The success of this scheme began to diminish as the sun rose and the day grew hotter. As we left the green flood plain of the Nile for the red desert toward Abukir, a grumble like thunder began to be heard, but in such a clear sky it was the thud of guns. A battle was underway, which meant unless the Turks won and the French broke, the entire Frankish army was in our way. It was July 25, 1799.
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“We can’t turn back,” Astiza said. “Silano would spot us.”
“And battles are confusing. Maybe a way will present itself.” We parked the donkey in the lee of a high sand dune and ascended to look out at the bay beyond. The panorama was heartbreaking.
Once more, the atrophy of Ottoman arms was apparent. There was nothing wrong with the courage of Mustafa’s men. What was lacking was firepower and tactical sense. The Turks waited like a paralyzed hare; the French bombarded and then attacked with their cavalry. We were spectators to a disaster, watching a headlong charge by Joachim Murat’s troopers not merely breach the first Ottoman line, but knife through the second and third as well. The cavalry stampeded the entire length of the Abukir peninsula, spilling the defenders in a panic from their trenches, tents deflating as guy ropes were cut. We learned later that Murat himself captured the Turkish commander-in-chief in furious hand-to-hand combat, receiving a grazing wound on his jaw from Mustafa’s pistol but chopping off a couple of the pasha’s fingers with his sword in return. Bonaparte used his own handkerchief to bind the man’s hand. In 1799, there was still chivalry.
The rest was slaughter, once the lines cracked. More than two thousand of the Muslim warriors were cut down on land and twice that many drowned as they plunged into the sea to try to reach their ships.
A garrison in the fort at the end of the peninsula stubbornly held out, but was bombarded and starved into submission. For the price of a thousand casualties, three-quarters of them wounded, Bonaparte had destroyed another Ottoman army. It was exactly the triumph he needed to retrieve his reputation after the debacle at Acre. To a colleague he wrote it was “one of the most beautiful battles I ever saw,” and to the Directory in Paris he described it as “one of the most terrible.” Both were true. He had been resuscitated by blood.
So Astiza and I had a camp of boiling mad Frenchmen back at Rosetta and a victorious French army looting the remains of our allies in front. I’d fled from the jaws of a crocodile to military encircle-ment.
“Ethan, what do you think we should do?” I suppose it’s flattering when women ask men things like that in the midst of military peril, t h e
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but I wouldn’t mind if they came up with their own ideas once in a while.
“Keep running, I think. I just don’t know where.” So she did make a suggestion, plucky girl. “Remember the Oasis of Siwah, where Alexander the Great was declared a son of Zeus and Amon? Napoleon doesn’t control it. Let’s make for that.” I swallowed. “Isn’t that a hundred miles across empty desert?”
“So we’d better get started.”
We’d both end up mummified by heat and thirst, but where else could we go? Silano would kill us for sure, now. Napoleon too. “I wish our donkey didn’t look so half-starved and addled-eyed,” I said. “If we’d had time, I’d have looked for a better one.” No matter. A French patrol was waiting when we descended from the dune.
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Predictably, Napoleon was in a good mood that night. There’s nothing like victory to settle him. Bulletins would be sent to France describing Bonaparte’s victory in vivid detail. Captured standards were being readied for shipment for display in Paris. And I, his annoying mosquito, was safely bound, one leg chewed by a ravenous crocodile, my love trussed, my gun confiscated, and my donkey on its way back to its rightful owner.
“I’ve been trying to save you from witchcraft, General,” I tried, without much spirit.
He’d uncorked a bottle of Bordeaux, part of the personal horde his brother had brought from France. “Have you now? With your beautiful viper by your side?”
“Silano is seeking dark powers that will lead you astray.”
“Then thank God you blew up half my fort, Gage.” He took a swallow.
It did sound bad when he put it that way. “That was simply a diversion.” It would have been braver to be surly and defiant, I know, but I was trying to save our lives.
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Count Silano had arrived gaping as if I’d walked from the tomb after three days. Now he said, “I am tired of trying to kill you, monsieur.”
I smiled at them both. “I’m tired of it too.”
“This piece of stone you destroyed,” Bonaparte said. “It was a key to translate an ancient book?” Fortunately, there was enough dignity that no one thought to strip Astiza.
“Yes, General.”
“And that book would tell us what, exactly?”
“Magic,” Silano said.
“Does magic still exist?”
“We can make it exist. Magic is just advanced science. Magic and immortality.”
“Immortality!” Bonaparte laughed. “Escape from the ultimate fate!
But I’ve seen too many dead, so my immortality is not to be forgotten.
Recollection is what we leave.”
“We believe this book will help you achieve immortality in more literal ways,” the count said. “You, and those who rise with you.”
“Such as yourself?” He passed the bottle. “So you have incentive, my friend!” Napoleon turned to me. “It’s annoying you broke the stone, Gage, but Silano has already deciphered some of the symbols.
Perhaps he’ll puzzle out the rest. And the stone remaining will allow the savants to focus on hieroglyphics. Depending on who ultimately wins here in Egypt, the piece will probably wind up someday in either Paris or London. Crowds will flock to it, never knowing a fourth text is gone.”
“I could stay around to tell them.”
“I’m afraid not.” Napoleon reached into a leather binder and brought out a bundle of dated newspapers. “Smith sent me these as a gift when I let the Turks take off their wounded. It seems that while we’ve achieved glory in Egypt, events in Europe have been rapidly unraveling. France is once more in peril.” It was then I confirmed that Bonaparte had clearly abandoned one goal, conquest of Asia, and adopted another, a return to Paris. He’d t h e
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won what he could, and we’d found what he most wanted to find.
Power, one way or another.
“France and Austria have been at war since March, and we’ve been driven from Germany and Italy. Tippoo Sahib died in India the same time we were repulsed at Acre. The Directory is in shambles, and my brother Lucien is in Paris trying to reform the imbecilic assembly. The British fleet will have to loosen its blockade soon to resupply at Cyprus. That’s when I can return to put things right. Duty requires it.”
That seemed shameless. “Duty? To leave your men?”
“To prepare the way. Kléber has dreamed of command since we landed here. Now he’ll get it: I’ll surprise him with a letter. Meanwhile I take the risk of evading the British fleet.” Risk! The risk was to be left with a marooned army in Egypt. The bastard was abandoning his men for the politics of Paris! Yet the truth was, I had a grudging admiration for the sly dog. We were two of a kind in some ways: opportunists, gamblers, and survivors. We were fatalists, always after the main chance. We both liked pretty women.
And high adventure, if it was an escape from tedium.