The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [215]
My fate was upon me as well.
I quickly signaled to Yael and Revka. We made our way back to my chamber, pulling Revka’s younger grandson, Levi, along, lest he be taken up by the crowd, with Noah following behind. Revka herself all but fainted in the crush.
Yehuda was in my chamber, wrapped in his white garment, reciting the prayer for the souls of the dead. Adir was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is he?” I was so distraught I caught the poor Essene boy by his prayer shawl. Revka, who had come to consider Yehuda as her own, came to coax the frightened boy into speaking.
“He was worried for Aziza. He said she was in his place, and he would find her and bring her back here.”
I ran to my cabinet for my mother’s book of spells, my two hearts stirring inside me. There were screams echoing from the plaza, for the death-givers had begun their work and some of the dying could not bear to see their families slaughtered, even at the hands of our own men, angels of mercy, the messengers of our fate. My hands were shaking. Perhaps it had been written that I would be redeemed. Perhaps love would not be my undoing but my salvation.
I cast my mother’s book into Yael’s hands and insisted that she must keep it safe. I noticed that she wore the collar of the lion twisted around her arm, and then I knew I had been right to choose her, for she was as fierce as she was loyal.
Revka was huddled with her grandsons, keeping Arieh on her lap. He was little more than a baby, but he was sensitive and knew when silence was needed. When Revka held a finger to her lips, he hushed and leaned against her. She then patted Yehuda’s shoulders as he wept, guilt-ridden for having allowed Adir to leave. He was only a boy, and his mother had left him in our care so that he might be safe from harm. They all huddled together on the tiled floor fashioned for a king’s kitchen, a room that had turned fetid, burning hot, like a grave in the sand.
The child who was my heart cried. I took her from beneath my cloak and gave her into Yael’s hands as I had given her the book of spells. I went to my ironwood box, which had come with me from Egypt, the one my mother had locked with a key in the shape of a snake, a snake I’d thought came alive to inch across my palm when I was only a girl. Inside the unlocked box were ingredients I had been storing for the worst of times: snakeskin for the black viper that sleeps between the rocks, ash from the fire of a sacrificed dove, crushed lapis from the stone that is stronger than all others, strings tied in precise knots, all of these meant to weave a web of protection. I took what I needed. I was going to find my children in the plaza, then I would go to Eleazar. Panic was beating inside me, for I knew, no matter what I did, I would indeed drown on this day. That was the fate that had been cast by the bones in the tower.
Yael put her hand on my arm, attempting to stop me as I went to the door, insisting it was too late for me to go.
“What would you not have done for the one you loved?” I asked her.
“I am doing that now,” she answered, as if she were indeed my daughter. “Don’t go to him.”
She had promised me once that she would do as I asked. I reminded her of this as I gave her the last piece of fruit I had saved, a pomegranate, the same fruit I had given her at our last farewell. She knew me then as the girl who had cared for her in Jerusalem. She threw her arms around me, and we might have wept if there had been time. Instead, I drew away and told her what she must do. I hoped she would obey me as she had when she was a child. If she saw a sign from the doves, she was to ask Revka where she first saw me as I am. She was to go there without hesitation.
*
THERE WAS chaos everywhere. I did my best to make my way. Those who say you cannot see Mal’ach ha-Mavet could not be more wrong. I have seen him standing right in front of me, his twelve wings blackened by fire, his thousand eyes seeing all that