The Dovekeepers: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  At last her brother arrived, apologetic, his prayer shawl around his shoulders. Amram was clearly uncomfortable with the unfamiliar task of caretaking. I wondered how he would manage the covenant when he flinched even as Yael fitted the newborn into his arms. The baby caught the warrior’s glance and held it with his unblinking ember-colored eyes. There was a red mark on the left side of his face, one we were all hoping would fade. “I didn’t think he’d look like this,” Amram blurted.

  “He looks like a baby,” I remarked matter-of-factly. There was no reason for this child to be viewed as one of the mamzerim, a bastard with no rights, not even the right of circumcision, although he would certainly be seen as what our people call a shetuki, a silent one, any child who does not know his father.

  Amram laughed. “That he does.” He nodded to Yael approvingly. “He looks strong.”

  I did not notice anyone else’s presence until Yael took a step back.

  The old assassin was there in the shadows. He’d been there all along, a cold eye set on the baby.

  “He’ll complete the ritual,” Amram said of their father.

  Yael clutched her baby closer, uncertain, stunned that her father had agreed to participate. The last contact she’d had with him was when they’d quarreled bitterly over her condition, and he’d struck her, driving her from their home.

  “Do you think I don’t remember how to use a knife?” the assassin asked when he saw her hesitation.

  Yael raised her glance to him. “Oh no. I’m sure you do.”

  Clearly that was her fear.

  “Am I not your father?” the assassin said.

  Yael gazed at him, unsure.

  “Is that child not my grandson?”

  Yael’s brother quietly urged her to have faith. It was he who had persuaded his father to come to the synagogue, and the two, who had turned away from one another, had made amends because of the birth of this boy. “This child belongs to us, and we to him, never more than on this day. He is not a burden, for he has brought us together.”

  Only male relatives were allowed to be present at the ceremony when the child would be named. He was ready for the covenant, he had enough life and breath to shield him so that Lilith and her demons could not call to him as easily as they might have in the hours following his birth. Until this day he’d still had one foot in their world and the other in ours; now he was rooted, fed by his mother’s milk. This ritual would set the path for his entire life to come.

  The assassin kept his head bowed as he waited for Yael’s decision, a sign of respect he had never offered to his daughter in the past.

  “Take him,” Yael said. “But even when I’m not watching, God will be there.”

  We waited nervously beside the western wall. Yael’s face was white. She refused to sit on a nearby bench and paced instead. When the baby cried out, she took hold of my arm.

  “A cry is a good thing,” I reminded her, echoing Shirah’s words. “It’s silence we need to fear.”

  Amram himself looked ashen when he at last carried the baby back to his mother. Yael’s worried expression broke into a grin when she saw her brother’s face, his usual swagger replaced by the weight of his immense responsibility to the newborn.

  “You look worse than he does,” she teased.

  “I think it was more painful for me,” Amram agreed.

  Yael opened the child’s blankets. The cut was perfect, leaving only a slight flush of blood. The baby was already dozing in his mother’s arms, exhausted by his own cries and by the sudden flash of pain he’d known, as well as by the wine that he’d been fed to dull that pain. The old assassin was standing in the threshold. Yael, still unsure in her father’s presence, at last nodded her gratitude, but Yosef bar Elhanan had already disappeared, as if he had never been present. I gazed into the plaza. There wasn’t even a shadow to be seen.

  “Did he speak of the child?” Yael asked her brother, curious despite herself.

  “He blessed him,” Amram said. “Let that be enough.”

  WE KEPT the wound clean, applying a balm of balsam and honey that would bring about healing more quickly. But there was more to be done to announce this child’s arrival in our world, later, and in secret.

  We brought the baby into the field on a night when the moon was waning. Shirah was waiting for us. We three stood where the afterbirth had been buried to commit to a naming ceremony of our own. It was a starry night, but we avoided the light and gathered in the shadows so as not to be spied by the guards and questioned. Shirah had broken an eggshell into halves, onto which she had written the holy name of God as many times as could fit in tiny black letters, the ink drawn from crushed mulberries.

  Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh.

  We lit a small fire of green wood. Yael placed the baby in the grass. He whimpered, then dozed. She removed her head scarf and her robe to stand before God as she had been on the day her mother died, the day she was born, in this very same month of Av. Shirah began to chant words of protection under a screen of smoke.

  Redeem this child and save him from all afflictions. Allow him to become a man and sing glorious songs of praise to our Lord and king, the mighty God who created us. Amen Amen Selah, may God keep you from all evil and may He allow you to dwell in Jerusalem and in all holiness.

  When the hymn was completed, Shirah buried the eggshells beneath the tree. The moonlight was yellow as it swept across the field. Already the afterbirth had disappeared, feeding the earth, giving gratitude to the Almighty. Yael took up her shawl and her tunic. She reached for her child and named him beneath the open sky, as he had been named earlier that morning by the men at the synagogue. She called him Arieh, the word for lion, even though he slept through our rejoicing as though he were a lamb.

  WHEN OUR WARRIORS next went into the desert, it was not to fight but to hunt, trying as best they could to satisfy our hunger. When the Romans returned to the place they had once marked with rocks, our men were forced to retreat, their foray cut short. They had no choice but to outrun the enemy, who had returned to spy on us. For their troubles, our warriors brought back partridges that were more bones than flesh and a stray baby ibex, left behind by the herd. It was Tishri, the time of the growing season, and we should have been rejoicing. Instead a silence swept over the mountain, a sense of foreboding.

  In the dovecotes, we all felt Nahara’s absence. Aziza especially pined for her sister. She often went to the field near the Essenes’ camp, where she sat cross-legged in the grass for many hours, but Nahara never came to greet her. When Aziza followed the goats her sister cared for, Nahara was quick to lead them away. Hurt by her sister’s refusals, Aziza began to fashion arrows to fill her time and keep her hands busy. We had all been asked to help with the weaponry, and many women gathered in the evenings to shape stones for slingshots. All the same, Aziza hid her work from Shirah.

  “She wouldn’t think it proper for me,” she confided.

  As it turned out, Aziza had a light touch. The arrowheads she crafted were thin, beautifully made. Each was bound to a wooden shaft with linen twine. Shirah’s elder daughter was surprisingly well suited to such work, for metal was to her what cloth and thread were in the hands of other women. I saw in her what I had spied in the Baker each morning of his life, the love of fashioning something out of ingredients that would be nothing without a human touch, be it salt or wheat or iron that was transformed.

  The Man from the North revealed that, in the country where he’d been born, each warrior’s arrows were decorated with the sign of his tribe, in his case a stag, the creature he had told us about but one we hardly believed in, for he said this deer’s shoulders were as tall as a man, its antlers spreading farther than the span of a vulture’s wings. From the time he was a boy, he assured us, every arrow he’d carried had been engraved with the image of that miraculous creature. “Tie feathers to the end of the shaft,” the slave told Aziza as she constructed her weapons. “That is how to make them fly.”

  Because Amram w
as thought of as a phoenix, rising from every battle to fight again, Aziza crafted arrows that might be worthy of him, adorning each with hawk feathers dyed in a bath of madder root. Soon her hands were red; I overheard Yael teasing her, suggesting she was so consumed with passion that heat was rising from her skin in waves of scarlet.

  When it came time to test Aziza’s handiwork, she sent Adir to the garrison for a bow. Adir returned soon enough, laughing, joking and making rude remarks, suggesting that his sister had best not touch the bow or she might shoot herself accidentally. Aziza grinned and sent him away with a push.

  I sat with Yael, who had her baby resting in a sling made of finely spun wool. Arieh was a quiet boy, with dark, liquid eyes, as calm as the sheep he’d appeared to resemble on the evening of his naming. Though only weeks old, he slept through the night, clutching the square of blue fabric Yael let him hold to settle him. He still had the red birthmark on his cheek, but it had been treated with a salve mixed from wheat, honey, and aloe, and had begun to fade. We imagined that his thick black cap of hair was a sign of his virility, marveling over the size of his hands and feet, and his small, manly penis, suggesting he would likely be able to lift a donkey above his head by his tenth year.

  “Perhaps we should let Arieh test the arrows if he is already a warrior,” we teased, for we had no man among us.

  Aziza handed the bow to the Man from the North, even though it was a crime to place a weapon in the hands of a slave. He took up the bow, grateful for the trust. Each of Aziza’s arrows made its mark when the slave turned to his target—a knob on the stump of the ancient olive behind the dovecote. He stood in the threshold so no one else would take notice. When we called out praises, he bowed. He noticed the intent expression on Aziza’s face, her gaze fixed on the bow in his hands.

  “Let me teach you,” he suggested. “Then you can see for yourself the worth of what you’ve crafted. These arrowheads are among the finest I’ve ever used.”

  Aziza backed away, shaking her head, her eyes masked. Still, there was something resembling desire etched across her face.

  Women were not to touch weapons, such was our law, but we had already broken the law by handing the bow over to a slave. We who had already sinned did not question or condemn. We stared back at those who whispered about Yael and her baby until they were the ones forced to lower their eyes.

  “Try what you’ve made,” I urged, if only for our amusement.

  “Fine.” Aziza nodded. “But only to please you.”

  The slave showed her what she must do, and she listened carefully. She held the bow with ease, a broad smile bursting upon her face. Her very first arrow hit the mark. I could see the surprise on the slave’s face.

  “You have a warrior inside you!” he remarked.

  “Pure luck.” Aziza dropped the bow and went to gather the fallen arrows, admiring her handiwork, making certain each feather was in place. “The phoenix always prevails,” she said. “Whoever Amram strikes will fall before him.”

  Shirah had remained inside the dovecote. Now she came to the doorway. Her expression was trancelike, difficult to read. She had changed since Nahara’s departure, becoming more wary and withdrawn. Some people whispered she had the ability to see through our world into the next. If this was indeed true, then for Shirah the future was not a distant place. We, who had no idea what was to be, sat in the courtyard enjoying ourselves, applauding as Aziza hit the target again and again, her agility and grace a revelation to us all.

  As for Shirah, she only watched, the way one might keep a wary eye on a swarm of bees already in flight, when it was too late to wave them away or return them to the hive. When the damage had already been done.

  BEFORE LONG the new year was upon us, a time for celebration. But we entered into the holiday of Rosh Hashanah frugally and without joy. Our tables were set with simple things, gourds and leeks, a few thin partridges, lentil salads, yogurt cheese. Yael brought some of this meager feast to her friend Tamar. The Essene woman was grateful, and in return her son, Yehuda, a dreamy boy who was often climbing trees in the orchard when he should have been at his studies, surprised my grandsons with the gift of a carved spinning top. The children were delighted with their present; they were happy enough with so little. They didn’t notice how Yehuda stared at them, curious once he’d discovered they didn’t possess the power of speech. Noah and Levi seemed to accept their plight, however. They made the best of things, ignoring the stares that greeted them in the plaza from the curious who tried to guess what had caused them to become mute. The boys enjoyed the new baby in the house, spending hours entertaining Arieh with his rattle, or with gourds made into flutes, and now with the clever little top Yehuda had fashioned.

  Arieh seemed drawn to my grandsons’ sweet silence, his eyes following them around our chamber. We catered to our little lion, who threw back his head to laugh when my grandsons made shadows dance on the wall. Already when they played a hiding game with him, ducking behind a length of fabric, he called out for them with a shout, chortling and cooing until my grandsons silently reappeared, so still they might have indeed been shadows rather than flesh-and-blood boys.

  This new year was especially bitter for me. Every piece of fruit I cut in half possessed a flavor I couldn’t abide. What was sweet, I had grown to despise. I ate bitter greens, and was accustomed to the taste of salt on my tongue. I went to the synagogue and stood with the women in the back. Men must not be distracted by women, but what of women who were distracted by their own thoughts? I recited the prayers I knew by heart, but my voice was hesitant, listless.

  I had grown so pale that Yael asked if I had fallen ill. I said no, but I could no longer bring myself to go to the dovecotes in the morning. Instead I chose to remain on my pallet, my face to the wall. I saw shadows as my grandsons passed in and out of the threshold. I saw all that had happened in the desert every time I closed my eyes.

  A year had passed since my daughter’s life had been taken. On the Day of Atonement, I went to the synagogue to say the prayers of lamentation, but my loss was like an arrow piercing through me, and these rituals were not enough to dull the pain. Melancholy was around me like a shroud, my sorrow sewn to me with the black thread demons are said to use. When I went back into the plaza, people avoided me. They could see the darkness I carried. Even my grandsons shrank from me, preferring to sit beside Yael and hear her stories. There was only one individual who might understand me, one who’d walked the same path and stood beneath the same sky.

  Surely, Yoav was somewhere in a darkened corner, aching as I did.

  IT WAS EVENING when I went to the barracks. I had not left my chamber for several days, other than to pray in the synagogue. If you do not leave your bed, you become unused to walking. If you do not forgive yourself, you cannot forgive anyone else. I had disposed of the beasts at the oasis, but they had disposed of me as well. The woman I had been, she who had awoken to the scent of bread baking, who swept the steps each morning with complete certainty that the new day would be like any other, had vanished. I was a shell, a beetle, a shock of flesh stitched through with demon thread.

  The warriors were at prayer on this evening. I noticed an enormous pile of rocks had been chiseled into smooth, hard balls, to be used in a catapult should we be attacked. These rocks were piled high where before there had been lengths of wood. Now the wood was used up, and there was little enough of it to be found on the surrounding cliffs, only a few stray sunstruck bushes with bleached, scaly bark that smoldered rather than burned when tossed upon a fire. It was the planting season, but the air smelled like an oven in which bread had burned for days. No one worked the fields; protection from the elements and from our enemies occupied us all. I wondered what my husband would have thought of a world that was too hot for bread, too brutal for human kindness.

  I waited beneath the remnants of a mulberry tree not far from the barracks. The leaves rustled in the dark. The sound echoed like a rattle, or perhaps it was more like a snakeskin
shaken in the wind. I sat on the stump of a tree whose bounty had once fed a king. Soon the young warriors returned from their prayers. They took up their work even on this holiest of days. I spied the great assassin of Jerusalem, Bar Elhanan, cleaning the flat bronze blades of spears with rags and sand as though he were a slave himself. He had come to my home several times, only mumbling a greeting to me but lighting up when he saw Arieh, whom he sat upon his knee. I glimpsed Yael’s brother as well, out in the field where he vied with his friends in a contest to see whose eye and aim were best and who among them could shoot an arrow through one of the narrow windows set into stone, made for pouring hot oil and boiling water onto enemies should they be foolish enough to try to breach the wall.

  I waited so long I began to hear the echoes of owls in the caves. The warriors retreated to the barracks. As the assassin crossed the plaza, I saw the age in his step, the heaviness of his burden, for he carried all the cruelty he’d been party to on his shoulders. I had resented his desire to come to my chamber because he had taken to visiting his grandson, but in that moment I felt I could not judge his actions in this world, not after all I’d done.

  The moon was in the center of the sky watching over me, lonely, cold. Still I stayed. At last my son-in-law came through the plaza, his ax in hand, his expression brooding. He was still a young man, though his hair was white. His arms were bare beneath his prayer shawl. I saw that he had wrapped several thin lengths of sharp-edged bronze around his muscled forearms; the fierce, bloodied twists were meant to turn every move he made into excruciating self-punishment. Such abuse was not allowed; it was the mourning practice of nomads and barbarians. Still, he had done as he pleased, breaking our laws. There were bands of bloody scars where he had cut directly into his flesh with a knife, a row of injuries set above his dark blue veins. The self-inflicted marks were the blue of the hyssop when it bloomed, my daughter’s favorite flower. Around them arose bruises that were the gorged color of plums, her favorite fruit.