The Rosetta Key (4 page)

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 suggest 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.

“The compass,” he whispered in Arabic.

“What?”

“Satan’s fingers. Allah’s mercy be upon you.”

He was clearly as addled as a loon. Still, his look of dismay made me uneasy. “They’re personal relics. Not a word of this, now.”

“My imam whispered of these. From the den.”

“The den?” They’d come from under the Great Pyramid.

“Apophis.” And with that, he turned and fled.

Well, I hadn’t been so flabbergasted since the danged medallion had actually worked. Apophis! That was the name of a snake god, or demon, that Astiza had claimed was down in the bowels of Egypt. I didn’t take her seriously — I am a Franklin man, after all, a man of reason, of the West — but
something
had been down in a smoky pit I’d had no desire to get closer to, and I thought I’d left it and its name long behind in Egypt…. Yet here it had been spoken again! By the snout of Anubis, I’d had quite enough of stray gods and goddesses, mucking up my life like unwanted relatives tracking the floor with mud on their boots. Now a senescent handyman had brought the name up again. Surely it made no sense, but the coincidence was unnerving.

I hurriedly redressed, secreting the seraphim again in my clothing, and hurried outside my cubicle to seek the old man out and ask him what the name meant.

But he was nowhere to be found. The next morning, the innkeeper said the servant had apparently packed his meager belongings and fled.

A
nd then at last we came to fabled Jerusalem. I’ll admit it was a striking sight. The city is perched on a hill set amid hills, and on three sides the ground falls steeply to narrow valleys. It is on the fourth side, the north, from which invaders always come. Olives, vineyards, and orchards clothe the hillsides, and gardens provide clusters of green within. Formidable walls two miles long, built by a Muslim sultan called Suleiman the Magnificent, entirely enclose the city’s inhabitants. Fewer than nine thousand people lived there when I arrived, subsisting economically on pilgrims and a desultory pottery and soap industry. I’d learn soon enough that about four thousand were Muslims, three thousand Christians, and two thousand Jews.

What picked the place out were its buildings. The primary Muslim mosque, the Dome of the Rock, has a golden cupola that glows like a lighthouse in the setting sun. Closer to where we stood, the Jaffa Gate was the old military citadel, its crenellated ramparts topped by a round tower like a lighthouse. Stones as colossal as the ones I’d seen in Egypt made up the citadel’s base. I’d find similar rocks at the Temple Mount, the old Jewish temple plateau that now served as the base of the city’s great mosque. Apparently, Jerusalem’s foundations had been laid by Titans.

The skyline was punctuated everywhere by domes, minarets, and church towers bequeathed by this crusader or that conqueror, each trying to leave a holy building to make up for his own national brand of slaughter. The effect was as competitive as rival vegetable stalls at a Saturday market, Christian bells tolling as muzzeins wailed and Jews chanted their prayers. Vines, flowers, and shrubs erupted from the ill-maintained wall, and palms marked squares and gardens. Outside, ranks of olive trees marched down to twisting, rocky valleys that were smoky from burning garbage. From this terrestrial hell-dump one lifted the eye to heaven, birds wheeling in front of celestial cloud palaces, everything sharp and detailed. Jerusalem, like Jaffa, was the color of honey in the low sun, its limestone fermenting in the yellow rays.

“Most men come here looking for something,” Mohammad remarked as we gazed across the Citadel Valley toward the ancient capital. “What do you seek, my friend?”

“Wisdom,” I said, which was true enough. That’s what the Book of Thoth was supposed to contain, and by Franklin’s spectacles I could use some. “And news of one I love, I hope.”

“Ah. Many men search their entire lives without finding wisdom
or
love, so it is well you come here, where prayers for both might be answered.”

“Let’s hope so.” I knew that Jerusalem, precisely because it was reputed to be so holy, had been attacked, burned, sacked, and pillaged more times than any place on earth. “I’ll pay you now and seek out the man I’m to stay with.” I tried not to jingle my purse too much as I counted out the rest of his fee.

He took his pay eagerly and then reacted with practiced shock. “Not a gift for sharing my expertise about the Holy Land? No recompense for the safety or your arrival? No affirmation of this glorious view?”

“I suppose you want credit for the weather, as well.”

He looked hurt. “I have tried to be your servant, effendi.”

So, twisting in my saddle so he couldn’t see how little was left, I gave him a tip I could ill afford. He bowed and gave effusive thanks.

“Allah smiles on your generosity!”

I wasn’t able to keep the grumpiness from my “Godspeed.”

“And peace be upon you!”

A blessing that had no power, it turned out.

J
erusalem was half ruin, I saw when I rode down the dirt track and crossed a wooden bridge to the black iron of the Jaffa Gate, and through it to a market beyond. A
subashi
, or police officer, checked me for weapons — they were not allowed in Ottoman cities — but allowed me to keep my poor dagger. “I thought Franks carried something better,” he muttered, taking me for European despite my clothing.

“I’m a simple pilgrim,” I told him.

His look was skeptical. “See that you remain one.”

Then I sold my donkey for what I’d paid for it — a few coins back, at least! — and got my bearings.

The gate had a steady stream of traffic. Merchants met caravans, and pilgrims of a dozen sects shouted thanksgiving as they entered the sacred precincts. But Ottoman authority had been in decline for two centuries, and powerless governors, raiding Bedouin, extortionate tax collection, and religious rivalry had left the town’s prosperity as stunted as cornstalks on a causeway. Market stalls lined major streets, but their faded awnings and half-empty shelves only emphasized the historical gloom. Jerusalem was somnolent, birds having occupied its towers.

My guide Mohammad had explained the city was divided into quarters for Muslims, Christians, Armenians, and Jews. I followed twisting lanes as best I could for the northwest quadrant, built around the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Franciscan headquarters. The route was depopulated enough that chickens skittered out of my way. Half the houses appeared abandoned. The inhabited homes, built of ancient stone with haphazard wooden sheds and terraces jutting like boils, sagged liked the skin of grandmothers. As in Egypt, any fantasies of an opulent East were disappointed.

Smith’s vague directions and my own inquiries took me to a two-story limestone house with a solid wooden wagon gate topped by a horseshoe, its façade otherwise featureless in the Arab fashion. There was a smaller wooden door to one side, and I could smell the charcoal from Jericho’s smithy. I pounded on the small entry door, waited, and pounded again, until a small peephole opened. I was surprised when a feminine eye looked out: I’d become accustomed in Cairo to bulky Muslim doormen and sequestered wives. Moreover, her pupils were pale gray, of a translucence unusual in the East.

On Smith’s instruction, I started in English. “I’m Ethan Gage, with a letter of introduction from a British captain to a man they call Jericho. I’m here…”

The eyehole shut. I stood, wondering after some minutes whether I even had the right house, when finally the door swung open as if of its own accord and I stepped cautiously through. I was in the work yard of an ironmonger, all right, its pavers stained gray with soot. Ahead I could see the glow of a forge, in a ground-story shed with walls hung with tools. The left of the courtyard was a sales shop stocked with finished implements, and to the right was storage for metal and charcoal. Slightly overhanging these three wings were the living apartments above, reached by an unpainted wooden stair and fronted by a balcony, faded roses cascading from iron pots. A few petals had fallen to the ashes below.

The gate closed behind me, and I realized the woman had been hidden by it. She ghosted by without speaking, her eyes inspecting me with a sidewise glance and an intense curiosity that surprised me. It’s true I’m a handsome rogue, but was I really that interesting? Her dress fell from neck to ankles, her head was covered by a scarf in the custom of all faiths here in Palestine, and she modestly averted her face, but I saw enough to make a key judgment. She was pretty.

Her face had the rounded beauty of a Renaissance painting, her complexion pale for this part of the world, with an eggshell smoothness. Her lips were full, and when I caught her gaze she looked down demurely. Her nose had that slight Mediterranean arch, that subtle curve of the south that I find seductive. Her hair was hidden except for a few escaping strands that hinted at a surprisingly fair coloring. Her figure was trim enough, but it was hard to tell more than that. Then she disappeared through a doorway.