Bright and blunt, this blacksmith. “Sidney Smith thinks he and I can help each other. I got caught up with Bonaparte in Egypt. Now the French are planning to come this way.”
“And Smith wants to know what the Christians and the Jews and the Druze and the Matuwelli might do.”
“Exactly. He’s trying to help Djezzar mount resistance to the French.”
“With people who hate Djezzar, a tyrant who keeps his slipper on their neck. More than a few will regard the French as liberators.”
“If that’s the message, I’ll take it back. But I also need help for my own cause. I met a woman in Egypt who disappeared. Fell into the Nile, actually. I want to learn if she’s dead or alive and, if alive, how to rescue her. I’m told you may have contacts in Egypt.”
“A woman? Close to you?” He seemed reassured by my interest in someone other than his sister. “That kind of inquiry is more costly than listening to political gossip in Jerusalem.”
“How much more costly?”
He looked me up and down. “More, I suspect, than you can afford to pay.”
“So you won’t help me?”
“It’s my contacts in Egypt who won’t help you, not without coin.” I judged he wasn’t trying to cheat me, just tell me the truth. I needed a partner if I was going to get anywhere in my quest, and who better than this blue-eyed blacksmith? So I gave him a hint of what else I was after. “Maybe you can contribute. What if I promised, in return, a share of the greatest treasure on earth?” He finally laughed. “Greatest treasure? Which is?”
“A secret. But it could make a man a king.”
“Ah. And where might this treasure be?” 3 4
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“Right under our noses in Jerusalem, I hope.”
“Do you know how many fools have hoped to find treasure in Jerusalem?”
“It’s not the fools who will find it.”
“You want me to spend my money looking for your woman?”
“I want you to invest in your future.”
He licked his lips. “Smith found a bold, impudent, rascal, didn’t he?”
“And you are a judge of character!” He might be skeptical, but he was also curious. Paying for word of Astiza would not really cost him much, I bet. And he had the same avarice as all of us: Everyone dreams of buried treasure.
“I could see if it’s affordable.”
I’d hooked him. “There’s another thing I need as well. A good rifle.”
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Jericho lived simply, despite some prosperity from his ironmonger trade. Because he was a Christian his house had more furnishings than a Muslim abode: Muhammadans rely on cushions that can be moved so the women can be sequestered when a male guest arrives.
The habit of the Bedouin tent has never been left behind. We Christians, in contrast, are accustomed to having our heads closer to the warm ceiling than the cooler floor, and so sit high and formal, in stationary clutter. Jericho had a table, chairs, and armoires instead of Islamic cushions and chests. The carpentry was plain, however, with a Puritan simplicity. The plank floors were bare of carpets, and any decoration on the plaster walls was limited to the odd crucifix or pic-ture of a saint: clean as a convent, and just as disconcerting. Miriam, the sister, kept it spotless. Food was plentiful, but basic: bread, olives, wine, and what greens the woman could buy each day in the market stalls. Occasionally she’d bring meat for her muscled, hungry brother, but it was relatively rare and expensive. Winter was coming, but there was no provision for heat except that given off by the charcoal of the cooking hearth and the forge below. There was no glass in the screened windows, so the coldest were blocked up by bags of sawdust t h e
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for the season, adding to the autumn gloom. The basin water was cold, winds penetrating, candles and oil precious, and we slept and rose at farmer hours. For a Parisian layabout like me, Palestine was a shock.
It was the forging of my new rifle that first bonded us. Jericho was steady, skilled, quiet, diligent (all things I should emulate, I suppose) and had earned the town’s respect. You could see it in the eyes of the men who came into the sooty courtyard to buy iron implements: Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike. I thought I might have to tutor him in the design of a good gun, but he was ahead of me. “You mean like the German jaegar, the hunting rifle?” he said when I described the piece I’d lost. “I’ve worked on some. Show me on the sand how long you want the piece to be.”
I sketched out a forty-two-inch barrel.
“Won’t that be clumsy?”
“The length gives it accuracy and killing power. Just forty-five caliber is enough; the rifle velocity makes up for bullets smaller than a musket’s. I can carry more ammunition for a given weight of shot and powder. Soft iron, deep grooving, a drop to the stock to bring the sights up to my eye for aiming but keep my brow out of the pan flash.
The best I’ve seen can drive a tack three times out of five at fifty yards.
It takes a full minute to load and ram, but the first shot will actually hit something.”
“Smoothbores are the rule here. Quick to load and you can shoot with anything—pebbles, if need be. For this gun, we’ll need precise bullets.”
“Precision means accuracy.”
“In a close fight, sometimes speed wins.” He had the prejudice of the sailors he had served with, who fought in sharp brawls when boarding.
“And the right shot can keep them from getting close at all. To my mind, trying to fight with an ordinary musket is like going to a brothel blindfolded—you might get the result you want, but you can miss by a mile, too.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.” Damned if I could get him to joke.
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He looked at the pattern in the sand. “Four hundred hours of work.
For which you’ll pay me out of this treasure of yours?”
“Double. I’m going to be searching hard while you craft the rifle.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Easy to promise money you don’t have.
You’ll help, and not just with this but other projects. It will be a new experience for you, doing real work. On slow days you can hunt for buried treasure or learn enough gossip to satisfy Sidney Smith. You can bill him to satisfy your debt to me.” Honest work? The idea was intriguing—truth be told, I’m sometimes envious of solid men like Jericho—but daunting, too. “I’ll help at your forge,” I bargained, “but you have to guarantee me enough hours to peck about. Get me the rifle by the end of winter, when Napoleon comes, and by that time I’ll find the treasure and get Smith’s money, too.” Squeezing anything out of the Admiralty is like getting gravy from a shoelace, but spring was far off. Things could happen.
“Then bellow that fire.” And when I leaped to obey, and shoveled charcoal, and shifted enough metal to make my shoulders ache, he grudgingly nodded. “Miriam thinks you’re a good man.” And with her endorsement, I knew I had some trust.
Jericho first fetched a round metal rod, or mandrel, slightly smaller than the intended bore of my future rifle. He heated a bar of carbon-ized Damascus steel, called a skelp, the same length as my gun barrel.
This he would wrap around the mandrel. I held the rod and handed tools while he placed these on a groove in a barrel anvil and began to beat to fuse the barrel’s cylinder. He’d do an inch at a time, removing the rod while the metals were still slightly pliable, then plunging the result into sizzling water. Then it was reheat, wrap another inch of the steel, hammer, and reweld: inch by inch. It was tedious, painstaking work, but curiously enthralling too. This lengthening tube would become my new companion. The duty kept me warm, and hard physical work was its own satisfaction. I ate simply, slept well, and even came to feel comfortable in the pious simplicity of my lodging. My muscles, already toughened by Egypt, became harder still.