“And I suspect they’re no longer virginal,” she replied. “But, by the gods, she must be sixteen, and”—she leaned nearer and spoke into his ear—“whoever could imagine a Herodian virgin any older!”
Claudia’s caution had not been necessary, for the Tetrarch’s dark eyes, smoldering as though at any moment they might burst into flame, were measuring and exploring and savoring the girl. Claudia, following Cornelius’ eyes, glanced toward the entranced ruler and then, turning back to the centurion, whispered again, “Soon he’ll be drooling. He’s mad, stark, raving mad.”
The music had been soft and slow, but now Salome, with a quick upward flexing of her fingers and a nod to signal the musicians, stepped forward a pace and with shoulders twisting and hips undulating came slithering into the opening between the tables.
From high on a pilaster a shaded lamp cast a circle of bright light in the center of the hollow square. As she tripped on the balls of her bare feet, Salome held the sheer veils lightly to her white body, arms crossed over her breasts, taking care to avoid the full brightness of the illuminated circle. Once she ventured, whirling and twisting, to come as close to the Tetrarch as the position directly in front of Cornelius, but then teasingly she doubled back the other way. When a moment later she reversed her direction and came prancing between the bright circle and the Tetrarch’s couch, Antipas lunged forward to grasp her, but laughingly she slipped from his reach and sped away.
“Magnificent! Wonderful!” he shouted, unabashed, as he sank again to his couch and reached for his goblet. “My child, you restore the sap of youth to my aging limbs!”
At the edge of the circle and straight across it from the Tetrarch, Salome stopped, and as the drums ceased their throbbing and the strings subsided to a whisper, she turned deliberately to face the Tetrarch and his guests.
“Bountiful Ceres!” Claudia kept her voice low. “Is she going to discard those veils?”
But Salome, with her arms still pressed across her chest, continued to clutch the colored gauze protectively before her. The music began to increase in volume, and hardly discernible at first above the harmony of the strings and the flutes, the drums added their insistent throbbing. Now the girl in the square before the diners slowly withdrew her right arm, which had been crossed underneath the left one, and lifted it high; at the same time she pushed forward her left leg, so that the gossamer veils fell to either side to expose it from toes to hip, and leaned back; the leg, torso, and lifted arm to ringed forefinger made one continuous straight line of vibrant, glowing, suddenly stilled flesh, veiled but scantily by the diaphanous colored silks.
Cornelius ventured a glance toward the Tetrarch. Antipas, upright on his couch, was leaning forward, mouth half open, dark eyes staring unblinking at his stepdaughter and grandniece. The centurion gently nudged Claudia. “Any moment now,” he whispered, “he’ll be lunging over the table again.” But his eyes darted quickly to the girl.
Her head was back, in line with the rest of her body, and her sultry eyes looked upward to her extended forefinger. Now it began to move, almost imperceptibly, so that few of the Tetrarch’s guests were aware of the beginning of its motion. But Cornelius, intrigued, saw the finger’s movement widening and speeding; like a serpent it was coiling and uncoiling, twisting sideways, darting, writhing, all in perfect rhythm with the music. As he watched, the motion of the finger appeared to flow like liquid downward to involve the hand and then the forearm. Now along the graceful length of her slender bare arm the smooth, unknotting muscles, rippling and twisting, seemed to have transformed it into an oriental adder swaying and bobbing to the compelling strains of the charmer’s flute.