The Pharisees had refused to wear these, considering them to be Roman obscenities, and they shuddered when they were sprinkled with galbanum and incense, a mixture which they reserved for the rites of the Temple.
Aulus rubbed it into his armpits; Antipas promised to send him a whole supply of it, along with three basketfuls of the original balsam that had made Cleopatra so long to be the queen of Palestine.
A captain from his garrison at Tiberias, who had arrived only a few moments earlier, came to stand behind Antipas to tell him of certain extraordinary events that had occurred there, but the Tetrarch was too absorbed in attending to the Proconsul and listening to what was being said at the tables in front of him.
They were talking about Jokanaan and others like him; Simon of Gitta who cleansed sins by fire and a certain Jesus…
‘He is the worst of all,’ exclaimed Eleazar. ‘A cheap charlatan!’
Behind the Tetrarch, a man rose to his feet, his face as white as the hem of his mantle. He stepped down from the platform and addressed the Pharisees:
‘That is a lie,’ he said. ‘Jesus performs miracles!’
Antipas said that he would like to see them for himself.
‘You should have brought him with you! Tell us about him!’
The man then explained how he, Jacob, had gone to Capernaum when his daughter had fallen ill and had begged the Master to heal her. ‘Go back to your house,’ the Master had told him. ‘Your daughter is cured!’ And he had found her waiting for him at their door, having risen from her sickbed at the third hour, as indicated by the palace sundial, the very moment at which he had spoken to Jesus.
But the Pharisees were not convinced. Certainly there were practical remedies and there were potent medicinal herbs. Here at Machaerus itself you could sometimes find the baaras plant, whose leaves were a protection against all ills. But to heal someone without even seeing or touching them was impossible, unless of course Jesus employed demons.
The Tetrarch's friends, the chief men of Galilee, all nodded their heads in agreement.
‘Yes,’ they said, ‘he must be using demons.’
Jacob, who was standing between their table and that of the priests, said nothing, looking at them with a mixture of pity and scorn.
They insisted that he tell them more. ‘How do you explain his power?’
He bent his shoulders and speaking quietly and deliberately, as though afraid of himself, he said:
‘Do you not realize that he is the Messiah?’
The priests looked askance at each other; Vitellius asked what this word meant. His interpreter hesitated before replying.
It was a word used to describe a liberator, someone who would restore to them all that was rightfully theirs and give them dominion over all other peoples. Some even argued that there would be two Messiahs. The first of them would be overthrown by Gog and Magog, demons of the North, but the second would slay the Prince of Evil. His coming had been awaited day by day for centuries.
The priests quickly conferred amongst themselves. Eleazar then spoke on their behalf.
In the first place, the Messiah was to be a son of David, not the son of a carpenter. Secondly, the Messiah would uphold the Law, whereas this Nazarene attacked it. Finally, and this was the strongest of their arguments, the Messiah would be preceded by the coming of Elijah.19
‘But Elijah is already with us,’ replied Jacob.
‘Elijah! Elijah!’ chanted the crowd from one end of the hall to the other.
In their mind's eye, everyone pictured an old man with ravens circling above him, an altar set on fire by lightning, idolatrous priests flung into raging streams. The women seated in the galleries thought of the widow of Sarepta.20
Try as he might, Jacob could not convince them that he knew who Elijah was, that he had seen him and that the people had seen him too.
‘Then name him,’ they cried.
‘His name is Jokanaan!’ shouted Jacob at the top of his voice.
Antipas fell back as if he had been struck full in the chest. The Sadducees rushed at Jacob. Eleazar continued to declaim out loud, trying to make himself heard above the noise.
When silence had returned, he wrapped his cloak around him and began to ask questions like a judge.
‘Seeing that the prophet is dead…’
He was interrupted by murmurs of disapproval. People believed that Elijah had merely disappeared.
Eleazar turned angrily upon the crowd and continued with his questions:
‘Do you think that he has risen from the dead?’
‘Why not?’ answered Jacob.
The Sadducees shrugged their shoulders. Jonathas, his tiny eyes wide open, gave a forced laugh like a circus clown. Nothing could be more foolish than to claim that the body possessed eternal life and, for the benefit of the Proconsul, he recited the following verse by a contemporary poet:
Nec crescit, nec post mortem durare videtur.21
But Aulus was leaning over the edge of his couch, his forehead bathed in sweat, his face green and his hands clutching his stomach.
The Sadducees put on a show of great concern for him (the very next day the High Priesthood was restored to them). Antipas pretended to be distraught. Vitellius seemed unmoved. His concern was very real, however, for if he lost his son he would lose his fortune.
Aulus had scarcely finished making himself sick before he wanted to start eating again.
‘Bring me grated marble,’ he cried. ‘Bring me schist from Naxos or water from the sea! Bring me whatever you want! Or perhaps I should take a bath?’
He bit into a large lump of snow and then, being unable to decide whether to eat a Commagene terrine or some ouzels, he opted for pumpkins in honey. Asiaticus gazed at him in wonder, convinced that this propensity for self-indulgence marked him out as a superior being of the highest pedigree.
While the guests were being served with ox-kidneys, dormice, nightingales and minced meat wrapped in vine leaves, the priests debated the problem of resurrection. Ammonius, a pupil of Philo the Platonist, thought they were stupid and said so to some Greeks who were joking about oracles. Marcellus had come over to join Jacob and was telling him of the joys he had experienced as a baptized follower of Mithras. Jacob urged him to follow Jesus. Palm and tamarisk wines, the wines of Safed and Byblos, flowed from jars into bowls, from bowls into cups and from cups into thirsty mouths. Soon everyone was chatting away happily with their neighbours and beginning to relax. Jacim, although he was a Jew, was saying how he still worshipped the planets. A merchant from Aphek was regaling a group of nomads with a detailed account of the marvels of the temple at Hierapolis and they were asking him how much a pilgrimage there would cost. Others were perfectly happy with the religion of their own country. A German who was nearly blind sang a hymn in praise of the promontory in Scandinavia where the gods appear in shining glory, and there were some people from Sichem who would not eat turtle doves, as a mark of respect for the dove Azima.
Several of the guests stood talking to each other in the middle of the hall, their breath mingling with the smoke from the candelabra and hanging in the air like fog. Phanuel entered and walked around the edge of the room. He had just been studying the heavens again but did not want to walk over to the Tetrarch in case he was splashed with oil, which the Essenes regarded as a defilement.
Suddenly a loud knocking was heard on the castle gate.
Word had spread that Jokanaan was being held prisoner there and men with lighted torches were making their way up the path. At the foot of the hill could be seen the dark shapes of many others. From time to time a cry rang out:
‘Jokanaan! Jokanaan!’
‘He is nothing but trouble!’ said Jonathas.
‘If things go on like this,’ added the Pharisees, ‘we shall all be left destitute!’
The accusations came thick and fast.
‘We need protection!’
‘Do away with him!’
‘You have no respect for religion!
’
‘You are as ungodly as all the other Herods!’
‘But not as ungodly as you!’ retorted Antipas. ‘It was my father who rebuilt your temple!’
Then the Pharisees, the sons of the outlawed followers of the two Matathiases, began to accuse the Tetrarch of all his family's crimes.
They had sharp pointed heads, great bristling beards and flabby, evil-looking hands. There were others among them who looked like bulldogs, with short snub noses and big round eyes. A dozen or so of them, some scribes and some of the priests' servants, who lived off the leftovers from burnt sacrifices, rushed up to the foot of the platform and threatened Antipas with their knives. Antipas rebuked them while the Sadducees made a half-hearted attempt to defend him. He caught sight of Mannaeï and with a wave of his hand told him to go away since it was quite clear from the expression on the face of Vitellius that he felt this was none of his business.
The Pharisees who had remained on their couches suddenly began to rant and rave as if they were possessed by demons, smashing their plates on the table in front of them. They had been served with wild-ass stew, a favourite dish of Maecenas but one which they considered to be unclean.
Aulus jokingly reminded them of the ass's head that everyone said they worshipped and made other sarcastic comments about their aversion to pigs. No doubt it was only because some overfed pig had killed their ‘Bacchus' – and since the discovery of a golden vine in the Temple, their fondness for wine was an open secret.
The priests did not understand what he was saying. Phineas, a Galilean by birth, refused to translate, which angered Aulus intensely, all the more so as Asiaticus had run away in terror. The meal was not to his liking, the food was the sort that common people ate and it needed more flavouring! He calmed down a little at the sight of some Syrian sheeps' tails, the greasiest dish that could be imagined.
Vitellius found the Jews repulsive. He suspected that they worshipped Moloch22 as he had come across several altars to this god on his way to Machaerus. He called to mind stories of child sacrifice and a man who had been mysteriously fattened up. Being a Roman, he found their intolerance, their mad iconoclastic frenzy and their mulish obstinacy sickening. He decided it was time to leave. Aulus, however, wanted to stay.
He was lying flat on his back behind a huge pile of food with his robe hanging around his waist, too bloated to eat any more yet unable to tear himself away from the table.
The people grew more and more excited. They began to talk about their hopes of independence, recalling Israel's glorious past. Every conqueror of Israel had been duly punished – Anti-gonus, Crassus, Varus…
‘Shame on you!’ said the Proconsul, for he understood Syriac; his only reason for having an interpreter was that it gave him more time to prepare his answers.
Antipas hurriedly took out the medal of the Emperor, his hand shaking as he looked at it. He showed it to Vitellius, with the face of the Emperor uppermost.
Suddenly the panels in the golden balcony were folded back and Herodias appeared in a blaze of candlelight, surrounded by slaves and festoons of anemones. On her head she wore an Assyrian mitre held in place by a chin strap. Her hair fell in long ringlets on to a scarlet peplum which was split down the length of each sleeve. Standing as she was between two monstrous creatures carved in stone that stood on either side of the doorway like those guarding the treasure of Atreus, she looked like Cybele with her attendant lions. She stood on the balcony directly above Antipas, holding a patera between both hands, and declaimed:
‘Long live Caesar!’
The cry was taken up by Vitellius, Antipas and the priests.
At the same time, from the far end of the hall, came a buzz of surprise and admiration. A young girl had just come in.
A blue-tinted veil covered her head and breasts. Through it could be glimpsed the curve of her eyes, the chalcedony jewels that hung from her ears and the whiteness of her body. A drape of dove-coloured silk fell from her shoulders and was fastened about her thighs with a jewelled girdle. She wore dark-coloured trousers embellished with mandrakes. She moved forward with languid grace, tapping the floor with her tiny slippers of hummingbirds' down.
She went up on to the platform and slipped off her veil. It might have been Herodias, as she used to be in her youth. Then she began to dance.
Her feet moved rhythmically one in front of the other to the sounds of a flute and a pair of hand cymbals. She extended her arms in a circle, as if she were calling to someone who was fleeing her approach. She ran after him, light as a butterfly, like Psyche23 in search of her lover, a soul adrift, as if she were about to take flight.
The sound of the cymbals gave way to the more sombre notes of the flute. Hope had ceded to grief. Her movements now suggested sighs and her whole body took on an attitude of such languor that one could not tell whether she was mourning a departed god or expiring in his embrace. With her eyes half-closed, she swivelled her waist, thrust her belly backwards and forwards in rhythmic waves and made her breasts quiver; her face remained expressionless but her feet never stopped moving.
Vitellius compared her to Mnester, the mime actor. Aulus was being sick again. The Tetrarch was lost in a dream and had stopped thinking about Herodias. He imagined he saw her standing near the Sadducees, but the vision quickly faded from his mind.
Yet what he had seen was no mere figment of the imagination. Herodias had had her daughter Salome brought up far from Machaerus, knowing that one day the Tetrarch would fall in love with her. It was a clever move and she now knew that her plan was working.
The dance continued, now depicting the lover's yearning for satisfaction. She danced like the priestesses of the Indies, like the Nubian girls of the cataracts, like the bacchantes of Lydia. Her body twisted in every direction like a flower buffeted by the storm. The jewels that hung from her ears danced about her face, her silken shift shimmered in the light, and from her arms, her feet and her clothing leapt unseen sparks that enflamed the hearts of the men who watched her. A harp played sweet music and the crowd responded with shouts of acclamation. Without bending her knees, she spread her legs apart and inclined her body so low that her chin touched the floor. Nomads weaned on abstinence, Roman soldiers practised in debauchery, mean-minded publicans and priests embittered by religious wrangling, all looked on, their nostrils dilated, quivering with desire.
Next she danced in a circle around the Tetrarch's table, spinning wildly on her feet like the humming-top of a sorceress. ‘Come to my arms!’ cried Antipas, in a voice choking with passion. She continued to dance before him, while the drums beat furiously and the crowd roared. The Tetrarch's voice rose above the din. ‘Come to my arms! You shall have Capernaum! The plain of Tiberias! All my citadels! Half my kingdom!’
She threw herself on her hands with her heels in the air and in this pose she crossed from one side of the platform to the other like an enormous beetle. Then suddenly she stood absolutely still.
Her neck and her spine formed a perfect right angle. The coloured silks which she wore about her legs fell down over her shoulders like rainbows and encircled her face just a few inches from the ground. Her lips were painted red, her eyebrows black; she had startling dark eyes; tiny beads of sweat clung to her brow like droplets of water on white marble.
She said nothing. She and the Tetrarch stood looking into each other's eyes.
There was a snapping of fingers from the balcony above. She went up to the balcony and then came back to stand in front of Antipas. With a look of childish innocence and a slight lisp in her voice she spoke the following words:
‘I want you to give me on a plate the head of…’ She had forgotten the name. Then, with a smile, she continued: ‘The head of Jokanaan!’
The Tetrarch sank back on his couch, stunned.
He was bound by his word and the people awaited his reply. It occurred to him that if the death which Phanuel had predicted happened to someone else, at least his own death might be averted. If Jokanaan really was E
lias, he would find a way of avoiding it. If he was not, then the murder was of no consequence.
Mannaeï, standing beside him, understood what he was required to do.
Vitellius called him back to tell him the password for the sentries guarding the pit.
Antipas felt relieved. In a moment it would all be over.
But for Mannaeï the task was not as easy as expected.
He reappeared, obviously disturbed.
For forty years he had performed the duties of executioner. It was he who had drowned Aristobulus, strangled Alexander, burnt Matathias alive and beheaded Soaemus, Pappus, Joseph and Antipater. And now he could not bring himself to kill Jokanaan! His teeth were chattering and his whole body shook.
In front of the pit he had seen the Great Angel of the Samaritans, covered with eyes and brandishing a huge sword, red and jagged like a tongue of flame. He had brought two soldiers back with him as witnesses and they would bear him out.
But they said they had seen nothing except a Jewish captain who had rushed at them and who was now no more.
Herodias vented her anger in a stream of coarse and unseemly abuse. She broke her fingernails as she clutched the railing of the balcony; the two carved lions seemed to be snapping at her shoulders and roaring with her.
Antipas did likewise, along with the priests, the soldiers and the Pharisees, all calling for vengeance, while the rest objected noisily at having their pleasure delayed.
Mannaeï went out, hiding his face.
This time the guests found the wait even longer than before and they began to get impatient.