The Dovekeepers (43 page)

My mother pleaded with your father to let us remain in the mountains when he and his brothers and uncles answered the call to Petra. We could camp with those who were stationed to guard against the legion, should the Romans change their peace with the tribesmen into war. She said her spirit could not be contained in a city, even one so glorious. She told her husband she had become accustomed to this tent and to these stars, but I knew that wasn’t the truth. There was something more. Something your father had not seen, though he had the keen sight of a falcon. Something only a woman would notice. In that way, I was still female enough.

On the day the women began to pack up the camp, pulling down the tents, gathering their kettles and their rugs, a dove arrived. I saw it float down among us as if it were a part of the sky that had wrenched away to plummet to earth. There was a violet chill in the air, and I gazed up in alarm, unsettled by the dove’s arrival. I had the sense that everything was about to change and that the past was already smoldering into ash. Our mother had asked to stay behind, but your father had refused her request. He wanted her with him. He told her to take all of the belongings that mattered to her, for she might never come to the Iron Mountain again.

Our mother went up to the mountaintop with the bird in a basket, so that she could be alone to read the words that had been sent to her. I don’t know what the message was, but when she returned to camp her expression was set.

We packed up, and it seemed we would be leaving for Petra in the morning, but my mother did not wait for the sun to rise. She woke me the instant your father set off with his brothers to ensure that the route to the city would be safe for the women and children who followed. As soon as he was gone, we readied Adir’s fast
horse. We had my father’s great racehorse as well, for he had taken one of the mares, leaving his own steed behind for my mother, a mark of his devotion to her. The horse was called Leba, a name which meant heart. He was an animal so loyal he would never have gone with us had he not known me so well, but I had often fed and watered him. I’d always wished he would be mine someday, though I knew your father would never give Leba to me. Adir was the true son.

We took only the doves in their wooden cage and a single woven satchel of our belongings, along with a leather bag of water, and another bag of yogurt and cheese. I saw my mother reach for the book of spells from her mother and the ironwood box in which she kept the journal. She wore the gold amulets that had been given to her in Alexandria when fate seemed unlikely to bring her to Moab, and the earrings your father gave to her on their wedding day. She left behind all of the rest, masses of jewels your father had presented to her. There were jade necklaces, turquoise and gold bracelets, silver and lapis beads, gold rings set with precious gems none of us had seen before, some of which, rare opals, moved, incandescent, containing both water and fire within the stones. She laid out the jewels tenderly and with gratitude on the pallet where they had slept, but she showed no regret. Your father was the man who had rescued us but not the man she loved.

OUR MOTHER’S FACE
was transformed all the while we rode west, as though she was young again. I had spent my entire life beside her; now she had become wholly unknown in a way I couldn’t define.

It was true that you and our brother did not want to go. Adir sulked and fussed, and you called out for your father. You might have gotten us killed with your cries, but we rode so quickly that the wind took your voice up to heaven. We left the horses at the shore of the Salt Sea, so they might return to their rightful owner.
We weren’t thieves. Your father’s horse turned and raced back the way we had come. Adir’s horse followed. In a flash they were gone. Only their hoof marks in the sand remained, and even that disappeared as we stood watching, for it now seemed that our lives in the tents had been a dream. If we ran back the way we had come, surely we would find nothing on the mountain where we’d lived for so long, not even ashes.

The only mark of that time was the scar beneath my eye.

PEOPLE SAY
that our mother walked across the water and that Lilith’s thirteen demons held the hem of her dress, but in fact we met a man with a flat boat. A simple, greedy man who wanted a high fee to take us across the water. He looked at my mother with his black eyes, happy to have her as his price. Instead, my mother traded the first jewelry your father had given her, the earrings she always wore. They were rubies from India, captured from a caravan of men who spoke a language no one had ever heard before. The rubies reminded me of your father, how pure they were, how elemental, so brilliant and red they seemed hot to the touch. I turned away, unable to watch this exchange. I had seen your father’s blood shed on many occasions. Despite the Romans’ rumors and stories, it had never been blue.

Before we left we gathered figs, along with a bundle of branches from the acacia trees. There was a storm rising, and the sea was filled with black lumps. They looked like stones set out to block our way. Our mother said not to worry. She swore that the water would heal and protect us; she had seen this as her own destiny. The boat rocked, and the man who rowed it uttered curses and fought with the sea. Still my mother was serene. Salt water splashed in our faces and threatened to blind us, but halfway across the sea turned calm, blue and then gray and then finally silver and still. The mountains of Judea were reflected in the water, floating before us. The vision
made it appear that we had already reached our destination, though it was still a far journey. I caught the scent of fire and metal. My elements. My double life.

When we reached the other side of the Salt Sea, the boatman left us. In the silence around us, I felt I could hear the beating heart of the world,
lev ha-olam,
the center of creation in the distance of Jerusalem. We camped where we had been left, exhausted from our travels. At night, after you and Adir had fallen asleep on the damp sand, our mother motioned for me to follow. We made a fire from the acacia wood we had gathered on the other shore, the last acacia I would ever see that had taken root in Moab. My mother released her pet doves. Once they had disappeared, she added their cage to the fire and let it burn in a blur of flame.

Here in this emptiness, I could not stop thinking of the Iron Mountain and my life there, how I had imagined I was flying when I rode through the night with the troop of fearless raiders, how we had claimed everything we had come upon. I was fourteen, but I had killed several men. Afterward, I had burned the flowers of the acacia in tribute to each, as was the custom. Your father often brought back branches that were hung with hundreds of blooms for our mother. Although she thanked him, she wasn’t partial to those beautiful boughs. She didn’t appreciate the sweet nature of the flowers and how the bees were attracted to them. Those winged creatures understood the true essence of the acacia, the reason we burned it in honor of a soul. When acacia blooms are set aflame, they rise upward, in tribute to our God, who had made them.

The only thing that grew on this side of the Salt Sea was the Jericho balsam, a tree people say arose from the underworld that contains a flame inside an inedible fruit. Our mother took three of these fruits and cast them into the fire, and the flame turned yellow, like gold. She then told me to remove all of my garments. Because I dared not disobey, I did as she said.

I took off my leggings and tunic and then my cloak, along with the head scarf that was dyed the blue color of your father’s people. Our mother burned it all. The fabric sent inky sparks into the sky. She unplaited my hair and combed out the knots with her fingers. I didn’t complain, though it hurt. I said nothing and choked back tears. I had been told that at the beginning, when we first arrived, your father’s people had whispered that he had brought back a witch from Jerusalem and that our mother possessed the power to entrance him. It was best not to look her in the eye, the women of our camp said, or to go against her. Now I wondered if perhaps they’d been right. I feared my own mother on this night. I stood there naked on the salt, my feet burning as she chanted in a language I did not understand, mud from the Salt Sea covering her arms and throat and face so that she appeared to be a demon herself. I felt unmasked, my breasts unbound, my hair so long it reached past my waist in a black sheet.

Our mother carried her small woven bag of belongings. When she reached inside, I dreaded what might be revealed. Perhaps a snake or a scorpion, or a knife meant to mark me a sacrifice, as Abraham had been commanded to bring up his only son, Isaac, before God. It took a moment for me to understand what she intended even after she revealed what she had brought with her from Moab. It was a skirt and a cloak made of silk that your father had given to her, a treasure from India, spun by butterflies. I dressed, slipping on the unfamiliar garments, along with a pair of fine leather sandals. It was dark that night, which was a good thing. I would not have been able to look at myself. I had become a stranger in my own skin. I still felt the wings above my shoulder blades, yet they seemed bound in a way they never had when there was a sheet of linen wound around me, concealing them.

Our mother and I said prayers together, those that are recited when a child is born and a human soul has entered into our world. It was the night when I became a woman, though I kept my name.
Aziza, the compassionate, the powerful. Aziza, the woman who knew what it was to be a man.

In the morning a messenger arrived from Masada. He had been made aware of exactly where we would be waiting. He gave us fresh water and food, then told us he was meant to lead us to safety. He looked at me in a way no man had before.

It was the first time in my life that I understood who I was to the rest of the world.

I made certain to lower my eyes.

EVEN NOW
I am drawn to the ways of my old life. I spend as little time as possible inside the dovecotes. Doves do not interest me, no women’s work does. I cannot weave or sew without pricking my fingers. When I cook, I burn the flatbread. My stew is tasteless no matter what ingredients I might add to the pot. There is not enough salt or cumin in the world to make my attempts palatable. I am clumsy at tasks my sister could complete with ease when she was a mere eight years old.

I often find myself beside the barracks, pulled there especially on the evenings that mark the new month,
Rosh Chodesh,
when the women gather to celebrate, for it is not with them I belong but here, alongside the warriors. When I find arrowheads, I hold them in the palm of my hand, talismans from my past. The blades fit perfectly in my grasp. Their cold, flat weight is what I yearn for. Metal alone can reach the center of who I am.

I have been in this fortress for so long, but I still dreamed of that other time, though I told no one, not even Amram, to whom I have pledged myself, despite my mother’s warnings. Some things are meant to be kept secret, I learned that young, and I have kept our secret well. My mother may be flooded with doubts, but she has no proof that I have disobeyed. She’s piled salt outside our threshold,
so that I might leave footprints, but I leap over, leaving no trace. She’s tied a strand of her hair across the doorway, but I merely crawl beneath it. I can outwit her at some things; all the same, I think of her prophecy every time I meet Amram. I am his, yet I know I have disgraced myself in keeping the truth from my own mother, the one who gave me life not once but three times.

From the start my sister was my accomplice. We had been here for nearly a year, working beside our mother in the dovecotes, when Amram first arrived. We spent days devoted to toil. The three dovecotes were like a family of goats—the father, built as a tower, then came mother and child, square and squat, small and then smaller yet again. They were my world then, as I avoided our neighbors and kept away from other women, afraid they would somehow see through to the differences between us.

When Amram arrived from Jerusalem at the beginning of the summer in the year the Temple fell, he was merely one more young man running from his enemies, convicted by his bloodline as well as by his actions, an assassin who could be seen as a murderer or a hero depending on who you were and where fate had placed you. I happened to be there, crossing the plaza. I was nearly sixteen, but still I kept to myself. I did not take note of any man until I saw Amram climb the serpent’s path. He did so easily, as though the rugged cliffs were little more than a field. What was steep and difficult for others was for Amram no different than air to the lark. It was clear he could conquer whatever came before him, man or beast, even the land itself.