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waded toward the riverbank, a man splashed into the river, holding up the hem of his fine coat. “Rabbi!”
    The people near him drew back, and one woman spat at him. “Filthy tax collector!”
    The tax collector ignored everyone but John. “Rabbi—how can I repent?” His plump chin quivered.
    Elias looked at John as if expecting a signal to push the tax collector away, but John waited for the man to come closer. “Lord,” he murmured, “you want to save all your people.” He was deeply moved, and his eyes stung. How hungry even the tax collectors were for the word of the Lord! “Don’t collect any more than the legal rate,” he told the man. “If you’ve cheated anyone, pay them back.”
    The woman who’d spat at the tax collector gave a short, sour laugh. But the man, keeping his eyes on John, nodded humbly. “When you’ve lived in repentance for a month,” John went on, “you’ll be clean inside. Then come back here to be washed clean outside.”
    John started to wade forward again, but another man called out in a Syrian accent, “Rabbi, wait!” The wealthy woman’s litter swung around to meet him. The nearest of the four litter bearers went on, “Rabbi, can I ask you a question? My lady wants to know what she should do to repent.”
    Elias stepped in front of John, indignant that his tired master was being bothered. “Carry that litter away from here!” he told the servant. “The Rabbi has taken a vow not to speak to women. Besides—aren’t you from the accursed household of Herod Antipas?”
    John held up his hand. “Tell your mistress to share her riches with the poor,” he said to the litter bearer. “This will be pleasing to the Lord.” Elias was right: the Tetrarch’s insignia adorned the roof of the litter. But that was all the more miraculous, that the word of the Lord could reach into Antipas’s own household.

THREE
    A SURPRISE PERFORMANCE

    In Rome the winter wore on, cold and rainy. “How much longer will Uncle Antipas stay here?” I asked Herodias. “Isn’t it hard to rule Galilee and Perea from so far away?”
    “He can’t go back there now because there’s no sailing on the Mediterranean until spring, silly,” said my mother. “And Antipas has a trusted steward in Galilee to mind his affairs. Steward Chuza sends him reports. Very detailed reports, in fact.” She rolled her eyes. “Chuza tells Antipas
exactly
how many stonemasons he hired to enlarge his prisons and
exactly
how he calculated the extra amount to tax the peasants in order to pay the stonemasons. Oh, such details!”
    Putting on an earnest expression, Herodias pretended to read from a tablet. “To my prince Herod Antipas, greetings. Some insignificant rabble-rousers from the hill country have been arrested and brought in for questioning. The
tediously
complete record of the interrogation is enclosed. Oh, and furthermore, my prince, the donkeys’ groom’s boy stubbed his toe yesterday….”
    January and February passed. At the Temple of Diana, the priestess paid special attention to me. The other girls found out that I was to ask the goddess about a calling, and they gave me respectful looks. (I didn’t explain that my mother was only pretending to let me try for a calling.) But Herodias seemed to notice me less and less—when she was home at all, for she was often gone with Antipas.
    One wet morning in March, Herodias and Antipas were in the reception room playing a board game. They might be there for hours, I knew. Gundi was in the kitchen, gossiping with Herodias’s maid, Iris.
    I wandered into the atrium, where rainwater trickled from the open roof into the pool. I was not supposed to be in the public parts of the house without Gundi, but no one was paying any attention. Besides, I thought, Herodias herself wasn’t behaving in such a seemly way for a married woman. Why should I worry about being proper?
    Antipas’s attendants chatted or tossed dice, as usual. All the attendants, that is,