The Dovekeepers: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  It was water that saved us, protecting us from the flames that flickered and from Death’s grasping hands. We had hurried down the stone steps, breathless in the dark, as Death surged above us, before we slipped into the water, as though we were fish, for our people are sister and brother to such creatures, and that is why we can endure where others are doomed to perish.

  In Alexandria, the mornings are pale, the air so damp it seems a world of water until the sun breaks through in yellow bands of light. I can see the harbor as I prepare cups of black tea, sesame candies, sweet oranges cut in quarters. There are three black goats in the barn, a dozen sheep behind the fence, a white donkey who is so swift he raises clouds of red dust when he runs. There have been disruptions in this city for our people, but we have managed to remain.

  Arieh and Yonah play in the garden after their lessons, hiding in the reeds beside a pond where herons come to feed. There is a white ibis who has laid claim to our fountain. She stands on one slim leg and drinks water, lifting her head to the heavens. Perhaps the one we left behind has come to us in the guise of this creature, for she observes us carefully, and with compassion.

  Revka’s grandsons are no longer children but men whose shadows are so tall I am startled they belong to those who were once the boys to whom I told stories so they might sleep through the night. Now it is Revka and I who toss and turn as we dream of men who refused to surrender and women who were ruled by devotion. We remember everything they were fighting for and everyone they loved and were loyal to. We remember the way the world looked when it was ruled by war.

  In the evening when the sky is struck with gauzy vermilion light, in the hour when the space between worlds opens before the inky blue night sifts down to earth, women come to the back gate to ask for the Witch of Moab. They wear their finest clothes, leather sandals that hush their steps, gold signet rings and bracelets adorning their slim fingers and wrists, black kohl rimming their eyes. They offer me gold and silver coins, strands of pearls. In return they ask that I throw the bones of birds to divine their futures. They ask for marjoram and rue, for amulets and potions, for good health, for children to be born and enemies to vanish. Always, they ask for love. I open the book where these recipes are written, the ink still fresh even though the parchment has turned brown, as if I held a sheaf of leaves in my hands.

  The women who arrive call me clever, cunning, beautiful, wise. They tell me their secrets and speak of violations and of dreams. They confide what they would never admit to another even though I am a stranger. I do the best I can on their behalf. I have learned divination from a wise woman, but I learned how to listen from a ghost.

  I often take the winding cobbled road to the harbor to watch the great lantern that is lit there in the evenings in the lighthouse on the island of Pharos, one of the seven wonders of the world. I look for the ships that come from Greece, blowing across the sea, their huge white sails filling with wind from the four corners of the earth. Water surrounds us. When the Nile overflows, the fields turn green and there are great celebrations, lanterns strung from trees, drumming all night long, dancers in veils and long skirts. The river runs every shade of blue that has ever been known to humankind: ink and turquoise and lapis, indigo, teal, cerulean, and ultramarine. Yet what I long for most is the desert. Ivory, alabaster, the rocks that caused my feet to bleed, the knife to mark off days, the man I loved. In the evenings the scent of that arid land comes across from Judea and reminds me of who I used to be. My hair is perfumed and braided, but at night I remove the pins and let it fall loose down my back.

  When I sit in the darkness, the birds come to me. They still know me for who I am.

  I am the girl in the desert, even though I am so far away.

  I am the woman who was saved by doves, for when I saw them rise up in a cloud above Masada at the hour when darkness reigned, I knew that we must escape.

  We were in the kitchen of the palace, waiting for Mal’ach ha-Mavet to walk through the door in the form of one of the ten death-givers who would come to us to slit our throats. Revka and the children were huddled together, listless, as dumbfounded as the sheep who edge toward the butcher when called and herded by bells. I paced the black and white mosaic floor, then went to the door, eagerly scanning the crowd. I was hopeful that Shirah would soon appear, returning to us with Aziza and Adir safely retrieved from the mayhem. But the more I watched the more I trembled, for bodies were piled up in the plaza and the blood was like a river, a tide that fed the olive trees and the date palms and the garden that had turned to ash. There was incessant wailing, but soon the echoing cries gave way to an uncanny silence. Shirah had once told me that silence was the only thing we had to fear. It was our true enemy, signifying that, like the footprints that were swept away in a storm, we had disappeared from God’s sight.

  Yonah cried suddenly, breaking the silence with the sweet voice of one who demands to be fed. I still nursed Arieh, and when the newborn cried, I felt my milk come in. In that instant I knew that, despite the death that encircled us, I was still alive.

  The fortress was burning from the inside out, ravaged by our own people. Every home had been lit aflame, every possession cast upon a bonfire that flared up with the wind and was quickly burning out of control, the sparks smoldering on rooftops and in the leaves of the few trees that had not been cut down to build the inner wall. Many bodies had already burned to ash, and those ashes rose up to bring about a night that was the darkest we had ever known. It was the eve of Passover, but there was no manna as our people had known in their escape from slavery in Egypt, only the black sky and a scrim of smoke. We breathed in the bones of our people—their desires, their petty differences, their faith—all martyred, vanishing into the dusky, murderous air.

  There were no stars, and darkness reigned, as it did before the first day of creation. But then the doves lifted upward through the smoke, as though they themselves were stars. I wondered if manna had appeared in this way as our people wandered in the desert for forty years, if it had floated above the earth as a dove might, a message to let us know we were meant to survive.

  Because birds do not fly at night, I knew the doves in flight were the sign Shirah had vowed she would send to me. She, who had cared for me when I was a motherless child in Jerusalem, once again watched over me. She had opened the doors of the dovecotes, as we were now to open the doors for ourselves.

  I took Shirah’s daughter in my arms and held her along with my son. To me, they might have been twins, the one newly born, the other twenty months in this world, one no dearer to me than the other. I instructed Revka to stop weeping, for we must flee. We had no time for death, I told her, surprised by my fierce certainty.

  Revka stared at me, thinking I had gone mad, for we were the captives of the Romans and of our own people and of fate. We had been told to be indifferent to the world we had no choice but to lose and to embrace death. But the children in my arms were squirming, alive, destined for something more.

  We had been commanded to sacrifice rather than surrender, and I might have complied, if not for the children. Once I explained myself, Revka was quick to agree. We would do anything to save those in our care. Revka had done so at the waterfall when death stalked her grandsons. As for me, I was not about to lose another lion. I could not yield to our leader’s commands. If this was treachery, then I was a traitor indeed.

  But I had broken laws before, and God, who had witnessed my sins, had forgiven me.

  I hurried Revka and the children. Yehuda hesitated, for he had been taught not to combat violence but to accept it and was troubled to think he might disrespect his people. I spurred him on by reminding him that his mother had entrusted him to us so that he might live; that was her intention and he must honor her will above all other motives.

  I raised a small rug to reveal a door that had been fashioned in the floor of the kitchen, meant for the escape of the king. Aziza had once confided to me that she’d used this exit in order to meet Amram. No one knew o
f this doorway but the king who had been gone for a hundred years.

  We entered the space below the floor, hushed, slinking into the shadows. I pulled the door closed behind us, shutting out every glimmer of light. We took the stairs into the cellar. Holding hands, we moved in the dark, swiftly and in silence, as the rats do. Noah and Levi were used to silence, for it had become part of their nature. Yehuda was diligent and hushed. Even Yonah and Arieh seemed to sense that without their silence we would be caught up in death’s net. They did not whimper or cry but instead clung to me without complaint.

  I could not help but think of my brother, one of the ten who had been chosen by our leader. I wondered if he still wore that square of blue silk on his armor, if he remembered the day I had come to him beneath the flame tree and begged him to put away his knife. Perhaps that knife was all he had now, the only thing he cared about or trusted or was loyal to. I said a prayer for him. I think I knew the answer to my questionings, because the prayer I murmured on his behalf was a lamentation sung in memory of the dead to bring peace in the World-to-Come.

  We went through the stone chamber, breathing in the dank air, not stopping until we came upon another set of stairs, which would bring us to a heavy wooden door. That door, once pushed ajar, led us into the open air. There we stood, the bitter reek of smoke claiming us, the wind in threads carrying sparks of the fires that had been set, along with the writhing spirits of the dead.

  Revka took my arm, and we gazed at each other, needing no words to understand the pact made between us.

  We intended to live.

  I kept Shirah’s newborn girl wound in my shawl so that she might remain quiet and unseen, while Arieh rode upon my hip, his dark eyes wide, his hands clutching tightly to my tunic. When we emerged into the night and the door to the tunnel had shut behind us, it was as though we had entered through the first gate to Gehennom, the doorway into the valley of hell. The scene we had stumbled upon hardly seemed like earth but rather a world that was aflame with punishments for the wicked. Or perhaps this was a test for the faithful. Could we face hell and walk through fire without hesitation, or would we sink to our knees and give up the life God had granted us?

  We could not go back now. Our world was ravaged, it had disappeared from God’s grasp. Revka and the boys were reluctant to go on, for there were crowds all around and they were afraid we would be sighted. Stay in the shadows, I told them, for that was what I’d done in the wilderness when I wished to go unnoticed by the birds who came to me.

  I asked Revka where she had first seen Shirah, for that was where Shirah had instructed me to flee. I assumed she meant for us to run to the dovecotes and hide there, or wait for her by the Snake Gate, but Revka whispered a location that surprised me: She had seen Shirah many times, but she had not clearly seen her for who she was until she stumbled upon her in a cistern, the largest one, situated in the deepest cave carved into this mountain, down hundreds of plaster steps, set in the farthest field. That was where Shirah meant for us to go.

  We made our way through the madness around us. Edging around the barracks, we passed the bonfire that was flaming out of control. Bodies had now been heaped upon it, alongside provisions and the remains of animals, all that we had in our warehouses and storerooms. Though the smoke was acrid, I stopped, stunned, for it was there, beside the piles of weapons, that I saw my father for the last time, lying among the slain soldiers.

  I went to him and knelt beside him so that I might close his eyes. From his expression I understood that he was now beside his beloved wife, the woman with the flame-colored hair who was also my mother. We had that, at least, in common. Beside him on the ground lay the gray cloak. He might have attempted to escape his fate, but he had taken off the cloak so that he would be seen for who he was, the assassin Yosef bar Elhanan, who had been my father and who would remain so for all eternity.

  As I studied his face, serene for the first time, I recalled what he’d said about his talent of stealth. Men often failed to catch sight of what was right before them. They searched for secrets and for what was buried, but what was openly before them in the light blinded them so they could not see. A mouse who went quickly across the table was less likely to be caught than one that stationed itself in the corners of a room, where mice were expected to huddle. An assassin who walks into a room may easily look like any common man if he does so with confidence, with every right to do as he pleases.

  I took my father’s cloak. The others followed, and we moved together as if we had formed a cloud, a mist, nothing human. Quickly, we made our way through the orchard where there had once been almond trees, where pink flowers had floated in the air when the kadim wind arose. Nothing remained here, not a branch, not a bough, although the ground was littered with sparks that glowed with the incandescence of white moths that had been set before us, fallen to the earth.

  More than mere trees had been felled in this now barren orchard, with blood flowing rather than sap, and strands of hair rather than flowers. Corpse after corpse littered the field.

  Revka told her grandsons and Yehuda to think of the dark shapes on the ground as fallen trees, not as men and women and children with their throats slit. The deeds of the death-givers were nearly completed; soon they would set upon one another, for they had stood beside the Water Gate and drawn lots to see who would be the last warrior, the man to take all of his brothers’ sins upon himself and finish the other nine before turning the sword on himself.

  Yet there were still some among our people to be dispatched, and the violence was not completed. We saw a family with four children waiting on the steps of a burning storeroom, silent as ghosts, though they were still in the world of the living, bleary-eyed and trembling. The father of the family was the first to offer his throat to one of the death-givers, as if to teach his children, as he might instruct them on how to gather sheep, or shoot an arrow, or begin their morning prayers with the rising of the sun. But this was not a lesson of beauty or knowledge, only an ugly moment of horror. The children swarmed around their dying father, grasping at his cloak as though by doing so they could retrieve his spirit from the World-to-Come.

  The death-giver was Uri, the warrior who had come for my father and me in the desert, the boy who had been my brother’s friend, a mild young man who had been so awed by this fortress as he described it to me in the greatest detail while we sat around a fire in the wilderness, eating a meal I had procured, a bird I had called to me.

  He had told me of the frescoes of the seven sisters painted by the finest artists from Rome, the baths that were heated by ceramic pipes, the gardens that clung to the cliffs, the palace that faced north so that anyone who resided there would always be gazing toward Jerusalem. We had sat together in the desert in the dwindling light, the scent of the myrtle around us, watching the fire as though observing a fate we didn’t yet understand. We were young, and the desert loomed with its unearthly beauty, the stars glittering above us in such great number we grew dizzy with their light.

  Now the stars were hidden by the rising billows of smoke. Uri murmured the prayer for the dead for the man he had killed. The slain man had been one of the bakers in our marketplace. Revka hesitated when she saw the white apron beneath his prayer shawl as it turned scarlet. It was as though a flag of despair had been waved at her. I grabbed her arm and forced her to follow me, as I followed the doves who were fleeing from the only home they had ever known. Already the baker’s children on the stairs were being dispatched by Uri’s knife; they had gathered together to oblige their slayer, for there was nowhere for them to run.

  Perhaps Revka uttered a groan as she turned from that scene of death, perhaps one of the boys stepped upon a stone or Shirah’s daughter, who had been named for a dove, whimpered and cooed inside my cloak. I hushed her as I hurried the others along, but it was too late. The echo of noise caused Uri to spy us through the dark. He finished his business on the steps in haste—they were only young children, and once they were gone, their mother g
ave no fight but flung her cloak open so that she might be taken from this life.

  Uri came after us, spurred on by his duty. We ran, urging each other on, the boys darting out in front. Our breath was hot, and we all gasped as we ran for our lives. Noah and Levi stopped when they realized their grandmother was no longer among us. Revka had fallen back, unable to keep up. She shouted for us to run on, insisting that we forsake her though Uri was upon her, already restraining her, pleading with her to accept what must be as she fought him off. I wondered if she had stumbled on purpose, to keep the young warrior from gaining on us.

  I told the boys to go forward and handed the babies over to Yehuda before running back to Revka.

  “Go on,” she shouted, waving her arms the way she might have if I were one of the doves who refused to leave the nest.

  She hadn’t thought much of me when I had first come to the dovecote, and she’d been right to be suspicious of me. I hadn’t been anyone worthwhile. A thief who hadn’t known what love meant, a fool with no understanding of what a lion could do if you lay down beside him.

  I’d been a girl from the desert willing to do anything to survive.

  I ran up behind Uri as he held Revka in his grasp. I rushed at him so that I might come at him with more strength, but also so I would not have to see his face. I had the knife that had belonged to Ben Simon, the one he had used on behalf of Zion, given to me to protect myself when he knew that he would die, and that we had sinned, and that I must go on without him.

  I used the dagger before I could consider the weight of my deed, before I could feel the heat of Uri’s blood. When I had trapped the doves in the desert, their deaths had seemed like drifts of white smoke, swift and silent. This was an inferno, an explosion of blood and heat. Uri released Revka and turned to me, stunned, his gaze fixed upon me, as if I were the murderess and he the bird in the net. He moved to grab me and take me down with him, but before he could grasp me, he was struck from behind and he stumbled, lurching forward. He seemed a pale sheaf taken from the furrows of the earth, cut down in harvesting. He fell to the ground like the almond trees in the orchard.