“Where?”
“Two, three hours,” he said vaguely. He gave his left arm a final shake and, catching up the reins of the spare horse, vaulted onto its back. Ali bent to lift the dead weight that was Holmes, but I put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“Wait,” I said. “I’m the lightest one, by a considerable amount, and my horse easily the largest.” And the most contrary, I did not add. Ali and I waited for Mahmoud’s answer.
“How is your head?” he asked after a moment.
“It aches.” Actually, it throbbed horribly with every beat of my heart and I felt both queasy and shaky, but I did not feel there was any threat of passing out. Not without warning, at any rate. I held his gaze coolly. He gave one of his internal nods and slid back down to the ground, lifting his chin at my own horse as an order to mount it. I handed him the burden of Holmes’ possessions and mounted the horse, shifting back to the edge of the pad to leave room for Holmes. He and Ali lifted Holmes bodily up, threading one leg up and over the horse’s withers so Holmes’ back was resting against my chest. I could barely see over his shoulders, but I worried that I was hurting his back, and said so.
“He won’t feel it,” said Mahmoud.
Insh’allah, I thought.
It took fully three hours. At some point the guide left us, only to come pounding up behind again half an hour later with a parcel of Arab sandwiches, spiced meat and bits of raw onion wrapped in flat bread. We ate while riding, and afterwards I felt considerably less shaky and not in the least queasy. My head still ached, though.
After two hours of alternately picking our way over rocks and loping on the flat bits, Holmes began to come around. It was easier to hold him as he became less limp; on the other hand, the pain in his back was obviously getting through to him. We had to stop, and while Ali and Mahmoud between them held Holmes upright, I slipped off the horse and then climbed back on, awkwardly, in front of him. We rode the next few miles with him slumped forward against me, dreadfully uncomfortable for me but easier on him. However, when he began to jerk about behind me I was forced to relinquish the reins to Mahmoud and be led, riding half-doubled over and with both arms stretched behind me to keep Holmes from tumbling to the ground. At about this time our guide turned calmly into another road and, without acknowledgement from either side, rode away. A few minutes later Ali turned to check on us, then kicked his mare into a gallop and left us trotting along in a cloud of dust.
Twenty minutes later, I nearly tumbled to the ground myself when a voice spoke, strong in my ear.
“Russell?”
“Holmes! Thank God—are you all right? It won’t be much longer.” I waited. “Holmes?”
There was no answer. I tried to turn and look at him, but his head was limp against my neck; he had faded again. A few minutes later the same thing happened.
“Russell?”
“Yes, Holmes, we’re all here. You’re safe now.” I didn’t think he heard me. And again a few minutes later:
“Russell?”
“Holmes.”
We repeated this lunatic non-conversation any number of times before we finally emerged from the hills and made for a collection of raw-looking buildings set among fields, a manned guard-tower rising over all. Ali stood in a doorway beside a tiny apple doll of a woman with a kerchief over her grey hair. Mahmoud rode up to the small house and dismounted, then turned to the woman and with his right hand gave a gesture ridiculously like that of a man tipping his hat, which of course is quite impossible with a kuffiyah. The tiny woman smiled with delight, came forward, and actually kissed Mahmoud on his hairy cheek.
Before I could speculate on the hidden depths to the man, he and Ali were on either side of me, holding Holmes so I could slip out from under him. They let him fall gently forward, then slide face-down off the tall horse, but when they tried to lift him, one of them must have seized some tender part of his anatomy, because he stiffened and drew a sharp breath. His eyes flew open, and he looked straight at me with that wide-eyed, apparently alert but slightly unfocussed gaze of a drunk, or someone wakened from a heavy sleep.
“Russell.”
“Yes, Holmes. It’s all right.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said easily, and then his eyes lost all focus and he slumped into the supporting arms.
• • •
His wounds took some time to clean and dress. I did not have to take a hand in that; I felt that I had placed quite enough dressings on that back in the last two months, and the tiny woman was more than competent. She had introduced herself in Hebrew as Channah Goldsmit and apologised that she was not actually a qualified doctor, but was as close as we would come for some miles. I did not dispute her claim on the patient.
I was brought a tall glass of cold, sour lemonade, and it went down my dry and dusty throat like a taste of paradise, a sensation utterly disconnected from all others as I stood in that small bare room watching Channah Goldsmit clean and salve and plaster the raw, beaten, and burnt skin of the half-conscious man who was the centre of my life. The needs of action had been met, leaving me lost, bereft even. I felt, frankly, young and helpless and in confusion, and I did not like it one bit.
Even before this latest episode, I had been aware that I did not really understand my feelings about Holmes. I was nineteen years old and for the last four years this unconscious figure on the bed had been the pillar of sanity and security in my daily life. However, he was also my teacher, he was more than twice my age, and furthermore he had never given me the least indication that his affection for me was anything other than that of a master for a particularly promising student. Five weeks earlier I had been a maturing apprentice who was moving away into another field, but the events of the last month, both at home and here in Palestine, had shaken that comfortable relationship to its core. I had been given little leisure time in which to contemplate the consequences of my change in status from apprentice to full partner, from pupil to … what?
Channah Goldsmit finished an eternity later, tidied up the snippets of gauze and such, and turned to me, to give instructions I suppose. I do not know just what she saw in my face, but it caused her to drop the basin of supplies and push me into the chair beside Holmes’ bed. More gently, she removed the glass from my hands and herself from the room, but in a minute she was back, with a heavy woollen rug she tucked around my shoulders and a glass of the local brandy that she pushed into my hands.
I had not even realised that I was shivering.
I was aware of noise, she was speaking but I did not answer, and she went away. A short while later I was dimly aware that she had returned, standing in the doorway, with Mahmoud’s head towering above hers, and again there was the sound of speech, but eventually they went away and left me alone with Holmes.
The sound of his breathing filled the room. I could tell when he drifted into an unconscious state, when his breathing slowed and deepened. For ten minutes or so all would be well, and then with a guttural sound in the back of his throat his breath would catch, as wakeful-ness and sensation approached. For a few minutes he would draw only short, shallow breaths, until with a sigh he was again teased away into the depths.
I could not stop shivering. The only warm part of me was my right hand, which covered Holmes’ where it lay on the thin mattress. The left side of his face was against the mattress, and I watched his right nostril move, his right eye twitch from time to time, the right side of his mouth pull and relax beneath the beard and the bruises. I watched him as if willing the very life back into him.
The afternoon wore on and the evening sun slanted through the window before I heard his breathing change again. He did not move, but he was awake, fully awake. I drew my hand away, and waited.
His eyes flared open. He blinked at the sight of my knees, looked sideways without moving his head, and saw my face. His eyes closed, and his throat worked two or three times.
“Russell.” His voice was hoarse and low.
“Holmes.”
“Haven’t we done this once already?”
“What, me sitting in a chair while you lie in bed with bandages on your back? I’m afraid so.”
“It grows tedious.”
A bubble of joy began to expand in my chest, and I felt a stupid grin come onto my face. To hide it from him, I poured a glass of water and attempted to dribble some of it into his mouth, without much success. He closed his eyes for a few minutes, then asked, “What damage is there?”
“Superficial injuries only. Nothing broken.” Including, thank God, his spirit, not if he could joke.
“Whose diagnosis?”
“We’re in a kivutz. A communal village. They have a doctor. Actually, she’s a midwife, but trained.”
“In all my years, I don’t believe I have ever before required the services of a midwife, Russell.”
At that I did laugh, and at the noise Mahmoud put his head inside the door, then withdrew it.
“Mahmoud gave me something,” Holmes said suddenly.
“Opium paste.”
“Dangerous madman.”
“He apologises for the heavy dose. Still, it got you here.” There was no answer. I said quietly, “Holmes?”
“The car crashed, did it not?”
“It did.”
“The driver?”
“Dead.”
“I thought so. You?”
“Minor bangs.”
“What?”
“I’ll have a head-ache for a couple of days, that’s all.”
“Fortunate.”
“We were both lucky.”
“Yes. He was going for pain, not damage.”
It took me a moment to realise who “he” was. “Your captor,” I said. “What did he want?”
“Information. Joshua. Allenby.” His voice was slowing.
“Did you give it to him?”
He did not answer for so long, I thought him asleep. Then: “I would have done,” he said heavily. “The next session, or the following.”
“Who was he?”
“I wish to God I knew,” he said, and then he was asleep.
True visions carry signs to indicate their truthfulness. The first is that a person wakes quickly; were he to stay asleep, the vision would weigh heavily upon him. Another sign is that the vision stays, with all its details, impressed on the memory.
—THE Muqaddimah OF IBN KHALDÛN
e stayed at the kivutz for three days. That first day, a Saturday, Ali and Mahmoud took an early supper with the Goldsmit family, borrowed fresh horses, and rode back to the villa where Holmes had been held captive. They returned on Sunday afternoon, and found the two of us sitting in the sun in front of the small house, drowsing like a pair of pensioners on the seashore at Brighton while the busy life of the kivutz went on around us.
Ali snorted in disgust and led the horses away. Mahmoud dropped to his heels in front of us, facing to the side. Both Arabs looked grey with exhaustion, and I doubted they had slept last night either. Mahmoud reached for his pouch of tobacco and began to roll a cigarette, his fingers slow and awkward. He lit it with a vesta, and I could not help an involuntary glance at Holmes. His eyes seemed fixed on the burning end of the cigarette. With an obvious effort, he tore his gaze away and, with small, jerky movements of his strained arm muscles he eased his pipe out of his robe, filled it, and lit it. I took from a pocket the small pomegranate a child had handed me earlier in the day, and concentrated on the process of opening and eating it.
“Gone,” Mahmoud said succinctly.
“Who were they?”
“The villagers thought they were from Damascus, one man said no, Aleppo. Not Palestine, anyway, that was agreed. The owner of the villa is himself a Turk. He took to his heels in the September push, and it’s been empty ever since. These men came three or four weeks ago. Around Christmas.”
“Any idea where they have gone?”
“Wherever it was they took everything with them. We went through the house with great care.” Mahmoud turned his head to look at Holmes, searching that bruised and inscrutable face for doubt or criticism, and finding none. “In one fireplace many papers had been burnt, then pounded into ash. Thoroughly. The only things we found were recent copies of the Jerusalem Post. In one of them, from last Thursday, we found this.” He reached over and placed a small torn-out scrap of newsprint in Holmes’ lap. It was not an article but an advertisement for a watchmaker in the new part of Jerusalem. Next to the box there was a small tick mark from a pen.
“You take this to mean they are going to Jerusalem,” Holmes stated.
“Do we have anything else?”
Holmes tried to shift into a more comfortable position, and winced. The scrap of newspaper drifted to the ground; Mahmoud picked it up and tucked it away in his robe.
“The monastery of St George,” Holmes said. “Channah Goldsmit assures me there are no bees on the Mount of Temptation.”
I could not think for a moment what he was talking about; then it came to me that the two monasteries, to the north of Jericho and to the west, had been our next planned stops before General Allenby’s car had appeared and taken us away from our search for monastic bees. Ages ago, though only four days on the calendar.
Mahmoud looked away again. “Mikhail’s wax candle,” he said flatly.
“Precisely.”
Mahmoud ground the end of the cigarette out on the earth and rose to his feet. “Ali and I will waste no more time. We go to Jerusalem.”
“That is probably a good idea,” Holmes said. We both stared at him in astonishment. “You go to Jerusalem. Russell and I will meet you there. Shall we say either Wednesday night at dusk or Thursday at noon, just inside the Jaffa Gate?” He blinked mildly in the bright sunlight at Mahmoud towering above him, though I could see in the sudden lines along his jaw that craning his neck was painful. Mahmoud shook his head and walked off. Holmes eased his chin down, and let out a breath.
“You’re in no condition to clamber over rocks,” I said. “And I saw enough of the landscape to know that’s what will be involved.”
“I will be by Tuesday,” he said. For Holmes, that was a considerable concession to the body’s weakness.
However, Ali and Mahmoud had no intention of staying at the kivutz with us, particularly not as that would also mean a further (and no doubt pointless) delay at the Wadi Qelt monastery. I caught them before they set off for Jericho, and took Mahmoud to one side.
“I wanted to say thank you,” I told him.
“One does not thank a brother,” he said in return, with a twinkle in the corner of his eye.
“Is that a saying?”
“It is the truth.”
“Well, brother or not, I thank you.”
He gave me a sideways shrug to wave it away, but I thought he was pleased nonetheless. Then he pursed his lips for a moment, looking off at the hills.
“Amir,” he said. “Mary Russell. Do not try to protect your Holmes, these next days. It will not help him to heal. This I know.”
“Yes,” I said. “I had already decided that. Fi amaan illah, Mahmoud.” Have a safe journey.
“Insh’allah,” he replied. If it be God’s will.
Holmes spent the rest of that day and all of Monday sitting in the sun, eating, and sleeping. The nights, however, were another matter. Without either of us commenting on it, I left a small lamp burning all night. I had asked for a second bed to be brought in for me, as his arm muscles tended to go into spasms when he relaxed and I needed to be there to force them down and knead them into pliability. Again, neither of us commented on his inability to control his muscles; I just slept in the same room, listening to the sounds he made.
He did not sleep much, not at night. On Saturday night he had twitched and spasmed until in desperation I insisted on another, milder, draught of opiate. Sunday night he sat and smoked and read a book borrowed from one of the kivutz members, and sipped brandy while I drifted in and out of sleep.
On Monday night he read and smoked, and then very late I heard him take himself to bed, cursing under his breath all the while. I smiled, and slept, and in the still hours of the night I shot upright, staring at my surroundings.
“Holmes?”
The thin howl, an eerie, unearthly noise like a soul in torment, cut off instantly.
“My God, Holmes, was that you?”
He cleared his throat. “Was what me?” he asked, and I gave myself a hard mental kick. I of all people ought to know the shame of nightmares, and as I woke more fully, I was not even certain that I had actually heard it. I lay back down and pulled my bedclothes over my head.
“Jackals,” I muttered sleepily. “Sorry to wake you.” Neither of us slept much more that night.
Channah had arranged for the kivutz lorry, a Ford Model T that had been converted to carry sheep and cows, to take us to Jericho. The following morning after I had helped with the morning chores, we climbed in beside the driver and bounced away. It was not a merry ride. Holmes had refused medication, I was tense with anticipation of another crash, and the driver, whose name was Aaron, was not one of the handful of kivutz residents privy to our secret. He was also on the Orthodox side and made no attempt to hide his resentment at being forced to chauffeur a pair of Mohammedans.
The drive went without incident, aside from one punctured tyre and a delay while a large flock of Bedouin fat-tailed sheep drifted from one side of the road to the other. Two hours after we left the kivutz, Aaron stopped on a deserted patch of road just north of Jericho and we let ourselves out. Looking straight ahead, he waited for us to fasten the rope that held the door shut, then drove off. The sound of the engine faded. A crow cleared its throat from a nearby tree, a goat’s bell clattered in the distance, and it suddenly hit me how very alone we were. When I looked at my companion it grew even worse: He looked terribly ill, pale and sweating with dark smudges under his eyes, and he was slumped against a fence post, unable at the moment to stand upright. I began to feel frightened, and yearned for the abrasive presence of Ali and Mahmoud.
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