The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [194]
Before she sent me away, Eleazar’s mother tied an herbal amulet to my cloak and told me it was good luck. I smiled and thanked her, but I knew it was nothing of the kind. She’d gone to a practitioner of keshaphim for a charm that would bind me to solitude and keep me from her son. My mother had taught me about such things, and I recognized the root of henbane. As soon as I was sent into the street, I plucked out the thread. I left the amulet in a gutter that ran with filth, for that was where it belonged. I said the prayer of protection, Amen Amen Selah, so that He our Lord, blessed be His name, would cast away my aunt’s ill will against me.
I WAS SENT to the house of Yosef bar Elhanan, where I was to sleep in the corridor alongside the child I was to care for. She was little more than a baby, forgotten on her pallet, while her brother had his father’s favor and a nursemaid of his own. I wiped away her tears when she called for her mother, much as I myself did when I woke from sleep and was startled to find that I was no longer in Alexandria, and that there was no courtyard and no fountain, no white lilies shimmering in the dark water.
Moved by my charge’s sorrow, I whispered that she could call me immah, even though I was twelve and should have thought of myself as her sister. I knew that in this world every girl must have a protector, for my mother had told me so and I believed all that she said. Although I longed for my mother’s wisdom and advice, I had to make my own decisions now. I took it upon myself to watch over this motherless child. I made a vow to protect her as she slept in the corridor that I swept each evening to ensure that the scorpions would stay in the corners.
When the father of the household had the cook leave out only crusts for us, little more than food for the rats, even on the eve of the Sabbath, I took matters into my own hands. I found a silver blessing cup and slipped it into my cloak. Although I knew thievery would bring a curse to me, I brought the chalice into the marketplace, trading it for a new tunic and cloak for the child, along with persimmons and pomegranates and grapes, as well as bedding for our corridor and a dove I planned to roast.
My little charge cried, clinging to me when she realized I meant to kill the dove, pleading with me to set it free. Though she was quiet, she was also fierce when she needed to be.
“If I do as you wish,” I warned before I set the bird free, “then you must abide by my wishes in return.”
This had been a bargain my own mother had often made with me when I yearned for her favor. Yael gave me her promise, and I released the dove. It disappeared into the sky above Jerusalem, and in doing so it bound us together for all eternity.
We did not have meat for our meal that night, but Yael was pleased. I was equally pleased to care for her, just as I was grateful to discover she was a good sleeper. She never woke when I slipped out at night to go to the well where I had first seen my cousin, so that I might be his. He would talk to me and I would listen—that was how it began. He spoke of his anger at the ways of the priests in the Temple, where there were divisions over who represented the true Israel. He could not abide that the Ark of the Covenant, God’s word to Moses, had once been hidden behind walls of gold, when it was meant to be enclosed in a simple tent, as Adonai had initially instructed. No wonder it had disappeared from men’s sight.
The home of our people was in the word of God, Eleazar insisted, not built of stone or gold. I listened and knew that one day others would listen to him as well, and that they would follow him, and that I would be among