‘I intend to examine it, not sell it, General.’
‘Of course. And you’ll not uncover secrets without sharing them with me, the man who shielded you from murder charges in France, will you, Monsieur Gage?’
‘I am working in concert with your own savants right now.’
‘Good. You may be getting more help soon.’
‘Help?’
‘You’ll see. Meanwhile, I certainly hope you’re not considering leaving our expedition by trying to take ship to America. You understand that if I give you leave to go back to L’Orient for this calendar device, your slave girl and Mameluke captive will stay here in Cairo, under my protection.’ His look was narrow.
‘But of course.’ I recognised that he’d assigned an emotional importance to Astiza I’d yet to admit to myself. Did I care that she was hostage to my loyal conduct? Was she truly a guarantee that I’d return? I hadn’t thought about her in those terms, and yet I was intrigued by her and I admired Napoleon’s perception of my intrigue. He seemed to miss nothing. ‘I will hurry back to them. I do wish, however, to take my friend, the journalist Talma.’
‘The scribbler? I need him here, to record my administration.’
But Talma was restless. He had asked to come along so he could visit Alexandria, and I enjoyed his wry company. ‘He’s anxious to file his dispatches on the fastest ship. He also wants to see more of Egypt and interest France in the future of this country.’
Napoleon considered. ‘Get him back here in a week.’
‘It will be ten days, at most.’
‘I’ll give you dispatches to deliver to Admiral Brueys, and Monsieur Talma can carry some to Alexandria. You’ll both give me your impressions upon your return.’
Despite Talma’s misgivings, I decided after careful consideration to leave the medallion with Enoch. I agreed with Astiza’s reasoning that it was safer in the cellar of an old scholar than bandied about Egypt. It was a relief not to have the pendant around my own vulnerable neck and have it safe from robbery when I went back down the Nile. While leaving the pendant was clearly a risk after carrying it so carefully from Paris to Cairo, its possession was pointless if we didn’t know what it was for, and I still had little clue. Enoch seemed my best bet for an answer – and I am, after all, a gambler. Given my admittedly soft spot for women, I gambled that Astiza felt some loyalty to my quest, and that Enoch was more interested in solving the puzzle than hawking the bauble for money. Let him keep thumbing through his books. Meanwhile, I would examine the calendar in the hold of L’Orient in hopes it could supply a hint to the medallion’s purpose, and together perhaps we’d crack the mystery. I urged Astiza to stay safely inside, and told Ashraf to keep both of them guarded.
‘Should I not guide you to the coast?’
‘Bonaparte says your presence here ensures I’ll want to return. And it will.’ I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We are a partnership, all of us in this house, Citizen Ash. You will not betray me, will you?’
He drew himself straight. ‘Ashraf will guard this house with his life.’
I didn’t want to carry my heavy rifle for a brief trip in a conquered country, but neither did I want it toyed with. After reflection, I remembered Ash’s remark about superstition and fear of curses and stored it and my tomahawk in one of Enoch’s mummy sarcophagi. It should be safe there.
Uncharacteristically, Talma made no comment on my decision to entrust the medallion to the Egyptians, instead mildly asking Astiza if she had any message she wanted him to bring to Alexandria. She said no.
We hired a native felucca to take us back down the Nile. These able sailing craft, skimming up and down the broad and slow Nile under their triangular sails, were the taxis of the river in the way donkeys filled that role in the streets of Cairo. It took several minutes of tiresome bargaining, but at length we were aboard and headed for Abukir, steered by a helmsman who spoke no French or English. Sign language seemed sufficient and we enjoyed the ride. As we once more entered the fertile delta downriver from Cairo, I was struck again by the serene timelessness of the villages along the river’s banks, as if the French had never passed this way. Trundling donkeys carried monumental heaps of straw. Small boys jumped and played in the shallows, indifferent to the crocodiles that lay like logs in quiet side channels. Clouds of white egrets rose flapping from islands of green reed. Silver fish darted between papyrus stalks. Clumps of vegetation bearing lilies and lotus flowers drifted down the Nile from the high reaches of Africa. Young girls in bright dresses sat on the flat roofs of houses, sorting red dates in the sun.
‘I had no idea that conquering a country was so easy,’ Talma remarked as the current carried us downriver. ‘A few hundred dead and we’re masters of the place where civilisation started. How did Bonaparte know?’
‘Easier to seize a country than to run it,’ I said.
‘Exactly.’ He lay against a gunwale, lazily looking at the passing landscape. ‘Here we are, lords of heat, flies, dung, rabid dogs, and illiterate peasants. Rulers of straw, sand, and green water. I tell you, it’s the stuff that legends are made of.’
‘Which is your specialty, as our journalist.’
‘Under my pen, Napoleon becomes a visionary. He let me come with you because I’ve agreed to write his biography. I have no objection. He told me hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets, but that I can rise with him. This is not exactly news to me. The more heroic I make him seem, the sooner he fulfils his ambitions and we can all go home.’
I smiled at the world-weary way that the French view life after so many centuries of wars, kings, and terrors. We Americans are more innocent, more earnest, more honest, and more easily disappointed.
‘Yet it is a beautiful county, is it not?’ I asked. ‘I’m surprised how rich the greens are. The Nile flood plain is a lush garden, and then you change to desert so abruptly that you could trace the boundary with a sword blade. Astiza told me the Egyptians call the fertile part the black land, for its soil, and the desert the red land, for its sand.’
‘And I call all of it the brown land, for mud brick, cantankerous camels, and noisy donkeys. Ashraf told me a story of a shipwrecked Egyptian who returns to his village years after being given up for dead. He’s been absent as long as Odysseus. His faithful wife and children rush out to meet him. And his first words? “Ah, there’s my donkey!”’
I smiled. ‘How will you spend your hours in Alexandria?’
‘We both remember what a paradise it is. I want to make some notes and ask some questions. There are books to be written here, more interesting ones than a simple hagiography of Bonaparte.’
‘I wonder if you could ask about Achmed bin Sadr.’
‘Are you sure it was him you saw in Paris?’
‘I’m not sure. It was dark but the voice is the same. My guide had a staff, or lantern handle, carved like a snake. And then Astiza saved me from a snake in Alexandria. And he showed too much interest in me.’
‘Napoleon seems to rely on him.’
‘Yet what if this Bin Sadr truly works not for Bonaparte, but for the Egyptian Rite? What if he’s a tool of Count Alessandro Silano, who wanted the medallion so badly? What if he had something to do with poor Minette’s murder? Every time he’s looked at me I’ve felt he’s looking for the medallion. So who is he, really?’
‘You want me to be your investigator?’
‘A discreet enquiry. I’m tired of surprises.’
‘I go where truth leads. From top to bottom, and head to…’ – he looked pointedly at my boots – ‘to feet.’
His confession was instantly obvious. ‘It was you who took my shoes on L’Orient! ’
‘I didn’t take them, Ethan, I borrowed them, for inspection.’
‘And pretended you hadn’t.’
‘I kept a secret from you as you kept the medallion from me. I was worried you’d lost it during the attack on our coach but were too embarrassed to admit it. I sold your presence on this expedition to Berthollet partly on the strength of that medallion, but when we were reunited in Toulon you declined to show it to me. What was I to think? It was my responsibility to the savants to try to find out what game you were playing.’
‘There was no game. It was simply that every time I showed the medallion or talked about it, I seemed to find myself in trouble.’
‘Which I got you out of in Paris. You could have confided in me a little.’ He had risked his own life to help get me here, and I’d treated him as less than a full partner. No wonder he was jealous.
