I drifted. The calendar was gone. So was all the other treasure in L’Orient ’s hold. The moon illuminated a tableau of smashed and burning ships. Most were hamstrung by missing masts. Surely it was over now. But no, the crews gradually awoke from their stunned horror, as if from a dream, and after a quarter hour the cannon started up again, thuds echoing across the water.
So the battle went on. How can I explain such madness? Savage broadsides echoed through the night like the hammering of the devil’s foundry. Hour after hour I floated in a daze, growing colder, until the guns finally grumbled away in mutual exhaustion and the sea lightened some thousand years later. With dawn men slept, sprawled on their hot artillery.
Sunrise revealed the full extent of the French disaster. The frigate La Serieuse had been the first to sink, settling in the shallows, but didn’t strike her colours until five in the morning. Le Spartiate ceased firing at 11 p.m. Franklin, named for my mentor, surrendered to the British at 11:30. Le Tonnant ’s mortally wounded captain blew his brains out before she surrendered. L’Heureux and Le Mercure were deliberately grounded to prevent their sinking. The frigate L’Artemise blew up after being fired by her captain, and Le Timoleon was driven aground to be burnt by her crew the next day. Aquilon, Le Guerrier, Le Conquerant, and Peuple Souverain simply surrendered. For the French, the Battle of the Nile was not just a loss but an annihilation. Only two battleships and two frigates had got away. Three thousand Frenchmen were killed or wounded in the battle. In a single fight, Nelson had destroyed French naval power in the Mediterranean. Just one month after landing in Egypt, Napoleon was cut off from the outside world.
Hundreds of survivors, some burnt and bleeding, began to be plucked from the sea by British longboats. I watched in numbed fascination, and then dimly realised that I could be rescued too. ‘Over here!’ I finally shouted in English, waving.
They hauled me aboard like a played-out fish. ‘What ship you with, mate?’ they asked me. ‘How the bloody hell did you get in the water?’
‘L’Orient,’ I replied.
They looked at me as if I were a ghost. ‘You a frog? Or a bloody traitor?’
‘I’m an American.’ I was trying to blink the salt from my eyes as I held up the finger that held a unicorn ring. ‘And an agent for Sir Sidney Smith.’
Imagine a pugilist after a hard-won boxing match, and you have my first impression of Horatio Nelson. The lion of England was bandaged and woozy from a nasty head wound above his blind eye, a blow that came within an inch of killing him. He spoke with difficulty because of a sore tooth and, at age forty, had white hair and a face lined with tension. That’s what losing an arm and an eye in earlier fights, and chasing Bonaparte, will do for you. He was barely a shade taller than Napoleon and even slighter in build, his cheeks sunken and his voice nasal. Yet he relished the chance to dish out a thrashing as much as the French general did, and on this day he’d won a victory so decisive as to be unprecedented. He had not just beaten the enemy – he had obliterated them.
His one good eye burnt as if lit by divine light, and indeed Nelson saw himself on a mission from God: a quest for glory, death, and immortality. Put his ambition and Bonaparte’s in the same room and they’d spontaneously combust. Turn them with a crank and they’d throw off sparks. They were Leyden jars of electric charge, set among us mortal kegs of gunpowder.
Like Napoleon, the British admiral could leave a roomful of subordinates entranced by his very presence; but Nelson commanded not just with energy and drive, but with charm, even affection. He had more charisma than a royal courtesan, and some of his captains had the look of happy puppies. They were clustered around him now in his great cabin, regarding their admiral with unabashed worship, and me with deep suspicion.
‘How the devil do you know Smith?’ Nelson asked as I stood before him, damp and exhausted, my ears ringing.
Rum and fresh water had washed some of the salt from my throat. ‘After his escape from Temple Prison, Sir Sidney followed me because of rumours that I’d be accompanying Bonaparte to Egypt,’ I croaked. ‘He helped save my life in a skirmish on the highway to Toulon. He asked if I’d keep an eye on Napoleon. So I got myself back to the French fleet, figuring you’d find it sooner or later. Didn’t know how things would turn out, but if you won…’
‘He’s lying,’ one of the captains said. Hardy, I think his name was.
Nelson smiled thinly. ‘We’ve not much use for Smith here, you know.’
I looked at the unfriendly array of assembled captains. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘The man’s as vain as I am.’ There was dead silence. Then the admiral abruptly laughed, the others joining the joke. ‘Vain as me! We both live for glory!’ They roared. They were exhausted but had that satiated look of men who’d come through a good scrape. Their ships were drifting wrecks, the sea was littered with carnage, and they’d just endured horrors enough for a lifetime of nightmares. But they were proud, too.
I did my best to smile.
‘Good fighter though,’ Nelson amended, ‘if you don’t have to be in the same room with him. His escape made him the talk of England.’
‘He did get back, then.’
‘Yes. And didn’t mention you, as I recall.’
‘Our meeting was inconclusive,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t pledge to be his spy. But he anticipated your scepticism and left me this.’ I held up my right hand. ‘It’s a signet ring, inscribed with his symbol. He said it would prove my story.’
I took it off and passed it around, the officers grunting in recognition.
Nelson held it up to his good eye. ‘It’s the bastard Smith, all right. Here’s his horn, or should I say prick?’ Again, they all laughed. ‘You enlisted with that devil Napoleon?’
‘I’m a member of his team of savants who are studying Egypt. I apprenticed to Benjamin Franklin. I was trying to arrange some trade agreements, there were legal problems in Paris, an opportunity for adventure…’
‘Yes, yes.’ He waved his hand. ‘What’s the situation of Bonaparte’s army?’
‘It has defeated the Mamelukes and is in possession of Cairo.’
There was a murmur of disappointment in the cabin.
‘And yet he now has no fleet,’ Nelson said, to his officers as much as me. ‘Which means that while we can’t get at Boney, quite yet, Boney can’t get to India. There will be no linkup to Tippoo Sahib, and no threat to our army there. He’s marooned.’
I nodded. ‘It would seem so, Admiral.’
‘And the morale of his troops?’
I considered. ‘They grumble, like all soldiers. But they’ve also just conquered Egypt. I suppose they feel like sailors who have conquered Brueys.’
Nelson nodded. ‘Quite. Land and sea. Sea and land. His numbers?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not a soldier. I know his casualties have been light.’
‘Humph. And supplies?’
‘He resupplies from Egypt herself.’
He slammed his hand down. ‘Damn! It will be like prying out an oyster!’ He looked at me with his one good eye. ‘Well, what do you want to do now?’
What indeed? It was dumb luck I hadn’t already been killed. Bonaparte was expecting me to solve a mystery that still baffled me, my friend Talma was suspicious of my friend Astiza, an Arab cutthroat no doubt wanted to drop more snakes in my bed, and there was a baffling heap of pyramidal stone built to represent the world, or God, or who knows what. Here was my chance to cut and run.
But I wasn’t done figuring out the medallion, was I? Maybe I could get a fist of treasure, or a share of mysterious power. Or keep it from the lunatics of the Egyptian Rite and the Apophis snake cult. And a woman was waiting, wasn’t she?
‘I’m no strategist, admiral, but perhaps this battle changes everything,’ I said. ‘We won’t know how Bonaparte will react until news reaches him. Which I, perhaps, could bear. The French know nothing of my connection to Smith.’ Go back? Well, the battle and the dying boy had shaken me to the core. I had a duty too, and it was to get back to Astiza and the medallion. It was to finish, finally, something I’d started. ‘I’ll explain the situation to Bonaparte and, if that doesn’t move him, then learn what I can in coming months and report back to you.’ A plan had formulated in my mind. ‘A rendezvous off the coast near the end of October, perhaps. Just after the twenty-first.’
