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.
“But, my dear daughter, don’t you know that one never turns his back
upon the Tetrarch?” Antipas shouted, as he leaned out across the table,
his black eyes bulging as though they might leap from the sockets.
The girl’s only response was to draw in her hands slightly and then
thrust them outward again in the pantomime of unveiling herself anew as,
in an ecstasy of voluptuous simulations, she rotated her slim hips to
the mounting frenzy of the music.
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” Antipas clapped his fat hands together.
“Marvelous, my dear child! But must you continue to give your back to
the Tetrarch? Will you continue thus to tease us?”
Still Salome made no reply to her stepfather. But slowly, as Antipas
clutched the table edge to pull to his feet, the girl, without breaking
the rhythm of her seductive undulations, began slowly to turn herself
about, her arms still outthrust from her sides. The Tetrarch, seeing it,
let go his prop and sank heavily to the couch; once more his screamed
approval signaled the guests to new applause, as every eye in eager
anticipation followed the gracefully suggestive motions of their royal
host’s stepdaughter.
But hardly had the girl done a quarter turn toward the diners when
suddenly she drew the gossamer scarves protectively to herself, and,
whirling the remainder of the turn to face them, paused in her dancing.
Then with head tossed back and laughing, she scampered across the
spotlighted circle almost to the Tetrarch’s table. A pace from it she
stopped, turned her head, and with a nod signaled the musicians. As they
resumed the dancing rhythm, she began again her voluptuous gyrations.
Claudia was close enough now to Salome to see that the girl’s
half-closed eyes, peering through slits beneath the darkly shadowed
lids, were glancing from the Tetrarch to her mother beside him. Salome,
she was suddenly convinced, was performing for Antipas not out of her
own volition but through Herodias’ devising. And what, Claudia wondered
again, could the crafty Tetrarchess be planning to accomplish through
this brazen flaunting of her daughter’s physical charms.
But the Procurator’s wife had only a moment for conjecture; Salome
suddenly ceased her rhythmical writhings and stepped forward to lean
above the Tetrarch’s still burdened table. Teasingly, and before the
musicians were aware of her changed routine, she fumbled with the veils
still held pressed against her, and as Antipas, in a new frenzy of
excitement, sought to rise from his couch, she thrust her hands apart
and then, with a high squeal of laughter, crossed them again in front of
her. In the brief moment that her youthful but fully matured bosom had
been completely exposed to them, the Tetrarch had lunged out to clutch
her, but he had shattered his wine goblet instead and the girl,
screaming with laughter, had darted backward into the illuminated circle
to evade him.
As a servant came running up to mop the spilled wine and remove the
broken glass, Antipas settled back on his couch. “Aha! The clever little
vixen was too quick for me,” he said, turning to face his wife. “But
I’ll....” He said no more. Herodias, Claudia saw, was unsmiling, grim.
But evidently she hadn’t meant for Antipas to see her in such a mood,
for quickly she affected a cloaking smile. “By the gods,” she said to
her husband, “the child is clever, isn’t she?”
Salome was now in the center of the bright light. The music had died
away as the leader awaited his new instructions. The girl stood quietly
facing the Tetrarch and his guests, the colored veils clutched in her
crossed hands as though she were trying to cover herself in a chilling
breeze. Then she turned her head and lifted one veil-holding hand to
signal resumption of the dance music; the musicians swung quickly into a
fast rhythm that sent Salome dipping and prancing around the lighted
circle. As she came within inches of the Tetrarch’s table, Antipas once
more lunged toward her, but she had anticipated his attempt to catch her
and had darted out of reach. Laughing, she danced to the center of the
lighted spot; soon she was whirling around on the balls of her bare
feet, and as the tempo of the drums and the strings and the brasses
increased and the volume swelled, she circled as she pirouetted.
Opposite the Centurion Cornelius she released one of the veils and it
sailed across the table to be caught by the diner at his right.
“Another!” shouted Antipas as she whirled past his couch but safely
beyond his reach. “Another! Let another one fly!”
She was wheeling before the diners at her mother’s left when she loosed
a second veil; a man grabbed for it and thrust it beneath his pillow.
When she had spun around to the other side of the circle she held out
her arm and a yellow one sailed above the table. A man and a woman
grabbed for the floating gossamer; he caught it but laughingly
surrendered it to her.
“More! More!” screamed the Tetrarch, and around the square of the tables
others joined in chorus. And when the girl let two of the shimmering
scarves sail away together, they screamed again. “More! More! Let them
fly!”
Salome, her head back, laughing, began now to tease the Tetrarch and his
guests. Whirling around the rim of the patch of light, she would sweep
one hand with its veils outward with a flourish and then, without
releasing them, fold the arm back across the other one, which all the
while she had kept pressed close to her pirouetting white body.
“She’s an actress, the little coquette!” Cornelius observed. “She knows
how to build up suspense. She understands how to please Antipas, too;
she’s got a good sense of the dramatic.”
“Yes, and in another moment or so, unless I’m entirely wrong about her,
her dramatics will have Antipas—and maybe you, too—groveling.” But
quickly her expression changed to one of perplexity. “Still I wonder,
Cornelius, what Herodias is scheming. Surely she’s getting no pleasure
out of seeing her daughter make a spectacle of herself in public. There
must be something behind it; yet I can’t imagine what. What on earth
could she want so badly that she would go to such great...?”
But her question remained unfinished, for the girl had pranced, still
pirouetting, into the center of the bright spot. She paused in her
turning and with both hands clutching the remaining veils modestly
across her chest, signaled with a motion of her head to the leader of
the musicians. Immediately the volume of the music began to increase and
the tempo to speed, and Salome whirled faster and faster in time with
the music’s crescendo. As she spun on the balls of her bare feet, the
veils that had been hanging to her knees streamed out in a kaleidoscope
of whirling color. The flutes more insistently joined their whining
pleas to the deeper invitations of the harps and the dulcimers and the
rhythmical throaty demands of the drums; the girl’s black hair, standing
out from her head as she whirled, made a dark spinning disk above the
circular rainbow of the scarves.