“Certainly Antipas isn’t likely to cause us trouble. He’s in enough trouble himself to keep occupied with his own affairs.”
“Yes. Between Sejanus and Aretas he’s likely to be very busy for the next few months. And that gets me back—after you started me on another tack—to why I’m so eager to be in Caesarea. I’ve got to get off a report to Sejanus. I want him to hear from me what happened at Machaerus before someone else gets the chance to tell him. He may think my dallying allowed Antipas to behead the Wilderness fellow, and also he may wonder why I didn’t prevent the trouble between Antipas and Aretas from coming to such an acute crisis. So I want to get my report off as quickly as possible, do you understand?”
“Yes, I do understand. You’re quite right, it’s very important. I wouldn’t be surprised if Antipas got into a war with Aretas because of Herodias. And that would bring the Roman legionaries into the fighting, of course, and surely Pilate would be drawn in, and you.”
“Very probably, yes. Certainly it would involve Pilate sooner or later. And, of course, the Legate Vitellius would be implicated. Sejanus will certainly call on him to defend Galilee should Aretas attack Antipas.”
“Then the Tetrarch’s marrying Herodias may ruin him ... and Pilate, too,” Claudia said thoughtfully. She lay, head back, watching him finish his preparations for bed.
“You sound as though you hope it will.”
She stretched herself seductively under the light covering. “Well?” Her quick smile revealed a suddenly changed mood. “But for tonight at least let’s think no more of Antipas or Pilate. Tomorrow perhaps there’ll be a caravan along, and we’ll be starting for Caesarea.” Gingerly she turned down the covering beside her and held out white, bare arms to him. “Hurry, Longinus,” she said softly. “The night is wasting.”
33
Well ahead of his caravan returning to the palace at Tiberias raced the startling and, to many, the highly provocative report of the Tetrarch’s beheading of John the Baptist in fulfillment of a rash promise made to his wife’s dancing daughter.
The delegation that had gone down to Machaerus to intercede for the prophet’s release had brought back the tragic news; quickly the story had spread to Jerusalem and to Ophel, the teeming Lower City into which countless poor were squalidly compressed, and beyond there on past the villages of Judaea and Samaria, all the way down into Galilee. Along the shores of the little sea and in many a huddle of modest homes, and here and there in the pretentious houses of the rich, Israelites were shaking their heads sadly and muttering imprecations upon the Idumaean ruler of Galilee and Peraea.