• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 882 0

and death. The long shadows seemed like spectres to be avoided, and I noticed Holmes glancing about him sharply. Ali and Mahmoud, in their customary place four strides ahead of us, seemed as unaware of the gloom as they were of anything outside themselves, but even they edged towards the middle of the streets as if the walls were unclean. I tried to push away the mood, but it crept back stubbornly.

“I wonder if these stones would speak with such a bleak voice if I didn’t know what the place stood for,” I said to Holmes irritably.

“To a mind attuned to observation and deduction, the product re-veals the mind of its creator.” He squinted up at the great, ponderous blocks that loomed up to hide the sky, and rubbed his hands together slowly. “Take Mozart—frenzied gaiety and weeping put to music. The agony of the man is at times unbearable. Let us go.”

We made our way through the streets down to the water, and when we turned a final corner, Ali and Mahmoud had disappeared. I felt shockingly naked without those two swathed backs billowing along in front of me, heads together, but Holmes just smiled and nudged me ahead. As we went past a wooden door set into a wall he spoke into the air.

“Marhaba,” he said, and to my surprise added, “cAlla-M’aq.”

I echoed his thanks, and the blessing, and we went on to the edge of the water, and we sat drinking mint tea from a nearby stall and watched the waves rub at the remnants of the Crusader pier until dark, when we were found by the crew member who had taken us ashore at Jaffa the month before. Our backs were to the fortress as he rowed us noiselessly towards the waiting boat, our faces turned to England.

We stood on the deck and watched the last lights of Palestine fade. Jerusalem was hidden from sight, but to my eyes there was a faint glow in the southeast, as of stored sunlight. I recited under my breath,

“cAl naharoth babel sham yashavnu gam-bakinu...Im eshkahek Yerushalaim tishkah y’mini....”

“You sang that the other night, did you not?” asked Holmes. “What is it?”

“A psalm, one of the more powerful Hebrew songs, full of sibilants and gutturals.” I translated it for him.

“By the waters of Babylon, where we lay down and wept when

we remembered Zion ...We hung up our lyres,

for our captors required songs of us, and our tormentors

demanded mirth.

How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand wither,

May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not

remember you.”

“Amen,” he murmured, surprising me again.

The land receded to a smear of lights against greater darkness, and we went below.

Book Four

Mastery

Battle Is Joined

The Act Begins

Isolate her, and however abundant the food or favourable the temperature, she will expire in a few days not of hunger or cold, but of loneliness.

he ship’s engines picked up in pitch even before we reached the common cabin, and the powerful movement be-neath our feet told of some speed. I made for the bath and gratefully shed my dust-thick, sweat-stiff, pungent, threadbare clothing. One hour and three changes of water later I arose transformed: my nails pink and white, my hair freed at last from its concealing wraps, my skin tingling and alive. I slipped on the long, embroidered kaftan I had bought in the suq in Nablus and, feeling positively sensuous as I glided across the floor, a female again in my loose clothing after weeks of squatting, striding, and scratching, I went to make a large pot of En-glish tea. Holmes had bathed elsewhere and sat reading The Times, dressed in a clean shirt and dressing gown as if he had never gone unshaven, never slept wrapped in goatskins, never concerned himself with the local fauna taking up residence in his scalp. I picked up a del-icate bone china cup and laughed silently in sheer delight.

There came a knock at the door, and the captain’s voice.

“Good evening, Mr. Holmes,” I heard. “Permission to enter?”

“Come in, Jones, come in.”

“I trust you had a satisfactory stay