Salome

by Beatrice Gormley

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  SALOME’S FAMILY TREE

  PROLOGUE: Salome Speaks

  ONE: Uncle Antipas

  TWO: At the Jordan River

  THREE: A Surprise Performance

  FOUR: Called by the Goddess?

  FIVE: How Shall I Live?

  SIX: A Warning

  SEVEN: Caesarea

  ElGHT: Bandits

  NINE: The Silver Platter

  TEN: A Baleful Influence

  ELEVEN: John Arrested

  TWELVE: A Dangerous Man

  THIRTEEN: A Visit from Herod Antipas

  FOURTEEN: Joanna's Daughter

  FIFTEEN: Two Herod Brothers

  SIXTEEN: The Tetrarch Repents

  SEVENTEEN: The Birthday Gift

  EIGHTEEN: The Scorpion Strikes

  NINETEEN: The Valley of the Shadow of Death

  TWENTY: Tragedy

  TWENTY-ONE: Murderer

  TWENTY-TWO: A Curse on the Herods

  TWENTY-THREE: Joanna Disappears

  TWENTY-FOUR: Joanna Reappears

  TWENTY-FIVE: A Second Chance?

  TWENTY-SIX: Beyond Tragedy

  AFTERWORD

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM LAUREL-LEAF BOOKS

  COPYRIGHT

  To my agent, Susan Cohen

  SALOME’S FAMILY TREE

  PROLOGUE

  SALOME SPEAKS

  If I’d never hoped to live in a world of goodness and truth—if the priestess of Diana, then Leander, and then Joanna hadn’t shown me glimpses of it—maybe I wouldn’t have minded being shut out of it. Maybe the preacher’s death wouldn’t have trapped me in a dungeon, the dungeon of my own self.

  Have you ever seen a dungeon? This is what it would be like if you visited the dungeon beneath Herod Antipas’s palace in Tiberias. First the prison door thuds behind you. A guard walks you down the corridor. His torch shows rough stone walls on either side, stone underfoot, stone overhead.

  Stone steps lead down to the lowest level. It’s cold underground, but not too cold to smell the stink from the cells. Past the last cell, steps lead down again, and there’s an iron grate in the floor. The grate covers a hole in the rock. A deep hole, like a well. Only instead of water, this well is full of despair.

  I put myself in the well of despair.

  How could this be, that I came to choose death-in-life? I’m not sure I know how it happened myself. But one thing you have to understand: Herodias and I were best friends before he came along. Or I thought we were.

  (“You have to understand,” I say. Of course, I don’t have any special right to be understood. Neither does Herodias, although she often uses those words, as if everyone should understand her—everyone should sympathize with her.)

  My mother, Herodias, was more like an older sister than a mother to me. She’d been only thirteen when she married my father, Herod. “Herod of Rome,” he was called, to set him apart from his late father, King Herod of Judea. His friends called him “Junior.” He was much older than my mother—in fact, he was one of her uncles.

  Growing up in Rome, I knew my father as the paunchy man who left our house early in the morning and came home after I was in bed. When he was home, he was usually in the dining hall with friends. I overheard bits of their talk about the chariot races or about which officer the Emperor was supposed to appoint to some post or other.

  Those dinner parties sounded as dull as dust to me, but my mother managed to get a great deal of fun out of them. Instead of listening to the talk, she’d notice how my father always leaned forward with his eyes wide and forefinger jabbing to make a point. Or how his friend Secundus would answer, “Well, well,” no matter what was said and give a series of burps. Later Herodias would amuse me and my nursemaid, Gundi, by imitating my father and his guests. Her light, musical laugh could cut anyone down to size. It was reassuring to me, because I was a little afraid of the men, including my father.

  Sometimes at night I overheard my parents quarreling. It often started when my father accused Herodias of throwing away his money on her spendthrift brother Agrippa. Herodias then called my father a skinflint to his family who threw his money away on his racetrack friends. My father called her a poor excuse for a wife, producing only one girl (me) in all these years. Herodias asked why he needed a son and heir, since he hadn’t become king of Judea after all. At this point Gundi would give me lambs’ wool to stop up my ears, but she stood at the door to listen.

  I never called Herodias “Mama” she was always “Herodias” to me. When I was little, I called Gundi “Mama,” but I grew out of that. Herodias and I laughed at my childish mistake. The idea that my nursemaid, Gundi, a slave from a northern land, with her ruddy face and harsh accent, could be the mother of Salome, descended from the royal Herodian line!

  So I was a girl without a “Mama.” But I thought I was lucky, because I lived with the most wonderful friend.

  When Herodias was around, everything was fun and treats. Gundi did the dull, unpleasant things with me, like combing the snarls out of my hair and correcting my manners. She tried to get me to stop twirling a lock of my hair, a habit I fell into when I was anxious. “After all my trouble to groom your hair, Miss Salome!”

  Sometimes, when I missed my mother, I would hit out at Gundi. She held my wrists and made reproachful clucking noises, but she couldn’t punish me. She was, after all, a slave.

  Returning home from a shopping trip, Herodias would call my name as she stepped into the atrium. I came running to see what little gifts she’d brought me from the market—fresh dates, maybe, or a trinket—but the real gift was the way she drew me into a charmed circle just for the two of us.

  When she was home, Herodias played clapping games with me and sang me songs. After Gundi had put me to bed, she would come to my room and give me a sip of honeyed wine from her own goblet. “Sleep well, my dearest pet.” I worshiped Herodias more sincerely than I worshiped any god. For the longest time I had faith—a faith so deep that I didn’t even know I believed it—that I would grow closer and closer to my mother as I grew up. If I was worthy, the two of us would become inseparable.

  As I grew older, Herodias did spend more time with me. She took me on outings to the theater, picnics on the Tiber River, holiday trips to a resort on Lake Sabazia. I only wished these events didn’t include other people, often relatives visiting Rome from other parts of the Empire.

  Herodias didn’t have close women friends, but she delighted in giving parties for other ladies and their children. It was a good excuse for her to show off her talents. Like most women, Herodias hadn’t had much education, but she had an excellent memory. She loved to read poetry and novels, and she could recite many long poems by heart.

  Sometimes I would ask Gundi, “Do you think I will be as pretty as Herodias when I grow up?” or, “Do you think I will be as clever as Herodias?” I didn’t mean that I wanted to rival my mother—only that I wanted to be worthy of her love.

  Gundi wouldn’t answer these questions, except to say, “What nonsense,” or, “Clever is as clever does.” I was afraid her answers really meant no, there was no chance that I would deserve to dwell in the charmed circle with Herodias forever.

  ONE

  UNCLE ANTIPAS

  Ordinarily, upper-class Roman girls didn’t dance. Dancers were lower-class entertainers, sluts. But it was entirely proper for well-bred girls to dance in the rites at the Temple of Diana. Diana, goddess of the moon and of the hunt, was also the protector of young girls. So, many well-to-do families sent their daughters for lessons at the Temple. There we received training in deportment (which is what our mothers cared about) and got to run around with other girls (which is what we cared about).

  We Herods wer
en’t actually Roman, of course: we were Jews from Judea. But like other wealthy foreigners in Rome—no matter whether they were from Ephesus in Anatolia, Cyrene in Africa, or Gadis in Spain—we lived an upper-class Roman life. There were many Jews of lesser birth in Rome, but for the most part they kept to themselves in the Jewish quarter of the city. Their women hardly went out at all.

  By the time I was twelve, I looked forward even more than before to my lessons at the Temple of Diana. I’d been enrolled at the Temple for years, and I’d always liked the training, especially learning the sacred songs and dances. The priestess was strict but kind to all the girls, and there was a peaceful sense of order in the Temple grounds.

  Now I grew quickly, and soon I was tall for my age. My size made me feel awkward, and I had to struggle to make my hands and feet do what they were supposed to. Herodias joked that I would cross a room in order to find the one loose floor tile and stumble over it.

  Since I felt so clumsy, I was grateful that I could dance as well as ever. Even with my new self-consciousness, I could still move gracefully when the pipes and tambourines started up. The music seemed to guide my body for me. I danced well even on festival days, when all the mothers came to the Temple to watch us take part in the rites.

  One afternoon in November when I was just fourteen, I hurried home from the Temple, accompanied as usual by Gundi. I was glowing with pride. Today the priestess had taken me aside and spoken to me. She’d been watching my progress, and she wondered if I might have a calling to become a priestess.

  “I am going to recommend that you try for a sign from Diana this spring,” she said. “One night during a full moon, you will sleep in the Temple at the feet of the great statue. If the goddess chooses you to serve her, she will give some sign.” She would talk to my mother about it and consult the auspices for a favorable date.

  I was flattered, although I hadn’t thought of joining the cult. I knew that my mother’s only purpose in sending me to the Temple of Diana was to help me gain poise and a proper sense of my role as a woman of noble birth. Herodias liked to celebrate all kinds of holidays, but otherwise she wasn’t very devout to any deities, including the Jewish god.

  At home I brushed past the doorkeeper, eager to tell Herodias how the priestess had complimented me. Then I stopped short, seeing the atrium full of men. Most of them were dressed in Eastern robes, although a few husky fellows wore uniforms—short tunics and capes and leather breastplates. These guards were throwing dice. The other men talked among themselves, except for a young man in a long Greek-style tunic and draped cloak. Leaning against a pillar, he was absorbed in reading a scroll.

  “What’s all this?” muttered Gundi. She took me by the elbow to hurry me away from the eyes of so many strange men. I supposed they must be the attendants of someone visiting my father. But my father was usually out, in the Forum, at this hour.

  Pausing in the doorway to the garden, I saw Herodias sitting by the fountain. It was a pleasantly warm day, although the afternoons were short this time of year. There was a table beside her with wine and cakes.

  “Salome, there you are,” said Herodias. “Come greet your uncle Antipas.” On a bench facing my mother, his back to me, sat a man in an embroidered robe.

  I hadn’t seen Antipas (actually Herodias’s uncle and my great-uncle) for years. That time, he’d been visiting Rome with one of his half brothers, Philip of Gaulanitis. But I remembered his powerful neck and shoulders. Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and Perea on the eastern side of the Empire. Like my father, Herod Junior, Antipas was one of the many sons of the late King Herod the Great of Judea. It seemed these two half brothers were on speaking terms for the moment—you never could tell with the Herods.

  I came into the garden and stood beside Herodias. Antipas’s iron gray hair was short in the Roman style, and his trimmed beard set off a rather delicate mouth. I said politely, “Welcome to Rome and to our house, Great-Uncle.” I hoped he wouldn’t be staying with us.

  Taking a sip from his goblet, Antipas looked me over. He remarked to my mother, “She’s grown, hasn’t she? Salome doesn’t look much like you, except for her big brown eyes.”

  Uncomfortable, I turned my big brown eyes aside to the mosaic on the fountain wall. It pictured a maenad, an attendant of the god Dionysus, whirling in an ecstatic dance.

  Herodias patted my arm. “Yes, she reminds me of a calf—a dear sweet calf.”

  They went on with their conversation, mainly Herodias listening with rapt attention while Antipas talked. He had a deep, rich voice, and it grew warmer as he described Galilee. Herodias knew Jerusalem in Judea from her girlhood, but she’d hardly ever been to Galilee.

  Antipas had hired a Roman city planner and built himself a beautiful capital city, named Tiberias in honor of the Emperor. This new city, on a slope above a lake (renamed Lake Tiberias in honor of the Emperor), was gifted with all the best features of Rome: a forum, a theater, a stadium. The public baths were especially luxurious, because of the natural hot springs.

  And the palace! Antipas made a sweeping gesture, indicating a building grander than we could imagine. (I noticed how small his hands were in contrast with his thick body.) Whitest marble, the palace was, its roof covered with gold leaf.

  Herodias seemed entranced with all these details. She kept her long-lashed dark eyes fixed on this half brother of her husband. Meanwhile, I watched her. Herodias was a slim, sleek woman, younger-seeming than her thirty-four years. I’d always thought she was beautiful, but I’d never seen a man gaze at her the way Antipas was doing. Antipas and Herodias almost seemed to be alone together. In a charmed circle.

  As Antipas talked on about his building program for Tiberias, I fidgeted with the waist cord of my stola. My mother turned to me as if she’d forgotten I was standing there. “You may go, Salome dear.” Antipas’s eyes rested on me again for a moment.

  His look made my insides tighten, and I forgot how to move. I swear the table with the wine pitcher was not in my way when I came into the garden, but somehow I bumped against it as I turned to leave. Herodias caught the pitcher before it fell off the table and broke, but the red liquid splashed over the tiles.

  A maid rushed to mop up the spilled wine. Herodias joked to Antipas, “Didn’t I say Salome was like a calf?” Somehow I got out of the garden, my face burning.

  I sulked in my room until Antipas left, and my mother found us there. Gundi was sorting out the clothes that were too small for me now while I sat on the bed, twirling a lock of my hair.

  “Uncle Antipas is quite a man, isn’t he?” said Herodias. “I never really noticed that before. He reminds me of a bull.”

  “I thought he looked more like a boar,” I said, “with his thick head and body and small hands and feet.” I was just being difficult; I knew what she meant. It was the way Antipas acted rather than the way he looked. The bull is in charge of the herd, and the other cattle know it. If the lesser cattle challenged him, he’d gore them with his horns.

  “Look, Lady Herodias,” said Gundi, “how your daughter’s grown between her thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays.”

  “Why, Salome—you’re almost as tall as I am.” My mother turned her dimpled smile on me. “How could you grow up without telling me?”

  Then my bad mood melted away, and I told Herodias what the priestess of Diana had said today. She praised me and kissed me, and I felt the enchanted circle snug around the two of us again.

  “Of course you are a gifted dancer,” said Herodias. “But the Temple can’t steal my dearest friend away from me, even to serve the goddess! No—I won’t allow it.” She winked mischievously. “No harm in going through the motions, though, to keep the priestess of Diana happy. It’ll be an adventure for you to stay at the Temple one night.”

  When Herodias left the room, Gundi made a sort of snort, “Hmph.” I ignored her. Gundi had known me ever since I was a baby, but she could never enter the charmed circle. She didn’t understand my mother and me.

 
; Holding another tunic up to my shoulders, Gundi paused. “My, my. You’re getting to look more like sixteen than fourteen. You care about your Gundi, dear Miss Salome, don’t you?”

  This question seemed like a sudden change of subject, and I looked at her in surprise. “Of course I do.”

  “Then give a thought to your old nursemaid when they marry you off. Ask to have me included in your dowry.”

  Marry me off? Her words opened a door that I’d managed to keep shut until this moment. Some of my friends in the class at the Temple were already betrothed. I’d heard their mothers ask my mother what the family’s plans were for me. Although she answered vaguely, she and my father must be thinking about a match.

  Of course I would have to marry and leave Herodias, but that change had always seemed too far in the future to worry about. Now it was in the near future, and I shrank back from it.

  Only two days after his first visit, Uncle Antipas was back at our door. In the weeks to come, Herodias spent more and more time with him and less and less time with me. Each time he arrived, Antipas would ask for his brother, but my father was almost always out—at the baths, in the Forum, at the chariot races.

  It occurred to me that my father didn’t really want to see Antipas any more than Antipas really wanted to see Herod Junior. The two men didn’t have much in common. To start, they’d been born to different mothers. Herod Junior’s mother had been the daughter of the High Priest of Jerusalem, while Antipas’s mother was a Samaritan noblewoman.

  Worse, there was the matter of the inheritance. Before their father, old King Herod of Greater Judea, had died, Herod Junior was second in line to take the throne. Instead, Herod’s last will had divided his kingdom among three other sons: Archelaus, Philip, and Antipas.

  I couldn’t see what Herodias had in common with Antipas, either, but she continued to be entranced with him. These days, even when my mother spent time with me, she spent most of it talking about Antipas and his wonderful city, Tiberias. “Antipas is the only Herod brother who understands how to live in the grand style,” she said.