She got him drunk, he passed out, and she cut off his head and took it back with her to the town. The invasion fell apart, Jerusalem was saved, and two and a half thousand years later women named for her give their children nightmares with the story." "A stimulating tale, Russell, though hardly one that I should choose for a seven-year-old."

  "My mother believed in starting theological training early. The following year we did the Levite's concubine, which makes the Judith story sound like a nursery rhyme. Still, that is why I wanted to come here, to see where Holofernes arrayed his troops. Does that answer your question?"

  He sighed. "I'm afraid so. Then you did see what I was thinking, on the boat?"

  "I could hardly miss it."

  "And you offer this as an alternative." He waved one hand at the darkening plain.

  "Yes." I would not consider the implications, not until I had to.

  "No. I am sorry, Russell, but I will not have you place yourself within the enemy camp. I do not believe that you would find this opponent of ours an obliging drunkard."

  "I won't be sacrificed, though, Holmes. I refuse to abandon you." I was relieved, but all the same I would not be a coward.

  "I am not suggesting that you abandon me, Russell, only that you appear to do so." He rose and went to his tent and came back with a familiar wooden box in his hand. He set out the pieces as they had been in the game we had played off Crete, before my queen had fallen. He then turned the board around to take possession of the black. This time it was I who captured his queen, I who pressed and chivvied him into a corner. The game shifted, however, for I knew his intentions and refused to be drawn in.

  The moves lengthened, slowed, as our two diminutive armies clashed. Pieces fell and were removed from the field of battle. The first stars emerged unnoticed, Ali brought over a small oil lamp and set it on a rock between us, and Holmes laid a pincers movement that took my second bishop. I took a rook (a hollow victory; Holmes scorned their stolid directness) and two moves later lost one to his knight. (Holmes' knights were terrible weapons when a certain mood was upon him, more like Boadicea's bladed chariot with its wholesale mowing-down of men than a proper knight on horseback.) Mahmoud pressed tiny cups of syrupy coffee into our hands, watched the board for a time without comment, and went off.

  It was a long game. I knew that he intended to duplicate my surprise victory, when I allowed the queen to fall in order to set up a trap in the hands of the commoners, but I refused to be manoeuvered. I drew him out, I kept away from his pawns and used my queen with great caution, and eventually he seemed to change his tactics and laid another triangle of pincers to drive me into. I danced away from it, he relaid it farther back on the board. Again I avoided it and sent my remaining rook down to place him into check. He evaded it, I brought up my queen in support, and then somehow in the excitement of closing in I overlooked the board in front of me, and the pawn that had been weak man in the first, long-forgotten pincers movement was in my second rank, and then it was before me, newly born a queen.

  "Regina redivivus," Holmes commented sardonically, and proceeded to tear into the unprotected back side of my offence like a hailstorm through peach blossoms. I fell before his resurrected queen in a complete rout, was mated in half a dozen moves, and then it was my turn to laugh quietly and shake my head before I sobered.

  "Holmes, she'll never fall for it," I objected. "She will, you know, if the distraction is believable enough. The woman is proud and scornful, and her anger at our absence will make her incautious and all too willing to believe that Sherlock Holmes has failed to preserve his queen, that poor old Holmes stands alone, exposed and helpless." He reached out and rocked the crown of the black king with the tip of his finger. "She will swoop in to pick me off," he tapped the white queen, "and then, we have her." He picked up the black pawn and rolled it around in his hands as if to warm it, and when he opened his hands the black queen lay there. He put her back onto the board and sat back with the air of a man concluding a lengthy and delicate business negotiation. "It is good," he pronounced, "really very good." His eyes gleamed in the last flicker of the lamp's wick, with a curious, intense relish such as I had seen on his face the week before, when he was facing a young assailant with a large knife. Joie de combat, I supposed, and my heart quailed before this changed Holmes.

  "It's dangerous, Holmes," I protested, "really very dangerous. What if she sees what we're doing? What if she doesn't play by the rules and just decides to wipe us both out? What if — " What if I fail? a voice wailed inside me.

  "What if, what if. Of course it's dangerous, Russell, but I can hardly spend the rest of my life rusticating in Palestine or tripping over bodyguards, can I?" He sounded quite pleased about it, but now that the time had come, I wanted to hide.

  "We don't know what she'll do," I cried. "At least let Lestrade provide some guards at the beginning. Or My- croft, if you don't want Scotland Yard in on it, until we know how she's going to react."

  "We may as well put an advertisement in The Times to inform her of our intentions," he scoffed. "You ought to take up fencing, Russell, truly you should. It offers a most instructive means of judging your adversary. You see, Russell, I have a feel for my opponent now, I know her style and her reach. She has made some points off me in the game thus far, but she has also revealed her own faults.

  Her attacks have all been patterned on her perception of my nature, my skill at the game. When we return, she will expect me to continue dodging and parrying with my customary subtlety and skill. She knows that I will do so, but — I shall not. Instead, I shall foolishly lower my blade and walk unguarded into her. She will stand back for a moment, to see what I am doing. She will be suspicious, then gradually convinced of my madness, then gloating before she strikes. But you, Russell," he swept his robed arm over the board, and when he drew it back the black queen stood in the place of the white bolt-and-nut king. "You will be waiting for her all the time, and you will strike first."

  Dear God. I had wanted more responsibility, and here it was, with a vengeance. I worked to control my voice.

  "Holmes, it is no false modesty to say that I haven't the experience in this — this 'game,' as you insist on calling it. A mistake on my part could be fatal. We must have a backup."

  "I shall think about it," he said finally, and then he leant forward over the chessboard and looked into my eyes with that same curious intensity that he had shown earlier. "However, I want you to realise, Russell, that I know your abilities, better than you do. After all, I have trained you.

  For nearly four years I have shaped you and tempered you and honed you, and I know the mettle you are made from.

  I know your strengths and weaknesses, particularly after these last weeks. The things we have done in this country have honed you, but the steel was there to begin with. I do not regret my decision to come here with you, Russell.

  "If you truly feel that you cannot do this, then I shall accept that decision. I will not consider it a failure on your part. It will merely mean that you join Watson while I enlist Mycroft's help. It would be inferior, I admit — inelegant, and I think long, but not hopeless. It is, however, your choice entirely."

  His words were placid, but what lay beneath them shook me breathless, for what he was proposing would in another man be sheer recklessness. Holmes the painstaking, Holmes the thoughtful, calculating thinker, Holmes the solitary operator who never so much as consulted an other for advice, this Holmes I thought I knew was now proposing to launch himself into the abyss, trusting absolutely in my ability to catch him.

  And more even than that: This self-contained individual, this man who had rarely allowed even his sturdy, ex-Army companion Watson to confront real risk, who had habitually over the past four years held back, been cautious, kept an eye out, and otherwise protected me; this man who was a Victorian gentleman down to his boots; this man was now proposing to place not only his life and limb into my untested, inexperienced, and above all female hands, but my own life as well. This was the change I had noticed in him and puzzled about, the intensity and relish with which he was facing the coming combat: There was no hesitation left. He had let go all doubt, and was telling me in crystal-clear terms that he was prepared to treat me as his complete, full, and unequivocal equal, if that was what I wished. He was giving me not only his life, but my own.

  I had long known the intellect of this man, been aware for nearly as long of his humanity and the greatness of his heart, but I had never had demonstrated to me so clearly that the size of his spirit was equal to his mind. The knowledge rumbled through me like an earthquake, and in its wake a small voice echoed, wondering if I had just pronounced his epitaph.

  I don't know how long it was before I looked up from the small carved queen into the carved-looking features of the man across from me, but when I did, it seemed that his eyebrows were waiting for something. I had to think for a moment before I realised that he had actually asked a question. But there was no decision to be made. "When faced with the unthinkable," I said shakily, "one chooses the merely impossible." He smiled approvingly, warmly.

  And then a miracle happened.

  Holmes reached out his long arms to me and, like a frightened child, I went inside them, and he held me, awkwardly at first, then more easily, until my trembling faded.

  I sat, safe, listening to the steady beat of his heart until the oil lamp guttered out and left us in darkness.

  Two days later the Crusader walls of Acre closed in on us, as unlike the sun-swept stones of Jerusalem, eighty miles away, as could be imagined. Jerusalem's golden walls had sparkled and shone, and the city vibrated with an inaudible song of joy and pain, but Acre's walls were heavy and thick, and its song was a multilingual dirge of ignorance and death. The long shadows seemed like spectres to be avoided, and I noticed Holmes glancing about him sharply. Alt 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 reveals 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 Mah moud 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, "'Alia-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, "CAI 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

  FOURTEEN: 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.

  The ship's engines picked up in pitch even before we reached the common cabin, and the powerful movement beneath 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 stuj 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 English 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 delicate bone china cup and laughed silently in sheer delight.

  There came a knock at the door, and the captain's "Good evening, Mr. Holmes," I heard. "Permission to enter?"

  "Come in, Jones, come in."

  "I trust you had a satisfactory stay in Palestine, sir?" the captain said.

  "Simple pleasures for simple minds," Holmes murmured.

  His words actually startled the good captain into a reaction, causing him to run an experienced eye over the fading green-yellow bruises on Holmes' face and glance for a moment at the neat bandage peeking out from the sleeve of my kaftan. He even went so far as to open his mouth on a comment, but before he could lose control so completely he made a visible effort, snapped his jaws shut, and then turned to close the door. Holmes glanced at me with an expression that looked suspiciously like mischief.

  "And you, Captain Jones," he said. "I hope you have had a successful January, though I see you haven't spent too much of it aboard ship. How was France? Rebuilding already, I see." Silence fell, and as I came out of the galley I saw a familiar look of wary perplexity on the captain's face.

  "How do you know where I've been? Oh, sorry: Evenin', Miss." He touched his cap.

  "No major mystery, Jones. Your skin tells me that you've spent no great time in the sun since you left us, and your new hair pomade and the watch on your wrist tell me you have spent a day in Paris. Don't worry," he said with a chuckle, "I haven't had spies on you. Just my own eyes."

  "I'm glad to hear that, Mr. Holmes. If I thought you'd been nosing about I'd be forced to have some gentlemen ask you a few hard questions. Not to offend, sir, it'd just be my job."

  "I understand, Jones, and I am careful to see only those things that tell me of unimportant activities."

  "That's probably for the best, sir. Oh yes, this packet is for you. It was sent by a courier from London last week, into my own hands — in Paris, in fact." I was standing close to him and reached out for it, but Holmes' voice cut in, sharp, scathing, and utterly authoritative. "Not to Miss Russell, Jones. This and any future official conveyences will be delivered personally to me, and to me alone. Do you understand, Captain Jones?"

  In the cabin's shocked silence Holmes rose and walked forward, coldly took the packet from the captain's hand, and went to open it by the window. Jones stared at his back for a moment, then looked at me in open amazement.

  A flush of shame crept into my face, and I turned abruptly and went into my cabin, slamming the door. A minute later I heard the outer door close behind the captain.

  We had begun our play.

  In a few minutes I heard two light taps on my door.

  I stood and went to the window before responding. "Come in, Holmes."

  "Russell, this packet is most — ah. I see. The mind was willing but the heart taken aback, I take it?" How he could discern my distress from looking at my spine, I cannot think.

  "No, no, it was just the suddenness of it, it took me unawares." I turned to face him. "I was not expecting to begin the act so quickly. However, perhaps it is for the best. The captain is now aware that something is amiss, and I doubt that I could have acted that particular scene.

  I'm not exactly Sarah Bernhardt." My smile was a bit forced.

  "It was indeed most convincing. I fear there will be any number of painful moments before this act is over."

  "The lines are written; we must speak them," I said dismissively. "Now, what were you saying about Mycroft's packet?"

  "Here, look for yourself. Our adversary has been most prudent. I am filled with admiration for her technique. Were it not that she presses so close in on me, I should relish this case greatly, for I cannot remember one in which such a large number of clues led absolutely nowhere. I think I shall go and fill my pipe."

  The packet was a thick one. I put aside for later reading the five fat envelopes with Mrs. Hudson's writing and stamps from various ports of call, and looked at Mycroft's offering. Numerous pages from the laboratories at Scotland Yard described the prints on the cab, the button with its attached bit of tweed, and the analysis of the three bombs, one in grisly detail. It was the description of the hive bomb that illuminated the most, and in fact changed the entire picture. The investigation had found that the charge was ignited, not by Holmes' clumsiness, but by a hair-thin wire that ran from the hive he had been checking, hidden beneath the grass, to the bomb in the next hive. Mycroft's men had found it in the wreckage.

  "She never meant to kill you, then!"

  "I was glad to see that. The problem had troubled rne. Oh, not her murder attempt, but that mine was the first. The whole point of killing you and Watson, as I read it, was to hurt me, but how could I be hurt by your deaths if I were already dead? I was very pleased to see that explained by the trigger. It also confirms that you shall be safe if we appear alienated. I shall have to arrange for a discreet guard for Mrs. Hudson when she returns from Australia, but Watson's protection we shall continue to leave to Mycroft."