Ethan Gage Collection # 1 (46 page)

My ferryman protested, but I had coins enough to pay double for his sorry net and keep him rowing. I leapt onto the stone quay a good minute ahead of my complainants, determined to find Astiza and get back out—and vowing never to see Big Ned or Little Tom again.

J
affa rises like a loaf from the Mediterranean shore, empty beaches curving north and south into haze. Its importance as a trading port had been superseded by Acre to the north, where Djezzar the Butcher has his headquarters, but it is still a prosperous agricultural town. There is a steady stream of Jerusalem-bound pilgrims in and oranges, cotton, and soap back out. Its streets are a labyrinth leading to the towers, mosques, synagogues, and churches that form its peak. House additions arch illegally over dim lanes. Donkeys clatter up and down stone steps.

Questionably gotten though my gambling gains might be, they quickly proved invaluable when a street urchin invited me to the upstairs inn of his disappointingly homely sister. The money bought me pita bread, falafel, an orange, and a screened balcony to hide behind while the gang of British marines rushed up one alley and down another, in futile search of my vile carcass. Blown and hot, they finally settled in a Christian quayside inn to discuss my perfidy over bad Palestinian wine. Meanwhile, I snuck about to spend more winnings. I bought a sleeved Bedouin robe of maroon and white stripes, new boots, bloused trousers (so much more comfortable in the heat
than tight European breeches!) sash, vest, two cotton shirts, and cloth for a turban. As Smith had predicted, the result made me look like one more exotic member of a polyglot empire, so long as I took care to stay away from the arrogant, questioning Ottoman janissaries in their red and yellow boots.

I learned there was no coach to the holy city, or even a decent highway. I was too financially prudent—Ben, again—to buy or feed a horse. So I purchased a docile donkey sufficient to get me there, and not much farther. For a meager weapon, I economized with a curbed Arab knife with a handle of camel horn. I have little skill with swords, and I couldn't bear to purchase one of the Muslims' long, clumsy, elaborately decorated muskets. Their inlaid mother-of-pearl is lovely, but I'd seen how indifferently they performed against the French musket during Napoleon's battles in Egypt. And any musket is far inferior to the lovely Pennsylvania rifle I'd sacrificed at Dendara in order to escape with Astiza. If this Jericho was a metallurgist, maybe he could make a replacement!

For guide and bodyguard to Jerusalem I chose a bearded, sharp-bargaining entrepreneur named Mohammad, a moniker seemingly given to half the Muslim men in this town. Between my elementary Arabic and Mohammad's primitive French, learned because Frankish merchants dominated the cotton trade, we could communicate. Still conscious of money, I figured that if we left early enough I could shave a day off his fee. I'd also slip out of town unseen, in case any Royal Marines were still lurking about.

“Now then, Mohammad, I would prefer to depart about midnight. Steal a march on the traffic and enjoy the brisk night air, you see. Early to rise, Ben Franklin said.”

“As you wish, effendi. You are fleeing enemies, perhaps?”

“Of course not. I'm told I'm affable.”

“It must be creditors then.”

“Mohammad, you know I've paid half your extortionate fee in advance. I've money enough.”

“Ah, so it is a woman. A bad wife? I have seen the Christian wives.” He shook his head and shuddered. “Satan couldn't placate them.”

“Just be ready at midnight, will you?”

Despite my sorrow at losing Astiza and my anxiety to learn her fate, I'll confess it crossed my mind to seek an hour or two of female companionship in Jaffa. All varieties of sex from the dullest to the most perverse were advertised with distracting persistence by Arab boys, despite condemnation from any number of religions. I'm a man, not a monk, and it
had
been some days. But Smith's ship remained anchored offshore, and if Big Ned had any persistence it would be just my luck that he'd find me entwined with a trollop, too single-minded to outwit him. So I thought better of it, congratulated myself for my piety, and decided I would wait for relief in Jerusalem, even though copulating in the Holy Land was the kind of deed that would choke my old pastor. The truth is, abstinence and loyalty to Astiza made me feel good. My trials in Egypt had made me determined to work on self-discipline, and here I was, past the first test. “A good conscience is a continual Christmas,” my mentor Franklin liked to say.

Mohammad was an hour late, but finally led me through the dark maze of alleys to the landward gate, its paving stained with dung. A bribe was required to get it opened at night, and I passed through its archway with that curious exhilaration that comes from starting a new adventure. I had, after all, survived eight kinds of hell in Egypt, restored myself to temporary solvency with gambling skills, and was off on a mission that bore no resemblance to real work, despite my fantasies of becoming a ledger clerk. The Book of Thoth, which believers contended could confer anything from scientific wisdom to life everlasting, probably no longer existed…and yet it
might
just be found somewhere, giving my trip the optimism of a treasure hunt. And despite my lustful instincts, I truly longed for Astiza. The opportunity to somehow learn her fate through Smith's confederate in Jerusalem made me impatient.

So off we strode through the gate—and stopped.

“What are you doing?” I asked the suddenly recumbent Mohammad, wondering if he'd had a fainting spell. But no, he lay down with the deliberation of a dog circling a fireplace rug. No one can relax like an Ottoman, their very bones melting.

“Bedouin gangs infest the road to Jerusalem and will rob any unarmed pilgrim, effendi,” my guide said blithely in the dark. “It's not just risky to proceed alone, it is insane. My cousin Abdul is leading a camel caravan there later today, and we will join him for safety. Thus do I and Allah look after our American guest.”

“But what about our early start?”

“You have paid, and we have started.” And with that he went back to sleep.

Well, tarnation. It was the middle of the night, we were fifty yards outside the walls, I had little notion which way to go, and it was entirely possible he was right. Palestine was notorious for being overrun by brigands, feuding warlords, desert raiders, and thieving Bedouins. So I stewed and steamed for three hours, worried the marines might somehow wander this way, until at last Abdul and his snorting camels did indeed congregate at the gate, well before the sun rose. Introductions were made, I was loaned a Turkish pistol, charged five more English shillings both for it and my added escort, and then another shilling for feed for my donkey. I'd been in Palestine less than twenty-four hours and already my purse was growing thin.

Next we brewed some tea.

At last there was a glimmer of light as the stars faded, and we were off through the orange groves. After a mile we passed into fields of cotton and wheat, the road lined with date palms. The thatched farmhouses were dark in early morning, barking dogs signaling their location. Camel bells and creaking saddles marked our own passage. The sky lightened, bird call and rooster crow started up, and as the dawn pinked I could see the rugged hills ahead where so much biblical history had taken place. Israel's trees had been depleted for charcoal and ashes to make soap, yet after the waterless Egyptian desert this coastal plain seemed as fat and pleasant as Pennsylvania Dutch country. Promised Land, indeed.

The Holy Land, I learned from my guide, was nominally a part of Syria, a province of the Ottoman Empire, and its provincial capital of Damascus was under the control of the Sublime Porte in Constantinople. But just as Egypt had really been under the control of
the independent Mamelukes until Bonaparte threw them out, Palestine was really under the control of the Bosnian-born Djezzar, an ex-Mameluke himself who'd ruled from Acre with notorious cruelty for a quarter century, ever since putting down a revolt of his own mercenary troops. Djezzar had strangled several of his wives rather than put up with rumors of infidelity, maimed his closest advisers to remind them who was boss, and drowned generals or captains who displeased him. This ruthlessness, Mohammad opined, was necessary. The province was splintered among too many religious and ethnic groups, each about as comfortable with the other as a Calvinist at a Vatican picnic. The invasion of Egypt had hurled even more refugees into the Holy Land, with Ibrahim Bey's fugitive Mamelukes seeking a toehold. Fresh Ottoman levies were pouring in to anticipate a French invasion, while British gold and promises of naval aid were stirring the pot even thicker. Half the population was spying on the other half, and every clan, sect, and cult was weighing its best chances between Djezzar and the so-far-invincible French. Word of the astonishing Napoleonic victories in Egypt, the latest of which had been suppression of a revolt in Cairo, had shaken the Ottoman Empire.

I knew, too, that Napoleon still hoped to eventually link up with Tippoo Sahib, the Francophile sultan fighting Wellesley and the British in India. The fervently ambitious Bonaparte was organizing a camel corps he hoped could eventually cross the eastern deserts more efficiently than Alexander had done. The thirty-year-old Corsican wanted to do the Greek one better by galloping all the way to southern India to link with Citizen Tippoo and deprive Britain of its richest colony.

According to Smith, I was to make sense of this porridge.

“Palestine sounds like a regular rat's nest of righteousness,” I remarked to Mohammad as we rode along, me three sizes too big for my donkey, which had a spine like a hickory rail. “As many factions here as a New Hampshire town council.”

“All men are holy here,” Mohammad said, “and there is nothing more irritating than a neighbor, equally holy, of a different faith.”

Amen to that. For another man to be convinced he is right is to sug
gest you may be wrong, and there is the root of half the world's bloodshed. The French and British are perfect examples, firing broadsides at each other over who is the most democratic, the French republicans with their bloody guillotine, or the British parliamentarians with their debtor prisons. Back in my Paris days, when all I had to care about was cards, women, and the occasional shipping contract, I can't recall being very upset with anybody, or they with me. Then along came the medallion, the Egyptian campaign, Astiza, Napoleon, Sidney Smith, and here I was, urging my diminutive steed toward the world capital of obstinate disagreement. I wondered for the thousandth time how I'd gotten to such a point.

Because of our delay and the caravan's stately pace, we were three long days getting to Jerusalem, arriving at dusk on the third. It's a tiresome, winding route on roads that would be snubbed by any self-respecting goat—there obviously hadn't been a repair since Pontius Pilate—and in little time the brown, scrub-cloaked hills had acquired the steepness of the Appalachians. We climbed up the valley of the Bab al-Wad into pine and juniper, the grass brown this fall season. The air got noticeably cooler and drier. Up and down and roundabout we went, past braying donkeys, farting, foam-flecked camels, and cart drovers whose oxen butted head-to-head while the two drivers argued. We passed brown-robed friars, cassocked Armenian missionaries, Orthodox Jews with beards and long sidelocks, Syrian merchants, one or two French expatriate cotton traders, and Muslim sects beyond number, turbaned and carrying staffs. Bedouin drove flocks of sheep and goats down hillsides like a spill of water, and village girls swayed interestingly by on the road's fringe, clay jars balanced carefully on their heads. Bright sashes swung to the rock of their hips, and their dark eyes were bright as black stones on the bottom of a river.

What passed for hostels, called
khans
, were considerably less appealing: little more than walled courts that served chiefly as corrals for fleas. We also encountered bands of tough-looking horsemen who on four different occasions demanded a toll for passing. Each time I was expected by my companions to contribute more than what seemed my fair share. These parasites looked like simple robbers to
me, but Mohammad insisted they were local village toughs who kept even worse bandits away, and each village had a right to a portion of this toll, called a
ghafar.
He was probably telling the truth, since being taxed for protection against robbers is something all governments do, isn't it? These armed louts were a cross between private extortionists and the police.

When I wasn't grumbling about the unceasing drain upon my purse, however, Israel had its charm. If Palestine didn't quite carry the atmosphere of antiquity that Egypt had, it still seemed well-trodden, as if we could hear the echoes of long-past Hebrew heroes, Christian saints, and Muslim conquerors. Olive trees had the girth of a wine cask, the wood twisted by countless centuries. Odd bits of historic rubble jutted from the prow of every hill. When we paused for water, the ledges leading down to spring or well were concave and smooth from all the sandals and boots that had gone before us. As in Egypt, there was a clarity to the light, very different from foggy Europe. The air had a dusty taste as well, as if it had been breathed too many times.

It was at one of these
khans
that I was reminded that I hadn't left the world of the medallion entirely behind. A geezer of indeterminate faith and age was given meager sustenance by the innkeeper for doing the odd chore about the place, and he was so meek and unassuming that none of us paid him much mind except to ask for a cup of water or an extra sheepskin to sprawl on. I would have had eyes for a serving wench, but a raggedy man pushing a twig broom did not capture my attention, so when I was undressing in the wee hours and had my golden seraphim momentarily exposed, I backed into him and jumped before I knew he was there. He was staring goggle-eyed at my little angels, wings outstretched, and at first I thought the old beggar had spied something he longed to steal. But instead he stepped back in consternation and fear.

I flipped my linen over the seraphim, the brightness vanishing as if light had gone out.