The Dovekeepers

  My mother had streaked her eyelids with lapis and perfumed herself with myrtle and lilies. She lifted her shawl over her head, perhaps to appear modest in her rival’s eyes. Channa would be all the more dumbfounded when she discovered who had come to call.

  My mother rapped on the door, lightly, as she might have if she’d had a basket of vegetables to offer, greens, perhaps, or cloves of garlic. We heard a scuffling, but there was no answer. My mother knocked again, more strongly now.

  No one came to the door, and there was no longer any sound from inside.

  I stepped onto the woodpile and drew myself up. In a corner, I spied the empty cradle. There were only shadows. But the fire was lit. A pot had been set on a metal post to hang above the flame, and the meal within was still cooking. I could smell the lentils and stewing meat.

  I took from my cloak the key fashioned from a slip of metal wire. It had worked in the locked door of the tower so that Wynn could be released, perhaps it would once again. My mother stepped away so I might try. It fitted the lock perfectly. The door opened with a click. We went into the chamber where the evening meal that had been set upon the fire would soon enough burn and turn black, for it was bubbling, past readiness. My mother cast the innards of the fish into this stew, and the smoke that arose was a pale green, the color of envy and of betrayal.

  Through the haze of the smoke we found a lamp, and although the glow was dim, it worked well enough so that we might find our way. We went along the hall, down the corridor where the frescoes of the seven sisters had been painted by masters from Rome. Each of the sisters was more beautiful than the next, yet none was as beautiful as my mother, not even the silver moon. She drew me to her, and we stood together beneath swatches of ocher and amethyst and sea green. She nodded toward a doorway, urging me to listen. She had done this when we were children, so that we might ascertain the difference between the approaching hooves of her husband’s great steed, Leba, and the sound of any other man’s horse. When my sister’s father was puzzled that we children had run out to greet him long before he arrived, we would tell him that Leba could speak to us, and that the language of horses was easy enough to divine.

  Now, in the house of Ben Ya’ir, I heard what I thought was a beetle, the kind they say search for the dead. After a moment I realized it was the rhythmic rasp of someone’s breath. I tapped at my throat, and my mother nodded. We had found the one we searched for.

  We followed the sound, pausing when it became more muffled, edging forward when it began again. The breath led us to a small chamber where oil and wine were stored, the tall jars among the last that had belonged to King Herod. The room was dark, but the lamp we carried cast enough light for us to make out the long furrows of shadows. One shadow was like a pool of water that bled toward us in the darkness. She had crouched behind the door, a raven in a dark tunic, hunched down as though she might evade us as easily as dusk fading into a field of blackened trees.

  As if magicked, Arieh called out to us. Perhaps he knew his true mother waited nearby. The raven quickly reached to cover his mouth, but he cried out again. He had recognized us, and we took this to be an omen. God was watching over us.

  “You have no right to be here,” Channa said when she had little choice but to face us. She stood up, proudly, as though she had not been cowering in the dark with the beetles, a shadow huddled behind a door. “When I call the sentries, you’ll be locked in the tower yourselves. Or perhaps I’ll see you set out in the wilderness. That’s where you belong. You were condemned, yet you think you can come into this house and treat it as your own.”

  Channa was eyeing my mother as one might a demon that had crept in through an open window. My mother gave her no answer. She did not argue or respond to these evil words. She stood in the doorway so that Channa could not make an escape. It was too late to hide or shriek. My mother had already begun the exorcism. She spread down two circles of ash, then motioned to me. We stepped inside the circles as she began the Song of the Afflicted. My mother’s voice was lovely, pure and ethereal. At first Channa merely listened, falling under the spell. Perhaps she thought she was being praised, or she had convinced herself that my mother had come to pay tribute, to admit her wrongdoings and eat the salt she now threw toward her rival, as some were said to eat their sins. But our leader’s wife’s eyes opened wide as she heard the words my mother recited.

  He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

  Perhaps the wings I had always imagined set upon my back had been placed there for my protection by the Almighty, for I felt sheltered, delivered from nets and traps. Whatever my mother said, I repeated with her. Whatever her sins, I forgave her.

  Before us, Channa held the baby more tightly as she gazed at my mother in alarm. “You took what should have been mine. He was to give a child to me, not you! Thieves are murdered for their deeds, not forgiven. You can’t place a curse on me.”

  My mother continued the song of the Almighty, praising Him and asking for His light.

  Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day. Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

  I listened, enthralled. Amen Amen Selah. My voice rang out, echoing my mother’s. Channa turned to me. When she looked into my eyes, she saw her husband in my gaze. I took a step backward when faced with her meanness of spirit.

  “Stay in the circle,” my mother warned.

  Now Channa knew me for who I was. She crept closer, the better to see me. Here I was, the child she had set into the wilderness for the ravens to peck at and the jackals to feast upon.

  “You should have been mine,” she told me. She threw my mother a brutal look. Her breathing was so labored it was difficult to hear her, but we heard enough. “You are the destroyer and the sin before God’s name.”

  Her voice was hoarse, wrenched from inside her. Her words pierced me as no weapon could; still I did as my mother advised and kept within the circle. I refused to hear the poison set upon me by her envy. I heard only my mother’s song. I could see the words she uttered becoming visible in the air between us, incandescent, written by faith.

  Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under thy feet.

  Channa was beginning to reveal who she was and what wickedness she was willing to undertake. “Arieh belongs to me! A covenant was made with the mother, before God!”

  She, who had sent us into the wilderness so that we might be taken into the arms of Death when my mother was thirteen years old and I only newly born, grabbed for a knife and held it at Arieh’s throat. I started toward the child, but again, my mother grabbed my arm.

  Not yet, she whispered.

  Channa was clutching Arieh so tightly he let out a hurt little yowl. I was grateful that Yael was not present and could not see the demon revealing itself to us. The moment would soon be upon us when she had no power at all.

  “You haven’t taken enough from me that you need to take this child as well? I’ll see him in the World-to-Come before I see him with you.”

  There was sweat upon my mother’s brow. Her lips moved as she repeated the song. No wonder men were transfixed by her an
d angels came to speak to her. No wonder the rain did her bidding and even the daughter she had betrayed would do anything she asked.

  My mother’s black cloak fell open. It was the moment when we all became who we were in the eyes of Adonai. Channa was outraged to see that my mother was with child. Her breathing worsened, rasping, as though a hand was at her throat, keeping air from her as she had kept my father from us. A sound emanated from her that was without words, a wounded, bloody cry. It was the demon.

  That was when I went forth on behalf of the stolen child, snatching him from her with such force that she stumbled, slipping in the place where my mother had piled the salt which would contain the evil within her. My mother had no fear in her expression as she watched her enemy falter.

  Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore I will deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

  “You witch,” the wife of our leader cried.

  He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.

  “Take him,” Channa said of Arieh, all but broken before us. “Do whatever you want with him. But you can’t have my husband.”

  I took the child and ran with him so that his true mother might rejoice over him in the palace yard. Later, we would make a feast to celebrate and sing his praises, but now there was only one voice as I heard my mother dismiss our enemy. For it was she, neither an angel nor a witch, but a woman who was no longer afraid to speak, who faced her rival and proclaimed, “I’ve had him all along.”

  TRADESMEN CAME to us from beyond the Salt Sea, bringing spices and incense, herbs and seeds. We were desperate for their wares, haggling over chicory and sorrel, trading silver coins and semiprecious stones for such condiments. One of the traders had with him a huge black dog, a mastiff from Asia. This creature went to the place where my brother often camped beside the barracks when he’d been an errand boy for the warriors, enthralled by their courage and their deeds. Now Adir was among the men, gone from us, yet something of his essence must have lingered here, for the huge, shaggy dog refused to be removed. He threw back his head and howled. The dog was an omen, that much was evident, good or bad I did not know.

  I looped a rope around his large head so he would stop his howling, then led him to our chamber, where I tied him outside. The dog watched after me, yelping until I returned, offering water. When the tradesman to whom he belonged came for him, the black dog refused to go. He ran forward and bit his owner, then hid behind my legs, peering out, bowing his huge muzzle and head, whining.

  “You’ve ruined my beast,” the tradesman shouted. “He was fierce, now he’s a sheep.”

  The tradesman came from the eastern side of the Salt Sea. I knew the tones in which he spoke, the accent of my first father. The voice of Moab was beautiful to hear, even though the tradesman cursed me. When I answered him in kind, suggesting that the dog had made his choice and had perhaps been mistreated, the traveler was stunned at my knowledge of his speech. He accepted a few coins in exchange for the creature.

  I did not wish to have a dog, yet he often accompanied me to the wall in the evenings as I kept watch over the valley with the other women, waiting for the warriors to return. I called him Eran, which means watchful, for the name suited this enormous and quiet creature. When I clicked my tongue, as I had for my horse in another world and time, he followed me. He did not bark or growl, nor did he beg at our table. I felt he would bring us luck; perhaps his fate and my brother’s were bound together. When my mother didn’t insist we be rid of him, though she disliked dogs and thought them little better than jackals, and when she set out a bowl of bread and milk, my brother’s favorite foods, I knew she agreed.

  There came a night when Eran began to bark and would not be comforted no matter how I tried to silence him. Soon my mother awoke. We both had the same sense of dread and together went to the wall in the dark. There were other women there as well, many in tears, for they also had experienced omens. One had woken from a dream sent to her by the angel Gabriel, in which her dead father had ordered her to station herself beside the gate. Another had heard a bat, the sign of vigilance and of stealth, flirting through her chamber.

  Near dawn we could make out the warriors returning; we saw the dust arise before we viewed their figures. When they began to climb the serpent’s path, our hearts lifted, then dropped. I was relieved to see Amram, but the slight figure he carried over his shoulder was my brother. I recognized his tunic and his cloak.

  Our men had followed the Romans. There had been a skirmish, and our warriors had bested the modest troop of exploratores, whom they had outnumbered, sending them into retreat. Several of the unprepared soldiers of the legion had been slain despite the protection of their mail armor and bronze helmets. The rebels had done well, but Adir had been felled by a spear, and his wound was deep; he was aflame with fever. His dark hair was snarled, and his eyes, with their yellow flares, so like his father’s and Nahara’s, were runny and pale.

  We took him to our chamber, where my mother bathed his listless body. His fever had turned him cold, as if Shalgiel, the angel of snow, had embraced him and brought him low. My mother told me to quickly burn Adir’s garments. We did this to protect ourselves from the demons who might spread disease, but we also burned the cloaks of the dead in this manner. Perhaps this was why I could not bring myself to do as I’d been told. Instead I washed my brother’s tunic and cloak in a bucket, then hung them on the clothesline behind the empty goat house where the Essenes had lived.

  Our people cleansed their hands before every meal, before every cup of wine, before we cut a loaf of bread in two. We did so for good reason. Demons could enter an individual who was unclean, and the fire of a demon manifested itself as a fever. My mother instructed me to wear a scarf across my face when I tended to my brother. We washed our hands with a soap made of lye and ashes until our skin was raw. Every morning my mother brewed a tea of bay leaf, rose oil, and hot pepper. Although my brother made a face after a sip of the brew, he did as he was told and drank. A poultice of samtar, combined with reita, the cure made from wheat, was packed inside his cleaned wound.

  My mother burned oil at the altar of Ashtoreth. She found a single lily growing in an abandoned garden, the rare bulb planted there a hundred years earlier by the gardeners of the king so that the petals and stems could be burned in a green flame for the glory of God.

  Redeem this child and save him from all afflictions.

  My mother took two doves from their nest that were so beautiful they themselves knew of their own beauty and proudly preened before their kind. She sacrificed them to the Queen of Heaven, though our people were no longer to make sacrifices, even to Adonai, now that the Temple was destroyed. She wiped the blood from her hands carefully to make certain there wasn’t a stain.

  Allow him to become a man and sing glorious songs of praise to our Lord and king, our mighty God. Amen Amen Selah. May He keep you from all evil and allow you to dwell in Jerusalem in holiness and in peace.

  Adir had been a boy who’d been eager for war; what he’d found was a grim surprise. He returned to us quiet and melancholy. Even after his fever passed, his leg remained affected by his wound. He could not stand steadily, and this especially brought him grief. The only one who could cheer him was the huge dog I commanded to stay at his side. Because of this, my mother insisted I wash the creature so that his filth might not bring demons to my brother in his current weakened state. I brought Eran into the plaza and threw handfuls of water at him, then covered him with lye soap while he stood there impassively, though he might easily have bolted from my grasp.

  “Is this who took my place?”

  Amram came behind me and surprised me with his embrace. I allowed his arms to encircle me, though I felt an odd reserve. As we stood together, the dog barked and growled.

  “Stop,” I told Eran, but he wouldn’t be quieted, and
this worried me, for he had never seemed so ferocious before. Whatever his reason, he did not like the man before him.

  “My rival,” Amram teased. “If he bites me, I’ll have to bite him back.”

  I tied the dog to the stump of a date tree, then pulled Amram aside so we might have some privacy.

  “You must tell the warriors my brother can’t go out again.”

  Amram laughed. “All warriors must go when they’re called upon. You know that. And he’s one of us now.” Amram then took from his tunic the blue square of fabric that was his token for luck. “At least you don’t have to worry for me. When I leave again, I’ll find my way back.”

  I wanted to command him, but I knew Amram wasn’t a man who would do a woman’s bidding. It was I who must make certain my brother remained safe. I made a vow to myself as I stood there in the plaza, though I said nothing to Amram. Adir would not be among them when the next raiding party went out. I would make sure of it.

  When Amram set out to fight, another warrior would walk beside him.

  I ASKED for her favor, and Yael did not deny me, for I was the one who had placed her son back in her arms. I had snatched him from the sinister woman who wished so desperately to be his mother she had convinced herself that she was. Yael waited for me in the plaza, where heat waves rose from the earth, the baby at her hip. Since Arieh had been returned to her, she refused to let him out of her sight for long. If she needed help and Revka and I were at work at the dovecote, she would occasionally leave him with her father, who had taken a liking to the child. He had made amends with Yael in the way he cherished her son. Perhaps he thought he had a second chance to forge another warrior. I’d overheard Revka ask why Yael allowed this man to be included in her son’s life when he’d been so cruel to her. Yael said he was a changed man now, beaten down by the desert and by his age.