The Dovekeepers (24 page)

Where there was one miracle, surely, there would be more.

I cried myself to sleep and awoke early after an unsettled night. My eyes were red and puffy. I expected the boys to still be asleep, but my younger grandson, Levi, who had just turned seven, was crouched beside me, waiting for me to wake, his gaze trained upon me. He took my hand and led me outside, my guide through the dim light. I felt that I was still in a dream, but the dust and the sound of goats in their pens were real enough. We were here inside this fortress, so far from everything we knew, the fields of poppies and thistle, the cypress groves, the blooms of pomegranates, whose bell-shaped, scarlet flowers would turn to fruit before our eyes.

Levi led me to the wall that overlooked the white cliffs which stretched on as far as we could see. We watched the doves fly. Let loose at this hour so they might stretch their wings, they turned the entire sky white. They rose and disappeared, then returned again, drawn back to their nests. They were devoted to their mates. Therefore, couples were never allowed to fly together; the loyalty of one brought it back to its partner time and time again, despite the lure of freedom.

I understood what my grandson was telling me in bringing me to see the beauty of their flight. It was an honor to work with creatures who lived in the sky, so close to
Adonai.
If it was my fate to do so, it was not a burden but a gift. I turned and kissed Levi’s forehead and whispered a prayer of gratitude for all I still had.

THERE HAS BEEN
talk about us ever since my son-in-law brought us here. People gazed at us trying to guess at the catastrophe in our family, convinced that even among the unfortunate, we deserved their pity because of my grandsons’ inability to speak. They know nothing more, only that we were driven out of our home, as they were, and that we chose to come here. We could have gone north toward Nazareth or Galilee, where the air was said to always be cool, where we might have begun a new life, searching out a village where no one knew of our bad luck. But my son-in-law was no longer a man who could live that way, settled into the practical matters of daily life. He was not about to herd goats, or find us a house made of stone in a town where we would walk to the well and cook our meals and forget what we had been through. He wanted revenge, nothing less. At Masada he had found what he was searching for, the company of men willing to die for what they believed in.

I don’t know how much time passed in the wilderness after God deserted us.
Blessed is He who spoke, and the world came into being
.
Just as creation began with words so, too, did our world come apart in silence. None among us spoke. The boys because they could not, my son-in-law because he would not, myself because there were no words worth speaking aloud. The world was broken, and there was only one road that remained, splayed open before us as if made of bones.

I understood that by making this mountain our destination, we were headed for a no-man’s-land, a place from which there was no return. We had been banished from the world as we’d known it. We had seen too much and lost too much to walk into another town and unload the few belongings we still had and start anew.

Here my son-in-law is called the Man from the Valley; he needs no more of a name than that. He lives in the barracks, but even his own brethren fear him. He will go headfirst into any battle, unafraid and unyielding, with the grim expression of one who is determined to face down the Angel of Death. He wields an ax, the only weapon he needs. He eschews armor.
Take me down,
he goads the angel,
Mal’ach ha-Mavet. Take me if you can.

Some people say the Man from the Valley sleeps with his ax, that he loves it the way another man might love a woman, or a father adore his child. He, who was once a scholar called Yoav, is now as brutal and merciless as the angel Gabriel is said to be, for Gabriel stands at the left hand of God, the side of the righteous. His sword is made of fire, and his eyes are fire as well. If he appears before you, you can sink to your knees and beg for mercy, but you will most certainly burn.

My son-in-law has not cut his hair since our time in the desert. He vows he never will again. He braids it into plaits that fall down his back. Already his hair has turned white, though he is a young man. Brambles and thorns are threaded through the strands as they are in the wool of sheep and goats, but he doesn’t notice, for he lingers in the world of grief, not in ours. Thorns mean nothing to him. Brambles are all he expects from the world. Some children
whisper that he can breathe fire, like Gabriel, who is said to possess the ability to destroy entire cities with a single breath. When they see this Man from the Valley, the children run from him. He has no friends, takes no woman to his bed, keeps no one’s confidence. What happened has turned him into something that is like the wind—you cannot see him, but you know he is there, ready to do damage.

When I think of my son-in-law, I cannot help but recall the story of the rebel Jew some call Taxo. King Herod’s men chased him into a cave in the time when our fortress was still a palace, but this man would not bow to the will of the king. He would not offer his sons to be conscripts and refused to pay his share of taxes. The king could not allow rebellion, for such things breed as swarms of insects do, erupting into stinging fury, the one becoming the many, gathering strength.

When Herod’s soldiers were lowered from the tops of the cliffs on thick ropes, dressed for battle and ready to defeat him, the rebel cut the throats of his seven sons, one by one. He then slashed the throat of his wife before he followed, leaping into the ravine where he’d scattered his sons’ bodies. He would not allow those he loved to be subjected to the torture and cruelty of the king. Instead he left this world alongside them, even though it is written that none of our people may harm himself. As Taxo cast himself upon the rocks, perhaps he imagined God would blame the rocks for his death and he would be forgiven in the World-to-Come.

Though our law states that no man may wound himself, Yoav has destroyed the father he had once been to his sons, and in doing so he has destroyed himself. My son-in-law never comes to see the boys, for when he lost himself, he lost them as well. Should he happen upon the children in the alleyways or the orchards, he walks on the way a blind man might. At first the boys ran to him and clutched at his legs, but it did no good. Yoav does not blink, or stammer, or even gaze upon them, not if they throw themselves
at him, desperate for his attentions. All that is good in this world is concealed from the man who was my son-in-law. The glinting water in a cup is sinister in his eyes, the clear sky is an affront, and his children have become nothing more than reminders of how flesh can burn and be turned to dust.

People take his negligence as proof that something is wrong with the children. Why would their own father disown them, even though they are so beautiful, with golden hair and dark eyes, reminiscent of their mother’s? There are those who whisper that the boys are possessed and this has caused their silence, but I understand that words aren’t necessary. The doves have taught me that. It is possible to speak without words, to know another creature’s wants and desires though there is only silence. That was my lesson to learn, my fate all along.

Each morning when I arrive, the doves know me; their song rises and falls with pleasure and acceptance. It is always there, a river of sound. Someone who isn’t accustomed to such noise might cover her ears and run outside. Yael did exactly that on her first day with us, hiding her head in alarm. We laughed and teased her, calling out that if mere birds could frighten her so, she had best never face a fierce beast. And yet the doves go to her as if she could speak their language. Though she doesn’t seem to care for them, they fly to her as if charmed. It’s her silence that draws them in and comforts them.

As for me, I’m grateful for my work in the dovecotes. The more distracted I am, the more possible it is for me to go on for another day. The sun streams in, and I begin to feed my charges their grain. I chase the nesting ones away to search for eggs. Most flutter up, but if they refuse to leave their nests, I shake my apron at them. How is it that I can feel sorrow for the doves, so much so that when I take their speckled eggs and place them in a basket I often weep, and yet when I dream of the men I killed, I feel nothing at all.

BEFORE WE
came here we believed that our village in the Valley of the Cypresses was heaven, or perhaps we imagined it was not unlike the heaven we would someday enter. We should have known it would be taken from us. Nothing in this world is lasting, only our faith lives on. One day soldiers from the legion arrived, six across, walking down roads my own father had helped to build. First the legionnaires came, trained in Rome, decorated with chain mail and helmets; then the fierce auxiliary troops arrived, many of them tribesmen, wearing leather tunics, carrying long broadswords and lances. They wanted any riches they could find. From that morning when they entered our village, our land belonged to them and our lives did, too. They killed a white cockerel on the steps of the synagogue. In our law, that is a sin. They were well aware of this doctrine. The bird’s blood defiled us. This initial act of violence announced what the future would bring, if only the priests had bothered to read the signs left behind by the rooster’s bones. A hundred of our people went to rally against the legion and demand an apology. These were men who paid taxes and had homes and families, reputable, honest men who were certain this day would end with an apology from Rome.

They could not have been more wrong.

We did not see beyond the cypresses that grew with fragrant twisted bark set within a wood that had been there for so long we thought it would last forevermore. Outrage howled from ruined villages nearby for those who could hear, but we turned a deaf ear to their misery. For those who breathed deeply, there was the stink of war, but it was also the season when the oleander’s pink blooms sent out their fragrance and perfumed the air. Our land had been conquered many times, the sweet groves and fields drawing outsiders to us just as surely as the baker called to his customers with
the rich scent of his loaves. But that was in the past; we wanted to believe that our lives were settled. My husband paid no attention to what was happening. In that he was indeed single-minded, as well as hardworking. The wise men and rabbis bowed to the legion, accepting taxes so high we could barely survive, but as long as there was wood for his ovens, my husband was happy. He cut the logs himself, and there was a pile as tall as a mountain in our yard. My husband asked only for a blessing from
Adonai
for what he was about to bring forth into this world each day, the mystery of the
challah.
He had white powder in the creases of his skin. Each time he kissed me he left a white mark, a baker’s kiss. He assured me that, if we paid no attention to what was around us and did no harm, we would be safe. People always needed bread.

He left our home determined to bring the first round loaves to the synagogue as an offering, as he always did. He had vowed to avoid trouble, but on this day it found him. Our neighbors had collected in a beleaguered group on their way to plead their case so they would not lose their homes to the Romans. My husband was convinced to go with them. He had his tray of offerings, the loaves covered by a prayer shawl that had been so finely spun gold threads were braided among the purple fringes. He was ready to go to the rabbis, but when his neighbors scolded him and said all men must make a stand, he was compelled to make his mark with the others. The letter
R
fashioned into the crusts of the loaves he baked should have been enough of a mark for him, my name his inspiration and his shield. Instead, he joined those men who wanted more.

I KNEW
something was wrong when I smelled smoke. There were loaves in the oven. I checked them, but they weren’t yet burning. Why did he go on this day of all days? Why on this morning was he not single-minded when at all other times he saw nothing but his own bakery? The barley, the salt, the coriander, the cumin, these
were the ingredients that made up his world. Until now the only difficulty that had plagued my husband was that rats slunk through the windows; like many bakers, he often had to lay down hemlock to turn them away from the flour bins. Now there was peril in every corner of our world. The demons had flung open the doors to our village. They had declared us to be victims as they stood on a dark ledge and rubbed their hands together gleefully. What you are given, they declared, we now take away.