The Magic Circle Read Free Page B

a sea of rich gold. Arising from alcoves and archways, they seemed to permeate each pore of this labyrinthine city. Even now, as Joseph moved through the crooked alleyways and ascended the hill, he inhaled their dark perfume, like incense wafting from a censer, soaking into the shadowy crevices of the sleeping city and swirling in drunken pools around the base of Mount Zion.
    Acacia: the sacred tree.
    “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them,” Joseph recited aloud.
    Suddenly there was the tall, regal Nicodemus standing before him, and Joseph realized he had arrived already at the familiar gates of the park surrounding Nicodemus’s palace. A servant was locking the gates behind him as Nicodemus, his mass of unbound hair swinging round his broad shoulders, threw open his arms to welcome his friend. Joseph warmly returned the embrace.
    “When I was a boy in Arimathea,” said Joseph, looking out over the sea of golden boughs, “all along the river there were embankments of chittah , which the Romans call acacia for their sharp thorns—the tree of which Yahweh instructed us to build his first tabernacle, the lattices and altar, the Holy of Holies, even the sacred ark itself. The Keltoi and Greeks hold it sacred just as we do. They call it ‘the golden bough.’”
    “You’ve remained far too long among pagans, my friend,” Nicodemus said, shaking his head. “Even your appearance is nearly blasphemy in the eyes of God.”
    It was hard to deny, thought Joseph ruefully. With his short toga and high-laced sandals, his muscular, tanned limbs, his shaven face—the skin crackled and leathery from the burn of salt sea air—and his hair uncut in the prescribed fashion but braided up off his neck like a Norseman’s, he knew he must look a good deal more like a Hyperborean Celt than what he actually was: a distinguished and respected Judean merchant and, like Nicodemus, an official council member of “the seventy,” the common name for the Sanhedrin.
    “You encouraged the Master, when he was still a boy, to follow these foreign ways that can only lead to destruction,” Nicodemus pointed out as they started downhill. “Even so, the last few weeks I’ve prayed for your arrival before it’s too late. For perhaps only you can undo the damage that’s been done this past year in your absence.”
    It was true that Joseph had raised the young Master as his own child, ever since the boy’s father—a carpenter also named Joseph—had died. He’d taken him abroad on many voyages to learn the ancient wisdom of the diverse cultures. Despite this parental role, Joseph of Arimathea, having by now attained the forty years required to sit in the Sanhedrin, was only seven years older than his surrogate son, whom he could not help but think of as the Master. Not just a rabbi , meaning my master or teacher, but as the great spiritual leader he’d become. Yet Nicodemus’s comment was still unclear.
    “Something I could undo? I came as soon as I could, upon receiving your note,” Joseph assured him, dismissing the risks to his fortune and his neck. “But I assumed a political crisis—an emergency—some unforeseen incident that caused our plan to change.…”
    Nicodemus stopped on the trail and regarded Joseph with his sad dark eyes that seemed to penetrate to the very depths—though today they were ringed red from exhaustion, perhaps from weeping. Joseph suddenly saw how much his friend had aged in the one short year of his absence. He put his hands on Nicodemus’s shoulders and waited gravely, feeling the chill creeping upon him again, though the air was warming and balmy and the sky had turned from lavender to peach as the sun approached the rim. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.
    “There is no political crisis,” said Nicodemus, “at least, not yet. But something perhaps far worse has taken place; I suppose one might call it a crisis of faith. He himself is the crisis, you see. He has