Salome

by Beatrice Gormley

  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.

  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?