The Dovekeepers: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  “The wall is just a wall, made of stones. But the stones are the stones of Judea. They belong to us, and our enemy only gives us what is already ours. We will not starve, for there is still enough wine and oil for us to make do. Even in a time of siege, we will have enough to eat. Our cisterns are filled with water. Our God is everywhere, on both sides of the wall.”

  Those who had panicked and been set to trample one another out of fear backed down. We could no longer hear the soldiers in the valley, for like a miracle the wind had shifted and those rough voices disappeared so that we could listen to our leader. The crowd stood close so they might hear the psalm Eleazar now spoke, the words of David, our great king of the past, a warrior who, like any other man, had walked with fear, as we did now, as all men must.

  “Because of the voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked: for they cast iniquity upon me, and in wrath they hate me. My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.”

  I remained in the latticework of shadows falling through the boughs of the olive tree in my garden, but my heart lifted to hear my beloved’s voice. This was what I had yearned for when I was cast out of Jerusalem, for the way he spoke was a miracle. With his words, he could approach the soul where it resided, a glory to God, for words were what the Almighty first created, after the silence of the world, and they were Eleazar ben Ya’ir’s gift as well.

  I closed my eyes as though we were alone and those who stood between us were no longer in our path. The world was a river, and I had been led here on its currents, not out of hope but because it was my destiny.

  WHEN I first saw him in Jerusalem, I was standing at a well, with a pitcher of water in my hands. I’d been sent to my mother’s kinsmen, for I had no father and no beit avi, family from my father’s line. Though she had to plead to have me taken in, my mother wanted me safely removed from Alexandria, where the kedeshah were being cast from their houses. There were no longer to be holy women for the priests, for the ancient laws of Jerusalem had filtered into Egypt. My mother and the other women I had always known as aunts were now called prostitutes and whores, like the women on the streets who had their prices etched into the soles of their sandals so that the men who followed them knew how much they must pay for favors. All at once, what had been honored was reviled. The henna tattoos that had proclaimed them as women of worth now marked them as worthless, and the priests for whom they had sacrificed themselves were the first to accuse them of their sins.

  Before I left, my mother had clasped her prized gold amulets at my throat, whispering only my daughters should receive them. She brought out her book of spells from the ironwood box, wrapped the leaves of parchment in linen to disguise it, then gave it to me, filling the box with herbs I might need: black cumin, bay leaves, myrrh. That was when I realized she might not survive the turn against who she was. She who was once exalted was now forced to move through the city in a dark cloak, hiding the swirl of markings that had once convinced me she was a queen, the tattoos which now caused people to scorn her, hissing, as if they were snakes and she a dove, there for the taking. I had already begun the painful and tedious ritual of becoming tattooed before I was sent away, fortunately only on my back and chest, not on my face or arms and legs, as my mother had been marked. No one could see who I was meant to be.

  I was twelve on the last day that I saw her, when she stood before me, her eyes welling with tears. That was my age when I went to the well in Jerusalem. I was drawn there because of my need for water, and because I remembered what I had seen in the Nile. My kinsman came to me, searching me out, for I was not allowed to go to the market unaccompanied. I saw that his eyes were silver, the color of the fish. He took the pail of water from my grasp. When he brushed my hand, he assured me that it didn’t matter, for we were of the same blood and were cousins. Therefore, as a brother who touched a sister, it was not a sin.

  I listened as he bewitched me, for even then he had a way with what God had created first, and his words poured over me like water. But I had bewitched him as well. He was a husband, a young man of eighteen, and I was only a girl. All the same, I felt the power I had experienced when the fish came toward me of its own accord. It had no choice, for it had been written that my cousin and I would find each other, and that our love would ruin me, and that I would not care.

  NOW, as I stood and listened to him speak King David’s words on the day of madness, when our people were transformed into jackals by their fear, I was again entranced. Like anyone else on the mountain, I was swayed by the splendor of his voice. But the others did not know him as I did. When he recited David’s song, I felt he spoke directly to me, for I was his beloved, and had been all this time.

  “Oh that I had wings like a dove; for then I would fly away, and be at rest. Lo, then I would wander far off, and remain in the wilderness. Selah. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest.”

  From this mountain there was no longer an escape into the wilderness. The six Roman camps with their high towers blocked any passage through the ravines, or down the serpent’s path, or along the treacherous southern route of the cliffs on the back of the mountain. This stronghold was the only place where we might abide. Like the lion on his chain, we had no way to run from the force of our enemy. It had been written that we would make a stand here and that we would be the last to do so. The outcome would remain unknown until it was upon us, and all we could hope to do was follow God’s path.

  “As for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord will save me. Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and He shall hear my voice. He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me: for there were many with me.”

  Afterward, when people had grown quiet, their faith restored, the women and children went to gather stones that they might fashion into weapons. These were then thrown down in a volley, like a hailstorm tossed upon the workers below. But the Romans seemed to worry little over the boulders that were catapulted into their midst. The building continued as they raised up their garrisons made of stone. If a slave at work on the wall should happen to die, there would be another to replace him. If a soldier should be wounded and falter, his brother would stand in his place.

  In the quiet of twilight, we listened to the echo of the rocks that were lifted upon the wall, and we trembled despite King David’s words and Eleazar’s fierce confidence. This was the Romans’ method, to intimidate and terrify. That night when they fed the lion they gave him a donkey so that he might kill his own meal. We could hear the donkey’s screams above the endless clinking of shovels and picks and the raw voices of the men shouting below us. There was a great echo in the valley, and it seemed that the soldiers were speaking directly to us, as though we were the ones the lion had in its jaws.

  I gazed down at the cliff to where my daughter was, hidden in the cave with the people she had chosen as her own. It seemed a cave like any other used by the wild ibex for shelter. If the Essenes’ presence remained unknown to the Romans, perhaps she would indeed be safer there. There was a bright flash; someone in the darkness of their cave had lifted a bronze bowl that glinted in the dark. I took it to be a message. I imagined it was her heart reaching out to mine. Despite everything, she was still the child I had struggled to bring forth into this world.

  IN THE MONTH of Shevat, sheets of rain fell. Our people did not plant wheat or barley or flax or venture into the plaza to celebrate Rosh Chodesh, but instead peered up at the swollen sky from our doorways, unable to see the new moon and therefore unable to chart the true month, which begins with the moon.

  My neighbors stood inside their houses and watched the flooding and breathed in the chill air. They shied from the rain, as I was drawn to it. I went to stand in my garden until I was drenched. I thanked Beree, angel of rain, who came to me when I searched for him, for I had called him to us in the hopes that the Romans
would stop their building if the last of the season’s violent rainfalls disrupted them. Perhaps pools of mud, deep enough for mules and men to drown, would serve to slow them down.

  But if anything the Romans worked harder at their task. Their world was appearing before us. Like the angels, we peered down to see what they were creating out of sand. More Jewish slaves had been brought to the valley, tied together with leather straps, treated as little more than sheep or goats. We could only watch as our brothers who had been enslaved called out for us to save them while they were mistreated and beaten. We heard their wailing, yet could do nothing to ease their suffering. They slept in pens, like the sheep, without shelter from the rain, while the soldiers resided with ease in large tents set upon stone foundations, protected by walls, with guards stationed at each camp’s four gates.

  I had once believed I could control the rain as I could call upon it, but now, as I gazed upon our enemies, I saw I had been wrong. Only the angel Beree could contain the rain and make it serve him, and then only by the grace of God. What I had called for had enriched our enemies. The Romans bathed in the rainwater and gave thanks to their gods. The myrtle bloomed, and its scent filled the air. Herds of ibex came to lie down before the Roman camps to drink from the pools, though it meant they would be slaughtered, and it seemed that they, too, were a gift from the heavens.

  THOUGH he was ailing, I left my son in the care of his sister and asked Yael to accompany me to the auguratorium. I had been saving the bones of sacrificed doves, drying them in the sun, so that I might now cast for the future.

  We climbed the stairs to the tower. The month of Adar was beginning, the time of the blooming of almond trees, and the air was fragrant. From our perch we could see the Roman camp in its entirety, a circle of brutality. The bones I’d brought along in a silk bag had become so white they appeared incandescent in the gathering dark. I thought of the doves who had given their lives, how beautiful they were, how loyal to each other, how unafraid they were of us, their keepers, even when they were to be sacrificed.

  Yael cleared the sand, then poured a circle of ashes that would contain the future so it would not spill into the present. She smoothed out the ashes with the knife she always carried in her tunic. As she did so, she recited a hymn to King Solomon. She had a beautiful voice; every chant I had taught her was far more lovely in her mouth than it had been in mine. The purity of her song carried across the valley, and for a moment our brethren who were slaves toiling below us looked upward, as if called by name.

  I had taught Yael well, as I’d known I would from the moment I saw her enter the Snake Gate. Though she did not remember me, I had known her long ago. This was the reason I insisted she take the gold amulet my mother had given to me. Before I gave birth to my first daughter and was cast out of Jerusalem, before I was taken to the Iron Mountain by a man I never called by name, before Nahara entered this world, before I had a son who was named Adir, a name his father allowed me, for it means noble to my people, before the doves brought me here, Yael was my daughter, though she was not born to me, and I was her immah, her beloved mother, though I was little more than a girl myself.

  In Jerusalem I’d whispered the songs of my mother to her long before either of us had ever heard of this fortress. I had combed her hair, and fed her, and watched over her, even though her father had instructed me to leave her hair unplaited and give her nothing but crusts, for he wished that she had never entered this world and blamed her for his grief.

  I came to them as a servant, a simple girl with long black hair, so worthless that the assassin never glanced at my face, and knew neither my features nor my history. Had my mother known of my condition, she would have been shocked to discover I had become a housemaid, for I could read Aramaic and Hebrew and Greek and had been trained to speak with the most learned men in Alexandria. In fact, I was relieved to be gone from the house of her kinsmen, who had come to despise me. Eleazar ben Ya’ir’s mother was the one who sent me to be a servant. When I first came to her, she brought me to the mikvah, for she had the sense that I was tamé, impure. As I slipped out of my tunic, I made certain to stand in the shadows, but she saw me for who I was. She drew a deep breath when she spied my tattoos, then quickly murmured a prayer.

  My aunt kept watch over her son after that, for she did not trust my upbringing. Soon enough her fear was realized. She knew what was between us from the glances we shared and quickly divined why her son no longer turned to his wife, though they had been wed only a short time. Though my aunt had promised my mother I would be safe in her home, she sent me away, hastily making plans without Eleazar’s knowledge, finding me work in a household where the mother had died. It was a place of ill fortune, and no one would work there. That was why I was accepted for the position, though I was a girl with little knowledge of household chores, so young and inexperienced I often cried myself to sleep because I missed my mother so.

  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 b
een 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.