The Dovekeepers

Amram came by, covered with sweat and dried blood. “Don’t bother,” he said to me as I turned over the bodies of my sister’s father’s people. “They’re all the same.”

BEN YA’IR spoke to the warriors as the last of the night settled around us. I could not abide to be among them. People said that he thanked God, then praised his men for their bravery. He instructed his warriors to say prayers for the souls of the dead and told them that, in another time and place, if our enemies from Rome had not forced us into starvation and poverty, we would have called our victims our brothers.

By that hour we had moved into the high desert, making haste so that we could not be found by any of the townspeople who might have been absent during the raid, returning with vengeance in their hearts. The warriors prayed to God and then killed a goat for their supper. To me the goat’s cries sounded like those of a woman. I huddled beside my dog, covering my ears, rocking back and forth on my haunches. The radiance of the Shechinah, the light and compassion of the Almighty, was nowhere near this campground. Here, we were surrounded by what some called the other side, the dark realm, for on this night we had wandered onto the evil side of the world that was also born from creation, that terrible region which could be found at the left hand of God and fed on human sin.

I had planned to lie beside Amram that night after our victory, to bring his hands beneath my cloak so that I might finally let him know who I was and give myself to him, but I did no such thing. I was sick to my stomach and sick at heart. I went into the desert and brought up everything I had eaten since I’d left my mother’s house. The taste was sour, as if I had spat out a demon. I was glad my brother had not been among us. Adir, who had such a gentle spirit, yet wanted nothing more than to be among the warriors, had been spared the sight of the cowardly actions of those he so admired.

The white cliffs were invisible in the dark. Everything was hidden. I now understood it was our duty as human beings to see behind the veil to the inside of the world, to the heart of things.

I glimpsed the Man from the Valley and went to stand beside him. There was a circle of thornbushes, and larks were sheltered in the cluster of branches. We heard the others’ voices singing, but their songs meant nothing to us. Every bit of the stained earth we walked upon seemed a part of the territory of transgression, where enemies were subdued at any cost. No acacias grew here. There was no way to help the souls of the dead find peace.

Today I had seen my beloved kill a child who could not have been more than four. It seemed nothing to him to do so, but everything to me. Other than the stars in the sky, I could not see any image but the face of the child who’d been murdered, for he now lived behind my eyes and would be a part of my vision forever-more. Every time I looked at Amram, it was that child I would see.

I wished I had been a woman and had stayed at home.

“Did you not think this was what the world was like?” the Man from the Valley said to me.

My dog lay at my feet. There was blood on his fur. By daylight flies would be swarming over him and he would look monstrous. Eran had never once deserted me in the bloody turmoil but had lurched toward anyone who approached me, snapping at them, baring his teeth.

I had never felt as vulnerable, or as flooded with shame. I had lost something so completely, I did not think I could get it back from anything that had been created on earth. I needed to look into heaven. The haze had vanished by this time, and the stars were bright. We saw some drift across the darkness in blasts of light, then vanish, invisible to our eyes. I was transfixed by the sight, and by the goodness of a dumb beast who had never once thought to flee from my side, and by the fact that both I and the warrior I stood beside were still alive.

“Is it not beautiful?” I said of the world around us.

“Is it not terrible?” the Man from the Valley countered.

He gazed at me, and all at once I knew that it was a question and that he needed an answer. I took his hand and pulled him to me, and had him lie down beside me. As he had rescued me, I did the same for him. For one night, when we could still smell the blood on each other, when the night was black and all the world was invisible, we were not alone.

ADIR’S WOUND had healed and his fever had ended, yet my brother limped and seemed frail. My mother worried over him and tried one cure after the next, sifting through her piles of herbs and her recipes for pharmaka. Still he was weak. Though she had disapproved of my actions in the past, she agreed I should again take Adir’s place when the time came for him to be called back to fight. This was as it should be. I was the better warrior, the one more likely to return. Once again, my mother and I shared secrets. It was a bond we didn’t deny, one that was meant to be, for our fate had always been entwined. Whatever bitterness had been between us had dissipated.