Salome (7 page)

“Just as my lady commands,” said the guard, expressionless, and he rode off.

As the carriage rolled forward again, Herodias sniffed. “Antipas’s men need to learn to obey orders from his lady. And to use their heads! If the carriage is too heavy, why, hitch another horse to it! That guard’s horse, for—”

A severe jolt broke off Herodias’s words. The carriage pitched forward, causing her to lurch toward me. I clutched at the nearest curtain, and it ripped away from the rod.

The horses whinnied, and I heard shouts and scuffling in front of the carriage. At first I thought the driver and guards were cursing because we were stuck in the mud. The next moment, the carriage was surrounded by strangers in rough clothes, shouting in Aramaic and brandishing knives. There must have been twenty of them.

One stranger in a dirty head cloth scowled through the curtainless window. He barked a command.

I shrank away. Herodias screamed, “Help! Guards!”

The stranger spoke again, this time in halting Greek. “Give riches, quick, quick!”

“He’s a bandit,” I said stupidly. “He wants our jewelry.” Lifting my hands to my ears, I unfastened my opal earrings.

But Herodias clutched her neck, her wrists, her hands, as if to hold on to all her jewels as long as possible, and screamed louder still. “Help! Bandits!”

As I dropped the earrings in the bandit’s hand, I noticed with wonder how young he was. He couldn’t have been any older than I was—he had no beard—and he looked shorter than me.

And then more guards splashed back across the river and fell on the bandits with their swords. A few of the outlaws were killed and most of the others scattered, but the guards seized the one with my earrings. Although the young bandit struggled wildly, moments later he lay facedown on the muddy ground with his arms twisted behind his back. His sleeveless coat had come off in the fight and his tunic had ripped, showing a scrawny back with shoulder blades and ribs standing out.

As suddenly as it had begun, the bandit attack was over. We rode the guards’ horses across the river and waited in Antipas’s carriage while the servants dug our carriage out of the mud. The bandit attack had left me shaken, but Herodias recovered almost immediately. She entertained her husband with a lively telling of the incident, in which she bravely defended our lives, our honor, and our property. I was the clown in her story, needlessly handing over my earrings. Now they were gone, of course, trampled into the mud during the fight.

Antipas laughed at Herodias’s story, but then a cold look came over his face. “This should never have happened. Chuza!” He leaned out the carriage window, where Chuza and Leander stood. “Summon the captain of the guards.”

I thought my stepfather was going to punish the captain for leaving our carriage so poorly protected during the fording of the river. But Antipas and the captain quickly concluded that the caravan master was to blame, for overloading Herodias’s carriage. He would be dismissed as soon as the party reached Sepphoris. As for the bandit, Antipas decided not to execute him here and now, although that would have been the most convenient thing to do. “If I have a chance to interrogate him properly,” promised the captain, “he’ll tell us where to find the ones who got away.”

“And if there’s any hint of a link to the rebels, I want to know about that,” said Antipas. “Or to the river preacher, John the Baptizer.”

I didn’t see the bandit again, but I thought about him. His face at the carriage window stuck in my mind, only now I saw the fear in his glaring eyes. Maybe he’d never robbed a caravan before. I wished—a foolish wish, of course—that somehow I could have given him my earrings
before
the bandits attacked us.

NINE

THE SILVER PLATTER

Late in the afternoon of the second day, our caravan crested a ridge and paused at the Tetrarch’s order. Antipas beckoned as a guard handed Herodias and me down from our carriage. “Here, I’ll show you a city worth seeing.”

From the height we gazed down at a lake about twice the size of Lake Sabazia, north of Rome, where we used to go for holidays. The city on the near shore gleamed in the mellow light. Herodias turned from that scene to her husband with shining eyes. “My prince! Tiberias must be the most beautiful city in the world. The magnificent building with the golden roof, splendid enough to house Zeus and Hera—is that a temple?”

“That’s the palace,” said Antipas. “And look, in the central square, you can see a stone point above the roof of that smaller temple. That must be the obelisk I ordered; Chuza says it was delivered from Egypt while I was away. I got it for a public sundial, like the one in the Roman Forum.”

“Queen” Herodias and her Bull gazed from each other to the city, well pleased. I felt lonely, with a tinge of panic. What did it matter to me how splendid Tiberias was? It wouldn’t be where
I
belonged. I yearned to be back in the Temple of Diana in Rome.

At sunset we entered Tiberias, welcomed at the gates by ranks of important citizens. In the public square our procession paused in front of the obelisk, where Antipas stepped onto its base. Chuza handed Antipas a bag of coins, a herald blew his trumpet, and Antipas tossed money to the crowd of beggars below. “May the gods bless the most gracious Tetrarch!” they shouted, scrambling for the coins.

Outside the palace, servants scattered petals in front of us as we climbed the front steps. Herodias was glowing again—scenes like this must have been what she had in mind when she married the Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea.

Greeted by the housekeeper of the women’s quarters, Herodias asked to be taken to her suite. The woman said, “It isn’t quite ready, my lady.” Reluctantly she explained that Antipas’s first wife, the Nabatean princess, had left only the day before. “She didn’t believe the prince would actually set her aside. She lingered until Steward Chuza’s messenger arrived from Caesarea, saying that you had landed.”

I glanced uneasily at Herodias’s face, which had turned pale. “The Nabatean woman ‘didn’t believe the prince would set her aside,’” she repeated in a dangerously quiet voice. “And why was that? Had someone told her so?
Who
told her so? Or—was the Nabatean woman stark raving mad?”

The housekeeper turned pale, too, and licked her lips. “Mad—I am sure she was mad, my lady. Yes, the signs of madness were unmistakable. We all remarked on it—oh, yes, we did. But of course nothing could be done, with the Tetrarch and Steward Chuza both away.”

Nothing could be done? I wondered. Did Antipas know that the Nabatean princess had waited until the last minute to leave? Did he care?

Herodias, however, seemed calmed by the housekeeper’s words. Still, she insisted on being taken to the suite. Slaves opened the double doors, revealing a spacious main room. “Not quite ready!” exclaimed Herodias. “Indeed.”

The room was strewn with carpets and furs, cushions and tableware, thrown every which way. Hangings had been half torn from the walls. There was a strong smell of an aromatic spice.

“
Pee-yew!
This place stinks of coriander.” Herodias stared around, as if she might find the Nabatean princess herself lurking behind a drapery. “Throw out all this trash. And scrub the floor and walls with lye.”

“Throw out…everything, my lady?” The housekeeper’s eyes widened. “These carpets are very fine Persian work, and some of the serving pieces—” She touched a silver platter on the chest by the bed.

I picked up the platter. It was round and as wide across as my shoulders. With a finger I traced the silver grapes and leaves around the edge and the silver grapevine handles.

“
Hmm,
yes,” said Herodias, peering at the platter. “Very finely wrought. Well, keep anything easy to clean, like this.” She stepped around the room, pointing out this piece or that to save.

I thought it was a pity to throw out the jewel-colored carpets, and I slipped off a sandal to stroke the soft pile of one with my toes. Feeling a pinch on my ankle, I slapped at a black dot.

“Fleas. I’m not surprised,” said Herodias. “Burn the carpets and cushions,” she instructed the housekeeper. “I’ll stay in the guest suite until this place is cleansed.”

As we continued our tour of the palace, Herodias seemed to have decided to treat the hasty departure of Antipas’s first wife as a joke. Pausing on the highest terrace, she asked me, “Can’t you imagine that desert woman scrambling out the back door to her camel?” She giggled. “Losing her sandal on the steps?”

Entering into Herodias’s spirit, I stood on tiptoe at the terrace railing and pointed southward. “Look, I think I see her in the distance. There’s a black trail behind her—the fleas, I guess.”

“May they follow her all the way to Petra,” said Herodias. She dimpled at me.

That night the Nabatean princess came to me in a dream. As I was riding in a carriage, she appeared at the window with desperate eyes and dirt-streaked face. I woke up feeling sorry for the put-aside princess, and I wished I hadn’t made fun of her. Even if she had pined for her desert home in Nabatea, it was a dreadful humiliation for a wife to be put aside.

Now that the Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea was back in his capital city, he had much business to attend to, which meant that Leander had many more letters to write and records to keep. He didn’t have time to give me Greek lessons every day. In fact, Antipas thought the lessons could be dropped.

But Herodias insisted that I should keep up my Greek by practicing with Leander now and then. “At least until Salome is betrothed,” she cajoled Antipas. “There is nothing so winning to a man as a pretty girl reciting classical Greek poetry while she strums the lyre—don’t you agree, my prince?”

Antipas laughed indulgently. “You have me there! Very well, a lesson for Salome now and then, when my secretary has time.”

To my delight, Leander found time the next morning, and we met under an arbor on the lower terrace. He dutifully coached me on my emphasis and gestures, but I thought he seemed to be thinking about something else. Finally I stopped in the middle of a stanza and asked, “What is it? Are you worried about getting all your work done?”

Leander looked startled; then he sighed. “I am thinking about my work—but not about getting it done. Yesterday I read a report to Antipas from the captain of the guards in Sepphoris, about the bandit they captured at the river Kishon.”

“Oh!” My dream of last night popped into my head, and I realized that the Nabatean princess at my carriage window had had the face of the young bandit. “They—they executed him?”

“Not exactly,” said Leander. “The guards at Sepphoris tortured him to get the names of the other bandits and to find out where they were from. It seems that the captured bandit was from Judea, but the rest of the band were from a village just over the border in Galilee. Antipas had high praise for the captain.”

I felt sick. “Why was it so important to know where they were from?” I asked.

“Because the Tetrarch has to be very careful not to offend Governor Pilate by encroaching upon his authority. So Antipas wrote—
I
wrote—the captain at Sepphoris not to execute the Judean bandit, but send him to Caesarea and hand him over to Governor Pilate’s men for crucifixion. At the same time, Antipas ordered the commander of the garrison at Sepphoris to send soldiers to the other bandits’ Galilean village and destroy it.”

“Destroy it?” I remembered a cluster of mud huts we’d passed, where I’d noticed women at the well. “You mean, tear down the houses?” Tearing them down wouldn’t take much work, I thought.

“Yes, and kill the villagers.” Leander turned his pained eyes to me. “You will say, They were bandits, and they had to be punished. Antipas had to make an example of them.”

“I
wasn’t
going to say that.”

“But
why
had they turned to banditry?” Leander went on. “These young men had no way to live. Their families had gone into debt to pay Antipas’s taxes. Then their farms were taken to pay the debts.”

We were silent for a moment. I’d never thought about how bandits might become bandits in the first place. Maybe I’d thought they were born bandits, as I was born a Herod.

Leander continued the lesson, but now I was the one who couldn’t keep my mind on it. I was trying not to picture the young bandit nailed up beside the Via Maritimus. I knew, of course, that the Romans crucified thieves. But I’d only seen crosses from a distance as we traveled, before Herodias pulled the carriage curtains shut.

A few days later, while we were still unpacking and settling in, Herodias sent for the court astrologer. She was pleased to have an astrologer on call, especially one trained in Babylon. “Antipas gathers only the best around him,” she told me. “Your father would never pay for a first-rate astrologer like Magus Shazzar.”

I’d gotten a different impression of Shazzar from Leander. Leander was too busy right now to give me another lesson, but I’d run into him once on the lower terrace. As we chatted about this and that, Leander complained about having to eat at the same table with the astrologer. “The learned man of Babylon has food stuck in his beard.”

“But that must be a sign of his great wisdom,” I said innocently. “If he wakes up hungry in the middle of the night, he can just chew on his beard.”

“True,” said Leander dryly. “He could enjoy a feast without even getting out of bed.”

Whether Magus Shazzar was a top astrologer or an unkempt swine or both, I had to wait to find out. He couldn’t attend Herodias right away, for the next day was the Sabbath, the Jewish Seventh Day. My family had never observed the Sabbath, but I knew about it. In Rome, the shops in the Jewish quarter of the city were closed every seventh day. The Jews didn’t go out on the Sabbath, except to an assembly for prayer and readings. They did no work—not even casting an astrological chart.

Herodias was indignant that Antipas had decided to make all his employees observe the Sabbath. “This isn’t necessary,” she muttered to me. “Magus Shazzar probably worships the Persian Mithras or some such god. Why should he observe Jewish customs?”

Herodias was still more annoyed to learn that Antipas’s entire household was to begin attending the Sabbath prayer meeting. “I haven’t been to one of those tedious gatherings—or wanted to—since I was a girl.”

But I was curious to see the Jewish prayer meeting, and so I rose promptly on the Sabbath morning. Gundi was already up, burning a pinch of incense before her statuette of Aphrodite. We both covered our heads and shoulders, as we’d been instructed, and then we joined the rest of the court on the palace portico.

By the time we reached the assembly house, I was sweating under my wraps, for the air in Tiberias was warm and moist. We all followed Antipas up the high limestone steps and through the fluted pillars of the portico. Inside the hall, Antipas and his courtiers took their seats at the front. We women and girls were directed upstairs to the gallery.

A woman on an open litter was carried into the gallery and placed near the balustrade. “That must be the steward’s wife, supposedly an invalid,” remarked Herodias. “They say that Chuza converted to the Jewish religion to marry her. What a poor bargain! Although very likely Antipas would have ordered him to convert, anyway.”

We’d gotten up earlier than usual, and now I tried not to yawn as the morning went on. I longed to push the scarf off my head; I felt like a steamed fish. There were prayers, and readings from holy scrolls, and explanations of the readings. I didn’t understand Hebrew, the ancient Jewish language, but the leader of the meeting translated each verse into Aramaic and Greek.

One of the prayers thanked the Lord for Prince Antipas’s safe return from Rome. Beside me, Herodias seemed to be listening carefully, even as she lifted her scarf to her mouth to stifle yawns. “Why don’t they give thanks for the Tetrarch’s marriage?” she whispered.

I looked around at the other women and girls, and I noticed that they were eyeing Herodias and me, too. They must be the wives and daughters of the noblemen of Tiberias. I saw them glancing at Herodias’s ruby earrings—she had managed to drape her head scarf so as to reveal them.

Now a rabbi, or teacher, explained an ancient text, the last words of David, a great king of ancient Israel. One passage struck me: “When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of the Lord, he dawns on them like the morning light…”

The words thrilled me, and they brought to mind Leander’s words on shipboard, “I do not admire power unless it is used in a good way.” Although usually he was so composed, his voice had shook as he said this. I wished I could see Leander’s face from where I was sitting. What did he think of King David’s poem?

I noticed that Herodias had stopped yawning and was smiling as she watched Antipas. He listened with a satisfied expression, nodding. He seemed to think King David’s poem described him. The thrill I’d felt on hearing the words faded.