Jerusalem was a place pregnant with the past. I roamed the hills outside the walls in chilly winter, when the light cast long shadows across anonymous ruins. Once the bitter wind brought light snow, the white coverlet followed by pale blue skies, and a sun as heatless as a kite. It lit the landscape into sugar.
Meanwhile work on the rifle proceeded, and I could tell Jericho was enjoying the craftsmanship required. When the barrel was completely forged we drilled it out to the correct diameter, I turned the hand crank while he fed the clamped barrel toward me. It’s hard work.
When that was done he stretched a line through its bore, drawing it tight with a bent bow, and then sighted down its middle for shadows and ridges that would signal imperfections. Adept heating and hammering made the tube even straighter.
The grooved rifling that would spin the bullet was painstaking.
There were seven grooves, each cut by a bit rotated through the barrel.
Since it could not cut deeply, the bit had to be hand-twisted through the gun two hundred times per groove.
That was only the beginning. There was polishing, the bluing of the metal, and then the myriad metal parts for the flintlock, trigger, patch box, ramrod, and so on. My hands helped, but the skill was pure 4 6
w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
Jericho, his meaty paws able to produce results worthy of a maiden with a needle. He was happiest when silently working.
Maid Miriam surprised me one day by asking to measure my arm and shoulder. She, it turned out, would shape the rifle’s stock, which has to be fitted to the rifleman’s size like a coat. She’d volunteered for the job. “She has an artist’s eye,” Jericho explained. “Show her the drop and offset you want in the stock.” There was no maple in Palestine, so she used desert acacia, the same wood used in the ark: heavier than I preferred, but hard and tight- grained. After I’d roughly sketched how I wanted the wood to differ from the design of Arab firearms, she translated my suggestion into graceful curves, reminis-cent of Pennsylvania. When she measured my size to get the dimensions of the butt right, I trembled like a schoolboy at the touch of her fingers.
That’s how chaste I’d become.
So I existed, sending vague political and military assessments to Smith that would have confused any strategist foolish enough to pay attention to them, until finally one evening our supper was interrupted by a hammering at Jericho’s door. The blacksmith went to check, and came back with a dusty, bearded traveler from the day’s market caravan. “I bring the American word from Egypt,” the visitor announced.
My heart hammered in my breast.
We sat him at the plain wood trestle table, gave him some water—
he was Muslim, and refused any wine—and some olives and bread.
While he gave uneasy thanks for our hospitality and ate like a wolf, I waited apprehensively, surprised at the flood of emotion rushing through my veins. Astiza had shrunken in memory during these weeks with Miriam. Now feelings buried for months pounded in my head as if I were still holding Astiza, or watching her desperately dangle on a rope below. I flushed impatiently, feeling the prickle of sweat. Miriam watched me.
There were the obligatory greetings, wishes for prosperity, thanks to the divine, a report on health—“How are you?” is one of the most profound queries of my age, given the prevalence of gout, ague, t h e
r o s e t t a k e y
4 7
dropsy, chilblains, ophthalmia, aches, and faints—and recitation of the hardships of the journey.
Finally, “What news of this man’s woman friend?” The messenger swallowed, flicking bread crumbs from his beard.
“There are reports of a French balloon lost during the October revolt in Cairo,” he began. “Nothing about the American aboard; he is said to have simply disappeared, or deserted from the French army. There are a number of stories placing him at this location or that, but no agreement about what happened to him.” He glanced at me, then down at the table. “No one confirms his story.”
“But surely there are reports of the fate of Count Silano,” I said.
“Count Alessandro Silano has similarly disappeared. He was reported investigating the Great Pyramid, and then vanished. Some suspect he may have been killed in the pyramid. Others think that he returned to Europe. The credulous think he disappeared by magic.”
“No, no!” I objected. “He fell from the balloon!”
“There is no report of that, effendi. I am only telling you what is being said.”
“And Astiza?”
“We could find no trace of her at all.” My heart sank. “No trace?”
“The house of Qelab Almani, the man you call Enoch, where you claimed to have stayed, was empty after his murder and has since been requisitioned as a French barracks. Yusuf al-Beni, who you said hosted this woman in his harem, denies that she ever stayed there. There was rumor of a beautiful woman accompanying General Desaix’s expe-ditionary force to Upper Egypt, but if so, she too vanished. Of the wounded Mameluke Ashraf that you mentioned, we heard no word.
No one remembers Astiza’s presence in either Cairo or Alexandria.
There is soldier talk of an attractive woman, yes, but no one claims to have seen her, or known her. It is almost as if she never existed.”
“But she fell into the Nile too! An entire platoon saw it!”
“If so, my friend, she must never have emerged. Her memory is like a mirage.”
