by Edgar Saltus
By Mr. Saltus
HISTORIA AMORIS THE POMPS OF SATAN IMPERIAL PURPLE THE ANATOMY OF NEGATION VANITY SQUARE THE PERFUME OF EROS
MARY MAGDALEN
_A Chronicle_
_By_
EDGAR SALTUS
NEW YORKBRENTANO'SMCMXIX
COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY EDGAR SALTUS.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.CHAPTER II.CHAPTER III.CHAPTER IV.CHAPTER V.CHAPTER VI.CHAPTER VII.CHAPTER VIII.CHAPTER IX.CHAPTER X.Transcriber's note
MARY MAGDALEN
CHAPTER I.
I.
"Three to one on Scarlet!"
Throughout the brand-new circus were the eagerness, the gesticulations,shouts, and murmurs of an impatient throng. On a ledge above the entrancea man stood, a strip of silk extended in his finger-tips. Beneath, oneither side, were gates. About him were series of ascending tiers,close-packed, and brilliant with multicolored robes and parasols. The sandof the track was very white: where the sunlight fell it had the glitter ofbroken glass. In the centre was a low wall; at one end were pillars andseven great balls of wood; at the other, seven dolphins, their tails inthe air. The uproar mounted in unequal vibrations, and stirred the pulse.The air was heavy with odors, with the emanations of the crowd, the cloyof myrrh. Through the exits whiffs of garlic filtered from the kitchensbelow, and with them, from the exterior arcades, came the beat oftimbrels, the click of castanets. Overhead was a sky of troubled blue;beyond, a lake.
"They are off!"
The strip of silk had fluttered and fallen, the gates flew open, there wasa rumble of wheels, a whirlwind of sand, a yell that deafened, and fourtornadoes burst upon the track.
They were shell-shaped, and before each six horses tore abreast. Betweenthe horses' ears were swaying feathers; their manes had been dyed clearpink, the forelocks puffed; and as they bounded, the drivers, standingupright, had the skill to guide but not the strength to curb. About theirwaists the reins were tied; at the side a knife hung; from the foreheadthe hair was shaven; and everything they wore, the waistcoat, the shortskirt, the ribbons, was of one color, scarlet, yellow, emerald, or blue:and this color, repeated on the car and on the harness, distinguished themfrom those with whom they raced.
Already the cars had circled the hippodrome four times. There were butthree more rounds, and Scarlet, which in the beginning had trailedapplause behind it as a torch trails smoke, lagged now a little to therear. Green was leading. Its leadership did not seem to please; it wascursed at and abused, threatened with naked fist; yet when for the sixthtime it turned the terminal pillar, a shout that held the thunder of Atlasleaped abroad. Where the yellow car, pursued by the blue, had been, wasnow a mass of sickening agitation--twelve fallen horses kicking each otherinto pulp, the drivers brained already; and down upon that barrier ofblood and death swept the scarlet car. In a second it veered and passed;in that second a flash of steel had out the reins, and, as the car swunground, the driver, released, was tossed to the track. What then befell himno one cared. Stable-men were busy there; the car itself, unguided,continued vertiginously on its course. If it had lagged before, there wasno lagging now. The hoofs that beat upon the ring plunged with it throughthe din down upon Emerald, and beyond it to the goal. And as the lastdolphin vanished and the seventh ball was removed, the palm was granted,and the spectators shouted a salutation to the giver of the games--HerodAntipas, tetrarch of Galilee.
He was superb, this Antipas. His beard was like a lady's fan. On hischeeks was a touch of alkanet; his hair, powdered blue, was encircled by adiadem set with gems. About his shoulders was a mantle that had a broadpurple border; beneath it was a tunic of yellow silk. Between the railingof the tribune in which he sat one foot was visible, shod with badger'sskin, dyed blood-red. He was superb, but his eyelids drooped. He had astraight nose and a retreating forehead, a physiognomy that was at onceweak and vicious. He looked melancholy; it may be that he was bored. Atthe salutation, however, he affected a smile, and motioned that the gamesshould continue. And as the signals, the dolphins and the seven balls,appeared again, his thoughts, forsaking the circus, went back to Rome.
Insecure in the hearts of his people, uncertain even of the continuedfavor of the volatile monster who was lounging then in his Caprianretreat, it was with the idea of pleasing the one, of flattering theother, that he had instituted the games. For here in his brand-newTiberias, a city which he had built in a minute, whose colonnades andporticoes he had bought ready-made in Rome, and had erected by means ofthat magic which only the Romans possessed--in this capital of a parvenuwas a mongrel rabble of Greeks, Cypriotes, Egyptians, Cappadocians,Syrians, and Jews, whose temper was uncertain, and whose rebellion to befeared.
_Annona et spectaculis_ indeed! Antipas knew the dictum well; and with anuprising in the yonderland, and a sedition under his feet, what more couldhe do than quell the first with his mercenaries, and disarm the secondwith his games? Tiberius, whom he emulated, never deigned to appear at thehippodrome; it was a way he had of showing his contempt for a nation.Antipas might have imitated his sovereign in that, only he was not surethat Tiberius would take the compliment as it was meant. He might viewsuch abstention as the airs of a trumpery tetrarch, and depose him thereand then. He was irascible, and when displeased there were dungeons at hiscommand which reopened with difficulty, and where existence was notsecure. Ah, that sausage of blood and mud, how he feared and envied him!An emperor now, a god hereafter, truly the dominion of this world and apart of the next was a matter concerning which fear and envy well mightbe.
And as Antipas' vagabond fancy roamed in and out through the possibilitiesof the Caesar's sway, unconsciously he thought of another monster, the sonof a priest of Ascalon, who had defied the Sanhedrim, won Cleopatra,murdered the woman he loved the most, conquered Judaea and found it toosmall for his magnificence--of that Herod in fact, his own father, who gaveto Jerusalem her masterpiece of marble and gold, and meanwhile, drunk withthe dream of empire, had made himself successor of Solomon, Sultan ofIsrael, King of the Jews, and who, even as he died, had vomited death andcrowns, diadems and crucifixions.
It was through his legacy that Antipas ruled. The kingdom had been slicedinto three parts, of one of which Augustus had made a province; overanother a brother whom he hated ruled; and he had but this third part, thesmallest yet surely the most fair. Its unparalleled garden surrounded him,and its eye, the lake, was just beyond. In the amphitheatre the hillsformed was a city of pink and blue marble, of cupolas, porticoes, volutes,bronze doors, and copper roofs. Along the fringe of the shore wereChoraizin and Bethsaida, purple with pomegranates, Capharnahum, belovedfor its honey, and Magdala, scented with spice. The slopes and intervaleswere very green where they were not yellow, and there were terraces ofgrape, glittering cliffs, and a sky of troubled blue, wadded with littlegold-edged clouds.
Yes, it was paradise, but it was not monarchy. It was to that he aspired.As he mused, a rancid-faced woman decked with paint and ostrich-plumessnarled in his ear:
"What have you heard of Iohanan?"
And as with a gesture he signified that he had heard nothing, she snarledagain.
Antipas turned to her reflectively, but it was of another that hethought--the brown-eyed bride that Arabia had given him, the lithe-limbed
princess of the desert whose heart had beaten on his own, whom he hadloved with all the strength of youth and weakness, and whom he haddeserted while at Rome for his brother's wife, his own niece, Herodias,who snarled at his side.
Behind her were her women, and among them was one who, as the cars sweptby, turned her head with that movement a flower has which a breeze hasstirred. Her eyes were sultry, darkened with stibium; on her cheek was thepink of the sea-shell, and her lips made one vermilion rhyme. The face wasoval and rather small; and though it was beautiful as victory, the wonderof her eyes, which looked the haunts of hope fulfilled, the wonder of hermouth, which seemed to promise more than any mortal mouth could give, wereforgotten in her hair, which was not orange nor flame, but a blending ofboth. And now, as the cars passed, her thin nostrils quivered, her handrose as a bird does and fluttered with delight.
On the adjacent tiers were Greeks, fat-calved Cypriotes, Cappadocians withflowers painted on their skin, red Egyptians, Thracian mercenaries,Galilean fishermen, and a group of Lydians in women's clothes.
On the tier just beyond was a man gazing wistfully at the woman that satbehind Herodias. He was tall and sinewy, handsome with the comeliness ofthe East. His beard was full, unmarred at the corners; his name was Judas.Now and then he moistened his under lip, and a Thracian who sat at hisside heard him murmur "Mary" and some words of Syro-Chaldaic which theThracian did not understand.
To him Mary paid no attention. She had turned from the track. An officerhad entered the tetrarch's tribune and addressed the prince. Antipasstarted; Herodias colored through her paint. The latter evidently waspleased.
"Iohanan!" she exclaimed. "To Machaerus with him! You may believe in fateand mathematics; I believe in the axe."
And questioningly Herodias looked at her husband, who avoided her look,yet signified his assent to the command she had given.
The din continued. From the tier beyond, Judas still gazed into the perilsof Mary's eyes.
"Dear God," he muttered, in answer to an anterior thought, "it would bethe birthday of my life."
