The Dovekeepers

Revka often watched us in the fields. Sometimes when we walked back to the dovecote with our empty baskets, she would shake her head, scowling. Despite her ill will, I wasn’t about to stop listening to the Man from the North. When he spoke, I didn’t think about the desert, or the past that beckoned to me, or the sins I had committed, only the land I would never know, the drifts of snow, the bands of men with black tattoos who lashed flat branches to their feet so they might walk through the snow as bears do, with ease.

The slave trusted me enough to recount the details of his capture, though he was taut with rage as he recalled that event. When the Roman garrison was sacked by our warriors, he and his kinsman had fallen to their knees, vowing that they had no allegiance to the Emperor and would never lift a hand against us. He couldn’t raise his eyes when he spoke of this humiliation. Our people had allowed them to live because they made an oath against Rome and because they had been stolen from their homeland. Everyone else was slain, though some of the soldiers were little more than boys who pleaded for their lives and cowered at the sight of a knife.

That night the blood of the Romans who had been killed welled up into the clouds and turned into a rain. The blood rain followed our warriors into their tents, streaming down in rivers. Our men panicked and were about to run away, but Ben Ya’ir instructed them not to flee. He could do that to his warriors, the slave had seen it firsthand, make them yield beneath his gaze. He boldly informed them that a rain of blood was not a curse but a promise. It was the future they had to face, as all men must face death eventually. They could do so as cowards or as men of God, that was their choice.

Every man in his command stayed. The slave remarked that he knew then Ben Ya’ir was a man who would never give in, no matter the circumstances.

In the morning, when the dark lifted, the blood that had fallen from the sky had turned into flame trees. Because of this the men were shielded from the noonday sun, a clear blessing from Adonai. Our warriors fell to their knees in gratitude.

I blushed at the mention of the tree that I had so often stood beneath and dreamed of. I said the flame tree was a favorite of mine, and he nodded and said he wasn’t surprised to hear so. On that day, however, even though he lay in irons, chained to his kinsman, a mere slave and nothing more, he knew the true meaning of what our leader claimed to be a miracle when he saw the flame trees. It was not God’s grace they had seen, the slave assured me. He knew the omens of war and was aware of what red flowers blooming on this day meant. Our people would have to walk through fire.

Because he had witnessed the massacre, God would consider him guilty as well. He, too, would have to face fire. He gazed at my hair as he spoke. That was when I insisted it was time to return to the dovecote. We walked back the way we had come. A breeze shifted through the trees. That was as good a reason as any for me to cover my head. We had spoken too freely, and nothing good could come of it. I retreated into silence, but the Man from the North had one more thing to recount. He confided that he hadn’t known what to feel when he was spared by our warriors. Should he be grateful or outraged? He’d been rescued from the Roman Legion, only to be taken in slavery. This humiliation was not what he had foreseen as the path of his life.

“What did you intend?”

“I intended to find a woman like you.” He was speaking to me as if he weren’t a slave and I was not a woman who carried another’s life within her.

“You’re confused,” I demurred. “You think because I have red hair I’m like one of the women you knew in another world.”

We had crossed the field and were approaching the largest of the dovecotes with emptied baskets in hand, the sky blue above us, the air fresh, and it seemed that we had indeed entered into the slave’s country during the season when everything was green.

“You’re taking forever,” Revka called as she peered out the door, watching us yet again, even though she was not my kinswoman and my deeds were none of her concern. “Hurry up. There’s work here. Did you ever hear of it?”

“I’m not confused, Yael,” the Man from the North told me before we went back inside, where Revka might overhear. “I know who you are.”

It took half the day for me to realize he’d said my name and even longer to admit that I hadn’t cringed at the sound.

IN A WORLD of blood one expects to see red, but when I awoke to a stream of blood flowing from within me, staining the pallet I slept upon, I was stunned. I had carried my child for more than six months, assuming he was safe. But I had been dreaming of the ghost who slept beside me. She had been whispering in my ear all night, refusing to leave me be, weeping for all she had lost in the world, unable to let go of me still. I had wanted what had belonged to her, now she desired what was mine. Perhaps her words had wounded me and this was why I bled. In my dream we had been together on the cliff where we’d left her bones. Feathers were tumbling down from the sky, and all the birds I’d killed with my bare hands had come alive.