The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [195]
When Eleazar’s wife went to visit her family in the north, near the shore of Galilee, my cousin brought me before a learned man so that we might wed secretly. Then he took me to his chamber where we were wed in deeds as well as words. I burned when I was beside him. I forgot Alexandria and the garden where I had studied with my mother. I never revealed I was learned in many languages, for it was only his voice I wished to hear, not my own. Another man might have questioned the tattoos set upon me and turned from me when he saw them. I told him the marks were the map that had led me to him, and that was enough for him.
He took me as I was.
AS A SERVANT in the house of my master, I was expected to know nothing. My lessons might have never happened, my knowledge turned to ashes. All that was required was that I sweep the floor and care for the child. That was not a problem for me. I was tender with Yael. I learned to be a mother from mothering her. Perhaps I’d sensed that I was with child myself, and that added to my tenderness. Eleazar promised he would tell his family of his love for me, but he could not bring himself to do so. He said his father was a tyrant, but I knew it was his mother he feared. In the night my heart beat too quickly and my blood did not come with the moon. I was hot and flushed, suffering from constant thirst, as I was to be every time I was with child, for each life that grew within me was a fire I had no recourse but to carry and let burn.
When I became so big I could no longer hide my size, Bar Elhanan sent me from his house. The dear girl who had been my daughter clutched my cloak and wept. I assured her that her brother would watch over her, warning him that he must always do so. Yael rushed after me, bringing me water. It was all she had to offer, but to me, in my loneliness, it seemed a great gift. I wept to leave her behind. I told her that if God was willing we would see each other in this world once more before we walked into the World-to-Come.
THE LAST TIME I met with Eleazar in Jerusalem rain was falling. Such a thing was a joy, unexpected and needed. The dust settled, the boughs of the trees lifted their arms to the sky. I became alive again, the girl in the fountain, the swimmer in the river, the one without fear of drowning. I stood in the street outside my aunt’s house until I was drenched. At last I saw him, shifting through the yard, liquid in his movements, becoming a part of the torrent that fell upon us, flooding the streets, forcing people to remain inside their homes.
He alone could quench my thirst.
I had called him to me as I had learned to call the rain. There was not a whisper and yet he had heard. I believed that he would divorce his wife and bring me into his home, convinced that, unlike other women who went to the practitioners of keshaphim, desperate, willing to pay any price for a charm, I would never have need of love spells.
But Eleazar had come to tell me that his wife insisted she had proof that I had been in his bed. She vowed that the pallet they slept upon had been tinted red from the henna on my skin. My aunt, who despised me, had told her of my tattoos, to forewarn her, and therefore she had looked beneath the blanket she had woven for her husband, and found my mark. My beloved had promised me that I was as much his wife as she was, but now I saw the truth in his expression, his longing for me entwined with sorrow. If the color red had been found in the place where we had lain together, then it had foreseen my fate and was indeed my blood, for my heart had begun to weep.
I was overcome with a kind of dread I hadn’t felt before, not even when I left my mother. I remembered what she had vowed on the day I saw my future. There was a part of me that wished I had remained by her side, though I knew our house had