The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [113]
The Man from the North was fortunate that I alone spied him. Anyone else would have set upon him immediately, and even if he was quick to surrender, whoever might have chosen to murder him would have been within his legal rights. I waved him away, clapping my hands, as I would to chase off rats. He slipped back against the wall, falling into the dark, disappearing, as a dream might. But unlike a dream, he left his mark. When I went to the wall in the half-light and ran my hand over the stones, I found them hot to the touch in the place where he had waited, cast by the impatience that was evident in any man in love.
The following morning, as Yael and I walked through the field, she kept her eye on the dovecote where the shadow who had stalked her was kept. My walk was slower than hers, and I saw her impatience when she bade me to hurry.
“The doves can’t wait?” I asked.
She flushed and began to fuss with the baby she carried at her hip. “Dear heart,” she said, masking her eyes, rubbing the soft skin under Arieh’s chin.
“Is there a reason you’re so impatient?” I pressed her.
She looked up at me, hesitant. I could feel her lie forming before it was declared. “No hurry,” she answered, but her gaze said otherwise.
That was when I knew she was the one who had left the slave’s chains unlocked.
She was treating him like a man.
I said I had a stone caught in my sandal. I stopped to slip it out, stating that I could not walk with a stone any more than a slave could become one of us. I glanced at Yael and saw she was flustered, angered by my remarks.
“Do you think he’s less than we are? Is he nothing more than a stone?”
It was said that angels came to human beings for comfort. How lonely they must be, locked in the silence of their world. But a human burned in the embrace of the angels, his body set aflame, and the kindness of such creatures could become a curse. Here on this mountain, Yael’s indiscretion would be considered treachery.
“If they find him roaming, they’ll kill him,” I warned. “If you unlock him, you unlock his death. Do you think he’ll be happy to do our bidding once his chains are off? He’ll want more, like any other man.”
Yael softly admitted that the Man from the North had spoken of his plans to escape. He knew of others who had done so. Several of his fellow conscripts had deserted the legion before they’d crossed the Great Sea, still more had disappeared after reaching Jerusalem. I was silent, wondering if he might have known the beasts who had attacked us, perhaps had considered them friends.
When the Man from the North made his impassioned speeches about freedom, I suspected he was trying to convince Yael to flee as well. He insisted the Romans would soon enough be upon us—and it was true we more often spied scouts in the region. Before long we would be the slaves, the Man from the North had vowed. But perhaps he had forgotten that, when Yael left the dovecote, she was not alone. She had told me she would never return to the desert, where there were bones left beneath the piles of rocks, glinting in white heat, the remains of the man she had loved.
I knew about the lion who had bitten her and possessed her. She’d rambled about him when we paused on the steps so that she might draw breath on the night she labored to bring forth her child. Although she never spoke of it again, I knew she was not about to bring another lion into the desert. If the Man from the North was planning to escape, he would have to do so alone.
I made no further comment when I saw them working together.