The Step-Daughter

Content warning: Blood, a severed body part

The stone walls of the banquet hall echo laughter and loud, drunken voices down the passage to where I stand waiting. My mother’s hands are warm against my bare shoulders. A server hurries out carrying an empty platter, and the breeze from his passing moves my clothing and cools my face. 

The next server stops at my mother’s word, and she enquires how drunk Herod is. 

The server’s face is stiff as he answers. He would not answer this question if any other person asked it. But he will answer the king’s new wife. 

“Now,” she murmurs to me, fingers squeezing my shoulders like the talons of a bird of prey. When I am released I glide forward amidst the stillness of settled stone and trapped air. 

The banquet hall is full of men, women, voices, candle and torch flames, stuffy air, bright colors on tables and bodies. Like a moth drawn to light, I float into the room, my costume fluttering like delicate wings. 

All eyes turn to me, but only one person’s gaze matters. 

Herod sits on a dais, raised above everyone else. He looks down on me, and I begin. 

I have practiced every movement of my dance innumerable times before tonight. I focus on my own body instead of the many surrounding me. I have a task to perform, given to me by the person I love most in the world: My mother. 

Everything blurs around me. Light, dark, color, faces, teeth, eyes, and smells of food, wine, incense, sweat, smoke. Eyes on the way I am dressed, the way I am moving. I cannot stop. WIll not think. Must keep going. 

I finish. Hold myself still and poised. No panting. No gasping. Deep, calm breaths. I am not tired. I am strong. I am controlled. Everyone is looking at me. 

Cheering erupts. Fists pound on the tables. Goblets flash as they are raised in a toast. To me, to my performance, to what I have made them feel. 

So many eyes on me. Eyes of men who have strange expressions on their faces. Expressions that mean things I am only beginning to understand. Even Herod’s face wears it as I look into his eyes. 

He beckons. 

I do not want to go near him. 

I approach. 

Before his entire court and the high-ranking soldiers who are here for the special occasion of his birthday, he swears he will give me whatever I want, even half of his kingdom. I can smell the wine on his breath as he speaks. 

I ask to withdraw so I may think of what I will choose. Permission is granted, and I escape to where my mother waits for me in the corridor. 

I want her praise, but she does not reach out to me with her hands, her face, or her words. She has her orders to repeat to me. Then she sends me to wreak her vengeance, just as she has been planning. 

Before the whole court, I declare, “I want you to give me at once on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” 

The words are out. The deed is done. Herod swore before all of these people that he would give me whatever I wanted. This is nowhere near the limit he placed on what he would grant me. The end of a man’s life, and his severed head delivered to my possession. His death will not be as painful as it could be. Beheading is kinder than the abuse he might receive from the guards down in the dungeons. 

Herod looks confused for a moment. Then his eyes widen slightly in understanding. 

He cannot, will not, say no to me. No one here will plead for the Baptist’s life. They will heckle and argue if he tries to spare the man they know as a lunatic. After all, the Baptizer was bold enough to come and berate my mother’s new husband to his face for taking her. That was the decision of an insane man. 

Herod orders my desire to be carried out. My mother’s desire. Surely he must at least suspect. Surely. Surely he does not think a mere girl would request a man’s death. Surely this is not my fault. 

I cannot run away again. I must wait in the banquet hall as the attendees begin to eat and converse again, all the while snatching glances at me. Herod calls me to sit with him and eat a little, so I do, forcing myself to take and consume the tidbits he hands me. 

I try to imagine and measure out the time it will take for this to happen, for them to bring back what I have requested. The footsteps of every server entering the room bring me a moment of relief, until I see they carry only food or drinks. 

Finally, finally, finally a man who enters carries his burden in an unusual way, trying to hold it far from him. He brings it to me, and I must rise and take it in my hands. 

Red drips onto my hands and the floor, covering the dish so I cannot see what fine metal it is made of. The metallic tang of so much blood fills my nose and coats my tongue and seems to run down the back of my throat. Long, matted hair from the head and chin are stiff against my body through the sheer garment I wear. 

Murmurs chase me as I leave the banquet hall on the night of King Herod’s birthday party, carrying the head of a dead man on a dish. The cloth of my costume sticks to me like the charred, shriveled wings of a moth that has fallen into a candle. My hair is wet and straggles down my neck and my forehead. I am glad I have not eaten much. I fear I may not be able to keep down what dainties I did eat. 

The head is turned so I must see the face. Though he is dead, there still seems to be an expression on John the Baptizer’s countenance: One of fierce and free joy. 

As my mother takes the dish from my hands, I wish I could feel the way that dead man looks. Unburdened. Happy. Alive.