The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

at Massilia, Roman Gaul

Front: Maryam Mark

at Jerusalem, Roman Judea

Dearest Miriam,

I apologize for the untidiness of both my penmanship and my thoughts. Although a ship bound for Massilia now leaves from Joppa weekly, I know you don’t plan to stay there on the coast of Gaul for long, that you’ll soon be heading north to join the rest of your family in the Pyrenees—so I’m hastening to dispatch this letter at once.

I also enclose the letter I’ve just received from my son. As you see, he requests that I share his words with no one. But his letter triggered in me such turbulent feelings, Miriam.

There are things I fear I should have told you earlier in your capacity as apostle or messenger. However, I admit these things meant little to me until John’s recent letter brought back so many memories of events that took place in the last week in the Master’s life. Specifically, what occurred that very last night.

As you surely know by now through reports you’ve received from others, even before reading this letter of John’s, the last Passover supper attended by the Master took place here at my residence in the upper city. But what perhaps no one knows, except myself, is the attention the Master himself paid to the planning of this meal down to the finest detail. He was very clear about the appointments he wanted to be made within the upper chamber of my home, where he’d designated the meal would take place: some of these appointments were actually so lavish as to surprise me. It was most important, the Master stressed to me over and over, that everything before, during, and after the meal must happen precisely as he asked. Then he added, strictly in confidence, that he hoped just after the supper to retire to the cave on Joseph’s estate at Gethsemane, to perform an initiation ritual. This now seems significant.

The evening of the supper, also at the Master’s request, we arranged that Rosa and my staff of servants would prepare the meal and carry the courses upstairs, but they were to remain outside the door for greater privacy, while my son John and I would serve the guests on our own. This explains why I was so fortunately able to see and hear everything that passed during that most remarkable meal. I wrote it down soon after, as a kind of story. Only now, for the first time, do I see that evening in a whole new light. And, Miriam, although you were not present at the meal yourself, and though what I have to say may shock you, in rereading my observations I’ve come to realize that a great many of the events that took place at that strange supper must in fact have revolved around you.

Of course, it has long occurred to me there must have been a valid explanation why you were not asked to what the Master surely knew would be his last supper among his disciples. After all, it was known to everyone you were the chosen disciple—“alpha and omega” he often called you, didn’t he? Then too, after his death you were the first witness of his ascent to the bosom of God. But the decisive factor, as I see it, Miriam, is that well before the supper you were already initiated into the Mysteries!

Undoubtedly, you’ve received many reports of those events from others who were present. But their reports may have been colored by their own participation, thus missing the crucial point. Indeed, it is possible that the whole meal and the events surrounding it were designed by the Master as a kind of test of the other disciples, as my son once speculated, to see which among them might turn out to be wheat or chaff: that is, which would—at the end of that evening and of the Master’s life—prove worthy of the transformation he’d always offered those who passed such tests. I have written this story as if I were an outside observer. I ask you alone to be the judge.

THE LAST MEAL

Some days before the Passover, for reasons unknown to any but himself, the Master told his disciples by what means they must enter the city that night, to locate the site of their supper: to wait by the Serpent Pond near the Essene Gate south of town. There, a man bearing a water pitcher would come and lead them, one by one, to the appointed spot. By this device, the Master ensured that only the twelve would be present at the meal. By arriving last himself, therefore, the Master was thirteenth.

There was controversy over the secrecy, this unorthodox approach to planning a ritual meal whose rules, after all, had been handed down more than a thousand years ago, directly from God to Moses. How could they know, for instance, that the meal would be prepared according to Torah, using proper rules of cleanliness and cooking technique? And according also to the Mishnah, the leaven must be searched for by candlelight, and cast out, the night before—who would see to that? The Master ignored these complaints. He shrugged and simply said all was arranged.

It was a surprise that the water-bearer was young John Mark, the ten-year-old son of Maryam Mark, who along with her brother Barnabas from Cyprus was among the Master’s wealthiest patrons. Her palatial residence on the western side of Mount Zion had for years been Simon Peter’s second home when not in Galilee, and the Master’s “fireside chats” there with his disciples, lavishly catered by her staff of servants, were often known to go into the wee hours of the night.

But on this occasion, a surprise was in store. When each disciple was greeted at the gates by Rosa, Maryam Mark’s housekeeper, he was escorted by another servant, not to the dining hall, but up several flights of stairs to an unknown room beneath the very rafters of the house. Furthermore, this room was outfitted with costly furnishings