The Dovekeepers: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  When it came time and the sky was sifting into darkness, I made a fire between the cliffs, so the wisps of smoke wouldn’t be noticed by the watchmen who patrolled the walls. I slipped off my garments and folded them. I had brought along pomegranate oil, which I poured into my hands and rubbed into my hair and skin. I then threw the knot of my shorn hair onto the pile of burning willow twigs. The sharp odor of a part of myself set aflame sent a shiver through me.

  I crouched among the rocks and ate the herbs I’d been given, even though they made my tongue swell. It was blessed thistle, and the taste was indeed sharp, leaving a gritty film inside my mouth. I could barely swallow. When I had consumed the leaves, I felt a shadow reach a hand inside me.

  For what seemed a long time, I sat back on my heels and waited for the spell to begin. I watched stars drop down from the sky. I glimpsed the bright arc of the new moon. It was Rosh Chodesh, the new month of Nissan. In the plaza this night was being celebrated, for this had been God’s first commandment to Israel, that we should keep time by charting the new moon, for it meant the renewal of our people and was a reminder that there is light in the darkness. This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.

  I realized then that I needed to forgo silence, which had been my sword and my shield. That was the price I must pay. What protected me once, I now must cast away. It was my gift, but no more.

  I began to pray. Amen Amen Selah. The spell wound around me as the dark spun into light. The stars dropped closer. I was afraid of what was about to happen once my true nature was revealed before the eyes of God. But what was to be was now beyond my will, in the hands of fate. I had eaten of the herbs, started the flame, said the prayer that opened my wounds and my heart, lifted my voice to the Almighty.

  The fire’s roar sounded like the voice of the ghost. I had called to her, pleading for her to come to me as she had once bathed with me and brushed the ashes from my hair. The fire was so bright I shielded my eyes, but it burned brighter still. Something inside me broke apart and splintered. I made a sound I didn’t recognize as my own voice. I called out, pleading, and then my pleas were answered.

  Sia was before me.

  Her cloak was in tatters, her hair in knots, her arms were nothing more than bones. I could not bear to see the harm I’d done to her. I ran to the edge of the cliff to escape her. Stones shifted beneath my feet, and I could feel myself sliding. If I leapt I would fly to the desert floor below, a petal from a flame tree, a dove set free. But the ghost still would not let me be, even now. She would not release me to the death I wished for myself. She reached out, pulling me back from the edge. I fought her, but she refused to let go. When at last I had no choice, I wrapped my arms around her, my one and only friend. I gave myself to Sia.

  When I begged for forgiveness, it was not her tears I cried but my own.

  I fell asleep on the rocks, sprawled out on a dark ledge where the thorn trees grew. When I awoke it was almost morning. Sia had been in my dreams all through the night. She was with a lion in the desert, beneath a willow tree. She had taken him back from me, as she deserved to, but unlike me, she was not a thief. She left me what was mine. I felt the child move within me and wept with joy. I was not a demon or a leopard, only a woman with red hair. Now, as light split apart the sky, turning the desert pink, I slipped on my tunic. My body felt raw and bruised. I saw the marks I had made long ago on my leg, pale, like the arc of the moon. They seemed to belong to someone else, but I was the one who would have to carry the scars.

  I knelt by the fire to make certain there were no burning embers left. That was when I spied the tracks of a lion. There were only a few such beasts left in the desert, but one had come here, answering my call. He had been there all the while, watching over me, before he left me at last.

  I ATTEMPTED to speak to my father to make amends, but each time I approached, he turned away. He waved at me, his signal for a dog, for that was what I still was to him. He had become an even more miserable man here at the fortress than he’d been in Jerusalem. He, who had courted invisibility, had become what he desired to be; no one could see him now. Old men were invisible in this world of war, thought of as useless. My father was no longer vital. Ben Ya’ir needed young men who could fight in hand-to-hand combat wielding axes, not assassins who hid their sharpened knives inside their robes and stalked their enemies in the dark corners of the Temple courtyard. No one honored the great Yosef bar Elhanan for his ability to slink into the houses of his enemies, at one with the darkness of the night.

  He’d been assigned to keep track of the weaponry. It was a lowly job, meant for young boys and old men. Replacing the tips of arrows was beneath him, but no one would listen to him, no one valued him. He began to fold in on himself, a tangle of envy. Now when he saw my brother return with the warriors, my father was jealous rather than proud. Amram had always been the one to shine in his eyes, but lately our father had begun to look upon him with distaste. Like the teacher whose student surpasses him, my father resented my brother his victories and his youth.

  It was as though he no longer had children. We were only shadows on the wall, there to mock him and betray him.

  ONE EVENING my father spied Aziza with my brother, secluded beside the fountain. Everyone knew she was the witch’s daughter. She was not the wife my father wanted for his son. He turned in her direction and spat on the ground. Shedah, he hissed, as though he’d spied a serpent. He called my brother to him, and they argued with such ferocity I covered my ears.

  My brother announced that he planned to wed Aziza despite my father’s claims that he wouldn’t hear of this match. Amram threatened to denounce my father, and my father made threats of his own. If Aziza’s mother was to discover her daughter’s impurity, perhaps she would see to her punishment herself, bind her in a spell of silence or cover her with boils, cut off all her hair or cast her beyond the gate. I was in a corner spinning yarn on my spindle, doing my best not to interfere, but my heart was hitting against my chest as my brother and father raged against each other. The air in the chamber was hot, charged. The more my father railed, the paler my brother appeared, turning to ice. Pale light is dangerous, reckless and cold. Amram put his hand on his knife. Perhaps he had forgotten it was our father before him. I whispered his name, hoping to wake him from his dark dream. My brother glanced at the knife he had plucked from his belt as though he were indeed a dreamer. Quickly, he let it go.

  “Don’t speak to me again,” he admonished my father before he departed. “If you see me, walk by me in silence, as I’ll walk by you.”

  In that instant, what little family I had was dismantled. That night my father refused his meal. He took to his bed, face to the wall. He had become older than his years, a man who had thrown away all he might have had, ruined by his own bitterness.

  I felt pity rise within me.

  “He’ll be back,” I assured him.

  My father shook his head.

  “I’m sure of it,” I said, though the rift between them was deep. “Amram is your son and your student.”

  I followed my brother to the garrison. There I found him splitting wood. He was in a fury, grunting as he worked, like a man rending an enemy in two. But his enemy had given him life and was his father. This enemy had taught him the secrets of invisibility and had crossed the desert to find him.

  “He’s an old man,” I reminded Amram.

  Perhaps my heart went out to our broken father because he had been my partner in our terrible crime. “Mourning our mother has caused a poison inside him.”

  “When we go to Aziza’s mother to ask for her blessing, will you stand by me, Yaya?” he asked.

  He spoke to me so even though we both knew the girl who had been Yaya was no more. I nodded, then found the courage to ask if he would also stand by me, no matter where fate might lead me.

  The boy he had been was gone as well, the one who had proudly announced he would become an assassin as we stood together in Jer
usalem. All the same, he was still my brother.

  “I found you in the wilderness,” he reminded me. “Why would I abandon you now?”

  SOON AFTER, I began to dream of my mother. All my life I had been dreaming of lions and of ghosts, but no more. I could feel my mother’s presence. I longed to see her, to have a list of her virtues, to know if we were anything alike.

  I went to my father early in the morning, before I lost my nerve, having awoken from a dream of my mother’s voice, the one I’d heard as I entered this world. The assassin was outside the barracks, cleaning weapons, sitting on the stump of an old olive tree. Young men and boys who passed by had no idea he had been one of the fiercest men in Jerusalem, that he had possessed the ability to conceal himself and had murdered more men than there were leaves on the willow tree.

  My father was hunched over, his hair white, the lines on his face deeply etched. I had never before asked a favor of him, but I wanted one now.

  I asked him to tell me the color of my mother’s hair.

  “You haven’t guessed why I can’t look at you? Every time I look at you I see her in your place.”

  At last I understood why each time he gazed at me grief shone in his eyes. My mother’s hair had been the same color as mine. Like her I was a flame tree. Despite everything, I still burned.

  THE RAINY SEASON ended early. The harsh trail of the future was evident in the white-hot sky above us, a fire waiting to be ignited. Each day barrels swollen with water were brought up from the pools below, tied to the backs of donkeys, until at last our cisterns were full enough to last through the harsh summer months. The air seemed enraged already, the wind blowing across from the far side of the Salt Sea, sparked with heat.

  We celebrated the Feast of Unleavened Bread, but this year was unlike any other, for we could no longer bring sacrifices to the Temple. We feasted when our prayers were complete, but we kept an eye on the desert as we rejoiced in our freedom. In the evenings I had begun to accompany Revka to the looms. Working there kept our minds on the task at hand. But we could not avoid the gossip of other women, and although we didn’t join in, we couldn’t help but overhear. Often the women at the looms spoke of our leader, who was our hero and our only hope. They praised him, and there were those among them who wished they were his wife. Even married women spoke of this, and hid their eyes so no one would see that, although they laughed, they were serious in their envy of the one to whom he was wed. I hadn’t known Ben Ya’ir had a wife. Revka pointed her out. A quiet, dark woman in veils who kept herself apart. I’d seen her walking through the orchards without knowing who she was.

  When I wondered what it would be like to be the wife of a great man like Eleazar ben Ya’ir, Revka laughed bitterly. “Take a good look the next time you spy her,” she suggested. “See if she seems happy with her fate.”

  *

  I THOUGHT OF how little we knew of our own fate when I went alone to the dovecote. There the Man from the North spoke to me of the threat that hung over us. He took my hand in his, which was reason enough to kill a slave, if you believed in slavery, or in murder, or in anything other than what I believed in now.

  “If you think Rome won’t come here, you’re mistaken. They may have already begun their plans. They won’t let a single fortress stand in Judea. They want to show the world they’ve won.”

  “Did they confide in you?” I teased. I took my hand from his. He looked like ice, but ice is known to burn. “Is that how you know so much? While you were carrying their weapons and saluting them, did the generals take you aside and tell you their plans?”

  “I listened and I heard. That’s what I do.”

  I had set to waving away the doves in order to gather their pale, speckled eggs.

  The Man from the North came to stand beside me.

  “I plan to leave before Rome comes here.”

  He spoke straightforwardly, as if we were equals. He was admitting a crime before the action was taken, confiding his intended escape. Had I believed in attending to rules, I would have had to report his remarks to the council.

  “That’s your plan? To walk home? How do you think you’ll accomplish that? You don’t know what it’s like to be in the desert on your own. You were protected and fed by the legion. You wouldn’t like what you found out there.”

  “What did you find?”

  What was inside me, the part no one knew, that which had been bitten by the lion.

  “Something that will be apparent to all soon enough.” I had no sense of what caused me to talk in this intimate way.

  “You think I don’t see you, but I do,” the Man from the North said.

  Anyone would have expected his eyes to be cast down, but he was staring right at me. In the end, I was the one to look away.

  THE MILD MONTH of Iyar had come to us. Nights were no longer black, as they had been. Instead, they turned a deep blue, like the threads of a prayer shawl. Light drifted through the oncoming dark, lengthening the evenings, keeping the dusk at bay. I spent many hours at the looms and had become a fine weaver. I dyed some of the wool myself, my arms tinted by the vats of color set out after the sheep had been sheared and the wool spun and cleaned. Saffron and sunflowers were used for yellow, green could be produced from stained lichen, red from madder root and from the peeled skin of the pomegranate, black from the mulberry tree.

  I had begun a weaving that was not unlike the garment worn by the Man from the North. He had allowed me to take a piece of cloth from his tunic so I could study the unusual pattern. I kept it beneath my sleeping pallet, along with the last blue square that remained from the scarf my brother had given me. The token didn’t mean anything. I simply appreciated the intricacy of the weaving. As I worked, other women gathered around to offer praise. I showed them how I fed the loom with different strands until the sequence emerged, the thread crisscrossing, forming squares. Blue like the sea, white like a star, red like a ruby.

  The Man from the North had taking to calling me Odeum, our word for ruby. The others in the dovecote soon overheard and were quick to determine that he spoke our language. Once he’d been found out, he was at their mercy. There was no way for him to pretend he didn’t understand their commands.

  “Just like any man, he can talk when he wants to,” the women cried. Aziza and Nahara took to calling me Ruby as well, just to tease me. When anyone wanted the Man from the North to do something, they would laugh and call out, “Let Ruby tell him. He’s her slave.”

  The Man from the North flushed red when the women spoke of him, but I laughed along with them. I had begun to take my noon meal with the others, even though I ate little, only fig cakes and crackers, the most I could consume without becoming ill. I had come to enjoy the company of Shirah and her daughters. Revka was still difficult, but I yearned to win her favor, if only to make peace. I offered to walk with her across the plaza.

  “For what reason?” she asked.

  It seemed she trusted no one.

  “So you’ll stop being suspicious of me,” I declared.

  “That won’t happen,” she grumbled. Still she allowed me to carry her allotment of water and grain.

  Her grandsons ran to meet us as we approached her chamber. When I spoke to them, they stared but did not reply. I had heard others whisper that neither boy possessed a voice.

  “You have something to say about them?” Revka asked, glaring at me.

  “There’s not that much to say in this world,” I offered. “Let’s keep our mouths shut.”

  She laughed at my remark, softening toward me.

  “When you have a son, you’ll understand,” she said. “You’ll do anything for him.”

  It was said that a woman about to have a daughter was hungry all the time, but one who was to give birth to a son would not enjoy food until the instant he was born. Neither Revka nor I said more. She had let slip that she was aware of my condition, and I was now mindful that her grandsons had lost their voices under circumstances she didn’t wish to speak
of. I did not venture to ask if demons had been at work, as some people suggested. In return, she did not question me further.

  I understood that to have a son was an honor. Yet it was said that at the moment when a mother first glimpsed a boy-child, she would also see the man he would become, the ax he would carry, the bow he would wield, the battles that awaited him. Even a witch could not undo her son’s desire to be a man. I had spied Shirah in the doorway of the small dovecote far across the field, her black hair tumbling down, her voice mournful when she called for her son. Most often, Adir didn’t answer. He spent his time at the garrison with the warriors. Shirah still tied knots in the boy’s tunic to protect him. She threaded packets of salt and parsley to the fabric to keep away evil. But I had seen him in the alley removing those stitches one by one, casting the charms onto the ground.

  WHEN I COULDN’T SLEEP, I sat on a small bench in my chamber spinning with a hand loom. I could do this work in the dark, the door cast open for a trickle of moonlight. The dye I’d used on this wool was shani, scarlet, a crimson color taken from boiling the husks of small insects. Red thread always served as protection and was noticed by the angels and by Adonai. As I worked, the thread was indeed like rubies in my hand.

  I gazed out at the fountain in the plaza and saw a shadow. There was no longer any water running through; the rains were long gone and the night was silent. For a moment I thought it was Aziza, come to meet my brother. I rose to shut the door so that I might respect their privacy. It was only then I recognized the figure in the dark. Shirah was the one standing beside the fountain, like a woman desperate for water. I could hear her crying as though the world were about to end. I couldn’t help wonder what on earth could make a witch ache so.

  When she left, I fully opened the door to my chamber so that I might drink in the cooler air of the night. I thought about the brutal time I had always feared, the month of the lion, the red-center of Av, when we would yearn for anything cold. As it was said that the rue plant sparks bright red at midnight, its strength dispersed in the heat, I would burn more brightly in Av. I thought of the flame tree in Jerusalem and of the goat who had been my angel and of the trail of blue I had followed through the wilderness. I thought of the woman in the World-to-Come with whom I shared my name and how I owed her both my life and the color of my hair.