“If all this is true, then why are you a slave?”
It was an insult to make such a remark to a man who had once been a warrior and then a soldier for the legion and was now the lowly slave of women. He might have taken offense, but he merely shrugged.
“Why are you?” he said simply.
I laughed. “I’m not.”
The Man from the North’s expression made it clear he disagreed.
“I’m not,” I insisted.
He gazed at me sadly. “You will be. I saw it in my own land.”
The Romans had captured his country, then had offered a way out of starvation for those who’d been conquered. The Man from the North had stood with his brothers and chosen to live. He was taken across the Cold Sea and brought to Rome before being sent out with the legion for Judea. While in Rome, he had seen miraculous things, baths where there was hot and cold running water, houses in which women and boys could be had for a small price, shops that sold monstrous creatures—elephants and eels and huge fish with lances attached to their heads. He had been to the Colosseum with the throngs who pushed and shoved through the cobbled gateways, watching gladiators battle. He could not believe all he’d witnessed; those vivid visions seemed like dreams to him still.
I asked if it was true that the Romans set men to fight against beasts. A man was no different from an animal in the Romans’ eyes, the slave told me, perhaps better sport because a man often called for his mother or his beloved in his last moments in the world, whereas an animal knew when to surrender.
I thought of Ben Simon and the mark on his face, and of the creature who had found him too bitter to eat. I asked the slave if he had seen men battle lions. He nodded, saying that gladiators feared lions more than any other creatures, even more so than the crocodiles who swam in huge tanks rolled into the center of the arena on logs, pulled by heavy ropes and chains by over a hundred men. Those water beasts could take a man in their mouths, dragging a victim into the deep to drown him, but it was possible to fight off a crocodile, to ram a knife into its eye and force a retreat. Some gladiators survived. But once a lion attacked, it would not back away. It would fight to the end, until there was a surrender and nothing was left but bones.
“Why do you ask about these beasts?” he wondered after I’d questioned him so thoroughly.
I shrugged, feigning no particular interest. “I dream about them sometimes.”
“Keep them in your dreams,” the Man from the North advised me, but I could tell from his gaze. He knew there was something more.
I TOOK TO listening to all of the slave’s stories. Some were so farfetched I barely believed him. He spoke about a creature called a stag, huge compared to the ibex that could be found in Judea. He could track one through the snow easily enough, even in a storm, for these deer rubbed their horns against trees and left their marks in this manner. In his world, the foxes turned white as snow was falling, then, when winter faded, changed back to red before your eyes. He vowed that the color of my hair was shared by all the most beautiful women in his land and, he added slyly, in mine. I laughed at some of what he told me, disbelieving that rivers could run silver, that the monsters in the ocean were so filled with water they spat into the air, that there were packs of wolves a hundred strong, calling to each other in the night with pure, cold voices.
Revka often watched us in the fields. Sometimes when we walked back to the dovecote with our empty baskets, she would shake her head, scowling. Despite her ill will, I wasn’t about to stop listening to the Man from the North. When he spoke, I didn’t think about the desert, or the past that beckoned to me, or the sins I had committed, only the land I would never know, the drifts of snow, the bands of men with black tattoos who lashed flat branches to their feet so they might walk through the snow as bears do, with ease.
The slave trusted me enough to recount the details of his capture, though he was taut with rage as he recalled that event. When the Roman garrison was sacked by our warriors, he and his kinsman had fallen to their knees, vowing that they had no allegiance to the Emperor and would never lift a hand against us. He couldn’t raise his eyes when he spoke of this humiliation. Our people had allowed them to live because they made an oath against Rome and because they had been stolen from their homeland. Everyone else was slain, though some of the soldiers were little more than boys who pleaded for their lives and cowered at the sight of a knife.
That night the blood of the Romans who had been killed welled up into the clouds and turned into a rain. The blood rain followed our warriors into their tents, streaming down in rivers. Our men panicked and were about to run away, but Ben Ya’ir instructed them not to flee. He could do that to his warriors, the slave had seen it firsthand, make them yield beneath his gaze. He boldly informed them that a rain of blood was not a curse but a promise. It was the future they had to face, as all men must face death eventually. They could do so as cowards or as men of God, that was their choice.
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.
“We work in the dovecotes,” I told him. He looked at me carefully, perhaps to judge if I was guilty of something and was now merely trying to determine the nature of my crime. Perhaps he had picked up the scent of my blood and knew I was unclean. “The doves are ailing and I’m not wise enough to know what the ailment might be,” I insisted.
Though he seemed suspicious, he pointed me toward one of the palaces. I thought, of course, Shirah was one of Ben Ya’ir’s kinswomen and therefore was meant for a palace even if some accused her of sorcery. There were those who whispered that life was not so different here than it had been in Jerusalem: those who ruled managed to live well, while those who followed hungered. But I discovered that Shirah resided in an outbuilding that had been a kitchen, used by servants in the time of the king. When I rapped on the door, it opened. We had no locks. The mountain was our lock, the serpent’s path our key.
There was no one inside, but I went in and peered about. The floor of her chamber was patterned with mosaics that spread out like a fan. There was a wooden altar beside shelves set into the stone wall. These shelves were piled high with bowls and pitchers; there were jars of honey and wine, along with vials of herbs. The floor echoed as I went to open the door so that I might peer inside the small sleeping chamber. Aziza and Nahara were entwined on the same pallet. Their brother, Adir, a dark boy of no more than eleven, slept by the rear door. There was no sign of Shirah, only a square of straw covered by a woven blanket that had not been slept upon.
I turned to find her entering her house, light on her feet, as though she were a thief herself. She was breathless; perhaps she’d been running. Her head was covered by a shawl stamped with a pattern of gold leaves, and there were half a dozen chiming bracelets on her arms. She stopped when she saw me, then quickly regained her composure.
She had been out walking, she told me, slipping off her bracelets. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Perhaps we’re the same in that.”
“Perhaps,” I agreed.
I didn’t ask what dark matter she’d been attending to. I had begun to lose my strength, and before I could say more, I slumped against the wall. When Shirah saw that I was staining, she chastised me for not speaking of the problem immediately. She had me sit at a table that was only a rough-hewn piece of wood set upon a trestle. She felt my belly and knew by mere touch when this child had begun and when he would enter the world. I showed her the coins I’d brought along and begged for a potion, but she waved the coins away. She told me a cure wasn’t so easily found. Although she wanted no payment, she would try to help. She boiled the leaves of the madder root, a plant that is said to turn the bones of any animals who graze upon it red. She added berries of the bramble bush and gave me a tea that was scarlet and steaming. I drank it though it burned my lips. This mixture wasn’t the cure, Shirah told me, but we could hope it would end the cramping.
“Is there anyone who wants your child to be unborn?” she asked. “Anyone who wishes you harm?”
I felt as though an arrow had pierced me. There was only one such person. As I had taken from Sia, she would take from me.
“A ghost,” I said in a low tone.
“Is she here with you now?”
I looked up to see that my ghost had indeed followed and was standing at the door, watching me reproachfully.
I nodded.
“Well, she comes for a reason.” Shirah studied me. Kohl ringed her eyes.
For a moment I felt I was drowning. “I took something that didn’t belong to me,” I admitted.
“I see.” She continued to study me, reading my every expression. “Do you regret this?”
A simple enough question. But I couldn’t give the answer she wanted. When I shook my head, Shirah sighed.
“If that’s how you feel, then you’ll have to accept that the one you stole from will take your child.”
If Sia had lived, the baby I carried would have belonged to her if Ben Simon had claimed it as his own and married me. She would forever be his first wife and could have arranged to take over my life. Perhaps that was her intention now.
I leapt up, beside myself with worry. The knife I carried as a love token clattered to the floor. Shirah reached for it. I could feel heat rise into my face as she ran her finger over the blade. It was still sharp enough to bring forth a bead of her blood.
“Sit down,” Shirah crooned. She cautioned me that if I was agitated I would only quicken the blood between my legs. “Don’t help your rival with her revenge.”
I did as I was told.
“When you’re with a man who has a wife, you marry her as well. Surely you knew that at the time?”
I tilted my chin and gazed directly into Shirah’s eyes. “I would not undo what I had with him.”
“But that’s exactly what is happening,” she cautioned. “If you want the child, you must rid yourself of the ghost, and to do that you must possess regret. A ghost doesn’t just go away. She’s sewn herself to you. You’re sharing the same skin, so she thinks this child belongs to her even though she’s in the World-to-Come. There’s only one way to be rid of her.”
I listened closely, not knowing which I felt more, terror or gratitude.
“Do what I say and don’t take it upon yourself to change anything. Cut a lock of your hair. Tie it in a knot. Go to the place where the new willows stand below this fortress and burn your hair on willow wood.”
She returned to the vials of herbs and plucked three leaves from a jar, wrapping them in a piece of white linen, then handing me the folded scrap.
“Eat these when darkness falls. What you swallow is the taste of what you’ve done. Be prepared for that. Only you know how bitter it will be. But don’t bother with any of it if you have no regret. If that’s the case, pour your rival a cup of tea every morning, because there she’ll be, with your child in her arms.”
My eyes were burning. If I wasn’t careful, I would weep Sia’s tears once more. I said nothing.
Shirah leaned forward, lowering her voice. Her head scarf slipped down. Her hair was plaited in a sleek braid, then looped up gracefully, in the Egyptian fashion. “If you are ready for forgiveness, you will have to take up the angel Raphael’s name three times. Then three times say I should not have harmed you. At the very last, say it backward three times to make sure what you’ve done disappears.”
Shirah took up the assassin’s knife. Before I could react, she reached to slash a long shock of my hair. It fell between us like a snake. I thought I heard it hiss as the merciless black vipers do.
“You have to give yourself over to her if you want to be free of her. Just know that what’s done can be undone, but what’s undone can never again be.”
I SET OFF the next day. I asked the watchman at the gate if I could walk along the path of the serpent. There were some small willows which grew nearby, new, pliant trees whose branches I wished to use to fashion a basket. The watchman was young, and he failed to question me further, waving me on, even though women were not allowed to go beyond the gate. I went forward straightaway, down the plummeting path, before he thought better of it and called me back.
; The air felt especially dry on this day. Little sparks sprang up from the chalky earth as I ventured forth. Winter had disappeared. Soon the land would burn and I would burn with it. I walked quickly on the downward pitch, the desert before me. Everything looked white in the haze. There was no difference between the earth and the sky. I spied the stand of willows Shirah had spoken of and veered from the path onto a ridge, then down into a hollow, where there was a canopy of shade and a pool of still, fetid water. I sat there sheltered by the trees and tried to catch my breath. My cramps had been stanched, but there was still the trickle of blood. A flutter of despair beat inside my chest.
I’d brought Ben Simon’s knife with me, that odd killing token of his love. I thought that of all the people he had murdered, he’d done his best work with me. There was a part of me that was forever gone. I could hardly resist the lure of the cliffs and the desire to end my struggle. I did my best not to think of such cowardly actions. It was against the law to harm oneself, a sin so great there was no forgiveness and only a field of fire in the World-to-Come.
I set my thoughts on the pattern of the leaves of the willow as I looked for fallen branches, and on the smoothness of the bark as I inhaled its scent, so fresh and green. I gathered the kindling in the white scarf the Essenes had given me. I brushed away stray leaves. When I did, they looked like rain falling, or the tears on Ben Simon’s face when he saw the two sister-brides in the desert.
I brought the firewood to a cave where I wouldn’t be seen, slipping inside a crevice that split the rocks. Women were warned away from such places. There were wild beasts in among the rocks, and robbers, perhaps demons as well. The sky was glowing with fading light, and the cliffs were streaked pink and gold. I waited for nightfall. I breathed the way a leopard might, panting, still feeling heat between my legs where I bled. I felt alone, drawn deep inside my own silence.