As the guests entered they were sprinkled with perfume. Throughout the length of the hall other tables extended, and at these they found seats and food: Syrian radishes, melons from the oases near the Oxus, white olives from Bethany, honey from Capharnahum, and the little onions of Ascalon. There were candelabra everywhere, liquids cooled with snow, cheeses big as millstones, chunks of fat in wooden bowls, and behind the tables, slaves with copper platters. On the platters were quarters of red beef, breams swimming in grease, and sunbirds with their plumage on. In the semicircular gallery musicians played, three notes, constantly repeated.
The tetrarch’s table was spread with a [pg 46]cloth of byssus striped with Laconian green. On it were jars of murrha filled with balsam, Sidonian goblets of colored glass, jasper amphoræ, and water-melons from Egypt. Before the procurator was a dish of oysters, lampreys, and boned barbels, mixed well together, flavored with cinnamon and assafœtida; mashed grasshoppers baked in saffron; and a roasted boar, the legs curled inward, the eyes half-closed. The emir ate abundantly of heron’s eggs whipped with wine into an amber foam. When his fingers were soiled, he wiped them in the curls of the beautiful boy who sat near by.
The smell of food filled the hall, mounted to the roof. The atmosphere was that of a bath, and the wines were heady. Already discussions had arisen. A mountaineer and a Galilean skiffsman had been dragged away, the one senseless, the other with features indistinguishable and masked in blood. It was a great festival, and the tetrarch was entertaining, as only he could, his friends, [pg 47]his enemies, and whoever chanced that way.
“As a child he rubbed his body with the leaves of the cnyza, which is a preservative of chastity.” It was a little man with restless eyes and a very long white beard detailing the virtues of Iohanan. “But,” he added, “he must have found cold water better.”
His neighbors laughed. One pounded the table.
“Jeshua—” he began, but everyone was talking at once.
“Jeshua—” he continued; yet, as no one would listen, he turned to a passing eunuch and caught him by the arm—“Jeshua does more; he works miracles, and not with the cnyza either.”
The eunuch eluded him and escaped. However, he would not be balked; he stood up and, through the din, he shouted at the little man:
“Baba Barbulah, I tell you he is the Messiah!”
His voice was so loud it dominated the hubbub, and suddenly the hubbub ceased.