The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [191]
I closed my eyes as though we were alone and those who stood between us were no longer in our path. The world was a river, and I had been led here on its currents, not out of hope but because it was my destiny.
WHEN I first saw him in Jerusalem, I was standing at a well, with a pitcher of water in my hands. I’d been sent to my mother’s kinsmen, for I had no father and no beit avi, family from my father’s line. Though she had to plead to have me taken in, my mother wanted me safely removed from Alexandria, where the kedeshah were being cast from their houses. There were no longer to be holy women for the priests, for the ancient laws of Jerusalem had filtered into Egypt. My mother and the other women I had always known as aunts were now called prostitutes and whores, like the women on the streets who had their prices etched into the soles of their sandals so that the men who followed them knew how much they must pay for favors. All at once, what had been honored was reviled. The henna tattoos that had proclaimed them as women of worth now marked them as worthless, and the priests for whom they had sacrificed themselves were the first to accuse them of their sins.
Before I left, my mother had clasped her prized gold amulets at my throat, whispering only my daughters should receive them. She brought out her book of spells from the ironwood box, wrapped the leaves of parchment in linen to disguise it, then gave it to me, filling the box with herbs I might need: black cumin, bay leaves, myrrh. That was when I realized she might not survive the turn against who she was. She who was once exalted was now forced to move through the city in a dark cloak, hiding the swirl of markings that had once convinced me she was a queen, the tattoos which now caused people to scorn her, hissing, as if they were snakes and she a dove, there for the taking. I had already begun the painful and tedious ritual of becoming tattooed before I was sent away, fortunately only on my back and chest, not on my face or arms and legs, as my mother had been marked. No one could see who I was meant to be.
I was twelve on the last day that I saw her, when she stood before me, her eyes welling with tears. That was my age when I went to the well in Jerusalem. I was drawn there because of my need for water, and because I remembered what I had seen in the Nile. My kinsman came to me, searching me out, for I was not allowed to go to the market unaccompanied. I saw that his eyes were silver, the color of the fish. He took the pail of water from my grasp. When he brushed my hand, he assured me that it didn’t matter, for we were of the same blood and were cousins. Therefore, as a brother who touched a sister, it was not a sin.
I listened as he bewitched me, for even then he had a way with what God had created first, and his words poured over me like water. But I had bewitched him as well. He was a husband, a young man of eighteen, and I was only a girl. All the same, I felt the power I had experienced when the fish came toward me of its own accord. It had no choice, for it had been written that my cousin and I would find each other, and that our love would ruin me, and that I would not care.
NOW, as I stood and listened to him speak King David’s words on the day of madness, when our people were transformed into jackals by their fear, I was again entranced. Like anyone else on the mountain, I was swayed by the splendor of his voice. But the others did not know him as I did. When he recited David’s song, I felt he spoke directly to me, for I was his beloved, and had been all this time.
“Oh that I had wings like a dove; for then I would fly away, and be at rest. Lo, then I would wander far off, and remain in the wilderness. Selah. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm