The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [57]
We remained beside the fire, the sweat from our own bodies stinging our eyes. As the fire flamed red and then blue, Shirah recited her devotion to Adonai so that the angel Raphael would thwart any attempt to do harm to the baby when at last it emerged. The mother-to-be began to have contractions. When I looked, I could see movement inside her; a storm was passing through her body. I found I was reciting Shirah’s incantation. I had learned the words and memorized them, for I, too, had come to believe this alone could keep us from harm.
Shirah had us move the woman away from the flames as soon as her liquid came in a rush. I realized that I was terrified the child might not follow, but Nahara, though she wasn’t more than thirteen, had no fear of what was to happen.
“Finally he arrives,” she said, overjoyed. She clapped her hands, then crouched down, ready. The baby came into her hands quickly, his sulky face twisted into a scowl. Nahara grinned, fearless, though blood was everywhere. I thought, She is a woman and I am not. She is already everything and I am nothing at all.
“What will happen to her now?” I asked Nahara, nodding to the new mother.
“She will return to the woman who is her mistress and say she found a baby in the cliffs.”
“And will she be believed?” I wondered.
“My mother will escort her. They’ll take her in. They’ll believe what they must so that the man of the household can have a new son.”
Shirah knelt and reached inside the woman, chanting as the afterbirth was coaxed from within. It would be buried in the orchard, where no one would discover it. What had once given this child life would bring good fortune to our crops.
The night had been a whirlwind. At last silence washed over us. We were slick and hot, too spent to cleanse ourselves. Now that the baby had been delivered and was bound in clean cloth, the mother grabbed for him and put him to her breast. I heard a sob and realized it came from my throat.
I understood the reason Shirah had wanted me here on this night. She had divined what was inside me. She came up beside me to whisper, so no one would overhear.
“Did you think you were the only lioness?” she asked now that our work was completed. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?”
MY BROTHER led a raid soon afterward. It was an honor for him to do so, a mark of his bravery and his favor in the eyes of Ben Ya’ir. Yet those who loved him wished he were not so honored. We feared his was an errand that would lead him to the World-to-Come. In the dovecote, Aziza was overwrought. Her hair was tangled down her back, a mass of black. She refused meals and spent her evenings by the wall, gazing at the emptiness of the white fields of stones God had set before us. It was still possible to see the footprints of the warriors who had ventured to the valley below, but they faded, and the dust blew them away, and soon enough it seemed that they had never taken this path.
The skies were overcast, and there were fires in the distance, for nomads roamed and troops from the legion were not far off. The smoke swelled into the clouds, turning the world somber. Amram was gone for days. Soon Aziza took to her bed, refusing to come out even when the sun finally broke through the gloom. Not even her younger sister could convince her she must go about her life. She was in the grip of the terror that held fast to every woman who waited for a warrior.
My father and I also looked out over the cliffs, searching the horizon. Despite the distance between us, we were equal in our love for Amram. Perhaps because of our shared worry, we had begun to take our evening meal together. We did not speak, other than to