The Dovekeepers

  My heart sank. There were so many places I would have preferred to be sent, nearly anywhere would have been an improvement: the olive groves, the bakers’, even the goat barns. There were three columbaria, the Roman-style dovecotes, where I was to work. Two were built as oblongs, but the third was a circular tower with a platform on the top floor used for observation. The windows of all were covered by screens, so prying hawks couldn’t enter. All three buildings were made of stone and covered with white plaster, raised from the ground so that snakes in search of eggs couldn’t slither inside. Thousands of birds were kept, and each of the niches carved into the white walls housed a pair of doves, mated for life.

  During the time when the Roman garrison occupied Masada, the shelves had been used as funerary chambers, to store the ashes of the dead, but now they once again housed nesting turtledoves. Whatever the Romans had corrupted during their time here after King Herod’s fall, our rebels took back for their own usage. What they had used for death had been transformed into life in the beating hearts of the doves. We did not believe in turning flesh to ash but rather in honoring the bones of our forefathers returning the body to the earth, from whence it came in the days of creation. What had housed the dead during the Roman occupation was once more filled with song, the cooing tirr tirr I had learned to imitate in the wilderness so that the doves might come to me and consider me one of their own.

  Among the abominations the Romans had committed was to use the synagogue for their stables. People said it had taken weeks to clean out the excrement and cleanse the area. Even now there was said to be the smell of horseflesh when the rains came, so incense was lit every morning. But no incense could disguise the rich, moist odor of the doves’ leavings, which assaulted me when Nahara led me into the stone dovecote. Of the three, this was the largest, filled with the stench of the birds. Even worse was the noise. When we entered the murk through heavy wooden doors, the sound was overwhelming, for together the doves shared one voice. I stopped, shaken by the fluttering of wings, once again yearning for the silence I had known in the wilderness.

  Nahara smiled when she saw my reaction, her face upturned. “They don’t bite,” she promised. “You’ll become accustomed to them.”

  She picked up a bird that had fluttered to the floor, holding it gently. We were to care for them, feed them, collect their eggs. Most important, we were to gather their excrement, used to fertilize the fields. That was why such beautiful groves arose on this cliff, where the soil was little more than limestone covered with a thin dusting of earth, and why the air smelled like almonds. The doves’ leavings turned the fields fertile; their waste was the secret to creating a garden in the wilderness.

  There were three other women in the dovecote, all busy until our arrival. Now they turned to me. One would imagine such nasty business would have been the last sort of work anyone would have wanted, but these women seemed proud of what they did. One, an older woman whose name was Revka, gazed at me disapprovingly, as though I had stumbled uninvited into her domain and she had already gauged me as unworthy. The others were Nahara’s elder sister and mother, each more beautiful than the other. Aziza was sixteen, composed, with dusky olive skin. As she stood beside her mother, I could hardly tell them apart. But it was Shirah, the mother, who had chosen me.

  Nahara whispered for me to step forward, reminding me of her mother’s faith in me. I wondered if her choice had been made when she spied the dove who came to me without being called.

  In this place of noise, Shirah was serene, a dark quiet engulfing her. I approached her, then stopped, flustered. Our glances met, and I felt something unexpected between us, a surge of heat. It seemed I was transparent in her eyes.

  “I wonder how a lioness will manage in a dovecote. Can you put away your teeth and claws?”

  The other women had gathered round, and they laughed at Shirah’s comment. I felt vulnerable and exposed, even though the chamber was dim, with only thin streams of sunlight entering through the roof and screened windows.

  Shirah had one long black braid down her back. She was extraordinarily beautiful, with high cheekbones and dark, nearly black eyes. The other women thought she was teasing me, having sensed my displeasure over handling birds. They didn’t understand what she meant. But I did. She knew what was inside me.

  “Hardly a lioness,” I said contritely. “Only a poor wanderer.”

  “Aren’t we all?” the older woman, Revka, replied. “You think you’re so different from us? You’re not too good to shovel the shit of these doves, are you?” she asked scornfully. “If you are, you can leave right now.”

  The women were gazing at my red hair. As Nahara had said, it was what people noticed first. Perhaps they believed that the tawny color was what Shirah referred to when she spoke of lions. They had no idea who I was or what I’d done. The birds fluttered around, unbidden, drawn to me. I kept my eyes downcast as I spoke. All I wished was to be left alone.

  “I’ll do whatever work you ask of me,” I said.

  Do unto me what you desire, whatever your will. I deserve nothing more than what has befallen me.

  Shirah approached with a basket formed of palm leaves, beautifully constructed with a leaf-over-leaf pattern. Her eyes were huge and deep, ringed with kohl. She wore gold bracelets on her arms and amulets tied around her throat on red string, including two gold charms, which glinted in the half-light. Her daughters came and circled their arms around their mother’s slim waist. Their love for her was evident, and I envied them. I wished I’d known what it was like to have a mother, someone who would stand beside you no matter what you’d done.

  The birds were cooing. I felt a pulse in my throat, remembering how I had waited for my prey in the wilderness, how they had come to me and how I had destroyed them. Shirah handed me the basket. I wondered if it had been woven with palm leaves from Ein Gedi, if some woman had set down the crossing leaves pattern on the morning of her own death.

  “Even a lioness has to work,” Shirah told me.

  THE WORK BEGAN right away. We were all wearing white, for vivid color was thought to disturb the doves and keep them from laying. Perhaps it had not been an accident when the Essene woman, Tamar, gave me my tunic, for it seemed as though she’d somehow known I would be chosen for the dovecote. Perhaps I wasn’t as invisible as I had imagined.

  There was no time to doubt myself or to complain. Aziza quickly taught me how to feed our charges millet and wheat and vetch, and how to chase the pairs from their niches when we needed to collect eggs or clean out their droppings. Whichever eggs we let remain in the nests would soon hatch, and the parents would care for the fledglings together. Aziza was eager to help me learn the ways of the dovecote. She resembled a deer, with slim legs and arms, and a thick braid of dark hair, like her mother’s, glossy, black as night. But whereas Shirah’s eyes were pitch, Aziza’s were an unusual pale gray, like river water, filled with moving light. There was a tiny scar, much like a teardrop, barely noticeable, set beneath one eye.

  Nahara came to gossip with her sister about me. Both sisters’ eyes were shining. They enjoyed having someone new to tease, an occasion to break the monotony of their workday. “She wouldn’t tell her name when I asked,” Nahara informed Aziza.

  The sisters stood with their hands on their hips, considering what to do with me. I was ashamed to be considered worthy of their interest.

  “We have to call you something,” Aziza insisted, wanting to befriend me.

  The sisters were so close their words were like beads on the same strand of gold. Perhaps if I said my name aloud, I’d be rid of their prying. We were to work side by side, after all, and they needed to call to me.

  “Yael,” I managed, for it was a word that left a bitter taste in my mouth. It had always sounded like a curse, and it remained so on this day.

  The sisters seemed satisfied, assuring me that mine was a beautiful name.

  “Do you have anyone here with you?” They wanted to know more about me, so that w
e might be friends. I shrugged coldly, with only a gleam of response.

  A lion, a ghost, a goat who is an angel, a hundred birds with broken necks.

  “I was brought here by my brother. Amram, son of Yosef bar Elhanan.”

  To my surprise, their curiosity faded, and my words dropped like stones. I heard the echo of my brother’s name. The silence that came back to me was something I understood, the realm of secrets best left untold.

  Nahara was called to her mother. She seemed grateful to have an excuse to run out to the smallest of the dovecotes, even though the dovekeepers usually recoiled from working there, for the building was so compact only one person could stand within its walls. Beside me, Aziza quickly returned to her work, chasing the doves away, collecting their eggs. I could see through the mirror of her languid, gray eyes. She didn’t have to say any more for me to understand how my brother’s name had blazed for her. Once spoken, it refused to disappear.

  IN THE DAYS that followed, I kept to myself during my hours at the dovecotes, attending to whatever tasks I was given. I was pleasant enough, but I spoke only when others spoke to me. I was their servant, nothing more. I wasn’t one of them and didn’t pretend to be. I had had a friend once, and I had betrayed her. I didn’t need another.

  The other women took their meal together at noon. I ate alone. I went into the orchard in the midday sun, taking along some dry cheese and flatbread. I neared the wall and peered out, gazing north, the direction we had come from, where we had left the bones. One day some of the women who worked in the fields came to sit beside me. They had tied up their hair and covered their heads with scarves to shade their complexions. Their hands, however, were brown from their work in a small pistachio grove, slick with nut oil. They had come here from Jerusalem, following their husbands, or fathers, or brothers. Now they acted like those fortunate ones who had found their way to the Garden of Paradise. I’d heard them singing as they worked. A few carried babies in woven slings tied to their backs or hips. The unmarried women asked me to meet them at the baths. I shook my head and said I was unable to do so. I wanted no one to notice my rounded form when I took off my cloak. As my excuse, I said I must remain at the dovecotes, for I had just begun there and wanted to please Shirah. When they heard this, the women grew suspicious.

  “Fine,” one said, rebuffed. “It’s your choice if you prefer the Witch of Moab.”

  The field women who gathered around cautioned me, murmuring that Shirah had come across the desert from the far side of the Salt Sea. The salt had lifted her up, allowing her and her children to cross without drowning. Shirah, they assured me, could call the clouds to her the way she called the doves in the dovecote. After her arrival there had been downpours for weeks. Torrents fell until the world was green and people were weeping with joy. This was why their leader, Ben Ya’ir, had sent for her. Shirah was his kinswoman and cousin, but there was more to her arrival. Even a great man may sometimes call for a witch.

  I found these women to be self-absorbed fools. What sort of witch would work in a dovecote, eat lentils for her meal, shovel out excrement, collect speckled eggs in a basket? She was a woman like any other. Still, when I went back to the dovecote, I noticed there was a curious intensity about Shirah; what was silent to others rang out clearly for her. Sometimes, at the end of the day, when she was locking the door, she would turn to gaze at me. In that instant I felt she knew everything about me. Even stranger, I had no desire to hide myself from her. I wanted to speak of the night when I cut myself for the twenty-first time, and the morning when I left to set out in search of a cure, and the evening when I returned to find that Ben Simon had already entered the World-to-Come. Perhaps that in itself was witchery, to make someone yearn to reveal herself.

  *

  ONE EVENING a young woman was waiting beside the largest dovecote. She was a servant, brought here from Jerusalem by her master’s family, living alongside them as their cook and housemaid. I had seen her in the fields. Now she gestured to Shirah from the shadows, urging her to come away. Shirah spoke with her daughters, sending them home to see to their younger brother and begin the evening meal.

  When Shirah left with the housemaid, I followed, curious. I removed my sandals and went barefoot, as I had when I’d stalked birds. I felt something wicked in my actions, yet continued on. Shirah and the housemaid did not stop until they reached the far end of the wall. There they slipped into a dark corner. We were not far from the place where large looms had been set up for women to work on in the evenings, after their daily chores had been completed. I paused behind a column where green-tinged shadows spread along the stones. I felt as I had when I had crouched in the wilderness, waiting for my prey. There was a beating of my pulse in my throat.

  Shirah drew the image of an eye on the wall with a piece of charred wood. She took a needle from the hem of her tunic, and while she recited an incantation she pierced the eye with the needle. The low, rhythmic sound of her voice drifted to where I was hidden. Although I didn’t understand the words, I guessed what she was doing. She was binding some man to be true, as I had done in the desert on the night when I drew the face of the lion in the dirt. Other men might stray, but this one would be bound to faithfulness as thread was bound to the stitches cast by a needle.

  I shouldn’t have lingered. I could have easily returned the way I’d come before anyone saw me, but I was caught up in the spell. The chanting entrapped me, the singsong of Shirah’s voice winding itself around me as though it had the ability to bind me as well as the lover of the housemaid. Shirah turned to eye me as the scorpion glances at the mouse. I hurried away, yet still felt her gaze.

  The following day I wore my scarf across my face when I went to work in the dovecote, hoping it would cause me to be invisible, much the way my father’s cloak hid his true nature. Shirah ushered me inside, a smile playing at her lips. I would have sworn she saw through my veil. When the others went to take their noon meal, cooking lentils and peas in an outdoor kitchen, Shirah insisted she needed my help. There was an errand we must attend to. I had no choice but to go. Like the housemaid who had come to her, I was only a servant.

  We went into the fields, carrying our baskets. The sun beat down upon us.

  “What I did at the wall, I was asked to do,” Shirah informed me as we passed beneath the lacy green shade of the almond trees. “It wasn’t love the girl asked for, merely decency.”

  From where they sat over their lunch in the grove, the field women stared at us, whispering, save for one, the housemaid who was still gathering pistachios for her mistress. Pale petals were falling around us, half of them bitter.

  “When the time comes and you want my help, I’ll listen to you as well,” Shirah said. “I’ll do as you ask.”

  I blushed, confused. “Did I ask for anything?”

  Shirah dumped the basket from the doves around the tallest almond tree, one that was abloom with a thousand flowers. It occurred to me that she could divine the truth even when it went unspoken.

  “True enough,” she replied. “You haven’t.”

  We began the walk back to the dovecote, side by side, past the mulberry bushes with their jumbles of black berries, past the pistachio tree where the housemaid was at work, stripping the pods from the branches. I noticed the young woman did not raise her eyes to us, even though Shirah touched her shoulder in a silent greeting. “Not yet,” she said to me.

  IN THE HALLWAYS of the Western Palace atop the plateau, what had in the past served royalty now served us all. Wheat and grain were stored in what had once been elegant chambers. The tanners and bakers and metalworkers labored in a hall where the marble floors were as fine as any in Athens or Rome. To those who came from small villages, the glory of this place was astounding. Here, where there had been huge royal gatherings, we now worked in the service of the Almighty, not for our own greed. The rebels were pure in their concerns, yet the men were on edge, my father among them. He went to the synagogue built in to the western wall each mo
rning, to pray and listen to the wise men talk about what the future would bring. I woke an hour before my father, to heat barley cakes in oil for his meal. I was his servant, his dog, and his chattel. His desires were my demands, his moods ruled my life.

  The men met at the synagogue, worrying over the welfare of their leader, Eleazar ben Ya’ir, who had left our fortress several days earlier to rally support in desert towns throughout Judea. His followers were anxious for his return. In his absence, our peril was felt a hundred times over with only the unforgiving brim of the mountain there to protect us. When an old man at a public meeting demanded to know who would take Ben Ya’ir’s place if he should fall in battle, all the rest fell quiet. No one wanted to think about Masada without a leader, a body without spirit. Without Eleazar ben Ya’ir we were lost, at each other’s mercy, at one another’s throats. His band of warriors included my brother, and I was especially worried, for those who have recently been reunited should not be parted.

  That very day, as if to answer any doubters, Ben Ya’ir—our rescuer and our redeemer, the man who had saved our people when Jerusalem had fallen—returned. He came at dusk. People went to the walls to watch as he and his closest companions climbed the path to God’s domain. There were those who believed he could speak with angels, that Raphael himself walked beside him, a gleaming sword raised to our enemies. We gazed over the cliffs that protected us and felt blessed to have such a noble leader.

  Because of the winter’s heavy rains, the world below us was green. The desert was covered in myrtle, a sign of good fortune. We women wove myrtle into our undergarments, so that we would carry the sweet scent of the desert with us when we walked. There was a sense of joy rising with the turning of the season, and the joy of my own secret that I carried within me. I caught sight of Amram and was relieved. I now wanted to see Ben Ya’ir for myself, the man who had led my brother and his friends to this remote and dangerous place. There was a crowd and people were jostling each other, all with the same goal, to see him and be comforted by his strength. I had to rise on my toes for a glimpse. People were willing to die for him; they would stand before him, denying arrows access to his flesh. Many bowed their heads in his presence, as they did before holy men and sages.