Ethan Gage Collection # 1 (61 page)

“Now!” A volley would roar out, smoke acrid and blinding, bits of wadding fluttering like snow. Horses, screaming and riderless, would go galloping away. Then teeth would tear at cartridges, pouring in precious powder. The ground was white with paper.

By midafternoon my mouth was cotton. Flies buzzed over the dead. Some soldiers fainted from standing in place too long. The Ottomans seemed impotent, and yet we could go nowhere. It would end, I supposed, when we all died of thirst.

“Mohammad, when they overrun us pretend you're dead until it's over. You can emerge as a Muslim. No need to share the fate of addled Europeans.”

“Allah does not tell a man to desert his friends,” he replied grimly.

Then a fresh cry rose up. Men claimed they'd spied the glimmer of bayonets in the valley to the west. “Here comes
le petit caporal
!”

Kléber was disbelieving. “How could Bonaparte get here so soon?” He gestured to me. “Come. Bring your naval spyglass.” My English telescope had proven sharper than standard French army issue.

I followed him out of the comfort of the square and onto the exposed slope of our hill. We passed a ring of bodies of fallen Muslims, some groaning in the grass, their blood a scarlet smear on the green wheat.

The Crusader ruins gave a panoramic view. If anything, the Turks looked even more numerous now that I could see farther over their ranks. Thousands trotted this way and that, gesturing as they argued what to do. Hundreds of their comrades already carpeted the hill
below us. In the distance their tents, supplies, and thousands of servants and camp followers were visible. We were like a blue rock in a sea of red, white, and green. One determined charge and surely they would crack our formation open! Then men would run, and it would be the end.

Except they hadn't yet. “There.” Kléber pointed. “Do you see French bayonets?”

I peered until my eye ached. The high grass billowed in the west, but whether from the passage of infantry or wind I didn't know. The lush earth had swallowed the antlike maneuvering of armies. “It could be a French column, because the high grass is moving. But as you say, how could it come so quickly?”

“We'll die of thirst if we stay here,” Kléber said. “Or men will desert and have their throats cut. I don't know if there are reinforcements that way or not, but we are going to find out.” He trotted back down, with me following.

“Junot, start forming columns. We're going to meet our relievers!”

The men cheered, hoping against hope that they were not simply opening themselves to being overrun. As the square dissolved into two columns, the Turkish cavalry became more animated. Here was a chance to swoop down on our flanks and rear! We could hear them shouting, horns blaring.

“Forward!” We began marching downhill.

Turkish lances waved and danced.

Then there was a cannon shot in the distance. The businesslike crack was as French as a shouted order in a Parisian restaurant, so distinct are calibers of ordnance. We looked and saw a plume of smoke drift off. Men began crying with relief. Help was indeed coming! The French began to cheer, even sing.

The enemy cavalry hesitated, peering west.

The tricolors rippled as we tramped down Djebel-el-Dahy, as if on parade.

Then smoke began rising from the enemy camp. There were shots, faint screams, and the triumphant wail of French bugles. Napoleon's cavalry had broken into the Turkish rear and was sowing panic. Pre
cious supplies began to go up in flames. With a roar, stored ammunition exploded.

“Steady!” Kléber reminded. “Keep ranks!”

“When they come at us, crouch and fire on command!” Junot added.

We saw a small lake by the village of Fula. Our excitement grew. There was an Ottoman regiment in front of it, looking irresolute. Now the officers galloped up and down the columns, giving orders to ready a charge.

“Strike!” With a cheer, the bloodied French swept the rest of the way down the hill and toward the Samaritan infantry that garrisoned the village. There were shots, a plunge of bayonets and clubbed muskets, and then the enemy was running. Meanwhile Turks were fleeing from whatever had appeared in the west as well. Miraculously, in minutes an army of twenty-five thousand was collapsing into panic, fleeing east before a few thousand Frenchmen. Bonaparte's cavalry galloped past us, giving chase toward the valley of the Jordan. Ottomans were hunted and slain all the way to the river.

We plunged into the Fula pond, slaking our thirst, and then stood wet and dripping like drunken men, our cartridge pouches empty. Napoleon galloped up, beaming like the savior he was, his breeches gray from dust.

“I suspected you'd get yourself into trouble, Kléber!” he shouted. “I set out yesterday after reading the reports!” He smiled. “They ran at the crack of a cannon!”

W
ith his instinct for the political, Bonaparte immediately named our near-disaster the Battle of Mount Tabor—a much more imposing and pronounceable peak than modestly sloping Djebel-el-Dahy, though several miles distant—and proclaimed it “one of the most lopsided victories in military history. I want the full details dispatched to Paris as soon as we can.”

I was certain he hadn't been as prompt in relaying news of the massacre at Jaffa.

“A few more divisions and we could march to Damascus,” Kléber said, intoxicated by his improbable victory. Instead of being jealous, he now seemed dazzled by his commander's timely rescue. Bonaparte could work miracles.

“A few more divisions, General, and we could march to Baghdad and Constantinople,” Napoleon amended. “Damn Nelson! If he hadn't destroyed my fleet, I would be master of Asia!”

Kléber nodded. “And if Alexander hadn't died in Babylon, or Caesar been stabbed, or Roland been too far behind…”

“For want of a nail the battle was lost,” I piped up.

“What?”

“Just something my mentor Ben Franklin used to say. It's the little things that trip us up. He believed in attention to detail.”

“Franklin was a wise man,” Napoleon said. “Scrupulous attention to detail is essential to a soldier. And your mentor was a true savant. He'd be anxious to solve ancient mysteries, not for his own sake but for science. Which is why you'll now go on to meet Silano, correct, Monsieur Gage?”

“You seem to have brushed the opposition out of the way, General,” I said amiably. Bonaparte sundered armies the way Moses parted the sea. “Yet we're still at the lip of Asia, thousands of miles from India and your ally there, Tippoo Sahib. You've not even taken Acre. How, with so few men, can you emulate Alexander?”

Bonaparte frowned. He did not like doubt. “The Macedonians were not much more numerous. And Alexander had his own siege, at Tyre.” He looked pensive. “But our world is bigger than theirs, and events progress in France. I have many calls on my attention, and your discoveries may be more important in Paris than here.”

“France?” Kléber asked. “You think of home when we're still fighting in this dung hole?”

“I try to think of everything, always, which is why I thought to bring relief to your expedition before you needed it, Kléber,” Bonaparte said crisply. He clapped the shoulder of the general that loomed over him, great hair like a lion's mane. “Just be assured there's a purpose to what we're doing. Stand your duty and we'll rise together!”

Kléber looked at him suspiciously. “Our duty is here, not France. Isn't it?”

“And this American's duty is to finish, finally, what we brought him here for—to solve the mystery of the pyramids and the ancients with Count Alessandro Silano! Ride hard, Gage, because time weighs on all of us.”

“I'm more anxious to get home than anyone,” I said.

“Then find your book.” He turned and stalked off with his staff
of officers, finger jabbing as he fired off orders. I, meanwhile, was chilled. It was the first I'd heard him mention any book. Clearly, the French knew more than I hoped.

And Astiza had told them more than I wished.

So we were in it now, tools of Silano and his discredited Egyptian Rite of Freemasons. The Templars had found something and been burned at the stake by tormentors hoping to get it. I hoped my own fate would be kinder. I hoped I wasn't leading my comrades to destruction.

We dined on captured Turkish meats and pastries, trying to ignore the stench already rising from the dark battlefield. “Well that's it, then,” Big Ned remarked gloomily. “If a horde like that can't stand against a few frogs, what chance do me mates have in Acre? It will be another bloody massacre, like Jaffa.”

“Except that Acre has the Butcher,” I said. “He won't let anyone run or surrender.”

“And cannon and Phelipeaux and Sidney Smith,” said Mohammad. “Don't worry, sailor. The city will stand until we get back.”

“Just in time for the final sacking.” He looked at me slyly.

I knew what the sailor was thinking. Find the treasure and run. I can't say I entirely disagreed.

 

F
rench cavalry were still pursuing the remnants of the shattered Ottoman army when we followed their trampled trail and dropped into the valley of the Jordan River. We were past the fields now, in dry goat country except for the groves and meadows along the river. Any number of holy men had followed this stream, John the Baptist holding court somewhere along its fabled banks, but we rode like a company of outlaws. Najac's dozen French and Arabs bristled with rifles, muskets, pistols, and swords. There were real outlaws as well, and we saw two different bands slink off like disappointed wolves after spying our ordinance. We also passed drowned and shot
bodies of Ottoman soldiers, bloated like balloons of cloth. We gave them wide berth to avoid the stink and took care to draw water only from springs.

As we rode south, the valley became increasingly arid and the British ships Ned called home seemed ten thousand miles away. One night, he crawled over to whisper.

“Let's ditch these brigands and strike out on our own, guv'nor,” he urged. “That Najac keeps eyeing you like a crow waiting for a corpse's eyeball. You could dress these rascals like choirboys and they'd still frighten Westminster.”

“Aye, they have the morality of a legislature and the hygiene of galley slaves, but we need them to lead us to the woman who wore the ruby ring, remember?” He groaned, so I had to settle him. “Don't think I haven't retained my electrical powers. We'll get what we're coming for, and pay this lot back too.”

“I longs for the day to mash them. I hate frogs. A-rabs too, Mohammad excepted.”

“It's coming, Ned. It's coming.”

We trotted past a track Najac said led to the village of Jericho. I saw nothing of it, and the country was so brown it was hard to believe a city with mighty walls had ever been built here. I thought of the ironmonger and again was guilty for my desertion of Miriam. She deserved better.

The Dead Sea was as its name implies: a salt-encrusted shore and brackish, bright blue water that extended to the horizon. No birds thronged its shallows and no fish broke its surface. The desert air was thick, hazy and muggy, as if we'd advanced in season by two months in two days. I shared Ned's disquiet. This was an odd, dreamlike land, spawning too many prophets and madmen.

“Jerusalem is that way,” Mohammad said, pointing west. Then, swinging his arm in the opposite direction, he said, “Mount Nebo.”

Mountains rose precipitously from the Dead Sea shore as if in a hurry to get away from the brine. The tallest was as much a ridge as a peak, speckled with scrub pine. In rocky ravines, which would run with water only in a rain, pink oleander bloomed.

Najac, who'd said little in our journey, took out a signal mirror and flashed it in the morning sun. We waited, but nothing happened.

“The damn thief has gotten us lost,” Ned muttered.

“Be patient, thickhead,” the Frenchman snapped back. He signaled again.

Then a column of signaling smoke rose from Nebo. “There!” our escort exclaimed. “The seat of Moses!”

We kicked our horses and began to climb.

It was a relief to get out of the Jordan Valley and into less cloying air. We cooled, and the slope began to smell of scrub pine. Bedouin tents were pitched on the mountain's benches, and I could spy black-robed Arab boys tending wandering herds of scrubby goats. We followed a caravan track upward, hooves plopping in the soft dirt, horses snorting when they passed camel dung.

It took four hours, but finally we breasted the top. We could indeed see the Promised Land back west across the Jordan, brown and hazy from here, looking nothing like milk and honey. The Dead Sea was a blue mirror. Ahead, I saw no cave promising to hold treasure. Instead there was a French tent in a hollow, green grass next to it indicating a spring. The low ruins of something, an old church maybe, were nearby. Several men waited for us by a wisp of campfire smoke, the remains of the signal fire. Was Silano among them? But before I could tell I spied a person sitting on a rocky outcrop below the ruined church, away from the men, and guided my horse out of our file and dismounted.

It was a woman, dressed in white, who'd been watching our approach.

 

S
he stood as I approached on foot, her tresses long and black as I remembered, falling from a white scarf to keep off the sun. Fabric and hair blew slightly in the mountain breeze. Her beauty was more tangible than I was prepared for, vivid in the mountaintop light. I'd turned her into a ghost and yet here she was, made flesh. I'd braced for disappointment, having polished her in my memory, but no, what I'd
imagined was still here, the poised litheness, the lips and cheekbones worthy of a Cleopatra, the lustrous dark eyes. Women are flowers, giving grace to the world, and Astiza was a lotus.

She'd aged, however. Not poorly—it's a mistake to think age an insult to women, because her beauty simply had more character—but her eyes had deepened, as if she'd seen or felt things she would prefer she hadn't. I wondered if I'd changed the same way: how long since I'd looked in a glass? I touched my hand to stubble and was conscious, suddenly, of my travel-stained clothes. Her own gown was dust-dyed, and divided for riding. She wore cavalry boots, small enough that perhaps they'd been borrowed from some drummer. She was slim, a dancer's body, but again, we'd all narrowed. Her waist was cinched by a silk rope, holding a small curved dagger and a leather pouch. A water skin was on the rock.

I hesitated, my rehearsals forgotten. It was as if she'd risen from the dead. Finally, “I sent men asking.” It sounded like an apology, awkward and without eloquence—but I
was
embarrassed, having floated away in the balloon when she hadn't. “They told me you'd disappeared.”

“Do you have my ring?”

It was a cool way to begin. I took it out, the ruby bright. She plucked like a bird and slipped it quickly into the pouch at her side, as if it were hot. She still thinks it cursed, I thought.

“I'll use it as an offering,” she said.

“To Isis?”

“To all of Them, including Thoth.”

“I feared you dead. It's like a miracle. You look like a spirit or an angel.”

“Do you have the seraphim?”

Her distance was disconcerting. “I find you through hell and high water and all you want is jewelry?”

“We need them.” She was straining not to show emotion, I realized.

“We?”

“Ethan, I was saved by Alessandro.”

Well, there was a sharp little knife in the ribs. She'd been cling
ing to the balloon's trailing tether, Silano locked around her so she couldn't climb, and finally she had cut the rope with my tomahawk so the airship could float out of musket range. I'd failed to haul her into the basket, or get rid of the nobleman-sorcerer who'd once been her lover. So were they a couple again? If so, I was damned if I could understand why they'd sent for me. If all they wanted were gold trinkets, I could have mailed the things. “You were almost killed by that bastard. The only reason you didn't get away is because he wouldn't let go.”

She looked away over the valley, her tone hollow. “I don't remember our landing, just the fall. The last thing I remember is your face, looking down from the lip of the basket. It was the most awful thing I've had to do in my life. As I cut the tether I saw a hundred emotions in your eyes.”

“Horror, if I recall.”

“Fear, shame, regret, anger, longing, sorrow…and relief.”

I was going to protest but instead I flushed, because it was true.

“When I swung that tomahawk I freed you, Ethan, from the burden thrust upon you: safeguarding the Book of Thoth. I freed you of me. Yet you didn't go to America.”

“You can't cut the rope that binds us with a hatchet, Astiza.”

So she turned back and looked at me again, her gaze fierce, her body trembling, and I knew it was all she could do to keep from flying into my arms. Why was she hesitating? Once again I understood nothing. And I couldn't reach out either, because there was an invisible wall of duty and regret we had to break down first. We couldn't properly begin because we had too much to say.

“When I woke, a month had passed and I was with Silano, nursed in secret. The savants had given him research quarters in Cairo. As he mended his broken hip he continued to read every scrap of ancient writing that could be scoured for him. He's assembled trunks and trunks of books. I even saw him picking through blackened manuscripts that must have come from Enoch's burned library. He hadn't given up, not for an instant. He knew we hadn't emerged from the pyramid with anything useful, and he suspected the book had been
carried elsewhere. So once again I became his ally so I could use
him
to get back to
you
. I hoped you might still be in Egypt, or someplace near.”

“You said you expected me to go to America.”

“I doubted, I admit. I knew you might run. Then we heard rumors about inquiries being made, and my heart quickened. Silano had Bonaparte jail the real messenger and sent his own man in his place to Jerusalem to discourage you. Yet it didn't work. And as the count began to piece together a new plan, and Najac left to spy on you, I realized that fate was conspiring to bring us all together again. We're going to solve this mystery, Ethan, and find the book.”

“Why? Don't you just want to bury it again?”

“It can also be used for good. Ancient Egypt was once a paradise of peace and learning. The world could be that way again.”

“Astiza, you've seen our world. Or has the fall knocked all sense out of you?”

“There's a church on the rise just above us, ruins now. It marks where Moses may once have sat, gazing at his Promised Land, knowing that for all his sacrifice he himself could never enter it. Your culture's old god was a cruel one. The building itself dates to Byzantine times. We've found a tomb of a Templar knight, as Silano's studies led him to expect, and in that tomb bones. Hidden in one femur was a medieval map.”