Secret Magdalene by Ki Longfellow Page B

within this child that you, John of Kefar Imi, are the One.”
    I stand as if held up by rope. Queen? The Queen of Adiabene’s voice sounds in this round room with its domed ceiling as God’s voice must have sounded in the heavens over Moses. But John has caught her in the white light of his regard. “Woman,” he says, “on this earth you are a queen, but before God you are one soul among many.” John of the River is not shouting, but the authority of his person shines forth as I am told the great beacon of Alexandria shines forth, and before it Helen lifts a hand to her face, seems almost to shield her eyes. “You will not demand of God what is God’s to give. You will not command the voice God chooses to use.”
    Salome, who has been standing all along, trembling with what I have thought is rage, sits down on the bare stone of the floor and on her face there is nothing but rapt attention.
    John has turned to me, and in his turning, I feel my knees weaken. Will he speak to me as he has spoken to a queen? But no, his voice when it comes is soft and it is mild. “As Seth tells me you are the Magdal-eder, you will speak as you will speak. That is the privilege of prophets.”
    Magdal-eder? I shake my head. I do not will the Loud Voice. It tempts my illness, makes room in my blood for fever. I would put it away forever, would swallow it, would spit it out! Yet something rises in me; pushes up from my chest. And I do
not
will it to come. “ COME I THROUGH THE MOUTH OF THIS CHILD !” My arms begin to raise themselves as if another owned them. “ THE ONE WHO COMES IS HERE . THE ONE WHO COMES IS THE VOICE THAT CRIES IN THE WILDERNESS . WHO WILL HEAR ?”
    “It is as I knew it would be,” cries Helen. “This long journey is fulfilled.”
    Now I understand. I am thought to be proof that John the Baptizer is the messiah of the Nazorean. I could not be more dismayed.
    Seth speaks. “I think, John, they would do well for a time in Egypt.”
    Queen Helen gives out a great sigh. “If it is not one land that calls to you, Seth, it is another. You would break my heart.”
    And this from her son, Izates: “Get yourself to Egypt, brother, before I break your nose all over again. We endured you three years on top of a mountain. We endured you following John. But there will be no suffering you until you see Egypt.”
    A thought from Salome flies through my head and I catch it.
All that occurs is intended. Did we not intend Egypt, Mariamne, and does it now not come to pass?

    I look up. The night seems no more than an Ethiop’s hand across the face of Glory. The moon is an Ethiop’s eye. I think Cicero right when he says, “Beyond the moon are all the eternal things.”
Oh Isis!
I am going to Egypt!
    I lie here awake, buried in thought. If what occurs is intended, Salome would have been born a male and I should be a great philosopher. Or a great mathematician. Seth once named mathematicians, and I was astonished, not for how many there were, but for how many were women. If I could truly be anything I intended to be, I would be a philosopher and a mathematician and a magician in one huge person and I should laugh as I strode up and down the halls of the Great Academy I would found and name with my true name: Mariamne of Jerusalem. That is, if intentions were more than wishes. It is a fact that no one would intend to be born a cripple or blind or poor or one of those wild people who live farther west than Italia. Surely no one would intend to be born a savage Celt? And yet Salome and I intended to go to Egypt, and here we are, going to Egypt.
    “Mariamne,” whispers Salome, “are you awake?”
    “What?” She has surprised me. I thought her well asleep an hour ago.
    “What do you make of John?”
    I think for a moment and then I say, “I think he is either full of wonder or he is full of camel dung. Either way, I will find out.”
    Salome answers immediately. “You will find he is full of wonder.”
             
    I