Poisoned Honey: A Story of Mary Magdalene by Beatrice Gormley Page B

day, as I helped Eleazar pack for a business trip to Tiberias, he said abruptly, “People tell me you’re spending all your time at your brother’s house. They’re beginning to wonder.”
    My heartbeat sped up. Surely Eleazar wouldn’t take this little pleasure away from me. Then I felt a flash of anger. “Did Chava say that? It’s not true! She doesn’t like me; I tried to tell you. Can’t I see my own mother and grandmother and sister now and then? Please—”
    “This idle visiting must stop,” he cut me off. “You belong to this house now.”
    I was trembling, but I dared not protest anymore.
    After Eleazar and the servant carrying his pack had left for the docks, Chava handed me a market basket. “Where is your head scarf?”
    “I didn’t know we were going to the market today,” I said.
    She rolled her eyes. “I would have thought that a girl’s mother would have taught her to notice when the pantry supplies were getting low.”
    I
would have thought that if she expected me to watchthe supplies, she’d let me look in the pantry. But it didn’t seem worth squabbling with Chava, and besides, if I annoyed her, she might make me stay in the compound. I followed her out the gate with my basket.
    The crowded, noisy market would be something different, at least. There was always plenty to look at, especially among the Gentile vendors. Last time we’d been in the market, for instance, I’d noticed a booth of pottery figurines.
    Chava had noticed them, too, and said aloud to no one in particular (she didn’t address me directly if she could help it), “They’re lucky the elders haven’t noticed these abominations.”
    Images were forbidden by Jewish law, and the town elders frowned on any images in public, even if they were displayed by non-Jews. They’d certainly be angry if they saw those little statues of Artemis, a Greek goddess. I thought she was fascinating, in a disgusting kind of way, covered with dozens of breasts.
    That day, when we reached the corner where the alley met the avenue, I hesitated. Chava turned downhill to the market, not looking back to see if I was following. What if I walked up the avenue, away from the market? What if I walked out the west gate, into the hills, and just kept walking?
    Then I was truly frightened. Was I going mad, like mygrandmother? There was no safe place for a lone woman in the hills. Savage animals lived there, and savage people. One of them was related to me on Imma’s side, as a matter of fact: the son of a cousin. The boy suffered from violent fits, and he was too wild to keep at home. They put him in a hut in the hills and paid a shepherd to bring him food.
    There were also rebel bands hiding in caves in the cliffs, people said. Herod Antipas sent a troop of soldiers up the mountain every once in a while to root them out, but the rebels always returned. I wouldn’t want to meet any of those desperate men—or Antipas’s soldiers, either, for that matter. With a shudder, I turned down the avenue and hurried to catch up with Chava.
    Outside the market, Chava met an acquaintance and stopped to chat. She kept her back turned to me, and the neighbor glanced at me curiously but didn’t greet me. I stood there behind Chava like a servant.
    Nearby, a woman squatted on a tattered cloth. She must not have been able to afford even the small fee for a vendor’s space in the market. She had a wicker cage of sparrows for sale. Only poor people who couldn’t afford a chicken or even a dove would buy such a pathetic little mouthful, hardly worth plucking and roasting. “Sparrows, plump and tasty, only a sestertius,” she called.
    The birds were strangely still, with only their headsturning this way and that. Then one sparrow, as if realizing where it was, fluttered up from the floor of the cage. In an instant, every bird in the cage was frantic, beating its wings against its fellow prisoners and the wicker bars. And then, just as suddenly, they all gave up at