The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [229]
Yonah is a beautiful child, although with her pale hair and gray eyes she looks nothing like her mother. Still, she is called to the water. I could not keep her away if I tried. I have found her splashing in our courtyard fountain where we keep fish. They do not flee from her, but instead gather around her, as the doves once came to me. That is her element, one she shares with Shirah, who did everything she could to bring this girl forth into this world, even though it was not yet her time, far too early to do so with any assurance of safety. Shirah bled so badly after the birth she would not have survived even if the Angel of Death had not walked among us on that terrible night. We both knew this would come to pass as she drank the rue and stood over the smoke that would begin her labor. She gave her life so that Yonah would have hers. For those who say that the Witch of Moab never loved anyone, that she was selfish, concerned with her own fate alone, I can only say that she was ruined by love and delivered by it and that she left something glorious to the world, a child who loves to stand in the rain.
Our bare feet sink in the mud as we make our way into the waters of the Nile. The river is ink blue. There are sharp, green reeds, and the scent of balsam floats in the air. Women wash their clothes and leave them to dry on rocks along the shore. The men have pulled their boats in, lifting them upon their shoulders and carrying them up the sandy paths. We walk until there are shadows of silver fish darting close by. As the twilight sifts down, we set a candle on a lotus leaf that floats out with the current and watch as it disappears into the dark. This is the reason we are here, to give thanks to our mothers, who are watching over us in the place where we will join them one day, in the World-to-Come.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Dovekeepers is a novel set during and after the fall of Jerusalem (70 C.E.). The book covers a period of four years as the Romans waged war against the Jewish stronghold of Masada, claimed by a group of nine hundred rebels and their families. The story is taken from the historian Josephus, who has written the only account of the siege, in which he reported that two women and five children survived the massacre on the night when the Jews committed mass suicide rather than submit to the Roman Legion. It was they who told the story to the Romans, and, therefore, to the world.
I was inspired by my first visit to Masada, a spiritual experience so intense and moving I felt as though the lives that had been led there two thousand years earlier were utterly fresh and relevant. The tragic events of the past and the extraordinary sacrifices that were made in this fortress seemed to be present in the pale air. It was as if those who had lived there, and died there, had passed by only hours before.
In the Yigal Yadin Museum at Masada many of the artifacts mentioned in this novel can be found: a tartan fabric belonging to a legionnaire conscripted from Wales; the sandals and hair of a young woman whose remains were found beside a fountain, alongside the skeletons of a young warrior and a boy, with silver scales of armor surrounding them. An amulet in a museum in Wales is the one given to the escaped slave, Wynn, and the incantation bowls, amulets, and spells in the novel can be found in museums in Europe, Israel, and Egypt. The names found on ostraca at Masada—including Yoav, the Man from the Valley, and Ben Ya’ir, the leader of the rebellion—which may have been the lots drawn by the last warriors, are also on display at Masada. Several skeletons were discovered in the cave below the fortress, and although no one can know if Essenes were at Masada, their