Claudia was close enough now to Salome to see that the girl’s half-closed eyes, peering through slits beneath the darkly shadowed lids, were glancing from the Tetrarch to her mother beside him. Salome, she was suddenly convinced, was performing for Antipas not out of her own volition but through Herodias’ devising. And what, Claudia wondered again, could the crafty Tetrarchess be planning to accomplish through this brazen flaunting of her daughter’s physical charms.
But the Procurator’s wife had only a moment for conjecture; Salome suddenly ceased her rhythmical writhings and stepped forward to lean above the Tetrarch’s still burdened table. Teasingly, and before the musicians were aware of her changed routine, she fumbled with the veils still held pressed against her, and as Antipas, in a new frenzy of excitement, sought to rise from his couch, she thrust her hands apart and then, with a high squeal of laughter, crossed them again in front of her. In the brief moment that her youthful but fully matured bosom had been completely exposed to them, the Tetrarch had lunged out to clutch her, but he had shattered his wine goblet instead and the girl, screaming with laughter, had darted backward into the illuminated circle to evade him.
As a servant came running up to mop the spilled wine and remove the broken glass, Antipas settled back on his couch. “Aha! The clever little vixen was too quick for me,” he said, turning to face his wife. “But I’ll....” He said no more. Herodias, Claudia saw, was unsmiling, grim. But evidently she hadn’t meant for Antipas to see her in such a mood, for quickly she affected a cloaking smile. “By the gods,” she said to her husband, “the child is clever, isn’t she?”
Salome was now in the center of the bright light. The music had died away as the leader awaited his new instructions. The girl stood quietly facing the Tetrarch and his guests, the colored veils clutched in her crossed hands as though she were trying to cover herself in a chilling breeze. Then she turned her head and lifted one veil-holding hand to signal resumption of the dance music; the musicians swung quickly into a fast rhythm that sent Salome dipping and prancing around the lighted circle. As she came within inches of the Tetrarch’s table, Antipas once more lunged toward her, but she had anticipated his attempt to catch her and had darted out of reach. Laughing, she danced to the center of the lighted spot; soon she was whirling around on the balls of her bare feet, and as the tempo of the drums and the strings and the brasses increased and the volume swelled, she circled as she pirouetted. Opposite the Centurion Cornelius she released one of the veils and it sailed across the table to be caught by the diner at his right.
“Another!” shouted Antipas as she whirled past his couch but safely beyond his reach. “Another! Let another one fly!”
She was wheeling before the diners at her mother’s left when she loosed a second veil; a man grabbed for it and thrust it beneath his pillow. When she had spun around to the other side of the circle she held out her arm and a yellow one sailed above the table. A man and a woman grabbed for the floating gossamer; he caught it but laughingly surrendered it to her.
“More! More!” screamed the Tetrarch, and around the square of the tables others joined in chorus. And when the girl let two of the shimmering scarves sail away together, they screamed again. “More! More! Let them fly!”
Salome, her head back, laughing, began now to tease the Tetrarch and his guests. Whirling around the rim of the patch of light, she would sweep one hand with its veils outward with a flourish and then, without releasing them, fold the arm back across the other one, which all the while she had kept pressed close to her pirouetting white body.
“She’s an actress, the little coquette!” Cornelius observed. “She knows how to build up suspense. She understands how to please Antipas, too; she’s got a good sense of the dramatic.”
“Yes, and in another moment or so, unless I’m entirely wrong about her, her dramatics will have Antipas—and maybe you, too—groveling.” But quickly her expression changed to one of perplexity. “Still I wonder, Cornelius, what Herodias is scheming. Surely she’s getting no pleasure out of seeing her daughter make a spectacle of herself in public. There must be something behind it; yet I can’t imagine what. What on earth could she want so badly that she would go to such great...?”