"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.