Poisoned Honey: A Story of Mary Magdalene (23 page)

Alexandros managed to hold on to his donkey’s rope, but the animal wrenched its head free and bolted after my donkey into the hills. Alexandros and I sprawled in the dusty road.

“Now you’ve done it!” My brother scrambled to his feet and started to dash after the donkeys, then realized they were gone. He looked down at me, and Phomelei looked up at him with a smug smile.

Alexandros glared at me, sighed deeply, and raised his arms to the sky. “Oh Lord, what sin have I committed, that you burdened me with such a sister?” Then, dropping the donkey’s rope around my neck, he led me like a beast up the road toward Capernaum.

Alexandros and I struggled along the lakeshore road all day. “From Magdala to Capernaum should take only half a day, even on foot,” moaned my brother. “Even though we left late in the morning, even if we paused at Gennesaret for a midday meal and rest. But not Alexandros bar Tobias and his demented sister, oh no! For us, it’s two steps forward, one step back.”

Indeed, to me it seemed that I traveled the same short stretch of road over and over, like a donkey plodding around an olive press. Moving as if through a mist, I hardly saw the blue lake on one side or the fresh green fields on the other. The demons jostled around me and through me, muttering and bickering among themselves.

“If only she had behaved like a lady of distinction and kept her head scarf on,” hissed Phomelei, “we would be treated as befits our dignity.”

“I’ve always maintained that discretion is the key,” said Aiandictor. “Smile, speak softly, slip the dagger into the ribs.” Zaphaunt chanted a stupid song over and over, guffawing after every chorus.

I looked for the sparrow, thinking to send him for help, but he was nowhere to be seen. It occurred to me that slavering Odjit might have eaten him. I couldn’t see Panhasaziel, but I sensed he was behind me, breathing out dread at every step.

From time to time, other travelers appeared through the mist. I heard a man tell his companion, “Step aside until they pass! Look how her loose hair hangs over her face—look how his robe flaps open. See how they rant at the empty air.”

Alexandros was offended.
“I
am not possessed, you fools!” he called out to them. “I’m going to great expense and trouble to take my sister to an exorcist, and if you think it’s easy, you should try it yourselves.” He gave a yank on my halter.

The travelers, pointing and shaking their heads, watched us pass from a distance. My brother trudged forward, grim-faced, and I staggered over the pavement behind him.
Dionesiona called over my shoulder to the travelers, “Come see me at my temple in Sepphoris!” and Zaphaunt laughed long and senselessly.

Time passed. I heard Aiandictor plotting something with Odjit, but the others were bickering too loudly for me to make it out. I didn’t know what they intended until Aiandictor exclaimed, “Now!” We leaped on Alexandros’s back and hooked my bound arms under his chin, choking him. Falling together, my brother and I rolled around on the dusty paving stones. Odjit managed to jab my knee into the small of Alexandros’s back before he wrenched himself free.

The demons came through the struggle unscathed although I was badly bruised and scraped. My brother ordered me to walk in front of him. “You won’t pull that trick again,” he snarled.

“We’ll try another trick, then,” said Zaphaunt, laughing at his own wit.

And in fact, just as Alexandros remarked, “We’ve reached Gennesaret, at least,” they caught him in an unguarded moment. Whirling on him, we kicked the end of the bridle from my brother’s hand, then dashed off the road into the brush.

Alexandros followed, shouting curses at me and at his loose robes, which kept catching on thorns and branches. I ran awkwardly with my hands tied, but the deadly, cold voice
of Panhasaziel drove me on past endurance until I fell, gasping for breath.

My brother dragged me back to the road, and we struggled on. Alexandros muttered as he walked, his voice fading in and out of the demons’ babble. Sometimes he complained to my father, sometimes to the Lord. He said the same things over and over, always ending by reminding Abba (or the Lord) that once he got me to the exorcist, his obligations were over.

Time passed. “What’s this?” my brother said suddenly. “There must be hundreds of people—yes, several hundred, on the grass over there.” He pulled me onward. “Oh … they’re listening to a preacher.”

The demons stiffened to attention. The mist around me cleared a bit, and I saw that we were at the edge of a great crowd. They sat on a hillside that sloped down to the water. In front of them, at the water’s edge, a man stood in a fishing boat.

“Not just a preacher, stranger,” said a man at the edge of the crowd. “That’s Yeshua of Nazareth.”

“That’s the exorcist?” exclaimed my brother. “Thank the Lord!”

Then Alexandros asked the man who’d spoken to him a question. But I couldn’t make it out because the demons all began to scream. “There’s the exorcist! Flee! Flee for your lives! If he gets hold of us, we’re doomed!”

The fiends twisted my limbs this way and that, and I fell to the ground, hitting the back of my head. I must have been knocked senseless. The next thing I knew, I was rolled up in a fishing net and swinging from a long pole. Alexandros carried the front end. Pain pounded through my head, and spittle ran out of my mouth as the unclean spirits shrieked and howled.

The crowd on the shore parted to let us through. Between the cords pressed against my face, I caught their stares of horror and their hands making the sign against the evil eye. At the end of the corridor of people was the lake, with the boat a few lengths from shore. The sun, hanging low over Mount Arbel, shone on the man in the boat.

“Rabbi, my sister Mariamne is possessed,” called Alexandros. Turning to a bystander, he asked doubtfully, “Is he truly an exorcist? He’s dressed like an ordinary workman.”

“Miryam,” said the man in the boat. It was a voice that spoke to the ears of my soul, ears that could still hear after all. I was struck breathless by the tenderness in his voice. And the eyes of my soul were not quite blind, either. This plainly dressed man with a thin face was looking at me as if he saw his own dear sister in the net.

The demons seemed stunned for a moment, and I seized my chance. “Help me,” I said.

The rabbi spoke to Alexandros. “Let her out.”

My brother launched into an explanation of why that was impossible, and how much he was willing to pay for an exorcism but no more, and how he’d done even more than a brother could be expected to—

The rabbi interrupted, “Let her out.” He didn’t raise his voice, but there was authority in it like a king’s. Alexandros and the other man hurried to obey. While they lowered me to the pebbly shore and untied the net, the rabbi stepped over the side of the boat and waded out of the water.

The demons made me fling myself back and forth and call on them by name. They snarled through my mouth, “We know you, Yeshua of Nazareth! Leave us alone—this woman is ours!” All the nastiness and ugliness in my spirit spewed out for this holy man to see, as disgusting as if I were relieving my bowels in front of him. I thought I would die of shame. At the same time, I was terrified that he might change his mind about helping me.

Rabbi Yeshua’s dark eyes flashed with anger, but his voice was calm and sure. “I know
you
, Phomelei, Aiandictor, Dionesiona, Odjit, Zaphaunt, Panhasaziel. I command you, leave this woman.”

They streamed out through my mouth, like a rush of foul air. And then the whole tribe of unclean spirits was gone—simply gone. Was it possible that they
were
gone? I lay on my back, gazing up at Rabbi Yeshua.

He gazed back at me, and his face broke into a grin of pure delight. He reached down and pulled me to my feet.
“Shalom
, peace, Miryam.”

“Shalom
, Rabbi,” I said, brushing the tangled hair from my eyes. I smiled back at him although it hurt a cut on my lip. I held out my bound hands, and he untied them.

“Come with me,” he said.

Then the crowd closed around Rabbi Yeshua, and Alexandros and I were squeezed off to the side. My knees wobbled; my mind was still. I sank down on a rock. I was clean; I was pure; I was at peace.

Peace. How many hundreds and hundreds of times had I heard the greeting “Peace” but never thought about what it meant? Now I
felt
what it meant: being still inside, so that I could see how precious the most ordinary things around me were. I ran my hand over the rock, marveling at how black and solid it was. I lifted my face to the sky, blue overhead but shading toward yellow above the hills.

I pondered what the rabbi had said: “Come with me.” I couldn’t imagine that he actually wanted me to follow him. Still, he had invited me, and that warmed my heart.

“Miryam, you must be thirsty.” A well-dressed woman stooped beside me with a gourd of water.

I hadn’t realized it before, but indeed I was parched. I drank, feeling the water soothe my hoarse throat. Tears of
gratitude filled my eyes, and it occurred to me to wonder why this woman dressed in a noblewoman’s robe was waiting on me. “Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Joanna of Tiberias,” she said. “My husband is Herod Antipas’s steward. I had a wasting illness, and Rabbi Yeshua healed me. And then I saw how I could help the rabbi’s mission—with my money, for one thing. So I left Tiberias last year, and I’ve followed Yeshua ever since.”

Joanna said this in a matter-of-fact way as she offered the gourd to Alexandros, sitting nearby. My brother drank deeply, too, and thanked her, but all the while he kept his eyes on me. “You’ve come to your senses?” he asked.

I was so intrigued by Joanna’s story that it took me a moment to focus on my brother. Poor Alexandros! He looked as if he’d been attacked by bandits. “Brother, are you all right?” I dipped a somewhat clean corner of my robe in the water and dabbed at a scratch over his eye. “I’m sorry I hurt you! I’m truly sorry.”

“You speak in your own voice,” said Alexandros. Closing his eyes, he let out a ragged sigh of relief. “Thank the Lord!”

“Thank the Lord!” I echoed, as did Joanna.

“I had my doubts about this healer,” Alexandros went on, opening his eyes. “I’d expected him to pronounce incantations and wave his arms, that kind of thing. And to be frank,
I wasn’t sure anyone could help you.” Then he added, “Well. The holy man did drive out your demons, so I must pay what I offered.” He stood up, pulled his loose robes together, and began to work his way into the crowd again.

Joanna sat down beside me. I said wonderingly, “It must be a great change for you, following the rabbi, after living in the palace.”

She smiled. “Yes, we live very simply with the rabbi. Our home is wherever Yeshua is. Our family is his band of followers. Tonight we’ll sleep at Simon’s house in Capernaum. Tomorrow, who knows? The rabbi has to keep traveling, to spread his message.”

While Joanna was explaining how she’d arranged to receive the income from her inheritance, Alexandros returned. “Come, I’ve paid the healer, and I’ve found a boat to take us back to Magdala,” he said to me. “We must be home by dark.”

Joanna looked at me with a question in her eyes. “So you return to your family.”

“Yes,” I answered, puzzled.

Joanna pressed my hand in both of hers. “Perhaps we’ll meet again,” she said. “I hope so. There aren’t many women among the disciples.”

I was sorry to leave her, but I followed my brother to the boat.

The way back to Magdala was as easy as the journey to Capernaum had been toilsome. Our boat slid through pink light shed on the lake by swirls of glowing sunset clouds above Mount Arbel. I, too, was glowing, glowing with good will. Making amends with my family would be a pleasure, starting with my brother. “Alexandros,” I told him as the boatman worked the sail, “you were a faithful brother to bring me to the rabbi for healing, even though I caused you so much grief. I’m more grateful than I can say.”

Alexandros looked mildly pleased. “It was the right thing to do. I was bound to follow Elder Thomas’s judgment.” He yawned hugely.