The Book of Longings(30)

Mother appeared at my elbow. “You will wait for the ceremony in the royal apartments. You must not be seen by Nathaniel until it’s time. It will not be long.” She made a motion with her hand and a silver-haired woman led me along a portico, past the wing of Roman baths, then up a second flight of stairs into a bedchamber without fresco or mosaic, but paneled with the golden wood of the terebinth tree.

“So, you are the lamb to be sacrificed,” a voice said in Greek.

Turning, I saw a dark-skinned, wraithlike woman standing beside a grand bed that was swathed in jewel-colored silks. Her black hair cascaded down her back like a spill of ink. It had to be Phasaelis, Antipas’s wife. All of Galilee and Peraea knew that her father, Aretas, King of the Nabataeans, had conspired with Herod Antipas’s father to arrange their marriage as a way to stop skirmishes along their common border. It was said that upon learning her fate, Phasaelis, only thirteen at the time, cut her arms and wrists and cried for three days and three nights.

The shock of her presence in the room left me momentarily mute. She was dazzling standing there in her scarlet dress and golden mantle, but pitiable, too, her life turned into a ploy by two men.

“Are you capable of speaking Greek or are you simply too docile to answer me?” Her tone was scoffing, as if I were an object of amusement to her.

Phasaelis’s rebuke was a slap, and it was like waking. A feeling of loss and wrath rose in me. I wanted to shout at her—I am betrothed to someone I despise and who despises me in return. I have little hope I will see the man I love ever again. I don’t know what has become of my brother. Words are life to me, yet my writings are buried in the ground. My heart is sickled like wheat tares and you speak to me as if I am weak and imbecilic.

I did not care if she possessed the stature of a queen. I thundered at her, “I AM NO LAMB.”

A flash in her eyes. “No, I see you’re not.”

“You heap condescension on me, but we are no different, you and I.”

A sneer slid into her voice. “Inform me. Please. How are we no different?”

“You were forced to marry as I am now forced. Were not each of us used by our fathers for their own selfish purposes? We are both wares to be traded.”

She walked toward me and her scent floated out—nard and cinnamon. Her hair swayed. Her hips oscillated. I thought of the lurid dance my mother had seen her perform. How I would have loved to see it. I feared she was coming to slap me for my insolence, but I saw her eyes had softened. She said, “When I last saw my father seventeen years ago, he wept bitterly and begged forgiveness for sending me to this wasteland. He told me it was for a noble reason, but I spit on the floor before him. I cannot forget he loved his kingdom more than me. He married me to a jackal.”

I saw the difference then—her father had traded her for peace. My father had traded me for greed.

She smiled, and I saw this time there was no guile in it. “We shall be friends,” she said, taking my hand. “Not because of our fathers or our shared misfortune. We shall be friends because you are no lamb, and I, too, am no lamb.” Phasaelis leaned her head to my ear. “When your betrothed repeats the blessings, do not look at him. Do not look at your father. Look to yourself.”



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? ? ?

WE STOOD in the torch-dark light atop the watery mosaic—my parents, Yaltha, Herod Antipas, Phasaelis, Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, Nathaniel and his sister, Zopher, and at least two dozen other extravagantly coiffed people I could not name and did not care to. I planted my toes upon the scaly back of a fierce-eyed sea dragon.

I’d never seen Antipas up close. He seemed the age of my father, but heavier, with a belly that protruded. His hair was oiled and fell about his ears from beneath a strange crown that resembled an upside-down, gold-plated stew pot. He wore bracelets and silver circlets in his ears, and his eyes were too small for his face, as small as date pits. I thought him repulsive.

The old rabbi recited the Torah—“It is not good for man to be alone”—and then spoke the rabbinic teachings.

“A man without a wife is not a man.

“A man without a wife establishes no household.

“A man without a wife has no progeny.

“A man without a wife, household, and children does not live as God ordained.

“Man’s duty is to marry.”

His voice was perfunctory and tired. I did not look at him.

My father read the betrothal contract, which was followed by a token payment of the bride price, passed ceremoniously from Nathaniel’s hand to his. I did not look at them.

“Do you attest to your daughter’s virginity?” the rabbi asked.

My head jerked up. Would they now make the pink-brown folds between my legs their business? Nathaniel leered, a reminder of the miseries that lay in store for me in the bedchamber. Father anointed the rabbi with oil as a sign of my purity. All of this I watched. I wanted them to witness the contempt shining on my face.

I cannot record how Nathaniel looked as he read the groom’s blessings, for I refused to offer him even a glance. I stared at the mosaic, imagining myself far away beneath the sea.

I am no lamb. I am no lamb. . . .



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? ? ?

IN THE BANQUETING HALL Herod Antipas reclined on a luxurious couch, propped on his left elbow. He sat behind the center table of the triclinium while everyone waited to see who would be seated to his right and left, and who would be escorted to the sad little couches at the far ends of the tables. The only true and precise measure of the tetrarch’s favor was how near to him one was seated. We women—Phasaelis among us—were gathered at a separate table altogether, farther away than the hapless and wretched persons who would soon find themselves consigned to the distant seats. Here we would be served the less fine dishes and the poorer wines, just as they would.