O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [111]
“And my mother’s father’s second wife,” called one of the women…
The topic of archaeological discoveries was thrashed over until our sergeant reappeared and ordered us back to work, but I was well satisfied with the results of my own labours: someone, at night, was depositing quantities of soil from deep underground onto the surface to be hauled away. Someone, perhaps, who had borrowed two baskets from the wall of a tomb/house in Silwan that he had happened to pass. Who before that had borrowed two habits, a rope, and a handful of candles, because he thought he might need them, and he was passing. Someone who— The consideration of the someone distracted my mind satisfactorily for quite some time. I queued up with the others to have my baskets filled, and followed them to dump the rubble, but was quite unaware of any of it until I felt a hand on my sleeve.
I looked down into the face of the young cook’s helper from the inn, for whom I was beginning to feel a deep affection.
“You are required back at the inn,” the boy said.
“Who requires me?”
“Your friend.”
“I have a number of friends. ”
“Your long friend in the blue kuffiyah,” he said, and then for some reason he covered his mouth with his hand and let out a giggle.
“I will come.” I laid down my basket and went down the narrow street on his heels, picking my way over the rough surface and avoiding the holes (one of the privates had graduated to a pickaxe). On the Street of the Cotton Merchants the sergeant stopped me.
“Oi, where do you think you’re going?”
“Effendi, my presence is required elsewhere,” I said smoothly in English.
“You don’t say.”
“I fear that I do say.”
“There’s no pay for half days. All or nothing, that’s His Majesty’s way.” I doubted it very much, but was not inclined to argue over a pittance. I began to say something to that effect when my youthful companion nudged me to one side and began sweetly to cajole the dour sergeant. I left him to it, and threaded my way briskly through the bazaar towards the Jaffa Gate. I thought I heard the sergeant’s voice raised in shouts, but then I turned a corner and left them behind.
Only as I was passing through the vegetable market on David Street, restoring my spectacles to my nose, did it occur to me that a British soldier might find it suspicious that a native worker would leave without the better part of a day’s pay. I hesitated, and nearly turned back, but Holmes was waiting, and the cook’s boy had seemed to me quite resourceful enough to get himself out of that sticky situation. I trotted on up the steps of David Street to the inn.
* * *
TWENTY-TWO
ك
With the decrease of civilisation, the land’s riches fade. In countries where springs existed in the days of civilisation, when the countries fell into ruin, the water of the springs disappeared into the ground as if they had never existed.
—THE Muqaddimah OF IBN KHALDÛN
« ^ »
An army staff car sat in the street outside the inn’s gates. This sounds like a simple matter, but when the street in question is less than eight feet wide and the car more than five, it means that a laden donkey must be unloaded and all but the narrowest carts turned and taken another way. The driver, magnificently deaf to the shouts and curses of would-be passers-by and the pleas of beggars alike, held a cigarette in one hand and a yellow-back novel in the other. I sidled past and went through the heavy wooden gates into the inn’s yard, wondering mildly whom an army officer might be visiting in this quarter.
I did not wonder for long. My soft boots made chuffing sounds on the worn steps all the way to the top floor. I rapped on Holmes’ door, stepped inside—and immediately bowed and scraped my panic-stricken way backwards into the hallway.
“Effendi, ten thousand apologies, I fear I have the wrong room, I did not intend—” I closed the door, stood and stared at it for