But Chuza, though he greeted them warmly and with profuse smiles, was obviously troubled, and Antipas quickly drew the man aside to question him. “Sire, you will not find the Tetrarchess here to welcome you,” the steward explained, his tone apologetic and his expression patently pained. “She has departed from Tiberias. I suggested that she might wish to delay her leaving, Sire, until your return, but she insisted on going at once.”

She had received a message, she told Chuza, that her father, King Aretas of Arabia Petraea, was desperately ill and that he had summoned her to his bedside. Although the steward had seen no messengers, he had not been disposed to question the Tetrarchess. She had prepared for the journey very quickly. The Centurion Cornelius had provided her with a detachment of soldiers to escort her to her father’s capital in the country southeast of the Dead Sea, beyond the Fortress Machaerus; she had taken with her, in addition, her best raiment and many of her choicest personal possessions.

“Then you think that she is not planning to come back to me? Is that what you’re suggesting, Chuza?”

“Sire, I am suggesting nothing. I am relating only what I saw and heard. I have no opinion as to what plans the Tetrarchess....”

“The Princess Herodias is Tetrarchess now, Chuza,” Antipas interrupted.

“Indeed, Sire”—Chuza bowed to the Tetrarch and then to Herodias—“the former Tetrarchess....”

“But when did she depart, Chuza?” Antipas interrupted again.

“A week ago, Sire. The escorting soldiers have not yet returned.”

“Had she heard that I was returning from Rome with a new Tetrarchess?”

“She said nothing to me about it, Sire, but I am confident that she knew of the Tetrarch’s marriage. Passengers coming ashore at PtolemaÏs from the vessel on which you and the Tetrarchess sailed out from Rome brought to Tiberias word of the new Tetrarchess. I myself heard it, and surely the report must have come also to her ears here at the palace.”

“Very well, Chuza; think no more of it.” By now they had entered the lofty, marble-columned great atrium. A faint smile crossed his heavy face. “Do you know, I believe she must have suspected all along?” He turned to Herodias. “By all the gods, my dear, she has made our course all the easier.”

Longinus declined the invitation of the Tetrarch and Herodias to take a chamber in the palace during his stay at Tiberias. He had promised Cornelius that he would be his guest when next he came to Galilee. Tempting though the Tetrarch’s invitation had been, Longinus reasoned that it might be wise to assume that the watched might also be the watching.

Besides, Claudia had been assigned an apartment which, the centurion had observed, looked out upon a broad terrace facing the Sea of Galilee. A door from Claudia’s bedroom conveniently opened onto the terrace. Longinus smiled as he reviewed the details of the arrangement.

The sentry at the palace gate, he also knew, would be a Roman soldier.