The Dovekeepers (52 page)

IT WAS DUSK
when we went, the hour when dark and light are difficult to measure and all things are possible. My mother intended to perform an exorcism. Raphael himself occasionally came to help in such proceedings, and there were rumors that it was he who was so radiant who once instructed an exorcist to burn the heart and liver of a fish to drive away demons. My mother had such ingredients with her now, the dried organs of a fish that had miraculously appeared in a
nachal
on our travels to this mountain, its sole purpose the exorcism of evil. I shivered when I realized this was what my mother meant to do, for it was a truly dangerous act. Once this world was opened, the exorcist herself could fall prey to evil spirits. There were stories of exorcists who never spoke again, who had lost their hearts as a result of their attempts, found with nothing remaining of them save for a pile of dry bones.

We went along the wall, past the garden. The scent of mint was in the air. We could hear the doves calling. My mother didn’t hesitate when she heard them. A smile crossed her face as she went to kneel beside their cage. She opened the door and I thought she meant to stroke their feathers, as she’d often petted the doves she kept when we were in Moab. Instead, she shook the cage so they came tumbling out. She took one in each hand and raised them up. The moment she let go, they lifted into the sky.

“There’s no use for them anymore,” she murmured as we watched them vanish, as we had done years ago, in another life it seemed.

It came as no surprise when we saw that Yael had followed and was waiting by the wall. She wore a dark veil, as though to disguise herself, but we knew her immediately, and understood why she
could not stay away. Perhaps her presence outside the palace would add to our strength.

We went to the door made of cypress wood. My mother leaned in close so she might whisper. I could feel the heat from her body and smell the oil she’d rubbed upon her throat and wrists. As the demon was chased out of the woman we were about to face, we must take the child. In that moment, and only then, would our enemy be powerless.

“She will try to terrify you with her claims, do not listen. She will heap misfortune on you, do not be afraid. There is a missing ingredient that she needs for her powers. It’s something only we have.”

I understood what that ingredient was. My father.

We had made certain to plait our braids tightly, close to our heads, so that the demon we were about to face would be unable to grab us by our hair. We had rubbed pomegranate oil on our arms and legs so that we might slip easily from its grasp. We chanted
Abra k’dabra. I will create something from the word. Amen Amen Selah.
For the word of our God was what would guide us and would protect us from evil. His song would be our only path, despite any sins we might have committed and any punishments we might deserve. What we believed in, and what we said aloud, we could create before His eyes and in His image.

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 and 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.”