The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene by Frank G. Slaughter Page A

herself, fighting against the strong urge to yield and knowing that she must not, did not realize what was happening at first. Then, whatever response had been momentarily aroused by his ardor was swept away in a surge of revulsion and fear.
    Forcibly she broke away from the demanding caress of his mouth and pushed herself clear momentarily of his embrace, but the man who held her now was not the same one who had waited upon her so gallantly while she ate. His face, so handsome a moment before, was swollen and distorted by lust, and his eyes were wild and bloodshot, like one suddenly demented.
    While she struggled in a sudden rush of terror to break away from him, Mary screamed again and again, but the thick hangings of the room dulled the sound. Her strength was failing fast and now she realized, in a rush of utter terror, why she had been a little dizzy. The effects of the wine of mandragora she had taken before leaving home had worn off. What she felt now was the aura preceding a fainting spell.
    Mary could only resist feebly when she felt Gaius Flaccus lift her in his arms, for the strange paralysis that accompanied the fainting spells was already upon her. She could no longer move her limbs, and when she tried again to scream no sound came, for her senses had already begun to lose contact with reality.
    Mercifully, Mary of Magdala became unconscious.
IX
    Joseph was away when the nomenclator of Pontius Pilate called to request that he visit the Lady Claudia Procula. It was late in the afternoon before his mother found him at the house of Eleazar and gave him the message, and darkness had already fallen by the time he tied his mule to a tree outside the villa of the procurator. As he was removing the nartik containing his instruments, medicines, and leeches from the mule’s back, he noticed another mule and cart tied nearby but paid them little attention, for he was concerned lest the procurator be angered by the slowness of his favorite leech in answering the summons.
    The boudoir to which Joseph was admitted was small and exquisite, as was its owner. Pilate’s wife was like one of the delicate figurines from the countries beyond the Eastern sea that were sometimes seen in the markets of Tiberias. Every line of her lovely features showed breeding, for she carried the blood of the Julio-Claudian line of Roman emperors. But there was also a warmth and understanding in her eyes which had not always characterized the often-hated line. When Joseph saw that she was not angry at him for the delay, he drew a sigh of relief.
    “I was treating the sick and did not get the message of the procurator until an hour ago,” he explained.
    Claudia Procula smiled. “I should apologize for making you come to Tiberias after nightfall. I know how devout Jews feel about the city.”
    “The chazan of my synagogue might not understand,” Joseph admitted. “But I am sure the welfare of the sick comes above the niceties of the law.”
    Procula looked at him keenly. It was unusual for a Jew to let anything come between him and his beloved law. This serious-mannered young leech was certainly well above the average of the Jews with whom she had come in contact, she decided. The breeding of a pure bloodline showed plainly in his clean-cut features.
    “The trouble is here, with my left arm.” She lifted a filmy sleeve and exposed an angry red swelling in the upper part of her arm. Joseph recognized the nature of the trouble at once, for such conditions were not at all uncommon in his experience. An insect bite, a small pimple, then in a few days a painful swelling and fever that lingered for days, unless it ended by rupture of the tense red skin and expulsion of the poisons which had somehow set up such a violent reaction in the flesh.
    “Can you do anything to relieve the pain?” Procula asked hesitantly.
    Joseph ran his fingers gently over the swelling. As he had suspected from looking at it, the skin was fluctuant, betraying the poisonous