The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [124]
“Place this under the bed and wait. Have patience still,” she instructed me. “One ingredient is missing. Because of that this bowl is powerless. I myself cannot say what is missing, but when it appears, you’ll know. Be quick to add it into the bowl and your son-in-law will have his wish.”
I was nothing but a baker’s wife, a mother without a daughter, a fool who had placed a baby in an envious woman’s hands. How could I possibly recognize the most important ingredient of all?
“You’ll know because it will come on the day I am in irons,” Shirah told me.
THE MEN who practiced magic took to the plaza one dusty day. It was the end of winter and the drought continued. Our people seemed cursed. The priest and the rabbis had failed, and now the minim who practiced outside the laws of the Temple claimed that by casting arrows they could divine the cause of the drought. People believed them because there was little else to believe. They were parched, beaten down, desperate for water. Surely someone was to blame for our anguish. The crowd gathered around those practitioners who claimed to have access to God’s truth. The men circled near, and behind them came the women, and then the children with sticks and stones in their hands. There was a line of fury on the ground, slithering forth. Someone would be blamed, we all felt that. Our people wanted more than a demon. They wanted flesh and blood, someone to turn against, someone on earth.
Many have said that the angel of rain comes to women in their dreams. It is Beree who causes them to cry when they feel they have nothing left inside, no soul, no tears. Perhaps this is why Shirah did not appear at the dovecote on this day. Beree had visited her before and now he had returned to whisper that she should prepare herself. The morning came and went, still Shirah remained in her chamber. She plaited her hair, drew on her black cloak and her veils, slipped on her amulets. Barefoot, she did not eat or drink or speak all that day. She sat at her table readying herself for the vision that had appeared to her when she first came to the fortress. She had seen herself in chains, in a season when the rain refused to fall.
The arrows thrown by the minim pointed directly to what had once been the kitchen of the king. The house of the Witch of Moab. She was waiting for the diviners at her threshold, her cloak held close. Exactly as she had predicted, she was shackled and led away.
I knew this was the day when the incantation bowl would be complete, for Shirah had vowed the missing ingredient could be added only when she was in chains. I could not attend to the spell, however. I fled the dovecote with Yael and Aziza when we heard news of Shirah’s captivity. Together we rushed to the plaza. There was a crush of people, and the flare of overheated rage striped the air. People wanted a reason which might explain why God had turned against us, why the leaves on the trees were singed, why the olives were white and unripened, why we had only thirst until we were gasping, like fish upon the shore. They believed they now gazed upon that reason.
Watching the crowd engulf her mother, Aziza had to be restrained to guard that she wouldn’t rush to Shirah’s side and perhaps be held to blame as well. Yael grasped one of her arms, and I the other. She was stronger than I would have ever imagined, but Yael managed to calm her.
“Have faith,” she urged, whispering to Aziza so no one could overhear and accuse them of plotting. The gold talisman glinted at Yael’s throat, and her face was serene despite the chaos.
They say a witch’s enemies must hold her in the air and separate her from earth if they wish to undercut her power, but when the minim tried this, Shirah laughed at them. The men lowered her and backed away, confused. They had no idea that water, not earth, was her element.
“There is no one but Adonai,” Shirah declared to those who had accused her of bringing God’s wrath down upon us. Her voice carried. We who had come from the