After a moment's thought Robin nodded his head. 'I think they will,' he said, 'at least until sunset. You could give your friends some unleavened bread.' An idea suddenly struck him, and he turned delightedly to the Rev. Babcock. 'Seeing that it's the evening of the 13th day of Nisan,' he said, 'oughtn't we all to walk down the hill to the Garden of Gethsemane? It's not very far away. I asked the guide. Jesus and the disciples crossed the valley, but we needn't do that. We could just imagine we had gone back two thousand years and they were going to be there.'
Even his grandmother, who generally applauded his every action, looked a little uncomfortable.
'Really, Robin,' she said, 'I don't think any of us are quite prepared to set forth after dinner and stumble about in the dark. We aren't taking part in your end of term play, remember.' She turned to Babcock. 'They put on a very sweet little nativity play last Christmas,' she said. 'Robin was one of the Three Wise Men.'
'Oh yes,' he countered, 'my Huddersfield lads staged a nativity play at the club. Set the scene in Vietnam. I was very impressed.' Robin was gazing at him with more than usual intensity, and he made a supreme effort to meet the challenge. look,' he said, 'if you really want to walk down the hill to Gethsemane I'm willing to go with you.'
'Splendid!' said the Colonel. 'I'm game. A breath of fresh air would do us all good. I know the terrain-you won't be lost with me in charge.'
'How about it?' murmured Jim Foster to his neighbour Jill. 'If you hold on tight I won't let you go.'
A delighted smile spread over Robin's face. Things were going his way after all. No risk now of being packed off early to bed.
'You know,' he said, touching the Rev. Babcock's arm, his voice sounding very loud and clear, 'if we were really the disciples and you were Jesus, you would have to line us all up in a row against the wall there and start to wash our feet. But my grandmother would probably say that was going a bit too far.'
He stood aside, bowing politely, to let the grown-up people pass. He was destined for Winchester, and he remembered the motto, Manners Makyth Man.
The air was sharp and clean, like a sword's blade. No wind- the air alone made the cutting edge. The stony path led downwards, steep and narrow, bound on either side by walls. On the right the sombre cluster of cypress trees and pines masked the seven spires of the Russian cathedral and the smaller humped dome of the Dominus Flevit church. In the daytime the onion spires of St Mary Magdalene would gleam golden under the sun, and across the valley of Kidron the city walls which encompassed Jerusalem, with the Dome of the Rock prominent in the foreground and the city itself spreading ever further west and north, would not fail to awaken some response in every pilgrim heart, as it had done through the centuries, but tonight… Tonight thought Edward Babcock, with the pale yellow moon coming up behind us and the dark sky above our heads, even the low hum of the traffic beneath us on the main road to Jericho seems to blend and merge into the silence. As the steep path descended so the city rose, and the valley separating it from the Mount of Olives down which they walked became sombre, black, like a winding river-bed. Mosques, domes, spires, towers, the rooftops of a myriad human dwellings fused together, blotted against the sky, and only the walls of the city remained, steadfast on the opposite hill, a threat, a challenge.
'I'm not ready for this,' he thought. 'It's too big, I can't take it, I shan't be able to explain what it means, not even to this small handful of people who are with me. I ought to have stayed in the hotel reading up my notes and studying the map so as to be able to speak with some sort of authority tomorrow. Or, better still, have come here on my own.'
It was wrong of him, uncharitable, but the perpetual chatter of the Colonel at his side got on his nerves, made him edgy, irritable. Who cared what his regiment had been doing in '48? It was out of keeping with the scene spread out before them.
'And so,' the Colonel was saying, 'the Mandate was handed over to the U.N. in May, and we were all out of the country by July 1st. To my mind we should have stayed. The whole thing has been a bloody nonsense ever since. No one will ever settle down in this part of the world, and they'll still be fighting over Jerusalem when you and I have been in our graves for years. Beautiful spot, you know, from this distance. Used to be pretty scruffy inside the Old City.'
The pine trees to their right were motionless. Everything was still. To their left the hillside appeared bare, uncultivated, but Babcock could be mistaken: moonlight was deceptive, those white shapes that seemed to be rocks and boulders could be tombs. Once there would have been no sombre pines, no cypresses, no Russian cathedral, only the olive trees with silver branches sweeping the stony ground, and the sound of the brook trickling through the valley below.
'Funny thing,' said the Colonel, 'I never did any proper soldiering once I left this place behind me. Served for a time back home, at Aldershot, but what with reorganisation in the army, and one thing and another, and my wife wasn't too fit at the time, I decided to pack it in and quit. I should have been given command of my regiment if I had stayed, and gone to Germany, but Althea was all against it, and it didn't seem fair to her. Her father left her the Hall, you know, in Little Bletford. She had been brought up there, and her life was centred in it. Still is, in fact. She does a great deal locally.'
Edward Babcock made an effort to attend, to show some sign of interest. 'You regret leaving the army?'
The Colonel did not answer immediately, but when he did the usual tone of brisk self-confidence had gone; he sounded puzzled, strained.
'It was my whole life,' he said. 'And that's another funny thing, padre-I don't think I've ever realised it before tonight. Just standing here, looking at that city across the valley, makes me remember.'
Something moved in the shadows below. It was Robin. He had been crouching against the wall. He had a map in his hand and a small torch.
'Look, Mr Babcock,' he said, 'that's where they must have come, from the gate in the wall over to the left. We can't see it from here, but it's marked on the map. Jesus and his disciples, I mean, after they had had their supper. And the gardens and trees were probably all up this hill then, not just down at the bottom where the church stands today. In fact, if we go on a bit further and sit down by that wall, we can picture the whole thing. The soldiers and the high priests' attendants coming down with flares from the other gate, perhaps where that car is showing now. Come on!'
He began running down the hill in front of them, flicking his small torch to and fro, until he disappeared round a turn of the wall.
'Watch your step, Robin,' called his grandfather. 'You might fall. It's jolly steep down there.' Then he turned to his companion. 'He can read a map as well as I can myself. Only nine years old.'
'I'll go after him,' said Babcock. 'See he doesn't get into trouble. You wait here for Lady Althea.'
'You needn't worry, padre,' replied the Colonel. 'The boy knows what he's doing.'
Babcock pretended not to hear. It was an excuse to be alone, if only for a few minutes, otherwise the scene beneath him would never make the deep impression he desired, so that he could describe it later to all the lads, when he returned to Huddersfield.
Colonel Mason remained motionless beside the wall. The slow, careful footsteps of his wife and Miss Dean descending the path behind him were only a short distance away, and Althea's voice carried on the still cold air.
'If we don't see them we'll turn back,' she was saying, but I know what Phil can be like when he's in charge of an expedition. He always thinks he knows the way, and only too often he doesn't at all.'
'I can hardly credit that,' said Miss Dean, 'as a military man.'
Lady Althea laughed. 'Dear Phil,' she said. 'He likes everyone to think he might have become a general. But the truth is, Miss Dean, he would never have made the grade. I had it on the highest authority from one of his brother officers. Oh, they were all fond of him, but the dear old boy would never have gone any further, not in the army as it is today. That's why we all persuaded him to retire when he did. I sometimes wish he would be just a little more active where local affairs are concerned, but there it is, I have to act for us both. And he has done wonders in the garden.'
'That lovely herbacous border!' said Miss Dean.
'Yes, and the rock plants too. They make quite a show the whole year through.'
The slow footsteps passed without stopping, neither woman looking to right or left, so intent were they upon the rough path under their feet. For one moment their two figures were sharply outlined against the trees beyond, then they turned the corner as Robin had done, and Babcock, and disappeared.
