Free Secret Magdalene by Ki Longfellow Page A

Yehoshua and Jude.
    When we are once more near our own tent and he is sure we are not followed nor overheard, Addai rounds on us. His voice is low but his passion high. “What you do and who you are affects more than your own skins!” Salome hangs her head. By this, I know she knows his anger is just. I too hang my head. “If you are found to be females, what would happen to Seth who has spoken for you?”
    “It would not go well,” I say to him.
    “Not well! It would go badly, very badly.”
    He closes our tent flap, commands that we remain inside, that he will be back, and until he is, we are to speak to no one. All we are to do is to wait.
    And then he is gone, and Salome and I are left gaping. Salome says “Why do Addai and Seth do this? Who are we to them that we endanger them so?”
    My very thought. Indeed, why should they?

THE FOURTH SCROLL
    Daughters of the Nazorean
    T
hough the camp
and the caravan settle in all around us, though fires burn low and it is sure by now that everyone sleeps, Salome and I are frantically whispering. By Isis, where shall we be tomorrow? Still here, waiting for another caravan? Should we choose other than Egypt? We cannot go back to Jerusalem for Father would not take us back into his house. Perhaps north to the true Damascus? Or better yet, Tarsus! I long to see Tarsus, the city of Posidonius, the great astronomer, who devised a machine to show the workings of the sun and the planets and even the stars. Were Tarsus ever mentioned in front of Nicodemus, he would sputter. “Mysteries and abominations!”
    Oh yes, I should love to go to Tarsus.
    I am suggesting leaving it in the hands of a god or a goddess when Addai suddenly pokes his head into our tent, completely unexpected. “Hush and rise up. I have someone I wish you to meet.”
    I shut my mouth in the middle of a hissed word. “Who?” asks Salome.
    “A great teacher,” he replies, already walking away.
    A teacher? Immediately we throw warm mantles over our youth’s tunics and hurry after Addai. We reach the same gate in the wall we reached the first day ever we saw this place, and enter it. Once again we are in the courtyard of the small sundial. Near the tower he stops us. “Sicarii,” he whispers, pointing up as we press ourselves to the stones. I look up. Above us, a watchman by night passes along the edge of the top of the tower. But this is not Sicarii; this is merely a zealous man. Suddenly, I am chilled by understanding—all of them are Sicarii. They are all terrorists and killers! This is why there is no easy entrance to the tower, why there are no houses or bedchambers here. This is why our camp sits high on a cliff set back from the Sea of Salt. How foolish I have been, not to have realized this sooner. These are the very men Rome would seek out and destroy.
Eloi! Eloi!
We are in a seething nest of them.
    When the daggerman moves away from the lip of the tower roof, Addai edges along the tower wall, around the jutting of a small storage room, then slips through a door in a farther wall, and we slip through too. We find ourselves in a perfectly square room that is mostly a set of steep stone steps leading up to the tower roof. Here, it is darker than the moonless night. Following Addai, we move quickly through this square room of steps and into a long rectangle of a room that lies on the opposite side of our entrance. Addai holds his finger to his flat nose and stands waiting. It is not long before we know why. Seth comes in out of the dark of the evening. He does not look at us. But I look at Salome, and she agrees. He is still very angry. A moment later, Tata steps into the room. Tata? What great goings-on are these? Tata glances our way but makes no other sign that singles us out. I fully expect Ananias to enter as well, but he does not; instead comes a woman whose head is covered. The woman lights a small earthenware oil lamp, cupping her hand round the flame, and by this, I see that her skin is as black