The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [89]
MY ONLY CONCERN was for my grandchildren. They were my world, my present and my future. I vowed to pay attention to our daily life, nothing more. Once we came to this fortress, we moved into our small chamber, built in to the king’s wall, a mere curtain dividing our residence from that of another family. At night we could hear our neighbors, the children laughing, the parents arguing or making love. In our room, there was only silence. That was the way our life was now. We no longer needed language; there weren’t words for what we had witnessed. The boys watched me with their dark, night-flecked eyes. I insisted we were safe and made every attempt to show them this was so. I put a thread across the threshold so no one could pass without my knowledge. I slept with a knife beneath my pallet. I turned each day into a ritual of sameness hoping the children would be comforted by the small tasks and duties of everyday life. In their presence I was calm and patient, the practical grandmother they could depend upon at all times and in all things, but my smile went slack whenever I was alone. Each morning I went to the dovecotes. Each evening I returned to cook dinner. But each night I wept.
*
MONTHS PASSED this way. We became accustomed to the dry air of the mountain and the scent of salt carried from the sea below. We began to know other people in the settlement, all of whom had come to this fortress when there was nowhere else for them in Zion. We were all in God’s hands, and in that way we were brothers and sisters, no matter where we had come from. There were warriors and assassins, rebels who had committed crimes and those who insisted crimes were committed upon them. There were learned men and tanners, potters and goatherds, simple men and those who could read Aramaic and Hebrew, as well as Latin and Greek. There were those who had been cast out of Jerusalem and those who’d run from the burning of Jericho, as well as refugees from small villages like my own.
Many of the women wanted to befriend me and asked me to join in the group that met at the looms in the evenings to discuss the day’s events. They meant well, but I kept my distance. I could not tolerate their chirping good humor any more than I could abide their faith. Though I pretended otherwise, the past had not melted away. It was all I had, and I clung to it and savored it, for my daughter was in that land of grief. My sorrow filled me, leaving little room for anything else. I was squinting out at the world from behind the barricade I’d placed between myself and all others just as surely as there was a curtain draping down to separate our chamber from our neighbors’ home. I understood that fate could not be eluded forever; it came on leathery wings, swooping through the darkness like the bats in the orchards.
We heard rumors of Roman scouts who had set up a camp not far from our fortress. Our warriors went to confront them, but there were too many of the enemy, and in the end our men had to slink away and wait for the Romans to break camp. Our enemies left little behind but the bones of pigs and piles of their own waste. But they also had left behind a tower of rocks. Those rocks were terrifying, for they marked the place as one to which they intended to return.
Still I was determined that, for the sake of my grandsons, our lives should continue without event for as long as possible. I was resolved that we should keep to ourselves. No friends, no enemies, only the three of us. I did my best to prevent any disruptions. Then one night there was a knock at our door. I felt a lump in my throat. I had known all along that at any