ERAN was waiting for us. We stopped before we climbed up toward the gate. As comrades, we agreed to do so without a word being said. We knew Rome was approaching, and we understood what this would mean. We took this one night for ourselves, in case there should be no other. We went to the cave where Yael had once told me a lion lived. There was no such lion inside. We made a fire deep inside the mouth of the cave. We knew that others had done so before us, for there were piles of ashes and soot. Perhaps whoever had been here before us had longed for freedom from the mountaintop, as we did. Perhaps they had wished for other worlds and times.
I put my arms around my warrior and drew him near to me and gave myself up to him. I hadn’t the strength for battle anymore. I wanted a world that was beautiful, and on this night, he was tender with me in a way he hadn’t been before, perhaps because he had seen me weep before my sister. He treated me not like a warrior but like a woman. I knew this was his way of telling me that the world was terrible and that I should prepare myself for what was to come. But I had decided to disregard such fears, as I had cast away my mother’s warning that love would undo me. None of that mattered now. We were both wounded, disbelievers in everything we had ever known and seen. We had killed together, and buried the fallen together, and chanted prayers meant only for men to recite. We had been together as animals were, desperate and driven by fierce need, and as lovers for whom the rest of the world falls away.
When we left the cave, morning had opened the far corners of the sky. Dust was rising as the Roman Legion approached. There was a column from the north and another from the east. When the troops joined together, the rising clouds formed not the shape of the boar, the symbol they carried on their banners, but the figure of a lion, the symbol of the ancient tribe of Judah and of the wilderness around us.
“My name is Rebekah,” I told him as we stood there together.
As he was Yoav, the Man from the Valley, the love of my life.
Autumn 72 C.E.
Part Four
Winter 73 C.E.
The Witch of Moab
We were no different from the doves above us.
We could not speak or cry, but when there was
no choice we discovered we could fly. If you
want a reason, take this: We yearned for our
portion of the sky.
My mother taught me everything a woman must know in this world and all it was necessary to carry into the World-to-Come. By the age of eight I had learned that the leaf of a date palm boiled in water was a cure for a scorpion bite, that the nectar of the spiky blue flower of the hyssop dabbed on the wrist would ward off evil, that the burned, powdery skin of a snake would keep a man from harm. I had the tooth of a black dog strung around my neck as a protection against wild beasts and took care to recite an incantation when I dug around the roots of henbane, the holy plant, for I often buried my mother’s amulets as offerings to Ashtoreth, the goddess who watched over us in times of strife.
My mother trained me in the making of fever charms and victory charms, although she refused to deal in hate spells, used to undermine rivals, something that was lacking in my book of recipes. I knew how to cast charms that would dissolve a spell and those which would cure reptile bites. Bits of silver scrolls and scarabs were sewn into the hems of my garments by my mother’s quick and tireless fingers. Her great beauty was eclipsed only by her great knowledge. Her name was Nisa, and I thought it was the most beautiful word in any language. The word itself was like the rising of the fountain, the rhythm of rain.
At twilight, when the air in Alexandria grew softly blue, she instructed me in our garden, teaching me Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek, forming the letters in the dirt with a few thrusts of the pointed edge of a stick. No one saw what we did during these lessons, for we did not dwell among the townspeople but in the house of holy women who were available for the priests. In this way we were blessed as well, for the laws that applied to other women did not apply to my mother. Prayers were not forbidden to her, nor was an education, nor was the freedom to allow men into her private chamber.
The entranceway to our house was lined with lanky hedges of jasmine and scented rose trees. In the evening the city itself seemed to turn blue, as if casting our world underwater. Long shadows spread out upon the terra-cotta bricks of our pathway, so no one could make out who entered our door and who left in the middle of the dusky, fragrant night. These shadows served me as well, for I was as solitary as I was self-reliant. The only witnesses to my instruction and my education were the inchworms and beetles. Even as a very small child, I understood that women had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity.