The Dovekeepers

“Would you have taken such a gift if she’d offered it?” I ventured to ask, for Nahara had been the one to turn her back on her mother’s ways.

Nahara shrugged, knowing I was right. You cannot give a gift to someone who is bound to deny it. Nahara now spent her days caring for the Essenes’ goats, idly feeding them weeds as though she had been a goatherd all her life. I had spied her with the pious women, dabbing water on her head before a meal, swaying in prayer, eyes closed in the ecstasy of the Almighty’s grace. We who worked in the dovecotes did not discuss what was evident: she would not be returning to us.

“What would you do with gold?” I went on, for I’d heard that the people she’d aligned herself with believed possessions were worthless, meant for this world alone. “I thought what belonged to one Essene belonged to all.”

Tonight Nahara been an equal partner to Shirah in bringing forth Yael’s child, yet she seemed consumed by a child’s jealousy as she gazed at Yael. “That shouldn’t include sharing one’s mother,” she remarked in a hurt tone, so that anyone might think she’d been the one who had been cast away when she alone had made her choice on the day of the salt rain.

EIGHT DAYS LATER, I went with Yael when she brought her son to the synagogue to ask for the ritual every boy child must endure for his faith in our God. From the time of Abraham it had been this way, and so it continued, with many believing our male children were considered tamim, perfected, by this ritual. It was said that Domah, the angel of the grave, cannot burn or harass any man who has been circumcised when he enters the World-to-Come; the suffering in the here and now is said to prevent suffering for all eternity.

We stepped inside the doors of the synagogue but were allowed no farther. It was not for the elders to perform the ritual. The child’s father must make this covenant between his son and God, and if there was no father, that was not their concern. Yael clutched the baby to her, frightened that no man would stand up for her child because of the circumstances of his birth and that perhaps she, like Moses’ wife, Zipporah, would have to complete the deed. I knew Yael carried a knife, but she shied away from the very idea of cutting her own son, vowing that her hand would be made unsteady by her devotion and her love.

At last her brother arrived, apologetic, his prayer shawl around his shoulders. Amram was clearly uncomfortable with the unfamiliar task of caretaking. I wondered how he would manage the covenant when he flinched even as Yael fitted the newborn into his arms. The baby caught the warrior’s glance and held it with his unblinking ember-colored eyes. There was a red mark on the left side of his face, one we were all hoping would fade. “I didn’t think he’d look like this,” Amram blurted.

“He looks like a baby,” I remarked matter-of-factly. There was no reason for this child to be viewed as one of the mamzerim, a bastard with no rights, not even the right of circumcision, although he would certainly be seen as what our people call a shetuki, a silent one, any child who does not know his father.

Amram laughed. “That he does.” He nodded to Yael approvingly. “He looks strong.”

I did not notice anyone else’s presence until Yael took a step back.

The old assassin was there in the shadows. He’d been there all along, a cold eye set on the baby.

“He’ll complete the ritual,” Amram said of their father.

Yael clutched her baby closer, uncertain, stunned that her father had agreed to participate. The last contact she’d had with him was when they’d quarreled bitterly over her condition, and he’d struck her, driving her from their home.

“Do you think I don’t remember how to use a knife?” the assassin asked when he saw her hesitation.

Yael raised her glance to him. “Oh no. I’m sure you do.”

Clearly that was her fear.

“Am I not your father?” the assassin said.

Yael gazed at him, unsure.

“Is that child not my grandson?”

Yael’s brother quietly urged her to have faith. It was he who had persuaded his father to come to the synagogue, and the two, who had turned away from one another, had made amends because of the birth of this boy. “This child belongs to us, and we to him, never more than on this day. He is not a burden, for he has brought us together.”

Only male relatives were allowed to be present at the ceremony when the child would be named. He was ready for the covenant, he had enough life and breath to shield him so that Lilith and her demons could not call to him as easily as they might have in the hours following his birth. Until this day he’d still had one foot in their world and the other in ours; now he was rooted, fed by his mother’s milk. This ritual would set the path for his entire life to come.