Salome (15 page)

TWENTY-TWO

A CURSE ON THE HERODS

On Lake Tiberias one sunny day followed another and another, but I seemed to be in a gray fog. All my senses were dulled. Food tasted like lint, and music sounded like tuneless twanging.

I couldn’t stand my own company, and the other people at court didn’t seem to want it, either. Antipas avoided me as intently as he’d sought me out before. (Not that I wanted to be with
him.
) The painting of the nymph chased by a satyr, the one that had sent Herodias into an insane rage, disappeared from the main hall. In its niche appeared a portrait of the Tetrarch and his wife, dressed like Zeus and Hera, king and queen of the gods.

For all Antipas’s robe-tearing on the night of the banquet, he now officially declared that the Baptizer’s death was a good thing. He had an announcement explaining this sent out to all the towns of his realm. In the marketplace of Tiberias, I saw a copy fastened to the obelisk:

Let it be known throughout Galilee and Perea: The dangerous rebel leader John, called the Baptizer, has been arrested and executed for the crimes of treason and inciting to treason. Hail to Prince Antipas, who has restored peace and order to the tetrarchy.
I recognized the elegant lettering as Leander’s.

I didn’t dare try to visit Joanna again. I longed to talk to Leander, but he avoided me as carefully as Antipas did. If we happened to cross paths in the library, Leander turned his face aside, bowed, and hurried out of the room.

A small comfort was that Gundi went back to treating me much as she used to. After her high hopes and dreadful disappointment on the night of the banquet, Gundi must have reminded herself that there were worse things than belonging to a foolish girl. Scrubbing floors in a brothel, for instance, as Herodias had suggested.

Luckily for Gundi, Herodias was no longer in a mood to punish her and me by sending Gundi to the slave auction. She was the happiest person in the palace these days. At dinner she made Antipas chuckle with remarks that were both witty and flattering to him. He was seen visiting her suite at night again. Antipas no longer attended the Jewish prayer meeting every Sabbath or made any of his court attend.

Antipas agreed to appoint Herodias’s brother, my uncle Agrippa, to the position of market master in Tiberias. Herodias looked forward eagerly to his arrival from Rome.

Meanwhile, Herodias hinted that she might persuade Antipas to send me back to the Temple of Diana in Rome instead of making a political marriage for me. Or perhaps I could be allowed to take up residence in Tiberias’s new shrine to Diana. I pretended not to hear her. Herodias knew quite well that a disgraced maiden like myself could not serve the chaste goddess. If Antipas bribed the Temple to take me anyway, it would be only a sham.

When I thought back to my dream in the Temple of Diana, it seemed that some other girl—a much younger, more carefree girl—had dreamed it. These days, the only dreams I had were bad ones. I would find myself on the bank of a river, shrouded in chill fog, waiting for a ferry. I was trying to cross so that I could return something belonging to a man on the other side. The basket on my arm was heavy, and I longed to set it down, but I had to find the man first.

As the days went by, I dragged myself around the palace. I suppose I harbored some unreasonable hope, in spite of everything, that I could make Herodias care about how I was suffering. Then it would dawn on her that she’d done something dreadful, that life could not just go on as before.

Although Herodias paid no attention to my mood, she did include me in her activities. One morning some days after the banquet, she summoned me to her suite. She was holding auditions to choose the slaves to sing and play in her next dramatic performance.

While I watched glumly, a slave arrived from the guest suite with a message from Philip: he wished to speak with me in the east portico.

“Uncle Philip?” I roused myself from the chair where I was slumped. “I thought he’d already left Tiberias.”

“What an idea!” Herodias’s musical laugh rang out. “He wouldn’t leave for Gaulanitis without saying goodbye to you.” She gave me an arch look. “I think he was shocked—maybe a little intrigued—by your dance the other night.” She dimpled at me, as if my dance were now a matter for teasing. “Maybe he hopes you’ll dance for
him.
”

I hadn’t talked to Philip since the night of the banquet, and I shrank from the thought of looking him in the face. But I let Gundi pin up my hair and went with her to the east portico.

Philip was waiting in a traveling cloak and boots. After greeting me, he made a few remarks about the weather. He asked politely if I was looking forward to seeing Jerusalem at the coming Feast of Booths.

I waited for Philip to tell me he was no longer interested in marriage with me. How would he phrase it in a polite way? “Now that I’ve gotten to know you somewhat…” It was really almost funny. I kept my eyes on the marble floor, but I was aware of his gaze. Maybe he was trying to decide if the listless girl before him was the same person as the murderous hussy who’d danced on Antipas’s birthday.

Finally Philip said abruptly, “There’s a terrible curse on us Herods—and I’m afraid we deserve it. Farewell.” Before I could answer, he turned and hurried down the steps to where his attendants waited. The men disappeared in the direction of the docks.

Gundi accompanied me back to my room. “Now there’s a decent prospect for a husband,” she said. “Why didn’t you smile at him? If you take my advice, you’ll send him an encouraging note. I’m afraid he got the impression you weren’t interested in him.”

“Take your advice!” A surge of anger goaded my dull spirits. “I’ll never take your stupid barbarian advice again.” I raised my hand to cuff her head, and she ducked. But then the anger drained away, and I hated only myself. Besides, it seemed like too much trouble to punish Gundi.

Later I went to the main garden by myself. I wasn’t thinking of Leander, but there he was on a bench with his nose in a scroll. Judging from his dreamy expression, I thought he was far away in ancient Thebes, or Athens, or perhaps Troy. But then he looked up and saw me, and his face changed, as if he’d just noticed a scorpion. He rose, bowed, and started to hurry out of the garden.

“Wait!” I was determined to make him speak to me. After all, he was only a secretary.

He stopped and bowed again, expressionless, a servant waiting for an order.

“Leander, of all the people in Tiberias, you should understand that I had to…Don’t, please don’t just look at me. Speak.”

Leander nodded, a servant accepting an order. “Understand? I understand some things,” he began slowly. “I knew that Lady Herodias wanted the Baptizer dead. I knew—everyone in the palace knew—that the Tetrarch took an…
interest
in his stepdaughter.” He stopped, his eyes on the flagstones.

“Go on,” I said.

“Very well. I admit I hadn’t expected Prince Antipas’s stepdaughter to take advantage of his…interest in her. When she first began to dance, I couldn’t believe it was her. She was not only seducing her stepfather, but doing it in front of a hall full of men.”

I burned with shame, but I listened. I wanted so badly for him to talk to me.

“Then,” continued Leander, “I thought, Is the young lady so desperate? Does she believe her only hope is to replace her mother? Clearly, the Tetrarch thought this was her intention.”

“But it wasn’t; it
wasn’t
what I meant to do!” I burst out.

Leander stopped speaking until I was silent again. Then he continued, “So the Tetrarch leaped at the chance. ‘Half my kingdom’—obviously, he could hardly wait to take his stepdaughter for his new wife.”

“Yes, but I was deceiving him, don’t you see?” I couldn’t stand the way Leander was talking about me, as a person he had no connection with. “I know it wasn’t decent, but I was possessed by the goddess—I had no will of my own. Please believe me!”

“Possessed by the goddess,” Leander repeated in a flat voice. “
Hmm,
I didn’t realize she was possessed. That excuses everything.” He continued, “No, her real intention was much worse than either Antipas or I suspected. She seduced her stepfather, in public, in order to murder a good man.”

“That wasn’t my idea!” I pleaded. “Herodias—”

“Ah,” interrupted Leander. “Now I understand. First she was possessed by Aphrodite, then by her mother.” His polite, interested tone cut deeper than the heaviest sarcasm would have. After a pause, he finished, “I had thought Herodias’s daughter was nothing like her mother, but I was wrong. She is a true Herod, a true descendant of her great-grandfather.”

I felt breathless and sick, as if a stone had hit me in the stomach. “How dare you—I could call the guards. I could have you thrown in prison.”

Leander looked at me. “Yes. The great-granddaughter of Herod could have my head on a platter, too.”

I put up a hand to shield myself from his words. One more, I felt, and I would fall bleeding onto the path. But Leander was through with me. With a final bow, he left the garden.

I wandered up and down the paths, pulling off a leaf here and a blossom there. I noticed a gardener pretending not to look at me, and I realized he must be worried that I’d damage his plants. Sitting down on a bench, I twisted a lock of my hair until my scalp hurt. That pain seemed to balance the pain in my mind so that I could think.

Joanna had been right. Leander was right. I—not Aphrodite—had murdered John the Baptizer. I had
chosen
to use my power over Antipas to demand John’s head. Herodias and Antipas were responsible, too, but that didn’t mean I was less responsible.

I sat in the garden like a judge on the judgment seat, and I pronounced myself guilty. That was dreadful, but somehow satisfying.

What still disturbed me, strangely, was that no one would punish me. This was not like living in the middle of a tragic play after all. In a Greek tragedy, some kind of dreadful justice is done in the end.

Once, when we were still friends, Leander had tried to explain to me why he liked to watch tragic plays. Yes, it was harrowing to go through all the dying and suffering in a tragedy, he said, but at the end of the play he felt somehow satisfied. At the beginning of the play, the world had been out of kilter. The only way it could be set right was through terrible destruction.

At the time, I hadn’t understood Leander, but now I began to see what he meant. To set things right, I ought to be punished for murdering the Baptizer. So should Antipas and Herodias. Especially since my stepfather and mother weren’t suffering over John’s death at all, but rather “putting the unpleasantness behind them.”

I longed to turn this story of the Herods into a proper tragedy. What if I poisoned our dinner one night? Gundi knew something about herbs and powders, and maybe I could bribe her with the promise of her freedom. The trouble with poison was, Antipas had a taster who took a bite of every dish before the Tetrarch ate it.

Besides, poison seemed too quiet and tidy for my feelings. I wanted some enormous force to wipe out us evil Herods. If I’d commanded an army, I would have ordered them to besiege Tiberias, burn the palace, and tear its walls stone from stone. Now,
that
would be satisfying.

One morning in the month after the banquet, I climbed to the upper terrace. The air over the lake was thick, but I could make out the cliffs of the eastern shore. That was the border dividing Galilee from Gaulanitis, the realm to which Philip had returned. I felt a pang, remembering his mild face. He didn’t seem to be a real Herod. How had
he
escaped the family curse?

Movement at the north gate of the city caught my eye, and I saw a curtained litter leaving. Wasn’t it the litter from Steward Chuza’s household? That was strange, because for months Joanna had barely had the strength to go to the hot springs.

When I asked Gundi, she confirmed that the steward’s wife often took the litter out of Tiberias these days. She must be having a spurt of energy. The rumor was that she went to hear a new preacher, and he had a healing influence.