Bonaparte and have the general interrogate us all. Nor was he a bargaining chip once you insisted on the fiction that the medallion was lost. His last chance was to steal it from whoever had it and deliver it to me, but he refused. In the end, the little hypochondriac was more loyal than you deserved, and a French patriot to boot.’
‘And you are not.’ My voice was cold.
‘The Revolution cost my family everything it had. Do you think I consort with rabble because I care about liberty? Their liberty took everything from me, and now I’m going to use them to get it all back. I do not work for Bonaparte, Ethan Gage. Bonaparte, unwittingly, works for me.’
‘So you sent Talma to me in a jar.’ I was so rigid, fists clenched, that my knuckles were white. The sky seemed to be wheeling, the chains a pendulum like some trick of Mesmer. I had just one chance.
‘A casualty of war,’ Silano replied. ‘If he’d listened to me, he’d have been richer than Croesus.’
‘But I don’t understand. Why didn’t your lantern bearer, Bin Sadr in disguise, just take the medallion that first evening in Paris, the moment I stepped into the street?’
‘Because I thought you’d given it to the whore, and I didn’t know where she lived. But she didn’t confess to it even when the Arab gutted her. Nor did my men find it in your chambers. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure of its importance, not until I asked more questions. I assumed I’d have the leisure to strip you of it in prison. But you ran, allied with Talma, and were on your way to Egypt as a savant – what amusement! – before I was even certain the trinket was what we’d all been looking for. I still don’t know where you hid the medallion that first night.’
‘In my chamber pot.’
He laughed. ‘Irony, irony! Key to the greatest treasure on earth, and you cover it with shit! Ah, what a clown. Yet what uncommon luck you’ve had, eluding an ambush on the Toulon highway and an Alexandrian street, dodging snakes, coming unscathed through major battles, and even finding your way here. You have the devil’s luck! And yet in the end you come to me, bringing the medallion with you, all for a woman who won’t let you touch her! The male mind! She told me that all we had to do was wait, provided Bin Sadr didn’t get you first. Did he ever find you?’
‘I shot him.’
‘Really? Pity. You’ve been a most troublesome man, Ethan Gage.’
‘He survived.’
‘But of course. He always does. You will not want to meet him again.’
‘Don’t forget that I’m still in the company of savants, Silano. Do you want to answer to Monge and Berthollet for my murder? They have the ear of Bonaparte, and he has an army. You’ll hang if you harm me.’
‘I believe it is called self-defence.’ He pushed slightly with his sword and I felt a faint sting through my robes, and a trickle of my own blood. ‘Or is it attempted capture of a fugitive from revolutionary justice? Or a man who lied about losing a magic medallion so he could keep it for himself? Any will suit. But I am a nobleman with my own code of honour, so let me offer you mercy. You’re a hunted fugitive, without friends or allies and no threat to anyone, if you ever were. So, for the medallion I give you back… your life. If you promise to tell me what Enoch learnt.’
‘What Enoch learnt?’ What was he talking about?
‘Your enfeebled mentor threw himself on a bonfire to grasp a book before we could torture him. French troops were coming. So, what did the book contain?’
The villain was referring to the book of Arabic poetry that Enoch had clutched at. I was sweating. ‘I still want the woman, too.’
‘But she doesn’t want you, does she? Did she tell you we were once lovers?’
I looked. Astiza had put her hands to one of the swaying manacles as if to hold herself up, looking at both of us with sorrow. ‘Ethan, it was the only way,’ she whispered.
I tasted the same ashes that Bonaparte must have bit when he learnt of the betrayal of Josephine. I’d come so far – for this? To be held at sword point by an aristocratic braggart? To be humiliated by a woman? Robbed of all I’d struggled for? ‘All right.’ My hands went to my neck and I lifted the talisman clear, holding it out in front of me where it rocked like a pendulum. Even at night it shone coldly. I could hear both of them gasp slightly at its new shape. They had led me, and I had found the part to complete it.
‘So it is the key,’ Silano breathed. ‘Now all we must do is understand the numbers. You will help me, priestess. Gage? Turn slowly now, and give it up.’
I did so, moving back slightly from his rapier. I needed just a moment’s distraction. ‘You’re no closer to solving the mystery than I am,’ I warned.
‘Aren’t I? I solved more than you. My journey around the Mediterranean took me to many temples and libraries. I found evidence that the key would be in Dendara, at the temple of Cleopatra. That I was to look to Aquarius. And here to the south I found the temple of Cleopatra, who would of course worship the lovely and all- powerful Isis, not the cow-faced Hathor with her bovine ears and tits. Yet I couldn’t figure where to look.’
‘There’s a crypt with the phallic god Min. It had the missing piece.’
‘How scholarly of you to find it. Now, give me the trinket.’
Slowly, leaning over the point of his rapier, I handed it to him. He snatched it with the greed of a child, his look triumphant. When he held it up it seemed to dance, this sign of the Freemasons. ‘Odd how sacred memory is passed down even by those who don’t realise its origin, isn’t it?’ Silano said.
And it was then that I threw.
The tomahawk in the small of my back had rested just inches from his sword point, itching beneath my concealing robe. I needed just a moment to steal it out, once my back was turned and he was triumphantly hoisting the medallion. The test, however, would be whether Astiza cried out when she saw what I was doing.
She hadn’t.
Which meant that perhaps she wasn’t on Silano’s side after all. That the man was indeed a liar. That I was not entirely a fool.
So I was quick, very quick. Yet Silano was quicker. He ducked as the hatchet whistled by his ear, spinning to land in the sands beyond the temple terrace. Still, the throw had put him off-balance, requiring an instant to recover. It was enough to seize my rifle! I brought it up…
And he leant forward, lithe and sure, and rammed his rapier blade right into the mouth of the barrel. ‘ Touche, Monsieur Gage. And now we are at an impasse, are we not?’
I suppose we looked ridiculous. I had frozen, my muzzle pointed at his breast, and he was a statue too, neatly balanced, his sword in my weapon’s throat.
‘Except that I,’ he went on, ‘have a pistol.’ He reached beneath his coat.
So I pulled the trigger.
My plugged rifle exploded, the shattered stock kicking back at me and the barrel and broken sword whirling over Silano’s head. We both went sprawling, my ears ringing and my face cut by pieces of the ruptured gun.
Silano howled.
And then there was an ominous creak and rumble.
I looked up. A precariously balanced stone beam, already partly dislodged from its ancient perch from some long-ago earthquake, was rocking against the stars. The chain was wrapped around it, I now noticed, and Astiza was pulling with all her might.
‘You moved the chains,’ Silano said to her stupidly, looking at Astiza in stunned confusion.
‘Samson,’ she replied.
‘You’ll kill us all!’
The beam slid off the column and fell like a hammer, crashing against a leaning pillar and starting it falling, too. The worn columns were a house of cards. There was a grinding creak, a growing roar, and the whole overhead edifice began to give way. I winced and rolled as tons of heavy rock came smashing down, heaving the very ground. I heard a pop as Silano’s pistol went off and bits of shattered rock flew like shrapnel, but its sound was dwarfed by groaning columns that rolled and tumbled. Then Astiza was jerking me upward, pushing me toward the edge of the temple platform amid the chaos. ‘Run, run! The noise will bring the French!’ We leapt, a cloud of dust rolling out with us, and hit the sand just as a section of pillar bounced over us like a runaway barrel. It crashed against Cleopatra’s feet. Back on the ruined terrace, Silano was screaming and cursing, his voice coming from the dust and wreckage of the toppled ruins.
She stooped and handed me the tomahawk I’d hurled. ‘We may need this.’
I looked at her in amazement. ‘You brought the whole temple down.’
‘He forgot to sheer my hair. Or hold his prize.’ The medallion, wide and clumsy in its new assembly, swung
