The Dovekeepers

We had Abba’s blessing and his medicine. We needed only to find our way. I hurried my father along, collecting scraps of blue as we followed the map they made, grateful to my brother for his gift. The fabric was tattered. Some of the squares had been carried off by hyenas or by the wind, so all that remained were the threads cast from silkworms that had turned into butterflies. One day there was a heavy rain. My father wanted to wait out the rain, taking refuge in a limestone cave, but I insisted we walk on, though our skins glistened with water and our garments were sodden. My father had little choice. He would be lost without me, for I alone knew the direction we must head toward. As we walked on, my father raved and complained, but the rain ended, a little at a time, so that we walked through the drops and then through the fresh, cool air.

The campsite was empty when we arrived. There was the fire pit and the basket I used to collect mint and greens. There were the bowls for our meals, and the ax which had cut the thorns from our path. A fine layer of grit covered everything, and I thought of the two girl-brides Ben Simon had showed me and how he had cried and how I had fallen under his spell. We had stolen our time together, time that had seemed endless in the dark. I felt something sharp in my throat. I didn’t know it was the beginning of my grief until my father silenced me. I had been wailing, the way the leopard does, suddenly and without regard for any other living creature.

We discovered them in the dank cave, searching for comfort and shelter in their final hours. They were together, as they deserved to be. All had the red marks of illness pocking their skin, all had wasted away so that bones showed through their flesh. Ben Simon had set his wife and children onto a stone ledge before he lay down beside them. The veins in his arms were still blue, but they were fading, and his skin had grown cold. I fell to my knees and clutched at him, desperate for any last warmth. I put my mouth upon his, but there was no breath, no life. I could taste the World-to-Come.

I would not move when my father shouted at me, or when he raised his hand to me. In the end my father had to bury them. It was a woman’s place to ready bodies for the Angel of Death and chant lamentations, then to set herself aside until the specter of death was no longer with her, but I refused. Welts rose across my back and shoulders when my father beat me, but I would not be his dog on this day. My father shouted out that I was a coward, afraid to see to the needs of the dead, but he was wrong. I wasn’t afraid to be unclean any more than I was frightened of the dead. I only feared that if I held Ben Simon for too long, I wouldn’t be able to let him go.

My father carried the bodies to the highest cliff and set rocks atop them so hawks and vultures and jackals couldn’t get near. He said prayers of lamentations, having folded Ben Simon’s prayer shawl around his own shoulders to honor him. For seven days after this ritual, my father had to sit in the sun to cleanse himself because he had been so close to death and was considered tamé, impure. He sang the lamentations that a woman was meant to sing because I would not allow those words into my mouth. I would not recognize Ben Simon’s death or see him walk into the World-to-Come. When I closed my eyes I could envision the natural grace of his strong body, the sharp planes of his face, his deep glance of appraisal which cut right through me. I did not want to let him go, yet I could hear my father’s laments and prayers even when I covered my ears with my hands. His chanting sounded like the wind, and like the wind it wrapped around me until I heard nothing but a single song.

I wondered if in his illness Ben Simon had been like the lion who had fought so hard against nine warriors, only to lay down his head and die before the tenth. I wondered if he had lasted until the day when it rained, when we were so close, only moments away, and if that rain had been made of his tears, for he had not been ashamed to weep.

I remembered the words I’d overheard before we left the Essenes when Abba had sent his messenger to my father. Even for the righteous, it is only up to Adonai to punish. Perhaps this holy man had known who we were all along. Now the assassins’ punishment had fallen upon us. If one of the Sicarii carried all the men he had murdered on his back wherever he went, did the dead not wish to eventually take their revenge? Perhaps their spirits had followed Ben Simon, and when he was weakened by grief, when he sank down, eyes shining wet before the still forms of his children, they had burned through his flesh and overtaken him.

I buried the Essenes’ cure, for it was worthless now, as they said things of this world always were. As I dug in the hard, white earth, I wondered if perhaps I was the one being punished, if I was now meant to suffer as I had made my friend suffer when I stole what belonged to her.