His voice was so loud it dominated the hubbub, and suddenly the hubbub ceased.
From the dais Pontius Pilate listened indifferently. Antipas held his hands behind his ears that he might hear the better. The emir paid no attention at all. On his head was a conical turban; about it were loops of sapphire and coils of pearl. He wore a vest with scant sleeves that reached to the knuckles, and trousers that overhung the instep and fell in wide wrinkles on his feet; both were of leopard-skin. Over the vest was a sleeveless tunic, clasped at the shoulders and girt at the waist. His hair was long, plentifully oiled; his beard was bushy, blue-black, and specked with silver.
Mary had approached. From the lessening waist to the slender feet her dress opened at either side. Beneath was a chemise of transparent Bactrianian tissue. From girdle to armpits were little clasps; on her ankles, bands; and above the elbow, on her bare white arm, two circlets of emeralds from the mines of Djebel Zabur.
The emir spoke to her. She listened with a glimpse of the most beautiful teeth in the world. He put out a hand tentatively and touched her: the tissue of her garment crackled and emitted sparks. He raised a goblet to her. The wine it held was yellower than the marigold. She brushed it with her lips; he drank it off, then, refreshed, he looked her up and down.
In one hand she held a cup of horn, narrower at the top than at the end; in it were dice made of the knee-joints of gazelles, and these she rattled in his beard.
“That beautiful Sultan, will he play?”
With an ochre-tipped finger she pointed at the turban on his head. The eyes of the emir vacillated. He undid a string of gems and placed them on the table’s edge. Mary unclasped a coil of emeralds and rattled the dice again. She held the cup high up, then spilled the contents out.
“Ashtaroth!” the emir cried. He had won.
Mary leaned forward, fawned upon his breast, and gazed into his face. Her breath had the fragrance of his own oasis, her lips were moist as the pomegranate’s pulp, her teeth as keen as his own desire.
“No, beautiful Sultan, it is I.” With the back of her hand she disturbed the dice. “I am Ashtaroth, am I not?”
Questioningly the emir explored the unfathomable eyes that gazed into his.
On their surface floated an acquiescence to the tacit offer of his own. Then he nodded, and Mary turned and gathered the jewels from the cloth of byssus where they lay.
“I tell you he is the Messiah!” It was the angry disputant shouting at the little man.
“Who is? What are you talking about?”
Though the hubbub had ceased, throughout the hall were the mutterings of dogs disturbed.
“Jeshua,” the disputant answered; “Jeshua the Nazarene.”
A Pharisee, very vexed, his bonnet tottering, gnashed back: “The Messiah will uphold the law; this Nazarene attacks it.”
A Scribe interrupted: “Many things are to distinguish his advent. The light of the sun will be increased a hundredfold, the orchards will bear fruit a thousand times more abundantly. Death will be forgotten, joy will be universal, Elijah will return.”
“But he has!”
Antipas started. The Scribe trembled with rage. But the throng had caught the name of Elijah, and knew to whom the disputant referred—a man in tattered furs whom a few hours before they had seen dragged away by a negro naked to the waist, and someone shouted:
“Iohanan is Elijah.”
Baba Barbulah stood up and turned to whence the voice had come:
“In the footprints of the Anointed impudence shall increase, and the face of the generation shall be as the face of a dog. It may be,” he added, significantly—“it may be that you speak the truth.”
The sarcasm was lost. The musicians in the gallery, who had been playing on flute and timbrel, began now on the psalteron and the native sambuca. Behind was a row of lute-players; but most in view was a trignon, an immense Egyptian harp, at which with nimble fingers a fair girl plucked.
In the shadow Herodias leaned. At a signal from her the musicians attacked the prelude of a Syrian dance, and in the midst of the assemblage a figure veiled from head to foot suddenly appeared. For a moment it stood very still; then the veil fell of itself, and from the garrison a shout went up:
“Salomè! Salomè!”
Her hair, after an archaic Chanaanite fashion, was arranged in the form of a tower. Her high bosom was wound about with protecting bands. Her waist was bare. She wore long pink drawers of silk, and for girdle she had the blue buds of the lotus, which are symbols of virginity. She was young and exquisitely formed. In her face you read strange records, and on her lips were promises as rare. Her eyes were tortoiseshell, her hair was black as guilt.
The prelude had ceased, the movement quickened. With a gesture of abandonment the girl threw her head back, and, her arms extended, she fluttered like a butterfly on a rose. She ran forward. The sambuca rang quicker, the harp quicker yet. She threw herself to one side, then to the other, her hips swaying as she moved. The buds at her girdle fell one by one; she was dancing on flowers, her hips still swaying, her waist advancing and retreating to the shiver of the harp. She was elusive as dream, subtle as love; she intoxicated and entranced; and finally, as she threw herself on her hands, her feet, first in the air and then slowly descending, touched the ground, while her body straightened like a reed, there was a long growl of unsatisfied content.
She was kneeling now before the dais. Pilate compared her to Bathylle, a mime whom he had applauded at Rome. The tetrarch was purple; he gnawed his underlip. For the moment he forgot everything he should have remembered—the presence of his guests, the stains
