The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (11 page)

“I could not blame you for wanting to kill him,” she agreed. “But you would only lose your own life. Rome does not always send its best representatives abroad, Joseph, and things like this only make us hated even more. But Pontius Pilate would never have condoned this. He is a good man at heart, although . . .” She did not finish the sentence, but Joseph knew she meant the weakness and indecision which had kept her husband from being one of Rome’s great colonial administrators.

“I can assure you of one thing,” Procula continued. “Gaius Flaccus will not harm the girl again. He sails in a few days for Rome. The emperor has called him back to the royal household.”

This was good news indeed, for then Mary could go back to Magdala and need no longer hide from her betrayer. Joseph hurried out of the villa to carry his tidings to Capernaum, but at the gate he was met by Gaius Flaccus himself. The tribune was in full uniform, having just come from drilling the palace guards, of which he was commander. Joseph stepped aside, but the Roman called to him peremptorily. “You there, leech. I would speak with you.”

Joseph stopped and waited. He was fairly certain that Gaius Flaccus had no inkling that he had snatched Mary away last night, for the guard could not have betrayed him without betraying himself.

“What do you know of Mary of Magdala?” the tribune asked. “The girl who fainted while dancing in the streets.”

“I took her to the house of Demetrius that day as she asked me to do.”

“And you have not seen her since?”

“I see her quite often,” Joseph admitted.

“Then you know where I can find her?” Gaius Flaccus asked eagerly.

“Have you tried the house of Demetrius in Magdala?”

“Of course.” The tribune made an impatient movement. “He will tell me nothing.”

“Perhaps because he is not sure what your intentions are regarding her.”

“I am mad about her!” Gaius Flaccus cried. “She runs in my veins like wine.”

“Then you wish to marry her?”

“Marry! Does a Roman of the equestrian order marry a Jewess? You know better than that, leech. It is forbidden by your law.”

“Our law forbids a Jew to marry a heathen,” Joseph corrected him gravely. “For thereby a Jew becomes unclean in the sight of the Most High.”

It took a second for Gaius Flaccus to realize that it would be the Jew who was defiled by marriage with a Roman, not a Roman by marriage with a Jew. He flushed, and Joseph saw his fists clench, but just then Claudia Procula came into the yard. Seeing them, she stopped to toy with some flowers, and Joseph understood that she had seen Gaius Flaccus’s anger and was protecting Joseph by her presence.

“Do you still say you know nothing of the girl?” the tribune asked in a lower voice.

“I know that she is the adopted daughter of Demetrius, who is a Roman citizen,” Joseph said deliberately. “He would be entitled to ask protection for her, even from the emperor himself.”

Gauis Flaccus was brought up short by the threat. A wanton act upon a daughter of a subject people might not bring punishment to a Roman officer. But a citizen of Rome had the right to bring charges against anyone below the emperor himself and receive redress if his cause was just. And Tiberius was known to be very strait-laced in matters of this kind. “Are you a citizen of Rome, leech?” he snapped, his lips white with anger.

“No, I am not,” Joseph admitted.

“Then see that you keep a civil tongue in your head toward your betters. The next time you may not have a woman to protect you.” Turning on his heel, Gaius Flaccus entered the house.

Mary came home to Magdala a few days after Gaius Flaccus departed for Rome, but there was little improvement in her spirits. She remained in her room much of the day, or sat in the garden holding her beloved lyre, yet never touched the strings. Nothing Demetrius or Joseph could do seemed to lift her spirits. The set cast of her face betrayed her suffering and shame, but she said nothing to show her feelings, speaking only when spoken to, and then in a monotonous voice as devoid of feeling as it was of tone.

And so the weeks passed and the time approached when Joseph’s preceptor, Alexander Lysimachus, was to take him before the judges and doctors of law at Jerusalem, to be examined as to his competence to receive the title of
rophe uman
and to practice as a physician in his own right.

A few days before Joseph’s planned departure Mary appeared at his house early one morning. He was there alone, his mother having gone to market. Mary’s eyes had a strange glow, and she seemed excited about something. His immediate reaction was that she might have a fever, but when he questioned her, she denied feeling badly at all. “I came to get more of the wine of mandragora,” she explained. “My bottle is empty.”

While he filled her bottle carefully from the large jug in which he kept his supply of this powerful and useful extract, he noticed that Mary was looking at a large jar at the end of the shelf. “My fortune,” he explained with a smile, and lifted it down. “See, the coins fill it almost halfway now.” The purses given him by Claudia Procula had added much to the hoard, and Pontius Pilate himself had needed the leech several times recently.

Mary lifted a handful of the gold and let it trickle through her fingers. “You will soon have enough to go to Alexandria,” she said dully.

Joseph shook his head. “When I return from Jerusalem, I shall begin my own practice here in Magdala.”

“But you had your heart set on Alexandria.”

“Is it news to you, Mary,” he asked gently, “that I would far rather stay here in Galilee with you beside me?”

“Don’t, Joseph,” she whispered. “Please don’t.” She sank down on a bench and put her face in her hands, but not before he saw the utter hell in her eyes. Yet when he would have comforted her, she only pushed him away. “Go on to your patients,” she whispered finally without looking up. “I will wait here and talk to your mother when she comes from the market.”

Reluctantly he took up the
nartik
containing his instruments and medicines and left the house. His first visit took almost an hour, while he applied leeches to the swollen eye of a wool dyer. When it was finished, he hurried back to his home, for his mother sometimes lingered at the market in the mornings, talking with the other women who congregated there, and he did not like the idea of Mary’s being there alone when she was so much disturbed.

The house seemed empty, and Joseph thought that his mother must have returned and walked with Mary across the city or into the small park nearby. Considerably relieved to find his fears groundless, he went into the surgery to drop the leeches that were fat with the dyer’s blood into the tank and get fresh ones before leaving for his other calls. And there he found Mary, lying unconscious on the floor, with the empty bottle that had contained the wine of mandragora beside her.

For a moment Joseph could not believe what he saw. It seemed incredible that Mary would have tried to take her own life when that very morning she had showed more animation than she had for a long time. But then he remembered their conversation several weeks before, when he had told her of the power of the mandrake root to produce sleep and death.

Why had she done it?
he asked himself as he picked up her limp body and carried her to the couch in his own room. She was still alive, but from the limpness of her muscles and the slow, shallow breathing, he was sure that a large amount of the drug must already have entered her body. He could have understood her trying to kill herself in the agony of shame following her experience at the hands of Gaius Flaccus. But almost two months had passed now, time for the shock to wear off and let her become somewhat adjusted.

Joseph wasted no time in futile wondering, however. Only a little more than an hour had elapsed since he had left her, he calculated, so even if she had taken the drug at once there was an excellent chance that some remained in her stomach. If he could remove that, it would at least have no further power to harm her.

Fortunately he carried in his bag a
kulcha,
or stomach tube. What followed was not pleasant, but when he finished he had the satisfaction of knowing that at least a part of the drug she had swallowed was removed. Next he used the tube to pour into Mary’s stomach a liberal dose of the mixture called
mithridaticum,
said to have been prepared first by King Mithridates VI, King of Pontus, to protect himself from being poisoned. He had claimed it to be “an antidote for every venomous reptile and every poisonous substance,” and in various forms the mixture was used throughout the world.

When Joseph’s mother arrived a short time later, he had wrapped Mary in blankets and was heating rocks on the cooking hearth to add more warmth. Everything possible had been done to remove the poison or counteract its effects. From now on he could only fight to maintain her strength in every possible way.

Through the day and into the evening Joseph remained beside the couch where Mary lay. The harsh cast of suffering in which her features had been set for the past weeks was relaxed now as she lay unconscious, and she looked once more like the happy girl he had first loved when he saw her dancing on the streets of Tiberias. Seeing her lying there sleeping peacefully, he found it even harder to understand what had made life suddenly so unbearable for her that she had tried to kill herself.

For a while, as the day receded into the shadows of the night, it seemed that Mary’s spirit would leave her body. Desperately, Joseph fought to save her, expending all the resources of his skill and his stock of stimulant drugs. Finally, he fell on his knees beside the couch and prayed that God would let her live, and as night settled over the lake and the city, he felt the pulse under his fingers grow stronger. With a rising sense of exultation, he knew that he had won his battle with death.

It was after midnight, and Joseph had long since sent his mother to bed, when Mary showed signs of returning consciousness. Suddenly she started writhing, seemingly in pain, drawing up her knees as if trying to find a comfortable position, like a sufferer from colic. And when Joseph put his hand on her body through the covers where the pain seemed to be centered, he could feel a boardlike tension of her abdominal muscles. Seconds later, they relaxed and she stretched out her limbs, but almost immediately the spasm came again. This time she moaned. and he thought for a moment that she was regaining consciousness, but the spasm ended and the lines of pain in her face were erased for a short time, until another bout began. Now, however, Joseph was able to make the diagnosis, and at last he understood why Mary had tried to kill herself.

How long since she first realized that she carried the child of Gaius Flaccus within her body, he could not know. But it must not have been more than a few days, or perhaps a week, he judged, for she had conceived less than two months before. Now he understood how the knowledge of her pregnancy during these past few days, coming after the shock of being ravished by a drunken Roman, had been more than she could bear. If he had felt anything of censure toward her before for seeking to end her own life, he could only pity her now. To one of Mary’s proud spirit, this last blow would have been more than she could bear.

The inexorable forces of nature worked rapidly once they had begun, but fortunately Mary herself was still too deeply under the effects of the drug to be conscious of the pain or even of what was happening. When it was all over, Joseph removed all traces of the formless incubus and buried it in the garden.

It was morning before Mary awakened. She was pale, and great dark shadows showed beneath her eyes, but Joseph could see no other effects of the ordeal through which her body had passed. He had remained beside the couch all night, and he was there when she awakened.

“Everything is all right, dear,” he reassured her. “I found you in time.”

Slowly her face assumed its former harsh cast. “I wanted to die,” she said bitterly. “Why did you stop me?”

“No one has a right to take his own life, Mary. You must live for Demetrius and for those who love you.”

“And be labeled a harlot when I bear the child of Gaius Flaccus?”

“That is what I am trying to tell you,” he said gently. “The conception has been expelled; your nightmare is over and no one knows of it except you and me.”

For a long moment she did not speak. If she was relieved by the news, it did not show in the harsh cast of her face. And when she spoke it was only to ask, “What will you tell your mother?”

“She thinks you were suffering from one of the fainting spells. She was not here when I found you or when it happened.”

Mary turned her face to the wall then, and Joseph did not try to say anything more to her. Telling his mother to give her some hot broth later when she felt like taking it, he went out to visit his patients. When he came back that evening, Mary’s head was propped up on pillows and there was a faint color in her cheeks. He took her hand where it lay outside the covers. “I am going to Jerusalem soon, Mary,” he said. “Perhaps for as long as a week. Promise me that you will not try again what you tried to do yesterday.”

Her eyes met his, and the look of determination in them startled him. “I will not try to kill myself again,” she said slowly and distinctly. “Now I have something to live for.”

For a moment Joseph dared to let himself hope she could mean what he wanted so much to hear her say. But her next words dashed his hopes.

“Today I swore to the Most High a solemn oath,” she told him. “An oath that I will not stop until I have killed Gaius Flaccus and am revenged.”

Nothing Joseph could say had any effect upon her decision. In vain he pointed out that a member of a conquered race had no real chance against the conquerors, and that her resolve could only end in unhappiness, perhaps in death. But Mary’s fiery Jewish blood had triumphed over the more logical Greek in her heritage, harking back to the implacable laws of the time of Moses, when God had said,
“You shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”