S
he has learned well your highness.” Herodias examined her daughter with a critical eye, and an envious eye. Barely fifteen and a beauty. Her mother remembered her own beauty. She had once had the same sensual body, firm breasts and round hips. Salome exceeded her. Her cascading black hair emitted a blue sheen in the right light, her white skin deliberately kept from the sun lest it sunburn or worse, turn brown, and those blue eyes that teased and beguiled, not so unknowingly, those who were fortunate enough to attract her glance. Salome was indeed, exquisite, elegant and most of all, useful.
Salome was not Antipas’ daughter. She was born to Herodias’s first husband, Philip, whom she had divorced in order to marry his more powerful brother, Antipas.
“She dances with the grace of a gazelle and the lightness of a butterfly,” continued her instructor. “She will inflame the passions of any man whom the gods allow to see her perform.”
“She should,” stated Herodias flatly. “She’s my daughter. And, she’s been training with you for how long, Laniana? Seven years now”? This was not a compliment. Herodias was not capable of generous gestures. Laniana was a mistress-slave of light color and striking beauty despite her years, who had served the family since she herself was a child. She had once danced for Herod the Great in his palace in Jerusalem. Now responsible for entertainment for the Herodian family, she conducted a school to train dancers, male and female, most of them dark beauties from Africa and Egypt. “Show me,” Herodias demanded. “Let me see for myself how well you have trained my virgin daughter to boil the blood of virile men.”
Herodias, years before, had also taken lessons from Laniana. Perhaps not as beautiful as Salome, she was still to be desired. She also knew her husband. His appetites were insatiable. In the past when she wanted something, anything, from Antipas, eroticism had been the way to get it. But recently, it had become harder to distract him. Recently, she’d seen the way he’d glance at her daughter. And now she wanted something. She wanted that disgusting prophet dead. John the Baptist was not just another prophet. He was not just another peasant teacher, peddling idiotic notions. He had Herod Antipas’s ear! He was influencing the Tetrarch. She could see it in his eyes, his behavior and his decisions. Moreover, the swine had openly declared opposition to her marriage to Herod. And her husband was listening! This would not do. She knew well that if he persuaded Antipas that she would be out. Truly out. Philip wouldn’t have her back, no one would. She would be destitute. This would not do, indeed!
“Dance, Salome my dear. Dance as if your very life depended on it.” Dance because my life depends on it. A cymbal sounded, followed by the deep throb of African drums. The girl’s delicate feet began to move, her hips swaying in soft syncopation with the heavy beat of the drums.
