Salome (8 page)

After the final prayer and hymn, the other women in the gallery stood aside to let Herodias and her attendants leave first. Pausing beside the litter of the steward’s wife, Herodias nodded a greeting. It was proper for Joanna, a woman of lower rank, to rise and bow to the Tetrarch’s wife, and she did so. But as Joanna struggled slowly to her feet, I wished Herodias would urge her to rest on the litter.

“It is my honor to welcome Princess Herodias to Tiberias,” Joanna said. I thought she looked to be about Herodias’s age, maybe younger, although there were pain furrows between her eyes and lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth.

Herodias nodded in her most queenly way. “Do pay us a visit one day soon.”

The day after the Sabbath, I went to the palace office to get some tablets to write a letter to a friend in Rome. I found Leander sitting at a table in the office, writing with ink on papyrus. There was a pile of silver and gold coins beside him.

Leander looked up guiltily as I came in. “Oh, Miss Salome. This isn’t new papyrus,” he said quickly. “I wouldn’t presume to waste expensive new papyrus on a letter of my own. This is the reverse side of a business letter that the Tetrarch doesn’t want to save.”

“My, what a long explanation!” I teased him. “Do you really think I’d run to my stepfather and tell him you were wasting his papyrus?” I looked down at Leander’s letter. “What beautiful clear script you write. I can even read it upside down. ‘To my honored mother, Eustacia, from her only son—’”

“All right,” said Leander, “if you must know, I’m sending my mother more money. They need it right away.” He handed me a tablet, a letter from his mother.

What do you think?
she’d written from Alexandria.
The matchmaker has arranged an excellent marriage for Chloe, with a solid citizen who has a government lease for copper mines in Lusitania. They’ll sign the marriage contract as soon as we can turn over the full amount of the dowry. Oh, my dearest son, send your wages on the wings of Hermes!
At the end of the letter, she added,
We’re so eager to hear everything about your life at the court of Herod Antipas.

While I was reading, Leander had finished his own letter. He rolled up the papyrus, tied it with a string, and put it in a pouch. One by one he dropped the silver and gold coins into the pouch. The last coin was a gold aureus, and he wistfully fingered the image of Caesar Augustus stamped on it. “This alone could pay my passage back to Alexandria.”

Leander sighed as he picked up a stack of parchment sheets. “Back to work. I need to take these to the palace librarian. Have you seen the library?”

I walked down the corridor with him to the room where the scrolls were stored. “These are ready for binding,” he told the plump caretaker of the palace library, handing him the stack of parchment.

The librarian, another Greek, bowed to me. “Welcome, Miss Salome. I’m not a scholar, but I can tell you that my lord Antipas keeps a fine collection of written works at Tiberias. It will be my honor to assist you in finding whatever you wish.” He added to Leander, “Tell me if you think of an author we ought to have. The Tetrarch wants to build up his library. He’s given me permission to send to Alexandria for scrolls.”

I was eager to explore the library, but right now I was even more eager to find out what Leander was thinking, and so I left the library with him. “What is it?” I asked. “You looked like you were going to burst in there. Isn’t it really a good library? There were hundreds of scrolls on the shelves.”

“Oh, it’s an excellent library,” said Leander sourly. “It has all the world’s great philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Philo of Alexandria, and…Herod Antipas.” A corner of his mouth pulled down. “The parchment I gave the librarian was a volume of the Tetrarch’s diary.”

“His Deep Thoughts?” I guessed.

“Precisely.” Leander gave a groan. “I am so ashamed to take part in this fraud. I do not deserve the name of philosophy student.” He glanced at me. “Do you know what he’s gotten into his head now? He thinks he might be the Anointed One of the old Jewish prophecies!”

“The Anointed One?” I repeated.

“Yes, a sort of new King David who’s supposed to appear and rescue the Jewish people from the conquerors. If this were a Greek tragedy, you know, the gods would strike Antipas down for his overweening pride.” He snorted. “I just hope I’m not standing next to him when the thunderbolt falls.”

TEN

A BALEFUL INFLUENCE

I spent much of my time on the highest terrace in the palace, watching for travelers approaching the city gates. It was the southern gate I was most worried about. Gundi had picked up some alarming gossip from Herodias’s maid, Iris: Antipas was thinking of ways to make amends to the king of Nabatea for putting aside his daughter. To prevent the king from attacking Perea, Antipas might marry me off to the king’s son.

Me, live in a flea-ridden tent in the desert! Surely Herodias wouldn’t allow that…but I wasn’t absolutely confident, after hearing Antipas instruct her in proper behavior, that he would abide by her wishes. And what would the Nabateans do to me once I was in their clutches? I had a feeling that life in Nabatea could be quite unpleasant and short for the daughter of Herodias, second wife of Antipas.

So when I spotted an important-looking caravan arriving at the south gate, I immediately sent Gundi to find out where they were from. To my relief, it turned out that they were only a party of Jewish nobles from Jerusalem. Even if one of them wanted to marry me, that couldn’t be nearly as bad as a Nabatean fate.

I went cheerfully off to the market with Gundi. Since Leander’s sister was to be married, I wanted to buy her a wedding present. Also, Herodias had urged me to pick out a pair of pretty earrings to replace the ones the bandit took. There
were
advantages to being the Tetrarch’s stepdaughter compared with being only the daughter of stingy Herod Junior. In Tiberias, I could buy anything I liked, within reason, and the merchant would collect the price from Antipas’s treasurer.

“A well-woven Persian carpet holds its value,” suggested Gundi as we passed the carpet dealers’ arcade.

“But it’s a bulky thing to send all the way to Alexandria,” I said. Still, the carpets were enticing. I stopped to admire a rack of carpets like the lovely ones my mother had ordered to be burned. Wait—this carpet was the very same pattern—I leaned forward and sniffed the wool. A strong scent of coriander. I smiled to myself. So “Queen” Herodias thought her command was law, did she?

I returned from the market with a beautiful bronze lamp for Leander’s sister as well as earrings for myself. A goldsmith had showed me opal earrings very much like the ones I’d lost, but I didn’t want them after all. I chose silver ones with moonstones instead.

Back in the palace, I found that Herodias had left word for me to hurry to her rooms. Shazzar had completed her horoscope and was ready to read it. “Why not a horoscope for Miss Salome, I ask myself?” mused Gundi innocently. “
Her
whole life lies ahead of her.”

I thought Gundi had a point; I was the one with the uncertain fate. I took my time about obeying Herodias’s summons, although I was curious to see the astrologer work his art.

Magus Shazzar, a gray-bearded man, wore a special dark blue robe for the reading. The cloth twinkled like the night sky, with bits of glass sewed in the patterns of constellations. On a table in Herodias’s sitting room, he unrolled star charts, covered with notes in a language I didn’t recognize. He also set up a board inlaid with the signs of the zodiac and positioned markers on Herodias’s sign, the Scorpion.

Reading the horoscope was a lengthy process. As Shazzar droned on about the houses of the different planets and the motions of the moon and the sun, I began to yawn. But not Herodias. She seemed to luxuriate in the attention from the astrologer, as if she were enjoying a massage.

When Shazzar explained Herodias’s forecast for the days ahead, though, her expression darkened. He had discovered what he called a “baleful influence” in her chart. “You see, my lady, a certain man has the potential to occult your sign.”

Herodias drew her breath in sharply. “I knew it! The Baptizer.”

Shazzar stroked his beard, came across a bread crumb, and absently popped it into his mouth. “
Mm,
this conjunction is
very
unusual. I see that my lady also has the potential to occult him.”

Herodias stared at the zodiac board as if it were a letter with bad news. “To
occult
him. To blot out this ‘baleful influence.’ And how may I do that—do your stars say?”

The astrologer glanced up, surprised at her tone of voice. He seemed to have forgotten that he was talking about her life. “Ah—apparently it would have to be quite a roundabout way. I will say, though, that this very day is favorable for action, for one with my lady’s stars.”

Later, during the midday rest, I didn’t feel like napping. Stepping quietly out the latticed doors from my room into the garden, I knelt on the edge of a fountain. I felt aimless, and I wished I could see what lay ahead for me. (If only I had known and could have taken another path!) I would ask Herodias to have the astrologer cast my horoscope.

As I trailed my fingers in the water, voices in the loggia above broke into my thoughts.

Antipas: “Still fretting about the Baptizer, my precious? What he says has nothing to do with you personally.”

Herodias (doubtfully): “
Mm.
Dear heart, is it my imagination, or does that river preacher have some kind of hold over you? What can it be?” Her tone was warm and concerned.

“A hold?” said Antipas. “I wouldn’t say a
hold.
An interest, perhaps. I sometimes wonder if…” An intense note came into his deep voice. “Is it possible that the Baptizer is a true prophet, truer than he understands himself? He preaches of a great king coming, of the dawn of a new age.”

I remembered Antipas’s pleased expression as he listened to the reading in the Jewish assembly hall. It was just as Leander had said: my stepfather thought that
he
could be that great king, a second King David. No wonder Leander was disgusted if he had to write down these Deep Thoughts.

“My prince,” said Herodias, “surely you don’t need a wandering preacher to tell you that you could be as great a king as your father? Even greater! And what does the Baptizer mean by saying that our marriage is a
sin
? Junior divorced me, and you divorced the Nabatean woman. And we consulted a soothsayer about the marriage day, and we sent offerings to all the proper gods and goddesses, including the Jewish god as I remember.”

“Yes, yes,” said Antipas. “We’ve been over all this before. I want to rest now.”

“Only do away with him,” said Herodias urgently, “and we’ll both rest well.”

“Why are you so afraid of him, my dove?” asked Antipas. “How could a penniless holy man harm the Tetrarch’s wife? Besides, doing away with him would be foolish and dangerous.”

“That sounds more like your cautious half brother Philip than the Prince Antipas I adore. Could it be that
you’re
the one who’s afraid?” Herodias laughed to show that she was joking—somewhat. “Simply give the order. You’re the ruler of this land!”

Antipas’s voice was like a warning rumble from a bull. “Yes, I am indeed the ruler of Galilee and Perea. I wish to remain so. Don’t you remember the folly of my brother Archelaus and how it was punished? When he tried to play the grand tyrant of Judea, the Jews complained to the Emperor, and the Emperor banished him to Gaul.” He went on in a lighter tone, “Believe me, exile in the northern provinces wouldn’t suit you, Lady Herodias. You would not delight in weaving sensible woolen cloth and breeding chickens.”

“Pooh!” Herodias made a scornful noise, as if blowing away an empty threat. Then suddenly she made her voice honey sweet. “Won’t you give this one order to set my heart at peace? How many other men have been slain at your word? Why not say the word again and take care of just one more? He’s not even a Roman citizen.”

Antipas snorted like a bull bothered by flies. Then he said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’ll do this much: I’ll send a messenger south to my garrison at Macherus to have the Baptizer arrested. You have to admit that he can’t do any harm in a prison cell, no matter how much he preaches.”

I waited to hear if my mother would insist on having the Baptizer killed. But she must have decided she’d gained as much as she could for now.

I wandered from the garden to the palace library. The librarian was taking his midday rest on a bench, so I tiptoed along the shelves. I thought I would look for some Greek poetry and surprise Leander by memorizing it.

As I was reading the tags on the scrolls, someone appeared in the doorway. I turned, hoping it might be Leander. I was eager to give him the wedding present for his sister.

But it was Antipas. “Good afternoon, Salome,” he said.

“Good afternoon, Stepfather.” A vague idea came to me: if I could get Antipas to care more about me, he might consider my feelings before marrying me off. I lowered my eyelashes, raised them to meet his eyes for a moment, then swept them down again, the way Herodias did. “What a fine library you have.”

He nodded, looking pleased. “The librarian was trained in Alexandria—knows his business.” He stepped closer. “What are you reading?”

I could smell the perfumed oil on his beard, and I felt a little nervous. “I was just looking for—I like poetry.”

“Poetry—is that so?” Antipas lifted the tag of the scroll in my hands and read the Latin title. “
The Art of Love,
by Ovid. Do you like that book?”

I was alarmed at the change in his voice and at the way he was looking at me. “I—I haven’t read it.”

Antipas stared at me for a moment, his tongue just showing between his teeth. “No—not yet.” Dropping the tag, he strolled from the library.

When he was gone, I took the scroll from its case and unrolled it. It was in Latin, which I could read somewhat. I glanced at a verse here, a verse there, my face growing hotter and hotter. My eye lit on the line,
Out in the springy meadow the heifer lows with longing for the bull.
These poems were indecent; they were all about lust.

I must explain to Antipas that I would never read such poems. But how could I explain without bringing up the embarrassing poems themselves? Pushing the scroll back in its cubbyhole, I, too, left the library.

The next morning, Herodias was in a merry mood. Antipas’s messenger was on his way to Macherus, the fortress in the south, and soon John the Baptizer would be in prison. “Of course,” Herodias told me, “it would have been more sensible for Antipas to order the preacher to be killed on the spot. But one step at a time!”

After breakfast Herodias took me to pay a call on Joanna, wife of Antipas’s steward. “The steward’s wife ought to have come to pay her respects to me by now,” remarked Herodias, “but of course she has a mysterious weakness in her limbs. Chuza works so hard for my prince,” she added sweetly. “We must be kind to his ailing wife.”

The steward’s house on the palace grounds was not large, but I thought there was something harmonious and peaceful about it. In the central hall, wooden screens let in lemon-scented air from the garden. Joanna greeted us from her couch, where she half reclined, propped up by cushions. The lines of pain in her face looked deeper than they had on the Sabbath.

“Please excuse me for not rising,” said Joanna in a soft voice. “My malady comes and goes, always leaving me a little weaker. Today it’s upon me. But it’s so kind of your ladyship and her daughter to visit. How do you like Tiberias? They say our city is a bit like Napoli in Italy, built on the hillside overlooking the water.”

Herodias agreed and went on to praise the palace. She added, “Of course there’s so much redecoration to do in my suite. The Nabatean woman had it looking like the inside of a tent!”

The steward’s wife smiled faintly. “Yes, the poor girl seemed to be homesick….” She turned to me. “So, Salome. That’s a name to be proud of in your family. Your ancestor Salome, sister of Herod the Great, was bold and merciful. You must know the story of how she spared the Jewish leaders at his death?”

“Of course,” said Herodias before I could answer. “Although my Salome is hardly like my great-aunt!” She looked at me with fond amusement. “Now
that
Salome—she was a woman to be reckoned with.”

I said nothing, but I didn’t like the way Herodias was talking about me. Wasn’t there any chance that
I
might be a woman to be reckoned with? Actually, although I did know the story Joanna mentioned, I’d never heard it told in praise of Salome. Rather, the point of the story was always what a bloodthirsty tyrant King Herod had been to the very end of his life. While he lay on his deathbed, my great-grandfather had worried that the Jews would rejoice instead of mourn when they heard the news of his death. (Who could have blamed them?)

So Herod ordered all the Jewish leaders arrested and kept in the stadium. As soon as the king died, his soldiers were to kill the leaders. Thus, Herod planned, the Jewish people would be forced to mourn his death. But when the king actually did breathe his last, Salome hastened to the captain of the guards and stopped him from carrying out the executions.

“And wasn’t there also another ancestor, Salome Alexandra,” Joanna went on, “called Queen Alexandra?”

“Indeed,” said Herodias, pleased. This was just what she’d reminded me of before we left Rome. “She ruled Judea before the Herods took power.”