Perhaps my father was hoping for a son, as Adir’s father had, for Ben Ya’ir had grown reckless when it came to my mother, meeting her in the cistern nearly every night, delighted both with her and with the child that was to be. His own wife was confined, nowhere to be seen. People whispered that Channa was ill again, but I wondered if perhaps her husband had forbidden her to go among the other women. He would not tolerate her interference any longer, for he had given her most of his life. What little he might have left he now claimed for his own.
Ever since our arrival he had been practicing his own form of invisibility, not unlike the skills the old assassin had taught me. He had kept his yearning for my mother hidden right in front of other people’s eyes. Indeed, they had looked past what was so evident and seen nothing. He had the right to claim another wife when his own proved to be barren; still Channa had fought him and done her best to trick him, insisting that God had given her the child she stole from Yael.
Now, when it seemed that every day was a gift and another might not follow, as the Essenes had vowed, my father no longer bothered with subterfuge. I had spied him with my mother outside our door, in an embrace so deep it seemed they were drowning. There were evenings when he sat at our table, to join in the meager meal. At such times I remained outside the door, bringing my brother with me into the yard, though he had to lean on my shoulder merely to walk. We sat outside and ate dried fruit and flatbread from our hands. Perhaps my brother assumed I believed neither of us had the right to be in the presence of the great man. But I could not see Ben Ya’ir without my head swimming with the screams I had heard during the village raid. I felt that I had failed him in some way, and that he in turn had failed me. Perhaps it had been better to have viewed him from a distance, so that his flaws were left unseen. I had wanted him to know me in battle and acknowledge me as his own; now I felt invisibility suited me.
And yet one night, as he left our mother’s chamber, Ben Ya’ir stopped before us. I had warned my brother what to do if such an occasion should ever occur. We were both to lower our eyes in the presence of our leader.
“When you go into battle again, you may need this,” Ben Ya’ir said.
He laid a knife down before us. I spied that the hilt was set in bronze, beautifully decorated with a bower of leaves. Perac lavan was engraved upon it. White flower. He had carried this knife in honor of my mother and of the lilies she had loved as a girl in Alexandria. I did not agree with all that he did, or his ways in battle, but he was my father. The gift was for a warrior, so I elbowed my brother. Adir mumbled words of thanks, but when Ben Ya’ir left us, I was the one to take up his knife.
*
MORE AND more often, we had our meals in the yard so that my mother and Ben Ya’ir could have privacy. We were not the only ones who knew that our leader came to my mother’s chamber each night. Jealousy stalked my mother and mistrust had sifted down upon the mountain. She was a woman who had been in chains, who could call to demons and draw the kadim to her. One midnight a quartered dove was left outside our chamber, its beak and feet chopped off, the white feathers dusted black with a scrim of soot. I gave my mother Ben Ya’ir’s knife after that, so that she might rebuke any ill intentions. It was a gift from her beloved and therefore rightly belonged to her, for although I owed my mother my first life, I owed my second life to the Man from the Valley, not to Ben Ya’ir. I now felt I had been a fool to think my father had been one of the angels; my true father had been the man on the Iron Mountain, the one who had rescued us and taught me all I’d needed to know.
My mother took the knife, the token of Eleazar’s protection. I advised her to lock the door whenever I was gone, and to be more discreet, lest she be the cause of her own prophecy and be brought to ruin by love.
A GROUP of Roman exploratores stunned us all when they set up camp in the valley. It happened in our holiest month, Tishri, when we celebrate our new year and atone for our sins, the ones we are responsible for and the ones that are to come.
When the scouts arrived, we thought they would be like all the others; they would stand amazed at the position of our fortress, then move on to report we could not be conquered. But this group was different. These soldiers intended to stay. They’d brought urns of wine and oil, herds of camels, and most telling of all, bakers who had settled into their own camp. We could smell the scent of fresh bread baking in their domed ovens.
It was apparent that these soldiers were only the first of what would soon be a legion. Rome was amassing an army outside of Jericho with ten thousand soldiers, along with a thousand Jews who were enslaved and made to serve the Emperor. Our council proclaimed that women were no longer allowed to venture beyond the gates for any reason, to make certain they would not fall into the hands of our enemies. Men who journeyed away from the mountain did so at their own peril. The warriors still went out but more stealthily, taking the serpent’s path in the cover of dark or making their way down the back of the mountain, a climb so treacherous, several lost their lives upon attempting to return. Despite the danger, I lived for these nights when the owls glided above us. We made our way past our enemies as though we were mist, freed from our earthly forms.