Salome

by Beatrice Gormley

  “Woe! Accursed day!” As Antipas cried out, I nearly dropped the heavy platter.

  Seizing his gold-embroidered robe with both hands, Antipas ripped it down the front. Then he walked out of the hall. Philip followed him, then their attendants, and then the rest of the guests. Some of the men cast horrified glances at me; others stared straight ahead.

  I was left standing before Antipas’s couch by myself, holding the platter. I managed not to look directly at it, but I couldn’t help feeling the weight. I gripped the handles so tightly that the edges of the silver grape leaves cut into my hands. I turned my eyes aside to the empty wine goblets on the table. I smelled blood, and I tried not to breathe very much.

  A thought came into my numb mind: Herodias, it was Herodias who had asked for this. I would give it to her. I turned toward my mother.

  In a firm, kind voice, as though I were six years old, she said, “Salome, set that down on the table. Here, I’ll clear a place.” She moved the goblets to one side.

  Carefully, as if I were serving a choice dish to invisible guests, I stooped to set the platter down on Antipas’s table.

  “Good girl.” Herodias put an arm around my shoulders. “Now come with me.” She led me across the hall. In the lamplight her face glowed.

  As we climbed the stairs together, she kissed my hair, whispered in my ear. “You did so well, my dearest dear! What a brave girl.”

  “Oh, Mama!” I gasped.

  Near the top of the stairs I glanced up at the balcony. The audience of servants had melted away, all except Leander and Gundi. Leander stared as if I were the Medusa and he were turned to stone at the sight. Then he wrenched his gaze away, and he, too, disappeared. Gundi, leaning on the balcony railing, did not turn away, but her expression was bleak.

  “Gundi,” said Herodias. “Go to my suite and fetch the pitcher and cup from my bedside table. Bring them to Salome’s room.” She guided me along the loggia.

  In my room we sat on the couch until Gundi brought the pitcher. Herodias gave me sips from her own delicate glass cup. The wine was sweet with honey, covering up a bitter taste. “Now the danger is past,” murmured Herodias. “Now we can breathe freely.”

  “It looked like a mask,” I choked out. “A mask from a tragedy—do you know what I mean?”

  “Of course Antipas was upset,” Herodias went on, “but he’ll come around. He’ll realize that he should have taken care of it himself some time ago. He’ll convince himself that it was all his own idea.”

  Gradually my distress faded, soothed away by the drug in the wine and Herodias’s murmurs. “There, there. The worst is over now.” Her voice stroked me while her hand rubbed the back of my neck.

  When I was calmer, Herodias had Gundi help me out of the dancer’s costume. Leading me to my bed, Herodias tucked a warm robe around me. The last thing I heard before I sank into a stupor was, “Sleep well, my dearest pet.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  MURDERER

  I woke up late, knowing before I was really awake that I wanted to stay asleep. Then I remembered why. My mind shied aside, the way my gaze had shied from the platter last night.

  But sunlight filtered through the lattice doors. Could the worst be over, as Herodias had said? I tried to talk to Gundi as she brought water for me to wash my face and offered bread and figs. I wasn’t hungry, and her grim silence didn’t help my appetite.

  Then Herodias appeared, smiling enough for the three of us. I rushed to her and put my head on her shoulder, wanting her to pet me and comfort me the way she had last night. She held me for a moment, but then she drew back, laughing a little. “Come on, no more sulking, Salome. Look what a luscious morning for us! We’re going to view the progress on the shrine to Diana.”

  As soon as I was dressed, Herodias bustled me into a litter that took us to the city square. The overseer showed us around the half-built shrine. On the porch, pediments were already in place for the columns to hold up the roof. “Do you see the quality of this marble?” Herodias asked me. “I convinced Antipas to spare no expense to this shrine in your honor. And on the roof, one of the statues of Diana’s attendants is to have your face!—What’s this?”

  “This” was a ragged cloak draped over one of the pediments. “A worker must have left it, lady,” said the overseer as he pulled it away. Then he gasped and tried to put it back, but it was too late.

  MURDERER

  said red letters on the marble.

  Pressing my hand to my mouth, I shrank back. But Herodias flew into a rage, screaming and stamping her foot. The overseer bowed to her over and over, stammering promises to find the “prankster” and hand him over to the guards. I crept back into the litter, shuddering as if the day were cold.

  “Salome, love. Salome, my pet.” Slipping in beside me, Herodias patted my cheek. “How you suffer! You’re so sensitive, just like me. But you have to understand, my dearest, that we had no choice.”

  “The head, staring!” I was desperate to make her understand. I held up a hand in front of my face. “It’s as if it’s right there.”

  But Herodias seemed determined not to understand. She reminded me, in a teasing tone, of the time I’d cried because I felt sorry for the roast suckling pig at a holiday dinner. Of course I’d been very little. I’d gotten used to roast pigs, hadn’t I?

  Herodias rattled on about how good life would be for the two of us now that the “baleful influence,” as Magus Shazzar had put it, had been “occulted.” We’d practice for a new performance of Demeter and Persephone and invite all the courtiers’ wives to see it. We’d plan a shopping trip to Antioch, a stylish, lively city, “nicer than Rome.”

  But the head—the eyes, staring at me! I wanted to cry out. Herodias’s cheery talk was an invisible shield, held up between her and my distress.

  Herodias had the litter drop me off at the front steps of the palace, then went on to a social call on a nobleman’s wife. I roamed through the colonnades and gardens, unable to sit still. In the main garden I glimpsed Leander, reading a scroll. I paused in the gateway, wondering whether to speak to him. But before I could step in, Leander glanced up and saw me. Jumping to his feet, he bowed and hurried out the other gate with his scroll half rolled.

  The midday meal came and went, although I didn’t eat it.

  Now it was early afternoon. If this had been an ordinary day (if only I could return to the time of ordinary days!), I would visit Joanna.

  Today I shrank from the thought of facing her, even as I longed to be with her. How could I explain what I’d done? I hadn’t wanted the death of John the Baptizer, but last night, it had seemed necessary. I seemed to have wandered into a Greek tragedy, I thought. King Oedipus hadn’t meant to kill his father and marry his mother, and yet he had committed those horrible acts.

  At last I felt that I must see Joanna—I must make her understand. Pulling a shawl over my head (I felt a need to cover myself, although the day was hot), I hurried through the palace grounds to the steward’s house.

  Joanna’s maid opened the door for me. She looked down at the floor as she said, “My mistress is away.”

  I glanced past Zoe through the atrium to the garden, where Joanna was reclining on her couch. I had feared this, but it was more painful than I expected. “Tell her I beg her to let me see her.” As the maid did not step aside, I raised my voice. “I want to talk to her.” In my own ears, my voice sounded like that of a spoiled child.

  Joanna called to her maid, “Never mind, Zoe. I will speak with her after all.”

  At her tone of voice, my insides went cold. Still, I walked into the garden. Joanna gestured to a bench, but I didn’t sit down. I went straight to her couch and dropped to my knees. “Joanna! Please understand. You have to understand—I only wanted to get away from Tiberias.”

  Joanna looked straight at me without speaking. There were smudges of weariness under her eyes.

  I began to babble about Greek tragedies, and how frightened I was of my stepfather and mother, a
nd what I’d intended when I danced at the banquet. I described how it felt to be a goddess, beyond the human limits of right and wrong—although of course I understood now that I wasn’t really a goddess—

  Still Joanna looked at me, stone-faced.

  “It was the herb Gundi made me breathe,” I pleaded. “I wasn’t thinking straight. And then my mother—my mother made me feel that we were like gladiators, fighting together for our lives.”

  Joanna shook her head in disbelief. “First a goddess, then a gladiator.”

  “Oh, Joanna, my mother is like an evil enchantress! But now my eyes are opened, and I’ll never be taken in by her again. It’s like what you told me about repenting. I didn’t want to look at what my mother was really like, but now I see.”

  I thought that Joanna’s heart would soften if I talked of repenting, but she put her hands over her ears. “It is blasphemy for you to talk of repentance. Never mind Antipas, or Herodias, or Gundi’s herbs. You have murdered God’s messenger. You have taken away the hope of the people. You may be named after the Salome who saved the Jewish leaders, but you’re nothing like her.”

  “I didn’t want to harm the preacher!” I sobbed.

  “Then why did you murder him? Antipas would have done whatever you asked! You could have asked to let John go free.” Joanna closed her eyes, and her brow creased as if in pain. “Leave me.” Then she opened her eyes and said, “No, stay a moment. I’ll tell you how I spent the morning.”

  The deliberate way she spoke made me shiver, but I didn’t move.

  “As soon as I heard the news,” said Joanna, “I sent my litter to the prison and my maid to the market to buy spices and ointments for the burial. The litter bearers delivered the Baptizer’s body to the safe house, then returned to bring me there. I couldn’t help the other disciples anoint his body, but I watched.” She looked me in the face. “Fortunately, they’d found the head on the palace trash heap, so they could wrap the whole body together.”

  I was sitting in Joanna’s garden, as I had many times. But now I seemed to be outside it, as if I was shut out even while I was there. The refreshing scented breeze, the peaceful mood, was not for me.

  Joanna’s merciless voice went on. “No, I didn’t have the strength to help prepare the body, but at least I had money to pay for a tomb. Not in accursed Tiberias, of course. They’ll bury him in Capernaum.”

  I couldn’t speak. Joanna ended with quiet emphasis, “I do not want you here with me.” She closed her eyes again.

  I left the steward’s house, my face burning as if Joanna had slapped me. I walked slowly at first, then faster and faster, as if I could escape Joanna’s ugly picture of me. Maybe I was trying to run back to yesterday afternoon, when Joanna had still been eager to see me. If only I had dropped my reckless, selfish plan and gone to Joanna for help instead!

  By the time I reached the main garden, I was almost running. I was not Joanna’s daughter; I was Herodias’s daughter. My mother had to comfort me now; she had to see how desperate I was. I dashed down the colonnade toward Herodias’s suite.

  I managed to hold myself together until I stood outside the doors to Herodias’s sitting room. Her maid, Iris, opened the doors. “My lady isn’t here.”

  I burst out crying, bending over as if I had cramps. Through my sobs, I heard a bright voice behind me. “What’s all this?”

  It was Herodias. I flung myself at her, clutching her so that she couldn’t back away. I tried to speak, but my voice came out in a wordless wail.

  Herodias gave an exasperated laugh. “What is all this, indeed? And where’s Gundi when we need her?” As I sobbed and hiccuped, she took me by the arms and held me away from her. “Salome. Listen. I want you to go to the spa. Have a massage and a good long soak in the warm bath. Here. Iris will take you.”

  As I stumbled out the door, supported by the maid, Herodias added, “You must pull yourself together. It’s time to put the unpleasantness behind us and move forward.”

  That night I lay awake thinking, I am a fool as well as a murderer. Hadn’t I just told Joanna that Herodias was an evil enchantress? Hadn’t I just declared, “I’ll never be taken in by her again”? And yet, a few minutes later I ran to her for comfort!

  My mother ought to love me as much as the goddess Demeter loved her daughter Persephone. But Herodias did not love me like that. She wasn’t even my friend. She was never going to be my friend.

  Worse, Herodias was making me into someone like herself. The night before, while I was dancing, I’d imagined I was casting a spell. I’d thought I was the goddess Aphrodite—what a twisted joke on me! I was a witless overgrown girl, blundering into murder.

  I was tired, but I couldn’t escape into sleep. I called Gundi to bring a sleeping potion, but she pretended not to hear me. I could hear her muttering on her pallet beside the door, “Ach, woe is me! Unlucky slave of a foolish girl!”

  Finally I sank into a strange half sleep. I seemed to be lying at the bottom of a well—no, a dungeon cell. The air down there was as thick and foul as water in a sewer. Far above was just enough light to outline the grating. By my own doing, I was locked away from the world of fresh air and light and everything clean and good.

  TWENTY-TWO

  A CURSE ON THE HERODS

  On Lake Tiberias one sunny day followed another and another, but I seemed to be in a gray fog. All my senses were dulled. Food tasted like lint, and music sounded like tuneless twanging.

  I couldn’t stand my own company, and the other people at court didn’t seem to want it, either. Antipas avoided me as intently as he’d sought me out before. (Not that I wanted to be with him.) The painting of the nymph chased by a satyr, the one that had sent Herodias into an insane rage, disappeared from the main hall. In its niche appeared a portrait of the Tetrarch and his wife, dressed like Zeus and Hera, king and queen of the gods.

  For all Antipas’s robe-tearing on the night of the banquet, he now officially declared that the Baptizer’s death was a good thing. He had an announcement explaining this sent out to all the towns of his realm. In the marketplace of Tiberias, I saw a copy fastened to the obelisk:

  Let it be known throughout Galilee and Perea: The dangerous rebel leader John, called the Baptizer, has been arrested and executed for the crimes of treason and inciting to treason. Hail to Prince Antipas, who has restored peace and order to the tetrarchy. I recognized the elegant lettering as Leander’s.

  I didn’t dare try to visit Joanna again. I longed to talk to Leander, but he avoided me as carefully as Antipas did. If we happened to cross paths in the library, Leander turned his face aside, bowed, and hurried out of the room.

  A small comfort was that Gundi went back to treating me much as she used to. After her high hopes and dreadful disappointment on the night of the banquet, Gundi must have reminded herself that there were worse things than belonging to a foolish girl. Scrubbing floors in a brothel, for instance, as Herodias had suggested.

  Luckily for Gundi, Herodias was no longer in a mood to punish her and me by sending Gundi to the slave auction. She was the happiest person in the palace these days. At dinner she made Antipas chuckle with remarks that were both witty and flattering to him. He was seen visiting her suite at night again. Antipas no longer attended the Jewish prayer meeting every Sabbath or made any of his court attend.

  Antipas agreed to appoint Herodias’s brother, my uncle Agrippa, to the position of market master in Tiberias. Herodias looked forward eagerly to his arrival from Rome.

  Meanwhile, Herodias hinted that she might persuade Antipas to send me back to the Temple of Diana in Rome instead of making a political marriage for me. Or perhaps I could be allowed to take up residence in Tiberias’s new shrine to Diana. I pretended not to hear her. Herodias knew quite well that a disgraced maiden like myself could not serve the chaste goddess. If Antipas bribed the Temple to take me anyway, it would be only a sham.

  When I thought back to my dream in the Temple of Diana, it seemed that some other girl
—a much younger, more carefree girl—had dreamed it. These days, the only dreams I had were bad ones. I would find myself on the bank of a river, shrouded in chill fog, waiting for a ferry. I was trying to cross so that I could return something belonging to a man on the other side. The basket on my arm was heavy, and I longed to set it down, but I had to find the man first.

  As the days went by, I dragged myself around the palace. I suppose I harbored some unreasonable hope, in spite of everything, that I could make Herodias care about how I was suffering. Then it would dawn on her that she’d done something dreadful, that life could not just go on as before.

  Although Herodias paid no attention to my mood, she did include me in her activities. One morning some days after the banquet, she summoned me to her suite. She was holding auditions to choose the slaves to sing and play in her next dramatic performance.

  While I watched glumly, a slave arrived from the guest suite with a message from Philip: he wished to speak with me in the east portico.

  “Uncle Philip?” I roused myself from the chair where I was slumped. “I thought he’d already left Tiberias.”

  “What an idea!” Herodias’s musical laugh rang out. “He wouldn’t leave for Gaulanitis without saying goodbye to you.” She gave me an arch look. “I think he was shocked—maybe a little intrigued—by your dance the other night.” She dimpled at me, as if my dance were now a matter for teasing. “Maybe he hopes you’ll dance for him.”

  I hadn’t talked to Philip since the night of the banquet, and I shrank from the thought of looking him in the face. But I let Gundi pin up my hair and went with her to the east portico.

  Philip was waiting in a traveling cloak and boots. After greeting me, he made a few remarks about the weather. He asked politely if I was looking forward to seeing Jerusalem at the coming Feast of Booths.