The Dovekeepers: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.

  THE DAYS PASSED, and before long we had eaten nearly all we had, the bread, the olives, the cheese. We began to ration our food. My son-in-law’s plan was simple, the tactics of a logical man. We would wait out the Romans, then return to our village and start anew. I didn’t say what I knew, that there’d be nothing to return to. We would have only blood and broken bricks. I saw that my son-in-law was intimidated by the wilderness before us and our place in it. The desert loomed, a harsh landscape even for those experienced in surviving its dangers. In all his hours of study, Yoav had never built a fire from twigs with the use of a flint, never hunted with a bow, never found water or made his way over limestone boulders and rocks so harsh they set our feet to bleeding. He was an important man in the village, but here he was nothing. Before long we were lost. Each thorn tree looked the same to us, ravaged, black. Each hillock led to yet another. Only the sky changed, flushing pink at twilight, and then sifting into a dove gray light before the darkness overcame us.

  Yoav began to pray, hour after hour, as if that could prompt him as to what to do next. I had tried and failed to make bread in a griddle over our small fire. I could only make crackers that hadn’t the strength to rise. I finally was able to cook bread on hot stones that I placed beneath burning kindling. The boys called the black, risen loaves ash bread; it was as bitter as it was satisfying. The goatskin bags of water were less heavy, drained by our thirst, and the rains hadn’t yet come. Yoav promised that Adonai would lead us, and we had no choice but to accept his decree. Secretly, I wished we could find a guide among the tribesmen in their blue robes that we sometimes spied heading toward Moab. I would give them all I had if they could help us navigate a trail.

  Though our village was gone, I still thought there was a world for us to return to.

  I kept my eye on the heavens. There were more birds all the time. Each day their numbers increased. I tried to count them, but it was impossible, they were as numerous as the stars, and in the end I gave up. I still felt the Baker was with me, and that brought me comfort. I spoke to him under my breath, trying to amuse him with my descriptions of the many sorts of winds we encountered: the billowing kind, the howling sort, the soft, warm wind from the south, the stark, blue wind that arrived at nightfall and abruptly departed at daybreak, the violet wind of despair. I chattered to my husband whenever no one could overhear.

  Then one day I awoke and he was gone. I felt his departure as surely as if I had seen his spirit rise. All at once, my aloneness settled deeply, a stone inside of me, hard and sharp. While I slept, my husband’s spirit had been claimed by the World-to-Come. He was utterly gone. When I spoke of the hissing, rain-spattered wind that would come to us when winter arrived, he made no reply. When I described the sunstruck wind of the drifting dust funnels, I was speaking to no one but the dust itself. There were only black birds above us now, a bank of feathers and flesh that roiled across the sky like storm clouds. I waited till dark to weep, holding my grief inside, for there was no point in sharing my sorrow.

  We had no choice but to go forward, as only emptiness was around us. The following day we did so. I had to leave that unmarked place, abandoning the last of my husband’s essence. I carried my loss as my burden; it weighed me down and made me slow. I could not keep pace with the tired donkeys who bleakly made their way. The boys ran back to me and grabbed my hands and urged me on. Because of them I continued, but God must have known it had crossed my mind to stay behind. I wanted to lie down beside the rocks and dream of the Baker, to call for him to come back to me, even if it meant giving up this world. Perhaps that was the sin I committed. I forgot that even the worst of lives is a treasure.

  WE WANDERED to a small oasis. There was a waterfall flowing from a cliff, pouring over the rocks to form a pool of fresh water. We felt blessed, overjoyed by our good fortune.

  “I told you to have faith,” my son-in-law chided. “God has done exactly as I said He would.”

  There were date palms and a jumble of fragrant jasmine. Reeds on fleshy stems grew along the banks of the pool. White flowers drifted in the green water, each forming the shape of a star. There was a cluster of wild mulberries where wasps and dragonflies gathered, their drone like music. The air was cool and sweet when the breeze stirred. I could have described that breeze to my husband if his spirit was still beside me, a wind so calm it inspired envy in all other winds in every corner of the world.

  My son-in-law thought we could wait out the Romans here, in this mild place. We should have known that in such cruel times it was best not to be attached to a single location, even if there was water and the air was refreshing. Envy is envy, both for the wind and for men on earth. The better the place, the more others covet what you have. Be a pauper, a wanderer, a secret in the darkness of night. Once you possess something others do not, you are a target for the wicked. It would have been better if we’d made our camp in one of the caves beyond the oasis, or perhaps gone farther into the wilderness, following the trampled paths beaten down among the thornbushes by bands of wild camels. But my son-in-law feared the heart of the desert and intended for us to stay where we would be safe. I had a rush of fear, a premonition. I saw the speckled shadows beneath the palm tree form the shape of a viper; it slithered along the sand, stopping at my feet.

  My daughter hushed me when I spoke of my fears, suggesting we move on. There were people who had entered the wilderness that spread out before us never to be seen again, she whispered. Wanderers who were abandoned or devoured by beasts, defeated by hunger and thirst, kidnapped, enslaved by the tribesmen who wore blue cloaks. Here we had everything we might ever need; to leave would be an ingratitude in God’s eyes.

  “Think of the children,” Zara urged. “They’re happy here.”

  When I looked at the boys, cheerfully shouting as they played together in the shade of the date palms, I put away my fears. We stayed where there would be water, the most precious element of all, even though hyenas came to drink in the twilight, drawn to water, as all beasts in the desert are. These fierce creatures stayed close, their eyes gleaming as they stalked the donkeys, another omen we ignored. At night these ungodly spotted animals made a wailing sound, for they desired what little we had, or perhaps they wished to convince us they were tame, like dogs, longing for our company, when what they really wanted was our flesh.

  We saw few people during this time, only stray travelers who filled their water flasks, then moved on, too wise to make camp in such uncertain times. We were told that Zealots from Jerusalem had taken over several outposts nearer the Salt Sea, including Herod’s fortress, that marvel of a palace perched on white cliffs, built by a king so cruel he murdered anyone who opposed him. One old man, a hermit with his feet bound in cloth and his tunic shredded by the wind, warned that, although the desert might appear vacant, it was teeming with life. What looked empty was full, much like water in a cup. What was most important was invisible to the eye.

  THE BIRDS had remained with us, like a plague hovering in the sky. Even I, a simple woman, knew this foreshadowed evil. One day there were so many we hid in the tent where we slept, frightened by such extreme darkness in the middle of the day, a world blackened by ravens. When we went out the next morning, the road that led to the east was strewn with feathers. Birds had fallen from the sky, stricken by some unknown disaster. Zara and I were busy foraging for twigs to make a fire so we could take our noon meal. Before I could stop them, my grandsons had gathered feathers and begun to play with them, adorning themselves, pretending they’d been turned into ravens. My daughter and I exchanged a look. All at once we had realized it was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when we ask God to forgive our sins. In the wilderness every day was much like the next, and we had forgotten the divine aspect of the day until that very moment. We had not been meant to work or eat, only to beg for forgiveness.

  It was said that in the Temple the
re was a scarlet rope hung at the altar; at the close of Yom Kippur, after fasting and sacrifice and many prayers, it would turn white when God forgave us our transgressions. Now we had ignored the most holy of days, and in doing so we had turned our backs on our God. The boys were dancing in the sand, covered with feathers, clucking to each other like birds. It was the sort of mistake that calls demons from their hiding places. I wondered if we had taken the wrong path in our journey and had heedlessly turned to the left, the side that gives rise to all evil.

  My daughter’s husband was furious when he saw the boys romping like savages. Compelled to make amends, he ran to pray, pacing into the desert, the wind hitting against him, leaving its mark like whips. He shouted through that ferocious wind that he would make things right and beg for forgiveness, he would pray for God’s mercy, even if it took him all day and all night. But my daughter and I knew what we had done could not be righted. We had forgotten Adonai. We’d thought only of ourselves and our own trifling human needs. For that, we would suffer. Our sins would grow and swallow us whole.

  I had named my daughter after morning’s radiance, but morning has two meanings, and perhaps I called down a curse when I chose to call her so. Now I wondered if I had foretold what was written even though learned men insist no woman can foresee what will come to be. They can say what they like. I knew nothing good would come to pass in the desert on the Yom Kippur that we forgot. My daughter’s husband could pray for forgiveness until his throat was dry. I could tell by the rising wind, the one without mercy, that there would be none.

  THAT TERRIBLE DAY would still continue to overtake my every thought if the racket in the dovecotes did not distract me with a constant stream of sound. A clatter of noise mirrors silence, for one is alone in both situations. I often noticed Shirah watching me as I worked. I wondered what she made of me. I was not afraid to get my hands dirty, and did not overstep my bounds. When she had her eye on me in the dim air, I bowed my head to hide what resided within me. There was a single stream of sunlight that poured in the roof, and I avoided walking through it, afraid the brightness would reveal the truth of my mourning. But one day, not long after my arrival, Shirah suddenly took my hand in hers. I was startled by her action, and before I could think to pull away, she gazed into my rough palm. Her touch was like water, cool upon my skin. Afterward, I could tell that she knew. I had a murderer’s hand. It burned at night, in the dark. Other women looked at the moon as it rose to see their fate reflected, but I peered into the palm of my hand to see what was written and what I had done.

  As I did not wish others to speak of me, I turned away from the gossip concerning Shirah. If she was indeed a witch, I had no fear of her, for when she clasped my hand in hers, she took a portion of my burden upon her.

  “Being human means losing everything we love best in the world,” she murmured as she released me. “But would you ask to be anything else?”

  I WAS SILENT at the time, but afterward I wondered if I would indeed have preferred to be a snake rather than a woman, if I would have chosen to live my life beneath a rock, striking at dusk, devouring my sustenance, ravenous and alone in my cold skin. Did a snake love her children? Did she weep beneath her rock, yearning for arms with which to embrace them, for a voice with which to tell them stories, a heart that could be rended in two? Often I couldn’t sleep when I thought about such matters. These were the times when I saw Shirah walking at night. Perhaps she knew the answers to my questions, but I never asked, just as I never questioned where she was going or where she had been. If she had a box of sins kept under lock and key, as some people vowed, that was not my business. Once you have broken God’s laws, you are aware that He alone can judge us. You know that no man can understand what a woman may be driven to do.

  WHEN YAEL first came to us, I was convinced she was a foolish, selfish girl who thought too well of herself to clean up after the doves or carry heavy baskets of dung into the fields. I would have never imagined she would come to live in my house, if one can rightly call a single chamber with a curtain as a divider from neighbors a proper home. And yet I myself had been guilty of those very same notions upon my arrival, bitter that I had been sent to work in the dovecotes. I’d held on to the position of my old life with an arrogance to which I had no right. I’d wept, convinced I’d been relegated to the lowliest position on the mountain, until my grandson showed me the truth of the doves. Now I understand the pride Shirah and her daughters show, a devotion which had puzzled me when I first walked through the carved wooden doors, a scarf tied over my face, afraid to draw a single breath because of the stench of the rich loam.

  Without the doves, this fortress would have already fallen. The leavings scattered in the orchard have turned our world green and lush, nourishing the roots of the dates and olives, feeding the almond trees, causing them to burst into blooms of pink and white clouds. Without the doves, we would have starved long ago. It was outlawed to kill one, for without the Temple there could no longer be sacrifices; a man who took one out of greed risked being karet, turned out from God’s view, for such a deed was considered a crime against us all.

  Each time I cut open a piece of fruit, I was grateful to the pale, pliant creatures we cared for. Whenever one was ailing, I brought it home to nurse it to health. I kept such birds in a wooden shelf beside my bed. I listened as they cooed, finding comfort in their song.

  These were the only nights when I didn’t dream.

  I BEGAN to change my mind about Yael, daughter of the famed assassin Yosef bar Elhanan, the murderer who people whispered had once possessed the ability to walk through walls and disappear in front of men’s eyes, sister of one of our young warriors. I noticed she could work her own brand of magic. All she had to do was reach out her hand, and the doves would come to her. She needn’t cluck her tongue or offer grain, tricks I used to call them to me. I was surprised by her abilities, struck by jealousy. I was always the first to unlock the door in the mornings, the one to feed the doves and nurse them back to health. It was I who threw stones when hawks came to light on our roof, ready to slip through the thatching and destroy the nests we tended so carefully, or to strike when we let the doves fly in the early morning, assured of their loyalty and their return.

  Yet it was Yael they went to, not me. She stood in the dark and they flitted around her.

  “Why do they prefer her?” I asked Shirah, for she had been among the doves for the longest time. I suppose envy shone in my eyes.

  “She speaks their language.”

  “Really? Of birds? What language is that?”

  Shirah smiled in response. “You of all people should know.”

  Then I understood. It was the language of silence.

  I HAD GUESSED what Yael was hiding beneath her tunic and scarves, although she would not speak of it, and for good reason, even though we were far from the laws of Jerusalem, where women in her condition were called before a council of wise men and elders, then cast out to fend for themselves. Women who committed adultery and conceived were forced to drink bitter water and dust from the Temple floor, which some believed made the children within them fall away. This was the sotah ceremony, where their innocence or guilt would be proven by God when they were forced to drink His name written upon a piece of parchment and dissolved in a cup of water. People whispered that evil repelled God’s grace. Should the wicked attempt to take His name into their bodies, they would fall to dust.

  But perhaps on this mountain, with so much danger before us, there was little time to search out sin and little reason to do so. Did my neighbors not wonder what sins of their own had brought them to this place, why our people must suffer so, why God’s ways were so mysterious, why He had forsaken us on this mountain?

  The constant howling of the wind drove some people mad; many among us cursed the fortress and were brought lower than they’d ever imagined. There were women who wept during the windstorms until tears streaked their faces with lines of salt. Did they not ask why they had been f
orced so far from Jerusalem and everything they had known and loved? In their darkest hours, as they huddled with their children in the dwindling light, their shawls their only protection from the sandstorms, they clearly wondered what we were fighting for.

  I never asked that question. I gazed out at the land beyond the serpent’s path and thought of the many forms a beast could take. There were those who revealed themselves at noon, squarely setting their feet upon the earth, and those who sifted inside your dreams. There were those who came from Rome, the beasts I despised more than any others, their claws beginning to show as they crossed the Great Sea, for salt repels demons. When I thought of such wickedness, I could not sleep. To protect myself I chanted the incantation Shirah instructed me to recite when I tossed and turned at night. I ban and make an oath against destroyers and demons and plagues and afflictions and terrors and nightmares.

  Still I lay awake, unable to close my eyes.

  There were occasions when I spied my son-in-law climbing the path, set apart from the other warriors as they returned from missions meant to protect us or when they attempted to locate the provisions we needed from the world outside our walls. I did not wish to think about the mournful deeds they had committed, the blood that had been drawn, the lives taken.

  The Man from the Valley who would not walk beside his brethren no longer had a resemblance to the scholar he’d once been. He was never without the ax for which he’d traded his most precious chalice, carrying the weapon so near his torso that it seemed a part of him, threaded to him with invisible red silk. His hair that had turned white overnight was so long that people said God was able to grab him away from danger. This was the reason he still lived, though he placed himself in peril time and time again. He was known to be furious in a skirmish, willing to forge into battle with little thought to his own life. I understood why he did this, for I knew what he was fighting for; in that he was no different than I. Anguish such as ours is fed on bones and blood. We had no more choice than the wind does as to where we must go and where we belonged. I was grateful for this quiet time on the mountain. Here, at last, my grandsons were safe, able to rest without danger while the doves at my bedside hushed them to sleep. As for me, sleep was a country I no longer visited, despite my incantation. When I did, I wished only for my waking life, the hours when I didn’t see the nightmare images of all that had happened and all I had become.