‘Tell him to surrender!’ I cried to Astiza.
She shouted something and the Mameluke nodded in defeat, his head falling backward against the sand. I’d won my first prisoner! It was an unexpectedly heady feeling, even more satisfying than a particularly lucky hand of whist. By Jove, I was beginning to understand the soldiers’ enthusiasms. Living, after a whiff of death, is a heady thing.
Swiftly disarming the Arab, I borrowed an officer’s pistol to finish the suffering horse. Other horsemen had also broken through, I saw, but each was eventually clubbed and hacked to earth by the French infantry. The exception was one bold chap who cut down two men, took a ball himself, and then jumped his horse back over the chaotic front rank to gallop away, warbling in desperate, wounded triumph. That was the kind of courage these devils had, and it led Napoleon to remark that with a handful of them, he’d whip the world. He would eventually recruit Mameluke survivors into his personal bodyguard.
Still, the escape of that warrior was a rare occurrence, and most of the enemy simply couldn’t break through our hedge of men. Their horses were gutted on the rows of bayonets. Finally the survivors broke in despair, French grapeshot chasing their retreat and cutting still more from their saddles. Despite Egyptian bravery, it had been a massacre. The Europeans had dozens of casualties but the Mamelukes had thousands. The sand was clotted with their dead.
‘Search his clothing,’ Astiza said as we sat on our captive. ‘They carry their wealth into battle, to be lost if they are lost.’
Indeed, my prisoner proved a treasure chest. His turban was cashmere, and I knocked it aside to reveal a skullcap sewn with gold pieces like a yellow helmet. More gold was in a sash around his waist, his pistols were inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gems, and his scimitar had a black Damascus blade and a handle of rhinoceros horn inlaid with gold. In the span of a few seconds I’d become rich, but then so had much of the army. The French would later estimate that each Mameluke could be robbed, on average, of fifteen thousand francs. Men were capering over the dead.
‘My God, who is he?’ I said.
She gripped to turn his hand, looking at his rings, and stopped. ‘A son of Horus,’ she murmured. On his finger was the same symbol she wore as an amulet. It was not an Islamic sign.
He jerked his hand away. ‘That’s not for you,’ he suddenly growled in English.
‘You speak our language?’ I asked, once more startled.
‘I’ve had dealings with European merchants. And I’ve heard of you, the British in a green coat. What is a British doing with the Franks?’
‘I’m American. Antoine is French, Astiza Egyptian and Greek.’
He absorbed this. ‘And I a Mameluke.’ He was on his back, looking up at the sky. ‘So does war and destiny bring us together.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘I am Ashraf el-Din, a lieutenant of Murad Bey.’
‘And what’s a son of Horus?’ I asked Astiza.
‘A follower of the ancients. This man is not the typical Mameluke from the Caucasus. He’s of the old families here, aren’t you?’
‘The Nile runs in my veins. I’m a descendant of the Ptolomies. But I was sworn into Mameluke ranks by Murad Bey himself.’
‘The Ptolomies? You mean Cleopatra’s clan?’ I asked.
‘And the generals of Alexander and Caesar,’ he said proudly.
‘The Mamelukes despise the Egyptians they rule,’ Astiza explained, ‘but occasionally they’ve recruited from the great old families.’
All this seemed a curious coincidence. I’m attacked by the rare Mameluke who swears by a pagan god and speaks English? ‘Can I trust you if we let you up?’
‘I am your prisoner, taken in battle,’ Ashraf said. ‘I submit to your mercy.’
I let him stand. He swayed a moment.
‘Your name is a mouthful,’ I said. ‘I think I shall call you Ash.’
‘I will answer.’
And all this good fortune would evaporate if I couldn’t satisfy my colleagues by making sense of the medallion. Astiza with her Horus pendant had made a useful guess about it, and maybe this devil could too. With the division cheering and everyone’s eyes on the battle, I took the medallion from my shirt and dangled it before him. Talma’s eyes widened.
‘I’m more than a warrior, son of Horus,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to Egypt to understand this. Do you recognise it?’
He blinked in wonder. ‘No. But another might.’
‘Who in Cairo knows what this means? Who knows the old Egyptian gods and your nation’s history?’
He glanced at Astiza. She nodded at him and they jabbered together in Arabic. Finally she turned to me.
‘More gods than you know are walking your shadow, Ethan Gage. You have captured a warrior who claims to know a man I’ve only heard of as rumour, who takes as his name that of one long lost.’
‘Who?’
‘Enoch the wise, also known as Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes the trice-great, scribe of the gods, master of arts and sciences.’
‘My, my.’ Enoch was also the name of the Old Testament father of Methuselah. A long-lived bunch. My Masonic memories also recalled a supposed Book of Enoch, source of ancient wisdom. It had been lost several millennia ago. I peered at my bloody captive. ‘He knows this sage?’
She nodded as our prisoner blinked at my medallion in wonder. ‘Enoch,’ she said, ‘is his brother.’
Suddenly we were advancing. The square reformed into columns and we marched toward the Egyptian fortifications at Imbaba, literally climbing up and over a windrow of the dead. I tied Ash’s hands behind his back with a golden cord taken from his waist and left him bareheaded. His head was shaven except for the standard small tuft at the crown by which it was said that the Prophet Muhammad would, at their last breath, come and seize Mamelukes to raise them to paradise. His skullcap of coins was tucked into my own belt, and Astiza carried his fabulous sword. If I felt guilty about exposing my defeated enemy to the hot sky, the feeling was assuaged by the fact that the atmosphere was becoming more and more obscured by dust. While it was only about 4 p.m., the midsummer day was becoming dark.
As we moved across the wreckage of the battlefield, I got a better view of what had happened. While our square and that of Jean-Louis Raynier had borne the brunt of the Mameluke cavalry attacks, other divisions had moved forward. One broke through enemy lines near the shore of the Nile and began raking the rear of the Egyptian infantry with cannon fire. Two more assaulted Imbaba directly to put an end to Egyptian batteries there. The surviving Mameluke cavalry had been split, some seeking refuge in the fortified town and others pushed westward into the desert with Murad Bey. This latter group was now scattering. The battle was turning into a rout, and the rout to slaughter.
The French had carried the breastworks of Imbaba in their first emotional charge, the Albanian infantry disintegrating. Turning to flee, the Ottoman soldiers were shot down or forced into the Nile. Whenever there was any pause on the part of the French, they were ordered to keep firing by the commander-in-chief himself. Here was Napoleon’s grim fury. At least a thousand Mamelukes were caught up in this panic and were pushed with their infantry into the river, swiftly sinking under the weight of their personal fortunes. Those who tried to stand their ground were killed. This was war at its most primeval. I saw some of the French emerge from the carnage so stained with blood that it looked as if they’d wallowed in a wine vat.
Our general galloped by, eyes shining. ‘Now! Crush them now, or we will pay more dearly later!’
We bypassed Imbaba and marched rapidly the last miles until we were between the pyramids and Cairo, the city a fairyland of minarets and domes on the far side of the Nile. The half of the Mameluke army still safe there followed us on the opposite shore, screaming at our formations as if words would accomplish what bullets had not. We were out of range of each other. Then, when they came abreast of the fleet of feluccas moored at the quays of Cairo, the bravest of the Mamelukes embarked to set off across the river to try to attack us.