We took him to our chamber, where my mother bathed his listless body. His fever had turned him cold, as if Shalgiel, the angel of snow, had embraced him and brought him low. My mother told me to quickly burn Adir’s garments. We did this to protect ourselves from the demons who might spread disease, but we also burned the cloaks of the dead in this manner. Perhaps this was why I could not bring myself to do as I’d been told. Instead I washed my brother’s tunic and cloak in a bucket, then hung them on the clothesline behind the empty goat house where the Essenes had lived.
Our people cleansed their hands before every meal, before every cup of wine, before we cut a loaf of bread in two. We did so for good reason. Demons could enter an individual who was unclean, and the fire of a demon manifested itself as a fever. My mother instructed me to wear a scarf across my face when I tended to my brother. We washed our hands with a soap made of lye and ashes until our skin was raw. Every morning my mother brewed a tea of bay leaf, rose oil, and hot pepper. Although my brother made a face after a sip of the brew, he did as he was told and drank. A poultice of samtar, combined with reita, the cure made from wheat, was packed inside his cleaned wound.
My mother burned oil at the altar of Ashtoreth. She found a single lily growing in an abandoned garden, the rare bulb planted there a hundred years earlier by the gardeners of the king so that the petals and stems could be burned in a green flame for the glory of God.
Redeem this child and save him from all afflictions.
My mother took two doves from their nest that were so beautiful they themselves knew of their own beauty and proudly preened before their kind. She sacrificed them to the Queen of Heaven, though our people were no longer to make sacrifices, even to Adonai, now that the Temple was destroyed. She wiped the blood from her hands carefully to make certain there wasn’t a stain.
Allow him to become a man and sing glorious songs of praise to our Lord and king, our mighty God. Amen Amen Selah. May He keep you from all evil and allow you to dwell in Jerusalem in holiness and in peace.
Adir had been a boy who’d been eager for war; what he’d found was a grim surprise. He returned to us quiet and melancholy. Even after his fever passed, his leg remained affected by his wound. He could not stand steadily, and this especially brought him grief. The only one who could cheer him was the huge dog I commanded to stay at his side. Because of this, my mother insisted I wash the creature so that his filth might not bring demons to my brother in his current weakened state. I brought Eran into the plaza and threw handfuls of water at him, then covered him with lye soap while he stood there impassively, though he might easily have bolted from my grasp.
“Is this who took my place?”
Amram came behind me and surprised me with his embrace. I allowed his arms to encircle me, though I felt an odd reserve. As we stood together, the dog barked and growled.
“Stop,” I told Eran, but he wouldn’t be quieted, and this worried me, for he had never seemed so ferocious before. Whatever his reason, he did not like the man before him.
“My rival,” Amram teased. “If he bites me, I’ll have to bite him back.”
I tied the dog to the stump of a date tree, then pulled Amram aside so we might have some privacy.
“You must tell the warriors my brother can’t go out again.”
Amram laughed. “All warriors must go when they’re called upon. You know that. And he’s one of us now.” Amram then took from his tunic the blue square of fabric that was his token for luck. “At least you don’t have to worry for me. When I leave again, I’ll find my way back.”
I wanted to command him, but I knew Amram wasn’t a man who would do a woman’s bidding. It was I who must make certain my brother remained safe. I made a vow to myself as I stood there in the plaza, though I said nothing to Amram. Adir would not be among them when the next raiding party went out. I would make sure of it.
When Amram set out to fight, another warrior would walk beside him.
I ASKED for her favor, and Yael did not deny me, for I was the one who had placed her son back in her arms. I had snatched him from the sinister woman who wished so desperately to be his mother she had convinced herself that she was. Yael waited for me in the plaza, where heat waves rose from the earth, the baby at her hip. Since Arieh had been returned to her, she refused to let him out of her sight for long. If she needed help and Revka and I were at work at the dovecote, she would occasionally leave him with her father, who had taken a liking to the child. He had made amends with Yael in the way he cherished her son. Perhaps he thought he had a second chance to forge another warrior. I’d overheard Revka ask why Yael allowed this man to be included in her son’s life when he’d been so cruel to her. Yael said he was a changed man now, beaten down by the desert and by his age.