The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (23 page)

“There is a law higher than Rome itself,” Philo said gravely, “the law of the Most High. If you had killed the man when this thing happened, Joseph, no Jew in the world could have accused you of murder.”

“But the Roman courts would have crucified me,” Joseph pointed out. “Should a man bring on his own death merely to punish one who is guilty of a crime? Who will have gained thereby?”

“The law will have been upheld, and the law is above men themselves.”

“I acknowledge no law that tells me I must kill my fellow,” Joseph said firmly. “The tablets of Moses say,
‘You shall not kill,’
and so long as I live I will knowingly bring about the death of no man, whatever his crime. Let him be shut up somewhere as punishment; such a life must be worse even than death.”

He turned to go, but Philo Judaeus said, “Wait awhile, Joseph. Perhaps you are right, I do not know. What you say is very much like the teachings of the man called Jesus.”

“Jesus? It is a common name among the Jews.”

“But He is no common man,” Philo said. “This Jesus is a young teacher of Nazareth, now preaching in the cities of Galilee. He followed John but is no zealot seeking to stir up the people against Rome. Instead He teaches forbearance, and love one for another, and the mercy of God to forgive sins.”

“Esdras and Enoch spoke much the same thing,” Joseph reminded him.

“It is no new thing He speaks,” Philo admitted. “He might even be the Greek philosopher Socrates teaching in our own tongue, except that He is young and no one can understand from whence comes His wisdom.”

“Why are you so concerned with Him?”

“I have not told you all,” Philo said gravely. “Many people in Galilee believe Him to be the Messiah.”

“The Galileans have always been prone to follow false leaders,” Joseph pointed out. “They have done it before.”

“But you have not seen this teacher of Nazareth, Joseph. How can you know He is false?”

“The Messiah would not come as an unknown teacher of Galilee,” Joseph said positively. “Such a thing is unthinkable.”

“You are undoubtedly right,” Philo agreed thoughtfully. “Certainly no Jew expects the Son of God in any such form. But no teacher in recent years has stirred up the people as does this Jesus, if my information is correct—not even John the Baptist. It would be bad indeed for the Jews if He were another Judas the Gaulonite.”

Some twenty years before, at the death of Herod the Great, many Jews had resisted the setting up of a kingdom in Judea under his successor, Archelaus, and thousands had been slain in the fighting that resulted from this insurrection. A patriot band under one Judas, called both the Galilean and the Gaulonite, had even captured Sepphoris, the Roman capital of Galilee. In punishment for this affront to the dignity of Rome, Varus, governor of Syria, had conquered the rebels with twenty thousand men. Two thousand Jews had been crucified at one time, thirty thousand sold into slavery, and the city of Sepphoris destroyed.

A delegation of the leaders among the Jews had gone to Rome then and petitioned Augustus to discontinue the kingship in Judea and make it a Roman province. Thus, the first of the procurators had come to rule the province in which Jerusalem was located. Rebellions sporadically broke out against these foreign rulers, usually under the leadership of self-styled messiahs. But although many of the Judean Jews would have liked to see the procurators removed from their land with the constant conflict over Roman emblems, dispositions of tax moneys, and the like, that had plagued Pontius Pilate’s term of office, only the most fanatical nationalists, confined largely to the fertile province of Galilee, dared think of usurping the power of Rome by revolution and setting up their own king.

A more powerful and much better organized group, the Herodians of Jerusalem, worked to have Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, made king of Judea as well. Joseph could understand Philo’s concern over any self-styled messiah who might disturb this delicate balance and perhaps cause a revolution among the temperamental Galileans. Such a rebellion could lead to more bloodshed and possible retaliation by the Romans upon Jews throughout the Roman world. As acknowledged leader and spokesman for the largest group of Jews outside Jerusalem, the Jewish colony at Alexandria, Philo would be seriously concerned with such an explosive question.

“I had hoped you would be returning to Jerusalem soon,” the old jurist said in parting, “so that you could report to me on this man Jesus of Nazareth.”

“Surely you don’t think this teacher could be the real Messiah,” Joseph protested.

Philo shook his head. “Hardly, although Isaiah speaks of one who will come in humility and suffering. To us who have lived away from Jerusalem for many years, the Messiah has become a distant figure, perhaps more of a figure of speech than an actual person.” He smiled then. “But do not tell of this in Jerusalem when you return, Joseph. There are those who look every day for the Christ to descend from the heavens in glory. They would judge me blasphemous if they knew I had spoken otherwise.”

As the winter months passed, Demetrius grew weaker and weaker. Soon the fluid accumulating in his body extended even to his lungs, so that much of the time he breathed with a rattling sound, as of air bubbling through water. It was becoming more and more difficult to remove the fluid through the sharpened quills, and finally a day came when the old lyre maker begged Joseph not to try anymore.

“I have known for a long time I could live only a few more months at the most, Joseph,” he said. “Nor do I dread to die. After all, as Socrates said, it is a great adventure. I have seen Mary triumph here in the theater, the thing I have lived for since she came to me in Magdala. And now that she is bent on her own destruction, I am not sure I want to be here to see it.”

“But, Demetrius—”

“You need not argue, Joseph. In a way I welcome death, and I need only two things now to be able to die in peace. One is your promise that you will look after Mary, and the other is to know that you two will be married as soon as this business is over.”

“You have my promise,” Joseph assured him. “I talked to Philo some time ago, and he agrees with you that Mary has a right, as an orphan, to the life of Gaius Flaccus.”

“And you?”

“I will take no man’s life knowingly, nor will I help her to do what she has planned,” he said. “But when it is finished, I will try to help her escape.”

“No one could ask more of you,” Demetrius agreed. He rang a small bell that stood on the table beside the bed and immediately the slave who looked after him appeared in the doorway. “Ask my daughter to come here, please,” Demetrius directed.

“B-but—” Joseph started to protest.

“It is better to get this settled once and for all,” the old musician said firmly. “I know how it pains you to see her, knowing what she is doing, but this must be.”

Mary came in a few minutes later. She had been dressing for the theater and was wearing the lovely Grecian robe in which she danced the story of the Galilean lovers. “I sent for you because I wanted to talk to you and Joseph together about something very important,” Demetrius said. “Come sit here with Joseph beside the bed.”

Gently the old man caressed Mary’s shining hair. “I have known for a long time, dear,” he said, “that I have only a little longer to live.”

“No, Demetrius!” she cried, and clung to him. “Don’t say it.”

“I am in no pain,” the old musician continued. “And I am not afraid to die, now that I know someone will look after you when I am gone.”

She raised her head from his chest. “W-what do you mean?”

“Joseph has promised me that he will stay here and watch over you.”

“But he must not!” she cried, and turned to Joseph. “I told you to go to Jerusalem. Why should you be killed for me?”

“Do you expect to die after you have carried out your plan of revenge upon the Roman?” Demetrius asked.

“Joseph himself told me the chances of doing it without losing my own life are small,” she admitted. “But I know what I am doing!”

“We know, too,” Demetrius told her.

She looked startled. “But I have not told you.”

“You are planning to kill Gaius Flaccus during the festival of the Great Dionysia.”

“I will tell you nothing,” she said quickly and looked away, but not before they had seen from her expression that their guess was correct. “This is my responsibility alone,” she added grimly.

“But you have not said I am wrong,” Demetrius insisted.

“Suppose you are right. Are you going to warn Gaius Flaccus?”

“No. Philo and Demetrius believe you have the right to take his life under our ancient laws,” Joseph admitted.

“I told you I did. It is plainly written in the Books of the Law.”

“I do not agree,” he said, “but I had already planned to help you escape, even before Demetrius asked me.”

“But why should you endanger your life for me, Joseph, when you don’t believe I have a right to kill Gaius Flaccus?”

“You have been too long away from our people, Mary,” he said simply, “else you would not have forgotten the words of a wise man who said,
‘Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.’”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Dear sweet Joseph,” she said softly, and for a moment she was the girl he had been afraid had ceased to exist. “I think my love for you is the only good thing left in my heart by this demon of hatred. But you must have no part in all this,” she added firmly.

“You cannot keep me from standing by in case you need help.”

“What could you do? The might of Rome will be against me.”

“With good rowers and a fast galley, we can be through the canal to the Red Sea and down to Adana in less than a week. Hadja could find a place for us with the desert tribes or at Petra. Or we could take ship to Malabar. Bana Jivaka would even go with us himself.”

“Would you give up your position in Jerusalem and your riches there for me?” she asked softly.

“Have you forgotten the pledge of Ruth?” he asked. “It was given in love as a guide for all those who love each other.”

“‘Entreat me not to leave you,’”
she repeated softly,
“‘or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the L
ORD
do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you.’”
And suddenly she burst into tears and ran from the room.

Demetrius died two weeks later, quietly in his sleep. He was buried with his beloved cithara in his hands, as he had requested, on the shores of Lake Mareotis. And since he had made Mary promise to keep on with her singing and dancing as if nothing had happened, there was no mourning.

As she and Joseph walked home along the shore beside the great walls of the stadium, where the festival of the Great Dionysia would be held, Mary looked up at the huge building and shivered as if with dread.

“I hope you never know what it is to have hatred in your soul, Joseph,” she said. “It is like a cancer, eating away at everything that is good in you.”

“As a surgeon, I would cut it out if I could.”

“No one else can help me,” she said firmly. “A part of me would do as you suggest, Joseph, and forgive Gaius Flaccus. But another part keeps repeating the words of the Most High.
‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.’
How could I ignore God’s commands?”

“You must do what your heart tells you to do. No one can do more. But be sure you are listening to your heart and not a demon of hate alone.”

“Then I must go through with it,” she said firmly.

“And you still refuse to tell me how you are going to carry out your plans?”

She nodded. “If you have no part in my guilt, Joseph, then you will have no part in my fate, whatever it shall be.”

The festival of the Great Dionysia in Alexandria was traditionally held at the end of March, when the chill of wintry breezes no longer attacked the city from the Great Sea and the air was already warm with the promise of summer. Flowers grew in great profusion everywhere then, and for the three days of the festival the public parks, the streets, the gardens along the shore of Lake Mareotis, and the islands off the shore were a riot of color.

Joseph had heard of this spectacle, when the people of Alexandria literally went mad in a surfeit of excitement and search for pleasure, but he could hardly believe it still, even seeing it with his own eyes. The racing season began several days before the Great Dionysia itself, and thousands thronged daily to the great Hippodrome beyond the Canopic Gate. In the evenings, the drinking establishments were crowded and there was merriment everywhere. Since Dionysos was considered by the Greeks to be the same as Bacchus, and by the Egyptians as Osiris and Serapis under another name, the festival of the Great Dionysia was a legal excuse for all sorts of bacchanalian celebrations. It was hard to believe that many people in Alexandria slept at all during the entire festival, for the streets were thronged both night and day with merrymakers.

Each day one of the great Greek dramas was presented in the theater, climaxed on the day before the symbolic marriage and death of the god by a presentation of the
Bacchae
of Euripides, in which Dionysos came to earth in the city of Thebes in human form and preached his own worship. Rejected by the women, he then used sorcery to arouse in them an ecstasy of adoration for the god Dionysos, the same ecstasy in which during ancient times women had torn men to pieces and sacrificed infants and later animals to the bacchant god. When, in the play, the king of Thebes, Pentheus, opposed the wild orgies of the cult, Dionysos, still disguised, used his magic talents to send the king among the Bacchae clad as a woman. And when he was discovered, the women, led by his own mother, tore him to pieces in a frenzy of ecstatic insanity.

Mary was dancing the part of Pentheus’s mother, the leader of the Bacchae. As the tragic ending of the scene rose to its inevitable climax, she staggered from the place in the hills where the final tragedy had occurred, carrying the dripping head of the king who was her son in her hands. Joseph could not help shuddering with horror, so realistic was her portrayal, even to the last lines when she realized what she had done and, revolted, cried out against the god who had caused her to kill her own son.