The Dovekeepers

The council set forth a ruling on our behalf. The dovecotes were blessed and offerings were made for the flocks’ good health. We burned balsam and myrrh in small silver holders, for the smoke would ensure that our charges would produce eggs easily. Because of the biting wind, the doves shivered on their perches and tucked their heads beneath their wings. We were given one of the Roman soldiers from the north to do the heaviest of our work, carrying baskets into the fields, laying down hay, and raking it up when it was used and dank. The other soldier had been exchanged for two white donkeys that traders from Edom brought to us and was already gone from the fortress. That was a slave’s worth in this world. Ours wore metal cuffs on his feet that were unlocked when he came to us. He kept his eyes averted and did as he was told. He had twisted his fair hair into braids rather than allowing it to hang lank as it had when he first arrived, but despite this attempt to conceal how different he was, he still didn’t look like us in any manner.

He seemed ashamed of his situation, yet when Revka motioned to him, he was quick to do what was demanded of him. He was tall, nearly a giant, well muscled, with long arms and legs. Inked on his strong forearm, there was a black tattooed image of a creature that looked like an ibex but with huge curled horns. The slave saw me staring and gazed back at me openly.

“Don’t worry,” Revka remarked when she noticed his rude demeanor. “We’ll make every effort to tame him.”

The slave threw her a dark look, then went back to work, cleaning out the nests. I quickly came to believe he knew more of our language than he let on. He shrugged and pretended he didn’t understand, but I could see the truth in the way he looked up one day when I broke an egg and murmured a prayer for the spirit of the dove who might have been.

“Do you know what I’m saying?” I asked.

He glanced away. His strange blue eyes were cold to look at.

I noticed that he often scanned the plaza through the slats that covered the dovecote windows, which allowed air in but contained the birds. I thought he might be searching for the other slave.

“Your comrade has been sent away,” I told him. “We will not see him again.”

Although I wasn’t certain, I thought he winced to hear this news. I pitied him, perhaps because he was now the only one of his kind. I thought of the leopard I had faced in the wilderness, how the beast had run from me when I leapt upon a stone and roared. How alone he had been as he darted into the thornbushes, as I’d been alone when he’d left me.

“Well, if you know what’s good for you, you won’t listen even if you’re able to understand us,” I cautioned our captive.

I kept watch and saw that he was clever; he had begun a new method of cleaning the dovecotes with a rake he had devised. The slave had found rusted nails on the floor and had used them to attach twigs to a twisted branch of the olive tree that had grown in through a space in the roof. Every time he realized I was studying him, he seemed abashed, cautious. He made me think of a Syrian bear I had seen once in Jerusalem, set in irons to perform tricks for his Roman owner. The bear had kept his eyes lowered, but once, when he could no longer restrain himself, he had bared his teeth, only to be slapped down. He had held his paws over his head, as though he were a man being beaten. Although others in the crowd laughed, I had recoiled and run away, my heart pounding.

“Do you have enough food?” I asked the slave at the end of one day.

I mimicked eating so he might understand. He shook his head, shrugged. I knew he slept in the fetid loft above the dovecote, where he was chained at night, that he was given grain and crackers as his ration and little more. I began to leave him piles of twigs, so that he might have a fire and warm himself when the nights were chill.

“Are you deaf?” I wondered aloud.

He looked up then. He was a stranger from a land covered with snow, something I had seen only once in my life, when I was a young girl and it fell in Jerusalem dusting the hills, sent by Shalgiel, the angel of snow. Some children had mistaken it for manna and eaten handfuls of it, freezing their lips.

The slave understood me. I was sure of it.

I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream. Did he dream of snow and wild blue goats, or of his comrade, taken in chains across the Salt Sea?

I urged one of the doves out of its niche, held it until it quieted, then quickly broke its neck. I nearly laughed to see how startled the slave was. Perhaps watching me the way he did, he did not expect such an abrupt and deadly action. But I was not afraid of cruelty; I knew it was inside me, as it was inside the leopard who must catch his supper to survive. The slave was grateful enough when I handed the bird to him to cook for his dinner; he hid it away in the corner, where he might reach it when he was chained at night.