The Dovekeepers: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  Shirah gathered the dove droppings and set a fire using them as peat. She fanned the flame until there was a plume of smoke. The scent that emanated was bitter but also familiar. It seemed the doves had followed us to this place; we could hear their wings beating, fast as our breathing, fast as the birth must become if mother and child were to survive. After the laboring woman drank the bitter rue, retching as she did, Shirah had us take her by either arm. We forced her to stand above the fire. The air burned with heat, and we were all slick with sweat. I grabbed off my shawl, feeling I might suffocate. I could hardly see for all the ash and sparks. The world was made of salt and smoke, and there was no choice but to go forward.

  We had entered into the deepest of places, the seat of the great goddess Ashtoreth, written of by the prophets, a goddess who was with us still, even though the wise men in the Temple had done all they could to destroy her. Neither could they defeat what many claimed was the female aspect of God, the Shechinah, all that was divine and radiant, the bride to Adonai’s groom. The Shechinah healed the ill, sat among the poor, embraced the wicked and the good alike.

  The woman who was laboring sobbed in our grasp. As for me, I had stopped thinking and merely did as I was told. I didn’t know how I had been drawn here, woken from my dreams, dragged from my chamber into this dim night. I of all people, a harbinger of the Angel of Death, known to Mal’ach ha-Mavet before I was known to humankind, a murderer of my own mother, now stood guard for the Queen of Heaven.

  The housemaid pleaded with us not to keep her positioned over the fire. She said she was burning alive, that the sparks were entering her, entwining with her blood and bones. I asked to be allowed to move her, but Shirah insisted the smoke was needed to open her womb. “Kindness can be a curse,” she said. She crouched beside the servant woman and began to chant.

  Beshem eh’yeh asher eh’yeh tsey tsey tsey.

  Shirah’s voice was hoarse and hot, the intonations rising. She spoke the words repeatedly, until the chant wound around us and we could hear only its tone and its desperation.

  Va’yees’sa va’ya’vo va’yett. In the name of I am what I am, the name of God, get out. You have journeyed and now you have arrived. Amen Amen Selah.

  The woman had been wailing, but now the sound worsened. Jackals called to each other in this way, crying in the night. The poor servant woman was so far inside herself, at the deepest core, it seemed impossible she would ever surface again. I thought of my mother in her last moments, before the silence fell, how her voice might have called out against the brutality of her fate, how my father might have wept at the door as he cursed me.

  The laboring woman spoke to those who were not there, praying to our God, Adonai, and to Abraxas, a god of the Egyptians, and to Ashtoreth. She made secret bargains, promising all she would be willing to sacrifice if only her torment would end, her life, her soul, her newborn child.

  “Take them!” she cried out. “Take me as well!”

  I was frightened that she would call the warriors to us with her wailing, or summon demons we could not repel, but Shirah said no, it was silence we needed to fear. Silence at a birth meant that the demons had won and that Lilith, the night creature from Babalonyia with long black hair and black wings who preys on other women, seducing their men and stealing their children, had prevailed.

  Shirah wrote down the name of Obizoth, the demoness that strangles newborns, then burned the papyrus upon which she’d written that vile name. The smoke was scarlet, the color of blood. We were the defenders and we were in battle. I felt I could have taken a demon by the throat, should it dare to appear before us. The desert had taught me that we must destroy so that we might live. We had piles of salt to throw upon any creatures of the night that might venture close by. I took a handful and rubbed it across my abdomen, for unborn children were especially vulnerable to demons.

  We remained beside the fire, the sweat from our own bodies stinging our eyes. As the fire flamed red and then blue, Shirah recited her devotion to Adonai so that the angel Raphael would thwart any attempt to do harm to the baby when at last it emerged. The mother-to-be began to have contractions. When I looked, I could see movement inside her; a storm was passing through her body. I found I was reciting Shirah’s incantation. I had learned the words and memorized them, for I, too, had come to believe this alone could keep us from harm.

  Shirah had us move the woman away from the flames as soon as her liquid came in a rush. I realized that I was terrified the child might not follow, but Nahara, though she wasn’t more than thirteen, had no fear of what was to happen.

  “Finally he arrives,” she said, overjoyed. She clapped her hands, then crouched down, ready. The baby came into her hands quickly, his sulky face twisted into a scowl. Nahara grinned, fearless, though blood was everywhere. I thought, She is a woman and I am not. She is already everything and I am nothing at all.

  “What will happen to her now?” I asked Nahara, nodding to the new mother.

  “She will return to the woman who is her mistress and say she found a baby in the cliffs.”

  “And will she be believed?” I wondered.

  “My mother will escort her. They’ll take her in. They’ll believe what they must so that the man of the household can have a new son.”

  Shirah knelt and reached inside the woman, chanting as the afterbirth was coaxed from within. It would be buried in the orchard, where no one would discover it. What had once given this child life would bring good fortune to our crops.

  The night had been a whirlwind. At last silence washed over us. We were slick and hot, too spent to cleanse ourselves. Now that the baby had been delivered and was bound in clean cloth, the mother grabbed for him and put him to her breast. I heard a sob and realized it came from my throat.

  I understood the reason Shirah had wanted me here on this night. She had divined what was inside me. She came up beside me to whisper, so no one would overhear.

  “Did you think you were the only lioness?” she asked now that our work was completed. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

  MY BROTHER led a raid soon afterward. It was an honor for him to do so, a mark of his bravery and his favor in the eyes of Ben Ya’ir. Yet those who loved him wished he were not so honored. We feared his was an errand that would lead him to the World-to-Come. In the dovecote, Aziza was overwrought. Her hair was tangled down her back, a mass of black. She refused meals and spent her evenings by the wall, gazing at the emptiness of the white fields of stones God had set before us. It was still possible to see the footprints of the warriors who had ventured to the valley below, but they faded, and the dust blew them away, and soon enough it seemed that they had never taken this path.

  The skies were overcast, and there were fires in the distance, for nomads roamed and troops from the legion were not far off. The smoke swelled into the clouds, turning the world somber. Amram was gone for days. Soon Aziza took to her bed, refusing to come out even when the sun finally broke through the gloom. Not even her younger sister could convince her she must go about her life. She was in the grip of the terror that held fast to every woman who waited for a warrior.

  My father and I also looked out over the cliffs, searching the horizon. Despite the distance between us, we were equal in our love for Amram. Perhaps because of our shared worry, we had begun to take our evening meal together. We did not speak, other than to mention the food, but we could finally be in the same chamber without one of us turning away. I tried not to think of how my father would react to my dishonor if he knew I carried Ben Simon’s child, how his loathing of me would multiply, how he would humiliate me and cast me out, how I would prove him right. Nothing but trouble. I, who could drown someone from the inside out, who would seduce another’s husband, as Lilith was said to do, was not worthy to sweep my father’s floor. My father would shear the hair from my head and shred my clothes to mark me as a zonah, then he would tear his own clothes, as we do to mourn the dead.

  I could only be silent if h
e did so, for silence was what I knew best.

  IN THE FIELDS, the fruit trees had not borne as sweetly as they might have after the sudden cold spell. Herod’s supplies were dwindling fast, the rations reduced. My father complained about the meals I made for him, and he had every right to do so. Our people began to go hungry. Amram and the other warriors had been sent into the valley to take what other settlements had in their storerooms and fields. Some might call this thievery or mayhem or murder, but it was the way we lived now. The rule of the desert was one I’d learned well, mere survival. My brother vowed that even a bandit could be pure in the eyes of the Almighty. He insisted that God’s judgment depended on motive, and ours was to stay true to Israel. Surely God would look down upon us and send fortune our way.

  Since the birth of the maidservant’s child, Nahara had taken to confiding in me. One day, when we had spent hours working side by side, she admitted that, before my brother went down from our mountain to lead the raid, Aziza had gone to him with a powder of burned snakeskin. Their mother knew every manner of spell, and although Aziza had never showed an interest in such matters, for Amram’s sake she had peered into the magic book her mother kept under lock and key.

  When Aziza had embraced my brother at his leave-taking, she’d wound the snake’s powder into his hair. As she held him near, he had no idea that within her embrace there was the white-green essence of a serpent that would bite his enemies and protect him from evil. My brother might not understand what lengths Aziza was willing to go to in order to save him, but I did. I would have done the same if I’d had access to such a potent spell. I would have burned the snake to ashes if it could have kept my beloved from harm.

  When the warriors completed the raid, it was clear they had not been favored. The settlement they had attacked had been forewarned by the barking of dogs, and the battle had been fierce, with losses on both sides. Our men did not return to the fortress but instead went into the cliffs directly across from us, a pockmarked, shadowy place known to the beasts. We knew then that they were tamé, made unclean by their proximity to death, and that they must now purify themselves. The survivors needed to pray and fast for seven days before they could be welcomed back.

  The families of those who had gone out waited mutely by the gate with the full knowledge that some of us would soon be in mourning. When at last the remaining warriors returned, I nearly fell faint when I heard people shouting Amram’s name. I went to find my brother, grateful beyond measure that he’d been among those left to bury the dead. But being so close to Mal’ach ha-Mavet had burned him, the way steel is fired in an oven and made harder. He had been forced to bury his friend Jonathan, the one who had studied to be a scholar, who’d had thoughts of becoming a priest but had picked up the dagger instead. On this day Amram wore Jonathan’s prayer shawl, with its white and blue fringes. There were women whose sole work was to make the violet-blue dye used for prayer shawls, boiling shellfish that could only be found on a single shore of the Great Sea, adding salt and sand and stone until the color became the color of the heavens. Each knot in the garment was a sign of devotion. Amulets were attached to the threads, to bind demons and bring fortune to the devout. And yet Jonathan had been taken by death. His family sat concealed in a darkened room, tearing at their cloaks, refusing to speak to anyone, closing their shutters to ensure light would not enter their chambers.

  My brother came to eat and drink with us, but he did not lift his eyes. There were streaks of dark blood on the shawl around his shoulders. My father was so happy to have his son returned to him, he didn’t notice the difference that had been stamped upon Amram, his grim expression, his fixed gaze. He saw only a strong man who could lift a sword so heavy he could slay any rival, but I saw something entirely different. My brother had taken a step away from the living. He had walked too close to the World-to-Come when it claimed those around him. The demons had reached out to him and tainted him, clutching at his spirit, attempting to snatch him over to the other side, the side of despair and seething misery. The Angel of Death saw all with his thousand eyes; his touch was said to be tender should he choose for it to be so. If you allowed him to embrace you, you might sink into his arms and never rise again. I saw the way my brother gazed at the cliffs below. He was seeing what he believed had been written for him, the fate he had eluded when his friend took his place.

  When my father remarked that Jonathan had died a warrior’s death, as every man should, I saw Amram shudder and turn away. We went to stand outside at the end of our meal, after our father had gone to pray and offer thanks for his son’s safe return.

  “It should have been me,” my brother remarked, unable to escape the gloom of his bereavement.

  Poor Aziza, I thought, her spell had not protected Amram as she had intended. Jonathan had stepped in front of my brother intentionally, taking the blow meant for Amram in the name of their love and friendship. I insisted this could not have been a mistake. God had a design for our lives, and Amram’s return must have already been written, whether or not he thought he deserved it. My brother still wore the amulet I had given him. I reminded him that he was in God’s favor, as Solomon had been. “We cannot know or understand God’s plan,” I said.

  I took my brother’s hand and placed it over my middle so that he could feel the life within me. It had quickened, and had formed itself fully, as a fish in a lake. My brother shot me a look. He was quick to guess I had been in the arms of a lion.

  “He was meant to protect you,” he said of Ben Simon, who had been his teacher, a man he had revered and put his faith in. “If this is anyone’s burden, it’s mine, for sending you to him.”

  “Can I question the Angel of Life any more than you can question the Angel of Death? This was meant to be.”

  My brother looked at me and understood: what I shared with him was not my burden but my joy.

  PERHAPS it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen. The Man from the North who was our slave had no choice but to be among our chattering all through the day. I pitied him, as I pitied all men in chains, but perhaps there was more that we held in common. We were both outcasts here, each in possession of a past no one could imagine. It was sometimes easier to be with a stranger from whom nothing was expected and to whom nothing was granted in return. I had become accustomed to this man. We all had. His hands were callused from work, but he never complained. He ate what little we gave to him. He lowered his eyes when we gossiped, although once or twice I had seen him smile. It was a strange sight, one I turned away from. For his expression made it seem he was not a slave, but a man. I knew it was an error to think of him that way.

  Once, when he was carrying a heavy basket for me into the fields, some unruly children threw stones at him, laughing, until I chased them away. Still they shouted out, dubbing the slave Leviathan, the name of a huge sea monster, because of his great height and strong arms. Maybe that was where my compassion began, the kernel of it grown from the way in which he was reviled.

  I turned to the children who teased him, warning that if they continued to do so they would bring demons into their midst. “Run!” I shouted, and the rude name-callers scattered like seeds, giggling and hurrying away.

  The slave nodded to thank me in his halting manner, but I shook my head to stop him.

  “I couldn’t stand to hear their voices. That was all.” I said this so he wouldn’t dare to assume his comfort was my concern. “I sent them away for my sake, not yours.”

  I had often caught him staring at me as we worked side by side. Now I knotted my scarf more tightly. I had come to believe he could speak our language perfectly if he desired to do so. He seemed to be aware of all that was said, although when anyone asked him a question he shrugged and muttered something in his own rough vocabulary, pretending to be as ignorant of ours as the doves were. And then one day, not long after I had chased off the rude children, as we were working beneath some fig
trees spreading out manure, he suddenly spoke to me.

  “You hair is like fire,” he said.

  He spoke our language strangely, the words frozen, cautious, yet he clearly knew it well, and perhaps had learned it before he’d been captured. Conscripts in the Roman army walked beside soldiers from many lands and found ways to communicate. This pronouncement about my hair, however, was not what I expected. I laughed despite myself. “Be careful,” I said. “You could get burned.”

  After a silence is broken, there is often a torrent of speech. The Man from the North now told me that where he came from many of the women had red hair. Before he was conscripted by the Roman Legion, he had never been beyond the borders of his village, which contained perhaps two hundred residents, most of them his own kinsmen. His land was so cold that snow and ice lasted much of the year, the sky dark even during the day. For a brief time of the year, his world would become green, not as the desert blooms in clutches, in a mild haze, but in a curtain of deep, shuddering green, with grass as tall as olive trees and forests so wide it would take a month to find your way across.

  The hotter our world became, the more I yearned to hear of his. We sat shaded by the fig trees in the blazing heat, unaware that the sun struck the earth so brutally. I listened, refreshed, to hear that in his land there were lakes as blue as lapis where the fish were the size of men. Warriors tattooed themselves with black ink and fought as fiercely as wolves; in combat they held shields that were stronger than anything we had, a metal that could not be broken with lances or axes. Such men could go an entire moon without sleeping so that they might keep watch over their women and their flocks, the sheep with hair so long it touched the earth, the goats the color of snow with eyes that were yellow orbs. If an enemy came up behind a warrior from this northland, he would quickly be slain with a single strike upon his throat.