We went walking through the orchard, toward terraces where ancient olive trees and huge, twisted grapevines grew. In the gardens there were onions, chickpeas, cucumbers, melons, all made possible by King Herod’s amazing use of cisterns and pools which brought water to this mountain. Beyond us rose a field of emmer and barley, with sheaves tied together with rope. A plow drawn by donkeys cut what was left, the blade attached to a long piece of wood; two boys shouted at the donkeys to keep them going. As the chaff rose up, the air glowed yellow, like honey poured into a bowl.
Amram told me of the huge storerooms from the time of Herod, filled with enormous porcelain vessels of wine and oil shipped from Rome and Greece, many with the king’s stamp still upon them. Through the Water Gate and the South Water Gate, donkeys brought up wooden barrels filled from the pools in the ravines below, enough for four baths and twelve cisterns, one a well so enormous fifty people could fit inside, shoulder to shoulder. It was no trouble to fill the pools and baths, even in the dry months. A market had grown up inside the fortress walls, much like the one in Jerusalem. There were bakers and tanners and weavers in small shops that had been set into narrow stalls between Herod’s wall and the open ground of the plaza. Tents and houses made of wood had gone up against the fortification of the wall.
The warriors made their homes in what had been the Roman garrison’s living quarters, while the priests and wise men had taken up residence in the small palaces where Herod’s kin and advisers had lived long ago. There were mosaic floors of onyx black and pearl white in every room of the palaces. The public baths were decorated with brilliant mosaics as well, formed into fields of stone flowers or numerical patterns. There were red and orange frescoes on the palace walls, some still with their gold-leaf edges. Ben Ya’ir and his kinsmen lived in the smallest palace with a view of the valley. As for the Northern Palace, the most elegant and awesome structure, so fantastic it would rival any wonder of the world, weapons and supplies were kept there. Shops had been set up in small stalls, with cobblers and butchers, for no man among the rebels would ever live in a place of wealth as the king once had, setting up residence upon this mountain to prove he owned the world.
The men who had gathered at Masada were dedicated to Zion, willing to make any sacrifice, defiant in all ways, unwilling to be any man’s slave. As for Ben Ya’ir, it was said he was not afraid even of Mal’ach ha-Mavet. When the Angel of Death came for him, he intended to pluck out that fierce being’s twelve wings and lay them upon the ground, bloody and strewn with feathers, as a gift to God.
My brother and I stood gazing at Eleazar ben Ya’ir’s residence.
“It’s an honor to follow him,” my brother remarked.
“Does he live in a palace and I make my home in the field?” I teased.
My brother told me that a chamber had been readied for my father and that I was to join him there and care for him. Amram had been shocked by how fragile our father had become. “Has he been ill?” my brother asked, concerned.
“He would not rest until we found you.” I wanted to spare him from the truth. Our father’s old age had been hastened by the burden of the men he had killed, by the daughter he had turned away, by a desert so fierce it had brought him to his knees.
When Amram wanted to know more of our time wandering, I said only that we had survived. I didn’t mention the man who’d been scarred by a lion or the woman whose ghost was haunting me. Instead I told him about the wild goat who must have been an angel, whose milk had saved us from starvation. We laughed to think of a goat as an angel, and I admitted that I missed my pet, for she had become my confidante and my friend. My brother reminded me that our word for angel is also the word for messenger. That was how you knew you had been visited by such a luminous being, by the message you received. Perhaps the goat had come to teach me how to survive in a land so harsh it seemed impossible to do so.
Excerpted from The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman. Copyright © 2011 by Alice Hoffman. Reprinted with permission by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
