A man nearly opposite me leaned over and said in fairly good French, with the manner of a doctor assuring his patient that the worst is yet to come:
"It has been decided that you are to be detained here in the castle until there is no danger of your carrying away important news."
While I was turning that over in my mind Anazeh came back, grinning. Something outside had tickled him immensely, but he would not say anything. He sat down beside me and chuckled into his beard; and when his neighbour on the right asked what had amused him he turned the question into a bawdy joke.
"Did ben Hamza get away?" I whispered.
He only nodded. He continued chuckling until the man on duty by the door announced to the "assembled lords and princes" that the muezzin summoned them to prayer. All except three Christian sheikhs trooped up the narrow stairway in Ali Shah al Khassib's wake, Anazeh going last with a half-serious joke about not caring to be stabbed in the back.
I expected the three non-Moslems would take advantage of the opportunity to ask me a string of questions. But they took exactly the opposite view of the situation. They avoided me, withdrawing into a corner by themselves. I suppose they thought that to be seen talking to me was more risky than the amusement merited.
So I went up to the ramparts, too, to watch the folk at prayer, minded to keep out of sight, for they don't like being regarded as a curious spectacle; and on the way up I did something that may have had a lot to do with our getting away alive, although I did not give much thought to it and could hardly have explained my motive at the time.
The door at the foot of the stairs opened inward. It was almost exactly the same width as the stairway, so that when it stood wide open you could not have put your hand between its edge and the stairway wall. Lying on the floor of the hall within a few feet of the nearest corner was a length of good sound olive-wood, about three inches in thickness, roughly squared and not particularly squared. Having stepped on it accidentally, I picked it up, and discovered more by accident than intention that it was longer than the width of the stairway. Then I noticed a notch in the stairway wall. Behind the opened door there was a deeper notch in the opposite wall. There was no lock on the door, no bolt. That length of wood had been cut to fit horizontally from notch to notch across the passage. Once that beam was fitted in its place, whoever wished to reach the roof would have to burn or batter down the door. I moved the door and placed the length of olive-wood on end behind it.
I found the view from the ramparts much more interesting than the soul-saving formalities of eighty or so potential cut-throats. While they prayed I stood watching the shadows deepen in the Jordan Valley, as no doubt Joshua once watched them from somewhere near that same spot before he marshalled his invading host. You could understand why people who had wandered forty years in a stark and howling wilderness should yearn for those coloured, fertile acres between the Jordan and the sea: why they should be willing to fight for them, die for them, do anything rather than turn back.
By the time we had filed down—Anazeh last again—the servants had nearly finished spreading a banquet. What looked like bed- sheets had been laid along the strip of carpet, and, the whole length of them was piled with all imaginable things to eat, from cakes and fruit to whole sheep roasted and seethed in camel's milk and honey. There were no less than six sheep placed at intervals along the "table," with mountains of rice, scow-loads of apricots cooked in various ways, and a good sized flock of chickens spitted and smeared with peppery sauce. At a guess, I should say there were several pounds of meat, about two chickens, and a peck of rice per man, with apricots and raisins added; but they faced the prospect like heroes.