I was stunned. Her death, the burial of her drowned body, I had 4 8
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braced for. Her survival, even if she was imprisoned, I had hoped for.
But her complete disappearance? Had the river carried her away, never to be seen again or decently buried? What kind of answer was that?
Silano gone too? That was even more suspicious. Had she somehow survived and gone with him? That was even greater agony!
“You must know something more than that! My God, the entire army knew her! Napoleon remarked on her! Key savants took her on their boat! Now there’s no word at all?” He looked at me with sympathy. “I am sorry, effendi. Sometimes God leaves more questions than answers, does he not?” Humans can adapt to anything but uncertainty. The worst monsters are the ones we haven’t yet encountered. Yet here I was, hearing her last words that rang in my head, “Find it!” and then her cutting the rope, falling away with Silano, the screams, the blinding sun as the balloon soared away . . . was it all just a nightmare? No! It had been as real as this table.
Jericho was looking at me gloomily. Sympathy, yes, but also the knowledge that the Egyptian woman had kept me at a distance from his sister. Miriam’s gaze was more direct than it ever had been before, and in her eyes I read sorrowful understanding. In that instant I realized she’d lost someone too. This was why no suitors were encouraged, and why her brother remained her closest companion. We were all bonded by grief.
“I just wanted a clear answer,” I whispered.
“Your answer is, what is past is past.” Our visitor stood. “I am sorry that I could not bring better news, but I am only the messenger. Jericho’s friends will keep their ears open, of course. But do not hope.
She is gone.”
And with that, he, too, left.
c h a p t e r
6
My first reaction was to depart Jerusalem, and the cursed East, immediately and forever.
The bizarre odyssey with Bonaparte—escaping Paris, sailing from Toulon, the assault on Alexandria, meeting Astiza, and on and on through horrific battles, the loss of my friend Antoine Talma, and the bitter secret of the Great Pyramid—was like a mouthful of ashes.
Nothing had come of it—no riches, no pardon for a crime in Paris I’d never committed, no permanent membership with the esteemed savants who had accompanied Napoleon’s expedition, and no lasting love with the woman who’d entranced and bewitched me. I’d even lost my rifle! My only real reason for coming to Palestine was to learn Astiza’s fate, and now that word was that there was no word (could any message be crueler?) my mission seemed futile. I didn’t care about the coming invasion of Syria, the fate of Djezzar the Butcher, the career of Sir Sidney Smith, or the political calculations of Druze, Matuwelli, Jew, and all the rest trapped in their endless cycles of revenge and envy. How had I found myself in such a crazy necropolis of hatred? It was time to go home to America and start a normal life.
And yet . . . my resolution to get out and be done was paralyzed 5 0
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by the very fact of not knowing. If Astiza seemed not alive, neither was she definitely dead. There was no body. If I sailed away I’d be haunted the rest of my life. I had too many memories of her—of her showing me the star Sirius as we sailed up the Nile, her help in wrestling down Ashraf during the fury of the Battle of the Pyramids, her beauty when seated in Enoch’s courtyard, or her vulnerability and eroticism when chained at the Temple of Dendara. And then possessing her body by the banks of the Nile! With a century or two to spare you might get over memories like that—but you wouldn’t forget them. She haunted me.
As for the Book of Thoth, it might well be a myth—all we’d found in the pyramid, after all, was an empty repository for it, and perhaps Moses’ taunting staff—and yet what if it wasn’t, and really rested somewhere under my feet? Jericho was nearing completion on a rifle that I’d had a hand in building, and which seemed likely to be superior to the one I’d lost. And then there was Miriam, who I guessed had suffered a tragic loss before mine, and who was a partner in sorrow.
With Astiza vanished, the woman whose house I shared, whose food I ate, and whose hands were shaping the wood of my own weapon, suddenly seemed more wondrous. Who did I have to return to in America? No one. So despite my frustration I found myself deciding to stay a little longer, at least until the gun was completed. I was a gambler, who waited for a turn of the cards. Maybe a new card would come now.
And I was curious who Miriam had lost.
She treated me with proper reserve as she had before, and yet our eye contact lingered longer now. When she set my plate she stood perceptibly closer, and the tone of her voice—was it my imagination?—was softer, more sympathetic. Jericho was watching both of us more closely, and would sometimes interrupt our conversations with gruff interjections. How could I blame him? She was a beautiful helpmate, loyal as a hound, and I was a shiftless foreigner, a treasure hunter with an uncertain future. I couldn’t help but dream of having her, and Jericho was a man too: he knew what any man would wish.
Worse, I might take her away to America. I noticed that he began t h e
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5 1
devoting more hours to my rifle. He wanted to get it finished, and me gone.
We endured the late winter rains, Jerusalem gray and quiet. Reports came that Bonaparte’s best general, Desaix, had reported fresh triumphs and seen spectacular new ruins far up the Nile. Smith was roving at sea between Acre, the blockade off Alexandria, and Constantinople, all to prepare for Napoleon’s spring assault. French troops were assembling at El-Arish, near the border with Palestine. The strengthening sun slowly warmed the city stone, war drew nearer, and then one dusky evening when Miriam set out to the city’s markets to fetch a missing spice for our evening’s supper, I impulsively decided to follow. I wanted an opportunity to speak with her away from Jericho’s protective presence. It was unseemly for a man to trail a single woman in Jerusalem, but perhaps some opportunity for conversation would present itself. I was lonely. What did I intend to say to Miriam? I didn’t know.
