Read Online The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene by Frank G. Slaughter - Free Book Online Page B

silent.
    Mary felt a sudden, almost overpowering urge to take herself away from this place as fast as she could go. Tales of Roman orgies, heard second- or third-hand, were only juicy bits of scandal. But now she was face to face with reality; in a few moments she must go into the next room and dance before shouting, drunken men. Only the thought of the thousand sesterces that had practically been promised her kept her from running away then. She could not deprive Demetrius, she reminded herself, of the things tonight’s purse, and the others that would inevitably follow if she succeeded here, would mean to him. But she could not and would not compete with naked slave girls in sensuality, she decided firmly. Her dance must stand or fall upon sheer beauty.
    Mary went to the door leading to the triclinium and cracked it open cautiously until she could see into the room. Its size startled her; she had never seen a room for dining so large. At one end were the couches upon which the banqueters reclined, arranged around a table like the spokes of half a wheel. The other end of the room was cleared for the entertainment, and here Thetis was dancing to music played by musicians hidden in an alcove.
    The triclinium itself was beautiful, the ceiling inlaid with colored marble, the walls painted with scenes of a bacchanalia at whose frankness Mary blushed and turned her eyes away. Five couches were arranged around the marble table, from which the food had been removed now, leaving only wine goblets. Two boys moved about with wine jugs, filling the goblets as soon as they were empty.
    The procurator’s nephew, Gaius Flaccus, lay on one of the couches. Beside him was a heavy man with a weak, sensuous face whom she judged to be Pontius Pilate. The three other guests were older, and all quite obviously drunker than the host. One, a fat man with little eyes, Mary recognized as Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee.
    Gaius Flaccus, strangely enough, did not seem to be as drunk as the others. He was watching the dancer with bored eyes, occasionally sipping from the goblet in his hand. Once more Mary was struck by his beauty. Reclining there, he might have been Apollo descended from Mount Olympus to revel with the mortals. But there was something repulsive about him, too.
    Thetis was dancing to the throbbing rhythm of the music, and as she spun on the marble floor the diaphanous stuff of her costume stood out from her body like the petals of a flower. Dipping and swaying in voluptuous rhythm, she moved closer to the banqueters, then as they laughed and eagerly clutched at her dress, she leaped gracefully away, teasing them deliberately again and again. Once she came close to Gaius Flaccus, darting away as he reached negligently for the spinning hem of her costume, then moving in closer again with what was, Mary thought, deliberate intention, as if she were flirting with him, daring him to seize the hem of her garment. He grinned impudently at her, but waited until she was almost touching his hands. Then with a quick movement like the striking of an adder, he seized the filmy cloth in his fist and jerked. As Thetis had explained to Mary, the clips came loose, but the force of the jerk tore the fabric too. When Thetis darted away in mock surprise, the bombyx unwound itself from her body. Halfway across the room she posed, fingers over her eyes in pretended embarrassment, her body unclothed except for the girdle about her loins.
    A roar of laughter and a spatter of applause rose from the reclining men. Then as the music changed to a slower measure, Thetis lowered her arms and began to dance once more. Now she scarcely moved her feet. The expressive movements of the dance were limited almost entirely to her torso and to her arms and hands. It was the oriental dance of love, a voluptuous poem of amorous adventure, graphically portrayed by the body and arms, both repulsive and yet fascinatingly beautiful in its picture of animal passion, the age-old