The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [168]
“For what cause did you come to murder me?” he demanded to know.
“That was not my purpose.”
He let go, and I faced him once more. He gazed at me, confused.
“Are you a woman?” he said thoughtfully, impressed and puzzled by my quickness with a weapon.
“Most of the time,” I answered.
Fortunately, he laughed. “I am nothing here,” he told me. “But if you want to learn to clean spears and armor, then I’m your man.”
“No. I want more,” I said. “I want to be invisible.”
By the time Yael had returned with the tea, her father had decided he would allow me to borrow his cloak. When we left, he suggested I visit him on the following day. I was interested in cleaning weaponry, he told Yael when she looked at him questioningly, and he had much to teach me.
ON THE DAY we were to leave we entered the month of Elul, a time of introspection before the holiest days come to us. I awoke in the dark while my brother, still healing, his leg bandaged, dozed on his pallet. I hurried to the goat house and dressed in his garments, burying my own beneath a pile of straw. I had been practicing weaponry daily with the old assassin, an uncompromising teacher. I was a puzzlement to him, but he was grateful that someone, even I, would ask to see his great skill. It bothered him not at all if I was harmed during our practice. His manner was remote, his methods cruel, but he had instructed me well.
The dog followed me while I retrieved my brother’s tunic and cloak, waiting patiently. I thought perhaps he was at my side because he imagined I was Adir, or perhaps he assumed I was gathering a meal for him. Yet when I shooed him away, he insisted on traipsing along to the barracks. In the dark I dressed in armor, a sheet of silver scales. I wore my head scarf tied low on my forehead so that my face was obscured and I might appear to be my brother in the other warriors’ eyes. Sure enough, a fellow named Uri came out and told me which spears to collect for the others. I did so willingly.
I had brought along only a small pack containing figs and pistachios and hard cheese, along with the gray cloak. The old assassin had taught me the tricks of invisibility, how to walk in shadow, how to step without making a sound, how to slip from the grasp of another’s attack in a blur of fog. At the end of our time together, he had proclaimed me a worthy student, although he assured me I would not make a good wife for Amram.
“They can say you’re a woman, but you’re something else.” The assassin was aging, but he was still clear-eyed, and his glance was piercing.
“A shedah?” I tried to make a joke of it.
He might have laughed, but he didn’t. “A warrior,” he said.
I bowed in gratitude, and left him there to clean other men’s weapons.
*
THERE WERE SIXTY of us who left that day, a raiding party led by Ben Ya’ir himself. My heart raced to think that I was now to be one of my father’s men, and that I was to follow him and perhaps bring some pride to him. I tied Eran to a post, but he shrank out of his rope and chased after me. Because he refused to leave my side, I used the huge dog as one might pack a donkey with belongings, enlisting a thick rope so I might tie spears onto either side of his body. Certainly, the beast was as strong as a donkey, and nearly as stubborn.
As we went through the gate, I was at the rear of the column. I could see the man who was my father in the lead and, behind him, Amram and his friends. I knew Amram even from a far distance, for he had attached the blue square to his armor. I could glimpse it as we made our way down the twisted path.
The heat was blistering,