The Dovekeepers

by Alice Hoffman

  “You don’t fight for peace, sister,” Nahara told me. “You embrace it.”

  “Not in the world of your father,” I reminded her.

  Nahara laughed outright, for this was undeniably true. “That was long ago. You were another person then. As was I.”

  “You cried for him when we left. We thought he’d hear you in Petra, that was how loudly you called to him.”

  “I was a child.” Nahara shrugged her narrow shoulders. “My father was the only man I knew. Now”—she nodded to the long trestle table, where Malachi was at work on a text—“I belong to him.” I had heard it said that Malachi wrote so beautifully the angels came to watch, for words were the first thing God created out of the silence and were still the most beautiful of all His creations.

  “Then I will be happy for you,” I said.

  I walked away, leaving the pheasants with my sister, unable to tell her the truth. No matter what she did or whom she loved, I was the one who had given her life in this world, a world she was so eager and ready to leave, one in which there were acacia trees that called the bees to their blossoms, where there were endless fields of grass and cassis.

  No matter what she said, she still belonged to me.

  I WAS WALKING at night, as I had come to do so that I might relish my freedom as a boy, when I came upon the Essenes digging near the synagogue. The earth was rocky, white as the stars above. The hour was late, and there were clouds of bats in the sky, in search of the last of the sycamore fruit in the arid ravines below. The center of the hottest time would soon be upon us, and the air grew heavy with heat, thick as a curtain.

  I crept closer, hiding behind a citron tree that no longer bore the etrog fruit. Though the tree was stunted and leafless, the bark still sent out a peculiar fragrance, sharp and sweet at the same time.

  I saw that the men had hold of a large urn, formed of simple dun-colored ceramic, the kind in which they stored their scrolls. They buried it carefully, softly chanting, then were quick to replace the sanctified ground. Their chants brought them to a place of ecstasy, and they rocked back and forth, raising the strands of their knotted prayer shawls to the sky so that God might hear them take joy in their prayers.

  I thought about the Essenes’ strange deeds for the rest of the evening. The next night I went back to sift through the shadows. Again they were at work, secretly burying yet another urn.

  In the morning I asked my mother what it might mean for pious men to disturb holy ground in such a secret and heedless manner. My mother had been ailing for days, listless and pale, leaving the business of the dovecote to me and Yael and Revka, able to eat little but soup and water. She’d made a tea of bitter vetch and cucumber, green in color, very strong, which she sipped through the day. She could not bear the rising heat and poured water over her head, braiding her wet hair so that it stayed damp against her scalp.

  “They’re burying their scrolls because they’re leaving.” She was quite sure of this, for she had studied the Essenes’ ways when they first came to us. Their scrolls were everything to them, the documents of their faith. “They want to make certain their word remains should they perish, and they trust none among us to keep them safe. It’s their way of packing up before they depart.”

  “We have to stop her,” I cried, thinking only of my sister. The matter was urgent; we had to rescue her now. I would take a rope to bind her and a scarf to cover her mouth so she couldn’t call out as she had when we ran away from her father. I would ask Yael for the cloak of invisibility, the one she’d used to lead the Man from the North away, so that I might cover my sister from head to toe. If Nahara’s husband came to search for her, he would see only the dew in the grass.

  My mother sadly shook her head when I suggested we take action. “It cannot be done. Do you think I didn’t see her fate as well as yours?”

  My mother’s damp hair shone in the dark. Lately, she could not drink enough water and was parched throughout the day. She had taken to wearing a black shawl. Her hands and legs were swollen, and her skin was dull, yet still she was beautiful. Some men said the sky paled before her and that in the World-to-Come the angels would be hesitant to call her to their side for fear her beauty would blind them.

  “The moment I met the Essene I knew he was the one who would tempt her with the path she must not travel. I saw her destruction as I saw yours. Why do you think I sent him from the dovecote?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I felt a sort of fury inside me. All along my mother had told me that I was the one to be unwound by love, not Nahara. I had changed the direction of my life not once but twice, simply because she had told me to do so. I had done her bidding without question, without doubt. I thought of how we had burned my garments on the shore of the Salt Sea, how I had denied who I was, willing to do anything to please her. I had turned away from Amram. Unable to reveal my true nature, I now felt little for him.

  “You told me I was the one who must stay away from love. Now you’re saying it’s also Nahara’s fate? And what of Adir? Has that been written as well?”

  My mother glanced away, but I grabbed her arm. She winced and turned back to me. I realized I was stronger. I was no longer afraid of her powers. I wasn’t duty-bound to keep promises to a woman who had told me only lies.

  “Tell me God’s truth, not yours. Is this the fate of all your children?”

  “It was me,” my mother admitted. Her voice was hoarse; she seemed fragile and distracted. “It was my fate. Whomever I loved would be doomed.” The air was murky inside our chamber, as though we were underwater. “I tried not to love you.”

  There were tears streaming down my mother’s face as she said this, yet I had no pity. She had destroyed the person I might have been had she not interfered with my destiny. My entire life had been based on her lies.

  “You succeeded,” I said coldly.

  “I wanted to protect you. From love and, also, from me.”

  I thought she might be crying, but I didn’t care. “And did you try not to love Ben Ya’ir?” I remarked rudely.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “In that matter I had no choice.” She lifted her eyes to me. For once she presented me with the truth. “I loved him too well.”

  *

  THE GOAT HOUSE was empty when I arrived. The field there was little more than rocks; the grass had dried into shreds, worthless yellow tufts. Unlike the day of Nahara’s marriage, when she’d held her body against the door to bar our way, the door now swung open easily. These people had not believed in locks, for the only key that mattered to them was the one Moses had used to unlock the many truths of Adonai.

  They had so little to take with them, a few goats, the garments they wore, their writing utensils so that they might continue to praise God as the world around them broke apart. Inside, the floor had been swept. I wondered if the broom leaning against the wall had been in Nahara’s hands. I took it in my own hands for that reason, but the wood was cold. There was not a crumb to be seen; even the rats that had lately come upon us would have little reason to search in the corners of this chamber or beneath the neat beds of straw. In the yard, the clothesline was still strung between two date trees, a thick rope made of goat hair I might have used to tie my sister, binding her to us had I been quick enough to save her a second time.

  From the corner of my eye, I spied a boy behind the tree. Tamar’s son, Yehuda, was weeping on the ground.

  “She wouldn’t let me go with her,” he told me.

  I saw he had been tied to one of the date palms. His mother had done what I had wished to do in order to keep Nahara here. Now Yehuda was forced to remain with us, where Tamar hoped he would be safe.

  Abba had decided that his people could not be party to our war. It did not matter that they did not directly engage in battle. Their eyes must not witness our storehouse of weapons. They could not abide here willingly if they knew it was our intent to fight the legion should we be attacked. And so it had been decreed, a message sent
from God above. They could no longer eat the fruit from our orchards or drink the water from our cisterns or approve of us in any way. If there were children of darkness and children of light, and if there raged a constant battle between the two, then they had drawn a line between us, even though their foremothers, Rachel and Sarah and Rebecca and Leah, were ours as well, even though we prayed to the same God, He who had no equal. We could not claim the same world.

  I untied Yehuda and brought him to Revka’s house. There were rope burns on his arms, for he had desperately tried to escape his bonds. I asked if Revka might tend to him in his grief. He was a dark-haired boy, with liquid eyes and a large, distinctive head, already straining to be a man, humiliated by his mother’s decision to leave him behind. Revka’s grandsons knew him well, and Yehuda seemed comforted to be with them, though his eyes still welled with tears.

  I went on to the wall so that I might watch the treacherous path the Essenes had chosen. They were headed toward a cave perched on the mountain where the cliffs were all but impossible to navigate. Hyenas had lived there, and it would be filthy inside, rife with their leavings and scattered bones. A herd of ibex startled when the Essenes came upon them. The wild goats raced sideways in their effort to flee, rocks flung from under their hooves, a curtain of dust rising as boulders rolled into the valley below.

  In the swirl of dust, I could have sworn I spied Domah, the angel of the grave, whose very name means silence, the one who visits the dead to ask for the soul’s true name before the spirit can travel on. But when the air cleared, I saw only the Essenes in their white robes, barefoot despite the harshness of the land, ignoring the thornbushes that grew there and the scorpions that rested beneath the rocks. I thought I could see Nahara following the men, a shawl covering her head, her eyes gazing upward, as if she trusted the path completely and had no fear that she might fall.

  But it was another woman, one whose name I’d never learned, not my sister at all.

  ON THE FIRST DAY of the month of Av, Yael came to our table. It was the time of year that brought us little more than tears and salt. We were all wary in the month when both Temples had fallen, on the same date Moses is said to have broken the tablets given to him by God when he came upon his people worshiping an idol, the ninth of Av, the Day of Calamity, when evil is released upon us. If ha-olam is the world, and le-olam is forever, then the two are intertwined. Yet in the month of Av the world that was meant to last forever seemed a fragile thing. Stone disintegrated, death haunted us, cities fell.

  We did not speak of the slave’s disappearance. We still felt his presence, for the hawk had returned to perch on the sill of the dovecote waiting for the mistress who had so kindly fed him grain from her hand for some time afterward. But that kindness had bound him, and he was a wild thing. Yael chased him away. She did so again and again until he, too, vanished, flying north. On the day he disappeared, Yael left the door of the dovecote open, the way we do when someone dies, to let a spirit free.

  Now that the slave was gone, Yael appealed for my mother’s help because she believed it was possible to bring Arieh back to his rightful home without fear of reprisal. Yael had her veil over her hair, the fabric clasped at her throat. I noticed the glimmer of the gold amulet, my mother’s precious gift to her, was gone.

  “You continue to make bargains with dead women,” my mother said mournfully. “Have you not learned from the first ghost?”

  “Channa is not dead,” I countered, confused.

  I had seen her that very afternoon, walking in the plaza with Arieh in her arms, and she had been very much alive. People whispered that she had convinced her husband God had meant for her to have this child, even though she had been barren since their marriage day. She told Ben Ya’ir that the one who had borne him had come begging her to take him in. The boy had been a gift and a blessing from Adonai.

  “She is dead to me,” my mother remarked coldly.

  “I will do anything to get him back,” Yael vowed. “I thought it would be a small price, a few days apart. I had no idea what she intended.”

  My mother shook her head sadly. “If I go against her, I place my own child in danger. Is that what you expect of me in the name of our friendship?”

  “I’m not afraid of her,” I said.

  My mother gazed at me, then quickly looked away. That was when I knew. I was not the child she wished to protect. I understood what should have been evident for some time. There had been signs that my mother was with child, but I had simply failed to notice what I didn’t wish to see. Of course I knew who the father was. The man who still kept the doves he’d sent to her on the Iron Mountain. She still belonged to him.

  “Did you think I was a witch and not a woman?” my mother ventured to ask.

  Hurt beyond measure, I shrugged. “Another one for you to destroy with your love.”

  Yael flashed me a warning look, then went to kneel beside my mother, begging for her help. “I will never ask for anything more. I swear it.”

  “She’s already given you a precious gift,” I said, referring to the amulet. The charm’s absence had gone unnoticed by my mother. I wondered what she would think if she found her gift had been forsaken.

  Yael exposed her throat to reveal that the amulet was gone. When she admitted she had given the talisman to Wynn for his protection, I felt shame to have confronted her so.

  “Forgive me.” Yael bowed her head before my mother. “He needed it more than I. If you help me now, I won’t ask again,” she vowed.

  “But I’ll come to you for something,” my mother confessed. “Trust is worth more than gold, loyalty is the best protection. If I do this for you, when the time comes, will you grant me anything I ask?”

  “Anything,” Yael promised.

  “Channa is not like the other woman who wanted your child,” my mother warned. “That woman had a heart, though she was dust. This one has none. Believe me, she would see your child murdered before she returned him to you. And she’ll put a curse on mine. Remember that when I come for what I want.”

  They took the knife Yael carried with her at all times, and they cut their flesh, then let the drops of blood fall into a cup of oil to be burned before the image of Ashtoreth at our altar. My mother then brought forth a bowl of samtar, the poultice that heals wounds caused by arrows. She coated her body as a warrior might before battle. She took a heap of ashes and another of salt, and the precious balm of Gilead, made from the gum of the turpentine tree. When Yael went to accompany her, my mother stopped her.

  Yael was puzzled. “You may need me.”

  My mother shook her head. “Not you.” She looked at me, then nodded. “You.”

  Though I no longer had any duty to this woman, the mother who had lied to me and betrayed me, there was a child’s fate at stake. And there was something more, something I would not have admitted aloud.

  Despite the many ways she had betrayed me, I yearned to be the one she chose.

  I covered myself with samtar, as my mother had done, and then with oil. I braided my hair and allowed seven knots to be tied inside my cloak, the number said to repel evil when witchery was before you.

  “Do you think she’s a witch?” I wondered.

  My mother laughed. “I know that she is.”

  IT WAS DUSK when we went, the hour when dark and light are difficult to measure and all things are possible. My mother intended to perform an exorcism. Raphael himself occasionally came to help in such proceedings, and there were rumors that it was he who was so radiant who once instructed an exorcist to burn the heart and liver of a fish to drive away demons. My mother had such ingredients with her now, the dried organs of a fish that had miraculously appeared in a nachal on our travels to this mountain, its sole purpose the exorcism of evil. I shivered when I realized this was what my mother meant to do, for it was a truly dangerous act. Once this world was opened, the exorcist herself could fall prey to evil spirits. There were stories of exorcists who never spoke again, who had lost their hea
rts as a result of their attempts, found with nothing remaining of them save for a pile of dry bones.

  We went along the wall, past the garden. The scent of mint was in the air. We could hear the doves calling. My mother didn’t hesitate when she heard them. A smile crossed her face as she went to kneel beside their cage. She opened the door and I thought she meant to stroke their feathers, as she’d often petted the doves she kept when we were in Moab. Instead, she shook the cage so they came tumbling out. She took one in each hand and raised them up. The moment she let go, they lifted into the sky.

  “There’s no use for them anymore,” she murmured as we watched them vanish, as we had done years ago, in another life it seemed.

  It came as no surprise when we saw that Yael had followed and was waiting by the wall. She wore a dark veil, as though to disguise herself, but we knew her immediately, and understood why she could not stay away. Perhaps her presence outside the palace would add to our strength.

  We went to the door made of cypress wood. My mother leaned in close so she might whisper. I could feel the heat from her body and smell the oil she’d rubbed upon her throat and wrists. As the demon was chased out of the woman we were about to face, we must take the child. In that moment, and only then, would our enemy be powerless.

  “She will try to terrify you with her claims, do not listen. She will heap misfortune on you, do not be afraid. There is a missing ingredient that she needs for her powers. It’s something only we have.”

  I understood what that ingredient was. My father.

  We had made certain to plait our braids tightly, close to our heads, so that the demon we were about to face would be unable to grab us by our hair. We had rubbed pomegranate oil on our arms and legs so that we might slip easily from its grasp. We chanted Abra k’dabra. I will create something from the word. Amen Amen Selah. For the word of our God was what would guide us and would protect us from evil. His song would be our only path, despite any sins we might have committed and any punishments we might deserve. What we believed in, and what we said aloud, we could create before His eyes and in His image.