The Dovekeepers (47 page)

It was Yael who brought him his meager provisions during the time he was locked away. She told us she could barely hear him speak. He was so weakened he could not rise from his pallet, a rough thing made from the chaff of the wheat. The cell was fetid, made the more filthy with his own waste. Still Wynn did not complain or curse his captors, but instead he spoke of the land of ice where he had been born. It was as though he were seeing it before his eyes. The heat dissipated as he spoke of his country, and he shivered as though he walked in snow. His people believed that a man would return home upon leaving this life. In the next world he would walk beneath the great yew trees of his homeland and once again be reunited with those who had gone before him.

One day he insisted he could see a stag outside the window. It was the animal that was so difficult to hunt, for it flew across the grass as the birds fly above us.

“What a beautiful creature,” he whispered.

Yael wept when she told us this, for there were no stags in our country, and no window in his cell.

It was a dark time. We had come to realize that our lives were here, so removed from the rest of the world we might as well have been in the World-to-Come. We would soon celebrate
Shavuot,
the Festival of Weeks, in remembrance of the day Moses was given the Torah. In the past our people would make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem with sacrifices of
bikkurim,
the first fruits brought forth after seven weeks of working the fields, sacrificing the seven species of the harvest: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, dates.

Such was our tradition and our law, but there was no Temple to journey to, and we had little to celebrate and no place where we might offer a sacrifice. Our orchards were failing, despite the rain my mother had called down. There was so little grain that
many of the storage jars were only half full. People wondered if demons had been at work. Indeed, now when it rained the sky hailed down upon us so strongly the rain itself might have been made of stone.

Although it was said that Masada could never fall, and that God had made this mountain for the purpose of our rebellion, allowing us to continue to give glory to Him, I wondered how long we could endure a siege should the Romans come. The storerooms of the king would not sustain us forever. Herod’s oil and wine and lentils had fed us, and we had depended upon them, but they were no more. There was a large oil press, but the olives on the trees were few and the oil produced was meted out in small jars. Now the rats ruled the storerooms. It was rumored they had been brought here by the Romans, purposely left behind in case our people ever took back this fortress, so that they might bring us disease, devouring what little we had left.

WORD HAD
gone out that the Roman garrison had captured another Zealot stronghold in the desert. The fortress of Machaerus, east of the Salt Sea on the border of Moab, had fallen to the Tenth Legion, led by Lucilius Bassus, a general some people said was impossible to defeat. An oracle had declared that favor would always be his, and so it seemed to be. But although Machaerus’s very name meant sword, perhaps its inevitable defeat had been caused at the hands of its own people. There was a bloody history in that place, and it was rumored that a great teacher named John had been imprisoned and beheaded there when he refused to renounce his teachings.

It was also reported that when rebels at Machaerus arrived at their fortress, they wanted to destroy all that had belonged to cruel Herod and his sons. In their zealousness, they chopped down an enormous rue that had grown there for hundreds of years, a plant taller than any fig tree, a talisman said to hold the secret to our
people’s freedom and success. With that one impulsive action, they had destroyed their chances at victory. Rue can save you or ruin you, it can bring luck or agony. Several warriors were said to be so haunted by their deed that they had tried to plant another herb in the same spot, but the roots always withered and refused to take.

When the Romans encircled them, one of their most beloved warriors had been trapped. He had been tortured in the open for all to see in ways too horrible for most decent men to imagine. His friends and loved ones were forced to watch as Romans cut off pieces of his flesh and filled him with burning thorn plants still alight, unwrapping his blistering skin from his soul. His fellow warriors pleaded for his freedom and the promise of their own safety, willing to surrender in exchange for the life of their brother. The bargain was made, and the rebels came down from their mountain. Their safety was assured but never granted. It came as no surprise to our people to hear that Lucilius Bassus was a liar. When our warriors thought of demons, they imagined his name. Each and every man at Machaerus was slain, their blood turning the ground black.

The Romans piled the pyres high with bodies—not only the dead were cast onto the flames but also the weak and the sick, those not worthy of being slaves. The sound of their cries echoed throughout Judea. Some women in our fields vowed there had been a rain of stones on that day, and when the last of the figs had been dashed to the ground, there had been ants inside the sticky fruit, destroying it from the inside.

There was a prayer meeting at the synagogue, and the men who gathered were stricken by the horror of the news. That evening we heard not only prayers but arguments. How could we avoid the fate of Machaerus? We could hear Ben Ya’ir’s low, steady voice. We knew it was he because when he spoke all others fell silent.

“We’ll never let our women and children die on pyres,” he told his warriors.

There was no choice for us, he cautioned, no retreat. It was apparent that our strength emerged from his courage; all the same, when I went into the fields I saw that the figs had indeed fallen; in what should have been the greenest time of the year, that golden fruit lay blackened on the ground.

YAEL WORRIED
not only for Wynn but for her child as well. Arieh had served as the key with which to open the barred door in the tower. He had been presented to our leader’s wife for her amusement in exchange for permission to bring provisions to the slave. But some keys can be used for many locks and should never be lent or given away. Our leader’s wife had taken a dangerous liking to Arieh, and a new prison had sprung forth, one made from her arms and from the net of her desires.

I had spied this dark woman alone in the evenings, walking beside the wall that surrounded us, as though she were a shadow in search of the substance that would bring her to life. Perhaps the child was such a cure for the ailment our leader’s wife carried within her, her barrenness and her despair.

Ben Ya’ir’s wife had begun to withhold Arieh when Revka came for him at the end of the day, insisting on keeping the baby through the night, rocking him as though he were her own. She threatened that, if she could not keep Arieh with her, she could no longer offer the slave her protection. Why should the barbarian live and she have nothing for her efforts? She went so far as to go to the priest to choose an auspicious day for Wynn’s death.

Yael herself went to the small palace when she heard of this. She bowed her head to Channa, but told her in no uncertain terms this was to be Arieh’s last visit in exchange for the life of the slave. When she returned to retrieve the child that evening, the door was bolted. A guard was stationed outside, there at Channa’s bidding.
He was a friend of Amram’s, Uri, who had brought Yael to the fortress, a good-natured young man who was liked by all. Yet he denied her entry.

“We do as we’re told,” he said apologetically. “She speaks with her husband’s voice as well as her own. You understand. I have no choice in the matter.”

Yael took to lurking around the palace, much as beggars roam the markets, hands outstretched. On nights when Revka kept vigil beside Yael, it was the older woman who wept, blaming herself for what had come to pass, for it was she who had fashioned the agreement with Channa. My mother had warned that nothing good could come from a bargain with Ben Ya’ir’s wife. She was dangerous, my mother said. More so than she appeared. I’d overheard Revka insisting that Channa’s interest in the baby was only a lonely woman’s attachment.

My mother had laughed coldly in response. “Then perhaps we should say a snake has an attachment to a dove when we speak of his hunger. Wait and see how much Channa is willing to devour.”

Now Yael came to my mother, tearful, desperate for a spell that would help her regain her son. “There must be something you can do,” she pleaded.

I was certain my mother would help her favorite. Instead, she shook her head sadly. “You shouldn’t have let her touch him. Now she has him in her claws.”

“Give me something to defeat the demon,” Yael begged.

“She’s not a demon, she’s a woman,” my mother said sadly. “In this case, that’s worse.”

I BEGAN
to keep watch with the others. We had all come to despise Channa for the liberties she took, showing off the child, dressing him in a tunic she’d had woven for him. This woman, who had set herself apart for so long, whose servants toiled in her garden and
kitchen while the rest of us went hungry, was now prideful, strutting through the plaza in the afternoons with the baby on her hip as though he were her own, chatting with the other women, who were quick to admire him, how handsome he was, how easily a smile came to him.

Revka’s grandsons acted as spies on our behalf, tracking Ben Ya’ir’s wife each day, reporting her activities to us. Noah and Levi had the ability to fade into the shadows, though their voices had come back strongly. People say that when you have lost something and it returns to you, it is doubly sweet, and so it was with Revka’s grandsons. When they spoke, their words captivated a listener. It seemed the conversations that had been silenced for so long could now be released in honeyed tones, and what they described they did artfully, their reports appearing before us as though written in the air.

“She stops where the black viper lives on the rocks and makes an offering,” they confided. “She feeds the baby from her fingers, filling him with figs and pomegranates and barley cakes as though he were a dove. She tells him he is so sweet the bees will follow him.”

The older boy, Noah, looked much like his father, the Man from the Valley, the warrior who kept to himself, a fighter I was curious about. Amram had told me this man could not be turned away by bloodshed, plunging into the fray when anyone else would have retreated, and wisely so. He took risks only a madman would take on, courting the Angel of Death, calling out, daring
Mal’ach ha-Mavet
to appear before him as he wielded his rough-hewn ax, the only weapon he had need of. His brothers in battle admired him, they spoke of him with respect, even awe, but they did not wish to stand beside him. They knew that he who is without a fear of death is the most dangerous man of all.

What makes a dangerous woman, however, was not always so apparent, for what is unnoticeable to the human eye is often the
most deadly attribute. What is hidden can destroy you. Demons appeared in the dark, when you least expected betrayal, when your eyes were closed. Because my mother refused to confront Channa, I wondered what this dark woman’s power over her might be. I studied Channa, and still I saw a weak creature, but one who had woven a strong web.

“Our leader’s wife whispers to Arieh that she alone protects him,” Revka’s grandsons told us. “She warns him against the women who wait at the wall. She tells him he must never listen to the one named Yael, that she will tell him lies and will beseech him to think he belongs to her.”

Yael grew ashen upon hearing these slanderous words, the marks on her face standing out as though she’d been dashed with blood. Still she sent the boys to discover more. They crept through the garden beside the palace, making their way past the mint and marjoram and sage, slinking as close as they dared. The boys had spied Channa waiting for her husband at the door with the baby in her arms, as though Arieh was an offering.

“And what does her husband say to this?” Yael wanted to know when Revka’s grandsons told of the situation, her voice sharp.

“He walks past her,” Noah remarked. “He never looks at her.”

When Yael heard this, she nodded, pleased. She was thin and agitated, yet doing her best to convince herself that the child would be returned to her. “What’s done can be undone,” she told us.

I didn’t offer an opinion, but I had heard my mother say the very same thing upon my sister’s marriage day, and Nahara was still bound to her husband. I was not certain that our lives were so similar to thread, able to be unspooled, then gathered up again.