The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [108]
“Their voices,” he said.
We could hear the warriors who had gone in to their evening meal, breaking their fast, the raucous conversation of young men, some too young to know the horrors they would encounter when they ventured into the desert to defend us. Most of those young warriors looked away when they saw the Man from the Valley, with his scars and his bands of metal, easily convinced they would never become like him, a death-giver maddened by war.
“Can you give me that?” Yoav asked. “I want my boys to speak like any others. Can your God do that?”
It was my wish as well, one I had prayed for to no avail. We were so alike it was painful, two people who had drowned in the same pool. We observed the night and the stars above us in silence. I could not promise him that God’s grace would prevail.
Yoav shrugged when I had no answer. “Exactly,” he said. “Come back to me when they can speak. When the innocent aren’t burdened by a curse, then find me. Until that time, I have no faith. If there ever was a God, He has forsaken us and is no more.”
We sat together with that terrible and reckless thought. The chill light of the falling moon filtered down.
“I’ll fight until there is no one left for me to go up against. Then I’ll lie down knowing I had no God.”
When I left that place, Yoav was still there, beneath the sun-bleached boughs of the ancient tree. All the while we’d made our way to this mountain, he’d possessed the unrelenting brooding of a man stalked by sorrow. Now he was searching for death, wanting to confront it and be done with this world. I knew what he dreamed about, and it was not my daughter. Such a dream would have broken him in a thousand ways. A vision of Zara would have been endlessly more painful than the sharp strands he strung around himself in self-punishment.
I did not look back as I made my way from the garrison, or pay attention to the owls who glided across the sky at this hour. I had an errand and didn’t dare delay. I made a vow to get this man the one thing in the world he still wanted, the sound of his children’s voices, a reason to believe.
I WENT to the synagogue to beg for an amulet that might cure my grandsons. I humbled myself, my eyes on the ground, my voice pleading. But the great man, Menachem ben Arrat, only shook his head. He reminded me that he had the fate of our people to pray over and therefore could not be concerned with the troubles of two small boys. He dismissed me as if their plight was meaningless, as perhaps it was for him, and had me escorted out.
Despite the priest’s denial, one of the scholars gave me an amulet in which there was a rolled prayer for forgiveness. I buried it beside the temple, as was the custom, but as I wiped the dirt from my hands, I wasn’t convinced that a scholar’s charm was strong enough for my needs. I was already headed in another direction.
Evening was falling, and the women were at work on the looms set up in the plaza. The men were coming to prayer, called by the blast of the ram’s horn which was sounded from the ramparts on the wall, passing me by as I went to the opposite end of the fortress. I neared the barracks, where I spied Aziza acting as a willing audience for her brother while he practiced with a bow, showing off all he’d learned. Adir had become the pet of some of the younger warriors. Although he was a decent student, he had no idea that his sister was the one who had revealed herself to be an expert marksman. We had not told him because such things were forbidden; Adir might not understand if he learned we had ignored the law. Any weapon touched by a woman, even by accident, must be cleansed with both water and prayer so that her essence would not linger, diverting the warrior who might use it next, for even the faintest touch could bring lust to that man’s