The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [213]
We gathered in my chambers, covered with soot. Yael’s boy, with his dark and beautiful eyes, was quiet; he seemed to sense the terror that had come upon us and dared not cry. We poured water over our heads from a pitcher, in the hope no sparks would light upon us. I nursed my child and thought of how Nahara and Adir’s father had not seen his children for ten days after they were born, the practice of his people. Only now did I realize this law was not merely to prevent the father from seeing the child in a bruised condition, the price of the journey of being born. Rather it was to ensure that a father waited until it was more certain that his child would live. To be attached to what is bound to die made no sense to the fierce people from Moab, for they rode with death and pitched their tents with death. They knew that flesh was not lasting in this world.
I would follow their law now and keep my daughter from her father’s eyes so that he would not have to love something he was bound to lose. As I held her inside my cloak, two hearts beat against my chest. But no creature can contain more than one heart. I knew that one of us would live and one would die. I wept to think I would not hear my child call me mother.
THE SECOND WALL had been breached. That rough edifice we had built until our hands were ravaged and bleeding, until there was no longer a single tree standing in the field, had cracked under their battering ram, the dirt spilling out, the pliant limbs of the almond trees splitting, turning to dust. Our people had done all they could to fight the tide of what was to come, the soldiers that would climb through, the bloodshed and the torture and the murder on the day of our greatest feast. Eleazar came into the plaza. We were brought there by the sound of the ram’s horn, used to call us to prayer. I made my way among our people, though I was still weakened from childbirth, the infant hidden in my cloak. I left a trail of blood on the stones, which turned black as it fell away from me, an omen I understood well.
From my place on the edge of the crowd, I could see women whose children I had helped bring into the world. I saw my daughter with her bow, mud streaking her arms and legs, and my son, ruined by battle before he was a man, and my people in the throes of sorrow, and the man I had loved since I had first seen that he would come to me.
“We resolved not to follow the Romans and to follow God alone. Now the time has come for us to prove our faith. We cannot disgrace ourselves in the eyes of our Lord, or submit to slavery. If we fall into Roman hands, it is the end of everything, not only our lives but the life of Zion. We had the privilege to be the last stronghold, and as God has favored us so, let us return the favor and die nobly as free men.”
People began to panic at Ben Ya’ir’s words. It seemed that some might attempt to flee. But there was also a surge forward of the most loyal, those who had burned for freedom and could not turn back now.
“By daybreak, our enemy will be upon us, and we can hold them back no longer, but we are free to choose to die with honor, in the arms of those we love. We cannot defeat the Romans in battle here on this earth, but we can deny them a victory.”
Women wept on either side of me. I pitied Eleazar that he must speak these words.
“We have done everything to claim our freedom, and we cannot stop now. We do not know why God let His city burn to the ground, why He has let our people be chased into extinction, why we must die today. Our freedom is our winding sheet, and it is more glorious than any other. We will leave nothing