The Rosetta Key (22 page)

“Effendi, you cannot mean to leave these walls!”

I glanced back to where Miriam was sleeping. “I have to.”

He was baffled. “Because of a woman? You have one, right here.”

“Because there’s something out there waiting for rediscovery, and its use or misuse will affect the fate of the world.” I thought. “I want to help the French find it, but then steal it from them. For that I need help, Mohammad. I’ll have to escape through Palestine once I have Astiza and the prize. Someone with local knowledge.”

He blanched. “I barely escaped Jaffa, effendi! To go amid the Frankish devils…”

“Might give you a share of the greatest treasure on earth,” I said blandly.

“Greatest treasure?”

“Not guaranteed, of course.”

He considered the matter. “What share?”

“Well, five percent seems reasonable, don’t you think?”

“For getting you through the Palestinian wilderness? A fifth, at least!”

“I intend to ask other help. Seven percent is the absolute maximum I can afford.”

He bowed. “A tenth, then, is utterly reasonable. Plus a small token if we get the help of my cousins and brothers and uncles. And expenses for horses and camels. Guns, food. Hardly a pittance, if it’s really from the greatest treasure.”

I sighed. “Let’s just see if we can get to Monge without being shot, all right?”

There was, of course, a nagging matter as we began our brisk planning. I’d just slept with the sweetest woman I’d ever met, Miriam, and was planning to take back my seraphim and sneak off to learn the truth about Astiza without leaving the poor woman so much as a word. I felt like a cad, and hadn’t the faintest idea how to explain myself without sounding caddish. It wasn’t that I was disloyal to Miriam, I was simply also loyal to the memory of the first woman, and loved them both in different ways. Astiza had become to me the essence of Egypt, of ancient mystery, a beauty whose quest for ancient knowledge had become my own. We’d met when she helped try to assassinate me, Napoleon himself leading the little charge that captured her. Then she’d saved my life, more than once, and filled my empty character with purpose. We’d not just been lovers, we’d become partners in a quest, and nearly died in the Great Pyramid. It was perfectly reasonable to go looking for Astiza — the ring had ignited memories like a match to a trail of gunpowder — but a trifle awkward to explain to Miriam. Women can be grumpy about this kind of thing. So I’d go find the meaning of Astiza’s ring, rescue her, put the two of them together, and then…

What? Well, as Sidney Smith had promised, it’s splendid how these things work out. “So convenient it is to be a reasonable creature,” Ben Franklin had said, “since it enables one to do everything one has a mind to do anyway.” Old Ben had entertained the ladies himself, while his wife stewed back in Philadelphia.

“Should we wake your woman?” Mohammad asked.

“Oh no.”

W
hen I asked Big Ned to come along, he was as hard to convince as a dog called for a walk by its master. He was one of those men who do nothing by halves; he was either my most implacable enemy or my most faithful servant. He’d become convinced I was a sorcerer of rare power, and was merely biding my time before distributing the wealth of Solomon.

Jericho, in contrast, had long since given up all talk of treasure. He was intrigued when I woke him to explain that the ruby ring had belonged to Astiza, but only because the distraction might keep me away from his sister.

“So you must take care of Miriam while I’m gone,” I told him, trying to salve my conscience by leaving him in charge. He looked so pleased that for a moment I considered whether he’d somehow sent me the ring himself.

But then he blinked and shook his head. “I can’t let you go alone.”

“I won’t be alone. I have Mohammad and Ned.”

“A heathen and a lunkhead? It will be a contest to see which of the three leads you into disaster first. No, you need someone with a level head.”

“Who is Astiza, if she’s alive. Smith and Phelipeaux and the rest of the garrison need you more than I do, Jericho. Defend the city and Miriam. I’ll still cut you in when we’ve found the treasure.” You can’t dangle wealth in a man’s mind and not have him think nostalgically about the prospect, however slim.

He looked at me with new respect. “It’s risky, crossing French lines. Maybe there’s something to you after all, Ethan Gage.”

“Your sister thinks so too.” And before we could quarrel about
that
issue, I set off with Mohammad and Ned. We’d be caught in cross fire if we simply strolled outside the walls, so we took the boat Mohammad had fled Jaffa in. The city was a dark silhouette against the stars, to give the French as few aiming points as possible, while the glow of enemy campfires produced an aurora behind the trenches. Phosphorescence was silver in our wake. We landed on the sandy beach behind the semicircle of French lines and crept to their camp the back way, crossing the ruts and trampled crops of war.

It’s easier than you might guess to walk into an army from its rear, which is the province of the wagon masters, sutlers, camp followers, and malingerers who aren’t used to reaching for a gun. I told my compatriots to wait in a thicket by a tepid stream and marched in with that superior air of a savant, a man who has an opinion on everything and accomplishment in none. “I have a message for Gaspard Monge from his academic colleagues in Cairo,” I told a sentry.

“He’s helping at the hospital.” He pointed. “Visit at your own peril.”

Had we already wounded that many? The eastern sky was beginning to lighten when I found the hospital tents, stitched together like a vast circus canvas. Monge was sleeping on a cot and looked sick himself, a middle-aged scientist-adventurer whom the expedition was turning old. He was pale, despite the sun, and thinner, hollowed out by sickness. I hesitated to wake him.

I glanced about. Soldiers, quietly moaning, lay in parallel rows that receded into the gloom. It seemed too many for the casualties we’d inflicted. I bent to inspect one, who was twitching fitfully, and recoiled at what I saw. There were pustules on his face and, when I lifted the sheet, an ominous swelling at his groin.

Plague.

I stepped back hastily, sweating. There had been rumors it was getting worse, but confirmation brought back historic dread. Disease was the shadow of armies, plague the handmaiden of sieges, and only rarely confined to one side. What if it crossed the walls?

On the other hand, the disease gave Napoleon a tight deadline. He had to win before plague decimated his army. No wonder he had attacked impetuously.

“Ethan, is that you?”

I turned. Monge was sitting up, tousled and weary, blinking awake. Again, his face reminded me of a wise old dog. “Once more I’ve come for your counsel, Gaspard.”

He smiled. “First we thought you dead, then we guessed you were the mad electrician somehow inside the walls of Acre, and now you materialize at my summons. You may indeed be a wizard. Or the most baffled man in either army, never knowing to which side you belong.”

“I was perfectly happy on the other side, Gaspard.”

“Bah. With a despotic pasha, a lunatic Englishman, and a jealous French royalist? I don’t believe it. You’re more rational than you pretend.”

“Phelipeaux said it was Bonaparte who was the jealous one at school, not he.”

“Phelipeaux is on the wrong side of history, as is every man behind those walls. The revolution is remaking man from centuries of superstition and tyranny. Rationalism will always triumph over superstition. Our army promises liberty.”

“With the guillotine, massacre, and plague.”

He frowned at me, disappointed at my intransigence, and then the corners of his mouth twitched. Finally he laughed. “What philosophers we are, at the end of the earth!”

“The center, the Jews would say.”

“Yes. Every army eventually tramps through Palestine, the crossroads of three continents.”

“Gaspard, where did you get this ring?” I held it out, the stone like a bubble of blood in the paleness. “Astiza was wearing it when I last saw her, falling into the Nile.”

“Bonaparte ordered the arrow missive.”

“But why?”

“Well, she’s alive, for one thing.”

My heart took off at full gallop. “And her condition?”

“I haven’t seen her, but I’ve had word. She was in a coma, and under the care of Count Silano for a month. But I’m told she’s recovered better than he has. He entered the water first, I suspect, she on top of him, so he broke the surface. His hip was shattered, and he’ll limp for the rest of his life.”

The beat of my pulse was like drums in my ears. To know, to know…

“Now she cares for him,” Monge went on.

It was like a slap. “You must be joking.”

“Takes care, I mean. She hasn’t given up the peculiar quest you all seem to be on. They were furious to hear you’d been condemned at Jaffa — that was the work of that buffoon Najac; I don’t know why Napoleon wouldn’t listen to
me —
and horrified that you’d been executed. You know something they need. Then there were rumors you were alive, and she sent the ring. We saw your electrical trick. My instructions were to inquire about angels. Do you know what she means?”

Once more I could feel them pressing my skin. “Perhaps. I must see her.”

“She’s not here. She and Silano have gone to Mount Nebo.”

“Mount what?”

“East of Jerusalem, across the Jordan River. There Moses finally spied the Promised Land, and died before he could enter it. Now why are they so interested in Moses, Ethan Gage?” He was watching me carefully.

So Monge, and probably Bonaparte, didn’t know everything. What kind of game were Silano and Astiza playing? “I have no idea,” I lied.

“And what do you know about these angels of yours that makes them as anxious to find you as you are to find them?”

“I have even less idea of that,” I said truthfully.

“You’ve come alone?”

“I have some friends, waiting in a safe place.”

“No place is safe in Palestine. This is a pestilential country. Our friend Conte has devised elaborate wagons to transport more siege artillery from Egypt, since the perfidious British captured our guns at sea, but it’s been a running skirmish to get them here. These people don’t know when they are beaten.”

If Napoleon was expecting big guns, time was short. “What happens at Mount Nebo?”

Monge shrugged. “If you’d confide in your fellow savants, Gage, perhaps we could illuminate your future with more precision. As it is, you keep your own counsel, and end up in trouble. It’s like your goose chase over the Pascal’s triangle that was inscribed on your medallion — say, did you finally get rid of that old toy?”

“Oh yes.” Monge had become convinced my medallion in Egypt had been a modern fraud. Astiza, out of his hearing, had called him a fool. He was not a fool, but burdened by the certainty that comes with too much education. The correlation between schooling and common sense is limited in the extreme. “There’s nothing to confide. I was simply conducting electrical experiments when you sent this ring over our walls.”

“Experiments that killed my men.”

The voice made me jump. It was Bonaparte, moving out of the shadows! He seemed to be everywhere, always. Did he sleep? He looked sallow, restless, and his gray eyes cast their cold hold, as they did toward so many men — like a master to his steed. Again I marveled at his knack of seeming bigger than he is, and how he exuded a sense of seductive energy. “Monge is right, Gage, your proper place is on the side of science and reason — the revolution’s side.”

We were enemies, I had to remind myself. “So are you going to try to shoot me again?”

“That is what my army was trying to do yesterday, was it not?” he said mildly. “And you and your electrical sorcery helped best us.”

“After you tried to shoot or drown me at Jaffa at the advice of that madman Najac. There I was, facing eternity, and when I look up you are reading cheap novels!”

“My novels are not cheap, and I have an interest in literature as I do in science. Did you know I wrote fiction as a youth? I had dreams of being published.”

Despite myself, I was curious. “Love or war?”

“War, of course, and passion. One of my favorites was called
The Masked Prophet.
It was about a Muslim fanatic in the eighth century, fancying himself the Mahdi, who goes to war with the caliph. Prophetic in its setting, no?”

“What happens?

“The hero’s dreams are doomed when he’s blinded in battle, but to keep his affliction secret he covers his face with a mask of brilliant silver. He tells his men he had to cover his face so the Mahdi’s radiance wouldn’t blind those who look upon him. They believe him. But he cannot win, and pride will not allow surrender, so he orders his men to dig a gigantic trench to swallow the enemy charge. Then he invites his followers to a feast and poisons them all. He drags the bodies into the trench, sets fire to the corpses, and runs into the flames himself. Melodramatic, I admit. Adolescent morbidness.”

This was the imagination at work in the Holy Land? “If you don’t mind me asking, what was your point?”

“‘The extremes to which the mania for fame can push a man’ was my closing line.” He smiled.

“Prophetic as well.”

“You think my story was autobiographical? I’m not blind, Ethan Gage. If anything, I’m cursed by seeing too well. And one thing I see is that now you
are
at your proper place, on the side of science you never should have left. You think yourself different than Count Silano, and yet you both want to know — in that way, you are exactly alike. So is the woman you’re both drawn to, all of you curious as cats. I could order you shot, but it’s more delicious to let the three of you solve your mystery, don’t you think?”

I sighed. “At least you seem more genial than when we last met, General.”

“I have a clearer sense of my own direction, which always settles one’s mood. I haven’t given up seducing you, American. I still hope we can remake the world for the better.”

“Better like the slaughter at Jaffa?”

“Moments of ruthlessness can save millions, Gage. I made clear to the Ottomans the risk of resistance so this war can end quickly. If not for fanatics like Smith and Phelipeaux, traitor to his own nation, they would have surrendered and no blood would be shed. Don’t let yourself be trapped in Acre by their folly. Go, learn what you can with Silano and Astiza, and then make a scholar’s decision of what to do with it. I’m a member of the Institute myself, remember. I will abide with science. Won’t I, Gaspard?”