The slice on my wrist was bloody but not serious, and as he bound it for me, Ali seemed to find the wound cause for pride, a mark of honour rather than the sign of clumsiness and near disaster. It gave me no problems and eventually left the thinnest curve of a scar, but to make Ali happy I displayed it openly, with studied nonchalance. Mahmoud approved.

Late that evening, though, I did cover it when, in clean skin and a dress borrowed from Helen Bentwich (which felt more like a disguise than anything I had worn since leaving England), I ran the gauntlet of beggars and stares to take my place before the Western Wall, leaving the scrap of paper with my prayer on it between the stones. War wounds, I thought, did not belong in that setting.

After I had paid my visit to the Wall, we left Jerusalem, to travel northwards towards Acre and the boat that would take Holmes and me out of this country, back to the equally troubling case that awaited us in England. I had seen very little of the Jerusalem known to pilgrims and tourists. I did not wade up Hezekiah’s Tunnel nor venture into St Anne’s magnificent simplicity, did not walk the perimeter walls or tour the Citadel or poke among the finds of the archaeologists. I did not even go to gaze upon the ethereal beauty of the Dome or upon the Rock itself that I had helped save—not that time, at any rate.

I left the city without seeing these things, because they would not have fit. They belonged to a different pilgrimage, and would have constituted a different set of memories, and one set was as much as I could assimilate just then. I also felt no urgency to “see” Jerusalem: I knew that there would be a “next year in Jerusalem.”

Besides which, I could imagine nothing that would top my memory of that Sunday afternoon when we trailed back to the Jaffa Gate and piled into a horse carriage to save us the uphill walk to Government House. We arrived there at sunset, and the spurious uniform Holmes wore was the only thing that kept us from being arrested on sight. We all reeked of sweat and sewage, bat droppings and paraffin smoke and burnt flesh, and other than Holmes’ khaki shell everything about us was battered, blood spattered, and filthy beyond belief. The appalled military guard took our weapons and escorted us, very nearly at gunpoint, through the layers of army officialdom until we were brought before Allenby himself, who sat among the empty teacups in front of a blazing fire in the elegant formal drawing room, surrounded by the notables who had accompanied him on the peaceful, and peace-building, afternoon at the Dome.

Nothing, no memory of tourist beauties or pilgrim satisfaction, no royal commendation or scrap of ribbon with a medal on it, could supersede the prize I hold to this day, the image I retain of the facial expressions of the bare-headed men in gold-braided uniforms and the head-covered men in gold-trimmed Arab robes, of Governor and Mrs Storrs, the Bentwiches, the Mufti and the Kadi, several members of the American Colony, the head of the Red Cross, two rabbis, Father Demetrius, and sundry other Important Persons (including, to my incredulity, the small, shy, awe-inspiring figure of T. E. Lawrence himself, flown in secretly overnight from the Paris talks for the meeting), when they saw General Edmund Al-lenby, majestically clothed in his most immaculate formal dress uniform, ribbons and medals in obedient line and every thinning hair in place, leap out of his chair to clap the shoulders and pump the hands of two frightful specimens of adult Bedouin Arabs (one in garish flowered kuffiyah and stained red boots, the other scarred and scowling, both men dirty and dangerous and probably not housebroken) and their accompanying army officer (himself no prize, being badly in need of a shave, a bath, some sticking-plaster, and a lorry-load of discipline) before he waved those three unsavoury individuals over to silk-covered chairs among the fastidious dignitaries. But that was not the end of the adventure, for then (and here the expressions of astonishment and dismay turned to sheer, slack-jawed disbelief) “Bull” Allenby—last of the Paladins, conqueror of Jerusalem, hero of the Middle East, and Commander in Chief of all the Holy Land—turned to the fourth noisome intruder, grasped that young Bedouin lad’s black, bloodied, and bandaged hand gently in his own, raised it to his lips, and kissed it.