The Passion of Mary Magdalen. Elizabeth Cunningham
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tell me you’re a proselyte,” he groaned.
“Answer my questions, please.”
“All right, all right. I am a Jew, yes, and of a prominent family. I hold an inherited seat on the Sanhedrin. But does that mean that I must be ignorant of the great ideas and literatures of the world? Because I have read Plato and Aristotle does that make me a gentile? Because I must do business in Rome, am I a collaborator?”
He was arguing with someone—but clearly not with me. Maybe with someone like my beloved, someone he’d like to dismiss as a Galilean peasant.
“And the rest of my question?”
“What am I doing in a Roman whorehouse? Come, show me to your room, and I will answer you.”
Well, maybe it was a dumb question. What is any man doing in a whorehouse?
Despite my status as a probationer, I was pretty seasoned by now, a quick learner, everyone said. But that night my native shamelessness faltered. This man knew something of my people. He knew what a free Celt looked like—I was glad I had given up my imitation woad and resumed the whore’s toga. More inhibiting still, this man might have stood beside my beloved in the Temple of Jerusalem. To my dismay, my hands began to shake again as I undressed; then my whole body trembled uncontrollably with a sudden chill.
Still fully clothed, Joseph came and put his arms around me. His touch was as gentle as his eyes. He murmured comforting words—in Hebrew, a language I had never heard except in my beloved’s voice. I couldn’t help it; I broke down and wept.
“There, there,” he soothed, and he put me to bed. “You have known sorrow. I have known sorrow. We will not speak of it,” he said in Aramaic. “Not tonight. Tonight you will rest. I will stay with you until you sleep. Rest now, Maeve Rhuad.”
I closed my eyes and hoped he would think I was sleeping. His kindness was too much. I didn’t want to trust anyone. I didn’t want to love anyone. I didn’t want anyone to love me. Not here. Not now. Not this way.
I must have fallen asleep; I did not hear him go. I woke much later when the house was finally dark and quiet, my favorite cat, a golden tabby named Olivia, purring next to my heart.
Joseph, whom my fellow whores called Uncle Joseph, was as good as his word. He came every day for an hour before we went to the baths to give me lessons in written Greek. The letters amazed me; they were so tiny and precise, moving in lines from left to right, each word so small compared to the amount of space it would take to write the same thing in ogham. But then Celts modeled ogham after the flight of birds—the whole sky for a scroll. Greek looked more like the scratch of small bird feet.
At my insistence, Joseph began to teach me the Hebrew alphabet, too, which went in the opposite direction. “Backwards!” he muttered. “A stubborn and stiff-necked people, our God calls us. We always have to be different.” The Hebrew letters were easier for me to remember, because they came from living things, like gimmel, or camel, shaped like the strange humped beasts my beloved had described for me. Though I was still wary of the written word, I looked forward to the distraction of my lessons with Joseph, the brusque impersonality with which he taught that covered, for the most part, the unnerving tenderness he had shown me on the first night we met. Nor did he ever go upstairs with me again. I knew he’d dined several times with Domitia Tertia, but he kept away from the whores’ parlor. I didn’t know what to make of his eschewing my bed, but I confess I was relieved. I did not want to ask myself why.
Then, one morning, Joseph didn’t show up for lessons. I noticed that I was mildly disconsolate, but I didn’t have much time to wonder about his absence. Just as I was heading back upstairs, Bonia came to summon me to Domitia Tertia’s private chamber, a place I had never been before, the secret center of The Vine and Fig Tree.
The domina received me reclining on a couch, which was where wealthy Romans generally were when they were not walking around the Forum or soaking in the baths. Behind her a mosaic depicted a scene I did not recognize. I did not know Greek or Roman stories. (Uncle Joseph had insisted we begin by reading Plato, as he found me utterly lacking in any rational philosophical foundation. The poets and playwrights could wait.) The mosaic featured a severe yet also seductive woman, not unlike Domitia Tertia—or one of my mothers. She stood on an island; stylized waves lapped the shore. She was surrounded by animals—lions, wolves, and a whole herd of pigs. The mosaic evoked a sense of wildness, remoteness. In fact, it made me homesick.
“You like the mosaic,” Domitia Tertia observed, not inviting me to sit. “Do you know who the woman is?”
“I think it might be you, domina.”
“You’re perceptive. I asked the artist to depict Circe on her island. An insolent but talented young man, he manages to hint that there is a likeness between us. Do you know the story of Circe?”
“No, domina.”
“Sit.” She indicated a low stool on the other side of the table from her couch. “Long, long ago, much longer ago than those philosophers Joseph wants you to read, in the time of the gods and heroes, Circe lived on Aeaea, an island off the coast of Italia. Some called her a goddess, some a sorceress. She was the daughter of Helio, the sun god, and Perse, an ocean nymph.”
Just the opposite of me, the daughter of the sea god and my mother Grainne of the golden hair, the sun herself, I mused, lulled by the storytelling, forgetting for a moment that god my father was a lie my mothers told because it made a better story than the truth.
“When a lover displeased her or rejected her, she turned him into an animal. All except Odysseus,” Domitia went on. “He cheated. Hermes gave him an herb called moly to protect him against Circe’s magic. She had turned his advance guard into swine. But she let Odysseus go unharmed, though he had been her lover for a year. She did more than that; she helped him, gave him directions to Hades, so that he could consult with the spirits of the dead. That is how the story goes. People are always telling stories of heroes outwitting witches. But I personally don’t think the moly affected Circe’s actions at all.”
I waited attentively. Whose story was she telling me?
“The name Circe means hawk. A predatory bird with keen sight. I think she saw it all. I think she knew exactly what she was doing.”
“Now then,” she shifted from story-telling mode to her more familiar business manner, “do you know why I called you here today, Red?”
Suddenly I had hope, wild desperate hope. Joseph had changed his mind; he was buying me from her. He was even now making preparations for departure. Like Circe, she would help him go home…with me, even though he had been her lover. Holy Moly!
“I would not presume to know your reasons, domina,” was all I said.
She gave me a sharp look. My imitation of a good, submissive slave must have seemed just that—an imitation, a subtly mocking one.
“Listen, Red, Rhuad, whatever Joseph calls you. You be straight with me and I’ll be straight with you. As you know, you’ve been on probation and under keener observation than you might imagine.”
I had no doubt of that, though it seemed rather absurd—obsessive-compulsive to use one of your terms—to expend so much effort monitoring a slave, a disposable commodity as I had been repeatedly reminded. I made no comment as I studied a chipped fingernail that one of the ornatrices would have to fix today. I knew my display of indifference bordered on insolence.
“Look