“Ali!” I called sharply. “Ssst!”
I could not wait for him. That pale head was a scarce thirty feet from me, racing up a set of stairs that led God knew where. I heard movement from behind me as Ali hurriedly abandoned the depths, but I was already launched. Just before I hit the stairs, Mahmoud strode around the corner coming towards me, with Holmes’ khaki hat going off in the other direction—the sight of them approaching must have been what drove our quarry back. I threw my hand up to attract Mahmoud’s eye, heard him shout to Holmes, and I raced up the stairs with them on my heels.
The ornate chapels at the top of the steps were perhaps fifteen feet above the floor level of the rest of the church, overlooking the entrance vestibule where the guards sat. I thought he intended to risk the drop and the guards for the entrance and the crowds of the bazaar just beyond, but when I burst in, I found him instead with a massive silver candlestick in one hand, a knife in the other, and a cluster of furiously protesting monks standing sensibly just beyond range of the blade. He raised the candlestick and drove it, not onto a tonsured skull, but through a screen, on the other side of which could be glimpsed a richly coloured little room. That he was not using a door could only mean one thing: the chapel on the other side of the screen had its entrance on the outside world. One more blow like that and he would be through it. I took my inadequate little knife from my boot and started hauling monks out of my way. The candlestick went up again, and I shouted his name.
“Plumbury!”
He did not stop, but it startled him enough to spoil his aim. The candlestick went up for the third and no doubt decisive blow, and I had to move or I would find myself staring again at his fast-retreating back with the blue sky above him. There were too many monks in the way to risk throwing the knife, or using the gun; instead, I dived forward, shoving my way between some very solid monastic bodies, and stabbed blindly downward into whatever portion of Plumbury’s anatomy I could reach.
It was his foot, and the heavy leather of his military boot trapped my knife. I tugged once and let it go, but before I could pull away his own blade flicked down and sliced open the back of my wrist. The press of monks that had held me from him was still there, blocking my escape, and as I scrabbled and pulled desperately at their robes, I felt more than saw the knife draw up into the air and slash down again towards my unprotected back.
A single shot rang through the sanctified expanses of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Its echoes called and faded and died off into the shocked and unprecedented silence, and then the heavy candlestick clattered to the ground, followed by the knife, and finally Plumbury himself.
Had I not been so occupied with reassuring the monks that I was not bleeding to death, I would have embraced Mahmoud with all the passion in my young, rescued body, embarrassing us both forever.
EPILOGUE
The significance of the children of Israel’s sojourn in the desert is that forty years brought about the disappearance of the first generation and the growth of the next, that had not known humiliation in Egypt.
—
THE
Muqaddimah
OF IBN KHALDÛN
« ^
The slice on my wrist was bloody but not serious, and as he bound it for me, Ali seemed to find the wound cause for pride, a mark of honour rather than the sign of clumsiness and near disaster. It gave me no problems and eventually left the thinnest curve of a scar, but to make Ali happy I displayed it openly, with studied nonchalance. Mahmoud approved.
Late that evening, though, I did cover it when, in clean skin and a dress borrowed from Helen Bentwich (which felt more like a disguise than anything I had worn since leaving England), I ran the gauntlet of beggars and stares to take my place before the Western Wall, leaving the scrap of paper with my prayer on it between the stones. War wounds, I thought, did not belong in that setting.
After I had paid my visit to the Wall, we left Jerusalem, to travel northwards towards Acre and the boat that would take Holmes and me out of this country, back to the equally troubling case that awaited us in England. I had seen very little of the Jerusalem known to pilgrims and tourists. I did not wade up Hezekiah’s Tunnel nor venture into St Anne’s magnificent simplicity, did not walk the perimeter walls or tour the Citadel or poke among the finds of the archaeologists. I did not even go to gaze upon the ethereal beauty of the Dome or upon the Rock itself that I had helped save—not that time, at any rate.
I left the city without seeing these things, because they would not have fit. They belonged to a different pilgrimage, and would have constituted a different set of memories, and one set was as much as I could assimilate just then. I also felt no urgency to “see” Jerusalem: I knew that there would be a “next year in Jerusalem.”
Besides which, I could imagine nothing that would top my memory of that Sunday afternoon when we trailed back to the Jaffa Gate and piled into a horse carriage to save us the uphill walk to Government House. We arrived there at sunset, and the spurious uniform Holmes wore was the only thing that kept us from being arrested on sight. We all reeked of sweat and sewage, bat droppings and paraffin smoke and burnt flesh, and other than Holmes’ khaki shell everything about us was battered, blood spattered, and filthy beyond belief. The appalled military guard took our weapons and escorted us, very nearly at gunpoint, through the layers of army officialdom until we were brought before Allenby himself, who sat among the empty teacups in front of a blazing fire in the elegant formal drawing room, surrounded by the notables who had accompanied him on the peaceful, and peace-building, afternoon at the Dome.
Nothing, no memory of tourist beauties or pilgrim satisfaction, no royal commendation or scrap of ribbon with a medal on it, could supersede the prize I hold to this day, the image I retain of the facial expressions of the bare-headed men in gold-braided uniforms and the head-covered men in gold-trimmed Arab robes, of Governor and Mrs Storrs, the Bentwiches, the Mufti and the Kadi, several members of the American Colony, the head of the Red Cross, two rabbis, Father Demetrius, and sundry other Important Persons (including, to my incredulity, the small, shy, awe-inspiring figure of T. E. Lawrence himself, flown in secretly overnight from the Paris talks for the meeting), when they saw General Edmund Allenby, majestically clothed in his most immaculate formal dress uniform, ribbons and medals in obedient line and every thinning hair in place, leap out of his chair to clap the shoulders and pump the hands of two frightful specimens of adult Bedouin Arabs (one in garish flowered kuffiyah and stained red boots, the other scarred and scowling, both men dirty and dangerous and probably not housebroken) and their accompanying army officer (himself no prize, being badly in need of a shave, a bath, some sticking-plaster, and a lorry-load of discipline) before he waved those three unsavoury individuals over to silk-covered chairs among the fastidious dignitaries. But that was not the end of the adventure, for then (and here the expressions of astonishment and dismay turned to sheer, slack-jawed disbelief) “Bull” Allenby—last of the Paladins, conqueror of Jerusalem, hero of the Middle East, and Commander in Chief of all the Holy Land—turned to the fourth noisome intruder, grasped that young Bedouin lad’s black, bloodied, and bandaged hand gently in his own, raised it to his lips, and kissed it.
—«»—«»—«»—
About the Author
Laurie R. King has received numerous nominations and awards for her two series of mystery novels, including an Edgar nomination and both the Edgar and John Creasey Awards. O Jerusalem is the fifth in the series featuring Mary Russell, the onetime apprentice of Sherlock Holmes and now partner. King’s other series, which features San Francisco police detective Kate Martinelli, is set in the present day, as is her latest novel, A Darker Place.
King lives with her family in the hills above Monterey Bay in northern California. Her background includes such diverse interests as Old Testament theology and construction work, and she has been writing crime fiction since 1987. She is currently at work on the sixth Mary Russell novel, the fourth Kate
Martinelli, and a sequel to the recently acclaimed thriller A Darker Place. Mary Russell fans can visit the fan-run website at
http://rja.mirrordance.net/russell/index.html
—«»—«»—«»—
FB2 document info
Document ID: aa64d1f0-0820-4501-a539-444239e0a865
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 17.6.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.56, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Laurie R. King
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
O Jerusalem mr-5 Page 33