The Dovekeepers (27 page)

Without the doves, this fortress would have already fallen. The leavings scattered in the orchard have turned our world green and lush, nourishing the roots of the dates and olives, feeding the almond trees, causing them to burst into blooms of pink and white clouds. Without the doves, we would have starved long ago. It was outlawed to kill one, for without the Temple there could no longer be sacrifices; a man who took one out of greed risked being
karet,
turned out from God’s view, for such a deed was considered a crime against us all.

Each time I cut open a piece of fruit, I was grateful to the pale, pliant creatures we cared for. Whenever one was ailing, I brought it home to nurse it to health. I kept such birds in a wooden shelf beside my bed. I listened as they cooed, finding comfort in their song.

These were the only nights when I didn’t dream.

I BEGAN
to change my mind about Yael, daughter of the famed assassin Yosef bar Elhanan, the murderer who people whispered had once possessed the ability to walk through walls and disappear in front of men’s eyes, sister of one of our young warriors. I noticed she could work her own brand of magic. All she had to
do was reach out her hand, and the doves would come to her. She needn’t cluck her tongue or offer grain, tricks I used to call them to me. I was surprised by her abilities, struck by jealousy. I was always the first to unlock the door in the mornings, the one to feed the doves and nurse them back to health. It was I who threw stones when hawks came to light on our roof, ready to slip through the thatching and destroy the nests we tended so carefully, or to strike when we let the doves fly in the early morning, assured of their loyalty and their return.

Yet it was Yael they went to, not me. She stood in the dark and they flitted around her.

“Why do they prefer her?” I asked Shirah, for she had been among the doves for the longest time. I suppose envy shone in my eyes.

“She speaks their language.”

“Really? Of birds? What language is that?”

Shirah smiled in response. “You of all people should know.”

Then I understood. It was the language of silence.

I HAD GUESSED
what Yael was hiding beneath her tunic and scarves, although she would not speak of it, and for good reason, even though we were far from the laws of Jerusalem, where women in her condition were called before a council of wise men and elders, then cast out to fend for themselves. Women who committed adultery and conceived were forced to drink bitter water and dust from the Temple floor, which some believed made the children within them fall away. This was the
sotah
ceremony, where their innocence or guilt would be proven by God when they were forced to drink His name written upon a piece of parchment and dissolved in a cup of water. People whispered that evil repelled God’s grace.
Should the wicked attempt to take His name into their bodies, they would fall to dust.

But perhaps on this mountain, with so much danger before us, there was little time to search out sin and little reason to do so. Did my neighbors not wonder what sins of their own had brought them to this place, why our people must suffer so, why God’s ways were so mysterious, why He had forsaken us on this mountain?

The constant howling of the wind drove some people mad; many among us cursed the fortress and were brought lower than they’d ever imagined. There were women who wept during the windstorms until tears streaked their faces with lines of salt. Did they not ask why they had been forced so far from Jerusalem and everything they had known and loved? In their darkest hours, as they huddled with their children in the dwindling light, their shawls their only protection from the sandstorms, they clearly wondered what we were fighting for.

I never asked that question. I gazed out at the land beyond the serpent’s path and thought of the many forms a beast could take. There were those who revealed themselves at noon, squarely setting their feet upon the earth, and those who sifted inside your dreams. There were those who came from Rome, the beasts I despised more than any others, their claws beginning to show as they crossed the Great Sea, for salt repels demons. When I thought of such wickedness, I could not sleep. To protect myself I chanted the incantation Shirah instructed me to recite when I tossed and turned at night.
I ban and make an oath against destroyers and demons and plagues and afflictions and terrors and nightmares.

Still I lay awake, unable to close my eyes.

There were occasions when I spied my son-in-law climbing the path, set apart from the other warriors as they returned from missions meant to protect us or when they attempted to locate the provisions we needed from the world outside our walls. I did not wish
to think about the mournful deeds they had committed, the blood that had been drawn, the lives taken.

The Man from the Valley who would not walk beside his brethren no longer had a resemblance to the scholar he’d once been. He was never without the ax for which he’d traded his most precious chalice, carrying the weapon so near his torso that it seemed a part of him, threaded to him with invisible red silk. His hair that had turned white overnight was so long that people said God was able to grab him away from danger. This was the reason he still lived, though he placed himself in peril time and time again. He was known to be furious in a skirmish, willing to forge into battle with little thought to his own life. I understood why he did this, for I knew what he was fighting for; in that he was no different than I. Anguish such as ours is fed on bones and blood. We had no more choice than the wind does as to where we must go and where we belonged. I was grateful for this quiet time on the mountain. Here, at last, my grandsons were safe, able to rest without danger while the doves at my bedside hushed them to sleep. As for me, sleep was a country I no longer visited, despite my incantation. When I did, I wished only for my waking life, the hours when I didn’t see the nightmare images of all that had happened and all I had become.

THERE WERE MANY
who were leaving cities and villages when we fled. They were mostly good people, but there were also those who veered to the left of the road, the side of the wicked. Before the Baker slid the last loaves in the oven on the huge wooden breadboard he always used, before I knew he wasn’t coming back, before black feathers fell onto the road, it had already been written that we would meet those who were evil and that they would come upon us late in the day, when the sky flared blue and the air was scented with jasmine.

They came for the donkeys, which they spied from the cliff. They came for the cool water that glittered in their eyes. But they stayed when they saw Zara tending to the fire. They saw her brightness, so beautiful it appeared that morning was breaking before them, and their intent changed. They forgot the donkeys and the pool of water and the Tenth Legion, the Roman regiment they had deserted, fearing punishment from their superiors, the canes of the generals broken upon their backs in exchange for misdeeds and grudges.

They were already beyond the line that divides us from the creatures of darkness. They crossed the worn path left by the pack of hyenas who had been stalking us, crying in the night, trying to gain our favor with their sorrowful yelps, hoping for scraps before they came to devour us. Four Roman soldiers who had lived without water or food or hope ventured down the hillside, their chain-mail armor weighing upon their frames, men once but no more. It was easy for them to become beasts; one step and their humanity was an illusion. Beneath the armor there was only teeth and claws, hunger and thirst. It was the Sabbath, and Yoav was gone into the desert to pray, his prayer shawl thrown over his shoulders. The wind was rising, so he didn’t hear any of what happened to us. He was committed to God and to the sound of his own voice. Ever since
Yom Kippur
he had been absent all day and into the evening, praying for our deliverance. When the first star appeared in the sky, we would light the Sabbath lamp with the last of our olive oil, and he would return to us. That was the sorrow of it. He saw the light but never expected the darkness.

I spied the soldiers as you might spy a demon, a shadow in the corner, melting across the ground. I didn’t wait to think further. I sent the boys running. It was as though a key had unlocked the future and for one brief instant I saw through to the other side.

“Go quickly and don’t venture forth,” I told my grandsons. “Not until I come for you. Even if the night falls, even if the sun is
eaten by the moon, no matter what you hear, even if someone calls you by name. Don’t answer. Don’t talk.” I looked into their eyes as I instructed them. “Above all else: Stay hidden.”

I sent them to the ledge behind the waterfall where they sometimes played. The children were small enough to slip inside a crevice that had been formed where the rocks met. The water was a curtain as it rushed past. I thought if anything went wrong the boys wouldn’t be able to see through the water and God would protect them.

But water is clear, like an open window, and their eyes were open as well.

THE MEN
fell upon Zara at the fire. I heard her voice the way you hear a bell, it rings and sounds above all other noises. I ran to her, and one of the intruders threw me to the side, for to him I was no more than a dried locust, good for nothing other than a raven’s dinner. I could taste blood brimming in my mouth. I charged at them, screaming, but they were four, and brutally strong, and I was a woman and unused to fighting. While two of them held Zara, tearing at her garments, the other two made quick business of me. The world grew dark when they took a rock to my head. I could feel the heat of my own blood washing across my forehead. Everything was black as night inside of me. To my shame I didn’t see what my grandsons saw, I only understood when I saw the broken shell Zara had become. But the boys observed it all: how the soldiers took turns with their mother, how she tried to fend them off, how when they were finished they tortured her with fire and with burning rocks and sharp sticks for no reason other than the sake of their own wickedness.

When I came out of the darkness and awoke again to this world, it was too late. The beasts were going through the meager possessions that were stored in our tent. I went to Zara even though
I knew that we had entered the realm of demons and that each demon who walks the earth has the strength of a thousand men and that I was only a woman, made old in these few hours, an ancient, worthless thing. I dragged myself through the sand.

One moment we had all the time in the world stretching out in front of us, and in the next instant my beloved daughter was dying in my arms. She was whispering for me to finish it and let her go to the World-to-Come. She pleaded with me as her blood washed over us, the blood I had labored to bring forth into this world. It was not enough for them to use her for their pleasure and then leave us be. It was not enough for them to take all that we owned—the donkeys, the water, the tent, the provisions—and abandon us to the hyenas who were already circling. They were the angels of destruction, I saw that clearly, though they appeared to be Roman soldiers. They had come to us from the dark side of the world, where no light can penetrate. Zara’s skin was blackened where they had held burning sticks and rocks against her. They had put the rocks inside her just to hear her scream. I snatched those rocks away, but it did no good. She was already speaking to those in the World-to-Come, already broken. Now I saw that she had been split in two with an ax, and all that was contained inside her body had spilled into the earth.