The Dovekeepers (51 page)

“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.”