Part 14

“No! No!” shouted the Tetrarch. “We have had enough of their dancing! But now, my friends”—Antipas faced right and left to look along the couches, as his guests began to sit up—“I shall provide you with more novel entertainment.” He paused and reached for his wine goblet. “I ask your pardon for having gone to sleep, although I’m sure a number of you did likewise. During our stay at Machaerus I have been overindulging in food and wine and, for a man of my age, certainly, other more strenuous pleasures.” He ran his thick tongue over his greasy lips and smiled lewdly. “But now”—he signaled two of the guards standing at the doorway opening upon the terrace—“go into the dungeon and fetch to our birthday feast the Wilderness prophet.”

Herodias whirled about to confront him, her countenance betraying both anger and amazement. “Why should the Tetrarch bring that depraved madman here to insult his guests, his wife, and himself? Has the Tetrarch permitted too much wine and too many women...?”

“Patience, my dear! And be calm. I am not having him brought before us to insult us. On the contrary, he will ask our pardon for his intemperate words, and we shall release him.”

“Release him! By all the gods, can the Tetrarch be speaking seriously? Does he for one moment contemplate giving this notorious insurrectionist his freedom to resume his agitating against us, against Rome...?”

“But, my dear Tetrarchess, Rome, as represented by the Centurion Cornelius,” he interrupted, as he glanced toward the centurion and then turned his head the other way to address his wife, “thinks that releasing this man will be not only an evidence of the Tetrarch’s magnanimity but also a politic act greatly pleasing to a countless number of our Jewish brothers. It was he who suggested....”

“But are not you Tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea? Was it not your wife and you, not the centurion, whom this revolutionary castigated so bitterly? And has he not sought to inflame the people even against Rome?”

Claudia had turned to confront Cornelius; she said nothing, but her eyes were sharply questioning. He bent forward and spoke quietly, so that none of the others would hear.

“I did suggest that it would be a good idea—especially in so far as Sejanus is concerned—for him to free the man, since it would please the Jews and the man is plainly no insurrectionist against Rome. But I didn’t know he meant to have the fellow brought before us. The man should have been freed quietly, with no fanfare.”

“Frankly, I think he would have done better,” Claudia whispered to Cornelius, “to have had the fellow beheaded, but quietly.” She leaned nearer the centurion. “Antipas craves attention; he tries to be dramatic. He’s always....”

But suddenly she stopped, for the guards, flanking the manacled prisoner, were entering the great hall. They escorted John into the open square before the Tetrarch’s table.

“Unbind him,” the Tetrarch commanded, “and step back from him.”

In an instant the guards had removed the shackles about the prophet’s wrists and retreated to their former places at the doorway.

Though not all the Tetrarch’s guests had completely sobered, every eye was on the Wilderness preacher. In the months he had been imprisoned in the Machaerus dungeon, John had lost the leathery deep burn of the desert, but otherwise he was little changed. He was tall and erect and perhaps even more gaunt than he had appeared to be the day Antipas had ordered his arrest; his coarse brown robe, belted with a woven rope at the waist, hung loosely about him. But his eyes still blazed with the zealot’s fire as, relaxed and silent, he stood calmly facing the Tetrarch.

“You are the Prophet John of the Wilderness and the Jordan Valley?” Antipas asked, his tone and manner almost friendly.

“Have I been so long in your dungeon, O Tetrarch, that you can’t be sure you know me?”

The question and the tone in which it was framed were sarcastic, even patronizing, but the Tetrarch appeared to take no offense.

“It was an idle query, and you have been a long time in prison. Perhaps your intemperate words to the Tetrarch and the Tetrarchess have been sufficiently punished.” Antipas smiled blandly and rubbed his fat hands together. “Our banqueting this day is an occasion of joy and merriment; it is our birthday and to mark it further the Tetrarch is happy to demonstrate before these our honored guests, including even the wife of the great Procurator Pontius Pilate”—he bowed toward Claudia, who had been listening avidly—“and our honored Centurion Cornelius, his softness of heart toward his subjects. Today a group of the prophet’s followers”—now he bowed toward John—“has petitioned the Tetrarch to liberate him. These men assured us that you”—he spoke directly to the gaunt preacher—“have never had any thought of insurrection against the government of Rome or the Tetrarch but that you were concerned only with the promulgation of our true religion. I agreed I would grant their petition. Now as soon as you satisfy me that you will cause us no further trouble and express your regret for the intemperate and malicious words with which you castigated the Tetrarch and his beloved Tetrarchess, as soon as you assure us that you have repented of your evil words....”

“Repented!” John’s eyes blazed. “I have nothing for which to repent to you, O Tetrarch! My repentance is to the God of Israel against whom I have sinned and continue to sin. But I have done you no evil. I call upon you to repent, O you of evil and lustful heart, you robber of your brother’s bed!” The prophet lifted himself upon his sandaled toes and pointed with lean forearm straight upward toward the ceiling dome. “Repent! Repent! Repent, for your days are numbered! The Messiah of God, Him of Whom I spoke in the Wilderness and along the Jordan lowlands, had come! Even now He walks up and down Galilee preaching of the coming of the Kingdom and bringing blessed salvation to those whose ears are bent to hear Him. The time of repentance, O Tetrarch, is now!” He lowered his gaunt arm, and the robe fell about it, and he swept it in an arc in the faces of the diners on the square of couches. “Repent! Repent! Cast away your sins and be cleansed, and be baptized!”

Suddenly the preacher paused, and his blazing eyes settled upon the Tetrarchess. He thrust out his arm and held it before the startled woman’s face. “And you, repent, you evil woman, you deserter of your lawful bed, return to your husband, forswear your adulterous cohabiting....”

“Hold your tongue!” Herodias, eyes flashing her uncontrollable rage, her cheeks flaming, had sprung to her feet. She leaned across the food-covered, disordered table. “By all the gods, O Tetrarch”—she turned to grasp her husband’s shoulder as he sat upright on the couch—“I will hear no more of this evil madman’s prattle. Send him away—have him shot with arrows, or order him beheaded, or throw him again into the dungeon—by the great Jove, I don’t care what you do with him, but I will not remain here with him and be further insulted!” She shook his shoulder furiously. “Do you understand, Antipas? Do you understand, by the Great Mother Ceres?”

The Tetrarch stumbled to his feet, swayed, but clutched the table edge to steady himself. “Take your seat, my dear,” he said evenly. “I understand very well what you say. And you speak the truth.” He turned from her to face the desert preacher. “I had meant to hand you your freedom, Wilderness prophet; I had meant to give you into the care of your friends who remained here tonight to take you back into Judaea. But your vicious tirade against us forces me to change my plans for you.” He beckoned to the two guards. “Manacle him, and return him to the dungeon,” he commanded.

Quickly they fettered his wrists and, grasping him by the arms, led him toward the door through which moments ago they had brought him into the chamber. John walked silently, head erect and unafraid. But as they were about to go out through the doorway, he jerked his arms free, and whirled about to face the Tetrarch and his guests. Raising the manacled hands, he pointed toward the Tetrarch. “Repent, adulterer!” His blazing eyes sought the still incensed Herodias. “And you, whore of Rome, get you back to your Babylon!”

The guards jerked their prisoner through the doorway, and the door closed heavily behind them. The banqueters, silenced by the bitter exchange between Herodias and the prophet, listened to the retreating footsteps of the three along the corridor.

“The fellow’s a fool,” Claudia observed in a low aside to Cornelius, “but he does have courage.”

“Yes, he must believe that he’s serving his Yahweh and Yahweh’s Messiah,” the centurion agreed; “that faith must be the source of his courage.”

“Amazing. I cannot understand how these Jews can be so swayed by such silly superstition. I do wonder what Antipas will do with him; Herodias, if she could, would have his head off in a minute. And so would I, if he had talked to me as he did to her.” She tossed her head and smiled indifferently. “But why should I be concerned about this Jewish fanatic? I don’t care one green Campanian fig what happens to him.”

As she reached for her wine goblet, which a servant had refilled, Antipas set his down and stood up. The servant hastened to fill the Tetrarch’s. Antipas licked his thick lips. “By the beard of the High Priest,” he said, “I really intended to liberate the prophet. His imprisonment is on his own head.” He clutched the table’s edge to steady himself again. Then he grasped his wine goblet and drained it in one gulp. The servant raced around the table to refill the empty glass. Antipas picked it up and twirled it slowly on its slender stem, “Drink, my friends! Let us dispel this sudden gloom. Isn’t this the Tetrarch’s birthday? Drink! Drink!” He downed the wine as his guests, lifting their goblets, drank to their host. Antipas clapped his hands. “And now, music and the dancing women!”

The leader signaled to his men, and the musicians began their lively playing, as the Arabian dancers came scampering again into the hollow square before the tables. Antipas sat down, rested his head on the palm of his left hand, and with his right reached for the glass.

“Soon now he’ll be very drunk, and we can escape,” Cornelius whispered to Claudia. “He’s still afraid of the Wilderness preacher, and he will try to drown his fears in wine.”

“But he just ordered the fellow back to the dungeon.”

“He also fears Herodias. He’ll free John, though, as soon as he can do so without his wife’s knowing about it.”

The tempo of the music was increasing, and the women, refreshed by the long intermission they had been having and the food and wine they had been served, were fast approaching a frenzy of abandon in their wild convolutions and sensual writhings. For a few moments the jaded Tetrarch, watching the brazenly lewd gyrations of the dancing women, appeared to be gaining renewed stimulation. But quickly his interest faded; he sat up on his couch and straightened himself. “Hold!” he commanded, waving his hand aloft. “Enough of this. We are surfeited on dark women.”

The music stopped. “Let them go,” said Antipas, nodding toward the leader of the musicians. The man bowed to the Tetrarch and, turning, waved his dismissal to the dancers, who went tripping out. Once again the great triclinium was as still and the guests as suddenly silent as they had been at the dramatic entrance of the gaunt prophet.

Now the Tetrarch, beaming, looked to his left beyond his Tetrarchess. “It is our wish that our beloved daughter Salome honor our birthday by dancing for the Tetrarch and his guests,” he declared in honeyed tones. “Will you not dance for us, my dear child?”

Cornelius leaned forward to watch Herodias’ daughter. Salome seemed amazed at her stepfather’s request. “But, Sire,” she ventured to protest, as she turned on her couch to face the unctuously smiling Tetrarch, “doesn’t my dear father know that I am not a dancer? Surely he prefers the dancing of women trained in the art.” She shook her head firmly. “Sire, I would not wish to display before this company just how poorly....”

“Oh come now, my child, your dancing will delight the Tetrarch and his guests. Do not let maidenly modesty deny us the pleasure of seeing you perform.” The Tetrarch’s eyes were beginning to flame. “We would delight in your dancing, my dear. After all that dark flesh, a flashing before us of firm, white, youthful....”

“But Salome, the Tetrarch well knows, is not accustomed to dancing before companies such as this.” Herodias, her eyes challenging, caught her husband’s arm in protest. “And has not the Tetrarch seen enough already of both white and dark female flesh? Is he not surfeited with women? Why should he wish to see a child...?”

“I wish to see her dance, my dear Tetrarchess. I have never seen her dance. And is this not my birthday? Shouldn’t one be indulged on his birthday?” He leaned past his wife to plead again with Salome. “Won’t you, my dear Salome, dance just this once, to please and flatter your doting father?”

Claudia leaned close to Cornelius. “I don’t believe ‘doting’ is the word,” she whispered; “I’d say ‘drooling’ is more like it.”

Antipas was still pleading with the girl. “If you will but dance this once for us, Salome, my child,” he said, his voice soft and sugared, his round face disarmingly friendly, “I will grant any request you make of me.”

“If I could dance well, Sire, I would be happy to dance for the Tetrarch, but I am not skilled in that art, nor do I have the mature charms of the Arabian women nor the....”

“But you have the tender charms, my dear Salome, the virginal charms of the bud about to open to full flowering. And I am satiated with these wide-open flowers ready to shatter.” He stood up and braced himself against the table, then turned toward her with renewed pleading. “Dance for us, my dear. Dance for us, and I will reward you what you will, I swear by the High Priest’s beard, even to the half of our tetrarchy!”

“But, Sire, even were I able to please the Tetrarch with my poor efforts, I am not suitably dressed....” The girl paused, for her mother had leaned over to whisper in her ear. She listened, solemn-faced, and then, suddenly smiling, she turned back to address the Tetrarch. “Sire, if the Tetrarch would not unmercifully censure my stumbling attempts, and”—she hesitated, and her smile was demure—“does the Tetrarch really intend seriously to grant any request I might make of him?”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life, my dear child. I fully intend to keep my promise. Anything you want, a marble palace, a pleasure barge to rival Cleopatra’s, gold, precious gems, silks from the Orient, anything; it is yours but for you to name it ... after you have danced for the Tetrarch and his guests.”

“Very well, Sire.” The girl stood up. “I shall do my best to please the Tetrarch and his guests on his birthday. But, first, I must change my costume.” Herodias arose unsteadily to stand beside her. “Mother will help me dress.”

Claudia leaned to her right to whisper to Cornelius. The Tetrarch, absorbed in watching his wife and stepdaughter, would hardly have heard her had she spoken aloud. “It’s Herodias who’s told her to dance for him. She’s got some sort of scheme in mind, and I’m sure it hinges on that request. I wonder what it will be....”

Cornelius nodded. “Something, I would say, that bodes the Tetrarch no good. I’ll be interested myself to see what Salome will ask.”

A few minutes later Herodias reappeared in the doorway. She signaled to the leader of the musicians, and he went over to her; she talked with him a moment, and then, as he rejoined his group, she made her way around the couches to resume her place beside the Tetrarch. Immediately the leader raised his hand, and the musicians began to play.

“By the great Jove!” Cornelius, who had turned momentarily to reply to something Claudia had said, glanced back toward the doorway through which the Tetrarchess had returned. At his murmured exclamation Claudia looked in the same direction.

“By Bona Dea! what a transformation!” she exclaimed.

Salome was standing just inside the doorway. When she had left the chamber a few minutes ago she had been wearing a shimmering white silken stola, held at the waist by a wide girdle of interlaced narrow strips of green and gold, and golden sandals. Her raven-black hair had been combed back from a part in the center and bound in a loose knot at the back of her neck where it was held neatly in place by a net. Her hair, like her mother’s and Claudia’s, had been arranged in the style currently popular among Roman women of the equestrian class.

But now the girl, immobile and statuesque, stood stripped of every garment she had worn in leaving the chamber. At first glance the centurion thought Salome had returned completely in the nude, save for the few thin veils she had draped about her shoulders. But looking more closely, he saw that her loins were bound, though scantily, with a carefully folded flesh-colored veil. To the casual observer and certainly to the aging Tetrarch, the girl appeared to be standing before them divested of all her clothing. The brightly colored veils even heightened the illusion. She was barefoot, and her hair, freed from the restricting net and unbound, fell past firm, outthrust breasts almost to her slim waist in a tumbling dark cascade of curls. Salome looked as though, finding herself unclad, she had pushed her black tresses suddenly through a small wispish rainbow that had settled about her white shoulders and slipped downward to her dimpled knees.

“Her charms seem quite mature,” Cornelius whispered to Claudia, grinning.

“And I suspect they’re no longer virginal,” she replied. “But, by the gods, she must be sixteen, and”—she leaned nearer and spoke into his ear—“whoever could imagine a Herodian virgin any older!”

Claudia’s caution had not been necessary, for the Tetrarch’s dark eyes, smoldering as though at any moment they might burst into flame, were measuring and exploring and savoring the girl. Claudia, following Cornelius’ eyes, glanced toward the entranced ruler and then, turning back to the centurion, whispered again, “Soon he’ll be drooling. He’s mad, stark, raving mad.”

The music had been soft and slow, but now Salome, with a quick upward flexing of her fingers and a nod to signal the musicians, stepped forward a pace and with shoulders twisting and hips undulating came slithering into the opening between the tables.

From high on a pilaster a shaded lamp cast a circle of bright light in the center of the hollow square. As she tripped on the balls of her bare feet, Salome held the sheer veils lightly to her white body, arms crossed over her breasts, taking care to avoid the full brightness of the illuminated circle. Once she ventured, whirling and twisting, to come as close to the Tetrarch as the position directly in front of Cornelius, but then teasingly she doubled back the other way. When a moment later she reversed her direction and came prancing between the bright circle and the Tetrarch’s couch, Antipas lunged forward to grasp her, but laughingly she slipped from his reach and sped away.

“Magnificent! Wonderful!” he shouted, unabashed, as he sank again to his couch and reached for his goblet. “My child, you restore the sap of youth to my aging limbs!”

At the edge of the circle and straight across it from the Tetrarch, Salome stopped, and as the drums ceased their throbbing and the strings subsided to a whisper, she turned deliberately to face the Tetrarch and his guests.

“Bountiful Ceres!” Claudia kept her voice low. “Is she going to discard those veils?”

But Salome, with her arms still pressed across her chest, continued to clutch the colored gauze protectively before her. The music began to increase in volume, and hardly discernible at first above the harmony of the strings and the flutes, the drums added their insistent throbbing. Now the girl in the square before the diners slowly withdrew her right arm, which had been crossed underneath the left one, and lifted it high; at the same time she pushed forward her left leg, so that the gossamer veils fell to either side to expose it from toes to hip, and leaned back; the leg, torso, and lifted arm to ringed forefinger made one continuous straight line of vibrant, glowing, suddenly stilled flesh, veiled but scantily by the diaphanous colored silks.

Cornelius ventured a glance toward the Tetrarch. Antipas, upright on his couch, was leaning forward, mouth half open, dark eyes staring unblinking at his stepdaughter and grandniece. The centurion gently nudged Claudia. “Any moment now,” he whispered, “he’ll be lunging over the table again.” But his eyes darted quickly to the girl.

Her head was back, in line with the rest of her body, and her sultry eyes looked upward to her extended forefinger. Now it began to move, almost imperceptibly, so that few of the Tetrarch’s guests were aware of the beginning of its motion. But Cornelius, intrigued, saw the finger’s movement widening and speeding; like a serpent it was coiling and uncoiling, twisting sideways, darting, writhing, all in perfect rhythm with the music. As he watched, the motion of the finger appeared to flow like liquid downward to involve the hand and then the forearm. Now along the graceful length of her slender bare arm the smooth, unknotting muscles, rippling and twisting, seemed to have transformed it into an oriental adder swaying and bobbing to the compelling strains of the charmer’s flute.

“The child’s amazing, I must agree with the Tetrarch,” Cornelius said. “Do you suppose Herodias trained her?” He leaned forward to glance past Antipas to the intent Tetrarchess who seemed absorbed completely in her daughter’s performance. “What a symphony of motion and movement!”

“And when that movement begins to gyrate in the region of the hips, Centurion, you’ll realize Salome’s no longer a child!”

Nor was the flowing, rhythmical motion long in attaining that region. In synchronized rolling and lifting and falling, the right shoulder joined the twisting, gently writhing arm, and then the rounded stomach undulated, freed now of the teasing veils. As the tempo of the music speeded and the volume swelled and the throb of the drums grew deeper, the hips began their undulating motion. Grinding, thrusting, withdrawing, thrusting, they moved faster and faster in an abandon of voluptuous movement. Then the music slowed again and the frenzied gyrations with it, and quickly the movement ran downward from the stilled hips and disappeared in a restrained tapping of bare toes on the mosaic of the triclinium’s marble floor.

The Tetrarch’s guests, inspired by his shouted acclamations, applauded wildly. And before they had settled to silence again, Salome dextrously transferred to her right hand the thin veils that throughout her dancing, even in the abandon of its most voluptuous last moments, she had held clutched snugly against her breasts, and lifted high her left arm as she extended her right foot. Then she began anew the routine she had just finished; she followed it, motion for motion, until in the midst of the most lascivious portion of the dance she suddenly turned her back to the Tetrarch and his company, and lowering her arm, without missing one wanton movement of her writhing, weaving hips, she thrust her arms, shoulder high, straight out to the sides. In each hand, completely away from her perspiration-dampened, shimmering white body, she clutched several of the bright-hued wisps of silk.

From where the diners sat across the bright circle from her, the girl appeared to be entirely nude, despite the thin bit of flesh-toned silk that bound her loins. Her curling long black hair hanging unrestrained down her back and across her shoulders added to the illusion.