A Christmas Message Page 6

  “Who is the Watcher?” Benedict turned the words over in his mind, as if trying to decide exactly what they meant. He looked confused and sad.

  Narraway did not help him but stayed with his demanding gaze unwavering.

  “I seem to remember that I have known him all my life,” Benedict said at last. “And yet I am still not exactly sure who he is.”

  “That’s not an answer!” Narraway snapped. “I don’t want to hear what you don’t know. If you expect our help then you owe us the best information you can come up with. You are being totally irresponsible, and we require better of you.”

  “Oh dear.” Benedict looked dismayed. “I daresay you are right.”

  Vespasia realized she was sitting with her hands clenched so hard it was painful. Before their marriage, she would have intervened. She would have told Narraway that there was something childlike in Benedict, and a gentler approach would not only have been kinder, it might also have been more productive. But this new relationship gave her both advantages and disadvantages. It had to do with vulnerability, and the power to hurt. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Narraway had allowed someone close enough to him to see his fears, and—more than that—close to his heart, his needs, his dreams. That was a trust that must never be betrayed.

  “Victor…” She said nothing more.

  He glanced at her, then back at Benedict.

  “Tell me more,” he urged, but more gently this time. “Who is the Watcher? I need to know all I can if I am to defeat him.”

  Benedict shook his head. “You will never do that.” He sounded absolutely certain and infuriatingly accepting of it. “None of us will until the very end. But we can win this part of things, if we are careful.” He smiled. “Please believe that. I do not tell people everything, but I never lie. The Watcher is a title, not an identity. He can be many people, but always with the same purpose.”

  “Which is…?” Narraway was keeping his temper with difficulty.

  Benedict’s eyes widened. “Oh…to destroy, of course. He wants dissention, despair, that rage that kills all it cannot understand.”

  “I see,” Narraway answered as if he understood perfectly. Vespasia thought from his face that he probably did. There was so much that she did not yet know, the horror he never spoke of. The shadow of it was there in his eyes sometimes, awakened by memory of the hot colors of India, the flutter of silks, the sight of a woman with a small child. Only in the last couple of years had she learned that he had studied law at Cambridge, and still kept his license to practice in court. There were so many years between that he rarely mentioned. But Special Branch was a very secretive service; it had to be to fulfill its purpose. She knew he had spent time in Ireland, often doing things he would prefer she never knew about. She had not asked. All people who have lived full, dangerous, and rich lives have learned lessons the hardest of ways, and done things they would prefer to bury along with their regrets.

  There were things in her life she would rather he only guessed at, or maybe not even that. There were wounds stitched closed whose threads one did not ever unpick. Let them heal, and the flesh knit together again. The scars were sufficient reminder to keep the lessons fresh. One touched them rarely, and with great tenderness.

  “What is it we are carrying?” Narraway turned to another part of his question. “And what is our role in this whole journey? Are we part of something vast? Do we matter at all, or are we incidental?”

  “Oh, no,” Benedict said with certainty. “No one is incidental, and now least of all you. It is the answer to the eternal questions.”

  “And what are they?” Narraway demanded.

  Benedict’s eyes widened. “Really? You don’t have questions? Who are you? Do you already know? Or are you so blind, so afraid that you do not ask yourself? Even in the dark, at three o’clock in the morning when the earth is invisible, you do not ask? Or now, in the desert, stranded on a train to Jerusalem, you don’t ask yourself, who am I? Where did I come from, and where am I going? Is there any point to it anyway? Did I ever choose this? I don’t remember when! Or do you remember?”

  “I ask what the hell am I doing here. What am I carrying? And who are you?” Narraway’s patience was fraying.

  More people came up and down the corridor, some with hands waving, faces angry.

  “You are waiting,” Benedict answered calmly. “Because you don’t yet know what to do. A lot of life seems to be like that…although perhaps less obviously so than in this instance.”

  “And these papers will tell me who I am, what I am, and where I am going?” Narraway asked sarcastically.

  “And where you have come from. And, of course, also why!” Benedict said firmly.

  “And why does the Watcher want them?”

  “To destroy them,” Vespasia said, as if it were she who had been asked.

  Benedict let out his breath with a sigh, and smiled at her with intense charm. “Exactly. The lust for power always hates knowledge, just as the darkness hates the light.”

  “And who are we taking them to?” Narraway glanced at Vespasia, then back again toward Benedict.

  “The House of Bread, on the Via Dolorosa. I have no idea to whom, or why. Only that what they will do with the papers will be good.”

  “I don’t think you really have any idea what you are talking about,” Narraway said quietly, disappointment, and even pain, in his face as the light caught it from the passageway beyond the blocked door.

  The outside doors of the train opened and slammed shut. It was not moving, and people were getting out.

  Vespasia felt a shiver of fear making the flesh on her arms into goose bumps. She looked at Narraway. If enough people got off they would be alone here, and if the Watcher came back he could kill them with no one to see, or intervene.

  “I do!” Benedict protested. “I don’t know the end, but I do know the beginning!”

  “And I know the middle,” Narraway said. “And I am not at all sure that I like it.”

  “You knew the man in Jaffa who had the first piece,” Benedict insisted. “You knew he was good!”

  “I did,” Narraway agreed. A sudden sadness was naked in his face, and he was unaware of it. “And he trusted us to complete his mission. He saw something in us that is either very good or very stupid, so I suppose that in part only, I accepted his call. We shall take the papers to the House of Bread in Jerusalem.” He glanced at the door again. “And I think if we are to succeed, we had better get out of here and mix among the other passengers. We can’t afford to be trapped in an all but deserted train. The Watcher knows where we are, and we have only a bottle, a knife, and two wineglasses to defend ourselves with. Not exactly a great arsenal.”

  They left the suitcases behind them, since they were too heavy to carry over the sand, and would serve no purpose anyway. They were well locked, and even the Watcher would not assume they had left the paper he wanted inside them.

  Climbing down the carriage steps onto the track was awkward, but Vespasia accomplished it with some grace, and a little assistance. She moved a few yards away from the train, standing motionless in the chill desert air. Only a few wisps of steam rose lazily from the engine into the night. What little light there was shone faintly on the long silver lines of the rails behind them, disappearing around the far side of a shallow hill, its shape almost lost against the farther slopes behind it. The air was cold.

  She turned and looked ahead. The last steam evaporated against the darkness and was lost. She could barely make out the shape of the engine. All that was visible was the rounded top of its roof, and the outline of the funnel. Its bulk, its power, even the arches of the wheels were lost in the density of shadow.

  She lifted her face to look up at the stars. How would anyone follow one star to Bethlehem? Or anywhere? The whole sky blazed with them, countless millions, like the sands of an endless ocean, burning silently outward to the many edges of infinity. If that was the creation of God, what could all the doings of
man matter to Him in the least?

  Were there other worlds out there? Life? Other beings with hopes and dreams? Did anything else laugh, like man? Did they create music, love each other, and write their names in the sand for the next wind to blow away?

  The other passengers were gathering into groups, talking to one another. There were all sorts of people, men and women, some clearly families, standing close together, the men protecting the women, although nothing threatened them, except possibly the desert itself, if they could not get the train started again.

  Without the sun, there was no color. Everything was shadows of gray and black, impenetrable. Some men wore turbans, making their heads look huge, and yet oddly graceful. Long robes fluttered a little when the breeze stirred. It was ice-edged and made an odd whispering in the sand. It seemed never to be still.

  Vespasia gazed around and could perceive no vegetation. Perhaps in the daylight one would see grasses of some sort, but now the desert appeared lifeless, like the rubble of some giant lost city. Men had walked this land since the time of Abraham. Of course they had done so for much longer, but that was long enough ago for the imagination. He had had herds of animals. There must have been grass somewhere near, and water.

  Benedict was standing beside her, also staring at the sky. Even in this very dim light, she and Narraway were close enough to him to see the expression in his upturned face. It was a look of awe so deep it would have been irreverent to interrupt him.

  Finally he turned to them.

  “The wind is not strong, but it is cold. Many people are sheltering on the leeward side of that slight hill over there. It may not be more than a few feet high, but it must be enough to break the wind’s edge. If we are here for long that will matter.” And, without waiting for their reply, he began walking slowly toward the outcrop. He was an odd figure, in his pale Western suit and elegant boots. He moved not awkwardly so much as carefully, as though uncertain of the ground beneath him.

  The terrain was stony, uneven, exactly as it must have been for thousands of years. The only sign that man had even passed that way was the silver-gray lines of the railway track, and of course the huge train sitting like a dormant beast of some sort.

  The air was clear and cold, and it smelled slightly bitter, as if someone had trodden on a pungent herb.

  Narraway looked around.

  Vespasia knew what he was seeking: some official from the train service to tell him what the problem was that had stopped them this time, and when they could expect to remedy it. Perhaps they would have to wait for another train to come for them, from Jerusalem.

  If there even was another train. Either way, they could not be left stranded here.

  “I wonder how close we are to Jerusalem,” she said. “If they can’t get this difficulty solved easily, perhaps they will send some other form of transport for us. I hope it is not camels! I do not think I should ride a camel well.” She said it ruefully, half as a joke.

  Narraway put his arm around her, and she felt the warmth of him with a quick pleasure. It was not something he would have done in the daylight. After a long time, in many senses alone, physical affection was something he was becoming accustomed to only slowly, quite delicately, and with a joy she found deeply touching.

  They walked toward the head of the train, and the engine. Presumably that was where the trouble was, either with the train itself, or with the track.

  Narraway looked from one side to the other. The landscape was almost flat. The moon was just visible rising in the east, a day past full, and it was becoming easier to see as the pale, silver light spread. It was extraordinary how beautiful it was, even without a trace of color.

  “There are no bluffs, no escarpments anywhere near here,” Narraway said gently. In the desert night sound carried easily. They could hear the murmur of voices almost a hundred yards away. “There’s nothing rocks could have fallen from, and no heavy drifts of sand. Probably why they took this route. It has to be the engine.”

  That was not good news. A broken part would almost certainly have to be replaced.

  “If they haven’t got another engine of some sort, they’ll come here by other means,” he went on, turning slowly to look along the tracks both before and behind them. “We can’t be far from the nearest town. The line has been going for years. It won’t be the first time it’s broken down,” he said with, Vespasia felt sure, more certainty than he felt.

  “Perhaps they will bring a herd of horses, and we shall all ride into Jerusalem, as they must have done in the past?” she suggested, only half flippantly. She was tired and frightened. It was getting increasingly difficult to keep a steady voice and not let the edge of despair become a reality.

  They reached the engine and found a man in a railway uniform. He was covered in dust and oil, and he was struggling to maintain his composure.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said politely. “We are not quite sure what the problem is. We are doing the best we can to find it, then we will be able to mend it.”

  “You carry spare parts?” Narraway said, more as an observation than a question.

  “Of course. Very good railway. Very good. My apologies, sir.”

  Narraway thanked him, then together he and Vespasia walked slowly back past many of the other passengers, looking for Benedict again. He would be easy to see in his pale jacket and trousers. Almost everyone else was either in dark clothes, or in the sort of robes worn by both men and women who lived in this region and climate.

  “I can’t see him,” Vespasia said after several minutes. “What can have happened to him? Surely he wouldn’t wander off into the desert? What for? If he wished to use the facilities he would have done that before leaving the train. Could he have gone back there?”

  “It’s possible,” Narraway agreed reluctantly. “He doesn’t seem to have much real appreciation of his own vulnerability. He’s”—he looked for a term that was applicable—“a sort of holy fool,” he finished. As he said it he took her arm again and started back toward the train, looking at the carriages, trying to recognize the one from which they had come.

  “Would he find the same one?” she asked, struggling to keep up with him. Her legs ached and she had very little energy left. “He could be in any of them.”

  “We’ll start there,” he replied. “I have no idea what he recognizes, or doesn’t.”

  “Do you think he’s in danger?” she asked anxiously. She wanted him to say no, and yet if he had she would have thought only that he had not recognized the truth, or that he was no longer being honest with her. That would be worse. It would leave her in an isolation she knew would be the deepest loss she could experience. Only now, with trust so strong between them, had she understood how alone she had been. Only in the sharing of passions and dreams, above all the tenderness of mutual pain, the hungers that invade the soul, did real intimacy lie. Physical intimacy was a small thing beside it, sweet and intense as it was.

  They were at the doors to their carriage. It was a high step up because it was built to get into from a platform, not from the ground beside the rails.

  “Of course he’s in danger,” Narraway said quietly. “Balthazar had the first drawing, and they killed him. Benedict has the second. They will kill him if they have to.”

  “We have the first one,” she reminded him. “In the corridor, when I met Benedict, I saw the Watcher too. I was alone with him for a few moments and I looked into his face. He knows we have it.”

  “You should give it back to me,” he said. “I mean it, Vespasia. Leaving aside the value of your life or mine, I have a better chance of defending it.”

  “And probably a better chance of getting to Jerusalem and delivering it,” she agreed. “At least if this were a physical battle, or one of endurance and knowledge of such things. But I don’t believe it is. Do you?”

  He turned to search her face, but they were in the shadow of the train and the moonlight was blocked. “What do you think it is? Are you going to say ‘a battl
e of the spirit’?” There was amusement in his voice, and fear. The laughter was at his own vulnerability.

  “I don’t know. But whatever it is, we will do it together, or not at all. Please stop being heroic, and just be sensible.”

  This time he did laugh. “I’m not in the least heroic! I served so long in Special Branch precisely because above all things I am a realist. Heroes have their place, and the world needs them. They inspire us all. Without them we become completely pedestrian, with our feet stuck in the mud and, too easily, our hearts as well. But in the secret wars against treason and betrayal, the hidden weapons of doubt and terror, it is being clever that counts, not just honorable and brave.”

  “You are not in Special Branch any longer,” she pointed out.

  He winced. She barely saw it in the shadows, but she knew it because she felt, always, how it hurt him, no matter how he pretended it did not.

  “You are free to be heroic again,” she told him. “The detached pragmatism was the clothes you wore, not who you were.”

  “I feel a trifle naked,” he said drily.

  She had no answer that was appropriate to the situation.

  “Please give me a hand up into the carriage, and let us see if our holy fool is inside,” she said instead.

  He hesitated only an instant, then reached up and grasped the door handle. He opened the door a little awkwardly, then swung it wider and climbed up. He turned back to help her. She was hampered by her skirts but, after a moment’s difficulty, she stood inside and they closed the door.

  At first they heard nothing. Then gradually there was the sound of leather against leather, as if someone was moving suitcases.

  “That’s our compartment!” Vespasia whispered. “He’s in there!”

  “Benedict?”

  “No! The Watcher.”

  Then a moment later they heard Benedict’s voice.

  “You are making a mess, and it is quite pointless, you know.”

  “I can destroy it all! Then the picture will be destroyed too.” It was a strange, raspy, sibilant voice and yet, for all its oddness, extraordinarily human. Vespasia could recognize the emotion in it, a rage so strong it felt as though it had reached out and touched her skin.