‘Because he may have what has long been rumoured!’
I didn’t like this talk at all. I’d just survived a major battle and yet was still in peril? ‘Just who is this Bin Sadr?’ I asked.
‘He was such a relentless grave robber that he became an outcast,’ Enoch said. ‘He had no sense of propriety or respect. Men of learning despised him, so he joined with Europeans investigating the dark arts. He became a mercenary and, by rumour, an assassin and began roaming the world in the company of powerful men. He disappeared for a time. Now he appears again, apparently working for Bonaparte.’
Or for Count Alessandro Silano, I thought.
‘Sounds like a splendidly interesting newspaper story,’ said Talma.
‘He would kill you if you wrote it.’
‘But perhaps too complicated for my readers,’ the journalist amended.
Maybe I should just give the medallion to this Enoch, I thought. After all, like the booty I had seized from Ash, it had cost me nothing. Let him deal with snakes and highwaymen. But no, what if it led to real treasure? Berthollet might think the best things in life are free, but in my experience the people who say that are ones who already have money.
‘So you’re seeking answers?’ Enoch asked.
‘I’m seeking someone to trust. Someone to study it but not steal it.’
‘If your neckpiece is the kind of guidepost I think it is, I don’t want it for myself. It is a burden, not a gift. But perhaps I can help understand it. Can I see it?’
I took it off and let it swing from its chain, everyone looking curiously. Then Enoch gave it the same inspection everyone else had, turning it, splaying the arms, and using a lamp to shine light through its perforations. ‘How did you get this?’
‘I won it at cards from a soldier who claimed it once belonged to Cleopatra. He said it was carried by an alchemist named Cagliostro.’
‘Cagliostro!’
‘You’ve heard of him?’
‘He was in Egypt once.’ Enoch shook his head. ‘He sought secrets no man should learn, entered places no man should enter, and uttered names no man should say.’
‘Why shouldn’t he say a name?’
‘To learn a god’s real name is to know how to call him to do your bidding,’ Ashraf said. ‘To say the name of the dead is to summon them. The old ones believed words, especially written words, were magic.’
The old man looked from me to Astiza. ‘What is your role here, priestess?’
She bowed slightly. ‘I serve the goddess. She brought me to the American just as you have been brought, for her own purposes.’
Priestess? What the devil did that mean?
‘Which maybe is to hurl this necklace into the Nile,’ Enoch said.
‘Indeed. And yet the ancients forged it so that it might be found, did they not, wise Hermes? And it has come to us in this unlikely way. Why? How much is chance, and how much is destiny?’
‘A question I haven’t answered in a life of learning.’ Enoch sighed, perplexed. ‘Now then.’ He studied the medallion anew, pointing to the perforations in the disc. ‘Do you recognise the pattern?’
‘Stars,’ Astiza offered.
‘Yes, but which ones?’
We all shook our heads.
‘But it is easy! It is Draconis, or Draco. The dragon.’ He traced a line along the stars that looked like a writhing snake or a skinny dragon. ‘It is a star constellation, meant to guide the owner of this medallion, I suspect.’
‘Guide him how?’ I asked.
‘Who knows? The stars revolve in the night sky and shift position with the seasons. A constellation means little unless correlated with a calendar. So what good is this?’
We waited for an answer to what we hoped was a rhetorical question.
‘I don’t know,’ Enoch admitted. ‘Still, the ancients were obsessed with time. Some temples were built only to be illuminated on the winter solstice or the autumn equinox. The journey of the sun was like the journey of life. Did this come with no time piece?’
‘No,’ I said. But I was reminded of the calendar that Monge had shown me in the hold of L’Orient, the one captured in the same fortress that had imprisoned Cagliostro. Maybe the old conjurer had carried the pair together. Could it be a clue?
‘Without knowing when it should be used, this medallion may be worthless. Now, this line that bisects the circle, what does that mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘These zigzag lines here are almost certainly the ancient symbol for water.’ I was surprised. I thought maybe they were mountains, but Enoch insisted they were the Egyptian symbol for waves. ‘But this little pyramid of scratches, it baffles me. And these arms… ah, but look here.’ He pointed and we bent closer. There was a notch or indentation halfway down each arm that I’d never really noticed, as if part of the arm had been filed away.
‘Is it a ruler?’ I tried. ‘That notch could mark a measurement.’
‘A possibility,’ Enoch said. ‘But it could also be a place to fit another piece onto this one. Perhaps the reason this medallion is so mysterious, American, is because it’s not yet complete.’
It was Astiza who suggested that I leave the medallion with the old man for study so that he could look for similar ornaments in his books. At first I was dubious. I’d got used to its weight and the security of knowing where it was at all times. Now I was going to give it up to a near-stranger?
‘It’s no good to any of us until we know what it is and what it’s for,’ she reasoned. ‘Wear it and it can be taken from you in the streets of Cairo. Leave it in the cellar of a reclusive scholar and you’ve left it in a vault.’
‘Can I trust him?’
‘What choice do you have? How many answers have you got in your weeks of possession? Give Enoch a day or two to make some progress.’
‘What I am supposed to do in the meantime?’
‘Start asking questions of your own savants. Why would the constellation Draco be on this piece? A solution will come faster if we all work together.’
‘Ethan, it’s too big a risk,’ Talma said, looking at Astiza with distrust.
Indeed, who was this woman who’d been called priestess? Yet my heart told me Talma’s fears were exaggerated, that I’d been lonely in this quest and that now, unbidden, I had some allies to help unravel the mystery. The goddess’s will indeed. ‘No, she’s right,’ I said. ‘We need help or we’re not going to make any progress. But if Enoch runs with my medallion, he’ll have the entire French army after him.’
‘Run? He has invited us to stay in his house with him.’
My bed chamber was the finest I’d enjoyed in years. It was cool and shadowy, the bed high off the floor and surrounded by gauze curtains. The tile was layered with carpets, and the washbasin and ewer were silver and brass. What a contrast to the grime and heat of campaigning! Yet I felt myself being seduced into a story I didn’t understand, and found myself going back over events. Wasn’t it fortuitous that I’d met a Greek-Egyptian woman who spoke English? That the brother of this strange Enoch had charged straight at me after breaking into the middle of the square at the Battle of the Pyramids? That Bonaparte had not just permitted, but approved, this addition to my retinue? It was almost as if the medallion was working magic as a strange attractant, drawing people in.
Certainly it was time to put more questions to my supposed servant. After we’d bathed and rested I found Astiza in the main courtyard, now shadowy and cool. She was sitting by the fountain in expectation of my interrogation. Washed, changed, and combed, her hair shone like obsidian. Her breasts were cupped in folds of linen, their nubs distractingly draped, and her feet were slim and sandalled, her ankles crossed demurely. She wore bracelets, anklets, and an ankh at her throat, and was so breathtaking it was hard to think clearly. Nonetheless, I must.
‘Why did he call you priestess?’ I said without preamble, sitting next to her.
‘Surely you didn’t think my interests are limited to cooking and washing for you,’ she said quietly.
‘I knew you were more than a serving girl. But priestess of what?’