The Dovekeepers

I was in desperate need of a remedy, something that would stop the bleeding and bind the child I carried to the world we walked through, not the World-to-Come. I went to my father’s chamber in the darkness of early morning and took what few coins he had. I was not embarrassed to steal his silver. I would rather be a thief than a woman without a child.

As I hurried across the plaza in the dim light, I felt a wash of unforgiving heat, formed by the pain that blazed inside me. I asked a watchman where Shirah lived.

“What would you want with the witch?” he asked.

“We work in the dovecotes,” I told him. He looked at me carefully, perhaps to judge if I was guilty of something and was now merely trying to determine the nature of my crime. Perhaps he had picked up the scent of my blood and knew I was unclean. “The doves are ailing and I’m not wise enough to know what the ailment might be,” I insisted.

Though he seemed suspicious, he pointed me toward one of the palaces. I thought, of course, Shirah was one of Ben Ya’ir’s kinswomen and therefore was meant for a palace even if some accused her of sorcery. There were those who whispered that life was not so different here than it had been in Jerusalem: those who ruled managed to live well, while those who followed hungered. But I discovered that Shirah resided in an outbuilding that had been a kitchen, used by servants in the time of the king. When I rapped on the door, it opened. We had no locks. The mountain was our lock, the serpent’s path our key.

There was no one inside, but I went in and peered about. The floor of her chamber was patterned with mosaics that spread out like a fan. There was a wooden altar beside shelves set into the stone wall. These shelves were piled high with bowls and pitchers; there were jars of honey and wine, along with vials of herbs. The floor echoed as I went to open the door so that I might peer inside the small sleeping chamber. Aziza and Nahara were entwined on the same pallet. Their brother, Adir, a dark boy of no more than eleven, slept by the rear door. There was no sign of Shirah, only a square of straw covered by a woven blanket that had not been slept upon.

I turned to find her entering her house, light on her feet, as though she were a thief herself. She was breathless; perhaps she’d been running. Her head was covered by a shawl stamped with a pattern of gold leaves, and there were half a dozen chiming bracelets on her arms. She stopped when she saw me, then quickly regained her composure.

She had been out walking, she told me, slipping off her bracelets. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Perhaps we’re the same in that.”

“Perhaps,” I agreed.

I didn’t ask what dark matter she’d been attending to. I had begun to lose my strength, and before I could say more, I slumped against the wall. When Shirah saw that I was staining, she chastised me for not speaking of the problem immediately. She had me sit at a table that was only a rough-hewn piece of wood set upon a trestle. She felt my belly and knew by mere touch when this child had begun and when he would enter the world. I showed her the coins I’d brought along and begged for a potion, but she waved the coins away. She told me a cure wasn’t so easily found. Although she wanted no payment, she would try to help. She boiled the leaves of the madder root, a plant that is said to turn the bones of any animals who graze upon it red. She added berries of the bramble bush and gave me a tea that was scarlet and steaming. I drank it though it burned my lips. This mixture wasn’t the cure, Shirah told me, but we could hope it would end the cramping.

“Is there anyone who wants your child to be unborn?” she asked. “Anyone who wishes you harm?”

I felt as though an arrow had pierced me. There was only one such person. As I had taken from Sia, she would take from me.

“A ghost,” I said in a low tone.

“Is she here with you now?”

I looked up to see that my ghost had indeed followed and was standing at the door, watching me reproachfully.

I nodded.

“Well, she comes for a reason.” Shirah studied me. Kohl ringed her eyes.

For a moment I felt I was drowning. “I took something that didn’t belong to me,” I admitted.

“I see.” She continued to study me, reading my every expression. “Do you regret this?”

A simple enough question. But I couldn’t give the answer she wanted. When I shook my head, Shirah sighed.

“If that’s how you feel, then you’ll have to accept that the one you stole from will take your child.”

If Sia had lived, the baby I carried would have belonged to her if Ben Simon had claimed it as his own and married me. She would forever be his first wife and could have arranged to take over my life. Perhaps that was her intention now.