ground.
‘If we go on now we can enter their lines before sunset,’ I said.
‘A good plan. I leave you to it, friend.’
‘What?’ I was startled.
‘I have done what I needed to, freeing you from jail and getting you here, yes?’
‘More than you needed to. I am in your debt.’
‘As I am in yours giving me my freedom, trust, and companionship. It was wrong to blame you for the death of my brother. Evil comes, and who knows why? There are dual forces in the world, forever in tension. Good must fight bad, it is a constant. And so we will, but each in our own way, for now I must go to my people.’
‘Your people?’
‘Bin Sadr has too many men to take on alone. I am still Mameluke, Ethan Gage, and somewhere in the desert is the fugitive army of Murad Bey. My brother Enoch was alive until the French came, and I fear many more will die until this foreign presence is driven from my country.’
‘But Ashraf, I’m part of that army!’
‘No. You’re no more a Frank than a Mameluke. You are something strange and out of place, American, sent here for the gods’ purpose. I’m not certain what role you’ve been chosen to play, but I do feel that I’m to leave you to play it, and that Egypt’s future relies on your courage. So go to your woman and do what her gods ask you to do.’
‘No! We aren’t just allies, we’ve become friends! Haven’t we? And I’ve lost too many friends already! I need your help, Ashraf. Avenge Enoch with me!’
‘Revenge will come at the gods’ chosen time. If not, Bin Sadr would have died today, because you seldom miss. I suspect he has a different fate, perhaps more terrible. Meanwhile, what you need is to get what this Count Silano has come here to find, and fulfil your destiny. Whatever happens on future battlefields can’t alter the bond we’ve made over these many days. Peace be upon you, friend, until you find what it is you’re looking for.’
And with that he and his camel disappeared toward the setting sun and I started, more alone than ever, to find Astiza.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I knew that the notion of galloping into Desaix’s division of French soldiers, shouting for Silano, was unlikely to produce anything other than my own arrest. But what I lacked in power I made up for in possession: I had the medallion, and my rival did not. It would be far easier, I realised, to have Silano come to me.
It was near dusk when I approached a squad of camped sentries, my arms raised. Several ran out with muskets, having learnt to view any approaching Egyptian with suspicion. Too many unwary Frenchmen had died in a war that was becoming crueller.
I gambled that news of my escape from Cairo had not reached these pickets. ‘Don’t shoot! I’m an American recruited to Berthollet’s company of scholars! I’ve been sent by Bonaparte to continue my investigation of the ancients!’
They looked at me suspiciously. ‘Why are you dressed like a native?’
‘Without escort, do you think I’d still be alive if I were not?’
‘You came alone from Cairo? Are you mad?’
‘The boat I was riding hit a rock and has to be repaired. I was impatient to come ahead. I hope there are ruins here.’
‘I recognise him,’ one said. ‘The Franklin man.’ He spat.
‘Surely you appreciate the opportunity to study the magnificent past,’ I said lightly.
‘While Murad Bey taunts us, always a few miles ahead. We beat him. And then we beat him again. And then again. Each time he runs, and each time he comes back. And each time a few more of us will never return to France. And now we wait at ruins while he escapes deeper into this cursed country, as out of reach as a mirage.’
‘If you can even see the mirage,’ joined another. ‘A thousand troops have sore eyes in this dust and sun, and a hundred are hobbling blind. It’s like a jest out of a play. Ready to fight? Yes, here is our rank of blind musketeers!’
‘Blindness! That’s the least of it,’ added a third. ‘We’ve shit twice our weight between here and Cairo. Sores don’t heal. Blisters become boils. There are even cases of plague. Who hasn’t lost half a dozen kilos of flesh on this march alone?’
‘Or been so horny they’re ready to mate with rats and donkeys?’
All soldiers like to grumble, but clearly, disillusionment with Egypt was growing. ‘Perhaps Murad is on the brink of defeat,’ I said.
‘Then let’s defeat him.’
I patted my rifle. ‘My muzzle has been as warm as yours at times, friends.’
Now their interest brightened. ‘Is that the American longrifle? I hear it can kill a Red Indian at a thousand paces.’
‘Not quite, but if you only have one shot, this is the gun you want. I recently hit a camel at four hundred.’ No need to tell them what I’d been aiming at.
They crowded around. Men find unity in admiring good tools and it was, as I’ve said, a beautiful piece, a jewel amid the dross of their regulation muskets.
‘Today my gun stays cold because I have a different task, no less important. I’m to confer with Count Alessandro Silano. Do you know where I could find him?’
‘The temple, I suppose,’ a sergeant said. ‘I think he wants to live there.’
‘Temple?’
‘Away from the river, beyond a village called Dendara. We’ve stopped so Denon can scribble more pictures, Malraux can measure more stone, and Silano can mutter more spells. What a circus of lunatics. At least he brought a woman.’
‘A woman?’ I tried not to betray any particular interest.
‘Ah, that one,’ a private agreed. ‘I sleep with her in my dreams.’ He jerked his fist up and down and grinned.
I restrained the inclination to club him with my rifle. ‘Which way to this temple?’
‘You intend to go dressed like a bandit?’
I straightened. ‘I look, I believe, like a sheikh.’
That drew a laugh. They pointed and offered escort, but I declined. ‘I need to confer with the count alone. If he’s not already at the ruins and you see him, give him this message. Tell him he can find what he’s looking for at midnight.’
Silano wouldn’t arrest me, I gambled. He’d want me to first find what we both were looking for, and then surrender it for Astiza.
The temple glowed under stars and moon, an immense pillared sanctuary with a flat stone roof. It and its subsidiary temples were enclosed by a mud-brick wall a square kilometre in circumference, eroded and half buried. The wall’s primary gateway jutted out of the sand as if half drowned, with clearance just high enough to walk under. It was carved with Egyptian gods, hieroglyphics, and a winged sun flanked by cobras. Beyond, the courtyard was filled with dunes like ocean swells. A waning moon gave pale illumination to sand as smooth as the skin of an Egyptian woman, sensuous and sculpted. Yes, there was a thigh, beyond it a hip, and then a buried obelisk like a nipple on a breast…
I’d been away from Astiza too long, hadn’t I?
The main building had a flat facade, with six immense pillars rearing from the sand to hold up the stone roof. Each column was topped by the eroded visage of a broad-faced goddess. Or rather four faces: on each pillar she looked in the four cardinal directions, her Egyptian headdress coming down behind cowlike ears. With her wide- lipped smile and huge, friendly eyes, Hathor had a bovine serenity. The headdress was coloured with faded paint, I
