The Dovekeepers

by Alice Hoffman

  I stored away my spindle and slipped into the dark, my cloak clutched around me. I went to the auguratorium, where the bones of doves and eagles had been cast upon the ground to count the years in a man’s life, or the number that his flock would grow to be, or the strength of his sons. Wise men had divined what was to come for warriors and kings from the flight of the swallows and from the collection of blue-white bones, but there was no one to decide my future, or even suggest where it might lead.

  I took the curving stairs, worn down by the tide of years and by the footsteps of the sages. I wanted to see the earth below me, a world that was so beautiful and so cruel, the land my child would walk through. There were women working at the looms even at this late hour. If I turned west I could identify their voices, but if I turned east I heard only the wind. Inside its roar were the voices of lions, of men who walked through the dark, of women who had been lost.

  There were seven hawks circling above me, echoing the seven sisters, stars that gather in the sky. I wore the white garments of a dovekeeper. Perhaps they thought I was ready to take flight and considered me a sacrifice. I climbed onto Herod’s wall, balancing on the thick stone blocks edged with the mark of the king. I lifted my arms straight out. The wind went through me. It shook me to my core. There was nothing but emptiness before me, yet I was not alone.

  Spring 71 C.E.

  Part Two

  Summer 71 C.E.

  The Baker’s Wife

  There was only one language we understood, one prayer we remembered, one path we walked upon, so far from the throne of heaven we could no longer hear your voice.

  They say that women cannot know the ways of our God, but I have seen His truth with my own eyes. Our God knows all and sees all and has as much compassion for the sparrow as he does for the hawk that hunts it across the sky. Before Him, everything disappears in the wind. If you place a handful of grain on a rock and turn your back, it will fly away. If you leave a sparrow in a tower, it will not be there when you return. If you ask a hawk for mercy, your words will be rendered mute.

  That is what happened in my life: I turned my back. I could no longer hear the voice of the sparrow. I asked for kindness from a creature who knew only cruelty. I didn’t understand what the wind was capable of and how we must bow before it, grateful no matter where it may take us.

  *

  AS A girl I lived in a village north of Shiloh, where it was said the spring water could prevent miscarriages and bring children to barren women, such was the pleasure of God in this land. We settled in the Valley of the Cypresses, where the fields were green and there were five black goats in every shed. I married when I was a young woman, too inexperienced to know there was evil in the world. I was happy and I thought happiness lasted. On my door I kept an intricately decorated mezuzah, a symbol that brings happiness and luck. Each time I passed by I felt fortunate, assured that God would deliver us from evil. I uttered my thanks to Adonai without thought and with the foolhardy conviction that wickedness would never come near. At night my bed was filled with straw so soft that I fell asleep as soon as I closed my eyes. My house was made of stone with beams fashioned of local cypress cut in the woods nearby. My husband was kind and good-hearted, yet still I was granted more. When my daughter was born, she was so beautiful people stopped in the marketplace to congratulate me on my good fortune. I should have begun to worry then, for as fortune comes to you, so does it slip away.

  AS THE YEARS drifted by, my dreams were rich with the scent of bread, for below our sleeping chamber my husband had his bread ovens, the kind we called a tannur, made of mounds of rounded clay. The pale smoky clay glowed with orange heat when the ovens were stoked before daybreak. Throughout the years the fire that burned below our rooms ensured our warmth. There was a millstone in our courtyard, and two donkeys to pull it, grinding the wheat we stored in a tall, wooden granary.

  My husband had learned the art of baking from his father, as he had from his father before him. No baker’s bread tasted the same as another’s, that was what my husband told me, for a baker’s life went into each loaf. Some baked with piety, some with prayers, some with the intent to create more than mere sustenance, raising their craft into an art, entranced by the beauty of the flame of the tannur and by the art of the challah.

  My husband was all three, pious and filled with prayer but also intent on the mystery of the rising loaf, the miracle of the manner in which wheat and water became alive in his hands. The bread he baked was so delicious wayfarers often found us by following its yeasty odor through the village, guided by a map of rich fragrance sent into the air expressly for those driven by hunger. My husband left out a dough offering to honor Adonai every morning as he said the blessing. In return his blessings rose to God and we had all that we wanted in this world.

  My husband had his secrets, as all bakers do. I was privileged to learn from him over the years simply by watching him work. He kneaded the dough longer than most, and the yeast he used to give the bread life was a secret recipe kept in cool stone jars, left to ferment for the best part of a year. He dusted the dough with cumin and coriander and salt before he slid the loaves into the oven on flat wooden boards. Perhaps most important, he made his mark on the dough, the letter R scrawled in honor of my name, Revka, for after so many years I was still his bride, the girl to whom he’d pledged his life.

  When the days were without haze, we could see to where snow sometimes fell in the highlands. The vista I saw from my own house was the only one I ever wished to survey. I would never have believed I would come to live in a king’s fortress where the wind engulfs us and claims us, making it clear we are nothing more than a moment in time. A hundred years earlier, Herod walked across the same plaza I must cross each morning on my way to the dovecote. Now there are poor men sleeping in his chambers, but these poor men draw breath while the king who murdered his own wife, Mariamne, and his sons, and anyone else who stood in his way, is nothing but dust. Warriors sharpen their knives in what had been the royal stable, a huge, cavernous place that once housed a hundred horses, each said to possess the ability to climb the serpent’s path in the dark. Blindfolds were slipped over their eyes so they could not see how treacherous the ground they trod upon truly was. Had they been aware of the staggering heights, surely they would have panicked and tumbled into the abyss, one after the other, as if falling from the sky. The same holds true for us. If any among us who reside in this stronghold paused for a moment to tear the blindfold of faith from our eyes, we would see how perilous our perch was, how shattering a fall would be.

  If we lost our faith, we would become like the clouds that swell across the western sky when the wind pushes them into the desert, promising rain but empty inside.

  IN THE MORNING, I always had a moment to myself before my grandchildren arose. For me, it was the best time of the day. I watched the boys sleeping next to me, their faces serene. I imagined they were in their own beds at home, that their mother was outside the door readying their morning meal, that they hadn’t lost their voices in the desert, stolen by a demon, grabbed from their throats and stored in a locked box in the World-to-Come.

  I tied threads knotted into the wool of their garments for protection while they slept. This was permitted until they turned nine, then I would have to give them over to the will of Adonai, or so people said. I was grateful for the amulets Shirah offered me. I paid no attention to those who claimed she was a witch, whispering that her presence on this mountain would bring us to ruin. I had seen what was wicked in this world, and it wasn’t the woman I worked beside. Inside my grandsons’ tunics I bound small pouches which held salt to keep away Lilith, who steals the breath of children, a shell from the red sea as a gift for the angel called Michael, the root and seeds of the mandrake, which would chase away the terrors that came with dreams, for there were surely terrors for the three of us that remained of our family, as certainly there were for the fourth among us who survived, the man who no longer spoke to us, who lost him
self when he lost his faith.

  I leave Noah and Levi their morning meal before slipping into the predawn. Small pressed cakes of almonds and figs so they would know sweetness, dates that grew wild on the cliffs so they would taste the fruit of the desert, flatbread I fried in oil on a griddle, sprinkled with coriander and cumin and salt, so they would remember the taste of their grandfather’s bread. On some mornings I took note of Shirah’s son, Adir, racing along the path where mint grows wild. He’s a charming boy, wild, with black hair and yellow-flecked, slanted eyes. He recently turned twelve, but I knew that inside his tunic were dozens of knots. It is written that one has to rely on Adonai without the use of magic, and so it should be. But our boys were valued highly. The mother of a boy was considered impure only for seven days after she gave birth, while she who delivered a girl was considered teme’ah for twice that time.

  I understood why Shirah would do anything necessary to guard her only son.

  I did not listen to what others said about her, but once, when she was ailing and I brought her soup made of turnip broth, I spied a hidden altar to the goddess. I had entered the chamber without waiting for a reply after rapping on her door. Shirah quickly closed the cabinet where the altar was concealed, but I saw the spark in a lamp lit before an offering of honey and oil that had been set out to honor alabaster terafim. One, the small, luminous figure of a woman, had her arms upraised. I recognized Ashtoreth, the mother and warrior, whose presence has long been outlawed. We were not to have idols, nor were we to give thanks to the goddess. Those women who did made certain to close their altars so the lamps that burned were never revealed.

  Shirah thanked me for the soup. We did not speak of matters some might claim to be sorcery, and I did not raise my eyes to her altar again. I had compassion for her, for I had often spied worry spreading across her striking, fine-boned face. Try as she might to keep him a child, Shirah’s son was already straining to be a man. She called out cautions, but Adir hurried to the garrison, determined to be among the men he admired. When the wind is so strong that we women know we will choke on the rising dust if we fail to tie our scarves across our faces, boys will always ignore the elements and race through storm clouds, dreaming of glory. Even a witch can’t stop her son from becoming a warrior. There is no spell great enough for that.

  BEFORE YAEL CAME, I was the new woman in the dovecotes. I thought I would be sent to the baker, for my husband had taught me much about the mysteries of bread. But I was wearing my white mourning shawl when I arrived at the fortress, and perhaps the council members were reminded of doves as I stood before them, head bowed in defeat. The moment I entered through the carved wooden doors of the largest dovecote, a circular tower with flaps for light in the roof, I was certain a curse had befallen me. I couldn’t understand why the original dovekeeper and her beautiful daughters took such pride in what they did. They assured me I had been honored, and they welcomed me with wreaths of flowers, which I quickly cast away. I thought that doves were filthy things, good for a stew or perhaps a few fresh eggs, nothing more. I had now sunk even lower than these simple creatures, for it was I who was commanded to collect their leavings into barrels. I was a slave to their waste and their filth, disgraced in the eyes of the Lord. Such was my station in life. Such was my fate.

  I CRIED the first night after I worked in the dovecote, a woman my age who should have known better, embarrassed to find myself in tears, my back turned to my grandsons so they wouldn’t know of my humiliation. We had arrived at the mountain only days before. Our feet were still aching, our skin sunburned, our silence thick in our throats. Everything seemed new and strange—the men in silver armor, the women toiling in the fields under almond trees. I should have given thanks for our salvation, instead I wept like a child in despair.

  Although I tried to hide my sorrow, I could not. My grandsons’ small hands patted my shoulders for comfort, and I felt the concern in their touch. They could not speak, and perhaps their affliction allowed them to divine what others ignored, the true nature of the world. They could catch a moth in the dark by taking note of the soft, fluttering rhythm of its wings. They could gauge whether the wind had traveled from the west or if it arose in the east simply by the sound. Perhaps these abilities were miracles.

  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 sid
e 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.