musket, lance, scimitar, and a sash crammed with pistols. By reputation, their courage was matched only by their arrogance.
Slavery was different in the East than the hopeless tyranny I’d seen in New Orleans and the Caribbean. To the Ottomans, slaves were the most reliable allies, given that they were stripped from their past and not part of Turkish feuding families. Some became princes, meaning the most oppressed could rise the highest. And indeed, the Mameluke slaves had become masters of Egypt. Unfortunately, their greatest enemy was their own treachery – no Mameluke sultan ever died in bed because of their endless conspiracies for power – and their weaponry was as primitive as their steeds were beautiful, for they wielded antiques. Moreover, while slaves could become masters, free men were often treated like serfs. The Egyptian population had little love for their leaders. The French saw themselves as liberators, not conquerors.
While the invasion had taken the enemy by surprise, by morning the few hundred Mamelukes of Alexandria had assembled a ragged force of their own cavalry, Bedouin raiders, and Egyptian peasants coerced into forming a human shield. Behind, on the walls of the city’s old Arab quarter, garrison musketeers and artillerymen had anxiously assembled on the ramparts. As the first French ranks approached, the enemy cannon were inexpertly fired, the shot pattering the sand well short of the European columns. The French stopped while Napoleon prepared to offer surrender terms.
No such opportunity presented itself, however, because the Mamelukes apparently took this pause as hesitation and started to drive a mass of crudely armed peasants toward us. Bonaparte, realising the Arabs meant battle, signalled with flags for naval support. Shallow-draft corvettes and luggers began working in toward shore to bring their cannon to bear. The few light guns brought ashore in the longboats were also run forward on the sand.
I was thirsty, tired, sticky from salt and sand, and finally comprehending that I’d put myself in the middle of a war, thanks to the clumsy necklace. I was now bound to this French army for survival. Still, I felt oddly safe near Bonaparte. As he had implied, he carried an aura, not so much of invincibility as luck. Fortunately, our march had accumulated a skirt of curious Egyptian opportunists and beggars. Battles attract spectators like boys to a schoolyard fight. Shortly before dawn I’d spied a youth selling oranges, bought a bag for a silver franc, and earned favour with the general by sharing it. We stood on the beach sucking the sweet pulp, watching the mob-like Egyptian army shamble toward us. Behind the peasants the Mameluke knights galloped back and forth, bright as birds in their silk robes. They waved shiny swords and shouted defiance.
‘I’ve heard that you Americans boast of your accuracy with your hunting rifles,’ Napoleon suddenly said, as if an idea for amusement had just occurred to him. ‘Do you care to demonstrate?’
Officers turned to look, even as the suggestion took me by surprise. My rifle was my pride, the maple oiled, my powder horn scraped thin to the point of translucence so I could see the fine black grains of French powder inside, and my brass polished, an affectation I’d never dare in the forests of North America, where a gleam could give you away to animal or enemy. The voyageurs had rubbed theirs with green hazelnut to obscure any shine. As beautiful as my rifle was, however, some of these soldiers considered its long barrel an affectation. ‘I don’t feel those men are my enemy,’ I said.
‘They became your enemy when you stepped on this beach, monsieur.’
True enough. I began to load my gun. I should have done it some time before, given the impending battle, but I’d been striding down the beach as if on holiday, all military bands, martial camaraderie, and distant gunshots. Now I’d have to earn my place by contributing to the fight. So are we seduced and then enlisted. I measured extra powder for long range and used the ramrod to push down the linen-wrapped ball.
As the Alexandrians came on and I primed the pan, attention suddenly swung from me to a dashing Bedouin who was riding up from the ranks behind us, his black horse spraying sand, black robes rippling in the wind. Clinging behind was a French cavalry lieutenant, weaponless and looking sick. Reining up near Bonaparte’s cluster of staff, the Arab waved in salute and hurled a cloth at our feet. It opened as it fell, scattering a harvest of bloody hands and ears.
‘These are men who will harass you no more, effendi,’ the Bedouin said in French, his face masked by the cowl of his turban. His eyes waited for approval.
Bonaparte made a quick mental tally of the butchered appendages. ‘You have done well, my friend. Your master was right to recommend you.’
‘I am a servant of France, effendi.’ Then his eyes fastened on me and widened, as if in recognition. I was disturbed. I knew no nomads. And why did this one speak our language?
Meanwhile the lieutenant slid off the Arab’s horse and stood stricken and awkward to one side, as if not sure what to do next.
‘This one I rescued from some bandits whom he chased too far in the dark,’ the Arab said. This was a trophy too, we sensed, and a lesson.
‘I applaud your help.’ Bonaparte turned to the freed captive. ‘Find a weapon and rejoin your unit, soldier. You’re luckier than you deserve.’
The man’s eyes were wild. ‘Please, sir, I need rest. I am bleeding
…’
‘He’s not as lucky as you think,’ the Arab said.
‘No? He looks alive to me.’
‘The Bedouin habit is to beat captive women… and rape captive men. Repeatedly.’ There was crude laughter among the officers and a slap to the back of the unfortunate soldier, who staggered. Some of the jocularity was sympathetic, some cruel.
The general pursed his lips. ‘I am to pity you?’
The young man began to sob. ‘Please, I am so ashamed…’
‘The shame was in your surrender, not your torture. Take your place in the ranks to destroy the enemy who humiliated you. That’s the way to erase embarrassment. As for the rest of you, tell this story to the rest of the army. There is no sympathy for this man! His lesson is simple: Don’t be captured at all.’ He turned back to the battle.
‘My pay, effendi?’ The Arab waited.
‘When I take the city.’
Still the Arab didn’t move.
‘Don’t worry, your purse is growing heavier, Black Prince. There will be even bigger rewards when we reach Cairo.’
‘If we reach it, effendi. I and my men have done all the fighting so far.’
Our general was unperturbed by this observation, accepting insolence from this desert bandit he never would from his officers. ‘My American ally was just about to correct that by demonstrating the accuracy of the Pennsylvania longrifle. Weren’t you, Monsieur Gage? Tell us its advantages.’
All eyes were again on me. I could hear the tramp of the Egyptian army coming closer. Feeling the reputation of my country was at stake, I held up my gun. ‘We all know that the problem with any firearm is that you only get one shot and then must take anywhere from twenty seconds to a full minute to reload,’ I lectured. ‘In the forests of America, a miss means your quarry will be long gone, or an Indian will be on you with his tomahawk. So to us, the time it takes to load a longrifle is more than compensated by a fighting chance to hit something with that first shot, unlike a musket where the path of the bullet can’t be predicted.’ I put the weapon to my shoulder. ‘Now, the long barrel is of soft iron, and that and the gun’s weight helps to dampen a discharge’s whip when the bullet leaves the muzzle. Also, unlike a musket, the inside of a rifle’s barrel is grooved, putting a spin on the bullet to improve its accuracy. The length of the barrel adds velocity, and it allows the rear sight to be set well forward, so that you can keep both it and its target in focus with the human eye.’ I squinted. One Mameluke was riding ahead of his fellows, just to the rear of the peasant mob shambling in front of him. Allowing for the wind off the ocean and the bullet’s drop, I aimed high at his right shoulder. No firearm is perfect – even a rifle gripped in a vice won’t put each bullet atop each other – but my gun’s ‘triangle of error’ was only two inches at a hundred paces. I squeezed the set trigger, its click releasing the first trigger so that the second was at hair touch, minimizing any jerk. Then I kept squeezing and fired, figuring the bullet would hit the man square in the torso. The rifle kicked, there was a haze of smoke, and then I watched the devil buck backward off his stallion. There was a murmur of appreciation, and if you don’t think there’s satisfaction in such a shot, then you don’t understand what drives men to war. Well, I was in it now. I put the stock down butt first on the sand, ripped open a paper cartridge, and began to reload.
