The Dovekeepers

We crossed to an abandoned section of the palace, ruined by fires in the years of the Romans but still useful if you wanted a place of privacy in this teeming world of ours.

“Why didn’t you get Revka to help you tonight?” Surely she was more trusted than I. “Is she afraid of a dog’s bite?” I mocked.

“She has the two little boys to care for, and this may take all night.”

“Revka?” I was surprised. She was so bitter, barely speaking. “She’s too old for little children.”

“Her grandchildren. She takes care of them and they sleep beside her. You’re all alone. No one will miss you.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“My mother wanted you.” Nahara looked at me with a respect that surprised me. “She told me you’d be able to catch the black dog, and you did. You should be flattered.”

We entered through an iron gate, then together used our strength to push open an ancient door of carved acacia wood that brought us into a corridor leading to the oldest of the storerooms. These chambers had once been so filled with treasure there was said to still be gold dust between the stones. We went down a hundred steps that twisted underground, and true enough, there was a faint shimmer on the stairs. The air felt damp and cool, murky, the shadows a dim slate color. The hallway grew more narrow as we went on. At last, we were forced to walk single file. Nahara carried a lamp filled with olive oil. I had the pitcher of milk. We came to an empty room made of crumbling stone.

There was an echo as we went on, though we were barefoot. Someone was calling out, but the sound was muffled. I recognized the plaintive bursts of pain. Sia had cried in this manner when she fell ill, her hand covering her mouth so that she might hush her sobs, hiding her frailty from the rest of us.

When I peered through the long furrows of shadows cast on the wall, I half-believed there was a demon flung onto the ground, much like the one imprinted upon my brother’s amulet, the female monster Solomon is said to have killed on the Temple floor. As we came near, I could make out the form of a woman rolling back and forth in agony. She was the young housemaid who had begged Shirah for a spell, the one who’d stayed on the edges of the bath the night when I was told Aziza belonged to the world of angels and demons. She had traveled to this place as a servant but had recently been cast out by the family who had rights to her when her situation became evident. Now she was no longer considered worthy to pick mulberries or pistachios, or to carry her mistress’s baskets. She had been lurking near the storerooms, stealing food from the goat barns. Her current state of misery affected me deeply. I felt fainthearted at the sight of her as she tore at her abdomen, panting, riddled with pains.

Shirah was urging her to sit up, but the young woman refused. There was a child about to enter our world, one who had no father and no family. If it became known that the father of this child was a married man, this young woman’s fate would be impossible to escape. The council might well recommend she be cast out onto the mountain. This birth must be a secret, and as I would soon understand, secrets were Shirah’s greatest gift.

Shirah signaled to me, but I stood motionless, stung by panic as I had once been stung by a wasp. I, who’d been born of a dead woman, had no right to tend to anyone bringing forth life.

“Hurry,” Shirah insisted. There was a second pitcher beside her. “Mix the milk with water.”

I did so, then watched, caught up in a dream as Shirah and Nahara held the woman up and urged her to drink the mixture of she-dog’s milk. The housemaid spat some of it on the ground and made a terrible sound, the cry of a woman who was drowning. She held on to her belly as the pain tore at her. Shirah and Nahara lifted her up and did their best to make her walk, but even this made no difference. The baby would not come.

Shirah now commanded the housemaid to crouch upon the birthing stool she had brought along, and to bear down. Still there was nothing. The housemaid was so young she seemed little more than a child at this moment. She cursed not the man who was the father but herself. I felt something rise in my chest and throat as I surveyed a birth that would not come to pass. I had Ben Simon’s knife in my tunic, cold against my skin. I thought of the knife that had been used to take me from my mother, and her great echoing cries, and the silence of her last breath.

Shirah came to me and shook me. “Stop dreaming! Go to the dovecote and get me a basket of droppings.”

It was broiling hot inside the storeroom, and Shirah was drenched. Her black hair streamed down her back. The kohl around her eyes was melting so that her eyes seemed to stare out from behind a veil. I thought I had never seen anyone as beautiful or as fierce. Her tunic had been flung open, and I was shocked to see a swirl of red tattoos on her shoulders, a practice that was forbidden to our people. Those who had been marked so were said to belong to the kedeshah, holy women who were loyal to religious groups with practices so secret and controversial they had been outlawed long before Jerusalem fell.