The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [27]
WE WENT FORWARD early the next day. Perhaps an angel led us on our journey. We found our way south, the direction of the springs. It was here the Essenes from Sechacha had come to haul water back to their settlement. We turned onto a path edged by brambles. The goat, now famished, chewed leaves that were prickly and brown. But as we ventured farther, there were green shoots among the rocks. The breeze rose up, carrying the fragrance of balsam and the soft, nearly undetectable scent of water. All at once I recognized the sound of bees. It had been so long since I had heard their honeyed song I nearly swooned. We had come to an oasis where a spring arose from the ground and huge date palms towered. The air was a cool balm, so sweet it seemed we had stepped inside a cloud filled with perfume, rich with the scents of myrrh and coriander. We had found a group of the Yahad people who had survived, settling here to wait for the End of Days.
In the clearing their grapevines and gardens were brilliant against the white-hot sky. The beauty of the world burst forth in every growing thing. There was a field of wheat and flax, yellow and gold, ablaze with sun. We heard bells that were hanging from the trees on twists of black rope, ringing as they moved with the breeze. There were dozens of mulberry and olive trees circling a stone well, alongside a grove of pistachios that turned the haze green. A pen of forty goats was set up in the shade, another forty sheep dozed in the sun.
Many among the Essenes had been priests, some lived without women in the limestone cliffs, their caves marked by mezuzoth, containers holding scrolls in which prayers to God were enclosed. These men were too pure for the entanglements of life in this world, but there were also men who had arrived with wives and daughters, their women dressed in white linen, heads covered at all times. They resided in large tents with their families, some of them having fled from Sechacha, others having arrived only recently from Jerusalem after the fall of the Temple.
People peered at us as we walked through the settlement. There were stone common houses, and ritual baths, and libraries where scholars set to completing documents, dividing themselves into groups of three, so that the men could work on scrolls written upon animal skins or papyrus throughout the day and the night. Perhaps my father and I looked like demons, made of sand rather than flesh. Our eyes peered out of our filthy faces. My hair was like blood twisted down my back, so long it reached past my waist. Some of the women blinked when they saw me, but no one jeered. The people of the Yahad sect practiced kindness in what they believed to be our last days in this world. What belonged to one man also belonged to his neighbor.
The women came to greet us. The fabric they wove on their looms was so light their garments flowed around them. I yearned for sheets of linen to wrap around myself so no one would see me. Perhaps then I would be able to withstand the intensity of God’s bright light when He could not forgive me for all I’d done.
Although these holy people had lost many of their own at the hands of the Romans, for they revealed that the settlement of Sechacha had been conquered and ruined even before the Temple fell, the Essenes weren’t willing to carry daggers, which they considered an affront to the greatness of God. Quickly my father made the decision not to tell them he was one of the Sicarii. These people considered the Sicarii to be on the side of darkness, snakes who defied Adonai. We merely announced that we were among those who had been expelled from Jerusalem, a poor father and