Younger brothers gathered beside the older who'd given me the water.
"I know you," said one of them. "You're Yeshua bar Joseph, the carpenter. You were at the river."
"And I you," I said. "Ravid bar Oded of Magdala." I moved closer to the litter.
It seemed unthinkable a human could make such sounds. I looked past the tasseled and gathered curtains of the litter.
"Holy Man, if only you can help her - ." It was a woman who spoke. She approached with two younger women. Beyond stood the bearers of the litter, muscled slaves with their arms folded, watching, and there too the servants with the horses tethered together.
"My lord," said the woman, "I beg you, she's not clean."
I moved past her. I stood before the giant canopied litter and I opened the curtains.
She lay on a nest of pillows, a woman in her prime, her gaunt body sheathed in linen robes, and her brown hair soaked in sweat and crushed in a great nest beneath her. The stench of urine was overpowering.
Bound from neck to toe in leather thongs, her arms bound out as if to a cross, she strained and seethed in her rage, her teeth cutting deep into her lip. She spit the blood into my face.
I felt it hit my nose and my cheek. Then came her spittle, coughed up from deep within her throat and spewed at me.
"Holy Man," cried the woman beside me. "For seven years, she's been this way. I tell you there was never a more virtuous woman in Magdala."
"I know," I said. "Mary, mother of two, and they were lost with her husband at sea."
The woman gasped and nodded.
"Holy Man," said the brother Ravid. "Can you help our sister!"
The woman on the bed convulsed and her scream ripped through the air, and then the howl, the perfect howl that I'd heard on the mountain. His howl. It cracked again into laughter.
You think you can take her back from me? You think after seven years you can do what no Priest of the Temple has ever been able to do! Fool. They will spit on you for your antics, spit as she spits.
In a sudden spasm of rage, she rose up, breaking the thongs that held her arms. The brothers and the women drew back.
She was bone and sinew and cold fury.
Rising as high as she might, breaking the bond around her neck with a snap, she hissed at me: "Son of David, what have you to do with us? Get away from us. Leave us."
The brothers were aghast. The women crowded together.
"Never, my lord, has she ever spoken in all these years. My lord, the evil one will kill us."
The straps around her br**sts broke. The litter, large as it was, rocked on the level ground, and suddenly, with a violent thrust, she broke the remaining thongs that held her legs together. She rose up, crouched, and sprang, knocking back the frame of the canopy, and she rushed out into the open air, falling into the sand and rising to her feet with the swiftness of a dancer.
She gave forth an exultant cry. She spun round terrifying her brothers and the women.
The older brother, the one who'd come to me with the water, rushed to take hold of her. But the younger shouted, "Micha, let him speak to her."
She swayed, laughing, growling like a beast, and then she almost fell, her legs wobbling, and as she reached for me, her arms revealed themselves, covered in welts and bruises. Her face for one moment was a woman's face and, then again, the visage of an animal.
"Yeshua of Nazareth!" she bellowed. "You seek to destroy us?" She crouched and pitched the sand at me in fistfuls.
"Say nothing to me, unclean spirits," I answered. I bore down on her. "I drive you out, in the name of the Lord on High, I say, Go out of my servant Mary. Go out and away from this place. Leave her."
She arched her back as she rose. But another scream brought her forward as though it were a chain anchored inside her.
Again I declared it, "In the name of Heaven, leave this woman!"
She went down on her knees, her mouth wet and shivering with her panting breaths. She clutched her waist as if holding herself together. Her entire body trembled, and when she shook her fist at me it was as if her hand were being held by another, and she with all her will fought for her own gesture. "Son of God," she bellowed, "I curse you."
"Out of her, I say, all of you. I banish you!"
She twisted this way and that, uttering cry after cry. "Son of God, Son of God," she said over and over. Her body pitched forward and her forehead hit the sand. Her hair fell to reveal the nape of her neck. The sounds coming from her were weakened, anguished, imploring.
"Out of her, all of you, one by one, one through seven!" I declared. I drew in closer, all but standing above her. Her hair covered my feet. She reached out, as if blind, and seeking a hold.
"By the power of the Most High, I say obey me! Leave this child of God as she was before you came into her!"
She looked up. Her hands went out again, but this time so that she might stand, and stand she did, jerked upward suddenly as if pulled by the hair.
"Out I say, one through seven, I drive you out now!"
One more scream rent the air.
And then she stood motionless.
A shudder passed through her, long and natural and filled with pain. And slowly she sank down and lay back on the sand, her head to the side, her eyes half closed.
Silence.
The women began to cry desperately, and then to beg in frantic prayers. If she was dead, it was the will of God. The will of God. The will of God. They approached fearfully.
As Ravid and Micha drew up at my side, I lifted my hand.
In a soft voice, I said:
"Mary."
Only the quiet - the moaning of the wind, the rattling of the palm branches, the gentle ruffling of the silken curtains of the litter.
"Mary," I said. "Turn to me. Look at me."
Slowly, she did as I had asked.
"Oh, merciful Lord," Ravid said in a low voice. "Dear merciful Lord, this is our sister."
She lay as one awakened from a dream, faintly stunned and musing, eyes passing over those who stood around her.
I sank down on my knees and I put out my arms, and she received me. I drew her up close to me. She made no sound, but clung to me as I kissed her forehead.
"Lord," she said. "My Lord."
Ravid's hoarse broken crying was the only thing in the stillness that surrounded us.
. . .
I DOZED.
I saw them, and felt their hands, but I didn't resist them.
The slaves washed me with great luscious streams of water. I felt the old robe taken away. I felt the water worked into my hair. I felt it run down my back and shoulders.