The Dovekeepers (56 page)

Perhaps my father was hoping for a son, as Adir’s father had, for Ben Ya’ir had grown reckless when it came to my mother, meeting her in the cistern nearly every night, delighted both with her and with the child that was to be. His own wife was confined, nowhere to be seen. People whispered that Channa was ill again, but I wondered if perhaps her husband had forbidden her to go among the other women. He would not tolerate her interference any longer, for he had given her most of his life. What little he might have left he now claimed for his own.

Ever since our arrival he had been practicing his own form of invisibility, not unlike the skills the old assassin had taught me. He had kept his yearning for my mother hidden right in front of other people’s eyes. Indeed, they had looked past what was so evident and seen nothing. He had the right to claim another wife when his own proved to be barren; still Channa had fought him and done her best to trick him, insisting that God had given her the child she stole from Yael.

Now, when it seemed that every day was a gift and another might not follow, as the Essenes had vowed, my father no longer bothered with subterfuge. I had spied him with my mother outside our door, in an embrace so deep it seemed they were drowning. There were evenings when he sat at our table, to join in the meager meal. At such times I remained outside the door, bringing my brother with me into the yard, though he had to lean on my shoulder merely to walk. We sat outside and ate dried fruit and flatbread from our hands. Perhaps my brother assumed I believed neither of us had the right to be in the presence of the great man. But I could not see Ben Ya’ir without my head swimming with the screams I had heard during the village raid. I felt that I had failed him in some way, and that he in turn had failed me. Perhaps it had been better to have viewed him from a distance, so that his flaws were left unseen. I had wanted him to know me in battle and acknowledge me as his own; now I felt invisibility suited me.

And yet one night, as he left our mother’s chamber, Ben Ya’ir stopped before us. I had warned my brother what to do if such an occasion should ever occur. We were both to lower our eyes in the presence of our leader.

“When you go into battle again, you may need this,” Ben Ya’ir said.

He laid a knife down before us. I spied that the hilt was set in bronze, beautifully decorated with a bower of leaves.
Perac lavan
was engraved upon it.
White flower
. He had carried this knife in honor of my mother and of the lilies she had loved as a girl in Alexandria. I did not agree with all that he did, or his ways in battle, but he was my father. The gift was for a warrior, so I elbowed my brother. Adir mumbled words of thanks, but when Ben Ya’ir left us, I was the one to take up his knife.

*

MORE AND
more often, we had our meals in the yard so that my mother and Ben Ya’ir could have privacy. We were not the only ones who knew that our leader came to my mother’s chamber each night. Jealousy stalked my mother and mistrust had sifted down upon the mountain. She was a woman who had been in chains, who could call to demons and draw the
kadim
to her. One midnight a quartered dove was left outside our chamber, its beak and feet chopped off, the white feathers dusted black with a scrim of soot. I gave my mother Ben Ya’ir’s knife after that, so that she might rebuke any ill intentions. It was a gift from her beloved and therefore rightly belonged to her, for although I owed my mother my first life, I owed my second life to the Man from the Valley, not to Ben Ya’ir. I now felt I had been a fool to think my father had been one of the angels; my true father had been the man on the Iron Mountain, the one who had rescued us and taught me all I’d needed to know.

My mother took the knife, the token of Eleazar’s protection. I advised her to lock the door whenever I was gone, and to be more discreet, lest she be the cause of her own prophecy and be brought to ruin by love.

A GROUP
of Roman
exploratores
stunned us all when they set up camp in the valley. It happened in our holiest month,
Tishri,
when we celebrate our new year and atone for our sins, the ones we are responsible for and the ones that are to come.

When the scouts arrived, we thought they would be like all the others; they would stand amazed at the position of our fortress, then move on to report we could not be conquered. But this group was different. These soldiers intended to stay. They’d brought urns of wine and oil, herds of camels, and most telling of all, bakers who had settled into their own camp. We could smell the scent of fresh bread baking in their domed ovens.

It was apparent that these soldiers were only the first of what would soon be a legion. Rome was amassing an army outside of Jericho with ten thousand soldiers, along with a thousand Jews who were enslaved and made to serve the Emperor. Our council proclaimed that women were no longer allowed to venture beyond the gates for any reason, to make certain they would not fall into the hands of our enemies. Men who journeyed away from the mountain did so at their own peril. The warriors still went out but more stealthily, taking the serpent’s path in the cover of dark or making their way down the back of the mountain, a climb so treacherous, several lost their lives upon attempting to return. Despite the danger, I lived for these nights when the owls glided above us. We made our way past our enemies as though we were mist, freed from our earthly forms.

At night I paced our chamber, wanting nothing more than to go beyond the gates. The only small joys we had were in celebrating Arieh’s many accomplishments. He was now fourteen months old. Even those who looked down on a fatherless child admitted he was unusual, handsome and large and respectful. He was so beloved among the women in the dovecote that, each time he ran on the cobblestones or spoke the name
immah
to his dear mother, we applauded as though he had climbed a mountain.

I sat with the women at the looms in the evenings. Though I could not weave, I helped to spin what little wool there was. Beside me, my dog put his head on my knee. Eran and I wanted the same thing, the freedom of the wilderness, but we needed patience. I yearned to be like the Man from the Valley, who slept beyond the fields. I did not see him, or search for him, but I knew he was there. Whenever we were called to go back down the mountain on raids, slipping past the Roman scouts, I made certain to walk beside him, for with him I did not have to pretend to be anyone other than who I was.

*

AMRAM
had sent a girl to me to ask why I no longer met him at the fountain. He waited for me in the evenings, but I did not appear. Now he had taken a risk and engaged this child to do his bidding. The girl, not more than four or five, was the daughter of one of the warriors, a friend he trusted from his days in Jerusalem. The child’s braid was thick and black, her manner friendly. She reminded me of Nahara, with her bright, knowing eyes. I said to tell the man who’d sent her that a fever was upon me. I flushed with the burden of my lie, and perhaps I appeared aflame, truly overtaken by an ailment, for the child seemed to believe me. Quickly she backed away, then ran to deliver my message.

It was the time of
Rosh Chodesh,
and the priest who watched for the rising moon sounded the call of the ram’s horn for us to gather for the Blessing of the New Moon,
Kiddush levanah,
a prayer which grants us favor from God and invites the Shechinah, all that is compassion and wisdom, into our midst. Our people stood beneath the new moon to listen to the priests and the learned men. We rejoiced, celebrating the passage of time with dancing, our musicians taking up rattles and cymbals and bells in defiance of the Romans stationed in our valley. We prayed and danced together, but only the women would not work in the morning, for they were tied to the moon in ways men could not understand, closer to the female heart of creation.

I kept to the shadows so that Amram would not see me, for I had noticed him among his brethren. When I looked at him, I saw not his handsome features but the face of the murdered child from the village, no older in years than the girl who had brought me his message. There was no one with whom I could share the joy of the new month. I yearned for my sister and the way in which we had danced together in the country of her father, though his
people did not count their days as we did. Our mother had taught us that when the moon was white, reappearing after its absence, it was showing us that what had been hidden could easily become whole again.

That night in my sleep perhaps I did become fevered, made ill by my sister’s absence. I yearned for her, the girl I had brought into this world. I dreamed that there were seven wolves on the mountain, and that each had brought forth a dove in its mouth, and that every one of the doves had seven wings and could fly farther than any others. Seven is the most powerful number of all. The first words of the Torah are seven in number, and the Sabbath is the seventh day, the most holy of all. Now my dream had come to me in sevens. This seemed to me a blessing and a calling, one I couldn’t ignore.

I went to the wall to watch for my sister.

I stood there much of the day, convinced my dream had been a pathway, a sign that God knew my sister still belonged to me and that we could never truly be parted. At twilight, the hour between worlds when one’s eyes can play tricks and it is easy to see what you wish to view rather than what is before you, I thought I spied Nahara. She was following the thin black goats as they searched in vain for tufts of grass on the sheer, rocky cliff. Below us, in their camp, the Romans would soon enough notice her as well if she went along the mountain while there was still light. Since the soldiers had made camp, the Essenes had not left their cave in daylight. But their provisions would last for only so long if no one came to their assistance. If they had no spring and no well, they would soon die of thirst.

Half of the doves had been taken from us, though my mother begged they be allowed to live. Instead, they had been used for meat. We had but a few baskets of their leavings to feed the earth, and the earth repaid us in kind for our lack of gratitude. In the orchards the leaves that unfurled were spotted; fruit came to us
already withered. During our harvest, I gathered what I could for my sister. I could not look across the valley and watch her starve while we could still manage to feed ourselves, however meagerly. I packed dried beans and millet, a small jar of oil we had been allotted. I was willing to be a thief, as I had been willing to be a liar, and a pretender, and a murderer. But there was one offense I could not bring myself to commit. I, who had killed men and had tasted blood, could not bring myself to murder the doves we had tended. I went to Yael, to plead for her help, which she gave me without question.

Together we went to the dovecote. The pale moon watched over us and allowed us to slip through the plaza as nothing more than shadows. We went inside, then crouched upon the straw. I watched as Yael called the doves to her. She raised her hand up, and they were summoned. As each one came to her, Yael sat with it quietly, then broke its neck. She wept as she did so, such was her sacrifice on my behalf. Then she lay their limp bodies on her lap, stroking their feathers before she gave them to me.

She walked me back to my chambers, helping me carry the provisions I meant to bring to my sister. As I had helped her in her times of need, so she was now beside me. I would never have imagined that she who had once been my rival had become a sister to me. If anything, I had imagined she might become my sister through the laws of marriage. Amram and I had always planned to include her in the ceremony, but that time was over. The day after the little messenger girl told him I was ill, Amram came to our chambers and knocked upon the door. My mother was surprised that, as soon as I spied who the caller was, I slunk into the garden. I overheard him ask about my fever and heard her answer that it was my brother who had been ill, not I. Perhaps Amram had complained to his sister, for as we neared the barracks Yael murmured, “My brother says that he rarely sees you. He still wears the blue token.”

“That’s done in your honor.” I kept my eyes lowered. “Not mine.”

“Every man changes in war.”

From her tone I understood that she knew some part of her brother had been lost.

I DRESSED
in my brother’s tunic and took a heavy pack upon my back, meant for my sister. Adir was still on his pallet because of his difficulty in walking. When he saw me dressed as him, he was amazed. He vowed he himself would think that I was Adir had he not known better. He hadn’t fully understood that he had managed to be a warrior though he still lay in a darkened corner of our chamber.

“They all believe I am you,” I admitted.

My brother accepted that I had taken his place and that I had honored his name. This was why the warriors left gifts of oil and myrrh at the door and why people came to offer their congratulations on the bravery of his deeds.

My brother lifted himself up on one elbow to study me. The dog stood beside me, a pack tied to his back, for he was mine when he should have been my brother’s.

“Have I done well as a warrior?” Adir wanted to know.

I nodded, embarrassed to have taken so much from him. But he seemed relieved.

“Have I slain many of the enemy?”

“Only when you needed to.”

Every time the warriors went out on raids, my brother, you were among them. We attacked at night, splitting into four sections, coming to our enemies in the dark from the four corners of the world. We went to let the Romans know that they had not destroyed us and that we had not disappeared despite their presence in our valley. We went to take what we needed to survive and
because our people could not be contained nor denied their right to Zion.