The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [163]
Through the haze of the smoke we found a lamp, and although the glow was dim, it worked well enough so that we might find our way. We went along the hall, down the corridor where the frescoes of the seven sisters had been painted by masters from Rome. Each of the sisters was more beautiful than the next, yet none was as beautiful as my mother, not even the silver moon. She drew me to her, and we stood together beneath swatches of ocher and amethyst and sea green. She nodded toward a doorway, urging me to listen. She had done this when we were children, so that we might ascertain the difference between the approaching hooves of her husband’s great steed, Leba, and the sound of any other man’s horse. When my sister’s father was puzzled that we children had run out to greet him long before he arrived, we would tell him that Leba could speak to us, and that the language of horses was easy enough to divine.
Now, in the house of Ben Ya’ir, I heard what I thought was a beetle, the kind they say search for the dead. After a moment I realized it was the rhythmic rasp of someone’s breath. I tapped at my throat, and my mother nodded. We had found the one we searched for.
We followed the sound, pausing when it became more muffled, edging forward when it began again. The breath led us to a small chamber where oil and wine were stored, the tall jars among the last that had belonged to King Herod. The room was dark, but the lamp we carried cast enough light for us to make out the long furrows of shadows. One shadow was like a pool of water that bled toward us in the darkness. She had crouched behind the door, a raven in a dark tunic, hunched down as though she might evade us as easily as dusk fading into a field of blackened trees.
As if magicked, Arieh called out to us. Perhaps he knew his true mother waited nearby. The raven quickly reached to cover his mouth, but he cried out again. He had recognized us, and we took this to be an omen. God was watching over us.
“You have no right to be here,” Channa said when she had little choice but to face us. She stood up, proudly, as though she had not been cowering in the dark with the beetles, a shadow huddled behind a door. “When I call the sentries, you’ll be locked in the tower yourselves. Or perhaps I’ll see you set out in the wilderness. That’s where you belong. You were condemned, yet you think you can come into this house and treat it as your own.”
Channa was eyeing my mother as one might a demon that had crept in through an open window. My mother gave her no answer. She did not argue or respond to these evil words. She stood in the doorway so that Channa could not make an escape. It was too late to hide or shriek. My mother had already begun the exorcism. She spread down two circles of ash, then motioned to me. We stepped inside the circles as she began the Song of the Afflicted. My mother’s voice was lovely, pure and ethereal. At first Channa merely listened, falling under the spell. Perhaps she thought she was being praised, or she had convinced herself that my mother had come to pay tribute, to admit her wrongdoings and eat the salt she now threw toward her rival, as some were said to eat their sins. But our leader’s wife’s eyes opened wide as she heard the words my mother recited.
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
Perhaps the wings I had always