O Jerusalem

FIFTEEN

ض

When ambitious men overcome a dynasty and seize power, they inevitably adopt most of the ways of their predecessors.

—

THE

Muqaddimah

OF IBN KHALDÛN

It was perhaps three miles before I caught the others up, despite my horse’s turn for speed, and then only because they had stopped. The spare horse was still riderless, but the mare Mahmoud had ridden was standing with her head down and her sides heaving, sweat dripping from her flanks, while Ali reached up to help Mahmoud manoeuvre a completely limp Holmes down from her back. I was off my horse and standing next to the men without being aware of dismounting. Holmes looked every bit as lifeless as the dead guard, but when I helped Ali catch him, his eyes were open, the pupils huge, and the cry that had burst from me changed to one of relief: he was drugged, not dead.

They had clothed him in an unfamiliar pair of baggy trousers and Ali’s sheepskin coat, and now laid him on the ground, arranging him on his side so as not to cause further damage to his back.

“How much opium did you give him, for God’s sake?” I demanded.

“Enough to keep him quiet,” Mahmoud replied. His left arm, which had held the full weight of his passenger, must have been numb, for he was kneading it with his right hand and working his hand vigorously to restore circulation.

“Almost permanently, by the looks of it. He’s completely unconscious.”

“He will recover,” he said, and added less belligerently, “He is mostly bone, little flesh. Perhaps I ought to have lowered the dose.”

“How long before it wears off?”

“Hours. Five, eight.”

“He needs to be in a bed before that.”

“It has been arranged.”

“Where?”

“Two, three hours,” he said vaguely. He gave his left arm a final shake and, catching up the reins of the spare horse, vaulted onto its back. Ali bent to lift the dead weight that was Holmes, but I put a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Wait,” I said. “I’m the lightest one, by a considerable amount, and my horse easily the largest.” And the most contrary, I did not add. Ali and I waited for Mahmoud’s answer.

“How is your head?” he asked after a moment.

“It aches.” Actually, it throbbed horribly with every beat of my heart and I felt both queasy and shaky, but I did not feel there was any threat of passing out. Not without warning, at any rate. I held his gaze coolly. He gave one of his internal nods and slid back down to the ground, lifting his chin at my own horse as an order to mount it. I handed him the burden of Holmes’ possessions and mounted the horse, shifting back to the edge of the pad to leave room for Holmes. He and Ali lifted Holmes bodily up, threading one leg up and over the horse’s withers so Holmes’ back was resting against my chest. I could barely see over his shoulders, but I worried that I was hurting his back, and said so.

“He won’t feel it,” said Mahmoud.

Insh’allah, I thought.

It took fully three hours. At some point the guide left us, only to come pounding up behind again half an hour later with a parcel of Arab sandwiches, spiced meat and bits of raw onion wrapped in flat bread. We ate while riding, and afterwards I felt considerably less shaky and not in the least queasy. My head still ached, though.

After two hours of alternately picking our way over rocks and loping on the flat bits, Holmes began to come around. It was easier to hold him as he became less limp; on the other hand, the pain in his back was obviously getting through to him. We had to stop, and while Ali and Mahmoud between them held Holmes upright, I slipped off the horse and then climbed back on, awkwardly, in front of him. We rode the next few miles with him slumped forward against me, dreadfully uncomfortable for me but easier on him. However, when he began to jerk about behind me I was forced to relinquish the reins to Mahmoud and be led, riding half-doubled over and with both arms stretched behind me to keep Holmes from tumbling to the ground. At about this time our guide turned calmly into another road and, without acknowledgement from either side, rode away. A few minutes later Ali turned to check on us, then kicked his mare into a gallop and left us trotting along in a cloud of dust.

Twenty minutes later, I nearly tumbled to the ground myself when a voice spoke, strong in my ear.

“Russell?”

“Holmes! Thank God—are you all right? It won’t be much longer.” I waited. “Holmes?”

There was no answer. I tried to turn and look at him, but his head was limp against my neck; he had faded again. A few minutes later the same thing happened.

“Russell?”

“Yes, Holmes, we’re all here. You’re safe now.” I didn’t think he heard me. And again a few minutes later:

“Russell?”

“Holmes.”

We repeated this lunatic non-conversation any number of times before we finally emerged from the hills and made for a collection of raw-looking buildings set among fields, a manned guard-tower rising over all. Ali stood in a doorway beside a tiny apple doll of a woman with a kerchief over her grey hair. Mahmoud rode up to the small house and dismounted, then turned to the woman and with his right hand gave a gesture ridiculously like that of a man tipping his hat, which of course is quite impossible with a kujfiyah. The tiny woman smiled with delight, came forward, and actually kissed Mahmoud on his hairy cheek.

Before I could speculate on the hidden depths to the man, he and Ali were on either side of me, holding Holmes so I could slip out from under him. They let him fall gently forward, then slide face-down off the tall horse, but when they tried to lift him, one of them must have seized some tender part of his anatomy, because he stiffened and drew a sharp breath. His eyes flew open, and he looked straight at me with that wide-eyed, apparently alert but slightly unfocussed gaze of a drunk, or someone wakened from a heavy sleep.

“Russell.”

“Yes, Holmes. It’s all right.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he said easily, and then his eyes lost all focus and he slumped into the supporting arms.

His wounds took some time to clean and dress. I did not have to take a hand in that; I felt that I had placed quite enough dressings on that back in the last two months, and the tiny woman was more than competent. She had introduced herself in Hebrew as Channah Goldsmit and apologised that she was not actually a qualified doctor, but was as close as we would come for some miles. I did not dispute her claim on the patient.

I was brought a tall glass of cold, sour lemonade, and it went down my dry and dusty throat like a taste of paradise, a sensation utterly disconnected from all others as I stood in that small bare room watching Channah Goldsmit clean and salve and plaster the raw, beaten, and burnt skin of the half-conscious man who was the centre of my life. The needs of action had been met, leaving me lost, bereft even. I felt, frankly, young and helpless and in confusion, and I did not like it one bit.

Even before this latest episode, I had been aware that I did not really understand my feelings about Holmes. I was nineteen years old and for the last four years this unconscious figure on the bed had been the pillar of sanity and security in my daily life. However, he was also my teacher, he was more than twice my age, and furthermore he had never given me the least indication that his affection for me was anything other than that of a master for a particularly promising student. Five weeks earlier I had been a maturing apprentice who was moving away into another field, but the events of the last month, both at home and here in Palestine, had shaken that comfortable relationship to its core. I had been given little leisure time in which to contemplate the consequences of my change in status from apprentice to full partner, from pupil to… what?

Channah Goldsmit finished an eternity later, tidied up the snippets of gauze and such, and turned to me, to give instructions I suppose. I do not know just what she saw in my face, but it caused her to drop the basin of supplies and push me into the chair beside Holmes’ bed. More gently, she removed the glass from my hands and herself from the room, but in a minute she was back, with a heavy woollen rug she tucked around my shoulders and a glass of the local brandy that she pushed into my hands.

I had not even realised that I was shivering.

I was aware of noise, she was speaking but I did not answer, and she went away. A short while later I was dimly aware that she had returned, standing in the doorway, with Mahmoud’s head towering above hers, and again there was the sound of speech, but eventually they went away and left me alone with Holmes.

The sound of his breathing filled the room. I could tell when he drifted into an unconscious state, when his breathing slowed and deepened. For ten minutes or so all would be well, and then with a guttural sound in the back of his throat his breath would catch, as wakefulness and sensation approached. For a few minutes he would draw only short, shallow breaths, until with a sigh he was again teased away into the depths.

I could not stop shivering. The only warm part of me was my right hand, which covered Holmes’ where it lay on the thin mattress. The left side of his face was against the mattress, and I watched his right nostril move, his right eye twitch from time to time, the right side of his mouth pull and relax beneath the beard and the bruises. I watched him as if willing the very life back into him.

The afternoon wore on and the evening sun slanted through the window before I heard his breathing change again. He did not move, but he was awake, fully awake. I drew my hand away, and waited.

His eyes flared open. He blinked at the sight of my knees, looked sideways without moving his head, and saw my face. His eyes closed, and his throat worked two or three times.

“Russell.” His voice was hoarse and low.

“Holmes,”

“Haven’t we done this once already?”

“What, me sitting in a chair while you lie in bed with bandages on your back? I’m afraid so.”

“It grows tedious.”

A bubble of joy began to expand in my chest, and I felt a stupid grin come onto my face. To hide it from him, I poured a glass of water and attempted to dribble some of it into his mouth, without much success. He closed his eyes for a few minutes, then asked, “What damage is there?”

“Superficial injuries only. Nothing broken.” Including, thank God, his spirit, not if he could joke.

“Whose diagnosis?”

“We’re in a kivutz. A communal village. They have a doctor. Actually, she’s a midwife, but trained.”

“In all my years, I don’t believe I have ever before required the services of a midwife, Russell.”

At that I did laugh, and at the noise Mahmoud put his head inside the door, then withdrew it.

“Mahmoud gave me something,” Holmes said suddenly.

“Opium paste.”

“Dangerous madman.”

“He apologises for the heavy dose. Still, it got you here.” There was no answer. I said quietly, “Holmes?”

“The car crashed, did it not?”

“It did.”

“The driver?”

“Dead.”

“I thought so. You?”

“Minor bangs.”

“What?”

“I’ll have a head-ache for a couple of days, that’s all.”

“Fortunate.”

“We were both lucky.”

“Yes. He was going for pain, not damage.”

It took me a moment to realise who “he” was. “Your captor,” I said. “What did he want?”

“Information. Joshua. Allenby.” His voice was slowing.

“Did you give it to him?”

He did not answer for so long, I thought him asleep. Then: “I would have done,” he said heavily. “The next session, or the following.”

“Who was he?”

“I wish to God I knew,” he said, and then he was asleep.