The Dovekeepers (53 page)

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.

“When I see him with Arieh,” Yael admitted, “I see the man he might have been had he not lost the one he loved most in this world.”

Arieh’s safety was assured while he was in the care of a grandfather who had been among the great
Sicarii
of Jerusalem, for the assassin’s knife was still hidden within his cloak, even though he was now delegated to clean weapons. It was he I wanted to see, and I asked Yael to lead me to his chamber. The assassin had disapproved of me as unworthy of his son. Perhaps Yael imagined I wished to win him over. But a man such as he could not be easily convinced, and in fact I wanted no such thing.

“You remember Aziza,” Yael said to her father.

Yosef bar Elhanan looked up, appraising me with a cool glance. I wondered how many men he had murdered, if the rush of blood had ever humbled him or made him seek forgiveness. He took the baby on his lap, then nodded. “The
shedah,
” he said.

He meant to insult me, but I smiled prettily. Such things as smiles can be weapons as well.

Yael went to make tea, though she feared leaving me at her father’s mercy.

“I’m used to such men,” I assured her, for indeed I knew that among men words were not nearly as perilous as the ones women spoke.

The assassin ignored me and tended to the child with unexpected affection. I leaned forward so only Bar Elhanan would hear, for what I was about to say was far too intimate a request for anyone passing by to overhear.

“I want you to teach me to be invisible,” I told him.

The old man had been jiggling Arieh on his knees, much to the baby’s delight. I half-expected him to feign deafness when I informed him of what I wanted, but he was curious when I made my request and couldn’t resist knowing more. He stared at me rudely, giving me no more respect then he would a common
zonah.

“Why would I do this?” he asked.

“So I can protect your son and my own brother.”

“My son is lost to me because of you.”

I knew distance still remained between Bar Elhanan and his son, but I wasn’t afraid to talk back to him and stand my ground. If I slunk away under the heat of his words, he would never respect me.

“If he’s lost to you, it’s because you’re too lazy to go and find him.”

The assassin chuckled and shook his head sadly. “True. I shut the door to him, and now I wonder why he doesn’t walk through it.”

I had hit upon his heart, for it turned out that he had one, so I dared to continue.

“I want to take my brother’s place, for it should have been my place to begin with.”

The assassin snorted a laugh. His weathered face showed only amusement. He seemed to believe I was there to entertain him with foolish tales. He would have begun to admonish me to keep to women’s work had I not learned what my sister’s father had taught me. You are only worthy of what you prove yourself to be. Before the assassin could dismiss me, I reached for the blade I carried. I leapt to stand behind him, placing the knife at his throat. Though it was forbidden to grab at me, Bar Elhanan had committed far worse sins. He ably grasped my arm and twisted it backward, nearly breaking it, all the while holding the baby on his knee. We were both breathing hard.

“For what cause did you come to murder me?” he demanded to know.

“That was not my purpose.”

He let go, and I faced him once more. He gazed at me, confused.

“Are you a woman?” he said thoughtfully, impressed and puzzled by my quickness with a weapon.

“Most of the time,” I answered.

Fortunately, he laughed. “I am nothing here,” he told me. “But if you want to learn to clean spears and armor, then I’m your man.”