Mahmoud through all this had placidly gone about the business of making coffee, and had now reached the stage of shaking the pan of near-black beans. He glanced up and caught my eye, then lifted his chin at the table leaning against the wall. I went over curiously and picked up the small, worn, leather-bound book that lay on the rough surface. On what would be the back cover in an English book but was the front in Hebrew or Arabic, there was a short phrase in faded gold Arabic script.
“A Koran?” I asked him. He continued shaking the beans. “Yours?”
“Yours,” he said briefly, and followed it with a flow of Arabic that Holmes translated. “ ‘Start with the knowledge of God’s Book and the duties of your religion, then study the Arabic language, to give you purity of speech.’ ”
“Is that from the Koran?”
“Ibn Khaldûn,” Mahmoud said. The name was familiar, that of an early Arabic historian whose work I had not read.
“Well, thank you. I will read this with care.”
Mahmoud reached for the coffee mortar and poured the beans into it, and that was that.
Once his mind had been turned to the problem, Ali did an adequate job in producing the long-skirted lower garment and the loose woollen abayya that went over it, and the heavy sheepskin-lined coat I would need on cold nights. The sandals he gave me were still thin-soled, but they fit, and the cloth he brought for my headgear was better in hiding long hair than the loose kufjvyah my three companions wore. He even demonstrated how to wrap a turban that looked sloppy but stayed firmly fixed.
I smoothed the skirts of my abayya, wishing I had a mirror, and allowed the men back inside. Mahmoud nodded, Ali scowled, and Holmes checked to see that all the ties and belts were done correctly.
Physically, I would pass as an Arab youth. There was one more difficulty, however.
“Do we still call ‘him’ Mariam?” Ali asked sarcastically. “ ‘Miri’ would be more useful.”
Mahmoud thought about it for a moment, then cast a sly glance at his partner. “Amir.”
Ali burst into laughter, and I had grudgingly to admit that the name was amusing. Mir indicated a relationship with a prince. Ali’s suggested Miri would indicate that I was owned by the state, the property of a prince or commander; in other words, a slave—which, although it might prove accurate, depending on how much drudge labour the men got out of me, was nothing to be proud of. Amir, on the other hand, was far too grand for an itinerant boy, and I could hear already that it would be a source of amusement every time it was pronounced. Still, it seemed that I had little choice in the matter: “Amir” I was, ridiculous or not. Maalesh .
Ali and Mahmoud were anxious to be away—or, Ali was anxious, while Mahmoud firmly dedicated himself to closing up and moving on. We packed away our clothing and the kitchen (the coffee-pots and mortar, one saucepan, the goatskin for water, and a large convex iron pan called a saj for making the flat bread we seemed condemned to live on) and made ready to slip away.
My first sight of Palestine by light of day was of a rain-darkened expanse of rock. The hut was set into a crumbling hillside, its bricks the same dun colour as the surrounding stones; when I glanced back fifty feet away, the structure was all but invisible. I turned my back on our shelter, and set off into the country.
After a mile or two, I asked Holmes if he knew where we were going. I thought perhaps the two Hazrs had a house in Jerusalem or in the foothills, but it seemed that the bulk of their possessions— tents, stores, cooking pots, and mules—had been left with friends some ten miles outside of town. I gaped at Holmes, then at Ali.
“You mean, you don’t have a house?”
“A hair house,” he said, the Arabic name for a tent. “Two, now. And a third mule.”
“We’re to be gipsies? In these shoes?”
“Not gipsies,” Ali corrected me scornfully. “Bedu.”
“For heaven’s sake,” I muttered. “Couldn’t Mycroft afford to get his people a house?”
Mahmoud the silent spoke up, contributing a string of Arabic that could have been a deadly insult or a recipe for scones. I looked to Holmes; he translated.
“He said, ‘Better a wandering dog than a tethered lion.’ ”
“Oh,” I said doubtfully. “Right.”
It looked, then, as if we were to be Bedouin Arabs rather than members of a more settled community. Not, however, the romantic, deep-desert, camel-riding Bedu brought to fame by the exploits of then Major, now Colonel Lawrence and his Arab revolt. These two travelled a cramped little hill country on mules—God’s most intractable quadruped—T. E. Lawrence was at the Paris peace talks, and romance was fled from the land.
I stifled a sigh. Even General Edmund Allenby, my own personal hero of the Middle East—soldier and scholar, terrible and beloved commander, brutal and subtle builder of campaigns—would be far beyond my reach in this guise. If I so much as caught a glimpse of him, it would be from a rock at the side of the road while the general flew past in his famous armoured Rolls-Royce, splashing me with mud.
Instead of a sojourn in a marble-floored villa filled with carpets and cushions, I would be on foot, in crude sandals, sharing a tent with Holmes, and with no private toilet facilities for miles. I thought about lodging a protest at least about not being given my own tent, but decided to let it be for the present. We had slept in close proximity before, when need be, and until I could arrange something else, sharing a tent with him would be better than sharing a tent with all three males.
The afternoon wore on, the rain lessened, and I succumbed to enchantment. The thrill of being in Eretz Yisrael, the exotic sensation of the clothes I wore, the glory of watching the sun move across the sky and smelling the brilliant air and the cook fires and the sheer intoxication of Adventure made me want to dance down the stony road, twirling my rough garments about me. I did not even mind too much that we were heading away from my own goal of Jerusalem, nor that we had still been told nothing whatsoever about our mission by the two close-mouthed Arabs. I was in the Holy Land; much as I craved to set eyes upon the city itself, holy ground to three faiths, the countryside would have to suffice for now.
After an hour, we were forced to stop and pack gauze around the painful chafe of my sandals’ toe-straps. The discomfort did not put a halt to my pleasure, though, and the cup after cup of cool water we dipped out of an ancient stone trough fed by a road-side spring filled me with the sensation of communion. I did not complain, at the footwear or at the heavy burden I carried, and 1 kept up with the pace our guides set.
The sun was low at our backs as we walked along a dusty road with groves of young orange trees on either side, when abruptly first Mahmoud and a split second later Ali stopped dead, their heads raised, their postures radiating alarm. I could hear nothing but the insistent lowing of a cow, smell nothing other than the sweet evening air of the orange grove. I glanced at Holmes in a question, but he shook his head to show his own incomprehension.
Ali wheeled about and bundled us off into the trees, where we threw off our packs while Mahmoud retrieved a well-cared-for Lee Enfield rifle from one of the larger bundles. Ali slipped away into the dusk, pearl-handled revolver in hand, while Mahmoud gestured for us to follow him.
Holmes spoke in a low voice remarkably free of impatience. “May I ask—”
“No smoke,” Mahmoud answered curtly. “And the cow has not been milked. Be silent.”
We approached the farm buildings with caution and indeed, aside from the loud complaints of the cow, an unnatural silence lay heavy around us. We took up positions behind a shed from the deserted-looking house and barn, and waited.
A quarter of an hour after he had left us, Ali stepped into the open farmyard and trotted across to us. He spoke to Mahmoud; Holmes translated for me.
“Whoever did this is gone. The two hired men are in the trees, shot in the back. I saw no-one else.”
Our companions exchanged a look, and separated again, Ali towards the barn, Mahmoud into the shed. It proved t
o hold only an assortment of farm equipment, but we heard a shout from the barn, and when we got there, Ali had lit a paraffin lamp and was kneeling next to a man who had spilt more blood across the earthen floor than I would have imagined possible. A dagger very like that in Ali’s belt jutted from the man’s chest. The theatrical sight of the curved hilt and the copious blood nearly shocked a gust of laughter out of me, so closely did it resemble the corpse in some stage melodrama, but the urge to giggle passed in an instant and another reaction took over.
A bare two weeks earlier, Holmes and I had been bombed, hunted down, chased through London, and finally shot at while standing in an office of New Scotland Yard; a sniper’s bullet had exploded the window beside me, missing me by inches. I thought I had left behind the blinding terror of the exploding window and the hard slap of lead on brick, but I had not; now I plunged straight back into the dry-mouthed, heart-pounding state as if no time at all had intervened between that attack and this one.
“Oh, God, Holmes, she’s here,” I found myself saying with a whimper. “She’s here waiting for us, she must have known where we were going. Someone in Mycroft’s group has been bought. We have to get out of here, Holmes, we can’t trust these men, we can’t trust anyone, we—”
He caught me and shook me, hard. “Russell! Use your brain. It is not us. She could have had us any time in the last day. This is not about us, Russell. Think.”
I stared at him, and the panic retreated, my vision slowly cleared. I swallowed, nodded, and Holmes released me.
Still, two men were dead, and this one would be soon. If it wasn’t to do with us, what was it?
Mahmoud had bent over the dying man, so close his beard brushed the man’s shoulder, and was speaking forcibly into his ear. “Yitzak,” he said, over and over again until the still figure stirred slightly and the blue eyelids flickered.
“Yitzak, who did this?” It took me a moment to register that he was speaking in Hebrew.
“Mahmoud?” the flaccid lips breathed. The embroidered skullcap the man wore was dislodged by his faint movement. It tipped and dropped away to the earthen floor, revealing thinning hair, a circle of pale scalp, and a clotted head wound.
“We are here, Yitzak. Who did this?”
“Ruth?”
“Ruth and the children are not back yet. The carriage is not in the barn. Your family is safe. Who was it, Yitzak?”
“Man. Saw him. With. The mullah . Last week.”
“The mullah who preached in Jaffa?” Yitzak blinked his affirmation. “It was one of his men?”
“Two. Not his. I—” Yitzak coughed wetly and groaned, and that was all he told us. Ten minutes later his breathing ceased. Mahmoud stood up, looked at the drying blood on his hands, and went outside. While Holmes moved in a circle around the body, examining the scuffed ground, I stood and listened to the sound of a hand pump and the splash of water. When Mahmoud came back into the barn, the entire front of his dark garment was wet. He picked up the lantern from the floor, and inclined his head towards the door, a clear gesture that we should leave. Ali protested in Arabic, something about Ruth and the children seeing this.
“We must not bury him,” Mahmoud told his brother. “We must go.”
“We cannot—” Ali began.
Mahmoud moved slightly, a matter of drawing himself up, and Ali stopped immediately. Mahmoud’s face was dark with rage, not at Ali but at what Ali was forcing upon him. I took an involuntary step back, and hoped fervently that I would never have that look directed against me. “You will go and tell the neighbours,” Mahmoud said forcibly. “We will meet you on the road. Insh’allah,” he added: If God wills it.
Ali glanced at us and nodded, but before he could turn away, Holmes spoke for the first time.
“Why did the killer leave his knife?”
Mahmoud stood with the lantern in his hand and looked at Holmes; neither he nor Ali showed any reaction.
“The knife,” Holmes repeated. “This man was knocked unconscious, dragged here, dramatically arranged in the doorway by two men wearing boots and robes rather than trousers, and stabbed with that knife. His position shouts out ‘murder most foul.’ Of Jew by Arab. The shocking effect was deliberate.”
Ali turned to leave, but Mahmoud stopped him with a gesture, and went back over to examine the body more carefully. The three men studied the scuffed boots, the head wound, the pitiful skullcap, the marks on the floor, and above all the ornate dagger that had slowly taken the farmer’s life. After a couple of minutes, Mahmoud rose. “We cannot bury him,” he repeated.
“I agree,” said Holmes. “It would raise an even worse uproar than this would. But given an hour or two, we could transform murder into an unfortunate accident. And if the two hired men might simply disappear for a while… ?”
Mahmoud reached up to rub at his beard, and his fingertips travelled briefly down the scar. He nodded thoughtfully. “ ‘Allah is the best of tricksters.’ Yes. Better for all. But quickly.”
“It might also be best to remove your possessions from the vicinity. It is one thing for unburdened men to slip into the groves, were a stranger to come upon the farm; quite another to make an escape encumbered with mules and household goods.”
I could see where this was going, but truth to tell, I had no wish to assist in the doctoring of the site. I did not even want to think about what they would have to do to disarm the effects of this death. Oh, I protested, of course, but in the end I gave in gracefully to the combined demands of the three men that I take the laden mules and get them out of the area. I do not think I fooled Holmes, but I protested.
We loaded the animals, tied them so I could control all three with one lead, and Ali gave me instructions that a child could have followed, on how to reach a hidden place where I might wait until they joined me. He repeated the directions three times, until I turned on my heel and walked away with all the Hazr worldly possessions trailing behind.
After my proud little gesture, I was greatly relieved when I succeeded in finding the place without mishap. I had envisioned dawn breaking with me still stumbling about the countryside, trying to explain myself in yet more stumbling Arabic, but I found it, the ruins of a burnt-out and long-abandoned caravanserai—roofless, overgrown, and no doubt infested with snakes, scorpions, and other happy creatures. I hobbled the mules, found a smooth boulder to perch on, drew my feet up under the hem of my skirts, and gave my soul over to patience.
And to thought. The shakiness that had overtaken me on seeing the dead man was beginning to fade, but I still felt queasy, and my mind skittered nervously away from speculations concerning what my companions were doing. I firmly directed my thoughts to the question of what threat might be felt both by a family of Jewish immigrants and by a pair of wandering Arabs, and meditated upon the possible relationship between two Palestinian Arabs and a family of Jewish settlers. What was I not seeing here?
And what, indeed, was I doing here?
It was not a long wait, as waits for Holmes tended to go, but it seemed considerably more than two hours before one of the drowsing mules twitched up its ears and a low whistle came out of the night. This was followed by the sound of three men moving quickly; in less time than it takes to describe, we had become four men (to all appearances) and three pack mules, still travelling quickly.
There are no true mountains in Palestine, not by European standards and certainly not within a days walk of Jaffa, but I could have sworn that our two guides had imported some for the occasion. We scrambled up and down precipitous if unseen hillsides, obliging me to cling to the pack ropes and let my surefooted animal lead me in the darkness, abandoning all pretence of my being in charge of it. At some hour well before dawn, we quit the hills and took to a dusty road for a few miles. Finally we stopped. Ali pressed cold food into our hands, we swallowed mouthfuls of musty water directly from a skin, and then we curled up on the hard ground and lay motionless as stones until the sun was well up in the sky.
I woke to the so
und of argument, unmistakable if unintelligible. I started to sit up, and sank back immediately, wondering if I had been beaten while I slept. Not a part of me did not hurt. I then remembered Yitzak, and blood, and I redoubled my efforts to become upright.
The name Jaffa—or Yafo—seemed to be central to the argument. Working from that clue, I decided that our two guides were proposing to double back and see what they could find out about Yitzak’s “man with the mullah.” Holmes, naturally enough, was objecting to this plan; if I knew him, he would propose instead that he himself return to Jaffa and investigate while Ali and Mahmoud cooled their heels here. Seeing Ali’s expression flare into outrage, I judged that the proposal had just been made, and that perhaps it was a good time for me to step in.
“Holmes,” I called. “Do I understand it aright, that they wish to go into Jaffa and ask questions but that you object?”
“But of course,” he began. “How can I know—”
“Holmes,” I said, addressing my mentor, my senior partner in crime, a man nearly old enough to be my grandfather, a person revered by half the world. “Holmes, don’t be difficult. They’re right, and you’re wasting time. I didn’t argue last night when I was sent away with the rest of the household goods, because it was the sensible thing to do. Now the sensible thing would be to let them get on with it. Painful as it is to admit, I can’t be left alone here during the day—my Arabic wouldn’t stand up to a visitor. Yours would.”
I allowed nothing in my attitude to suggest another reason that he stay where he was instead of haring off for a strenuous day in Jaffa; if he was not going to mention his half-healed back, I was certainly not about to bring it up. He glared suspiciously at me, and Ali looked flabbergasted at my effrontery, but Mahmoud glanced sideways at me with something verging on respect, looked up into the air, and recited in English, “Would they attribute to Allah females who adorn themselves with trinkets and have no power of disputation?” He then arose, taking the argument as settled. Ali followed his example with alacrity lest Holmes change my mind, but before they went, Mahmoud went to one of the packs and dug out a grimy block of notepaper, the stub of a pencil, a wooden ruler, and a tidy skein of string with knots tied all through it. He handed the collection to me, and pointed with his chin to a spot down the dusty road.
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