The Dovekeepers

She had promised me once that she would do as I asked. I reminded her of this as I gave her the last piece of fruit I had saved, a pomegranate, the same fruit I had given her at our last farewell. She knew me then as the girl who had cared for her in Jerusalem. She threw her arms around me, and we might have wept if there had been time. Instead, I drew away and told her what she must do. I hoped she would obey me as she had when she was a child. If she saw a sign from the doves, she was to ask Revka where she first saw me as I am. She was to go there without hesitation.

*

THERE WAS chaos everywhere. I did my best to make my way. Those who say you cannot see Mal’ach ha-Mavet could not be more wrong. I have seen him standing right in front of me, his twelve wings blackened by fire, his thousand eyes seeing all that we are and all that we do. I was grasped in the grip of his darkness, a violation of God’s radiance and His glory. We must suffer in his presence, we must stand before him, but I was not ready to face him until I found my children.

The Romans had already begun to lay down planks so they might walk across our wall in the morning. It was the night before our forefathers’ escape from Egypt, the night when our death began. There were husbands and wives lying down side by side on the blood-soaked cobblestones so that they might find their death together; children lined up, wailing. The ten executioners were at their sorrowful work, going from house to house, as the Almighty had done on the night of Passover, when Jews painted their doors with bloodstained hyssop flowers allowing Adonai to know them as true believers and pass them by so they might live.

I went through the Western Plaza, then down the steps toward the Northern Palace. My chest was aching, and drops of blood fell from me, but I went on. Above the chaos, I heard my daughter’s dog barking. I ran, following the echo of that desperate beast, avoiding all men, staying to the shadows until I saw figures near the entrance to a small pool where the king had once bathed in cool water surrounded by white lotus lilies he had brought from Alexandria. There, on the stairs, Amram had come up behind my daughter. Her arrows had fallen around her as he grabbed her at her waist and slit her throat. In doing so he had her for himself at last, but while she gasped in his arms, he had seen the silver medallion at her throat. When I spied him he had clasped her to him, his grief enormous, for he knew her for who she was for the first time, the warrior who had fought beside him and saved him. He cried out for what he had done, mourning all that had died with her.

Adir came rushing at Amram as I watched. My son hadn’t a spear or a sword, only his crutch, which he used to beat Amram, for he had seen his sister murdered and was standing in her blood. Amram turned and pierced him through, then finished his work with one swift cut at my boy’s throat. He wore his prayer shawl, as all the death-givers did, the garment which was always to be made of linen with a single blue woolen thread to remind its wearer of heaven and of God’s commandments. But Amram’s prayer shawl was stained, and appeared brown as the blood upon it clung to the linen.

I watched in a dream, as if I had seen this all before and had come here as a witness so that my children would not be alone in the hour of their death. I prayed to God that they would be embraced in the Shechinah, the dwelling place of the Lord.

My son was no warrior, only a boy. My warrior was a woman who would not have expected an attack from someone who had loved her so well.

The dog was wild over the injury to his mistress, wailing as though he were a man rather than a beast. He would not stand down when Amram turned to shout at him; he straddled Aziza’s fallen body, protecting her still form, his jaws snapping, flecked with foam. Amram kicked at him, then charged, but the dog stood his ground. He was a beast who craved revenge, more loyal than the warrior who now stabbed him through, time and again.

The mastiff refused to die, the guardian of my daughter, who in her death revealed herself to be only a young woman who had shorn her hair and worn men’s garb. Her red feathered arrows fallen around her, her field of flowers, her last farewell. Though mortally wounded, the dog grabbed on to Amram and refused to let go, his teeth sinking into his enemy’s flesh. I watched the struggle in a haze of grief, until both dog and man were so wounded neither could go on, yet neither one would die.

The Man from the Valley should have been at his leader’s bidding, for he was one of the chosen ten. Instead, he had come for Aziza. When he saw what had happened, he slit the dog’s throat so that the beast could die with honor, thereby releasing him from pain and from his duties in this world. But the warrior stood over Amram and watched him in his throes, offering no solace and no assistance. The man who had been Revka’s son-in-law when his name was Yoav, when he still had compassion and faith, let my daughter’s murderer die in anguish.