Play 1: I Know
Seven Years Ago, recited to the accompaniment of drum and flute
HEROD:
Everyone has a mother-in-law, even Herod. All the time I was communicating to Anthony in Rome, she was communicating to Cleopatra in Egypt. Cleopatra summoned us both, all involved parties: me and Alexandra, to Anthony's base camp in Laodicia--Turkic soil where Cleopatra could adjudicate the rival claims to our throne, quietly wielding the authority of Rome, where true authority lay, without the trappings of Egyptian splendor to conceal her lack of power.
One must give the witch credit. She is a loyal partisan who always rewards her friends. Not even Anthony could be a better friend to Cleopatra than Alexandra. Through half a dozen kings and civil wars, Alexandra worked her corrupted wonders so that Egypt would get a steady supply of Judean fruit and grain under nightfall's cover. Every year, the harvest's bottom line was subtracted by 14% because a seventh of our farmgrowth would disappear to Egypt.
I knew I would leave this meeting a king or a corpse. However good a friend to Anthony, Cleopatra needed me dead were Alexandra installed because I could simply halt the harvest shipments whose roads pass through my home province of ldumea. So I would not come out of this meeting alive unless I presented something immediate more valuable to Cleopatra than all of Judea's fruited grain. Not just the usual jewels and raiment, but something that would keep Egypt secure for all time. There was one thing in Israel Cleopatra coveted more than our crops, and it was the palm trees of Jericho.
The second I saw Cleopatra in Laodocia, I presented her with a notarized deed to all Jericho's balsam, in perpetuity. We'd make no claim to all those flowers' essential oils, and employ a continual daily transit of balsam to the Egyptian capital, pre-pressed in vats.
But just in case that plum humiliation wasn't enough, I had one other insurance premium. I put Alexandra's daughter, Mariamne, under the charge of my barbaric uncle Joseph - it's my right to do as her husband. Should word reach Joseph that Herod was executed, I told Joseph to murder Mariamne immediately.
It would be a shame, I've grown to love the sweet girl. Perhaps I can console myself with the thought that she could be mine again in the great sheol to come.
ALEXANDRA:
I am the queen of Judea. Herod may call himself sovereign, he may subordinate Judea within his yoke and burden, but no Phillistine will ever rule the Jewish state in legitimate deed. For Herod's sake, I have buried both father, father-in-law, brother-in-law, husband and son, and vengeance will be mine - vengeance will be all Judea's, for the people know Judea is mine and whom among them wouldn't welcome me freely?
Herod offers Cleopatra all the balsam of Jericho, but he cannot offer legitimacy. It is only a matter of time before the Jewish people rise up against their Palestinian occupiers, and at such a moment the friends of Herod will be Judea's enemies. Like any sovereign, Cleopatra rules at Rome's mercy, and Rome will tire of Egypt the moment after Anthony tires of her. Cleopatra needs firm allies, and her firmest ally is Judea and her one true queen: Alexandra Maccabee.
It is with solemn vengeance and exquisite pleasure that I plan with Cleopatra to poison Herod at the adjudication. Herod has so many enemies that Anthony could never be certain who poisoned his friend, and even if I am the prime benefactress, the poisoner could just as easily be Octavian in Rome who'd wish to restore Judea to the Macabee line who so benefited that dear Uncle Julius.
Of course Herod had his insurance plan, but still, he was Herod: murderer, tyrant, organized criminal. What guarantee can Herod now make that anyone would believe?
Surely Cleopatra did not believe it, but as a formality, she delayed us for an hour to consult her oracle. And as I stood there with Herod, the tyrant showed me what tyranny really is. The godfather of vice left my naive Mariamne under the auspices of that hideous uncle Joseph. Herod's fingers point to the man, and with Joseph's hands the man becomes a cadaver. My sweet little daughter, so much younger than her heinous spouse, will never outlive him. She's a dead woman, walking this palatial monstrosity as prisoner when she should be Judea's next imperatress.
I could do nothing but rescind my claim.
SALOME:
I didn't know what she was doing at Joseph's house, though I knew it could be nothing benevolent. Mariamne is the queen, but we are vipers, and it is not for me, the King's sister, to deny my hungers to fit a wife whose time in this world can only end with Herod ordering her death.
Joseph was at great pains to change. He always liked her, perhaps he loved her, but if he loved her, his strength could have easily taken her, and after years of Herod, what would she have done to fight him off?
Joseph is a murderer, but she will learn that I'm a far greater beast of burden. All my life, people told me I am everything of which Jewish women are accused: spoiled, manipulative, shrewish. Mariamne is a woman of valour: upholding the values of the Matriarchs, I am the cast off woman of evil: Lilith, Hagar, Potiphar's wife, the one in thirty-seven women who gives Jews a bad name.
We women hate Mariamne because she is better at being a woman than us in every conceivable way: more beautiful, kinder, more virtuous, more forgiving. She has been ravished by the worst man in the world every day for ten years yet still she seems virginal. She must suffer like none in the world yet she gives every appearance of joy. She is everything we all should be, and we all hate her for it.
JOSEPH:
The blood on my hands is so legion. The sorrow in my heart can never equal the extremity of my deeds. Wine is for drinking but all the water in my villa exists to wash my hands of blood that never comes out. I am Herod's murderer, his lackey, his enforcer, his executioner, his general, haunted by the eyes of the murdered so Herod may sleep without conscience. I will not recount my foul acts, nor will history, fortunately, for they are so numerous and awful that none may catalogue them. I sleep the sleep of nightmares, only to awaken so I may do dreadful things upon a new day. I will not kill Herod, for there will only be more blood in his wake, and I will not kill myself, for there is none who deserves a release of suffering less than I.
And now that Herod may die he charges me with the potential murder of she I most covet. I have no YHWH, only Mariamne, the poetry my hands lack: refinement where all of us are raw, sculpture where all of us are stone. To befoul her is to befoul holiness itself. I am dust. She is divinity.
And now, she was in my care, sipping tea on my balcony, and I wondered all I could say to her, tonguetied for moments at a time when I finally broke into tears for the first time since as a boy, beaten with the side of Antipater's sword. She released the floodgates of suffering decades like a broken aqueduct, and at the feet of my lady I confessed everything I could remember, not just the instruction to let her not outlive Herod, but of all Herod's foul deeds.
MARIAMNE:
I know.
JOSEPH:
(pause)
"I know."
(pause)
My atrocious hands have put so many horrors to action, yet nothing ever disturbed me like a simple I know.
She has that effect on people. In my lady's presence, all but Herod yearn to be cleaner, better, kinder; to repent their crimes and seek the purity of absolution. It is a power beyond even eros, beyond beauty, beyond love. It is holiness, and it cannot possibly exist too long of this world.
MARIAMNE:
Go into hiding with me.
JOSEPH:
(to Mariamne)
I don't deserve your clemency.
(to audience)
And she placed my hand upon her heart. I closed my eyes for seven seconds and breathed a deep sigh as though my heart's weight were lifted and my many sins forgiven. I have known so many women, and yet the import of this moment was too significant for sex. This moment was grace and absolution.
(to Mariamne)
There are no words for how deeply that wish goes to my heart, but I do not dare cross Herod, even in death.
(to audience)
And I told Mariamne all of my sins. The murders, the rapes, the abuses, the thefts, the enslavements, and oh the many many lies. She listened with tears in her eyes, and she forgave me. She told me it is not too late to change. She promised me that Yahweh forgives me so long as I promise to Yahweh that I would forever be different, that I kill no more, that I bring peace to everywhere I brought war.
It was at this moment that I spotted Alexandra's caravan riding in the distance. I shouted to Mariamne: Your mother is here! Herod is dead. . They know of Herod's order and they will be coming to make sure I carried it out, but run to the Egyptian embassy and you might be free in moments. Your only chance is to run away now. RUN!
(Mariamne runs offstage)
SALOME:
She was supposed to be dead! What plot is this? Herod is dead and he means to keep her alive so he can kill me and take Mariamne as a better wife!
HEROD:
It was Alexandra's sigil but I was riding back to Jerusalem in her caravan to show my complete confidence that my mother-in-law has become my ally.
JOSEPH:
I thought I had much longer formulate an explanation of my 'loss' of Mariamne, and was fully prepared to explain what happened to Alexandra, who usually greets me with spit in my face. She would not believe me, but she'd go to the Egyptian embassy herself and find her daughter and all might be well that ends well.
But out from Alexandra's carpentum, out stepped Alexandra.
(Alexandra walks onto stage)
And then out stepped Herod.
SALOME:
I was the only person ready for this and shouted out "Mariam has run away after being unfaithful to you with my husband!"
HEROD: (slaps Salome)
Silence Mechasheyfeh!
SALOME: (to Herod)
Search our palace! Seeing only Alexandra's sigil we thought you dead! Mariamne is not here, and I heard my husband command her to flee at once.
HEROD:
Joseph I honestly should make you the high priest. You did the greatest of all possible services by taking as your wife the Whore of Babylon.
SALOME:
He commanded her to go to the Egyptian embassy.
HEROD:
Egypt is Rome and Rome is me. So long as I am alive, no one in Judea avoids the justice of Herod.
SALOME:
But they thought you were dead!
HEROD:
There's no way they thought me dead! Joseph, I never thought you'd actually have to kill her. How can anyone possibly doubt my powers of pursuasion on Anthony and Cleopatra whom I've pursuaded so many times in situations precisely like this?
ALEXANDRA:
You literally instructed them that in case of your dea...
HEROD:
...I was never going to die.
SALOME:
How were we supposed to know that?
HEROD:
Sister do you doubt your brother and king is so unloved by his friends that they would stoop to kill them?
(Salome is finally silent)
Fine... Joseph, send one of your valets to the embassy and retrieve Mariamne... IF she's even there...
(to audience)
There could in no way be any chance that Mariamne was there.
(Mariamne returns to the stage)
And yet she was.
(Herod immediately decapitates Joseph)
Mariamne, Alexandra and Salome: AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!
(all three of them are reduced to tears)
HEROD:
"SLAVES!"
(six of Joseph's slaves come onto the stage)
Clean up the blood of your master and dump his body into the Valley of Gahennim.
SOLDIERS!
(six Roman soldiers come onto the stage)
Three of you escort Mariamne back to the Royal Palace, and three of you escort Alexandra to Praetorium Prison where she is to be lodged for the forseeable future!
(to audience)
Much like her daughter and my sister, Alexandra was far too in shock to protest.
(to Salome who quietly weeps through what follows)
Listen whore, I don't know if what you say is true. What I do know is that if Joseph told Mariamne of my plan, if he even told you, if he even told someone who told you, he's capable of everything you say. If I ever find out what you're capable of, you will join your ex-husband in Gahennim more swiftly than I meted out justice to Joseph. Word will go out tomorrow that Joseph was executed for trying to rape Mariamne, and a million people around the world will celebrate his death.
And here's the irony: you will be named 'protectress of Jerusalem' in his place. You, who can't even run a palace, will have to learn to defend Jerusalem. Much good may it do you. May you be as strong and brave as you always claim you are.
(exit Herod. Salome still weeps)
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