The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (25 page)

But Mary regained control of herself, and as the god Dionysos gathered the goddess of beauty in his arms and bent to claim her lips in the nuptial kiss, the crowd went wild. Now he took her hand and led her to the nuptial chamber, through whose transparent curtains their every movement would be visible to the audience. And as the curtains closed behind them, a torch set back of the room erected on the stage burst into flame, silhouetting their shadows in brilliant pantomime.

A great “Ahh” of pent-up emotion went up from the crowd as Gaius Flaccus lifted his bride in his arms and carried her to the great nuptial couch, taking her into the embrace signifying consummation of the divine marriage. A hush fell over the audience as they waited for the next act in the drama.

Joseph turned his head away. Now, if ever, he knew, Mary must carry out her purpose. With Hadja somewhere backstage to take care of the details, it would have been a simple matter to substitute a real dagger for the one made of parchment or some similar flimsy material that would give the illusion of reality, yet crumple when it struck Gaius Flaccus’s body. The victim would have no warning, before the blade found his heart, that the weapon was of steel, not paper.

Sitting there sick with horror and powerless to stop the rushing tide of tragedy, Joseph fought against the impulse to leap to his feet and shout a warning to the unsuspecting Gaius Flaccus. Nor would he have accomplished anything if he had, for in the great expanse of the stadium, with the crowd roaring its approval of the mock consummation and the symbolic death of the seed that was to follow, a single voice, even in warning, could hardly be heard. And if he had been heard, he would only have been lessening whatever chance Mary had to escape once her revenge was achieved.

Every eye in the stadium was upon the dagger in Mary’s hand as, outlined upon the gauzy screen of the curtains surrounding the nuptial bed as vividly as a picture painted in bold strokes, her arm rose above the body of the divine lover clasped in her arms. Even though the audiences of Alexandria were fully accustomed to such realism and knew that the dagger would actually crumple when it struck the body of Dionysos, a sudden tension gripped the crowd. When the blade finally plunged downward, the pent-up suspense was expressed in a mighty groan from the onlookers, so real was the tense drama being played out there before them in the nuptial chamber where the marriage of the gods had just been ritually consummated.

Then a man’s scream of pain rang through the great stadium, breaking the spell. The sound had hardly died away when Mary leaped from the nuptial bed and tore the curtains apart. Like an avenging goddess indeed she stood, silhouetted by the flaming torch behind the stage, a bloody dagger held high in her right hand. Blood was frequently spilled in the mock deaths of the Greek theater by means of small bladders filled with a red fluid, so the crowd still did not realize that they were witnessing a real, and not a pantomime, tragedy. But when Mary turned and ran for the wings of the temporary stage instead of remaining to receive the resurrected god as her consort, a few of the onlookers realized that this was something more than the realism of the stage.

People began to surge to their feet then, caught up by the real-life drama they were witnessing. And now another figure appeared through the torn curtains of the nuptial chamber. It was Gaius Flaccus, no longer divine, for blood was staining his immaculately white tunic. “Help me!” he shouted, his voice hoarse with terror. “I am dying!”

Pandemonium broke loose then. In the midst of it, without pausing even for a prayer of thanksgiving that Gaius Flaccus was still alive and Mary was not yet, at least, a murderess, Joseph vaulted over the seats just below him and into the open passageway by which the actors reached the dressing rooms under the stage. He knew vaguely that the dressing rooms were somewhere below him, and as he raced through the corridors, a deep roar from the crowd told him the people had at last realized how near they had come to witnessing a real murder.

Actors, actresses, dancers, musicians, and stage hands were milling about in the corridors beneath the great stadium. Most of them, not having been on stage, did not yet realize what had happened.

As Joseph hesitated for a moment, one familiar face appeared among the crowd. It was Albina, and when he called to her she came over at once, her face grave. “Mary ran through to her dressing room just now, Joseph,” she said hurriedly. “There was blood on her robe.”

“She tried to kill Gaius Flaccus,” he gasped. “Where is her dressing room?”

Albina wasted no time with questions but led him immediately to a door above which the torch symbol of Flamen had been painted. “I will wait outside!” she suggested. “If they come after her, perhaps I can send them in another direction.”

He nodded gratefully; there was no time for thanks. Hadja stood guard outside Mary’s door. “Praise be to Ahura-Mazda that you have come, Joseph,” he said fervently. “Did she kill him?”

“No.” Joseph swept the corridor with a quick surveying glance. There was a large window at the end, large enough for them to escape through if they had time. “Open the window there,” he directed. “I will get Mary and we will try to escape toward the lake.”

As Joseph pushed open the door to Mary’s dressing room, Hadja started toward the window. If they could get free of the stadium and reach the lake, it might be possible to hail one of the boats that plied for hire along the shore and make their escape before the audience in the great stadium had recovered from its momentary paralysis at the unexpected drama they had witnessed as a climax to the festival of Dionysos.

Mary stood beside her dressing table, her face devoid of color. Blood stained her fingers, her white gown, and the blade of the dagger still gripped in her right hand. Her eyes were dilated until they seemed to have no color, the wide pupils mirroring only a stark despair. By no act of recognition did she even so much as show that she knew Joseph was in the room.

When she did move, it was so rapidly that Joseph almost failed to seize her wrist as the dagger plunged downward toward her own breast. He was not quick enough to save her a wound, but did manage to deflect the sharp point of the dagger so that it failed to find the target for which she had intended it, her own heart. Ripping through the white fabric of her gown, the dagger made a shallow wound in her breast before it dropped from nerveless fingers as she swayed and collapsed in Joseph’s arms.

“I—I couldn’t do it, Joseph,” she sobbed in a sudden rush of words and tears, clinging to him like a terrified child. “Something held my arm back.”

“The Most High would not let you commit murder,” he told her. “We must go quickly. He will surely help us escape.”

The voice of the crowd was a deep-throated roaring now, like a great pack of snarling animals. They were enraged at the affront to the god in whose honor the festival was being held, and the first target of their anger would naturally be the woman who had tried to kill the impersonated god.

“Hadja is waiting outside,” Joseph told Mary urgently. “If we can reach the lake in the darkness, we will be safe.”

But she only shook her head. “I have caused enough trouble already,” she said almost in a whisper. “Leave me before it is too late.”

“I will never leave you, Mary,” he said simply. “If the crowd comes we will die together.”

Bana Jivaka burst into the room then. “Hurry!” he gasped. “The crowd was almost at my heels.”

“You must go, Mary,” Joseph pleaded. “All of us will die if you stay here.”

She moved suddenly and seized the dagger once more, but Joseph gripped her hand, keeping her from plunging the blade into her breast. “Please let me die, Joseph,” she begged. “It’s the only way to save you now.”

“Let me die! It’s the only way!” The words exploded in Joseph’s mind with a burst of inspiration. Death—or the appearance of death—might indeed be the best way now, perhaps the only way, as Mary had said, of escaping the fury of the crowd. Quickly he turned to Bana Jivaka. “You told me once you could induce a trance so deep that it cannot be told from death. Could you do it now and make it seem that she is dead?”

Jivaka’s alert mind took in the situation at once. “With that wound on her breast . . . and the dagger . . . Yes, it might be the answer.”

Joseph took the dagger from Mary’s resistless fingers. “You must do exactly as Jivaka tells you, dear,” he said quickly. “He may be able to save us all from the crowd if you help.”

She swayed against him as if she were about to faint, and without waiting for an answer he lifted her in his arms and placed her on the floor before the dressing table. “Look at Jivaka,” he commanded. “And do exactly as he tells you.”

The Indian physician had already removed from his pocket the emerald he always carried. As he held it before Mary’s eyes, the gem began to glow from the light of twin tapers burning on her dressing table. “You must sleep, Mary of Magdala,” he started to chant in a deep monotone. “You must yield yourself to sleep . . . sleep . . . sleep.”

Albina had done her work well, diverting Plotinus on a futile errand when he came raging backstage seeking Mary. It was almost five minutes before the
gymnasiarch,
with Gaius Flaccus and a pair of brawny soldiers carrying drawn swords, burst open the door above which a torch was painted. The tribune was pale and his tunic was still bloody, but the shallow wound in his chest made by Mary’s dagger had been controlled easily with a bandage. Behind the Romans, the forefront of the crowd surged into the narrow corridor, shouting with bloodlust, but the soldiers held them at bay outside the door.

A dramatic scene greeted the eyes of the onlookers. Mary lay on the floor with the bloody dagger gripped in her right hand, the point touching the wound where the blade had penetrated skin and muscle. The red trickle of blood across her breast stood out sharply against the alabaster pallor of her skin, and closer observers than the angry and excited Romans would still have thought she had stabbed herself in the heart, pulling the dagger out again in the agony of death.

“By the gods!” Gaius Flaccus cried. “She has killed herself!” And the people behind him took up the cry, passing it back to the crowd outside. “Flamen is dead! Slain by her own hand!”

Plotinus seemed stunned for a moment, then he wheeled upon the two physicians. “Why are you here?” he demanded savagely, as if he blamed them for his not finding the woman called Flamen alive.

“I was her father’s physician,” Joseph said, “and her friend. I came after her immediately, afraid that she might do something like this. She tried to kill herself once before in Magdala.”

“Then she really is a Jewess as you claim,” the
gymnasiarch
said to Gaius Flaccus. “But why would she try to kill you?”

Before the tribune could answer, Joseph said quickly, “He betrayed Mary of Magdala long ago, when she was a girl. The life of the tribune Gaius Flaccus has been forfeit to her since that time, according to the ancient laws of the Jewish people.”

“And after five years she still wanted to kill me?” Gaius Flaccus swayed and held onto one of the soldiers for support. “Let us leave this place,” he gasped. “The smell of blood sickens me.”

“What drivel is this?” Plotinus snapped. “Romans are not governed by Jewish laws.”

“This woman’s father was a citizen of Rome,” Joseph told him. “As such she is entitled to justice, even if she tried to kill the man who betrayed her.”

Plotinus shrugged. “I dispense justice in the name of Rome here,” he said coldly. “And I judge the woman called Flamen to be a murderess, even in death. Take her body away,” he ordered the soldiers. “Let her be buried this very night on the shore of the lake, in the common ground for criminals.”

Joseph paled. This was more than he had figured on, for he had planned that Mary’s body would be turned over to him for burial. Then he and Jivaka would be able to revive her and escape from the city by way of Lake Mareotis and the Nile. “She was a Jewess,” he said to the
gymnasiarch.
“Grant that I may take her away and lay her to rest after the manner of our people.”

Plotinus did not even answer. “See that her grave is guarded,” he told the soldiers and, turning on his heel, left the room, followed by his retinue. Two soldiers remained behind as guards until slaves could be sent with a litter to carry Mary’s body to the burying ground of the criminals, but they would not let either Joseph or Bana Jivaka approach the body.

Led by two slaves bearing torches, a macabre procession filed from the stadium a short time later. Mary’s body lay upon a litter borne by four slaves. So deep was the trance into which Jivaka had managed to place her that even Joseph, stealing a glance at her as often as he could and occasionally managing to come close enough to touch her skin, could still not tell that she was alive. Joseph and Bana Jivaka walked with Hadja at the rear of the procession, each cudgeling his brains for some stratagem by which to get Mary’s body away where Jivaka could release her from the stupor. But none of them thought of a way, and as each step brought them closer and closer to the grave where the Romans would bury her alive, their hopes for Mary’s life grew fainter and fainter.

Through the turbulent streets of the city the little procession marched toward the dark, ghostly monuments of the Necropolis, across the Agathadaemon Canal. And still Joseph was able to see no way in which they could hope to save Mary from being buried alive. Then near the Necropolis Gate, he spied a building before which a number of elongated boxes stood upended against the walls. It was the shop of a coffin maker, logically placed here at the entrance to the City of the Dead.

“How long could she live in the trance if she were buried in a coffin?” he asked Jivaka in a whisper, seizing his arm and drawing him back out of earshot of the others.

The Indian’s quick mind grasped his meaning. “I once saw a magician in India removed from a coffin alive after six hours,” he whispered. “But the box was very large.”

“Hold!” Joseph called to the slaves carrying the litter. “We must stop for the coffin.”