O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [18]
I got my coat and I came, and I followed Holmes and the two others through the dark night until we came to this villa, and the wall, and finally to my petulant question to Holmes.
“Holmes, will you tell me please what we are doing here?”
His dry voice came back in a breath, inaudible two paces off. “We are waiting to be relieved of duty.”
I lay for a few more minutes, watching the outline of the dark villa and its uninhabited grounds, and spoke again.
“What were they talking about, all the men tonight around the fire?”
“The usual topics of farmers. The lack of rain. The price of wheat. A ghazi —raid—one group of Bedouin carried off against another, that meant trampling two fields and killing a milch cow. And of course the manifold wickednesses of the government. Mahmoud,” he added, “seemed most interested in the last, although equally careful that the others would not see his interest in politics.”
“I see,” I said, not altogether certain that I did. “Is he after evidence about the murder of Yitzak and his two hired men, or something more general?”
“Both, I should say.”
I was rather relieved to hear him say that; for the past two days neither Arab had given the faintest indication that they were anything but itinerant scribes. I was even beginning to think that the two of them were no longer actively involved in Mycroft’s affairs, and that we had been parked with them by mistake. “Then why do I get the feeling that they’re giving us meaningless tasks like mapping that site just to see what we’re going to do?”
“Probably because that is precisely what they are doing,” he replied, sounding sardonic.
“It is becoming very tedious.”
“Mmm.”
Silence again, but for the inevitable night noises of a Palestinian village. Jackals cried in the distance, a donkey brayed below us, and the cockerel that had been crowing with monotonous regularity paused for twice its normal thirty seconds, then resumed. Someone in the house at the foot of the cliff treated us to another round of his tubercular cough, then quieted. My legs were now numb except for the sharp hot points of blisters on the soles of my feet and between the first two toes where the rough strap of the sandals had rubbed the skin raw. It was becoming difficult to breathe, I noticed. It was also extremely cold.
I thought about the two Arabs in the house and about the odd current of humour that had permeated Holmes’ reply to my query— and, now that I stopped to think of it, one I had thought I detected at times over the past days as well. It was not like Holmes merely to follow directions patiently, especially when they were unreasonable directions such as guarding the villa from a single place in the rear. The country and the way of life were foreign to me, but not completely so to Holmes; the distractions that kept me from looking too closely at just what it was Ali and Mahmoud were doing with us would not apply to him. It was as if two people were blindfolded and led around in circles, one of them a stranger who did not know what was happening, the other a person who knew exactly where he was and yet allowed himself to be led about as well, thinking it a great joke. I could not understand it, and I was too cold and uncomfortable to try.
“You’re certain you’d recognise Ali’s jackal noise?” I asked after a while.
“He has not made the signal,” Holmes said firmly. “They are still in the house.”
“Raiding the pantry and having a kip in the soft beds, I don’t doubt.”
“Don’t be peevish, Russell.