Slam! I jerked as much as my entrapment would let me. A dusty boot had come down, obliterating the creature. It twisted, grinding the scorpion into the dust, and then I heard a familiar voice.
“By the beard of the Prophet, can you never look after yourself, Ethan?”
“Ashraf?” It was a bewildered mumble.
“I’ve been waiting for your tormentors to go far enough away.
It is hot, sitting in the desert! And here the two of you are, in even worse shape than when I left you last fall. Do you learn nothing, American?”
Could it be? The Mameluke Ashraf had been first my prisoner and then my companion as we fled Cairo and rode to rescue Astiza. He’d saved us again in a skirmish on a riverbank, given us a horse, and then bid good-bye, joining the resistance forces of Murad Bey. And now he was here again? Thoth was at work.
“I’ve been tracking you for days, first to Rosetta, and then back again. I did not understand why you were disguised like a fellahin in a donkey cart. Then your Franks bury you alive? You need better friends, Ethan.”
“Amen to that,” I managed.
And I heard the blessed scrape of a spade, digging me out.
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I only dimly remember what came next. Crowding by a company of well-armed Mamelukes, explaining the rumble I’d heard.
Water, painfully wet as we sucked it into our swollen throats. A camel knelt and we were tied onto it. Then a ride into the setting sun. We slept under a scrap of tent at an oasis, regaining our senses. Our heads were red and blistered, our lips cracked, our eyes like slits. We were helpless.
So at length we were tied on again and led even deeper into the waste, south and west and then east to a secret camp of Murad’s.
Women salved our burnt skin, and nourishment slowly restored us.
Time was still a blur. If I climbed to the top of a nearby dune, I could just see the tips of the pyramids. Cairo was invisible, beyond.
“How did you know to find us?” I asked Ashraf. He’d already related his raids and battles that were wearing down the French.
“First we heard an ironmonger was inquiring about Astiza from distant Jerusalem,” he said. “It was a curious report, but I knew you’d disappeared and suspected. Then Ibrahim Bey reported that Count Silano had ridden north and disappeared somewhere in Syria. What was going on? Napoleon was repulsed at Acre, but you did not come back to Cairo with him. So I believed you’d joined the English, and I determined to watch for you in the Ottoman invasion force. And yes, we saw flames in Rosetta, and I spied the two of you in your donkey cart, but French cavalry were too near. So I waited, until they buried you and the French finally drew off. Always I am having to save you, my American friend.”
“Always I am in your debt.”
“Not if you do what I suspect you must do.”
“What is that?
“Word just came that Napoleon has sailed and taken Count Silano with him. You’re going to have to stop them in France, Ethan. The servant women have told me of the mysterious signs on your companion’s back. What are they?”
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“Ancient writing to read what Silano has stolen.”
“The paint is sloughing off, but there is a way to extend them longer. I’ve told the women to mix their pots of henna.” Henna was a plant used to decorate the Arab women with intricate traceries of brown patterns, like an impermanent tattoo.
When they finished, Astiza’s back looked oddly beautiful.
“Should this book be read at all?” Ashraf asked as we prepared to leave.
“If not, then its secret will die with me,” she said. “I am the Rosetta key.”
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Astiza and I landed on the southern coast of France on October 11, 1799, two days after Napoleon Bonaparte and Alessandro Silano did the same. For both parties it had been a long voyage. Bonaparte, after patting mistress Pauline Foures on her fanny and leaving a note to Kléber informing him that he was now in command (he preferred not to face the general in person), had taken Monge, Berthollet, and a few other savants like Silano and hugged the frequently windless African coast to avoid the British navy. The route turned a routine sea voyage into a tedious forty-two days. Even as he crept homeward, French politics became more chaotic as plot and counterplot simmered in Paris. It was the perfect atmosphere for an ambitious general, and the bulletin announcing Napoleon’s smashing victory at Abukir arrived in Paris three days before the general did. His way north was marked by cheering crowds.
Our voyage was also slow, but for a different reason. With Smith’s encouragement, we boarded a British frigate a week after Bonaparte had left Egypt and sailed directly for France to intercept. His slow-ness saved him. We were off Corsica and Toulon two weeks before t h e
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Napoleon arrived and, learning there was no word of him, darted back the way we’d come. Even from a masthead, however, a lookout surveys only a few square miles of sea, and the Mediterranean is big.
How close we came I don’t know. Finally a picket boat brought word that he’d landed first in his native Corsica and then France, and by the time we followed he was well ahead of us.
If Silano hadn’t been along, I’d have been content to let him go. It’s not my duty to dog ambitious generals. But we had a score to settle with the count, and the book was dangerous in his hands and potentially useful in ours. How much did he already know? How much could we read, with Astiza’s key?
If our hunt at sea was anxious and discouraging, the time it took was not. Astiza and I had rarely had time to take a breath together.
It had always been campaigns, treasure hunts, and perilous escapes.
Now we shared a lieutenant’s cabin—our intimacy an issue of some jealousy among the lonely officers and crew—and had time to know each other at leisure, like a man and wife. Time enough, in other words, to scare any man wary of intimacy.
Except I liked it. We had certainly been partners in adventure, and lovers. Now we were friends. Her body ripened with rest and food, her skin recovered its blossom, and her hair its sheen. I loved to simply look at her, reading in our cabin or watching the bright sea by the rail, and loved how clothes draped her, how her hair floated in the breeze. Even better, of course, was slowly taking those clothes off.
But our ordeals had saddened her, and her beauty seemed bittersweet.
And when we came together in our cramped quarters, sometimes urgently and at other times with gentle care, trying to be quiet in the thin-walled ship, I was transported. I marveled that I, the wayward American opportunist, and she, the Egyptian mystic, got on at all.
And yet it turned out we did complement and complete each other, anticipating each other. I began thinking of a normal life ahead.
I wished we could sail forever, and not find Napoleon at all.
But sometimes she was lost to me with a troubled look, seeing dark things in the past or future. That’s when I feared I would lose her again. Destiny claimed her as much as I did.
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“Think about it, Ethan. Bonaparte with the power of Moses?
France, with the secret knowledge of the Knight Templars? Silano, living forever, every year mastering more arcane formulae, gathering more followers? Our task isn’t done until we get that book back.” So we landed in France. Of course we couldn’t dock in Toulon.
Astiza conferred with our English captain, studied the charts, and insistently directed us to an obscure cove surrounded by steep hillsides, uninhabited except by a goatherd or two. How did she know the coast of France? We were rowed ashore at night to a pebble beach and left alone in the moonless dark. Finally there was a whistle and Astiza lit a candle, shielded by her cape.