Alice Hoffman - The Dovekeepers

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.

Eleazar’s father had him restrained so that he might not come to me. That night he managed to send a servant with two doves in a wooden cage, trained to return to him, devoted to each other as we were. I took the doves and my child into the cart they used to expel me from their sight. I left my beloved behind, but in my shawl I kept what was left of the incantation bowl. I brought the broken ceramic pieces to the Iron Mountain when I went with the man who paid for me with a few coins. I used turpentine gum to set the ravaged shards back in place. Then I waited. Years passed with waiting, a lifetime. When at last my beloved sent for me, I broke the bowl myself, certain I had no need of such charms anymore.

But when I threw the bones of the doves in the tower so that I might read what was to come, I knew I had been mistaken.

* * *

OUR WARRIORS went forth in small groups, with spears, in silence, invisible and deadly. They struck the slaves who built the wall on the cliffs behind us and the soldiers who oversaw them. But as soon as our enemies fell, others replaced them, as though they were not flesh and blood but mere stalks of wheat.

When our people stole weapons, however, those were not so easily replaced. The Romans’ anger was brutal at this offense, their retaliation fierce. They showed they would not tolerate our ways, capturing the warriors who had raided their storerooms, swarming upon them in such a great number that our people disappeared in their grasp.

The Roman slaves had set timbers deep in the earth and erected a platform for all to see. They crucified our people in our own valley, then they cut the heads from the bodies, so that our loved ones’ spirits would wander. They threw the heads upon the ground and rolled them to the lion. But the beast refused to take them. He lay down and would not touch a single one.

It was still Adar, the month of almonds and of good fortune, the time when Yael first came to the dovecote. Perhaps our people were still fortunate. A whisper went up among us that the beast that had been chained was our lion, on our side. Among the warriors a wager went out: whoever freed the lion would give the greatest glory to God. He who did so would be blessed and would bring God’s favor among our people.

NO MATTER HOW we might tear at our garments and sing lamentations, there was no end to our grief, for without bodies or bones, we could not honor our people. The families of the murdered shrieked and went to priests, begging for vengeance. There was not a man among us who would not have given his life in exchange for our people’s freedom, but a life was nothing to our enemies. We were like the locusts they could kill without effort, with a single slap.

My son tried to drag himself from his bed, using a crutch he’d fashioned from a fallen limb of the tree behind our chamber. He wished to fight alongside his brothers, but Aziza begged him to let her go in his place. She sat at our table and chopped off her long hair, then braided what little was left tightly, close to her head. She instructed her beast of a dog to stand guard and make certain Adir did not leave our chamber. At her command the huge mastiff stood beside the boy, growling, bits of foam flecking the corners of his mouth.

“Am I a prisoner?” poor Adir demanded to know.

He was still a child in my eyes, even though he was the age I had been when I was expelled from Jerusalem to find my way in the wilderness, when I had been judged as a woman and had already given away my innocence.

Yehuda could keep Adir company, watching over him to make certain he would not flee, for the Essene boy would not fight alongside our people, and though he remained with us, and Revka cared for him as if he was her own, he was set apart by his beliefs.

“Are you my jailer as well?” Adir asked his friend.

“I would never be that,” Yehuda replied.

The Essene boy rose up and opened the door so that Adir might leave if that was indeed his desire. But Adir was exhausted from our arguments; he leaned back on his pallet, his face ashy. His warrior life had been taken from him; only a part of him remained. Although I felt compassion, I was also relieved. Selfishly, I did not wish to risk my son’s life.

My daughter was another matter. She had been cast from iron.

OUTSIDE there was a rising madness. The Romans had begun an attack of fiery arrows that came to us in a blazing hail. A section of the orchard had caught fire, and even when the flames had been put out, our people hurrying to quench them with jars of precious water, the scent of burning fruit drifted everywhere. While our trees were destroyed, while our children breathed in smoke, while our garments singed and turned black with ashes, the Romans set up an arena for cockfights so that they might have some amusement in the evenings. When this bored them, they set their slaves against each other with spears and chains, for to the Romans, slaves’ lives were worth no more than the roosters’.