Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [73]
You think you can take her back from me? You think after seven years you can do what no Priest of the Temple has ever been able to do! Fool. They will spit on you for your antics, spit as she spits.
In a sudden spasm of rage, she rose up, breaking the thongs that held her arms. The brothers and the women drew back.
She was bone and sinew and cold fury.
Rising as high as she might, breaking the bond around her neck with a snap, she hissed at me: “Son of David, what have you to do with us? Get away from us. Leave us.”
The brothers were aghast. The women crowded together.
“Never, my lord, has she ever spoken in all these years. My lord, the evil one will kill us.”
The straps around her breasts broke. The litter, large as it was, rocked on the level ground, and suddenly, with a violent thrust, she broke the remaining thongs that held her legs together. She rose up, crouched, and sprang, knocking back the frame of the canopy, and she rushed out into the open air, falling into the sand and rising to her feet with the swiftness of a dancer.
She gave forth an exultant cry. She spun round terrifying her brothers and the women.
The older brother, the one who'd come to me with the water, rushed to take hold of her. But the younger shouted, “Micha, let him speak to her.”
She swayed, laughing, growling like a beast, and then she almost fell, her legs wobbling, and as she reached for me, her arms revealed themselves, covered in welts and bruises. Her face for one moment was a woman's face and, then again, the visage of an animal.
“Yeshua of Nazareth!” she bellowed. “You seek to destroy us?” She crouched and pitched the sand at me in fistfuls.
“Say nothing to me, unclean spirits,” I answered. I bore down on her. “I drive you out, in the name of the Lord on High, I say, Go out of my servant Mary. Go out and away from this place. Leave her.”
She arched her back as she rose. But another scream brought her forward as though it were a chain anchored inside her.
Again I declared it, “In the name of Heaven, leave this woman!”
She went down on her knees, her mouth wet and shivering with her panting breaths. She clutched her waist as if holding herself together. Her entire body trembled, and when she shook her fist at me it was as if her hand were being held by another, and she with all her will fought for her own gesture. “Son of God,” she bellowed, “I curse you.”
“Out of her, I say, all of you. I banish you!”
She twisted this way and that, uttering cry after cry. “Son of God, Son of God,” she said over and over. Her body pitched forward and her forehead hit the sand. Her hair fell to reveal the nape of her neck. The sounds coming from her were weakened, anguished, imploring.
“Out of her, all of you, one by one, one through seven!” I declared. I drew in closer, all but standing above her. Her hair covered my feet. She reached out, as if blind, and seeking a hold.
“By the power of the Most High, I say obey me! Leave this child of God as she was before you came into her!”
She looked up. Her hands went out again, but this time so that she might stand, and stand she did, jerked upward suddenly as if pulled by the hair.
“Out I say, one through seven, I drive you out now!”
One more scream rent the air.
And then she stood motionless.
A shudder passed through her, long and natural and filled with pain. And slowly she sank down and lay back on the sand, her head to the side, her eyes half closed.
Silence.
The women began to cry desperately, and then to beg in frantic prayers. If she was dead, it was the will of God. The will of God. The will of God. They approached fearfully.
As Ravid and Micha drew up at my side, I lifted my hand.
In a soft voice, I said:
“Mary.”
Only the quiet—the moaning of the wind, the rattling of the palm branches, the gentle ruffling of the silken curtains of the litter.
“Mary,” I said. “Turn to me. Look at me.”
Slowly, she did as I had asked.
“Oh, merciful Lord,” Ravid said in a low voice.