II.
“O Prophet Iohanan, how fair you are!”
Iohanan was hideous. His ankles were in stocks, a chain about his waist
was looped in a ring that hung from the wall. About his body were tattered
furs, his hair was tangled, the face drawn and yellow. Vermin were visible
on his person. His lips twitched, and his gums, discolored, were as those
of a camel that has journeyed too far. A tooth projected, green as a fresh
almond is; the chin projected too, and from it on one side a rill of
saliva dripped upon the naked breast. On the terrace he was a blur, a
nightmare in a garden.
“Ah, how fair!”
Tantalizing as temptation, Mary stood just beyond his reach. Her eyes were
full of compliments, her body was bent, and, the folds of her gown held
back, she swayed a little, in the attitude of one cajoling a tiger. She
was quite at home and at her ease, and yet prepared for instant flight.
Iohanan, or John—surnamed, because of practices of his, the
Baptist—beckoned her to approach. In his eyes was the innocence that oxen
have.
“My body is chained, but my soul is free!”
Mary made a pirouette, and through the terrace of the citadel the rattles
on her ankles rang.
It was appalling, this citadel; it dominated the entire land. Perched on a
peak of basalt, it overhung an abyss in which Asphalitis, the Bitter Sea,
lay, a stretch of sapphire to the sun. In the distance were the heights of
Abraham, the crests of Gilead. Before it was the infinite, behind it the
desert. At its base a hamlet crouched, and a path hewn in the rock crawled
in zigzags to its gates. Irregular walls surrounded it, in some places a
hundred cubits high, and in each of the many angles was a turret. Seen
from below it was a threat in stone, but within was a caress, one of those
rapturous palaces that only the Orientals build. It was called Machærus.
Peopled with slaves and legends, it was a haunt of ghosts and fierce
delights.
And now as Mary tripped before the prophet the walls alone repelled. The
terrace was a garden in which were lilies and sentries. For entrance there
was a portal of red porphyry, above which was a balcony hemmed by a
balustrade of yellow Numidian stone.
Against it Antipas leaned. He had been eyeing the desert in tremulous
surmise. The day before, he had caught the glitter of lances, therewith
spirals of distant smoke, and he had become fearful lest Aretas, that king
of Arabia Petræa whose daughter he had deserted, might be meditating
attack. But now there was nothing, at most a triangular mass speeding
westwards, of which only the edges moved, and which he knew to be a flight
of cranes.
He took heart again and gazed in the valley below. It was the anniversary
of his birth. To celebrate it he had invited the stewards of his lands,
the notables of Galilee, the elect of Jerusalem, the procurator of Judæa,
the emir of Tadmor, mountaineers and Pharisees, Scribes and herdsmen.
But in the valley only a few shepherds were visible. Along the ramparts
soldiers paced. At the further end of the terrace a group of domestics was
busy with hampers and luggage. The day was solemnly still, exquisitely
clear; and between two hills came a glare of gold projected from the
Temple of Jerusalem.
Through the silence rang the tinkle of the rattles that Mary wore. The
prophet was beckoning her.
“And Martha?” the tetrarch heard him ask.
The pirouette ceased awkwardly. Mary’s eyes forgot their compliments. Her
brows contracted, and, as though perplexed, she held her head a little to
one side.
“There,” he added, “there, I know you well. It was at Bethany I saw you
first. Yes, yes, I remember perfectly; you were leaving, and Martha was in
tears. Only a little since I had speech with her. She spoke of you; she
knew you were called the Magdalen. No,” he continued, for Mary had shrunk
back, “no, I will not curse. There is another by whom you will be
blessed.”
Mary laughed. “I am going to Rome. Tiberius will give me a palace. I shall
sleep on the down the Teutons bring. I shall drink pearls dissolved in
falernian. I shall sup on peacocks’ tongues.”
“No, Mary, Rome you will never see. The Eternal has you in His charge.
Your shame will be washed away.”
“Shame to you,” she interrupted. “Shame and starvation too.” She made as
though she were about to pirouette again. “Whom are you talking of?”
“One whose shoes I am unworthy to bear.”
For a moment he seemed to meditate; then, with the melancholy of one
renounceing some immense ambition, he murmured, half to himself, half to
the sky, “For him to increase I must diminish.”
“As for that, you are not much to look at now. I must go. I must braid my
hair; the emir’s eyes are eager.”
“Mary,” he hissed, and the sudden asperity of his voice coerced her as a
bit might do, “you will go to Capharnahum, you will seek him, you will say
Iohanan is descended into the tombs to announce the Son of David.”
Through the lateral entrance to the terrace a number of guests had
entered. From the balcony above, Antipas leaned and listened. Some one
touched him; it was Herodias.
“The procurator is coming,” she announced. “You should be at the gate.”
“Ah!”
He seemed indifferent. What Iohanan had said concerning the Son of David
stirred him like the point of a sword. He felt that there could be no such
person; his father had put a stop to all that. And yet, if there were!
His indifference surprised Herodias.
“What are you staring at?” she asked; and to assure herself she looked
over the balustrade. “That carrion? You should——”
Her hand drawn across her throat completed the sentence.
The tetrarch shook his head. There was no hurry. Then, too, the prophet
was useful. He reviled Jerusalem, and that flattered Galilee. But there
was another reason, which he kept to himself. Iohanan affected him as no
one had done before.
He feared him, chained though he was, and into that fear something akin to
admiration entered. In his heart he wished he had let him alone. No, there
was no hurry. As he assured her of that the prophet looked up.
“Jezebel!”
The guests approached. Their number had increased. There were Greek
merchants from Hippos and Sepphoris, Pharisees from Jericho, and Scribes
from Jerusalem. Herodias clapped her hands. A negro, naked to the waist,
appeared.
“Take him below.”
But the guests surrounded Iohanan. The Pharisees recognized him at once.
He was the terror of the hierarchs.
As he cried out at Herodias he seemed as though he would rise and wrench
his bonds and mount to where she was. His eyes had lost their pathos; they
blazed.
“Woe unto you!” he shouted, “and woe unto your barren bed! Though you hid
in the bowels of the earth, in the uttermost depths of a jungle, the
stench of your incest would betray you. Woe unto you, I say; the swine
will turn from you, the Eternal will rend you, and the heart of hell will
vomit you back!”
Herodias shook with anger. She was livid. Murmurs circulated through the
increasing throng.
The Pharisees edged nearer. On their foreheads were slips of vellum on
which passages of the Law had been inscribed. About their left arms other
slips extended spiralwise from the elbow to the end of the third finger.
They were in white; where their garments had become soiled, the spots had
been chalked.
To them the prophet showed his teeth. “And woe unto you too, race of
vipers, bladders of wind! As the fire devours the stubble, and the flame
consumes the chaff, so your root will be rottenness and your seed go up as
dust. Fear will engulf you like a torrent. The high peaks will be broken,
the mountains will sever, and night be upon all. The valleys and hills
will be strewn with your corpses, the rocks will run with your blood, the
plain will drink it, and the vultures feast on your flesh. Woe unto you
all, I say, that call good evil, and evil good!”
The invective continued. It enveloped the world. Everything was to be
destroyed. Presently it subsided; the voice of the prophet sank lower; his
eyes sought the sky, the pupils dilated; and the dream of his nation, the
triumphant future, the sanctification of the faithful, the magnificence
that was to be, poured rapturously from his lips.
“The whole land will glow with glory. The sky will be a rose in bloom. The
meadows will rejoice, and the earth will be filled with men and maidens
singing and kneeling to Thee, Immanuel, whom I await.”
The vision would have expanded, perhaps, but the chain that bound him was
loosed, sinewy arms were dragging him away. As he went, he glared up again
at Herodias. His face had lost its beatitude.
“You will be stripped of your purple, Jezebel; your diadem will be trodden
under foot. The pains of a woman in travail will be as joys unto yours.
There will be not enough stones to throw at you, and the abomination of
your lust will bellow, Accursed, even beyond the tomb.”
The anathema fainted in the distance. The Scribes consulted between their
teeth. By the Pharisees Antipas was blamed. A merchant from Hippos did not
understand, and the Law was explained. That a man should marry his
brother’s wife was a duty, only in this instance it had not occurred to
the brother to die beforehand. Then, again, by her first husband Herodias
had a child, and in that was the abomination.
The merchant did not wholly grasp the distinction, but he nodded as though
he had.
“There was a child, was there?”
A captain of the garrison answered: “A girl, Salomè.”
He said nothing further, but the merchant could see that his mouth watered
at the thought of her.
The crowd had become very dense. Suddenly a trumpet blared. At the gate
was Pontius Pilate. On his head was a high and dazzling helmet. His tunic
was short, open at the neck. His legs were bare. He was shod with shoes
that left the toes exposed. From his cuirass a gorgon’s head had, in
deference to local prejudice, been effaced; in its stead were scrolls and
thunderbolts. From the belt rows of straps, embroidered and fringed, fell
nearly to the knee. He held his head in the air. His features were
excellent, and his beard hung in rows of short overlapping curls.
Behind him was his body-guard. Before him Antipas stood, welcoming the
Roman in Greek.
In the sky now were the advancing steps of night; in crevices of the
basalt the leaves of the baaras weed had begun to flicker. It was time for
the festival to begin; and, preceding the guests, Antipas passed into a
hall beyond.
It was oblong, curved at the ends, and so vast that the roof was vague. On
the walls were slabs of different colors, marble spotted like the skin of
serpents, and onyx flecked with violet. On two sides were galleries
supported by columns of sandstone. A third gallery formed a semicircle.
Opposite, at the further end, on a dais, was the table of the tetrarch.
Antipas faced the assemblage. At his left was the procurator, at his right
the emir of Tadmor. Curtains were looped on either side. Above were
panels; they separated, and flowers fell. On a little stool next to the
couch on which the emir lay was a beautiful boy with curly hair. The couch
of the procurator was covered with a dim Babylonian shawl. That of the
tetrarch was of ivory incrusted with gold. All three were cushioned.
As the guests entered they were sprinkled with perfume. Throughout the
length of the hall other tables extended, and at these they found seats
and food: Syrian radishes, melons from the oases near the Oxus, white
olives from Bethany, honey from Capharnahum, and the little onions of
Ascalon. There were candelabra everywhere, liquids cooled with snow,
cheeses big as millstones, chunks of fat in wooden bowls, and behind the
tables, slaves with copper platters. On the platters were quarters of red
beef, breams swimming in grease, and sunbirds with their plumage on. In
the semicircular gallery musicians played, three notes, constantly
repeated.
The tetrarch’s table was spread with a cloth of byssus striped with
Laconian green. On it were jars of murrha filled with balsam, Sidonian
goblets of colored glass, jasper amphoræ, and water-melons from Egypt.
Before the procurator was a dish of oysters, lampreys, and boned barbels,
mixed well together, flavored with cinnamon and assafœtida; mashed
grasshoppers baked in saffron; and a roasted boar, the legs curled inward,
the eyes half-closed. The emir ate abundantly of heron’s eggs whipped with
wine into an amber foam. When his fingers were soiled, he wiped them in
the curls of the beautiful boy who sat near by.
The smell of food filled the hall, mounted to the roof. The atmosphere was
that of a bath, and the wines were heady. Already discussions had arisen.
A mountaineer and a Galilean skiffsman had been dragged away, the one
senseless, the other with features indistinguishable and masked in blood.
It was a great festival, and the tetrarch was entertaining, as only he
could, his friends, his enemies, and whoever chanced that way.
“As a child he rubbed his body with the leaves of the cnyza, which is a
preservative of chastity.” It was a little man with restless eyes and a
very long white beard detailing the virtues of Iohanan. “But,” he added,
“he must have found cold water better.”
His neighbors laughed. One pounded the table.
“Jeshua—” he began, but everyone was talking at once.
“Jeshua—” he continued; yet, as no one would listen, he turned to a
passing eunuch and caught him by the arm—“Jeshua does more; he works
miracles, and not with the cnyza either.”
The eunuch eluded him and escaped. However, he would not be balked; he
stood up and, through the din, he shouted at the little man:
“Baba Barbulah, I tell you he is the Messiah!”
His voice was so loud it dominated the hubbub, and suddenly the hubbub
ceased.
From the dais Pontius Pilate listened indifferently. Antipas held his
hands behind his ears that he might hear the better. The emir paid no
attention at all. On his head was a conical turban; about it were loops of
sapphire and coils of pearl. He wore a vest with scant sleeves that
reached to the knuckles, and trousers that overhung the instep and fell in
wide wrinkles on his feet; both were of leopard-skin. Over the vest was a
sleeveless tunic, clasped at the shoulders and girt at the waist. His hair
was long, plentifully oiled; his beard was bushy, blue-black, and specked
with silver.
Mary had approached. From the lessening waist to the slender feet her
dress opened at either side. Beneath was a chemise of transparent
Bactrianian tissue. From girdle to armpits were little clasps; on her
ankles, bands; and above the elbow, on her bare white arm, two circlets of
emeralds from the mines of Djebel Zabur.
The emir spoke to her. She listened with a glimpse of the most beautiful
teeth in the world. He put out a hand tentatively and touched her: the
tissue of her garment crackled and emitted sparks. He raised a goblet to
her. The wine it held was yellower than the marigold. She brushed it with
her lips; he drank it off, then, refreshed, he looked her up and down.
In one hand she held a cup of horn, narrower at the top than at the end;
in it were dice made of the knee-joints of gazelles, and these she rattled
in his beard.
“That beautiful Sultan, will he play?”
With an ochre-tipped finger she pointed at the turban on his head. The
eyes of the emir vacillated. He undid a string of gems and placed them on
the table’s edge. Mary unclasped a coil of emeralds and rattled the dice
again. She held the cup high up, then spilled the contents out.
“Ashtaroth!” the emir cried. He had won.
Mary leaned forward, fawned upon his breast, and gazed into his face. Her
breath had the fragrance of his own oasis, her lips were moist as the
pomegranate’s pulp, her teeth as keen as his own desire.
“No, beautiful Sultan, it is I.” With the back of her hand she disturbed
the dice. “I am Ashtaroth, am I not?”
Questioningly the emir explored the unfathomable eyes that gazed into his.
On their surface floated an acquiescence to the tacit offer of his own.
Then he nodded, and Mary turned and gathered the jewels from the cloth of
byssus where they lay.
“I tell you he is the Messiah!” It was the angry disputant shouting at the
little man.
“Who is? What are you talking about?”
Though the hubbub had ceased, throughout the hall were the mutterings of
dogs disturbed.
“Jeshua,” the disputant answered; “Jeshua the Nazarene.”
A Pharisee, very vexed, his bonnet tottering, gnashed back: “The Messiah
will uphold the law; this Nazarene attacks it.”
A Scribe interrupted: “Many things are to distinguish his advent. The
light of the sun will be increased a hundredfold, the orchards will bear
fruit a thousand times more abundantly. Death will be forgotten, joy will
be universal, Elijah will return.”
“But he has!”
Antipas started. The Scribe trembled with rage. But the throng had caught
the name of Elijah, and knew to whom the disputant referred—a man in
tattered furs whom a few hours before they had seen dragged away by a
negro naked to the waist, and some one shouted:
“Iohanan is Elijah.”
Baba Barbulah stood up and turned to whence the voice had come:
“In the footprints of the Anointed impudence shall increase, and the face
of the generation shall be as the face of a dog. It may be,” he added,
significantly—“it may be that you speak the truth.”
The sarcasm was lost. The musicians in the gallery, who had been playing
on flute and timbrel, began now on the psalteron and the native sambuca.
Behind was a row of lute-players; but most in view was a trignon, an
immense Egyptian harp, at which with nimble fingers a fair girl plucked.
In the shadow Herodias leaned. At a signal from her the musicians attacked
the prelude of a Syrian dance, and in the midst of the assemblage a figure
veiled from head to foot suddenly appeared. For a moment it stood very
still; then the veil fell of itself, and from the garrison a shout went
up:
“Salomè! Salomè!”
Her hair, after an archaic Chanaanite fashion, was arranged in the form of
a tower. Her high bosom was wound about with protecting bands. Her waist
was bare. She wore long pink drawers of silk, and for girdle she had the
blue buds of the lotus, which are symbols of virginity. She was young and
exquisitely formed. In her face you read strange records, and on her lips
were promises as rare. Her eyes were tortoise-shell, her hair was black as
guilt.
The prelude had ceased, the movement quickened. With a gesture of
abandonment the girl threw her head back, and, her arms extended, she
fluttered like a butterfly on a rose. She ran forward. The sambuca rang
quicker, the harp quicker yet. She threw herself to one side, then to the
other, her hips swaying as she moved. The buds at her girdle fell one by
one; she was dancing on flowers, her hips still swaying, her waist
advancing and retreating to the shiver of the harp. She was elusive as
dream, subtle as love; she intoxicated and entranced; and finally, as she
threw herself on her hands, her feet, first in the air and then slowly
descending, touched the ground, while her body straightened like a reed,
there was a long growl of unsatisfied content.
She was kneeling now before the dais. Pilate compared her to Bathylle, a
mime whom he had applauded at Rome. The tetrarch was purple; he gnawed his
under lip. For the moment he forgot everything he should have
remembered—the presence of his guests, the stains of his household, his
wife even, whose daughter this girl was—and in a gust of passion he half
rose from his couch.
“Come to me,” he cried. “But come to me, and ask whatever you will.”
Salomè hesitated and pouted, the point of her tongue protruding between
her lips.
“Come to me,” he pleaded; “you shall have slaves and palaces and cities;
you shall have hills and intervales. I will give you anything; half my
kingdom if you wish.”
There was a tinkle of feet; the girl had gone. In a moment she returned,
and balancing herself on one foot, she lisped very sweetly: “I should like
by and by to have you give me the head of Iohanan—” she looked about; in
the distance a eunuch was passing, a dish in his hand, and she added, “on
a platter.”
Antipas jumped as though a hound under the table had bitten him on the
leg. He turned to the procurator, who regarded him indifferently, and to
the emir, who was toying with Mary’s agate-nailed hand. He had given his
word, however; the people had heard. About his ears the perspiration
started; from purple he had grown very gray.
Salomè still stood, balancing herself on one foot, the point of her tongue
just visible, while from the gallery beyond, in whose shadows he divined
the instigating presence of Herodias, came the grave music of an Hebraic
hymn.
“So be it,” he groaned.
The order was given, and a tear trickled down through the paint and
furrows of his cheek. On the hall a silence had descended. The guests were
waiting, and the throb of the harp accentuated the suspense. Presently
there was the clatter of men-at-arms, and a negro, naked to the waist,
appeared, an axe in one hand, the head of the prophet in the other.
He presented it deferentially to Antipas, who motioned it away, his face
averted. Salomè smiled. She took it, and then, while she resumed her veil,
she put it down before the emir, who eyed it with the air of one that has
seen many another object such as that.
But in a moment the veil was adjusted, and with the trophy the girl
disappeared.
The harp meanwhile had ceased to sob, the guests were departing; already
the procurator had gone. The emir looked about for Mary, but she also had
departed; and, with the expectation, perhaps, of finding her without, he
too got up and left the hall.
Antipas was alone. Through the lattice at his side he could see the baaras
in the basalt emitting its firefly sparks of flame. From an adjacent
corridor came the discreet click-clack of a sandal, and in a moment the
head of the prophet was placed on the table at which he lay. The tetrarch
leaned over and gazed into the unclosed eyes. They were haggard and
dilated, and they seemed to curse.
He put his hand to his face and tried to think—to forget rather, and not
to remember; but his ears were charged with rustlings that extended
indefinitely and lost themselves in the future; his mind peopled itself
with phantoms of the past. Perhaps he dozed a little. When he looked up
again the head was no longer there, and he told himself that Herodias had
thrown it to the swine.