When I became so big I could no longer hide my size, Bar Elhanan sent me from his house. The dear girl who had been my daughter clutched my cloak and wept. I assured her that her brother would watch over her, warning him that he must always do so. Yael rushed after me, bringing me water. It was all she had to offer, but to me, in my loneliness, it seemed a great gift. I wept to leave her behind. I told her that if God was willing we would see each other in this world once more before we walked into the World-to-Come.
THE LAST TIME I met with Eleazar in Jerusalem rain was falling. Such a thing was a joy, unexpected and needed. The dust settled, the boughs of the trees lifted their arms to the sky. I became alive again, the girl in the fountain, the swimmer in the river, the one without fear of drowning. I stood in the street outside my aunt’s house until I was drenched. At last I saw him, shifting through the yard, liquid in his movements, becoming a part of the torrent that fell upon us, flooding the streets, forcing people to remain inside their homes.
He alone could quench my thirst.
I had called him to me as I had learned to call the rain. There was not a whisper and yet he had heard. I believed that he would divorce his wife and bring me into his home, convinced that, unlike other women who went to the practitioners of keshaphim, desperate, willing to pay any price for a charm, I would never have need of love spells.
But Eleazar had come to tell me that his wife insisted she had proof that I had been in his bed. She vowed that the pallet they slept upon had been tinted red from the henna on my skin. My aunt, who despised me, had told her of my tattoos, to forewarn her, and therefore she had looked beneath the blanket she had woven for her husband, and found my mark. My beloved had promised me that I was as much his wife as she was, but now I saw the truth in his expression, his longing for me entwined with sorrow. If the color red had been found in the place where we had lain together, then it had foreseen my fate and was indeed my blood, for my heart had begun to weep.
I was overcome with a kind of dread I hadn’t felt before, not even when I left my mother. I remembered what she had vowed on the day I saw my future. There was a part of me that wished I had remained by her side, though I knew our house had been taken from us. New tenants surely stood beside the fountain where the white lilies grew. I cried over those rare flowers when I wanted to cry over my fate. I said I could not live without them. I became frantic, uncontrollable. My cousin was beset by worry; he had me wait while he ran to the market and brought back a vial of perfume. The gift should have pleased me, for it carried the scent of lilies, but the fragrance had come from the red lilies of the fields of Moab, not the ones I had known as a child. I wept even more, for now I understood the loss I had felt when I was only a little girl, no older than Yael, and I saw my future in the Nile.
Eleazar promised he would plead with the elders of his family so that I might be allowed to join their household as his second wife. Such circumstances were fairly common, especially among the wealthy or in towns where there were too few men or if a first wife was unable to bring forth a child. My beloved was an honorable man but young; he not yet dared to defy his parents. He would learn this lesson well as he joined with the Zealots who defied the priests in the Temple, but for now he was at the mercy of his family.
I assured my cousin I would wait for him to come for me, and yet I knew he would not. The marks his wife swore had tainted their marriage bed had ruined me, and no man of any worth could take me for his wife. His family would not allow it.
*
I FOUND a chamber where I could stay behind a house of keshaphim. I’d noticed the dim shack as I went through the marketplace, for my mother had gone to such places in Alexandria, and I’d kept this in mind. She had instructed me that I might find refuge in times of trial among women who practiced magic. Three old women who were sisters lived there. They were unmarried, rumored to be witches who turned into dragons at night. In truth, they were kindhearted, poor, but wise in the ways of magic. In return for being allowed to sleep there, I cooked the meals and learned to bake bread in their small clay oven, making certain to always keep aside the burnt offering to sacrifice to God so that He would not forsake me. My cousin did not return. I dreamed about him for days on end, and then he disappeared from my dreams. Now when I woke from sleep I was gasping, drowning in my dreams in the river where my mother had taken me. For the first time I realized that, although the fish had come to me, he had also swum away from me. This had been the reason I was bereft as I stood knee-deep in the Nile.
I begged the sisters for a love charm, for one cannot complete such an amulet for oneself. They fashioned an incantation bowl from white Jerusalem clay, said to be the purest on earth. Before it was fired, I was to write upon it with a sharpened reed. Holy angels, I adjure you just as this shard burns so shall the heart of Eleazar ben Ya’ir burn after me.
But in the firing, the bowl broke. We collected the pieces, though they burned our fingers. It was a bad omen, but I took the shards and wrapped them in linen and soaked them with my own tears.
When my time came to bring a life into this world, the three sisters were my midwives. My firstborn’s birth was difficult. I was young and frightened. Since that time I have seen a hundred births, but my own blood terrified me, and the tearing heat inside me nearly broke me apart. I wanted to give up, and let the Angel of Death take me, but one of the sisters leaned close to urge me on.
Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. 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.
I named my child Rebekah and saw that she had her father’s eyes. That was all I would have of him. That was my punishment from God.
I WAS CALLED to stand before the elders who were to judge me in the ceremony of the sotah in their attempt to prove my guilt as an adulteress. My situation had become a legal matter, for his mother and wife had accused me of adultery and of having sexual relations with demons. They unbraided my hair and let it hang disheveled to shame me and show me as one of Lilith’s disciples. They seemed to forget I was only a child, for I had turned thirteen just days before. They wrote God’s name upon parchment, submerged in a cup of water so that the word might be erased into the liquid. I would be forced to drink the Almighty’s name. If I sickened, it meant my impurity would not accept what was pure. I would then be revealed to be an adulteress.
But water was my element, and it did not forsake me. I drank it all, yet stood before them unharmed and unrepentant. I proclaimed that I had not committed adultery, and that was the truth. Eleazar ben Ya’ir alone was a husband to me.
They held my child up to examine her. She was a small being, with a dark cap of hair. She looked exactly as I had when I was born, my image in nearly every way. Those who judged us were nearly satisfied that there was no proof of any wrongdoing. The dark girl child was mine. There was no sign of the father, whether he be human or some unspeakable creature, no wings, no horns, no demon’s mark. They almost let us go. Until they found their proof in the color of her eyes. “The eyes of a demon,” Eleazar’s wife testified, and perhaps at that moment she believed this to be true.
Eleazar’s father had him restrained so that he might not come to me. That night he managed to send a servant with two doves in a wooden cage, trained to return to him, devoted to each other as we were. I took the doves and my child into the cart they used to expel me from their sight. I left my beloved behind, but in my shawl I kept what was left of the incantation bowl. I brought the broken ceramic pieces to the Iron Mountain when I went with the man who paid for me with a few coins. I used turpentine gum to set the ravaged shards back in place. Then I waited. Years passed with waiting, a lifetime. When at last my beloved sent for me, I broke the bowl myself, certain I had no need of such charms anymore.
But when I threw the bones of the doves in the tower so that I might read what was to come, I knew I had been mistaken.
OUR WARRIORS went forth in small groups, with spears, in silence, invisible and
deadly. They struck the slaves who built the wall on the cliffs behind us and the soldiers who oversaw them. But as soon as our enemies fell, others replaced them, as though they were not flesh and blood but mere stalks of wheat.
When our people stole weapons, however, those were not so easily replaced. The Romans’ anger was brutal at this offense, their retaliation fierce. They showed they would not tolerate our ways, capturing the warriors who had raided their storerooms, swarming upon them in such a great number that our people disappeared in their grasp.
The Roman slaves had set timbers deep in the earth and erected a platform for all to see. They crucified our people in our own valley, then they cut the heads from the bodies, so that our loved ones’ spirits would wander. They threw the heads upon the ground and rolled them to the lion. But the beast refused to take them. He lay down and would not touch a single one.
It was still Adar, the month of almonds and of good fortune, the time when Yael first came to the dovecote. Perhaps our people were still fortunate. A whisper went up among us that the beast that had been chained was our lion, on our side. Among the warriors a wager went out: whoever freed the lion would give the greatest glory to God. He who did so would be blessed and would bring God’s favor among our people.
NO MATTER HOW we might tear at our garments and sing lamentations, there was no end to our grief, for without bodies or bones, we could not honor our people. The families of the murdered shrieked and went to priests, begging for vengeance. There was not a man among us who would not have given his life in exchange for our people’s freedom, but a life was nothing to our enemies. We were like the locusts they could kill without effort, with a single slap.
My son tried to drag himself from his bed, using a crutch he’d fashioned from a fallen limb of the tree behind our chamber. He wished to fight alongside his brothers, but Aziza begged him to let her go in his place. She sat at our table and chopped off her long hair, then braided what little was left tightly, close to her head. She instructed her beast of a dog to stand guard and make certain Adir did not leave our chamber. At her command the huge mastiff stood beside the boy, growling, bits of foam flecking the corners of his mouth.
“Am I a prisoner?” poor Adir demanded to know.
He was still a child in my eyes, even though he was the age I had been when I was expelled from Jerusalem to find my way in the wilderness, when I had been judged as a woman and had already given away my innocence.
Yehuda could keep Adir company, watching over him to make certain he would not flee, for the Essene boy would not fight alongside our people, and though he remained with us, and Revka cared for him as if he was her own, he was set apart by his beliefs.
“Are you my jailer as well?” Adir asked his friend.
“I would never be that,” Yehuda replied.
The Essene boy rose up and opened the door so that Adir might leave if that was indeed his desire. But Adir was exhausted from our arguments; he leaned back on his pallet, his face ashy. His warrior life had been taken from him; only a part of him remained. Although I felt compassion, I was also relieved. Selfishly, I did not wish to risk my son’s life.
My daughter was another matter. She had been cast from iron.
OUTSIDE there was a rising madness. The Romans had begun an attack of fiery arrows that came to us in a blazing hail. A section of the orchard had caught fire, and even when the flames had been put out, our people hurrying to quench them with jars of precious water, the scent of burning fruit drifted everywhere. While our trees were destroyed, while our children breathed in smoke, while our garments singed and turned black with ashes, the Romans set up an arena for cockfights so that they might have some amusement in the evenings. When this bored them, they set their slaves against each other with spears and chains, for to the Romans, slaves’ lives were worth no more than the roosters’.
We turned away and did not look down upon them. We covered our ears so that we would not hear the slaves cry out for their mothers and their wives and for their God, who appeared to have forsaken them.
ON THE DAY my son was called to duty, as all warriors were, I walked into the yard with Aziza. Some might say I was wrong to give her up so easily and allow her to fight among the men, but her fate had already been written. Perhaps I might have prevented her call to war had I not changed her name, or perhaps this was her fate no matter what she was named. She was on the path of her element. She had always chosen metal, something cold and sharp. It suited her, as it had suited her to ride in the grasslands.
Before she left, I offered her the second gold amulet of protection that I wore at my throat, but she shook her head.
“I’m protected,” she assured me. “Have no fear.”
When she lifted her scarf, I noticed the silver medallion with the image of Solomon attacking a female demon. No woman would be allowed to wear such an amulet. Her courage brought me pride, as well as a cloud of regret.
“We should have stayed where we were,” I said ruefully.
I had begun to dream about the Iron Mountain. In my dreams there were forty acacia trees, and in each tree there were forty black birds. I was beneath their branches, and I found I could not move. My feet had become entwined with the roots of a tree, my arms the limbs that were covered with yellow flowers. The bees were called to me, and they swarmed about me, and I wept, for I could not taste the sweetness of their honey, though it was all around.
I had done what I could to stop my daughters from following my fate. None of it had prevented what my mother told me had been written before they were born, before I went to Jerusalem and stood at the well and did as I pleased even though I knew where it would lead me. Love would bring about my undoing. That was the reason I had tried my best not to love my children, so I would not bring my curse upon them. In that, I had failed.
“We were meant to be here,” Aziza assured me.
Her skin was burned by the sun. I noticed the scar that was beneath her eye shone white in her darkened face. She could have been a beautiful woman, instead she was a warrior. She could have been a boy who walked through the streets of the red city of Petra, instead she was my daughter, who had followed me to this fortress, and whom I loved despite the many ways I had tried not to do so.
When she went to the barracks, I thought of my mother, who had stood in the courtyard beside the fountain to watch me leave Alexandria. Now I understood she had known she would not see me again. My heart dropped because I had viewed my own future and what was to come in the bones I had thrown on the tower floor.
I would lose everything I had.
Something was ending, but it was also beginning. I could feel the life within me move and shift. Creation had begun at the Temple mount, and perhaps it would once again if everything else disappeared. Already, there were men speaking of a third Temple, one that would arise in the future, more glorious than any other. From destruction there would be light, and the first words would again be spoken out of a holy silence, for that is always the beginning.
I walked to the wall, my cloak around me. I rested my hand upon my abdomen, and upon my daughter who was not yet born. My beloved wished for a son, as all men did, but I knew I would have another daughter. I always carried a girl child in the same way, high, under my heart. I wanted another world for her, not this mayhem below us. There were still pools of rain on the valley floor. In any other time we would have been grateful. Wild goats and deer would have come to drink. Falcons and herons would have dropped from the sky to bathe, and the ravens, who had fed Elijah in the wilderness, would have come to us with plums in their beaks.
Now there was only the lion, whose chain allowed him to roll in the water. He was covered with mud, his huge paws leaving cleft marks in the damp earth. I forced myself to look away from this great beast, for I could not bear to see him so debased and tamed. I was reminded of the trained Syrian bears one could see in the alleys of Alexandria and Jerusalem, but this was much worse, for the lion had been humiliated in his own
land, dispossessed as we were, the lord of nothing but stones.
I gazed down upon the sheer cliff in my grief. As I did, I spied a black goat along the mountainside, one that had escaped from the Essenes’ cave. He was scrambling among the rocks, lost and forsaken, unable to find the rest of his flock.
It was a sign of the darkness to come.
ONE ROMAN SOLDIER noticed the goat, but one was all it took. He told his comrades, and they went after the creature hastily, first in sport, then with the relentless fervor of hunters. In doing so they stumbled upon the camp of those who wanted only peace. Yehuda came to the wall to stand beside me as the Romans began their ascent to the limestone caves beneath us. It was as though his mother, still among her people, had called out to him, as my daughter’s heart had called to me. We were helpless to do anything other than watch as the soldiers climbed the cliff. One fell and I was quick to praise God, and I wondered what had become of me that I might pray for a man’s death on the rocks, rejoicing at the sound of his cries.
Those soldiers who managed to reach a plateau in the cliff then sent down ropes to ensure those who followed would have an easier time rising up. As it is said of the angels, we could see what was to happen before it occurred, but like them we were unable to change the outcome. If this was what the angels observed when they gazed upon our world, how we might murder each other and cause one another agony, then I pitied them as I pitied no others.
Our warriors came to send down a volley of arrows, but the arrows fell upon the rocks as if they were birds falling from the sky. Aziza, too, had rushed to the wall, but she was dressed like a woman and therefore helpless, though she could not be restrained from throwing down rocks and I heard the war cry of Moab escape from her. The Roman soldiers had entered the cave, and our weapons could not reach them there. Several of our warriors held Aziza back when she scrambled onto the wall in an attempt to leap into the fray beneath us, for a warrior such as my daughter could not stand idly by and was therefore restrained in ropes.
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