The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [62]
Every man in his command stayed. The slave remarked that he knew then Ben Ya’ir was a man who would never give in, no matter the circumstances.
In the morning, when the dark lifted, the blood that had fallen from the sky had turned into flame trees. Because of this the men were shielded from the noonday sun, a clear blessing from Adonai. Our warriors fell to their knees in gratitude.
I blushed at the mention of the tree that I had so often stood beneath and dreamed of. I said the flame tree was a favorite of mine, and he nodded and said he wasn’t surprised to hear so. On that day, however, even though he lay in irons, chained to his kinsman, a mere slave and nothing more, he knew the true meaning of what our leader claimed to be a miracle when he saw the flame trees. It was not God’s grace they had seen, the slave assured me. He knew the omens of war and was aware of what red flowers blooming on this day meant. Our people would have to walk through fire.
Because he had witnessed the massacre, God would consider him guilty as well. He, too, would have to face fire. He gazed at my hair as he spoke. That was when I insisted it was time to return to the dovecote. We walked back the way we had come. A breeze shifted through the trees. That was as good a reason as any for me to cover my head. We had spoken too freely, and nothing good could come of it. I retreated into silence, but the Man from the North had one more thing to recount. He confided that he hadn’t known what to feel when he was spared by our warriors. Should he be grateful or outraged? He’d been rescued from the Roman Legion, only to be taken in slavery. This humiliation was not what he had foreseen as the path of his life.
“What did you intend?”
“I intended to find a woman like you.” He was speaking to me as if he weren’t a slave and I was not a woman who carried another’s life within her.
“You’re confused,” I demurred. “You think because I have red hair I’m like one of the women you knew in another world.”
We had crossed the field and were approaching the largest of the dovecotes with emptied baskets in hand, the sky blue above us, the air fresh, and it seemed that we had indeed entered into the slave’s country during the season when everything was green.
“You’re taking forever,” Revka called as she peered out the door, watching us yet again, even though she was not my kinswoman and my deeds were none of her concern. “Hurry up. There’s work here. Did you ever hear of it?”
“I’m not confused, Yael,” the Man from the North told me before we went back inside, where Revka might overhear. “I know who you are.”
It took half the day for me to realize he’d said my name and even longer to admit that I hadn’t cringed at the sound.
IN A WORLD of blood one expects to see red, but when I awoke to a stream of blood flowing from within me, staining the pallet I slept upon, I was stunned. I had carried my child for more than six months, assuming he was safe. But I had been dreaming of the ghost who slept beside me. She had been whispering in my ear all night, refusing to leave me be, weeping for all she had lost in the world, unable to let go of me still. I had wanted what had belonged to her, now she desired what was mine. Perhaps her words had wounded me and this was why I bled. In my dream we had been together on the cliff where we’d left her bones. Feathers were tumbling down from the sky, and all the birds I’d killed with my bare hands had come alive.
I was in desperate need of a remedy, something that would stop the bleeding and bind the child I carried to the world we walked through, not the World-to-Come. I went to my father’s chamber in the darkness of early morning and took what few coins he had. I was not embarrassed to steal his silver. I would rather be a thief than a woman without a child.
As I hurried across the plaza in the dim light, I felt a wash of unforgiving heat, formed by the pain that blazed inside me. I asked a watchman where Shirah lived.
“What would you want with the witch?” he asked.