothe myself when people are … unkind to me.”

“Hmph,” snorted Susannah. “Maybe she should go dwell in your house, then.”

We sat in silence for a short while. Susannah knew quite well that Eleazar would never welcome the Egyptian wise woman into his house. Finally, I patted Kanarit, stood up, and left. I felt guilty that I hadn’t carried out my part of the bargain with Ramla, although I’d tried.

Back in Eleazar’s house, it was a day or so before I found a private moment at dawn to say the healing spell for my grandmother. In the following days, I wished I could visit Safta to make sure she was getting better, but I was afraid to defy Eleazar’s order. I looked forward to the Sabbath, when I would see my family across the synagogue.

I didn’t forget the protection words that Ramla had given me, but I felt uneasy about using them. Whenever I found myself on the threshold of my imaginary garden, I pulled back. If I didn’t enter, I wouldn’t need protection.

But I missed my retreat so badly! I began to dwell on the caged sparrows again. Finally, one night after Chava had been especially spiteful, and Eleazar especially brusque, I was frantic to escape.

As soon as Eleazar was snoring, I whispered the words of power beneath my breath. “I am Queen Mariamne. Beware, any spirits who try to threaten me!”

Immediately I felt a surge of strength. I almost laughed out loud with the pleasure of it. Why had I waited so long?
“
Abrasax
, I enter,” I uttered, and I stepped confidently through my secret doorway. My sparrow friend lighted on my shoulder. I had a sense of many other beings present but just out of sight—no doubt waiting to serve me, like attendants in a palace.

Early the next morning, as I tidied the bedchamber, I heard Eleazar reciting morning prayers on the roof. The air was already hot and damp, as if the lake were a cauldron of boiling water and we were living in its steam. While I listened to my husband droning, I felt a light touch on my shoulder.
It’s very different from the way your abba used to pray, isn’t it?
said a sympathetic voice.

I started, turned to look behind me, and glanced around the empty room. I pinched my arm to wake myself up, in case I was dreaming. “Who’s that?”

Come, you know me!
The voice chuckled in my ear, as if some creature were sitting next to my head.
I’m your old friend, Tsippor
.

The sparrow. I turned my head again, and I thought I caught a glimpse of a gleaming eye and a short, thick beak. “You’re supposed to stay in the garden,” I hissed. “Go back. I command you.”

What’s the harm?
chirped the voice.
Don’t worry—I won’t
talk to anyone but you. By the way, Eleazar doesn’t sound like he’s praying to the Lord, does he? It’s more like he’s counting the packs on his camels
.

I giggled in spite of myself. No, Eleazar’s prayers were nothing like the heartfelt prayers my father used to recite.

Although Ramla had warned me against letting anyone out of my private garden, I decided the sparrow couldn’t hurt anything. Besides, he was good company. Throughout the day, whenever Chava made one of her slighting comments, he chirped a saucy reply in my ear.

The next Sabbath morning, as I dressed to go to the synagogue, I opened my jewelry basket to get a bracelet. Immediately I had an uneasy feeling. Nothing was missing, but the things in the basket seemed disarranged. Or, rather, not disarranged but arranged differently. Had someone been going through my things?

I told Chava my suspicion, watching her to see if she would react in a guilty way. Her bland expression didn’t change, and she actually answered me civilly. “I’ll speak to the serving woman,” she said. “I caught her trying on my jewelry once.”

Later as we entered the synagogue, we passed my family, and I paused to give them a hurried greeting. My grandmother looked much the same, I thought; was she getting
better? At least, she didn’t seem worse. Maybe the healing charm worked slowly.

In the following days, I was glad for the sparrow’s company, and I quickly got to depend on it. One morning, I came down the stairs chatting out loud with Tsippor, thinking the courtyard was empty. Suddenly I realized that Chava was standing there in the shade, watching me.

She didn’t seem disturbed, and she didn’t say anything, but the incident made me remember Ramla’s warning about letting spirits follow me into our world: They can do all kinds of mischief. Probably Ramla didn’t mean a harmless spirit like the sparrow, but maybe I needed to ask her.

By that afternoon, I’d decided to go tell Ramla about the sparrow spirit and ask her advice. On my way to Susannah’s house, though, I kept changing my mind. What if Ramla urged me to banish the sparrow, even from my private garden? He was an old friend. These days, I didn’t have such a great crowd of friends that I could afford to lose one.

Intent on talking to Ramla, or maybe deciding to go home without talking to her, I wasn’t expecting to talk to Susannah. She surprised me by greeting me at the gate.
“Shalom
, Mari,” said my cousin without smiling. Kanarit was beside her and tried to take my hand, but Susannah pulled the child back. “Go—help the women with the bread. Quick now.”

“Shalom
, Susannah.” I realized that I’d seen that troubled expression on my cousin’s face recently, and more than once. “What’s the matter?”

“Cousin …” Susannah usually came straight out with whatever she had to say, but now she hesitated. “Has Eleazar said anything … Did you know that your husband is not satisfied with you?” She bit her lip, as if to punish it for saying something so harsh.

“What?” I tried to laugh. “Eleazar isn’t satisfied with anything. He grumbles about the heat, the cold; the lentils undercooked, the lentils cooked mushy; his relatives bothering him with their company, his relatives never visiting him. That’s just the way he is. I’m not surprised if he complained to someone about me.”

“Mari, listen! I’m afraid for you. Silas’s aunt told me she overheard Elder Thomas talking to her brother, another elder of the synagogue. She said that he said Eleazar had asked Thomas’s advice about … about divorcing you.”

My breath was taken away. In a flash, I saw that my life could be much worse than it was now. Divorce! It was better for a woman to die than to be divorced. I would be disgraced forever, like my family’s servant, Yael.

“Silas’s aunt was worried for you,” Susannah was saying. “She thought it might not be too late, if you went to Eleazar and begged him for forgiveness. Tell him you’ll do anything to please him.”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong!” I said with a flare of anger. “The elders wouldn’t let him divorce me for no reason at all—would they?”

Susannah shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve heard some terrible stories.” She caught my hand. “Oh, Mari, I’m afraid it
might be my fault, for introducing you to Ramla. Eleazar could claim you were practicing witchcraft with her. Silas says the assembly is considering complaints against her.”

“Witchcraft! The assembly!” The Jewish leaders in Magdala tolerated minor kinds of magic, like telling fortunes or casting healing charms. But practicing witchcraft was a serious crime. “Does Ramla know this?” I took a step toward Ramla’s apartment.

Susannah pulled me back. “Don’t. I’m going to talk to her myself. Silas says we have to tell Ramla to leave our compound. You’re in enough trouble, Mari. You’d better go home.”

I walked back to Eleazar’s house with my scarf pulled well over my forehead, brooding about the one divorced woman I knew: Yael. Although she’d come from a respectable family, after her divorce she was lucky that my father had hired her as a servant. A divorced woman was more likely to end up in the brothels down by the docks.

It’s true, little sister
, chirped a voice from my shoulder.
Right now you may be unhappily married, but at least you can show your face in the market without shame
.

Yes, now I could greet my cousin as one married woman to another. If Eleazar divorced me, no one would respect me, not even my own family.

But if Eleazar was thinking of divorcing me, why hadn’t I heard anything about it? Something was going on behind my back. Or … maybe it was going on in front of my eyes, but I’d been blind to it.

Now that I thought of it, Chava had been observing me closely recently. There was the time she’d seen me come down the stairs chatting with my invisible sparrow. Maybe there were other times, too. Had she reported them to Eleazar?

And was Chava the one, after all, who’d been pawing through my jewelry basket? I went over each bracelet and earring in my mind, wondering if there was something about one of those pieces that could be criticized.

At Eleazar’s house, Chava and the other women were doing handwork and chatting in the upper room since it was too hot in the courtyard. I murmured the usual greeting and sat down. They returned the greeting, but then the group was silent. I caught Hiram’s wife looking sideways at me. The half-witted girl, on the other hand, stared openly at me until her mother nudged her and spoke sharply. What had they been saying about me just now?

When the light from the high windows softened to late afternoon, the women gathered their handwork and left to prepare their evening meals. I went into the bedchamber I
shared with Eleazar. In this sweltering weather, his bed, as well as Chava’s couch and the servants’ sleeping mats, had been moved to the cooler rooftop. It was my task to put the bedcover away each morning lest the sunlight fade its colors, and put it back at the end of each day.

I carried the folded coverlet up to the roof and spread it over Eleazar’s bed.
Look under the mattress
, chirped a voice in my ear.

“Be quiet, sparrow!” As soon as I spoke, I was afraid, and I glanced around to make sure no one had heard me.

You’d better look under the mattress
, he sang.