The Dovekeepers (62 page)

Before she sent me away, Eleazar’s mother tied an herbal amulet to my cloak and told me it was good luck. I smiled and thanked her, but I knew it was nothing of the kind. She’d gone to a practitioner of
keshaphim
for a charm that would bind me to solitude and keep me from her son. My mother had taught me about such things, and I recognized the root of henbane. As soon as I was sent into the street, I plucked out the thread. I left the amulet in a gutter that ran with filth, for that was where it belonged. I said the prayer of protection,
Amen Amen Selah,
so that He our Lord, blessed be His name, would cast away my aunt’s ill will against me.

I WAS SENT
to the house of Yosef bar Elhanan, where I was to sleep in the corridor alongside the child I was to care for. She was little more than a baby, forgotten on her pallet, while her brother had his father’s favor and a nursemaid of his own. I wiped away her tears when she called for her mother, much as I myself did when I woke from sleep and was startled to find that I was no longer in Alexandria, and that there was no courtyard and no fountain, no white lilies shimmering in the dark water.

Moved by my charge’s sorrow, I whispered that she could call me
immah,
even though I was twelve and should have thought of myself as her sister. I knew that in this world every girl must have a protector, for my mother had told me so and I believed all that she said. Although I longed for my mother’s wisdom and advice, I had to make my own decisions now. I took it upon myself to watch over
this motherless child. I made a vow to protect her as she slept in the corridor that I swept each evening to ensure that the scorpions would stay in the corners.

When the father of the household had the cook leave out only crusts for us, little more than food for the rats, even on the eve of the Sabbath, I took matters into my own hands. I found a silver blessing cup and slipped it into my cloak. Although I knew thievery would bring a curse to me, I brought the chalice into the marketplace, trading it for a new tunic and cloak for the child, along with persimmons and pomegranates and grapes, as well as bedding for our corridor and a dove I planned to roast.

My little charge cried, clinging to me when she realized I meant to kill the dove, pleading with me to set it free. Though she was quiet, she was also fierce when she needed to be.

“If I do as you wish,” I warned before I set the bird free, “then you must abide by my wishes in return.”

This had been a bargain my own mother had often made with me when I yearned for her favor. Yael gave me her promise, and I released the dove. It disappeared into the sky above Jerusalem, and in doing so it bound us together for all eternity.

We did not have meat for our meal that night, but Yael was pleased. I was equally pleased to care for her, just as I was grateful to discover she was a good sleeper. She never woke when I slipped out at night to go to the well where I had first seen my cousin, so that I might be his. He would talk to me and I would listen—that was how it began. He spoke of his anger at the ways of the priests in the Temple, where there were divisions over who represented the true Israel. He could not abide that the Ark of the Covenant, God’s word to Moses, had once been hidden behind walls of gold, when it was meant to be enclosed in a simple tent, as
Adonai
had initially instructed. No wonder it had disappeared from men’s sight.

The home of our people was in the word of God, Eleazar insisted, not built of stone or gold. I listened and knew that one
day others would listen to him as well, and that they would follow him, and that I would be among them. He was learned and sang the psalms of David, yearning to be in God’s favor. I was both his disciple and his cousin. I believed in him and no other, and soon enough I belonged to him. I gave myself away, as my mother had predicted I would.

When Eleazar’s wife went to visit her family in the north, near the shore of Galilee, my cousin brought me before a learned man so that we might wed secretly. Then he took me to his chamber where we were wed in deeds as well as words. I burned when I was beside him. I forgot Alexandria and the garden where I had studied with my mother. I never revealed I was learned in many languages, for it was only his voice I wished to hear, not my own. Another man might have questioned the tattoos set upon me and turned from me when he saw them. I told him the marks were the map that had led me to him, and that was enough for him.

He took me as I was.

AS A SERVANT
in the house of my master, I was expected to know nothing. My lessons might have never happened, my knowledge turned to ashes. All that was required was that I sweep the floor and care for the child. That was not a problem for me. I was tender with Yael. I learned to be a mother from mothering her. Perhaps I’d sensed that I was with child myself, and that added to my tenderness. Eleazar promised he would tell his family of his love for me, but he could not bring himself to do so. He said his father was a tyrant, but I knew it was his mother he feared. In the night my heart beat too quickly and my blood did not come with the moon. I was hot and flushed, suffering from constant thirst, as I was to be every time I was with child, for each life that grew within me was a fire I had no recourse but to carry and let burn.

When I became so big I could no longer hide my size, Bar Elhanan sent me from his house. The dear girl who had been my daughter clutched my cloak and wept. I assured her that her brother would watch over her, warning him that he must always do so. Yael rushed after me, bringing me water. It was all she had to offer, but to me, in my loneliness, it seemed a great gift. I wept to leave her behind. I told her that if God was willing we would see each other in this world once more before we walked into the World-to-Come.

THE LAST TIME
I met with Eleazar in Jerusalem rain was falling. Such a thing was a joy, unexpected and needed. The dust settled, the boughs of the trees lifted their arms to the sky. I became alive again, the girl in the fountain, the swimmer in the river, the one without fear of drowning. I stood in the street outside my aunt’s house until I was drenched. At last I saw him, shifting through the yard, liquid in his movements, becoming a part of the torrent that fell upon us, flooding the streets, forcing people to remain inside their homes.

He alone could quench my thirst.

I had called him to me as I had learned to call the rain. There was not a whisper and yet he had heard. I believed that he would divorce his wife and bring me into his home, convinced that, unlike other women who went to the practitioners of
keshaphim,
desperate, willing to pay any price for a charm, I would never have need of love spells.

But Eleazar had come to tell me that his wife insisted she had proof that I had been in his bed. She vowed that the pallet they slept upon had been tinted red from the henna on my skin. My aunt, who despised me, had told her of my tattoos, to forewarn her, and therefore she had looked beneath the blanket she had woven for her husband, and found my mark. My beloved had promised
me that I was as much his wife as she was, but now I saw the truth in his expression, his longing for me entwined with sorrow. If the color red had been found in the place where we had lain together, then it had foreseen my fate and was indeed my blood, for my heart had begun to weep.

I was overcome with a kind of dread I hadn’t felt before, not even when I left my mother. I remembered what she had vowed on the day I saw my future. There was a part of me that wished I had remained by her side, though I knew our house had been taken from us. New tenants surely stood beside the fountain where the white lilies grew. I cried over those rare flowers when I wanted to cry over my fate. I said I could not live without them. I became frantic, uncontrollable. My cousin was beset by worry; he had me wait while he ran to the market and brought back a vial of perfume. The gift should have pleased me, for it carried the scent of lilies, but the fragrance had come from the red lilies of the fields of Moab, not the ones I had known as a child. I wept even more, for now I understood the loss I had felt when I was only a little girl, no older than Yael, and I saw my future in the Nile.

Eleazar promised he would plead with the elders of his family so that I might be allowed to join their household as his second wife. Such circumstances were fairly common, especially among the wealthy or in towns where there were too few men or if a first wife was unable to bring forth a child. My beloved was an honorable man but young; he not yet dared to defy his parents. He would learn this lesson well as he joined with the Zealots who defied the priests in the Temple, but for now he was at the mercy of his family.

I assured my cousin I would wait for him to come for me, and yet I knew he would not. The marks his wife swore had tainted their marriage bed had ruined me, and no man of any worth could take me for his wife. His family would not allow it.

*

I FOUND
a chamber where I could stay behind a house of
keshaphim
. I’d noticed the dim shack as I went through the marketplace, for my mother had gone to such places in Alexandria, and I’d kept this in mind. She had instructed me that I might find refuge in times of trial among women who practiced magic. Three old women who were sisters lived there. They were unmarried, rumored to be witches who turned into dragons at night. In truth, they were kindhearted, poor, but wise in the ways of magic. In return for being allowed to sleep there, I cooked the meals and learned to bake bread in their small clay oven, making certain to always keep aside the burnt offering to sacrifice to God so that He would not forsake me. My cousin did not return. I dreamed about him for days on end, and then he disappeared from my dreams. Now when I woke from sleep I was gasping, drowning in my dreams in the river where my mother had taken me. For the first time I realized that, although the fish had come to me, he had also swum away from me. This had been the reason I was bereft as I stood knee-deep in the Nile.

I begged the sisters for a love charm, for one cannot complete such an amulet for oneself. They fashioned an incantation bowl from white Jerusalem clay, said to be the purest on earth. Before it was fired, I was to write upon it with a sharpened reed.
Holy angels, I adjure you just as this shard burns so shall the heart of Eleazar ben Ya’ir burn after me.

But in the firing, the bowl broke. We collected the pieces, though they burned our fingers. It was a bad omen, but I took the shards and wrapped them in linen and soaked them with my own tears.

When my time came to bring a life into this world, the three sisters were my midwives. My firstborn’s birth was difficult. I was young and frightened. Since that time I have seen a hundred births, but my own blood terrified me, and the tearing heat inside me nearly broke me apart. I wanted to give up, and let the Angel of Death take me, but one of the sisters leaned close to urge me on.

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. In the name of I am what I am, the name of God, get out. You have journeyed and now you have arrived. Amen Amen Selah.

I named my child Rebekah and saw that she had her father’s eyes. That was all I would have of him. That was my punishment from God.

I WAS CALLED
to stand before the elders who were to judge me in the ceremony of the
sotah
in their attempt to prove my guilt as an adulteress. My situation had become a legal matter, for his mother and wife had accused me of adultery and of having sexual relations with demons. They unbraided my hair and let it hang disheveled to shame me and show me as one of Lilith’s disciples. They seemed to forget I was only a child, for I had turned thirteen just days before. They wrote God’s name upon parchment, submerged in a cup of water so that the word might be erased into the liquid. I would be forced to drink the Almighty’s name. If I sickened, it meant my impurity would not accept what was pure. I would then be revealed to be an adulteress.

But water was my element, and it did not forsake me. I drank it all, yet stood before them unharmed and unrepentant. I proclaimed that I had not committed adultery, and that was the truth. Eleazar ben Ya’ir alone was a husband to me.

They held my child up to examine her. She was a small being, with a dark cap of hair. She looked exactly as I had when I was born, my image in nearly every way. Those who judged us were nearly satisfied that there was no proof of any wrongdoing. The dark girl child was mine. There was no sign of the father, whether he be human or some unspeakable creature, no wings, no horns, no demon’s mark. They almost let us go. Until they found their proof in the color of her eyes. “The eyes of a demon,” Eleazar’s wife testified, and perhaps at that moment she believed this to be true.