The Eighth Veil by Frederick Ramsay Page B

steward or listen at the wall or both. Their stories would jibe in every detail and reveal nothing useful. The only way he could see to get around that would be to couch his questions in such a way that at least some of them would not be anticipated. Then, he reminded himself, he would search the “mortar between the bricks.”
    The Princess Salome swept in and took her place in the chair provided. Gamaliel had not seen the young woman up close before. His previous sighting of the girl allegedly responsible for the death of the Baptizer had only been from a discreet distance. She was a beauty, no denying that. And seeing her close up he understood how easy it must have been for her stepfather to lust after her. When he looked closer he saw that she had the physical makeup, probably inherited from her mother, to go to plump early. Salome, Princess of Judea, should find a husband and quickly for she was destined to become as broad across the middle and as heavy as a Judean merchant’s wife. The signs were there.
    He cleared his throat, as much to rid it of the overpowering scent that surrounded the princess like an invisible nimbus as from nervousness. “Princess, I will be brief. What can you tell me of the events that took place on the night of the murder? I assume you were there for some of them, is that not so?”
    The woman, eyes downcast in a theatrical rendering of ingenuousness, murmured her answer. He could not make out any but two or three words. “I must apologize, Majesty, I am old before my time, it seems, and my hearing is not what it should be. We are in a private room so no one but I will hear what you have to say.” He knew it was a lie, and she knew it, too, but he preferred to let the court, or whoever might be lurking behind the lattice, believe he’d not uncovered their sham.
    “I am sorry, then, as well, Rabban. I said that I attended the dining and stayed for some of the music. My poor head hurt so that as soon as I thought it proper or sufficient, I left and went to my chambers to lie down. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remember is the klaxon sounding and shouting and many men rushing about.”
    “Did you go to the baths either before or after the dining or the alarm sounding?”
    “Rabban! No of course not. It is not my place to bathe in such a public manner.”
    “I see.” The image of her reported nakedness or nearly so before the entire court crossed his mind and he wondered at this assumed modesty on her part. As to her statement, in truth, he did not see how it could be she knew nothing. Her painfully apparent dissembling annoyed him so that even if he wished to believe her, he could not. He reached for the cloth he’d retrieved from the pool the day before. It had dried and he spread it out for her to inspect. It looked fresh and hardly used. “Do you recognize this bit of cloth?”
    Salome’s eyes dilated briefly. Clearly she did. “No. I don’t think so. What is it?”
    “What is it? I would have thought you could tell me. I believe, but I am not certain—there are some things not permitted for me to know—that it is a cloth used as some sort of private garment, a small one, in fact. It might have been worn by a boy or a young woman. You don’t recognize it now?”
    “Where did you find it?”
    “Ah, that is the thing, you see. It was in the bath. Whoever wore it that night lost it somehow and it sank to the bottom.” He stretched the cloth towards her. “Look again. Perhaps if you see it more closely, some remembrance may occur.”
    She reached out and took it in her right hand and inspected its edge. “It is not one that belongs to anyone I know,” she said and handed it back.
    “And you know this how?”
    “We mark all our everyday things, everyday things you understand, with an initial or a symbol on the edge where the cloth has been hemmed so that after it has been laundered, it will be returned to its proper owner. There is no mark on this