“How did you… know what he was? What did he do?”
“I did not know at first meeting him. A holy man might have done; ordinary human beings are not given such a degree of insight. I watched him.
“A… being such as he lives for the discomfort of others. He feeds off any degree of pain. He probably grew up pulling the wings off butterflies and graduated to hurting small animals. Under a regime such as our past rulers oversaw, such a tendency would be a useful thing. It would have been fostered, put to work. Under the guise of promoting order, keeping disruption and revolt in its place, he was without a doubt one of those men allowed to feed his urges while serving his masters: politics and pleasure intertwined. I have seen other backs like yours, Mr Holmes. I have seen far worse. His sort is adept at inflicting torment; one might even call him a connoisseur of pain—both physical and, through the body, the spiritual agony of guilt and shame. Certainly he understands that injuries to the spirit tend to be longer lasting than those of the body.
“Now, after years of freedom to do as he wished under official sanction, he can no longer control his need for causing hurt as once he undoubtedly could. It is a compulsion. When he came here, he could not resist reaching for the hand of Brother Antoninus, twisted by arthritis, and squeezing it firmly. He had to seek out one of our younger brothers who is going through a period of doubt, and suggest further things for the young man to worry about. Similar events, little things, but, in a small community, potentially deadly. After the second day I had to let him know I was watching him. He left the next morning. I considered it fortunate that we only lost a few possessions, most of them easily replaced.”
“What did you lose, Abbot?”
“As you said, two habits, a dozen large candles and some small ones.”
“Two habits?”
“Two. Also one of our climbing ropes—”
“Climbing ropes?” I interrupted. It was only the second time I had spoken, but the image of mountaineering monks was too incongruous for silence.
“We live on a cliff,” Abbot Mattias pointed out with a smile. “There are times when we need to rescue the straying kid of a Bedouin flock or remove a boulder that threatens our heads or our roof tiles. Some of the younger brothers enjoy the task. I know I did when I was younger. Also a small amount of money,” he said, returning to Holmes’ question. “We never keep much. Our needs are met by our mother monastery in Jerusalem.”
“Does that house also dress in the same habits?”
“Of course.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. And one other thing. A small ikon. Not valuable monetarily outside the community, but of historical significance and of great value to us. A painting, six inches by eight, of the Holy Virgin Mother.”
“Have you reported any of this?”
The abbot just smiled sadly. This land had a long way to go before it could think of the police as either friendly or helpful.
“Father Abbot, may I suggest that your house in Jerusalem be warned to watch for any strangers who might be trying to pass themselves off as monks?”
“I shall write to them, yes. However, Jerusalem is filled with strangers in monastic dress, from all the corners of the earth.”
“One last thing.” My head came around involuntarily at the tightness in Holmes’ voice. “Can you give me a description of the man?”
The question surprised the abbot enough to cause his eyes to narrow. “I understood that you had met him.”
“I… encountered him. I should know his voice if I heard it again, his smell, possibly his step, but I never laid eyes upon him.” Holmes’ face was shut up, rock hard but for a tiny spasm of tension in his jaw. I looked back up at the Virgin, who seemed to tell me that she had seen it all before, but I did not find the thought comforting.
“I see,” said the abbot.
“I do know a great deal about him. I know that he was born in the vicinity of Istanbul approximately forty years ago. I know that he went to university in Germany and spent time in Buda-Pest. I know he is highly educated, thinks of himself as cultured, is near my own height, and right-handed. He is missing two or three teeth in the back of his mouth, and he prefers Western-style trousers and boots with soft heels. He bathes twice a day, uses a French hair pomade, and smokes expensive Turkish cigarettes. I know that he has read widely in European philosophy, that he speaks German, English, Turkish, and three dialects of Arabic fluently, and other tongues with a lesser degree of comfort. I know that he controls his subordinates with a combination of reward and fear, that they are terrified of his temper, which is cold and vicious rather than violent. I know that he enjoys causing pain in the innocent. I know he is a dangerous man. I do not, however, know what he looks like, because he never… approached me to my face.”
He was, I think, telling me what he had been through as much as he was answering the abbot, and my stomach turned at the picture. To be strung up with one’s arms together so as to make turning the head impossible; to stare at a blank wall and have pain inflicted without even seeing it coming, by a person—no, the abbot was right, this was not a person—by a creature who was no more than an accented voice, an elusive drift of odours, a step of shoes, and a rustle of clothing.
The abbot blinked his lizard blink. “Your ears and nose told you all this?”
“My mind told me this,” Holmes replied coldly.
“God has given you a great gift, my son.” It was Holmes’ turn to blink. “The man is, as you say, tall, perhaps an inch less tall than you, and heavier, but not fat. His hair is black and beginning to thin, his skin slightly swarthy, his eyes dark. His beard was full but neatly trimmed. Not a distinctive face, but his mouth betrays him. His lips are too heavy. His is a greedy mouth, never satisfied.”
“Would he appear European, if he had no beard?”
“No,” the abbot replied. “Not the least bit.”
So, this was not the man who had spoken with the
“Any scars, marks, features that stand out?”
The abbot thought. “A small scar, here.” He laid his finger at the outside edge of his left eye. “And a mark, a mole, just past his beard here.” He raised his chin and tapped the right side of his throat. “Also, I believe he was accustomed to wearing a ring on his right hand, although he did not have it on while he was here. There was a light patch on the finger,” he said.
“Abbot Mattias, you would have made a good detective,” said Holmes.
“And you, my son, in very different circumstances, might have made a good abbot.”
I had not thought to hear Holmes laugh for a long time. The sound cheered me a great deal.
The half-moon lit our way as we followed a sleepy brother up a path to a pair of cells—enlarged caves, in the hillside. The night was cold, but heavy wraps made it bearable, and I fell asleep quickly.
During the night a noise outside my monastic cell woke me: Holmes moving past, outlined against the moonlit sky. I slid from my pallet and went out onto the pathway, where I watched him make his way down from our quarters to the central portion of the monastery. He stopped outside the abbot’s door, and must have tapped or called quietly, because after a minute the door opened and Holmes went inside. He was still there an hour later when I went back to sleep.
I did not awaken until the sun crept through the cave entrance. I knocked a scorpion out of my boots, fixed my turban firmly in place, and came out to find Holmes sitting on the ground in front of his cell, watching the small signs of life in the wadi before us. He looked rested: the bruises were fading, his eyes were clear again. I sat down ten feet away from him, and considered asking him about his midnight visit to the abbot. If it was about information, it clearly had no urgency about it, but there was also the distinct possibility that he had gone to the man for what could only be called pastoral care. In that case it would be best to pretend I had slept through his nocturnal excursion. We sat together in the morning sun and meditated on the life of the Wadi Qelt.
The sun heated the rocks around us, causing a smell of warm dust to rise up and mingle with the crisp odour of the wet stones of the stream below. Our clothing smelt, too, although I was becoming accustomed to that, and the air moving down the valley brought with it a hint of incense from the chapel, accompanied now and then by the rhythm of chanted prayer. Bells had sounded earlier, the dull clatter so different from the resonant English bells; now I heard a tiny scuffle coming from beneath a bare shrub, which proved to be a small brown bird scratching in
