The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [182]
At twilight, when the air in Alexandria grew softly blue, she instructed me in our garden, teaching me Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek, forming the letters in the dirt with a few thrusts of the pointed edge of a stick. No one saw what we did during these lessons, for we did not dwell among the townspeople but in the house of holy women who were available for the priests. In this way we were blessed as well, for the laws that applied to other women did not apply to my mother. Prayers were not forbidden to her, nor was an education, nor was the freedom to allow men into her private chamber.
The entranceway to our house was lined with lanky hedges of jasmine and scented rose trees. In the evening the city itself seemed to turn blue, as if casting our world underwater. Long shadows spread out upon the terra-cotta bricks of our pathway, so no one could make out who entered our door and who left in the middle of the dusky, fragrant night. These shadows served me as well, for I was as solitary as I was self-reliant. The only witnesses to my instruction and my education were the inchworms and beetles. Even as a very small child, I understood that women had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity.
In the garden, where I learned my letters, there grew a variety of rare white water lily that gave off a perfumed scent at night. These blooms have been my favorites ever since that time. A single one is worth a barrel of balsam or myrrh. The wild red lilies of Moab, glorious as they may be, are weeds when compared to these blossoms, their scent mere air when considered alongside the lilies of Alexandria. My mother rubbed their perfume on her wrists, and because of this no man could deny her.
While other women were contained within the walled courtyards of their houses, venturing no farther than the marketplace—and then only accompanied by servants or kinswomen—my mother was allowed to do as she pleased. Every spring she made the journey to visit her family in Jerusalem during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It was there in that city that my fate awaited me.
IT IS SAID THAT, after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, two angels offered to enter our world to teach humans the knowledge God would allow us. These angels have eaten meals with humans, fallen in love with them, had sexual relations with them, watched their children be born. Because of this, they can never return to the spirit world. They continue to walk the earth to this day, teaching the wisdom of sorcery to those who yearn to know it. My mother came from a line of women who were willing to listen when the angels began to speak. She kept her most private possessions in a box of carved ironwood, the key to which she wore around her neck on a strand of braided horsehair. The key had been formed into the shape of a snake. When I was a child, it seemed a living thing. Whenever my mother allowed me to hold it in my hand, I could feel it coldly inch across my palm.
Inside the locked box was a notebook of parchment upon which my mother had written the many secrets she had accumulated over the years. It was a recipe book for the human heart, for our people believe that all we know and all we have experienced is contained there.
*
THERE WERE SPELLS on every page of my mother’s diary: For Night Blindness. To Catch a Thief. For Headache. For Fever. For Loyalty. For Love. While other girls were playing with string or with carved wooden animals, I was learning