“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.
“For heaven’s sake, Russell, stop looking like a lost schoolgirl. I’m not about to collapse at your feet.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I’ve sustained worse injuries than this. I merely need to limber up. Just… lend me your shoulder for a bit.”
I supported his steps for a hundred yards or so, but the exercise did actually seem to do him some good. His back straightened, his limp lessened, and eventually he took his hand from my shoulder and continued, slowly but unaided.
We skirted Jericho to the west of the tell, although I was sorely tempted to call on the mad archaeologist for whatever help she could inflict upon us, or even for an infusion of energy. However, the thought of the subsequent enervation held me back, and we continued through the banana and orange groves to the farm where we had abandoned our mules and our possessions. Ali and Mahmoud had agreed to leave us one of the mules and basic provisions, carrying the rest to Jerusalem before us.