There was an exclamation from the doorway, and the child Sarah scrambled to her feet and flew across the room. I could not summon the reserves to raise my head, so my first sight of Rahel was her bare feet.
“My daughter, I thought I told you to come and fetch me when our guest awoke.” Her Hebrew was sweet on my ears; for a brief moment she sounded like my mother.
“Sorry, Mama. I was just going to come.”
The woman had a lovely voice, and her hand on the side of my neck was cool. She did not seem to be feeling for a pulse or estimating fever, but rather was conveying sympathy and comfort, and I could have slumped on that pallet with her hand on my neck and her words in my ears for the rest of my life. Instead I asked her a question.
“There was another man in the car. Two other men. What… happened to them?”
“One is dead and one missing.”
“Which?” I had to force the question out, past my closed throat and the pounding in my head.
“The driver was killed. That is his blood you have on your—” She made a startled noise and caught my shoulders, said something rapid and urgent to the child, and held me firmly as her daughter scurried out of the room and came back a minute later carrying a bottle and a glass.
The brandy steadied my head and brought my stomach back to earth, and after a while, moving with great caution, I sat straight up. The oil lamp on the tea-chest stopped whirling. My head continued to throb, but I thought perhaps it would not actually come off my shoulders.
“Where have Mahmoud and Ali gone?”
“They went to look for your friend. He was taken away by the men who attacked your car.”
“When?”
“You were set upon at about noon. It is now ten o’clock at night. They left you here perhaps seven hours ago. How are you feeling?”
“I will live.”
“Nausea? Dizziness?” she asked in English.
“Not too bad.” It seemed more natural to remain in Hebrew—the switching back and forth made me feel dizzy.
She reached behind her and took up the lamp. “Look at me,” she ordered, and held the flame up between us, moving it slowly back and forth while she stared into my eyes. She was not satisfied with whatever she saw there, or didn’t see, and paused with the lamp in her hand.
“You look bad,” she said frankly.
I couldn’t assemble enough coherent thoughts to come up with a lie, so I simply gave her the truth. “I am beset by memory. I was in a motorcar accident some years ago, and this one has brought back… unpleasant things. It’s not a concussion,” I added, using the English noun. “I’ve had one before, and this is not as bad.” My hand went up to explore the outside of my skull.
“Good.” She put the lamp back on the tea-chest. “Could you eat?”
“I don’t know. Tea would be a blessing.”
“I will send Sarah up with some, and bring your supper in a short time. My name is Rahel. I ought to warn you, do not make any noise if you can avoid it. Mahmoud thought you were best hidden away.”
My two hostesses left me. Further explorations revealed one large and tender lump behind my right ear, an abraded shoulder, a scraped elbow, and many amorphous aches. Whatever had hit us, I seemed to have been fortunate. Even my spectacles, which I picked up from the table, were relatively undamaged, aside from two parallel scratches on the side of the right lens and a certain wobbly feeling as I put them on.
I was considering the risks of being on my feet when Sarah came back and saved me from immediate action. The tea she poured with great concentration from the brass beaker was mint, and sweet, and although it was not what I had in mind, it continued the work the brandy had begun. By the time Rahel returned with a tray, I was positively ravenous.
A light soup, a piece of bread, a small glass of harsh red wine, and I felt considerably more real. The next goal was to be upright, and with Rahel’s assistance I achieved that, keeping a wary eye on the low rafters.
“Where am I?” I asked her as I hobbled up and down experimentally, her hand on my elbow.
“Ram Allah. About ten miles from Jerusalem, just off the Nablus road. You are in the attic of the inn. I am the innkeeper.”
“It is very generous of you to take me in,” I ventured. It was difficult to know precisely what arrangement Mahmoud had with this woman, and surely not wise to make assumptions.
“Mahmoud has helped me; I help him. He saved my life and the life of my daughter in the war. You have heard of the Nili?”
The name popped an immediate reaction into the front of my mind, loosed from some dim corner. “Netzach Israel lo Ishakar,” I said promptly. “ ‘God will not forsake Israel.’ The spy operation run by… the Aaronsons?”
“Yes. My husband and I had an inn in Nazareth until the spring of last year. Men talk in inns, and we sent a great deal of information to your government, until we were betrayed to the Turks. I was a dear friend of Aaronson’s sister, who… died after being tortured by the Turks. A week later, they killed my husband. Mahmoud rescued Sarah and me, and brought us here. He can ask a great deal more from me than hiding a friend in the attic.”
I moved free from her support and walked slowly down the length of the room. “I cannot stay here.”
“Where would you go?”
That was indeed a poser. Still, I could not simply sit. With every degree of returning energy came two notches of anxiety for Holmes. Who had taken him, and why? I found I was standing in front of Rahel.
“Did they tell you nothing?”
She put out her hand and took my shoulder. “Those two have more soldiers in the field than the British Army. They will find your friend, and they will come back for you.”
She was right, of course. It would be senseless, and no help to Holmes or myself, to go out into the night, in an unknown city, and lose myself as well. But it was very hard.
And I had no wish to stay in the confines of the attic.
“Do you have guests in the inn?”
“The last customers are just leaving.”
“Servants you don’t trust? Any reason to think there is someone out there looking specifically for me?”
“No,” she admitted.
She helped me dress and secure my turban over the lump on my skull. Leaning heavily on her arm, I lurched my decrepit way down two flights of narrow stairs, used the privy, and was given soap, water, and a stiff brush to scrub my hands. Sarah was sent to bed, I was settled on a bench in front of the fire with a rug wrapped around me, and Rahel, after throwing wood onto the coals, went off somewhere. I decided that she was hoping if she left me alone, warm and quiet, I might go back to sleep.
I did not wish to sleep; I was, in fact, leery of sleeping. My bruised brain could not yet piece together what had happened on the drive down from Haifa, but there was a car, and an accident, and a death, and every time I closed my eyes the images that seared across them were those of the automobile accident that had taken my family four years before: vivid, terrifying memories, of my brother’s face and my mother’s scream and nothing at all of my beloved father who was driving, over a cliff and gone in flames, the guilt-saturated stuff of the nightmares that haunted me still. I had never spoken of the accident to Holmes, had told no-one of the death of my family aside from one long-ago psychotherapist. I could not think why I had allowed it to slip out in front of Rahel, but no, I did not wish to risk sleep.