Daphne du Maurier - Not After Midnight & Other Stories

When they came to St Stephen's Gate the first thing they saw was an ambulance drawn up alongside their bus, and a crowd of people, strangers, grouped round it. An official, white in the face, was directing them to move away. Bob's first thought was for Jill. Something had happened to Jill… Then Jim Foster, limping, his hair dishevelled, appeared from the midst of them.

'There's been an accident,' he said.

'Are you hurt?' asked Bob.

No… no, nothing wrong with me, I got caught up in some sort of demonstration and managed to get away… It's Miss Dean. She fell into that drain they call the Pool of Bethesda.'

'Oh God in heaven…' exclaimed Babcock, and he looked despairingly from Jim Foster back to Bob. 'This is all my fault, I should have been taking care of her. I didn't know. I thought she was with the rest of you.' He moved forward to the ambulance, then remembered his own plight and spread out his hands in a gesture of despair. 'I don't think I can go to her,' he said. 'I'm not in a fit state to see anyone…'

Jim Foster was staring at him, then glanced enquiringly at Bob Smith.

'He's not in good shape,' murmured Bob. 'He was taken ill a short while ago, up at the church. A bad tummy upset. He ought to get back to the hotel as soon as possible.'

'Poor devil,' replied Jim Foster under his breath, 'what an awful thing. Look…' he turned to Babcock, 'get up into the bus right away. I'll tell the driver to take you straight to the hotel. I'll go with Miss Dean in the ambulance.'

'How bad is she?' asked Babcock.

'They don't seem to know,' said Jim Foster. It's shock chiefly, I imagine. She was practically unconscious when the guide fellow pulled her out of the water. Luckily he was only at the top of the steps. Meanwhile, I can't think what has happened to either Bob's wife or mine. They're somewhere back in that infernal city.'

He took hold of Babcock by the arm and steered him towards the bus. Funny thing how other people's misfortunes made you forget your own. The panic he himself had experienced had vanished at his first sight of the ambulance as he stumbled down through St Stephen's Gate, giving way to a deeper anxiety that Kate might be the victim the stretcher-bearers were carrying to it. But it was only Miss Dean. Poor wretched Miss Dean. Thank heaven, not Kate.

The bus rumbled off with the pale, unhappy Babcock staring at them from one of the windows.

'Well, he's on his way, that's one thing,' said Jim Foster. 'What a calamity, what a situation. I wish the Colonel was here to handle it.'

'I'm worried now about Robin,' said Bob Smith. 'I told him to wait for us outside the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and he was missing when we came out.'

'Missing? In that mob?' Jim Foster stared, aghast.

Then, with unspeakable relief, he saw his wife, with Jill beside her, coming through St Stephen's Gate. He ran across to her.

'Thank heaven you've come,' he said. 'We've got to get Miss Dean to hospital. She's in the ambulance already. I'll explain everything on the way. There's been a series of mishaps all round. Babcock ill, Robin missing, it's been a disastrous day.'

Kate seized his arm. 'But you?' she said. 'Are you all right?'

'Yes, yes… Of course I'm all right.'

He dragged her towards the ambulance. He did not even look at Jill. Bob hesitated, wondering what he ought to do. Then he turned, and saw Jill standing beside him.

'Where have you been?' he asked.

'I don't know,' she said wearily. 'In a sort of garden. I was looking for you but I couldn't find you. Kate was with me. She was worried about her husband. He can't stand crowds.'

'Nor can any of us,' he said, tut we'll have to face them again. Young Robin is lost, and I must go and find him. There's nobody else left.'

'I'll come with you.'

'Are you sure? You look absolutely done in.'

The Fosters were climbing into the ambulance. The siren wailed, and the spectators moved away. Jill thought of that endless winding street they called the Via Dolorosa, the chanting pilgrims, the chattering vendors, the repetition of a scene she never wanted to see again, the clatter, the noise.

'I can face it,' she sighed. 'It won't seem so long if we're together.'

Robin was enjoying himself. Being on his own always gave him a sense of freedom, of power. And he had become very bored trailing along in the path of the pilgrims, with people going down on their knees every other moment. It wasn't even as if they were walking the right way. The city had been pulled down and rebuilt so many times that it was altogether different from what it had been two thousand years ago. The only way to reconstruct it would be to pull it down again, and then dig and dig and reveal all the foundations. He might well become an archaeologist when he grew up, if he didn't become a scientist like his father. The two professions were rather similar, he decided. He certainly would not become a clergyman like Mr Babcock. Not in this day and age.

He wondered how long they would stay inside the church. Hours, probably. It was full to the brim with priests and pilgrims wanting to pray, and they would all bump into each other. This made him laugh, and laughing made him want to go to the toilet-his grandmother hated the word toilet, but everyone used it at school-and so, as there wasn't a real one handy, he went and relieved himself against the wall of the church. Nobody saw. Then he sat down on a step, opened his two maps and spread them across his knees. The thing was, Jesus had either been held in the Antonia Fortress or in the Citadel. Probably both. But which one had he been held in last, before he had to carry his Cross with the two other prisoners, and set out for Golgotha? The description in the Gospels did not make it clear. He was brought before Pilate, but Pilate could just as well have been in the one place as in the other. Pilate delivered Jesus to the high priests to be crucified, but where were the high priests waiting for him? That was the point. It could have been at Herod's Palace, where the Citadel stood now, and in that case Jesus and the two thieves would all have left the city by the Genath Gate. He looked from one map to the other: the Genath Gate was now called Jaffa Gate, or in Hebrew Yafo-it depended which language you spoke.

Robin looked at the church door. They would be ages yet. He decided to walk to the Jaffa Gate and see how it was for himself. It wasn't very far, and with the help of the modern map he wouldn't lose the way. It took him less than ten minutes to reach the gate, and here he paused to take stock of his surroundings. People were passing in and out, and there were cars drawn up outside, as there had been by St Stephen's Gate at the opposite end of the walled city. The trouble was, of course, that instead of the bare hillside and gardens, which was how it would have been two thousand years ago, there was now a main road, and the modern city spreading itself everywhere. He consulted his old map once again. There used to be a fortress tower called Psephinus, standing proud and mighty by the north-west corner of the city, and this was the tower that the Emperor Titus rode to inspect, when he camped with his Roman legions before capturing and sacking Jerusalem in A.D. 70. There was something built on the present site called the College des Freres. Wait a moment, though. Was it the College des Freres or a hotel called the Knight's Palace? Either way it was still inside the walls of the city, and somehow that was not right, even with the walls having been rebuilt.

'I'll imagine,' he told himself, 'that I'm Jesus, and I've just come out of the Genath Gate, and all this is bare hillside and sloping gardens, and they don't crucify a person in a garden, but a decent distance away, especially before the Feast of the Passover, otherwise the people would make a disturbance, and there had been enough riots already. So Jesus and the two other condemned prisoners were made to walk a fair way, that's why they made Simon the farm-labourer-and Cyrene means farm-labourer in Aramaic, the Headmaster told me so-carry the cross. He was just coming in from work in the fields. Jesus couldn't manage it, being weak from all that scourging. And they took him and the others out to some rough scrubby ground overlooked by the Psephinus tower, where the soldiers would have had a guard posted, so that if there should have been an attempt at rescue the attempt would fail.'