The Dovekeepers (41 page)

You are mine and mine alone.

YOUR FATHER
was a wealthy man, and he knew what he wanted. Had this not been so, had he not traveled to Jerusalem from the far
shore of the Salt Sea, our mother and I would have perished, cast out on the day I was born. I had no sister to comfort me as you did on the day of your arrival in this world, only the taste of my own blood in my mouth.

The man who was to be your father had come such a great distance to trade the riches he had amassed, piles of black myrrh and balsam, spices in heaps of ocher and red, baskets of frankincense grown from the white star flower of Edom, salt from the sea, limestone from the cliffs. Perhaps an angel stopped him on the street and whispered in his ear, suggesting that he turn his head. He wore a long scarf and the blue robes of his people, which were dyed with the root of the ginger plant. Although he was far from young, his eyesight was sharper than a falcon’s and he took note of my mother’s great beauty. Among the men he rode with, he was known for seeing what others could not. That may be why he spied us in a cart meant for sheep brought to the butcher as we were driven into the wilderness. The Angel of Death was waiting for us—
Mal’ach ha-Mavet,
who has a thousand glinting eyes—but he was defeated when your father followed us.

Your father gave the driver a handful of coins that he himself deemed worthless. He was a man who believed what mattered came from the earth, not from the treasuries of a temple or the workshops of men. He took us with him that very day, destined for the east, the ancient land across the Salt Sea, where the mountain is made of iron and mounds of black asphalt float along the shore, setting themselves on fire when the heat rises. Your father’s people collected nets full of asphalt to sell at a high price to the legion so that the soldiers might forge paved roads in Alexandria and Rome.

Our mother confided that when she saw the black sea she didn’t know if we’d been rescued or forsaken by this fierce, silent man whose arms were ringed with blue tattoos and who marked his own face with scars he had cut with a thin knife to commemorate his many battles. She feared he was bringing her to Gehennom, the
valley of hell. In fact we journeyed from Judea to Moab, a kingdom that had been ruined and deserted more than once but that was now in full flower. Many of the tribesmen of this land refused to stay in one place but instead called every corner of their country home. This was the land Ruth had come from when she followed Naomi into Judea, though her people had cursed ours. From her line our great King David was born, a gift to his people and to the world. The land here was green, the earth rain-spattered even when other countries were aflame with heat, the vistas lush with fields of grass. There were acacias in bloom, the tree God asked be made into the Ark of the Covenant so that its strong and fragrant wood might house His word to mankind. Myrtle bushes grew tall in Moab, and there were spills of wild cassis. The bursts of yellow iris made it appear as though sunlight had spilled across the land as a blessing.

Your father and his kinsmen lived in the hills, made wealthy not only by the sale of asphalt but by the treasures they seized from caravans that traveled the King’s Highway from Damascus to Egypt. Stolen goods some might say, but in the eyes of the tribesmen, these treasures were a simple payment, taken as their just due, for their homeland was the route connecting two nations. A robber is a king in his own land, that is what your father believed, the lord of his own mountain. Every man in this region was said to be born with a knife in his hand, a horse already chosen for him, and a prayer to offer to his God.

My mother was still bleeding from my birth when they stopped to make camp the first evening. All the same she wrapped me in cloth and laid me in a hollow, so that your father could make her his wife that night. To celebrate their marriage, he gave her a pair of earrings set with rubies. Anyone in Jerusalem would have known why she was marked by tattoos, a swirl of henna-red inkings upon her flesh. From the time she was a child, she had been trained to be a
kedeshah
in Egypt, a woman meant for the holy use of the priests, as her mother before her had been. But such things had become
secret and outlawed. Our mother had been sent out of Alexandria, to be raised by her kinsmen in Jerusalem. She never managed to return to the city where her mother longed to see her again, waiting by her gate for her only daughter’s return.

Our grandmother whom we never knew gave our mother two gold amulets for protection. On one was written
Chayei ‘olam le‘olam—Eternal life, forever
—the gold imprinted with images of the sun and the moon. On the other the words
I have placed the eternal always before me
were inscribed; on the back of the medallion a fish had been engraved, to ensure that the wearer would always be near water, the most precious element, the giver of life.

Although our mother was sent to Jerusalem for her safety, she was repudiated for her sins there, accused of seducing a man who was married. It was claimed she had been wed both to him and to a demon. When the case was brought before the priests by the man’s family, my mother refused to admit any wrongdoing. The
sotah
ceremony was held, in which God’s name is written on papyrus, then slipped into a tumbler, where it is erased into the water and mixed with the dust of the Temple floor, to be consumed by the suspected adulteress. My mother drank God’s name and did not falter; still, those who opposed her considered her to be in league with the demons. She could deny her sin, but I was the evidence, held up by my heels before three judges. Perhaps when they examined me they were looking for proof that she had indeed slept with a demon, searching for horns or wings, to see if I was a
shedah,
the child of a watcher, an angel who had been called to earth by my mother’s beauty, or if I had simply been born of the flesh.

The tribesman from Moab who was to become your father did not care about such matters. Judgments made by our councils were meaningless to him. Our God was not his God. Our mother’s sin was not his interest. He knew what he wanted. He was simple in that way, yet he was complicated as well. As for me, I was little more than a mouse caught in a snare, a creature he allowed our mother
to keep as a pet when they set off the next morning and she refused to leave me behind. The world was still dark on the day they left Judea, as the sea was, but before them the horizon was radiant, like a pearl. Our mother told me that, after they passed by the black mounds of burning asphalt in the Salt Sea, she was grateful we had not fallen into the fires of hell. She felt her heart lift at the sight of the mountains, which are green even when the rest of the world is dying of thirst. The lilies that grow there are red, and she still wears their perfume; a ceramic vial of their scent was one of the few belongings she took with us when we came to this fortress.

Perhaps when she wears the scent of the lilies she remembers the morning when we were given another life.

OUR PEOPLE
believe that the world is split in two. On the side of goodness are the
malachim,
the thousand angels of light. On the side of evil there are
mazzikim,
demons who are uncountable and unknowable, uncontrolled even by the Almighty’s wishes. Your father was both combined. We made camp in the mountains, above the pass that overlooked the King’s Road from Damascus. Your father did not think twice before he swooped down with his men upon a caravan to take what he wanted, but he was shy with children and kind to our mother. Though he was a warrior, he could become flustered in the presence of our mother and hardly knew what to say to her. His eyes burned when he gazed at her, and he often sent everyone from our tent so he could be with her, even in daylight hours. He had other wives who lived in a far valley, women whose names we never heard spoken aloud. Perhaps he loved them, too. Surely he could not look at them in the way he gazed at our mother. She was his favorite. Because of this, we were safe with him.

Then on a night I can hardly remember, before you were born, bandits came into our tent, nomads who had no law and no gods.
They came as thieves, but when they saw our mother, their purpose changed. She was so beautiful with her long black hair, still so young, and there were those who said she possessed the ability to hypnotize a man with one look, as she could heal the sick with a single word of prayer. She told me that, as they held her down, one of the intruders swept me up, though I was yet a little child, thinking he would have me as well, tearing off my tunic. I don’t remember the screams she vowed I cried, furious wails that recalled the shrill cries of a mouse when it is caught and struggling in a trap, but my throat hurt anew when she told me the story of that night. She disclosed this account only once, when we left Moab to travel to Masada. I tried to remember every word she said. I knew she would not tell me again.

Just as I knew that night was the reason for my fate and for who I had become.

YOUR FATHER,
alerted by his kinsman that there were intruders, returned before he was expected, his blue scarf over his dark, scarred face. He was like a whirlwind. Our mother held me close, hidden in her robes, while your father killed each of the thieves. The crude, keening sounds he made were terrible, like the wind when it falls upon you. It was said people could hear him far to the south, where there was a city rising out of red rock, its great temple and carved columns a wonder to be seen. Many among us swore that he possessed the cry of a
mazzik,
a demon from another world.

After the struggle was over, your father was the only man left alive in our tent. My mother confided that outsiders often whispered that the blood of your father’s people runs blue, and indeed they were a tribe so fearsome even the Romans avoided them. But I remember that he knelt beside our mother with great tenderness, even though he was slick with blood. When he did so, he seemed
like one of the thousand who watch over our world, an angel who had rescued us from the wilderness.

After that night our mother cursed what it meant to be a woman. Her life had been molded by all she could not do and all she never would be. But there was a gift she had as well, one no man would ever understand. Her mother had given her a book of spells, magical recipes that would offer her protection while they were apart. She carried that manuscript with her, the most precious of her belongings, along with the gold amulets she wore around her throat, preferring them to all other jewels she might be offered. No protection against evil was stronger.

But what was magic on that night? My mother had tried to bind the vile intruders by reciting an incantation, but we’d had need of another sort of protection, one made of iron, a man, a sword, a rescuer. Our mother offered thanks to the Queen of Heaven for our salvation. Still, her blood was hot and she was unsatisfied. She wished she had been the one to wield the knife so that she might have slain the robbers instead of merely standing mutely by to watch your father do so.

It was on that night that our mother decided to change who I was. She took me with her when everyone else was asleep. Even the horses were dreaming, quick, powerful steeds, left to stand in place without need of a rope, loyal to their riders until the day they could no longer run. Most people of Moab rode camels, but your father’s people owned the most beautiful and fierce horses, who were granted water only every third day so that they might have the great attribute of camels and be inured to thirst, their fortitude surpassing that of any of our enemies’ horses. Our mother chanted the song of protection, then she began the naming rites to Ashtoreth. When you change your name, you change your fate as well. The person you had been vanishes, and not even the angels can find you. We stood on the Iron Mountain, beneath the red moon. There was no afterbirth to mark this occasion, no sacrifice to give back to
the earth. Instead our mother buried her own monthly blood. Then she cut my arm and let three drops fall into the earth as an offering to the Queen of Heaven.

My arm burned, and I might have wept, but my heart was full when our mother proudly said I was not to be like anyone else. From that time forward only my mother and God would know of my past life. My name had been Rebekah, but that name disappeared on the night of our blood. I never heard it spoken again. As for your father, he allowed our mother her wish, as he had allowed her to take me with them through the wilderness.

From then on, I was a boy.

SHE CALLED ME
Aziza, a name of your father’s people. It can mean one who is beloved, but it also means one who is mighty and fierce. There are those who believe the name is an ancient word for archer, one who is never without a weapon, never at anyone’s mercy. That was what our mother wished for me. The people who lived on the Iron Mountain worshiped a great goddess among their gods; they saw the strength in their own women as well. Now when I witness my sister working in the field with the Essene people, adhering to their strict ways, crooning to the goats that she herds, a servant calmly waiting for the End of Days as if she was nothing more than a passive and beautiful ewe herself, I think that flesh and grass are one and the same, so fleeting, changing before our eyes. My sister was made in the country where the sky gleamed silver and the men were fierce. Had her own father spied her walking in the dust behind the Essene men, her head lowered, he would have been ashamed. But no matter how you might bow before others, my sister, the bond between us will last all eternity, until we meet again in a place where nothing can separate us, as it was on the night you were born, in your father’s tent, with my breath inside you and my life the thread that kept you in this world.