“The child’s amazing, I must agree with the Tetrarch,” Cornelius said. “Do you suppose Herodias trained her?” He leaned forward to glance past Antipas to the intent Tetrarchess who seemed absorbed completely in her daughter’s performance. “What a symphony of motion and movement!”
“And when that movement begins to gyrate in the region of the hips, Centurion, you’ll realize Salome’s no longer a child!”
Nor was the flowing, rhythmical motion long in attaining that region. In synchronized rolling and lifting and falling, the right shoulder joined the twisting, gently writhing arm, and then the rounded stomach undulated, freed now of the teasing veils. As the tempo of the music speeded and the volume swelled and the throb of the drums grew deeper, the hips began their undulating motion. Grinding, thrusting, withdrawing, thrusting, they moved faster and faster in an abandon of voluptuous movement. Then the music slowed again and the frenzied gyrations with it, and quickly the movement ran downward from the stilled hips and disappeared in a restrained tapping of bare toes on the mosaic of the triclinium’s marble floor.
The Tetrarch’s guests, inspired by his shouted acclamations, applauded wildly. And before they had settled to silence again, Salome dextrously transferred to her right hand the thin veils that throughout her dancing, even in the abandon of its most voluptuous last moments, she had held clutched snugly against her breasts, and lifted high her left arm as she extended her right foot. Then she began anew the routine she had just finished; she followed it, motion for motion, until in the midst of the most lascivious portion of the dance she suddenly turned her back to the Tetrarch and his company, and lowering her arm, without missing one wanton movement of her writhing, weaving hips, she thrust her arms, shoulder high, straight out to the sides. In each hand, completely away from her perspiration-dampened, shimmering white body, she clutched several of the bright-hued wisps of silk.
From where the diners sat across the bright circle from her, the girl appeared to be entirely nude, despite the thin bit of flesh-toned silk that bound her loins. Her curling long black hair hanging unrestrained down her back and across her shoulders added to the illusion.
“But, my dear daughter, don’t you know that one never turns his back upon the Tetrarch?” Antipas shouted, as he leaned out across the table, his black eyes bulging as though they might leap from the sockets.
The girl’s only response was to draw in her hands slightly and then thrust them outward again in the pantomime of unveiling herself anew as, in an ecstasy of voluptuous simulations, she rotated her slim hips to the mounting frenzy of the music.
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” Antipas clapped his fat hands together. “Marvelous, my dear child! But must you continue to give your back to the Tetrarch? Will you continue thus to tease us?”
Still Salome made no reply to her stepfather. But slowly, as Antipas clutched the table edge to pull to his feet, the girl, without breaking the rhythm of her seductive undulations, began slowly to turn herself about, her arms still outthrust from her sides. The Tetrarch, seeing it, let go his prop and sank heavily to the couch; once more his screamed approval signaled the guests to new applause, as every eye in eager anticipation followed the gracefully suggestive motions of their royal host’s stepdaughter.
But hardly had the girl done a quarter turn toward the diners when suddenly she drew the gossamer scarves protectively to herself, and, whirling the remainder of the turn to face them, paused in her dancing. Then with head tossed back and laughing, she scampered across the spotlighted circle almost to the Tetrarch’s table. A pace from it she stopped, turned her head, and with a nod signaled the musicians. As they resumed the dancing rhythm, she began again her voluptuous gyrations.