O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [126]
“Never mind. I’ll go.”
It was a tight and narrow hole, little more than a crack, too small to crawl through on hands and knees. Holmes boosted me up, and I pulled myself in, and I went less than four feet before scrambling out again to strip off the confining coat and abayya, leaving only the long, thin shirt and baggy trousers I wore underneath. The turban I left on, in the hope it might offer a degree of protection to my skull. I pulled myself in again, and wriggled, moved the torch a few inches, pushed with the toes of my boots, and wriggled some more. Occasionally the crack widened enough that I could nearly crawl; other times the walls closed in and I thought I should have to retreat. I inched forward perhaps as much as sixty feet, which seemed like miles, only to have my way blocked by a total collapse of the ceiling. There was no way around it, or through, and I lay half on my side with the sweat in my eyes, and the fingers of panic that had been plucking at my mind suddenly grabbed, and squeezed me, squeezed me in the rock under the city where I lay, waiting for my light to go out, waiting to run out of air, waiting to be stuck, irrevocably.
In another half minute my rational mind would surely have given way to the panic and the horror that was pulling at me, urging me to fling myself against the confining walls and shriek, but Holmes must have heard the cessation of my scrabbling noises, because I heard his voice.
“Russell?” It bounced and echoed, but it was as revivifying as a hand from a lifeboat. I bent my neck and answered loudly in the direction of my feet.
“Yes?” My voice quavered a bit.
“Russell,” he said, slowing his voice so that the echoes did not obscure the words. “It would be very inconvenient if I had to go and fetch someone to bring you out.”
My growing panic flipped instantly into fury. Inconvenient, is it? By God, I’ll give him inconvenient.
I pushed my body backwards, drawing the torch with me, pushed again, drew the light, pushed and scooted the yards back to one of the wider places where, with a flexibility I had not known I could summon, I managed to do a kind of slow, sideways somersault, and made the remainder of the journey facing out.
At the end of the tunnel Holmes took the torch from my hand, put it on the ground, and hauled me bodily out and set me on my feet. I staggered a bit when he let go of me, but I was glad he had taken his hands from my shoulders, because I could feel myself— not trembling, but certainly vibrating. He thrust a water bottle into my hands, and I drank deeply.
“God,” I muttered under my breath. “The one time I could actually do with strong drink. Oh, nothing. Holmes, that tunnel’s a bust. It was certainly used at one time—there are chisel marks all along it—but the roof is down after about twenty yards, with no side openings.” I shivered, and when Holmes handed me my abayya, it occurred to me that I was damp with fast-cooling sweat. It was comforting to know that my reaction was at least in part physical.
Holmes took his lamp and went off into the main cave while I dressed, drank a bit more water, and chewed at some leathery dried fruit. All of which made me feel considerably more substantial.
“So,” I said when he returned. “What next?”
“We have eleven hours.”
I looked at him bleakly. It seemed hopeless. We had agreed with Mahmoud that if he did not hear from us by twelve-thirty, Allenby’s one o’clock meeting with the officiais of army and town would be moved elsewhere and the Haram cleared. Lives would be saved, although the resultant turmoil from the destruction of the site alone was bound to be violent.
I stood up. “Then we’d best be going.”
We left the small chamber, which seemed almost homely in comparison with the main cave. On the way out I saw on the wall, in addition to the crosses and some truly ancient Hebrew graffiti, the Square and Compass of the Freemasons. A busy little place, this, over the ages.
Holmes stood in the cave