The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [173]
Of all who were before me, he was the only one I wished to stand beside.
THEY LET the donkeys live, heaping them with the possessions that now belonged to us, the ginger and pepper, the gourds and leeks, all manner of wine and oil and wheat, small amounts of gold, earrings and rings taken from homes and from corpses, heaps of precious cinnamon, lamps, stacks of weaponry. They took the goats and the sheep and killed the chickens. They filled leather containers with water and cheese. Everything smelled like blood.
I went back to the village to gather my arrows. They were easy to find among the slaughtered, a field of red lilies I had left behind. All I needed was to pluck them one by one from the chests and backs of the fallen. I took nothing else. While others gathered the rings from cold fingers, the wine from the storerooms, I washed the blades of my arrows in a bowl of water taken from a rain barrel, reciting a prayer as I did so, entreating Adonai not to cause those who had died tonight to suffer any further torment, pleading for Him to keep them safe from the three gates of Gehennom, the valley of hell. I could not look into the faces of the slain women and children, but I began to search among the men from Moab for those I might know.
Amram came by, covered with sweat and dried blood. “Don’t bother,” he said to me as I turned over the bodies of my sister’s father’s people. “They’re all the same.”
BEN YA’IR spoke to the warriors as the last of the night settled around us. I could not abide to be among them. People said that he thanked God, then praised his men for their bravery. He instructed his warriors to say prayers for the souls of the dead and told them that, in another time and place, if our enemies from Rome had not forced us into starvation and poverty, we would have called our victims our brothers.
By that hour we had moved into the high desert, making haste so that we could not be found by any of the townspeople who might have been absent during the raid, returning with vengeance in their hearts. The warriors prayed to God and then killed a goat for their supper. To me the goat’s cries sounded like those of a woman. I huddled beside my dog, covering my ears, rocking back and forth on my haunches. The radiance of the Shechinah, the light and compassion of the Almighty, was nowhere near this campground. Here, we were surrounded by what some called the other side, the dark realm, for on this night we had wandered onto the evil side of the world that was also born from creation, that terrible region which could be found at the left hand of God and fed on human sin.
I had planned to lie beside Amram that night after our victory, to bring his hands beneath my cloak so that I might finally let him know who I was and give myself to him, but I did no such thing. I was sick to my stomach and sick at heart. I went into the desert and brought up everything I had eaten since I’d left my mother’s house. The taste was sour, as if I had spat out a demon. I was glad my brother had not been among us. Adir, who had such a gentle spirit, yet wanted nothing more than to be among the warriors, had been spared the sight of the cowardly actions of those he so admired.
The white cliffs were invisible in the dark. Everything was hidden. I now understood it was our duty as human beings to see behind the veil to the inside of the world, to the heart of things.
I glimpsed