The Magic Circle (27 page)

The ship below was swallowed into the bank of cold, dark fog that always encased this coast, even, as now, in summer. But from up here, Joseph could still make out the beach, its surface unmarred but for the lapping waves, each narrow silken line disappearing beneath the next—much like the Master’s words, he thought. Though the Master had always told them not to carve his words in stone but to hold them in their thoughts, perhaps those words had already vanished from the minds of men—because there was no
drui
, like his companion, who was trained to keep them alive in his heart.

If this were so, then the only remnants of the Master’s words might be those gathered by Miriam of Magdali over the past year, which now lay sealed within the clay amphorae here in the fishing net at his feet: the memories of those who’d seen and heard the Master in his final week on earth.

Joseph and the
drui
had climbed from the dark, dank summer fog below to this isolated lookout to watch the ship depart before discussing their own mission. Now for the first time Joseph turned to his companion.

In the slanted light of the setting sun, the
drui
’s rugged, angular face took on the hard cast of burnished copper. His red-gold hair was plaited into many complex knotted braids that tumbled over his broad shoulders and powerful chest. Though he wore the same loose Celtic tunic as Joseph wore himself, over one shoulder and held by a golden brooch was a throw made entirely of the soft, thick pelts of red foxes, the badge of a high official of the fox clan. His muscular neck and upper arms were encircled by the thick, intricately wrought gold torques he always wore, which marked the status of a prince or a priest: as a
drui
, he was considered both.

He was Lovernios, Prince of Foxes, a man Joseph had trusted all his life—and, except for the Master, the wisest man he’d ever known. Joseph prayed that his great wisdom would bring them through the crisis he felt impending.

“It is nearly over, Lovern,” Joseph said.

“Over—perhaps,” Lovernios replied. “But each ending is a new beginning, as Esus of Nazareth told me when you brought him to live among us when he was but a boy. He said during his travels with you he’d learned everyone resists change.” Lovernios added with a questioning smile, “I wonder if you understand exactly what that means?”

“I’m afraid it means,” said Joseph, “that just like Miriam of Magdali you believe the Master is really alive: that he went through the transformation of death, yet somehow he still walks among us.”

The
drui
shrugged. “Recall his statement: ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’”

“In spirit, yes, that’s possible,” agreed Joseph, “but hardly by taking off and putting on flesh like a cloak, as some would have it! No, my wise friend, it wasn’t primitive superstition that brought me here. I’m after the truth.”

“What you seek, my friend,” Lovernios said, shaking his head, “you’ll never find in these clay vessels at your feet: they contain only words.”

“But it’s you yourself,” objected Joseph, “who first told me of the magic with which the
druid
invest words. You said words alone have the power to kill or to heal. I pray some of these memories will reveal the Master’s last message to us—just as he prayed his words would not be forgotten.”

“Writing does not aid memory but destroys it,” said Lovernios. “That is why our people restrict the use of our written language to sacramental functions: to protect or sanctify a spot, destroy an enemy, raise the elements, work magic. Great truths cannot be put into writing, nor ideas be set in stone. You may open your clay vessels, my friend, but you’ll find only memories of memories, shadows of shadows.”

“Even from boyhood the Master had the memory of a
drui,
” said Joseph. “He knew Torah by heart and could recite from it hour after hour. During long sea voyages I used to read him stories, and he committed those to memory too. His favorite was the
Pythian Odes
of Pindar—especially the phrase ‘
Kairos
and tide wait for no man.’ In the Greek tongue, there are two words for ‘time’:
chronos
and
kairos
. The first means time as the sun passes through the heavens. But
kairos
means the ‘necessary moment’—the critical instant when one must catch the tide or be swept under and utterly destroyed. It was this second meaning that was so important to the Master.

“The very last occasion when I saw him—when I went to tell him I’d arranged for the white ass he’d requested to ride on his entry into Jerusalem the next Sunday—he said to me, ‘Then all is done, Joseph, and I go to meet my
kairos.’
Those were the last words he spoke to me before he died.” Joseph blinked tears from his eyes and swallowed hard. “I miss him so much, Lovernios,” he whispered.

The Celtic prince turned to Joseph. Though the two were of the same age and of nearly equal height, he put his arms around Joseph and rocked him like a child, as the Master used to do when words seemed inadequate.

“Then we can only hope,” Lovernios said at last, “that these glimpses of words, even if they are not all of them true, will at least take some pain from your heart.”

Joseph looked at his friend and nodded. Then he stooped to the net and extracted the amphora that bore Miriam’s mark as the first of the series. Breaking the seal of the clay container, he pulled out and opened the scroll, and he began to read aloud:

To: Joseph of Arimathea

at Glastonbury, Britannia

From: Miriam of Magdali

at Bethany, Judea

Dearly beloved Joseph,

Many thanks for your letter, which James Zebedee brought after his visit with you. I regret it’s taken one whole year to fulfill your request, but as you’ve no doubt learned from James by now, everything here has changed—everything.

Oh, Joseph, how I miss you! And how grateful I am that you’ve asked me to carry out this undertaking. It seems you alone recall how much the Master relied upon women. Who but women financed his mission, provided him shelter, traveled and taught and healed and ministered by his side? With his mother Miriam we followed his path to Golgotha; we stood weeping beneath the cross until he died and we went to the sepulchre to wash his body, to prepare it with rare herbs and fine Magdali linen. In short, we women were the ones who stayed with the Master from beginning to end. Even beyond the end, until his spirit ascended to heaven.

Joseph, forgive my pouring out these turbulent feelings. But when you reached across the waters through your letter, I felt like a drowning woman rescued at the final hour. I agree that something significant happened in the Master’s last days, and I’m the more frustrated since I can’t come at once to Britannia as you wish. But this delay could prove a blessing—for I myself may have discovered something that hasn’t been hinted at in any of the memoirs I’ve collected for you: it’s related to Ephesus.

The Master’s mother, who’s been like a mother to me, is as disturbed as the rest of us at what’s become of her son’s legacy in so short a time. She’s determined to move to Ephesus on the Ionian coast, and has asked me to accompany her there and to stay out the year until she’s fully settled.

Her protector, young Johan Zebedee, whom the Master used to call
parthenos
, or ‘blushing virgin,’ now seems a grown man. He’s built us a little stone house on Ortygia, Quail Mountain, in the outskirts of the city: perhaps you recall it from your travels? I’m sure the Master did, for he selected the location himself and told his mother of it shortly before his death. It’s an odd choice of site: the house, I’m told, is only a stone’s throw from the sacred well the Greeks believe marks the spot where their goddess Artemis (or Diana, as the Romans call her) was born. But there is more.

Each year at their festival of Eostre—the spring equinox when the goddess’s birth is celebrated—Ortygia becomes the focus of pilgrimages from all over the Greek world. Small children tramp across this mountain searching for the fabled red Eostre eggs, symbols of luck and fertility, sacred to the goddess. Ironically, this celebration takes place just during our Pesach: the very week, two years ago, when the Master died. So this pagan goddess and her rites seem strangely linked with the memory of the Master’s death, and also with the one thing I told you was missing from all the other accounts: a story the Master told us up on the mountain, the same day you came to my house two years ago, just home from your year at sea.

“When I was young,” the Master told us that morning, high in the wildflower meadow, “I went abroad among many foreign peoples. I learned that the people of the far north have a word for something they hold true: ‘dru,’ which also means belief, and ‘troth’—a pledge. So just as in our Judaic tradition, truth, justice, and faith are one: priests are also lawgivers. When one of their priests dispenses justice, as our own ancestors did in ancient times, he stands beneath the duru, a tree we call oak. Their priest is therefore called
d’rui
or
d’ruid
in plural, meaning ‘giver of truth.’

“Also like the ancient Hebrews, these northerners hold most sacred the number thirteen, the number of months in a year of the lunar calendar. Because the thirteenth moon marks the end of the year, it’s the number we identify with change, the number of a new cycle, the number of rebirth and of hope. This number itself is the kernel of truth in the story of Jacob, who wrestled with the angel of God and was transformed into ‘Isra’el.’ As everyone tends to forget, our forefather, Jacob, did not have twelve children—he had thirteen.”

Then, as if he’d explained everything clearly and the session were at an end, the Master seemed to drift back toward an inner realm, and turned from us as if to depart.

“But, Master!” cried Simon Peter. “Surely there’s some mistake? I admit I know nothing of these oak-men you speak of. But among our own people it’s an established fact of Torah that there are
twelve
tribes of Israel—not thirteen as you said. Such a thing has never been questioned!”

“Peter, Peter, God gave you ears. You should pay Him back by using them!” said the Master, laughing as he squeezed Peter’s shoulder. When Peter looked crestfallen, the Master added, “I didn’t say thirteen tribes but thirteen children. Listen to the story with new ears: ask yourself why this fact should represent the kernel of truth I was seeking.”

The Master came over to where I sat with the others in the broad ring of grassy meadow, and he placed his hand on my hair and smiled down at me.

“One day Miriam may find the answer,” the Master told Peter. “I’ve always thought of Miriam as my thirteenth disciple. But one day she’ll also be my first apostle: thirteen and one, the completion of a cycle. Alpha and omega, the first and last.” Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “Jacob’s forgotten child that I spoke of was named Dinah. As I see it, Dinah herself embodies the kernel of truth in the story. Her name, like that of her brother Dan, means judge.”

Smiling that strange smile, the Master turned away again and went off down the mountain, leaving all of us to follow in his wake.

Joseph, you know as well as I that the Master never used parable or paradox to confuse, or merely to titillate: there was motive behind his method. He thought that only if we quested after truth, and arrived at it ourselves, would the truth we found be completely understood, thoroughly absorbed, and become a part of us.

That morning the Master made clear the number thirteen was related to the Hebrew lunar calendar, therefore to the concept of seasonal change. But why didn’t he also mention what he must have known: that the Roman name for Dinah is Diana? And why didn’t he tell us the plan I’ve just spoken of: that he intended one day for his own mother to live in a famous oak grove in Ortygia? That her house was to be built beside a well on the very spot where the moon goddess Artemis—also called Diana of the Ephesians, patroness of springs and wells, whose rites are conducted in oak groves throughout the Greek world—was born? No, it could be no accident that this was the last story the Master told his flock, on what proved to be the last day we were all together. The only mistake was mine, in not seeing it before.

Joseph, I know that this story and the reports I’ve sent will give rich fodder to your mind, and that before we meet again, you’ll have digested them fully. I myself, meanwhile, shall strive to learn more about the Master’s private motives—for such, I’m convinced, they were—in sending his mother to the home of this famous Ephesian goddess. Perhaps, together, you and I can find the missing link that will knot together all these seemingly diverse and scattered events of the Master’s last days.

For now, Joseph, I pray that you walk with God; and I send you my eyes, my ears, my heart, and my blessing—that you may see, hear, love, and believe as the Master wished us to do.

Miriam of Magdali

When Joseph looked up from this letter, the sun had dipped below the horizon, staining the sea bloodred. The churning fog rolled over the waters like sulfuric fumes rising from the depths. Lovernios stood beside him, his eyes on the fiery vista as if lost in thought, and did not speak.

“There’s something in this tale Miriam hasn’t mentioned,” said Joseph. “While it’s true Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, was one of thirteen children, she wasn’t the thirteenth child born to him. In Torah, birth sequence—at least among the sons of a tribe—is quite important. Dinah was the last child born to Jacob’s elder wife, Leah, but not the last of Jacob’s thirteen.”

“He had more than one wife, then, your ancestor?” asked Lovernios with interest. Polygamy among the Keltoi was rare, and unacceptable within the elite class of Druid.

“Jacob had two wives and two concubines,” said Joseph. “I told you the Master’s memory was remarkable, especially regarding Torah. All the numbers in Torah are significant—for the Hebrew alphabet, like the Greek, is based on numbers. I agree that the Master wanted the story of Dinah to be seen from many angles.”