The Dovekeepers (21 page)

“Is there anyone who wants your child to be unborn?” she asked. “Anyone who wishes you harm?”

I felt as though an arrow had pierced me. There was only one such person. As I had taken from Sia, she would take from me.

“A ghost,” I said in a low tone.

“Is she here with you now?”

I looked up to see that my ghost had indeed followed and was standing at the door, watching me reproachfully.

I nodded.

“Well, she comes for a reason.” Shirah studied me. Kohl ringed her eyes.

For a moment I felt I was drowning. “I took something that didn’t belong to me,” I admitted.

“I see.” She continued to study me, reading my every expression. “Do you regret this?”

A simple enough question. But I couldn’t give the answer she wanted. When I shook my head, Shirah sighed.

“If that’s how you feel, then you’ll have to accept that the one you stole from will take your child.”

If Sia had lived, the baby I carried would have belonged to her if Ben Simon had claimed it as his own and married me. She would
forever be his first wife and could have arranged to take over my life. Perhaps that was her intention now.

I leapt up, beside myself with worry. The knife I carried as a love token clattered to the floor. Shirah reached for it. I could feel heat rise into my face as she ran her finger over the blade. It was still sharp enough to bring forth a bead of her blood.

“Sit down,” Shirah crooned. She cautioned me that if I was agitated I would only quicken the blood between my legs. “Don’t help your rival with her revenge.”

I did as I was told.

“When you’re with a man who has a wife, you marry her as well. Surely you knew that at the time?”

I tilted my chin and gazed directly into Shirah’s eyes. “I would not undo what I had with him.”

“But that’s exactly what is happening,” she cautioned. “If you want the child, you must rid yourself of the ghost, and to do that you must possess regret. A ghost doesn’t just go away. She’s sewn herself to you. You’re sharing the same skin, so she thinks this child belongs to her even though she’s in the World-to-Come. There’s only one way to be rid of her.”

I listened closely, not knowing which I felt more, terror or gratitude.

“Do what I say and don’t take it upon yourself to change anything. Cut a lock of your hair. Tie it in a knot. Go to the place where the new willows stand below this fortress and burn your hair on willow wood.”

She returned to the vials of herbs and plucked three leaves from a jar, wrapping them in a piece of white linen, then handing me the folded scrap.

“Eat these when darkness falls. What you swallow is the taste of what you’ve done. Be prepared for that. Only you know how bitter it will be. But don’t bother with any of it if you have no regret. If
that’s the case, pour your rival a cup of tea every morning, because there she’ll be, with your child in her arms.”

My eyes were burning. If I wasn’t careful, I would weep Sia’s tears once more. I said nothing.

Shirah leaned forward, lowering her voice. Her head scarf slipped down. Her hair was plaited in a sleek braid, then looped up gracefully, in the Egyptian fashion. “If you are ready for forgiveness, you will have to take up the angel Raphael’s name three times. Then three times say
I should not have harmed you
. At the very last, say it backward three times to make sure what you’ve done disappears.”

Shirah took up the assassin’s knife. Before I could react, she reached to slash a long shock of my hair. It fell between us like a snake. I thought I heard it hiss as the merciless black vipers do.

“You have to give yourself over to her if you want to be free of her. Just know that what’s done can be undone, but what’s undone can never again be.”

I SET OFF
the next day. I asked the watchman at the gate if I could walk along the path of the serpent. There were some small willows which grew nearby, new, pliant trees whose branches I wished to use to fashion a basket. The watchman was young, and he failed to question me further, waving me on, even though women were not allowed to go beyond the gate. I went forward straightaway, down the plummeting path, before he thought better of it and called me back.

The air felt especially dry on this day. Little sparks sprang up from the chalky earth as I ventured forth. Winter had disappeared. Soon the land would burn and I would burn with it. I walked quickly on the downward pitch, the desert before me. Everything looked white in the haze. There was no difference between the
earth and the sky. I spied the stand of willows Shirah had spoken of and veered from the path onto a ridge, then down into a hollow, where there was a canopy of shade and a pool of still, fetid water. I sat there sheltered by the trees and tried to catch my breath. My cramps had been stanched, but there was still the trickle of blood. A flutter of despair beat inside my chest.

I’d brought Ben Simon’s knife with me, that odd killing token of his love. I thought that of all the people he had murdered, he’d done his best work with me. There was a part of me that was forever gone. I could hardly resist the lure of the cliffs and the desire to end my struggle. I did my best not to think of such cowardly actions. It was against the law to harm oneself, a sin so great there was no forgiveness and only a field of fire in the World-to-Come.

I set my thoughts on the pattern of the leaves of the willow as I looked for fallen branches, and on the smoothness of the bark as I inhaled its scent, so fresh and green. I gathered the kindling in the white scarf the Essenes had given me. I brushed away stray leaves. When I did, they looked like rain falling, or the tears on Ben Simon’s face when he saw the two sister-brides in the desert.

I brought the firewood to a cave where I wouldn’t be seen, slipping inside a crevice that split the rocks. Women were warned away from such places. There were wild beasts in among the rocks, and robbers, perhaps demons as well. The sky was glowing with fading light, and the cliffs were streaked pink and gold. I waited for nightfall. I breathed the way a leopard might, panting, still feeling heat between my legs where I bled. I felt alone, drawn deep inside my own silence.

When it came time and the sky was sifting into darkness, I made a fire between the cliffs, so the wisps of smoke wouldn’t be noticed by the watchmen who patrolled the walls. I slipped off my garments and folded them. I had brought along pomegranate oil, which I poured into my hands and rubbed into my hair and skin. I then threw the knot of my shorn hair onto the pile of burning
willow twigs. The sharp odor of a part of myself set aflame sent a shiver through me.

I crouched among the rocks and ate the herbs I’d been given, even though they made my tongue swell. It was blessed thistle, and the taste was indeed sharp, leaving a gritty film inside my mouth. I could barely swallow. When I had consumed the leaves, I felt a shadow reach a hand inside me.

For what seemed a long time, I sat back on my heels and waited for the spell to begin. I watched stars drop down from the sky. I glimpsed the bright arc of the new moon. It was
Rosh Chodesh,
the new month of
Nissan.
In the plaza this night was being celebrated, for this had been God’s first commandment to Israel, that we should keep time by charting the new moon, for it meant the renewal of our people and was a reminder that there is light in the darkness. This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.

I realized then that I needed to forgo silence, which had been my sword and my shield. That was the price I must pay. What protected me once, I now must cast away. It was my gift, but no more.

I began to pray.
Amen Amen Selah.
The spell wound around me as the dark spun into light. The stars dropped closer. I was afraid of what was about to happen once my true nature was revealed before the eyes of God. But what was to be was now beyond my will, in the hands of fate. I had eaten of the herbs, started the flame, said the prayer that opened my wounds and my heart, lifted my voice to the Almighty.

The fire’s roar sounded like the voice of the ghost. I had called to her, pleading for her to come to me as she had once bathed with me and brushed the ashes from my hair. The fire was so bright I shielded my eyes, but it burned brighter still. Something inside me broke apart and splintered. I made a sound I didn’t recognize as my own voice. I called out, pleading, and then my pleas were answered.

Sia was before me.

Her cloak was in tatters, her hair in knots, her arms were nothing more than bones. I could not bear to see the harm I’d done to her. I ran to the edge of the cliff to escape her. Stones shifted beneath my feet, and I could feel myself sliding. If I leapt I would fly to the desert floor below, a petal from a flame tree, a dove set free. But the ghost still would not let me be, even now. She would not release me to the death I wished for myself. She reached out, pulling me back from the edge. I fought her, but she refused to let go. When at last I had no choice, I wrapped my arms around her, my one and only friend. I gave myself to Sia.

When I begged for forgiveness, it was not her tears I cried but my own.

I fell asleep on the rocks, sprawled out on a dark ledge where the thorn trees grew. When I awoke it was almost morning. Sia had been in my dreams all through the night. She was with a lion in the desert, beneath a willow tree. She had taken him back from me, as she deserved to, but unlike me, she was not a thief. She left me what was mine. I felt the child move within me and wept with joy. I was not a demon or a leopard, only a woman with red hair. Now, as light split apart the sky, turning the desert pink, I slipped on my tunic. My body felt raw and bruised. I saw the marks I had made long ago on my leg, pale, like the arc of the moon. They seemed to belong to someone else, but I was the one who would have to carry the scars.

I knelt by the fire to make certain there were no burning embers left. That was when I spied the tracks of a lion. There were only a few such beasts left in the desert, but one had come here, answering my call. He had been there all the while, watching over me, before he left me at last.

I ATTEMPTED
to speak to my father to make amends, but each time I approached, he turned away. He waved at me, his signal for a dog,
for that was what I still was to him. He had become an even more miserable man here at the fortress than he’d been in Jerusalem. He, who had courted invisibility, had become what he desired to be; no one could see him now. Old men were invisible in this world of war, thought of as useless. My father was no longer vital. Ben Ya’ir needed young men who could fight in hand-to-hand combat wielding axes, not assassins who hid their sharpened knives inside their robes and stalked their enemies in the dark corners of the Temple courtyard. No one honored the great Yosef bar Elhanan for his ability to slink into the houses of his enemies, at one with the darkness of the night.

He’d been assigned to keep track of the weaponry. It was a lowly job, meant for young boys and old men. Replacing the tips of arrows was beneath him, but no one would listen to him, no one valued him. He began to fold in on himself, a tangle of envy. Now when he saw my brother return with the warriors, my father was jealous rather than proud. Amram had always been the one to shine in his eyes, but lately our father had begun to look upon him with distaste. Like the teacher whose student surpasses him, my father resented my brother his victories and his youth.

It was as though he no longer had children. We were only shadows on the wall, there to mock him and betray him.

ONE EVENING
my father spied Aziza with my brother, secluded beside the fountain. Everyone knew she was the witch’s daughter. She was not the wife my father wanted for his son. He turned in her direction and spat on the ground.
Shedah,
he hissed, as though he’d spied a serpent. He called my brother to him, and they argued with such ferocity I covered my ears.

My brother announced that he planned to wed Aziza despite my father’s claims that he wouldn’t hear of this match. Amram threatened to denounce my father, and my father made threats of his
own. If Aziza’s mother was to discover her daughter’s impurity, perhaps she would see to her punishment herself, bind her in a spell of silence or cover her with boils, cut off all her hair or cast her beyond the gate. I was in a corner spinning yarn on my spindle, doing my best not to interfere, but my heart was hitting against my chest as my brother and father raged against each other. The air in the chamber was hot, charged. The more my father railed, the paler my brother appeared, turning to ice. Pale light is dangerous, reckless and cold. Amram put his hand on his knife. Perhaps he had forgotten it was our father before him. I whispered his name, hoping to wake him from his dark dream. My brother glanced at the knife he had plucked from his belt as though he were indeed a dreamer. Quickly, he let it go.

“Don’t speak to me again,” he admonished my father before he departed. “If you see me, walk by me in silence, as I’ll walk by you.”

In that instant, what little family I had was dismantled. That night my father refused his meal. He took to his bed, face to the wall. He had become older than his years, a man who had thrown away all he might have had, ruined by his own bitterness.