The Dovekeepers (34 page)

Aziza handed the bow to the Man from the North, even though it was a crime to place a weapon in the hands of a slave. He took up the bow, grateful for the trust. Each of Aziza’s arrows made its mark when the slave turned to his target—a knob on the stump of the ancient olive behind the dovecote. He stood in the threshold so no one else would take notice. When we called out praises, he bowed. He noticed the intent expression on Aziza’s face, her gaze fixed on the bow in his hands.

“Let me teach you,” he suggested. “Then you can see for yourself the worth of what you’ve crafted. These arrowheads are among the finest I’ve ever used.”

Aziza backed away, shaking her head, her eyes masked. Still, there was something resembling desire etched across her face.

Women were not to touch weapons, such was our law, but we had already broken the law by handing the bow over to a slave. We who had already sinned did not question or condemn. We stared back at those who whispered about Yael and her baby until they were the ones forced to lower their eyes.

“Try what you’ve made,” I urged, if only for our amusement.

“Fine.” Aziza nodded. “But only to please you.”

The slave showed her what she must do, and she listened carefully.
She held the bow with ease, a broad smile bursting upon her face. Her very first arrow hit the mark. I could see the surprise on the slave’s face.

“You have a warrior inside you!” he remarked.

“Pure luck.” Aziza dropped the bow and went to gather the fallen arrows, admiring her handiwork, making certain each feather was in place. “The phoenix always prevails,” she said. “Whoever Amram strikes will fall before him.”

Shirah had remained inside the dovecote. Now she came to the doorway. Her expression was trancelike, difficult to read. She had changed since Nahara’s departure, becoming more wary and withdrawn. Some people whispered she had the ability to see through our world into the next. If this was indeed true, then for Shirah the future was not a distant place. We, who had no idea what was to be, sat in the courtyard enjoying ourselves, applauding as Aziza hit the target again and again, her agility and grace a revelation to us all.

As for Shirah, she only watched, the way one might keep a wary eye on a swarm of bees already in flight, when it was too late to wave them away or return them to the hive. When the damage had already been done.

BEFORE LONG
the new year was upon us, a time for celebration. But we entered into the holiday of
Rosh Hashanah
frugally and without joy. Our tables were set with simple things, gourds and leeks, a few thin partridges, lentil salads, yogurt cheese. Yael brought some of this meager feast to her friend Tamar. The Essene woman was grateful, and in return her son, Yehuda, a dreamy boy who was often climbing trees in the orchard when he should have been at his studies, surprised my grandsons with the gift of a carved spinning top. The children were delighted with their present; they were happy enough with so little. They didn’t notice how Yehuda
stared at them, curious once he’d discovered they didn’t possess the power of speech. Noah and Levi seemed to accept their plight, however. They made the best of things, ignoring the stares that greeted them in the plaza from the curious who tried to guess what had caused them to become mute. The boys enjoyed the new baby in the house, spending hours entertaining Arieh with his rattle, or with gourds made into flutes, and now with the clever little top Yehuda had fashioned.

Arieh seemed drawn to my grandsons’ sweet silence, his eyes following them around our chamber. We catered to our little lion, who threw back his head to laugh when my grandsons made shadows dance on the wall. Already when they played a hiding game with him, ducking behind a length of fabric, he called out for them with a shout, chortling and cooing until my grandsons silently reappeared, so still they might have indeed been shadows rather than flesh-and-blood boys.

This new year was especially bitter for me. Every piece of fruit I cut in half possessed a flavor I couldn’t abide. What was sweet, I had grown to despise. I ate bitter greens, and was accustomed to the taste of salt on my tongue. I went to the synagogue and stood with the women in the back. Men must not be distracted by women, but what of women who were distracted by their own thoughts? I recited the prayers I knew by heart, but my voice was hesitant, listless.

I had grown so pale that Yael asked if I had fallen ill. I said no, but I could no longer bring myself to go to the dovecotes in the morning. Instead I chose to remain on my pallet, my face to the wall. I saw shadows as my grandsons passed in and out of the threshold. I saw all that had happened in the desert every time I closed my eyes.

A year had passed since my daughter’s life had been taken. On the Day of Atonement, I went to the synagogue to say the prayers of lamentation, but my loss was like an arrow piercing through me,
and these rituals were not enough to dull the pain. Melancholy was around me like a shroud, my sorrow sewn to me with the black thread demons are said to use. When I went back into the plaza, people avoided me. They could see the darkness I carried. Even my grandsons shrank from me, preferring to sit beside Yael and hear her stories. There was only one individual who might understand me, one who’d walked the same path and stood beneath the same sky.

Surely, Yoav was somewhere in a darkened corner, aching as I did.

IT WAS EVENING
when I went to the barracks. I had not left my chamber for several days, other than to pray in the synagogue. If you do not leave your bed, you become unused to walking. If you do not forgive yourself, you cannot forgive anyone else. I had disposed of the beasts at the oasis, but they had disposed of me as well. The woman I had been, she who had awoken to the scent of bread baking, who swept the steps each morning with complete certainty that the new day would be like any other, had vanished. I was a shell, a beetle, a shock of flesh stitched through with demon thread.

The warriors were at prayer on this evening. I noticed an enormous pile of rocks had been chiseled into smooth, hard balls, to be used in a catapult should we be attacked. These rocks were piled high where before there had been lengths of wood. Now the wood was used up, and there was little enough of it to be found on the surrounding cliffs, only a few stray sunstruck bushes with bleached, scaly bark that smoldered rather than burned when tossed upon a fire. It was the planting season, but the air smelled like an oven in which bread had burned for days. No one worked the fields; protection from the elements and from our enemies occupied us all. I wondered what my husband would have thought of a world that was too hot for bread, too brutal for human kindness.

I waited beneath the remnants of a mulberry tree not far from the barracks. The leaves rustled in the dark. The sound echoed like a rattle, or perhaps it was more like a snakeskin shaken in the wind. I sat on the stump of a tree whose bounty had once fed a king. Soon the young warriors returned from their prayers. They took up their work even on this holiest of days. I spied the great assassin of Jerusalem, Bar Elhanan, cleaning the flat bronze blades of spears with rags and sand as though he were a slave himself. He had come to my home several times, only mumbling a greeting to me but lighting up when he saw Arieh, whom he sat upon his knee. I glimpsed Yael’s brother as well, out in the field where he vied with his friends in a contest to see whose eye and aim were best and who among them could shoot an arrow through one of the narrow windows set into stone, made for pouring hot oil and boiling water onto enemies should they be foolish enough to try to breach the wall.

I waited so long I began to hear the echoes of owls in the caves. The warriors retreated to the barracks. As the assassin crossed the plaza, I saw the age in his step, the heaviness of his burden, for he carried all the cruelty he’d been party to on his shoulders. I had resented his desire to come to my chamber because he had taken to visiting his grandson, but in that moment I felt I could not judge his actions in this world, not after all I’d done.

The moon was in the center of the sky watching over me, lonely, cold. Still I stayed. At last my son-in-law came through the plaza, his ax in hand, his expression brooding. He was still a young man, though his hair was white. His arms were bare beneath his prayer shawl. I saw that he had wrapped several thin lengths of sharp-edged bronze around his muscled forearms; the fierce, bloodied twists were meant to turn every move he made into excruciating self-punishment. Such abuse was not allowed; it was the mourning practice of nomads and barbarians. Still, he had done as he pleased, breaking our laws. There were bands of bloody scars where he had cut directly into his flesh with a knife, a row of injuries set above
his dark blue veins. The self-inflicted marks were the blue of the hyssop when it bloomed, my daughter’s favorite flower. Around them arose bruises that were the gorged color of plums, her favorite fruit.

When I called his name, Yoav narrowed his eyes as though I had uttered a curse. But I gestured to him, and he recognized me and approached. He stood beneath the dry leaves of the mulberry tree, half-dressed in his silver armor. I wondered if he slept in it, if he dreamed of battles and blood or of my daughter’s beautiful face.

“It’s the day of sorrow,” I reminded him, thinking we might pray together or light a lamp in memory of Zara.

He snorted. I thought of the blindfolded horses of the king, set upon a path they could not see. Some must have protested; they must have reared up, furious to be sightless in the brutal grasp of the serpent that led up the mountainside.

“Every day is that,” said the Man from the Valley, who was still my son-in-law even though I had no daughter. “What should I pray for?”

He seemed both ashamed and furious; there was scorn in his voice at the mention of prayer. Of course he knew the day. He had counted every moment since he’d found her beneath the heavy rocks I’d placed over her so that she might be protected from any other creatures of prey.

“You have two sons,” I reminded him. “They have your wife’s dark eyes.”

Yoav stunned me with a roar of grief. I drew back, uncertain of who was before me, this Man from the Valley who confided in no one and slept with his back to the wall, ax in hand, ready to fight while he was dreaming. “I told you not to speak of her,” he admonished me.

“Or of the boys?”

He faced me, defiant. “This world is nothing to me. Why would you think I care about such things?”

“I came to you because you carry her with you,” I said, reminding him that I had offered him her last breath. He had taken it and now she belonged to him. In exchange for this great gift, he needed to respect me still, no matter how bitter he had become. He nodded, recognizing the bond between us and the sacrifice I’d made. He restrained his temper and listened to reason. The man who was still my son-in-law came to sit beside me under the black mulberry tree. He had never asked how I’d managed to kill those beasts, how I’d lured them to their deaths with bread. Perhaps he resented me, for I had performed the deed of vengeance he was likely ashamed not to have committed himself. But back then he was a man who knew only prayer, while I had already become a torrent of fury.

“There must be something here for you still,” I insisted, trying to speak to the man he’d been, not this violent warrior intent on torturing himself. “The air you breathe, the water you drink, waking each day to see the sun. There must be something you still want from this world.” There was so little that remained of him, but when I looked down into the dust, his shadow seemed the same.

Yoav laughed and shook his head. “You’re asking what I want?”

For a moment I saw the scholar who had come to the Baker to ask for our daughter’s hand, the young bridegroom so overwhelmed on his marriage day that even after the legal contract, the
ketubah,
had been drawn up and agreed upon, he seemed stunned to realize that Zara was indeed his. When he caught sight of the beauty of his bride, he was speechless, and his friends teased him, vowing he’d been mesmerized.

“Their voices,” he said.

We could hear the warriors who had gone in to their evening meal, breaking their fast, the raucous conversation of young men, some too young to know the horrors they would encounter when they ventured into the desert to defend us. Most of those young warriors looked away when they saw the Man from the Valley, with
his scars and his bands of metal, easily convinced they would never become like him, a death-giver maddened by war.