We stood outside a shop distinguished from all the others in the Holy Land by just two features, from what I could see. The first was its size: most of the shops that catered to tourists were fairly small, squeezed into tiny storefronts along tinier streets -- there was no end of such establishments back in the Old City -- but this souvenir shop was housed in an uncommonly large, unexpectedly modern-looking building. Though built of the local stone like every other edifice in Israel, its architecture was of a more contemporary style. That is to say, it actually looked like it had been built, or at least refurbished, more recently than the Crusader years.
The second distinguishing factor was the business's name. The sign over the entrance read "Shepherd Hill Gifts and Antiquities", and that marked this place as one of M'allim Rouddim's three establishments. At least, his three establishments open to the general public.
Our job was to find out the details on his less public business venture: the marketing of selected components of our missing shield.
We nodded to Cheriss as she took her leave of us, moving down the street to keep an eye on things outside the store. Then Thayer gripped my hand in reassurance, and in we went.
"It's very nice," Thayer was saying, "but for a brass coffeepot of this quality, don't you think you're charging rather a high price?"
The store clerk brightened to the challenge. "Ah, but sir, consider the craftsmanship. The delicacy of the engravings, yes? You will not find a finer pot anywhere in Israel."
"What's to stop me looking outside Israel, then?" Thayer sniffed. "Three hundred shekels is simply unthinkable. I would give you one hundred, not an agorot more."
Moving away to take a closer look at an olive wood display, I smiled as the clerk countered with a pained offer of two-seventy-five. Thayer was proving to be an expert haggler, and the young Arab men running the store were delighted with him. Must be the pirate ancestors, I decided. That clerk doesn't know what he's up against.
I went on browsing the olive wood displays while Thayer bargained for his coffeepot. All the usual items covered the tables. Communion cups the size of my thumb. Magnets. Ornaments. Olive wood jewelry, even -- wooden bead necklaces, smoothly polished wooden bracelets. Bibles in every language, bound with covers of the rich brown wood. And dioramas. Everywhere dioramas, the intricate cut-out scenes, the Last Supper, the Jerusalem skyline, Jesus baptized by John, and most of all, the Nativities. The crèche is Bethlehem's claim to fame, after all, and I saw it everywhere. Christ-Childs of every shape and size, with Marys and Josephs in proportion.
"Haven't you anything smaller?" Thayer was saying. "We'd practically have to buy a camel of our own to get a rug that size home from here. No, pardon me, I did not say I wished to buy a camel. I said I did not wish to buy this particular rug."
An olive-wood angel caught my eye and I picked it up, handling it delicately though I knew these figurines weren't really all that fragile -- presuming, that is, that they were as well made as the clerks had assured me they were. Barely larger than my hand, it was a lovely creation, fit together from dozens of tiny pieces of the wood to make one singular and wholly beautiful figure. Outstretched wooden wings seemed poised to fly the angel right out of my hand.
Before it could thus escape, I turned it over for a look at the underside. And there it was, stamped unmistakably: the name of "Bethlehem," and the signature of the artist.
I recognized his handwriting, though his name meant nothing to me. Except to remind me of where I had seen that name before. In Paris, too, his goods were sold.
Maybe it didn't mean anything, after all: the artist might well market his carvings in many a Holy Land shop, one of which would be owned by the brother who shipped a portion of them to his Parisian brother's curiosity shop. But if my hunch should prove right, and Rouddim was the Bethlehem brother?
"Really," Thayer was saying, closer to my ear now, "I must protest. Truly, it is a marvelous work of art. But not that marvelous. Five hundred sheqels, that is as high as I will go."
"But sir," the clerk argued, "it is worth so much more!"
"Fourteen hundred sheqels it is not worth!" Thayer snorted. "Nearly fifty Dars. Preposterous!"
This, I gathered, was my cue. I turned to see what he was bargaining for now.
I had to get my breath back before I could speak my part.
They were still haggling when I stepped to Thayer's side, finally managing to get out, "It -- it's gorgeous. . . ." So it was: An olive wood diorama, apparently a wall display -- a painting in wood -- and an exact copy -- in olive wood, yes -- of da Vinci's Last Supper. It was the most remarkable thing ever to grow on a tree, and I fancied even Eve would have said so if she'd seen it beside her ill-gotten fruit. But at the moment, all I could say was "gorgeous."
"Quite," Thayer said briefly, dropping an arm around my waist, just to make sure no one mistook me for some random tourist muscling in on his find: I had come in with him, I was leaving with him, and if I left with the Last Supper, he was leaving with it too. "But the price tag isn't so lovely. Come along, love, let's--"
"Perhaps," the clerk interposed in a hurry, "I could let it go for only thirteen hundred. . . . For the lady's sake, sir. She seems to favor it." He smiled ingratiatingly with a little bow. We smiled secretly to each other before turning back to meet the clerk's smile of desperation.
"Still quite unacceptable," Thayer insisted. I quietly put on my best begging face, raising my eyebrows and blinking a slow gesture of entreaty toward my fiancé.
"No, no, sir; a bargain; a steal, I assure you!" The clerk put on his most conflicted expression for our benefit. "The fact is, sir -- I should not even offer so low a price as thirteen hundred. If the owner knew I had parted with such a masterpiece, for such a sum, he --"
Bingo.
"Well, then," Thayer smiled. "Let us speak to the owner. Perhaps he'll be at greater liberty to sell it for a decently reasonable figure, hm?"
The clerk looked first confused, then nervous. "The owner?"
"Him indeed. Is he about?" Thayer glanced around the store as if expecting to find the proprietor lurking over one of his clerks' shoulders, waiting to pounce on the next man to sell some priceless souvenir for too little. I kept my eyes -- quietly -- on our own clerk.
"Ah, no, sir, I'm afraid not," the poor little man stalled. "He . . . er . . . is not always in town, you see. His businesses in other locations, you see . . ."
Thayer let his annoyance show in an aristocratic frown. "He'll be back ere long, I presume? We are in town a few days ourselves. For a purchase of this calibre we would not object to awaiting his convenience."
The clerk shifted his eyes -- hiding something? -- and answered, "I cannot say when exactly he will return. Business sometimes keeps him away for extended periods, but I -- as you are so very interested in this piece -- truly, you are quite interested? -- if you would be so good as to come back tomorrow, well, I shall try to contact him. It may be that we can reach an arrangement."
"Would you?" I batted my eyelids in hopeful gratitude. "That would be wonderful. It is such an amazing piece."
"I will do all in my power," he bowed again, a gesture that was beginning to reach the annoying stage, "to reach terms by which it may come into your possession, good madam."
I said I appreciated that, trying not to break out in giggles when I felt Thayer at my side restraining a chuckle himself, and a few minutes later we were outside Rouddim's shop once more, still without having quite tracked the man himself down, but seeming one step closer to that goal. And then I had to laugh, throwing my arms around Thayer's neck and kissing him.
"You were magnificent!" I praised him.
"Do you think so?" he grinned. "So were you -- grace, I thought I was going to have to fight that fellow for you, for a while there. He was quite taken with you."
"Fine, but I'm just plain taken."
And it was in the middle of the subsequent kiss that another of the shop clerks stepped out of the entrance below the Shepherd Hill sign to deposit a rather large pile of packages at our feet, retreating into the shop again with a smug smile. "Um . . . what's this?" I asked Thayer.
"Oh. Those would be my purchases," he answered matter-of-factly.
"All this?" I raised an eyebrow. I saw the infamous coffeepot glittering in one bag, and a good-sized Oriental rug poking out of another, but those were only the beginning. "You were getting into that haggling role a bit more than I realized, I take it."
He grinned, releasing me to pick up the bags and boxes. "It was rather a pleasure. I don't often get to argue over what I pay for things, you know -- doesn't look right for royalty to pinch Dels." To my quizzical expression, he explained: "Seems strange, I suppose, especially for a royal line founded by pirates, hm?" I smiled in agreement and he went on. "But it's a sort of unwritten law of sovereignty and nobility. Nothing to do with pirates -- everything to do with what makes a king, a lord, a prince, a president, 'first among equals.' Generosity is the river whereon sovereignty sails. Without largesse, a king is but a man. When he gives with no thought of the cost, he is a lord."
I was pondering this when Cheriss joined us, unobtrusively falling into step at my side. "How did it go?" she asked quietly.
"He wasn't in," I answered.
"You have the phone tapped?" Thayer asked. Cheriss nodded in confirmation. "We'd best listen in tonight, then -- they're to put a call through to the owner to clear a rather large purchase we've proposed to make."
"We should probably scan the comm frequencies too," I suggested. "If our man had access to galaxy-level tech before, chances are he retained some of it even when he split from the group Achmed's representing."
"Done," Cheriss said. "I've had the unit recording since we left the speeder, actually. Shall we head back now and see what we've got?"
"Okay," I nodded, "but first -- I have one more stop we should try. You have the datapad?" Cheriss pulled it from a pocket. "While the cat's away," I said, pulling up the dossier file on M'allim Rouddim and scrolling down to the address given as his Bethlehem residence, "shall we mice go have a look at his home?"