Drusilla turned with a cynical laugh to her sister.
“You get your wish, Sister! You can join their caravan and go to Jerusalem and plead our case with Titus; but this must be kept from Aunt Herodias. If this Apollos be a follower of the raving Hermit, John, whose bloody head she sees every night in her dreams, she’ll be for a potion of poison on him and ditch our plans deeper than the moat beneath the walls. I’ll take care of the older man in the flowing white, ’spite of his beard, if you’ll beguile the young one with the golden locks. Now to the Temple of the Sun to make offerings to Istarte and Venus and Astoreth and all the goddesses of love under the Evening Star! Herodias cannot be moved while this madness is on her; but we can escape. You get your wish, Sister.”
But Bernice had turned white as the cyclamen of snow which brushed the royal purple of her silk vesture.
“Yes,” she repeated. “I get my wish! A curse upon it! Must Herod’s daughters always, always be pawns in Rome’s royal game?”
“What matter, if we are winning pawns?” smiled the other. “Cheer up, Sister! Throw away regret! Cast off fear! We can escape. Herodias has lived her life and won, and lost, and sits like an old fool drooling over her loss; but we are young yet! Let us eat, drink and be merry; for to-morrow we die.”
“You said, yourself, but a moment ago, you thanked Jupiter your slave husband Felix was the only one who had left a Herod daughter safe—”
Drusilla, like her aunt earlier in the afternoon, whirled upon her sister. Laughter had left only craft in the deep black eyes, and on the cruel voluptuous lips.
“Fool,” she said with a stab of scorn. “Do you hesitate because Onesimus, your slave boy, has come back grown to man? Will your lure be weaker, or stronger, now that he is grown with the strong wine of manhood in his veins? If you, a Herod’s daughter, could hesitate now, I’d stab you with my own hand the first time I found you asleep. Go to Jerusalem! Win Titus! He will be Emperor, too, in time. Onesimus can meet you in Rome. Bend fate to your will! Do not be bent and broken by any fate. We go to the Temple gardens to-night.”
The old Idumean went clanking back to the gate under the arch, stiff-legged as legs are wont to walk, that have been in armored greaves for seventy years.
“A curse on this Herod brood,” he went, muttering. “These women have thrown every Herod from his throne. If I had my will, I’d weight their feet with stones and throw them over the precipice in the Dead Sea; and I’d see these Nazarenes feed the lions as they fed the wild beasts in Nero’s days. Disturbers! Disturbers! Trouble makers! Pilate, a suicide stabbed by his own dagger! Procla, his wife, whining about the crucifixion and bad dreams! Herod First a madman. Herod Two an exile with his wife raving here over the Hermit’s bloody head! I’d like to know didn’t she order his head off at one blow in this very Fort! Herod Three falls dead in the theater of Cæsarea and his jade of a girl wife here up to fresh tricks on Titus! Pah! A nice task for an old soldier keeping guard of such harpies! I’d slash their lily-stem throats if I had my way.”