Excerpt from The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He'd taken up the knife of the Sicarii and excelled at his work. He was a truly dangerous man, all sinew and muscle. I saw his big, distinctive head and cast my eyes down, not wanting to glimpse a man who was so feared. His wife was named Sia, his young sons Nehimiah and Oren. I heard the wife crying as she clutched her sons. Their family had little more than we did, but they did have a donkey, which Ben Simon's wife and sons rode upon. I walked behind them, like a woman in disgrace. In truth, I was used to being an outcast, more comfortable on my own. Jachim ben Simon looked over his shoulder once and seemed startled, as if he'd forgotten about me and now spied a wraith.

As we made our way out of Jerusalem, I was already trying to decipher who among us would die and who would live, for surely we would not all survive. Without brute strength, even our escape would be difficult. The streets were mayhem. All Jews had been expelled from the city, and any found would be instantly murdered. That was the new edict and therefore the law. Many of the priests had plunged into the sewers, hoping to escape the city undetected. But their collusion could not help them now; they were in the realm of the rats, struggling for their lives along with the rest of us.

We could hear what sounded like a roar as the Temple was torn down. It was Tisha B'Av, the ninth day of the month, the day on which I'd been born. In the years to come, people would swear that six angels descended from heaven to protect the walls of the Temple so that it would not be entirely destroyed; they vowed those angels sat there and wept and are weeping there still. The Romans used battering rams that weighed one hundred tons, and more than a thousand men were needed to swing them so that they might loosen, then pull down the huge stones upon which King Herod's mark had been etched. Ropes were hoisted by hundreds of men, some of them ours, enslaved, cursing themselves for their fate and for the wretchedness of their own deeds. Stone should last forever, but on that night I came to understand that a stone was only another form of dust. Streams of holy dust loomed in the air, and every breath included remnants of the Temple, so that we inhaled that which was meant to stand throughout eternity.

Once again the fires that had been set created a smoke screen and this helped in our escape. For that we were grateful, despite the smoldering heat. The air was thick and gray. I held my scarf to my mouth and tried not to breathe in sparks. I guessed that my father had killed someone that night and that was why his robe was spattered red. I was thinking about such matters when Ben Simon's wife, Sia, came to walk beside me. She pitied me because I followed behind in the clouds of dust that had been stirred up. She was perhaps ten years older than I, with a mass of black hair set into coils. Her eyes were dark with gold flecks. She might have been beautiful had she not been the devoted wife of an assassin, worn down by fear. Assassins should not marry, I decided then, or have daughters, or allow anyone to love them.

"Would you like to ride with my sons for a while?" Ben Simon's wife suggested.

I could see she was tired, and I was used to walking. I thanked her and said no, I was happy to follow. I hoped she would leave me alone.

"I'm so glad to have you here," she blurted. "Leaving would be so much worse without another woman beside me."

I glanced at her, wondering what she wanted of me. She smiled, taking my hand, and then I understood. She wanted a friend.

I urged her to return to her sons. She should leave me to tread last, as I was invisible to most people, even without a cloak such as the one my father wore. Perhaps I had inherited that ability, or perhaps I had learned its secrets from watching my father. Either way, the Romans who searched for us would see only a swirl of dust wherever I walked.

Excerpted from The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman. Copyright © 2011 by Alice Hoffman. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.