The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (13 inch ebook reader .TXT) 📗

a kind of dark humor what he planned to do to follow that performance.

On Friday morning Joseph drove out to Bethany, a few miles beyond Gethsemane. When he pulled up below the house, he saw the vision—or rather an apparition in white—coming down the hill with open arms. It was the Master, but he seemed somehow transformed. He was surrounded by as many as a hundred people, as usual most of them female, all dressed also in white and bearing armloads of flowers, and singing a strange but haunting chant.

Joseph sat speechless in his cart. When the Master came up to him, his robes flowing like water over his limbs, he looked into Joseph’s eyes and smiled. Joseph saw him, just in that instant, as the little child he once had been.

“Beloved Joseph,” said the Master, taking him by the hands and drawing him from the cart, “how I have thirsted for you.”

Then, instead of embracing him, the Master ran his hands up Joseph’s arms, across his shoulders, over his face, as if examining an animal, or committing his features to memory to execute a pagan sculpture. Joseph scarcely knew what to think. And yet—he felt a kind of warm tingling deep beneath the skin, down in his flesh, his bones, as if some physical action were taking place. He drew away uncomfortably.

The chanting people drifting about them were annoying to Joseph, who recognized none of them and longed to draw the Master away. As if he had grasped his thoughts, the Master said,

“Will you stay with me, Joseph?”

“For dinner, you mean, and the night?” said Joseph. “Yes, it’s all been arranged by Martha. And I’ll stay for as long as you like; we really must speak.”

“I mean, will you stay with me,” the Master repeated in a tone Joseph couldn’t identify.

“Stay with you?” said Joseph. “Why, yes, you know I’ll always be with you. That’s why we must—”

“Will you stay with me, Joseph?” the Master asked again, almost as if repeating a mnemonic phrase. Though he was still smiling, a part of him seemed to be looking off into a deep distance. Joseph felt a horrible chill.

“We must go indoors,” he said quickly. “We haven’t seen each other for a very long time; we have much to discuss in private.”

Shooing away the others, he ushered the Master up the path to the house. He would send someone down to tend to the horses. They reached the portico of the large and rambling stone building.

As Joseph entered the dark recesses of the courtyard with its tree-shaded pool, he took the Master by the arm. His attention focused for a moment as his fingertips touched the cool linen sleeve—that new white garment he recalled having been mentioned by Nicodemus and several others. Joseph, as a knowledgeable importer of foreign wares, could recognize by touch that this was not the world-famous but affordable linen of Galilee, the production of which had built the fortunes of the Magdali family and so many other Galileans. Rather it was the far costlier Pelusian linen of northern Egypt—one might almost say precious, for its cost rivaled that of another fabric also made by some mysterious secret process: Chinese silk, a fabric sufficiently rare that in Rome it was forbidden to be worn by any but the imperial family. How on earth had the Master come by such a treasure? Stranger still, given his message of renouncing the trappings of worldly wealth, why had he kept the garment instead of selling it and giving the money to the poor, which had always been his policy even with far less extravagant gifts?

They found Martha, the older sister, her braided hair covered by a cloth, her neck damp from perspiration, bustling among the servants around the clay hearths at the back of the house.

“I’m making a real feast-offering for today,” Martha said proudly as the two men came to embrace her, carefully picking their way among servants bearing food-laden platters. “Pickled fish in wine,” she went on, “breads and gravies, chicken broth, roasted lamb, and the first spring vegetables and herbs from here in our garden. I’ve been cooking for days! Since the Master, as usual, has adopted this visiting crowd, I’ve had to prepare more food than planned. Though Pesach isn’t until next week, this is a special thanks offering from our family—not only for your safe return from the sea, Joseph, but also in gratitude for the miracle that the Master’s faith brought about only three months ago, as I’m sure you’ve heard, with respect to our young Lazarus.”

Martha beamed upon the Master with familiar affection, and seemed to notice nothing amiss. In surprise Joseph glanced at him too, and indeed the former feeling of otherworldliness had vanished. In its place was that warm compassion that Joseph had always felt went far to explain the powerful and tremendous following the Master had acquired within the very short period of his ministry. The Master seemed to possess a knowledge of every dark secret buried within one’s bosom, but with it the ability to forgive and absolve all.

“Dear Joseph,” the Master was saying, smiling as if about to share some private jest, “please do not believe a word this woman has told you! It was her own faith and that of her sister that brought young Lazarus from the earth. I assisted in the delivery as a midwife might, but God alone performs the miracles of birth and rebirth, whether from womb or tomb. And only for those who have true faith.”

“Our brother Lazarus can share his experience with you himself,” Martha assured Joseph. “He is out on the terrace now, with the other guests.”

“And Miriam?” asked Joseph.

“You really should do something about her, Master,” Martha said, working herself into a small fit. “She’s been cavorting all morning on the mountain with you and the others; and now she’s in the orchard with the disciples and their families from out of town. She’s only interested in philosophical chitchat, while