The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [137]
When Amram arrived from Jerusalem at the beginning of the summer in the year the Temple fell, he was merely one more young man running from his enemies, convicted by his bloodline as well as by his actions, an assassin who could be seen as a murderer or a hero depending on who you were and where fate had placed you. I happened to be there, crossing the plaza. I was nearly sixteen, but still I kept to myself. I did not take note of any man until I saw Amram climb the serpent’s path. He did so easily, as though the rugged cliffs were little more than a field. What was steep and difficult for others was for Amram no different than air to the lark. It was clear he could conquer whatever came before him, man or beast, even the land itself.
Watching him, I was almost ashamed of how handsome I found him. He was the warrior I wished I had become, fluid and lean, sure of himself. I envied him and wanted to possess him and all that he had. I remembered the way the dusk fell on the other side of the Salt Sea in waves of deep blue on the day my mother warned me of the prophecy that I should avoid love at all costs. But I was born to disobey her. I knew this when I found I could not look away from Amram. I tried and failed, though I was iron and stronger than most in such matters. Aziza, the powerful, was somehow undone. Was there some angel or demon who remembered what my name had once been and now called me Rebekah from the reaches of heaven? I stood there like any other woman at the Snake Gate alongside all the rest who gathered there, charmed and seduced by Amram even before he reached us.
Perhaps the moment might have passed and I would have turned away and resumed my duties, if only he hadn’t seen me as well, if we hadn’t been transformed by a single glance that passed between us. I realized I had been caught from the moment I’d given in to my impulse to stand upon the wall to cheer him on. My intention was otherwise. Merely to view the sort of man I might have been in my second life. Instead, I became a woman in that instant. I gazed through the shimmering heat, watching his fate and mine twine together as he climbed the serpent path.
I WAS CURIOUS, drawn to him. When the rains came, I stood beside the armory, dripping wet, hoping to catch a glimpse of this man at the barracks. I circled the wall, in search of signs marking where he had walked: an arrowhead, a footprint, a strand of hair. When the dust rose I thought of him, when I gazed into the sky I was reminded of him, when I fetched water, ate my dinner, worked among the doves, all of it, no matter how trivial, brought him to mind. I would not have pursued him, but one day he stood in my path as my sister and I hurried to the dovecote. I raised a hand to shield my eyes so I could take him in and so that I might hide the mark beneath my eye. In that instant I was claimed yet again. He grinned, convinced he knew me, and I grinned back, knowing he did not.
Our mother was waiting for us. Had she been beside us, I would have been made to turn away. Perhaps everything that followed would have been different, but as fate would have it, she wasn’t there, and for that I was immensely thankful. Nahara threw me a look when I told her to go on, but she did as I asked.
“You come this way every day,” Amram remarked once my sister had gone.
“How would you know?” I spoke to him as I had once spoken to Nouri, as though I were an equal, not one who would bow before him.
“Because I watch you.”
I felt the way I had when I was in the mountains, myself once more.
“Not as often as I watch you,” I said, my grin widening.
Because I’d grown up among boys, I didn’t have the guile of a woman. Amram laughed, surprised by my honesty. I suppose when I first kissed him, holding nothing back, I did so as a man would, unwound by ardor. If he was surprised by that, he was not displeased.
THE WOMEN in the fields gossiped about us. I heard their words, but such comments were nothing to me, wasp stings, grains of sand in my shoe. I let the sparks of their rude jealousy fall to the ground.