Poisoned Honey Read online

  But after all, Yeshua had connected himself with me—I who had wished the death of my husband, and almost caused the death of an innocent child, and raved lewdness and blasphemy! I remembered how Yeshua looked at me when we met—looked straight through the layers of grime to my soul.

  How would Yeshua see Matthew? I thought of that time years ago when I’d seen the tax collector’s son, as I was about to spit on his doorstep and glimpsed a tender heart. Yeshua must have seen that Matthew hidden inside the vile toll collector.

  “It’s just as well,” my brother was saying. “Elder Thomas has graciously offered to interview you and vouch that you’re healed, and then we won’t have to stoop quite as low as Matthew bar Alphaeus. Uncle Reuben thought perhaps one of his connections in Tiberias …”

  I felt the bars of a cage closing in on me again, and it was hard to take a deep breath. Making a hasty excuse to my brother, I left the rooftop.

  As I stumbled down the stairs, which were lit only by a small lamp, a concerned voice spoke in my head. What good is it to be healed if you have to be married off to another Eleazar? If only you could get away, just for a short while….

  Your family has so little appreciation for the ordeal you’ve been through! exclaimed another voice. They never did realize how gifted you were, how special.

  They should suffer for it, added a hideous grating that was hardly a voice.

  My heart pounded. The demons had returned. What was to keep them from infesting me again?

  Desperately I sought something to hold on to, as if I were sliding off a cliff. Words from a psalm came to mind, and I gasped them out: “For your name’s sake lead and guide me, take me out of the net which is hidden for me….”

  Then I blinked as sunlight flooded the courtyard. Only it wasn’t the courtyard but a lakeshore. Before I could even take in the scene, a sense of well-being washed over my spirit. In front of me stood a tall man with a thin face. “Miryam,” said Yeshua. “Come with me.”

  While I watched, he turned and began walking up a path that led away from the lake. The path was steep and rocky, climbing quickly into the hills. At a turning where the path disappeared behind boulders, Yeshua paused, looked over his shoulder, and beckoned to me.

  The scene faded, leaving me in the dark. My legs shook all over so that I had to sit down on the stairs. But I was filled with gratitude for the vision. At last, I recognized the path that the prophet Miryam had told me of. Indeed, it was not the path of my mother, my grandmother, my sister, my cousin, and every other woman I knew. It was the way of the rabbi and his disciples.

  A short while later, as I was falling asleep on my cot next to my mother, a practical question came to me. I must join Yeshua; I would join him. There was no question in my mind about that. But how would I travel back to Capernaum? I couldn’t go by myself.

  In the morning, I woke up still puzzled. I went down to the kitchen and began helping Yael with the morning bread. While I patted the rounds of dough flat for baking, my thoughts took shape also: I must speak to Matthew. As soon as Matthew received the sign he was waiting for, he would go to follow Yeshua, I was sure of that. The son of the tax collector didn’t want to marry me, but maybe he would let me travel with him.

  What if he’d received his sign the previous night, at the same time I’d received mine? He might have left Magdala already. Or maybe right this minute, as I slapped bread onto the baking stone, he was leading his donkey out the north gate.

  Praying that he would still be at the wool merchant’s, I made myself wait until the rest of the family had left the courtyard or started their day’s work. Then I wound a scarf around my head and slipped out the gate.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  SEEKING YESHUA

  I got some strange looks walking through the Gentile quarter, but I found the warehouse of Tabbai the wool trader without too much trouble. There were more strange looks from the doorkeeper when I asked for Matthew bar Alphaeus. I told him I was Matthew’s sister, my excuse for approaching a man in a public place, but he probably didn’t believe that. However, he pointed out the office, where a man with thick, earnest eyebrows sat cross-legged, sliding the counters across a bronze abacus.

  Matthew’s finely woven striped coat may have been the same one he’d worn the night he came to Susannah’s house, only now the edges of the coat looked shabby. The rings and gold chains were gone from his hands and neck. As he glanced up from his work, I was troubled by doubt. Maybe he wasn’t going to join Rabbi Yeshua after all. Even if he was, would he want to be bothered taking a strange woman along?

  “Shalom,” I said uncertainly. “I am Mariamne …” My voice trailed off at Matthew’s look of dismay.

  “Mariamne, widow of Eleazar.” (I winced at that, but of course it was my name.) He stood up. “Why are you here? I told your brother … he said you were healed … surely your brother told you …”

  I felt my face redden as I understood: he was afraid that I was still possessed after all. He thought I’d come to berate him, or perhaps to demand that he marry me anyway. “Don’t worry,” I said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with what Alexandros talked to you about, except that he told me you were waiting for a sign.”

  Matthew nodded, looking puzzled.

  “I thought the sign might have come to you, because I had a vision last night.” As I spoke, the vision came back to me, and I forgot to be embarrassed. “I saw Yeshua looking at me with eyes of love. He said, ‘Come.’ So now I must go find Rabbi Yeshua again.”

  Matthew seemed to be struck speechless. Maybe he was horrified at being confronted, once again, by such a bold woman. I went on, more hesitantly, “I hoped I might travel with you.”

  As I spoke, Matthew’s expression softened into wonder. Again the memory of the boy on the doorstep flashed in my mind, and I could imagine Yeshua seeing through Matthew to his tender soul.

  “Why are you hesitating, Matthew bar Alphaeus?” I exclaimed. “You don’t belong here, either. Go join Rabbi Yeshua. Don’t wait to receive a sign!”

  Taking a deep breath, Matthew finally spoke in a dazed voice. “I think I’ve just received it.”

  Matthew and I agreed to meet inside the south gate of the city shortly after midday. Returning to my family’s house, I thought at first that I’d leave without telling anyone. What if they tried to stop me?

  But when I went upstairs to find a traveling cloak, I saw my mother at the other end of the room pushing her shuttle through the threads of the loom. Poor Imma, striving day in and day out for a well-run household and a family to be proud of. She would never be proud of me now.

  At least, I wouldn’t make her worry about what had become of me. Kneeling beside the loom, I said, “Imma, I’m leaving. I’m going to follow Rabbi Yeshua.”

  I expected my mother to be shocked, but she hardly looked surprised. Sighing, she said, “Maybe it’s for the best. If the tax collector’s son won’t have you, I don’t know who would. I suppose it’s better to follow a penniless wandering preacher than to lurk in the hills with demons coming out of your ears.” Then something occurred to her, and she frowned. “But who will escort you to the rabbi? Alexandros can’t be expected to leave the packinghouse again.”

  When I explained that I was traveling with Matthew, Imma dropped her shuttle and stared at me. “No wonder he won’t marry you. He doesn’t have to. Ai, all my years of work for nothing!” Then her face cleared, and she exclaimed, “I have it! Yael must go with you as a chaperone.”

  “Yael? She’s not strong enough for a journey,” I protested.

  “Yes, that would solve more than one problem,” my mother continued. She nodded several times. “Yael can’t carry the water jars from the well anymore. The manservant had to add that to his other chores, and he’s been grumbling.”

  “No.” I spoke with such authority that my mother stared, and I was surprised at myself. “Yael isn’t able to travel,” I went on. “But you must not think of turning her out, now that she’s gett
ing feeble. Respect all the years of work she’s done for you, and respect my father’s memory. He would at least let her have her bread, and a corner of the courtyard.”

  Imma looked stunned. She started to say something, then stopped. She plied her shuttle for a few moments. Then she said in a matter-of-fact voice, as if she’d never mentioned Yael, “Bread. You’ll need bread for the journey, and cheese, and you may as well take a string of dried figs, too.” Rising from the loom, she went down to the kitchen shed with me to pack some provisions.

  As I approached the gate where I was to meet Matthew, I had to admit that my mother’s words about traveling without a chaperone bothered me. It had been highly improper of me to visit Matthew at his place of work, but to go on a journey with him …! Only a prostitute would travel alone with men not of her family. According to Matthew, Rabbi Yeshua was up in the hill country of Galilee now, so it might be a few days before we found him.

  To my relief, when I joined Matthew at the south gate, he’d already found a group to travel with. They were a family of peasants, conscripted to bring firewood to the lighthouse in the Magdala harbor. They were in a hurry to get back to the hills, where their crops needed tending.

  As the peasants—a man, his wife, and their half-grown sons—walked ahead of us, Matthew fell into step with me. “I feel for them,” he said quietly, nodding toward our fellow travelers. “They have so little as it is, and they can’t really afford to take time away from the fields. My brother, James, used to talk about how unfair it was, that the Romans made them supply firewood.”

  “Your brother used to?” I asked, wondering if his brother had died of the Tishri fever, like many others.

  “My brother is lost to me,” he answered. There was such pain in his voice that I let it go.

  Our route was the same as the one I’d traveled with my father three years before, climbing through pomegranate orchards, then terraced olive groves. After we’d been walking for a time, Matthew mentioned that Rabbi Yeshua was supposed to be somewhere near Arbel at the moment.

  “I have an aunt in Arbel,” I said. “Maybe we can stay with her.” Ordinarily, I wouldn’t doubt that, but after all that had happened, even my aunt Deborah might not welcome me with delight. She must have heard that her brother’s elder daughter had been possessed, but maybe not that I’d been healed.

  I had been healed, and I knew I was on the right way, but still I didn’t feel quite out of danger. I was eager to reach Yeshua. In his presence, surely, the unclean spirits would not dare to approach me again.

  When the road became steeper, Matthew stopped and cut a walking stick for each of us. As we walked on, I asked him how he’d first met Rabbi Yeshua. Matthew seemed glad that I wanted to hear his story. Gazing over the rocky goat-pastures, he described the time that Yeshua had walked up to the tollgate. He told how the encounter had drawn him into a different way of seeing, a different way of acting.

  “Then one day, when I was standing at the back of the crowd, listening to Yeshua preach, he noticed me again.” Matthew grinned as if remembering a good joke. “He said, ‘Matthew bar Alphaeus, I’m coming to your house for dinner tonight.’”

  I smiled, too. The holy man, inviting himself to break bread with the outcast toll collector! I could imagine how shocked everyone, including Yeshua’s disciples and Matthew himself, must have been.

  But Matthew recovered himself enough, he said, to call out to the whole crowd, “Everyone is welcome!”

  Matthew’s eyes sparkled as he described for me that dinner party at his villa above Capernaum. The roasted ox! The dining room decked with garlands, and wreaths of flowers for all the guests! The fine wines! The musicians!

  “At first, I was afraid I’d overdone it,” Matthew admitted. “I don’t think the rabbi’s fishermen disciples had ever seen a dining couch before, let alone reclined on one. But they followed Rabbi Yeshua’s example, and he seemed perfectly at home.” Matthew shook his head in wonderment. “That man would be at home anywhere—in the emperor’s throne room, or sharing a crust with beggars.”

  Yeshua’s joyous mood spread to everyone else, Matthew said, and soon they were all eating and drinking and talking with gusto. Matthew found himself thinking, This is what money is for: a celebration like this. Looking around the hall, he felt great affection for each of the people at his tables. But then a sobering thought came to him. Some of these guests at his banquet were also the travelers he’d overcharged, or turned back from the gate.

  After the main course, Matthew stood up, motioning a musician to beat the drum for attention. “Friends, I have something to say.” He looked around the room at the faces turned to him. There was the blind man, although he didn’t seem to be blind anymore; there was the dried-fruit vendor; there was the man with the five children and the sick father.

  Their expressions showed wonderment—except for Rabbi Yeshua’s; he watched Matthew like a proud father. Matthew went on, “I’m going to repay everyone I cheated. In fact, I’m going to pay them back double what I owe.”

  There was a stunned silence, and then the dining hall rang with applause: shouts, whistles, stamping feet. Yeshua hugged Matthew in beaming silence.

  “It was the happiest moment of my life,” Matthew ended his story. “I was sure I knew, in that moment, what Yeshua meant by ‘the kingdom of heaven.’”

  “That’s it,” I said passionately. “That’s the way I felt after he drove out the demons.” I told Matthew my story, beginning with my miserable marriage. When I came to the moment when Yeshua looked into my eyes like a loving brother, Matthew interrupted.

  “Yes! That’s the way he looked at me, like a brother.” He choked on the last words. I thought of what he’d said earlier, about a brother who had been “lost.”

  I started to go on with my story, describing how the rabbi commanded the unclean spirits to leave me. But Matthew broke in again: “Rabbi Yeshua!”

  He explained that he’d just remembered a story he’d heard some time ago. It was about an exorcist named Rabbi Yeshua who’d tricked demons into possessing a herd of pigs. “Granted, Yeshua is a common name,” said Matthew, “but I’m sure it must have been the same man. I can picture it all happening.”

  “So can I,” I said. And I could, as if I’d been hiding behind a rock in that Gentile cemetery, watching the rabbi drive out the demons.

  After a moment, Matthew returned to his thoughts about his banquet. “So I was granted a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven. But then what?” He gave a baffled sigh. “The very next day, my Roman overseer came by and dismissed me for gross incompetence. It turned out that my most trustworthy guard had sent him word about what I was doing, and he replaced me with that man.”

  “So I came back to Magdala, not knowing what else to do. My father was … is … disgusted with me. The only work I could get was what you saw: as an accountant for a Gentile merchant.”

  “Rabbi Yeshua will make everything clear for us, don’t you think?” I asked.

  “I hope so,” said Matthew.

  Below the top of Mount Arbel, the road split, and one branch continued on around the back of the mountain. The peasant family was waiting for us at the fork, resting under a scrubby lone olive tree. “The road isn’t so steep from here on,” called the father encouragingly. “Over the next rise, it’s downhill all the way to Arbel.”

  Matthew produced a skin full of watered wine, and we each had a sip. Then we followed the road down into the small valley behind Mount Arbel. The fields and pastures were green from the winter rains. Before we reached Arbel, the peasant family said good-bye, pointing out their field and house and the cart track that led to them. I’d never thought much about how peasants lived. Now the sight of these people’s stone hut, and their little field, hardly big enough to feed a goat, gave me a pang.

  Matthew must have felt the same way, because he gave the young son the extra tunic in his sack. I gave the wife my string of dried figs. Thanking them for their company, we walked on into
the village.

  In Arbel, a few of the village men were standing under the synagogue shed, talking. Matthew stopped to ask them about Yeshua. He found out that the rabbi had come that way, but he and his followers had left the day before.

  “None too soon,” said the village elder. “They’d eat us into poverty. That teacher charms the women into bringing out the hidden stores so that everyone can eat their fill, whether they have a right to or not.”

  My aunt Deborah, who owned the largest house in the village, was delighted to see me. “I’d heard you were …” She made the sign against the evil eye. She wanted to hear about Alexandros and Sarah’s baby, and she asked after my uncle’s and my mother’s health. Aunt Deborah looked troubled when she realized I was traveling with Matthew, but she welcomed him and showed him the shelter on the roof where he could sleep.

  It was almost evening by then, and I helped my aunt carry water jars to the village well. She was amazed, but not disbelieving, when I told her that Rabbi Yeshua had driven out my demons. “I knew Elder Jonas was mistaken. He thought the holy man was fooling us with magic tricks, and getting on the right side of the women by paying attention to their children. He ordered Rabbi Yeshua and his disciples to leave.”

  Other women were gathered at the well, and we waited as they filled their jars first. When my aunt introduced me as seeking Rabbi Yeshua, each of them had something good to say about him. One woman said, “The rabbi cured my neighbor’s boy of his stutter.” Another said, “And he healed a lame nanny goat, the leader of our herd.” A third woman added, “Who knows what he might have done for the grape harvest, if the elder hadn’t sent him away?”

  “It was wrong of Elder Jonas,” agreed my aunt. “But he’s the elder, like his father before him.”

  “I wanted to listen to the rabbi some more,” said a shy young woman with a baby tucked into her shawl. “I hoped he’d explain …” She waved a hand at the hillside above the village, bright yellow even in the fading light. “He said the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.”