This was her third awakening – a man’s desire for a woman might have the power to make her immortal, but a woman’s love for a man had the power to make her extinct!
For days she did not come out of her bedchamber, taking all her meals in silence, searching in her mind for ways to redress the balance. Finally, the opportunity came, on the night of the Belshazzar-feast, the anniversary of the death of Herod the Great and her stepfather’s ascension to the Tetrarchy.
That night she took long to ready herself: bathing and dressing, combing and primping until every inch of her was as polished smooth and inviting as silver. Herod’s vanity had given her the opportunity she had desired but had not been expecting so soon. And so it was with the cold, cruel heart of a woman scorned that she honed her finest asset, the instrument of pleasurable torture and delicious torment, towards achieving one end and one end alone.
Revenge!
43
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS
In the dungeons of Machareus sat John the Baptist in a pool of filth and excrement and rat dung. His tortured body, chained to the wall of rock, was so contorted that every muscle and sinew screamed with pain and his mind, having held tight to it-self these months, now began a slow unravelling. He knew, therefore, that it was only a matter of time before those crawling things that lived in the corners of his cell would come to feed upon his carcass.
For a time he had kept those dark things at bay, but recently Herod had come to him with news – John’s followers had returned with an answer to the question put to Jesus of Nazareth:
Are you the coming one? Or are we to await another?
According to the Tetrarch of Galilee Jesus of Nazareth had said that he was not a prophet or a king. That among those born of woman there was no greater prophet than John the Baptist and that blessed was he who was not ashamed of Jesus!
These had been painful words to hear! No tortures devised by Herod and his adulterous wife could have made him suffer more. No pincers or knives, no fire could have caused his heart more sorrow, his mind more torment! And now those serpents and dragons, those malformed devils that lay hidden and hungry in the darkness came out, attracted to him by his doubt.
Herod’s stepdaughter, Salome, had appeared in a dream and had stood before him with her emotions seething inside her. He knew the creature was not Salome but Lilith, an ancient feminine devil. Lilith, had come dressed in fineries, with her heart on her sleeve, but he knew that she was a shape-shifter and a temptress and that her desire was to take a man from his destiny and so he had sent her away and she had gone. But soon other devils had come in the guise of companions in the cold. In the black of night they came into his mind. In the black of day they stood before his eyes – those same eyes that had seen the Lamb of God in all His glory! How could these eyes have fallen so low and become so profane?
He could not remember if he had asked that question which had led to his madness –
Are you the coming one, the Olam Habba? Or shall we await another?
His mind, distorted and confused, unfed and tortured, could not recall the precise details, and yet, there it was, there it was the answer, with its dread-cold breath on his cheeks.
A voice came near his ear and hissed:
‘Think of all those years in the wilderness, the fasting and meditation, the self-denials and sufferings…for what? Your scrap of a life has been marked by errors and you have led others to error thereby, for where is the Kingdom you proclaimed? Where is the Messiah you promised?’
John knew that he had seen Him with his very eyes! He had seen the spirit dove!
‘Ah…was this not a fine dream? Was it not a fleeting reflection that, like a delusion in the desert, is uncaused by reality? Is this not a trick of the light, of the mind, of the soul that wallows in its own one-sided raptures? You are less than less, remember that! No more than a speck of a speck and nothing you have done has a meaning!’
What a traitorous thought this was!
And yet…did he not himself say aeons before, that he must decrease while that other increased? That he must be less than less, so as to make way for Christ, who would come after him and who would be more and more? For was He not greater for His outward meekness? Was He not more powerful for His outward powerlessness, more Godly for His outward manliness? What had Christ Jesus said? He searched in his arid mind until he found it:
Blessed is he who is not ashamed of the man Jesus.
He understood it!
For who could be ashamed, who had seen what lay above, and below, and within him? Those who were ashamed that he was not a prophet or a king in outward ways, were only so because they had no faith to see the inner Greatness, the inner Power, the inner Godliness!