The Dovekeepers: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  It was on that night that our mother decided to change who I was. She took me with her when everyone else was asleep. Even the horses were dreaming, quick, powerful steeds, left to stand in place without need of a rope, loyal to their riders until the day they could no longer run. Most people of Moab rode camels, but your father’s people owned the most beautiful and fierce horses, who were granted water only every third day so that they might have the great attribute of camels and be inured to thirst, their fortitude surpassing that of any of our enemies’ horses. Our mother chanted the song of protection, then she began the naming rites to Ashtoreth. When you change your name, you change your fate as well. The person you had been vanishes, and not even the angels can find you. We stood on the Iron Mountain, beneath the red moon. There was no afterbirth to mark this occasion, no sacrifice to give back to the earth. Instead our mother buried her own monthly blood. Then she cut my arm and let three drops fall into the earth as an offering to the Queen of Heaven.

  My arm burned, and I might have wept, but my heart was full when our mother proudly said I was not to be like anyone else. From that time forward only my mother and God would know of my past life. My name had been Rebekah, but that name disappeared on the night of our blood. I never heard it spoken again. As for your father, he allowed our mother her wish, as he had allowed her to take me with them through the wilderness.

  From then on, I was a boy.

  SHE CALLED ME Aziza, a name of your father’s people. It can mean one who is beloved, but it also means one who is mighty and fierce. There are those who believe the name is an ancient word for archer, one who is never without a weapon, never at anyone’s mercy. That was what our mother wished for me. The people who lived on the Iron Mountain worshiped a great goddess among their gods; they saw the strength in their own women as well. Now when I witness my sister working in the field with the Essene people, adhering to their strict ways, crooning to the goats that she herds, a servant calmly waiting for the End of Days as if she was nothing more than a passive and beautiful ewe herself, I think that flesh and grass are one and the same, so fleeting, changing before our eyes. My sister was made in the country where the sky gleamed silver and the men were fierce. Had her own father spied her walking in the dust behind the Essene men, her head lowered, he would have been ashamed. But no matter how you might bow before others, my sister, the bond between us will last all eternity, until we meet again in a place where nothing can separate us, as it was on the night you were born, in your father’s tent, with my breath inside you and my life the thread that kept you in this world.

  ALL THE WHILE you were growing up, I was your brother. You followed me as the dove follows the fields of grain. I dressed in blue robes, my hair caught up, then tightly braided in the fashion of young boys. Your father taught me to ride a horse, how to use a slingshot and a spear. I was a natural warrior, made for iron. It was my element from the start. Rather than frighten me, it brought me comfort. Metal was cold and heavy and reliable. It did as I asked. In return I was dedicated; there was never a day when I did not speak my gratitude to the sword I carried and the horse I rode.

  Evil spirits have an aversion to metal, and there are those who whisper that the name of iron when invoking it before the Almighty is Barzel, what some believe is a combination of letters taken from the names of the matriarchs of Jacob’s family, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah. Weapons are kept from women, but such a naming suggests that perhaps men fear our talents in war as well as our desire for peace. I was watched after by the grace of the foremothers of our tribe, Rachel and Leah, but I did not walk the same path they had traveled. I never learned what it meant to be a wife. I never worked a loom. I did not go with the girls to welcome births, and for that I was especially thankful. Your birth was enough for me.

  I preferred to be your father’s son, waiting with the horses in silence while the men made their attacks. I held on to the reins as the warriors crept down on foot along the narrow pass to attack caravans traveling west toward Egypt, the carts and fearless horses laden with goods from the east. I helped carry piles of frankincense, strands of lapis and coral and jade, baskets of cardamom and cassia, purses filled with bars and coins of gold. I saw more blood on the ground than any of the girls witnessed at the birthings. I knew things they could not begin to understand: how it felt to ride through the hot night with a spear upon my back. How we swooped across the Iron Mountain, one creature, with one heart, hollering war cries, slick with sweat, darting beneath the moon. On these occasions it was possible to imagine that I had wings and was free as any bird of prey, fierce as any man.

  My secret became my daily life. Our mother made certain that I bathed alone. When my breasts began to show, she bound them with a swathe of linen. That binding made me stand up straight, my full height, so that I might have been cast of iron rather than flesh. I could hit harder than the boys. I was faster, as well, and more nimble with a sword. In time your father grew proud of me, almost as if I was his own, as if our lie was the truth. At night our mother taught me to read and write. I learned Greek and Aramaic and Hebrew. There were girls who teased me and pursued me, as they did all the boys they admired. One kissed me during these games, and I laughed, thinking her a fool. I was above such matters. And yet I was confused, for when my friend Nouri pulled me away so we could flee from the girls, my blood raced. When he grabbed me, his fingers upon my arm stung, as though he’d burned me without meaning to.

  I went to our mother and wept, like any other silly girl, as I told her what had happened. I fought the urge to be close to Nouri, but he drew me to him, as steel calls to steel. Our mother said it was time for me to understand I could never be like those heedless sheep who chased after boys. She told me she had seen my fate. Love would be my undoing. She whispered that she didn’t tell me this out of cruelty, but out of concern. She had thrown down stones on the day of my birth, and my fortune had appeared on the ground before her, a warning she now shared with me, as her mother had once shared the divination of her future with her. I was not to look at boys or think of them as anything but brothers. On the day that I did so, my fate and my undoing would claim me. There were tears in our mother’s eyes as she instructed me. I knew she wanted what was best for me and did not doubt her.

  Not yet.

  It was easy to give her my promise on that day. She embraced me and called me daughter, a dangerous slip of who I had been and was no more.

  I AVOIDED Nouri after that, though he was clearly hurt that I had abandoned him. I didn’t think about his handsome features, the way his face broke into a sudden smile. He wasn’t as good a rider as I anyway; he would never have kept up with me. I was the best among the boys of my age, fearless. When I unbound my breasts to bathe, I felt the wings above my shoulders, twining through the bone, the secret of my gifts, a legacy from the one who was my father, whoever and whatever he might be. I half-believed he might be an angel, for there were such luminous divine creatures, winged, gliding messengers from God, who were said to become entranced with women on earth and visited them in the night, joining themselves to human flesh.

  I rode with the cry of your people in my throat as I chased down rabbits and the shy hyrax who burrow in the rocks and prowl the thickets. I practiced my skill to impress your father, killing my first ibex when I was ten. He said nothing when the ibex stumbled and fell, but I could see what he felt in his expression as I helped to butcher the animal. It was Adar, the time when ibex calves are in the grasslands, but I had killed a huge male. Your father touched my forehead in a blessing for my skill. From a man of such silence, this was high praise.

  I was glad to be a boy in this world of men and to be granted a great honor when your father allowed me to ride beside him. I burst into each day, my black hair braided, my cloak the indigo blue of your father’s people. But our brother had been born, and as he grew everything changed. It was Adir our father looked upon with pride. Perhaps he really had forgotten who I was for all those many years, and onl
y now recalled it was a girl child my mother had refused to leave behind on the first night of their marriage, before we reached the land of Moab and changed who I was meant to be.

  IN THE RAINY SEASON, when there were no caravans, the men journeyed back to other villages, other wives. Your father and his kinsmen never stayed in one place but instead rolled down their tents and set off across the land, leaving their families on the Iron Mountain, visiting other wives and children far from our camp. They rode so far their shadows could hardly be seen by humankind. We stayed behind with the goats and the white-fleeced sheep. There were hundreds in the flock, all adding to your father’s wealth, and they needed tending. The acacia trees were abloom with yellow flowers, and the fields of grass were so tall we could disappear and never be seen when we ran across the meadow. At night the bats flew together in one dark cloud, dropping down to the trees to drink the juice of the figs. The air was mild, and the rain turned the air the same shade of blue as the cloaks your people wore.

  Our mother did not complain that we stayed behind on the Iron Mountain when your father went off. She had other attachments. When our mother was cast out of Jerusalem, I was not her only pet. She had also brought along two doves, and she was devoted to them. They perched inside a wooden cage and were fed grain and dates. When they drank water, they lifted up their heads as though praising God. Our mother sent them out one at a time, slipping messages into bronze tubes attached to their legs. The doves lifted into the western sky as she tossed them upward, vanishing in a blink. They always returned to her. In time their children and grandchildren did so as well, following the same mysterious route.

  Our mother would wait for their return as dusk fell across the mountains in blue bands. She said the color of the sky reminded her of water, and of the land where she had been a child, before she was sent to Jerusalem. She yearned for the city of Alexandria, a place where the rivers were filled with miraculous creatures and monsters alike, where her mother had sung her to sleep with the same songs she offered us now. Throughout the years we were in Moab, she remained solitary. Perhaps she was thinking of the city of her birth. Perhaps that was why I often saw her weeping.

  When one of the doves reappeared, our mother would become utterly absorbed. If you called to her, she would not hear your voice. If a bee lit upon her hand, she wouldn’t take notice. Unlike your father, who was satisfied, I understood that our mother yearned for something more. Still I couldn’t quite fathom her expression, not while I stood there barefoot, dressed as a boy. Only now do I understand. She was a woman in love.

  Throughout the years we lived with your father, she was sending messages to another man, the one who was my father. Once I found a missive he sent back to her, written on a tiny scrap of parchment, smaller than a thumbnail. I knew then that an angel was not involved in the matter of my birth, for angels come to us in dreams and visions, not upon parchment. Our mother thought she had folded the note into her book of spells, but instead the message had dropped into my path. Perhaps the angels did indeed set it there, so I would know the truth about my origins, or perhaps a demon plucked it from between the pages. My true wife had been written. My mother had taught me the language of scholars, and because I could read Hebrew, I knew of her betrayal of your father, the man who taught me everything I knew, how to ride and how to hunt and how to be loyal to those I loved.

  I tossed the parchment into the bonfire that night. As I did, it flew up like a wasp to sting me. There is a mark, beneath my left eye, that remains from that time. Because of this I can never forget what I found. Sometimes people imagine I am crying, they believe they’ve spied a tear, but they’re wrong. I spent the first part of my life without tears, as any boy would. The mark beneath my eye is made of fire. It’s the single element that can overwhelm iron.

  WE STAYED until the summer when I turned fourteen. I knew that I bled even though the boys I ran with did not, but that did not change who I was, the fiercest among them, the rider with wings, Aziza, who carried both compassion and power within. I merely had to keep my blood secret, as I was to keep my body from view. The women here were not considered niddah when they bled, so I was not committing any true sin when I keep my secret and stayed among people during that time of the month. On hunting trips I insisted I was a restless sleeper and needed to make camp alone. When the others relieved themselves, I joked that I was a camel and could hold my water for days, waiting until I could sneak off on my own.

  By then your father had given Adir a fine horse, the one I’d trained upon, no longer mine. Now I rode an old white stallion whose time had passed and who would never again win a race no matter how I might kick at him. Your father’s people were moving south, to Petra, giving up their traveling ways. The city that had arisen from the red rocks, taken from the edge of the deep, nearly endless ravine, had begun to call them to its great beauty and the settled life they might have there. There was a pool reputed to be larger than any lake and terraced gardens that were incomparable. It was said that every wanderer came home to this place, and that even these wild men who longed for freedom, who had spent their lives in pursuit of open grasslands, could not ignore the voice of Petra. And there was another reason—the Romans might attack our camp, despite their pledge of peace and their fear of the legendary courage of the tribesmen. There was a rumor that, should any blood be spilled upon the iron cliffs of Moab, a dozen men would spring from the blood of the first. Perhaps the men were tired from their shifting homes, their many wives, and were eager for a single residence and a life of ease.

  My mother pleaded with your father to let us remain in the mountains when he and his brothers and uncles answered the call to Petra. We could camp with those who were stationed to guard against the legion, should the Romans change their peace with the tribesmen into war. She said her spirit could not be contained in a city, even one so glorious. She told her husband she had become accustomed to this tent and to these stars, but I knew that wasn’t the truth. There was something more. Something your father had not seen, though he had the keen sight of a falcon. Something only a woman would notice. In that way, I was still female enough.

  On the day the women began to pack up the camp, pulling down the tents, gathering their kettles and their rugs, a dove arrived. I saw it float down among us as if it were a part of the sky that had wrenched away to plummet to earth. There was a violet chill in the air, and I gazed up in alarm, unsettled by the dove’s arrival. I had the sense that everything was about to change and that the past was already smoldering into ash. Our mother had asked to stay behind, but your father had refused her request. He wanted her with him. He told her to take all of the belongings that mattered to her, for she might never come to the Iron Mountain again.

  Our mother went up to the mountaintop with the bird in a basket, so that she could be alone to read the words that had been sent to her. I don’t know what the message was, but when she returned to camp her expression was set.

  We packed up, and it seemed we would be leaving for Petra in the morning, but my mother did not wait for the sun to rise. She woke me the instant your father set off with his brothers to ensure that the route to the city would be safe for the women and children who followed. As soon as he was gone, we readied Adir’s fast horse. We had my father’s great racehorse as well, for he had taken one of the mares, leaving his own steed behind for my mother, a mark of his devotion to her. The horse was called Leba, a name which meant heart. He was an animal so loyal he would never have gone with us had he not known me so well, but I had often fed and watered him. I’d always wished he would be mine someday, though I knew your father would never give Leba to me. Adir was the true son.

  We took only the doves in their wooden cage and a single woven satchel of our belongings, along with a leather bag of water, and another bag of yogurt and cheese. I saw my mother reach for the book of spells from her mother and the ironwood box in which she kept the journal. She wore the gold amulets that had been given to her in Alexandria when fa
te seemed unlikely to bring her to Moab, and the earrings your father gave to her on their wedding day. She left behind all of the rest, masses of jewels your father had presented to her. There were jade necklaces, turquoise and gold bracelets, silver and lapis beads, gold rings set with precious gems none of us had seen before, some of which, rare opals, moved, incandescent, containing both water and fire within the stones. She laid out the jewels tenderly and with gratitude on the pallet where they had slept, but she showed no regret. Your father was the man who had rescued us but not the man she loved.

  OUR MOTHER’S FACE was transformed all the while we rode west, as though she was young again. I had spent my entire life beside her; now she had become wholly unknown in a way I couldn’t define.

  It was true that you and our brother did not want to go. Adir sulked and fussed, and you called out for your father. You might have gotten us killed with your cries, but we rode so quickly that the wind took your voice up to heaven. We left the horses at the shore of the Salt Sea, so they might return to their rightful owner. We weren’t thieves. Your father’s horse turned and raced back the way we had come. Adir’s horse followed. In a flash they were gone. Only their hoof marks in the sand remained, and even that disappeared as we stood watching, for it now seemed that our lives in the tents had been a dream. If we ran back the way we had come, surely we would find nothing on the mountain where we’d lived for so long, not even ashes.

  The only mark of that time was the scar beneath my eye.

  PEOPLE SAY that our mother walked across the water and that Lilith’s thirteen demons held the hem of her dress, but in fact we met a man with a flat boat. A simple, greedy man who wanted a high fee to take us across the water. He looked at my mother with his black eyes, happy to have her as his price. Instead, my mother traded the first jewelry your father had given her, the earrings she always wore. They were rubies from India, captured from a caravan of men who spoke a language no one had ever heard before. The rubies reminded me of your father, how pure they were, how elemental, so brilliant and red they seemed hot to the touch. I turned away, unable to watch this exchange. I had seen your father’s blood shed on many occasions. Despite the Romans’ rumors and stories, it had never been blue.