Read Agrippa's Daughter for Free Online Page A

empty audience room, a year after he had burned smiling horror into the fragile, fluttering soul of a fifteen-year-old girl who had never known a man and covered her horror of men with a veneer of little-girl strutting and boasting—a year after all this that same girl had played with his vanity and used his vanity, coldly—as cold as most of her actions were now. Her brother saluted her as they strolled in the gardens after the breakfast. He was absolutely delighted, as he told her, and said to her, “Oh, I don’t hate him the way you do—not at all, but—”
    “Don’t you?” she interrupted. “Suppose you could kill him—”
    “What a thing to suppose!”
    “No, I don’t mean that—not that at all, brother; because we’re both civilized, aren’t we? I mean that somewhere in us, there is a germ of human decency—”
    “Where?” Agrippa grinned.
    “I don’t mean, kill him. But suppose you could interfere and prevent his death—would you?”
    “I don’t know,” her brother said slowly and thoughtfully.
    “There! And you say you don’t hate him?”
    “Not the way you do,” Agrippa protested. “I mean—why should I? It’s the difference between the son and the daughter, and if he’s never shown me any love, he’s never gone out of his way to be cruel to me.”
    “Because he’s indifferent.”
    “Perhaps,” Agrippa shrugged. “Perhaps you’re right. But I love to see you handle him.”
    “Ah. I paid a price to learn that.”
    They paused in their stroll, and Agrippa turned to face his sister. “Why did you come here, Berenice?”
    “To get away from Herod,” she answered directly. “He’s beginning to fear me. I work at that, and it’s beginning to take hold. I have my own way—more and more—”
    “You know, I was going to say it before, Berenice. I mean, out of admiration, really—that in spite of all your gabbling about being a Hasmonean, there’s more of old Great-grandfather Herod in you than you care to acknowledge.”
    “How dare you!” she cried. “How dare you!”
    “I didn’t mean—”
    “Don’t ever say that to me again. Ever!”
    “All right—never again,” Agrippa agreed amiably. “Change the subject. Are you going to that stupid play?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “I want to see these Greeks of yours. I want to see what’s so erotic about them.”
    “No. Truly—why?”
    Berenice shrugged.
    “It will be hot as the very devil. And the play is a bore—three hours of it, written by father’s dear friend, benefactor, and protector, the Emperor Claudius. Or ghost-written by some clever Greek. In any case, I am told that it’s an utter bore. A melodrama would have been bad enough. This is a comedy—out of stale jokes and heavy-handed scholastic wit. God save us. Why don’t we both go swimming?”
    “I told Gabo I would take her,” Berenice sighed.
    “Gabo?”
    “The little animal has never been in a theater. She pestered me until I agreed to take her.”
    “And that’s it?”
    Berenice shrugged.
    “You know,” her brother went on, “someday that hairy little toad will do you in. Those Benjaminites are all murderers—I wouldn’t have one near me. No, sir. Someday, she’ll take a notion to cut your throat.”
    “And a good thing,” Berenice nodded. “I’ve often had the same thought myself—but never enough guts to carry it off.”
    Cypros, Berenice’s mother, lay dying slowly, and through this day and many days afterward she would continue to die. Her skin was almost as white as the counterpane, and her face was full of the empty frustration that appeared to grip every member of the House of Herod when he or she faced death. For she was cousin to Agrippa, her husband, and like him the grandchild of Herod. Once she had been a stately and strong woman—as Berenice could recall—but now, dying, she was weak and petulant, and she pleaded with Berenice, who stood by her bedside,
    “Why doesn’t he come to see me? All day yesterday he