LITMIR.BIZ

      I was so disturbed by my near encounter in Sepphoris that I looked forward to returning to Tiberias. Chuza and I left for the capital several days after my ordeal. One of our first nights, my husband and I attended a birthday party for Herod Antipas. It was an effort to get dressed, knowing what a show of false gaiety the evening would require. I tossed aside six pairs of earrings before settling on gold hoops. They looked as ostentatious as the others, but time demanded that I make a choice.

      “Are you ready?” Chuza called from the atrium. I could picture him, rapping his fingers against the wall. A quick glance in my mirror restored my confidence. I smiled at my rolling brown hair that was wrapped, just so, around a headband as slim as a new moon.

      “Coming,” I answered in a pretended rush.

      He smiled as I walked toward him with a swish of frothy drapery. My dress was copied after the statute of Venus in Antipas’s garden. Chuza’s attentions lifted the clouds that had settled above me.

      We walked the stone pathway to Antipas’s palace. It was a lesson in the labors that support a royal life. Eight solid gold lanterns shaped like papyrus blossoms lit our way. Egyptian imports, I could tell by the blocky shapes. A team of craftsmen had taken at least six weeks to complete the set. Crossing the mosaic carpet of blue-tipped pheasants in the reception area, I guessed the number of workers needed to install the floor; one to engineer it, as many as nine to lay it in, for a period of not less than two months.

      On the way through the house a servant who knew us well allowed us a side trip to the dining room. Antipas had flamboyant tastes and liked his guests to compliment him. I wanted to be prepared.

      The room was transformed under a gauzy tent that fluttered from the ceiling. Trapeze bars hovered above the dining couches, hinting at the night’s entertainment. I felt my skin tingle in revolt. I could already guess what had been planned.

      Chuza led me away, tripping over a dancing monkey as we left the room. The chattering creature screamed at us and chased us down the hall past murals of Bacchus and his tipsy friends, their faces buried in their goblets. My husband kept a protective arm around me, sensing, as I had, what the tent and decor implied. Rome’s most famous transvestite, Flavia, was to be the special guest of the evening. My husband did not approve of parties meant for the officers’ club. Not when women were present.

      In the garden, Antipas stood beside his wife, Herodias, who leaned possessively against him. My eyes went directly to the imperial ring he wore, the one he used for sealing Roman documents. It seemed an intentional show of his authority. His thinning brown hair was crowned with a laurel wreath. I’d never seen him act a closer imitation of a Caesar. Ambition rose off him like an unattractive odor. He was fiftysix years old that night and noticeably eager to secure a higher position in Caesar’s inner circle.

      “Joanna, you’re here at last,” he said, a bit too familiar. Chuza ignored it. He was accustomed to Antipas’s awkward attempts as a ladies’ man.

      “My Lord Tetrarch.” I gave him an inflated title.

      He embraced Chuza like a favorite brother. Antipas had so few real friends that he made more of trusted colleagues than was appropriate.

      I listened quietly, until he chose to speak to me. “Tell me the news of my kingdom,” he said, leaning toward me. “I know everything about how to rule Galilee but never enough about the people I govern.” He moved slightly away from his wife to suggest that I was at liberty to be frank. “She’s not interested in such matters,” he said, casting a glance toward her.

      Their marriage was a complicated arrangement. Her grandfather was Antipas’s father, Herod the Great. She abandoned her first husband for Antipas and he put aside a perfectly acceptable wife. It was a messy display, ripe for gossip. Herodias wanted a more powerful husband than the one she had. Antipas simply wanted everything that he did not already own. His incestuous marriage to Herodias infuriated the Hebrews in his court, although he was one of them in name at least. The fact is, his family converted. He would never be fully a Hebrew, as his mother was a Samaritan woman. He had ignored the marriage laws just as he did all the others that got in his way.

      I took a small silver rabbit from my pocket, a lucky charm from my afternoon shopping, and showed it to Antipas. He and I had one thing in common. Magic excited us. It was a faithless woman’s answer to divine intervention.

      “There is a new man in Galilee,” I said. “Everyone is talking about him.”

      “His name, tell me his name.”

      “Jesus, from Nazareth.”

      “Who?” His voice cracked. Competition made him wild.

      “He is the center of attention.”

      “What does he do?” Antipas rubbed the lucky rabbit in the palm of his hand.

      “He heals the sick.” I told the story of Zorah, the cripple.

      “And what about you, Joanna?” Antipas turned on me with syrupy concern. “Did the healer from Nazareth cure you?” The words pricked. I forced myself to clear my throat. It was enough to send him away.

      After dinner, the lamps were turned down. I could hear the acrobats enter. When they were in their places the torches were lit. Clowns as tall as camels hobbled around the room on wooden stilts. An Ethiopian in a red turban tossed streamers from the back of an elephant. I caught one and tied it around my wrist. From across the room, where the men were seated, I noticed Chuza watching me from the corners of his eyes. I could read his testy expression. He had not approved of my telling Antipas about my day with the wonder-worker, which could only upset the jealous tetrarch.

      By the time Flavia rolled onto the trapeze bar, some of the men in the room had been drinking for three hours. They started howling as the performer’s golden hair swung over their tables, flitting across their faces. Flavia’s painted lips and the black kohl outlining his eyes made him a freakish version of a woman.

      He was supple as kelp, twisting into knots, rolling into a ball. Not once did he miss a coin purse tossed his way. It became a game, and like children we got overly excited as we played. A fight broke out. Wine from a flying cup sprayed the side of my face. Chuza stood up abruptly, came and took my arm. “We’re leaving,” he said. My husband hardly spoke to Antipas on our way out. The tetrarch was pressed against his wife’s thick neck and waved us off.

      At

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