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‘Or at least benefit from compounding interest,’ Monge joked.

I stirred. Is this why we were really invading Egypt – not just because it could become a colony but because it was a source of everlasting life? Is this why so many were curious about my medallion?

‘It’s all myth and allegory,’ Berthollet scoffed. ‘What people doesn’t fear death, and dream of surmounting it? And yet they are all, including the Egyptians, dead.’

General Desaix peeked from his slumbers. ‘Christians believe in a different kind of everlasting life,’ he pointed out mildly.

‘But while Christians pray for it, the Egyptians actually packed for it,’ de Venture countered. ‘Like other early cultures, they put into their tombs what they’d need for the next journey. Nor did they necessarily pack light, and there lies opportunity. The tombs may be stuffed with treasures. “Please send us gold,” rival kings wrote the pharaohs, “because gold to you is more plentiful than dirt.”’

‘That’s the faith for me,’ General Dumas growled. ‘Faith you can grasp.’

‘Maybe they survived in another way, as gypsies,’ I spoke up.

‘What?’

‘Gypsies. Gyptians. They claim descent from the priests of Egypt.’

‘Or they are Saint-Germain or Cagliostro,’ added Talma. ‘Those men claimed to have lived for millennia, to have walked with Jesus and Cleopatra. Perhaps it was true.’

Berthollet scoffed. ‘What’s true is that Cagliostro is so dead that soldiers dug up his grave in a papal prison and toasted him by drinking wine out of his skull.’

‘If it was really his skull,’ Talma said stubbornly.

‘And the Egyptian Rite claims to be on the path to rediscovering these powers and miracles, is this not so?’ Napoleon asked.

‘It is the Egyptian Rite that seeks to corrupt the principles of Freemasonry,’ Talma responded. ‘Instead of pledging themselves to morality and the Great Architect, they look for dark power in the occult. Cagliostro invented a perversion of Freemasonry that admits women for sexual rites. They would use ancient powers for themselves, instead of for the good of mankind. It’s a shame they’ve become a fashion in Paris, and seduced men such as Count Silano. All true Freemasons repudiate them.’

Napoleon smiled. ‘So you and your American friend must find the secrets first!’

Talma nodded. ‘And put them to our uses, not theirs.’

I was reminded of Stefan the Gypsy’s legend that the Egyptians might be waiting for moral and scientific advancement before yielding their secrets. And here we came, a thousand cannon jutting from our hulls.

The conquest of the Mediterranean isle of Malta took one day, three French lives, and – before we arrived – four months of spying, negotiation, and bribery. The three hundred or so Knights of Malta were a medieval anachronism, half of them French, and more interested in pensions than dying for glory. After the formalities of brief resistance, they kissed their conqueror’s hands. Our geologist Dolomieu, who had been drummed out of the Knights in disgrace after his young duel, found himself welcomed back as a prodigal son who could help in the surrender negotiations. Malta was ceded to France, the grand master was pensioned to a principality in Germany, and Bonaparte set himself to looting the island’s treasures as thoroughly as he had sacked Italy.

He left to the Knights a splinter of the True Cross and a withered hand of John the Baptist. He kept for France five million francs of gold, a million of silver plate, and another million in the gem-encrusted treasures of St John. Most of this loot was transferred to the hold of L’Orient. Napoleon also abolished slavery and ordered all Maltese men to wear the tricolour cockade. The hospital and post office were reorganised, sixty boys from wealthy families were sent to be educated in Paris, a new school system was set up, and five thousand men were left to garrison the island. It was a preview of the combination of pillage and reform that he hoped to accomplish in Egypt.

It was at Malta that Talma came to me excited with his latest discovery. ‘Cagliostro was here!’ he exclaimed.

‘Where?’

‘This island! The Knights told me he visited a quarter-century ago, in the company of his Greek mentor Alhotas. Here he met Kolmer! These wise men conferred with the grand master and examined what the Knights Templar had brought from Jerusalem.’

‘So?’

‘This could be where he discovered the medallion, deep in the treasures of the Knights of Malta! Don’t you see, Ethan? It’s as if we’re following in its footsteps. Destiny is at work.’

Again I was reminded of Stefan’s tales of Caesar and Cleopatra, of crusaders and kings, and a quest that had consumed men through time. ‘Do any of these Knights remember the piece or know what it means?’

‘No. But we’re on the right path. Can I see it again?’

‘I’ve hidden it for safekeeping because it causes trouble when it’s out.’ I trusted Talma, and yet had become reluctant to show the medallion after Stefan’s dire tales of what happened to men through history who grasped it. The savants knew it existed, but I’d deflected requests to share it for examination.

‘But how are we to solve the secret when you keep it hidden?’

‘Let’s just get it to Egypt first.’

He looked disappointed.

After a little more than a week our armada set sail again, lumbering eastward toward Alexandria. Rumours flew that the British were still hunting us, but we saw no sign of them. Later we would learn that Nelson’s squadron had passed our armada in the dark, neither side spying the other.

It was on one of these evenings, the soldiers gambling for each other’s shoes to relieve the tedium of the passage, that Berthollet invited me to follow him to L’Orient ’s deepest decks. ‘It is time, Monsieur Gage, for us scholars to start earning our keep.’

We descended into murk, lanterns giving feeble light, men in hammocks swaying hip to hip like moths in cocoons, coughing and snoring and, in the case of the youngest and most homesick, weeping the night away. The ship’s timbers creaked. The sea hissed as it rushed past, water dripping from caulked hull seams as slowly as syrup. Marines guarded the magazine and treasure room with bayonets that gleamed like shards of ice. We stooped and entered Aladdin’s cave, the treasure hold. The mathematician Monge was waiting for us, seated on a brass-bound chest. Also present was another handsome officer who had listened to most of the philosophical discussions in silence, a young geographer and mapmaker named Edme Francois Jomard. It was Jomard who would become my guide to the mysteries of the pyramids. His dark eyes shone with a bright intelligence, and he had brought on board a trunk full of books by ancient authors.

My curiosity at his presence was distracted by what the cabin contained. Here was the treasure of Malta and much of the payroll of the French army. Boxes brimmed with coin like combs of honey. Sacks held centuries of jewelled religious relics. Bullion was stacked like logwood. A fistful could remake a man’s life.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ the chemist said.

‘ Mon dieu! If I were Bonaparte, I’d retire today.’

‘He doesn’t want money, he wants power,’ Monge said.

‘Well, he wants money, too,’ Berthollet amended. ‘He’s become one of the richest officers in the army. His wife and relatives spend it faster than he can steal it. He and his brothers make quite the Corsican clan.’

‘And what does he want of us?’ I asked.

‘Knowledge. Understanding. Decipherment. Right, Jomard?’

‘The general is particularly interested in mathematics,’ the young officer said.

‘Mathematics?’

‘Mathematics is the key to war,’ Jomard said. ‘Given proper training, courage does not vary much from nation to nation. What wins is superior numbers and firepower at the point of attack. That requires not just men, but supply, roads, transport animals, fodder, and gunpowder. You need precise amounts, moving in precise miles, to precise places. Napoleon has said that above all, he wants officers who can count.’