American Queen

I saw nothing as I walked through the galleries, absorbed nothing, thinking only of Ash. I didn’t even bother glancing at the map in my hand, and so I had no idea where I was when I found myself in an enclosed courtyard surrounded by statues. I was alone and the sunlight on the stone gave the room a holy glow, like a church. The silence was so profound that I could almost hear the statues themselves, marble so lifelike you watched for it to breathe, collecting dust, their creators long dead.

My mind quieted.

I stopped in front of one statue, arrested by the delicate stonework—a young woman veiled and dressed in robes—a tambourine hanging limply from one hand. There was something about her face—downcast and a little stunned—or maybe it was the instrument dangling listlessly from her fingertips, that made it look like she’d forgotten how to be inside her own body. Like she’d fall apart if she tried to stand or speak.

I could empathize.

“That’s Jephthah’s daughter,” came Ash’s voice from behind me. I’d been so absorbed in the sculpture that I hadn’t heard his footsteps, and I spun around to hide my surprise.

“What?” I asked, hoping I sounded normal and not the strange version of panic-excited I felt like.

“Jephthah,” he said, nodding toward the statue as he took a step toward me. The light glinted off the face of the large watch on his wrist as he put his hands in his pockets. “He was a judge in ancient Israel, a war leader who fought against the Ammonites, and he made a vow to God. If he won his fight against his enemies, he would offer the first thing that came out of his house when he returned home…he’d make it a sacrifice, a burnt offering. I’ll give you one guess what he found coming to meet him.”

“His daughter,” I said, sadness and disgust sticking heavy on my tongue.

“His daughter,” Ash confirmed. “She came out dancing, ready to make music with her instruments. When he saw her, he despaired and tore his clothes, but when he told her what he had vowed, she refused to let him renege on his word to the Lord. She asked for two months in the mountains with her women so that she could ‘bewail her virginity.’”

“So she could bewail her virginity,” I repeated. “I know how that feels.”

His mouth twitched at that, but I couldn’t tell if it was with a smile or a frown. “And then she returned to her father. The Bible only says that he made good on his vow…it doesn’t go into detail—almost as if the priests writing it knew how awful it was even then. And after she was sacrificed, there was a festival of women every year, who gathered together for four days to lament her death.”

“And that’s it?” I asked incredulously. “He was allowed to murder his own daughter and burn her corpse? Just because of some promise he made about a battle she had no part in?”

Ash nodded. “Awful, isn’t it? You can see why she seems so shocked. So sad.”

He stepped closer again, this time standing next to me and looking up into the downturned face of the statue. “Some people say that it was a rash vow, a vow made in haste without much thought, and that may be true. But I think some people haven’t ever been in a war. You don’t know what you’ll promise yourself or God until you’re facing down that moment yourself. Until the lives of countless others rest on your shoulders and yours alone.”

I turned to look at him, meaning to examine his face, to question him, but it took me a second to regain my train of thought because fuck, he was good-looking. Hot wasn’t the right word, neither really was handsome. They didn’t capture the raw masculinity that barely seemed contained in his wide, lean frame. They didn’t capture the potency of his muscular body, the keen flash of his eyes, the unexpectedly generous lines of his mouth. “So are you saying you approve of him sacrificing his daughter?”

“Fuck no,” Ash said, and something about seeing a man so in command of himself use a word like fuck was undeniably erotic. “Even taking into account the fact that human sacrifice was a norm in the Levant, it wasn’t supposed to be a norm for the Israelites, certainly not during the period of the Judges. Rabbis from as far back as a thousand years ago have contended that Jephthah never actually murdered his daughter, that he instead ‘sacrificed’ her to a life of religious servitude. Some people think it never happened at all, but it was a story retrofitted to explain the ritual of women gathering to lament a maiden’s death.”

“What do you think?”

Ash’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly at the statue, as if he could persuade her to spill her secrets. After a beat or two, he shrugged and sighed. “I think what actually happened is less important than the story we want it to be. Is this a morality tale, cautioning against impudent vows? A different morality tale, showing the righteousness of upholding a vow even when it’s hard? Is this a narrative showing where a pagan tradition was shoehorned into the well-ordered history of the Levite authors? The first step to understanding anything—whether it’s the Bible or Fifty Shades of Grey—is acknowledging that we come to it with agendas of our own. We want it to mean something, we are biased whether we know it or not, and usually what we walk away with is what we want to walk away with.”

“What do you want to walk away with from her? What do you want it to mean?”

For the first time, he looked down at the floor, and for a moment, just for a moment, I could see the weight of every death, every battle, every cold night spent in the fens of Eastern Europe pulling on him. And then he turned to me and it all vanished, leaving only a regretful smile. “I guess I want it to mean that the Lord forgives soldiers for unacceptable sacrifices. For decisions made in the heat of the moment, when there was no good choice, there was only what would save the most people, even if it meant leaving someone to burn.” A deep breath. “Metaphorically, I mean.”