The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [161]
“You continue to make bargains with dead women,” my mother said mournfully. “Have you not learned from the first ghost?”
“Channa is not dead,” I countered, confused.
I had seen her that very afternoon, walking in the plaza with Arieh in her arms, and she had been very much alive. People whispered that she had convinced her husband God had meant for her to have this child, even though she had been barren since their marriage day. She told Ben Ya’ir that the one who had borne him had come begging her to take him in. The boy had been a gift and a blessing from Adonai.
“She is dead to me,” my mother remarked coldly.
“I will do anything to get him back,” Yael vowed. “I thought it would be a small price, a few days apart. I had no idea what she intended.”
My mother shook her head sadly. “If I go against her, I place my own child in danger. Is that what you expect of me in the name of our friendship?”
“I’m not afraid of her,” I said.
My mother gazed at me, then quickly looked away. That was when I knew. I was not the child she wished to protect. I understood what should have been evident for some time. There had been signs that my mother was with child, but I had simply failed to notice what I didn’t wish to see. Of course I knew who the father was. The man who still kept the doves he’d sent to her on the Iron Mountain. She still belonged to him.
“Did you think I was a witch and not a woman?” my mother ventured to ask.
Hurt beyond measure, I shrugged. “Another one for you to destroy with your love.”
Yael flashed me a warning look, then went to kneel beside my mother, begging for her help. “I will never ask for anything more. I swear it.”
“She’s already given you a precious gift,” I said, referring to the amulet. The charm’s absence had gone unnoticed by my mother. I wondered what she would think if she found her gift had been forsaken.
Yael exposed her throat to reveal that the amulet was gone. When she admitted she had given the talisman to Wynn for his protection, I felt shame to have confronted her so.
“Forgive me.” Yael bowed her head before my mother. “He needed it more than I. If you help me now, I won’t ask again,” she vowed.
“But I’ll come to you for something,” my mother confessed. “Trust is worth more than gold, loyalty is the best protection. If I do this for you, when the time comes, will you grant me anything I ask?”
“Anything,” Yael promised.
“Channa is not like the other woman who wanted your child,” my mother warned. “That woman had a heart, though she was dust. This one has none. Believe me, she would see your child murdered before she returned him to you. And she’ll put a curse on mine. Remember that when I come for what I want.”
They took the knife Yael carried with her at all times, and they cut their flesh, then let the drops of blood fall into a cup of oil to be burned before the image of Ashtoreth at our altar. My mother then brought forth a bowl of samtar, the poultice that heals wounds caused by arrows. She coated her body as a warrior might before battle. She took a heap of ashes and another of salt, and the precious balm of Gilead, made from the gum of the turpentine tree. When Yael went to accompany her, my mother stopped her.
Yael was puzzled. “You may need me.”
My mother shook her head. “Not you.” She looked at me, then nodded. “You.”
Though I no longer had any duty to this woman, the mother who had lied to me and betrayed me, there was a child’s fate at stake. And there was something more, something I would not have admitted aloud.
Despite the many ways she had betrayed me, I yearned to be the one she chose.
I covered myself with samtar, as my mother had done, and then with oil. I braided my hair and allowed seven knots to be tied inside my cloak, the number said to repel evil when witchery was before you.
“Do you think she’s a witch?” I wondered.