The Dovekeepers

“It took long enough for you to come here,” Amram said, embracing me, then letting me go so he could have a look.

Only months had passed since our last meeting, yet it seemed ten summers had gone by. Before this day Amram had always seemed younger than I—now he seemed a true warrior, fierce, sure of himself. For once I felt myself to be the little sister. My brother made me think of steel, metal that has been transformed through flame. I didn’t want to know how many men he’d killed or what cruel deeds he had accomplished. I was appalled to think he might have been one of the warriors who had taken Ein Gedi and slaughtered people of our own faith.

“I’m here now,” I said.

My hair was clean and oiled, plaited atop my head. I could tell from my brother’s gaze how different I appeared to him. He studied me, searching my expression, not quite seeing what had happened but aware that something had changed. I’d been bitten by a lion, but you had to look inside me to see the scar.

“I thought I would find you long before this. You must have been hidden, Yaya,” Amram teased.

I thought of the caves where we had camped and what I had done there and of that last sorrowful place where Ben Simon had died. If he had gone with me to the Essenes, he might have lived. I had come to think that he knew what would befall him if he chose to remain behind, and still he had stayed. I should have seen it in the manner in which he glanced away from me, as if we had already been separated while I stood before him to say farewell. I should have known when he gave me his knife.

I didn’t want my brother to see my shame. I sank onto the grass, beneath a canopy of pink almond blossoms, so that I might avert my face and be unreadable beneath Amram’s curious glance. It was said that the almonds of pink trees were bitter, whereas those on trees where the blossoms were white would always be sweet. I lowered my eyes so I might seem like any other young unmarried woman.

“We did as best we could,” I said simply.

“The others were unlucky,” he replied. “I was sorry to hear of their passing. I thought Jachim ben Simon would take care of you. That was why I left you in his hands.”

“It was their fate to enter the World-to-Come,” I told him. That and nothing more.

My brother came to sit beside me joyfully, for a moment a boy once more rather than a warrior. He had scars I hadn’t seen before, including a deep gash on his neck where he’d been pierced by an arrow. When he unclasped his armor, I noticed the constant pressure of the bow he carried had etched itself into his skin; there was now a crescent on his back and chest even when he did not shoulder his weapon.

He had grown his hair long and braided it tightly as warriors did. His face was still beautiful, but burned by the sun, thin. The openness of his youth was gone. He was no longer a boy learning rebellion in the dappled red shade of the flame tree.

“We are among the last holdouts in all of Judea,” he told me. “Fortress after fortress has fallen. We haven’t run and we never will.”

There were only two routes to Masada, the way we had come, through the heartless desert which stretched on toward the mountains of Moab on the far side of the Salt Sea, or along the dusty route that connected Edom and the Arava Valley to Ein Gedi and Jerusalem. Either route was visible from this perch.

“We’re safe here,” my brother promised.

He told me that when the rebels first arrived they’d pulled down the golden eagle Herod had installed on the huge gate of the palace. There were to be no idols here, no great shows of wealth. All men were equal in this domain, no kings, only the kingdom of God. No man needed to bow to any other, not even to Eleazar ben Ya’ir, their leader, a great man and a great warrior.

My brother showed me that he continued to wear the amulet of Solomon I’d given him, strung around his throat. He took great pride in it still.

“Where’s your scarf?” he asked then.

I showed him the single section of silk that remained. I told him how the scarf had saved my life and the life of our father, how it had become a map to guide us through the desert, tied to the thorn trees. To my great surprise, my brother brought forth a matching bit of blue. It had come to him on the wind, he told me. He’d thought it was a bird at first, and had held out his hand. It had come to him as if called. That was how he knew I was still alive, and that he would find me, and that our presence in this place so close to God was meant to be.

WE WENT WALKING through the orchard, toward terraces where ancient olive trees and huge, twisted grapevines grew. In the gardens there were onions, chickpeas, cucumbers, melons, all made possible by King Herod’s amazing use of cisterns and pools which brought water to this mountain. Beyond us rose a field of emmer and barley, with sheaves tied together with rope. A plow drawn by donkeys cut what was left, the blade attached to a long piece of wood; two boys shouted at the donkeys to keep them going. As the chaff rose up, the air glowed yellow, like honey poured into a bowl.