The Rosetta Key

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My rifle was complete. Jericho had carefully pasted two of Miriam’s hairs on its telescope to give an aiming point, and when I tested the gun outside the city I found I could reliably hit a plate at two hundred yards. A musket, in contrast, was inaccurate after fifty.

But when I took the piece up to watch for the French brigands from our rooftop, peering until my eye ached, I saw nothing. Had they left?

I fantasized that they hadn’t, that Alessandro Silano was here, secretly directing them, and that I could capture and interrogate him about Astiza.

But it was as if the gang had never existed.

Miriam has used bright brass to inset two replica seraphim on each side of the wooden stock as patch boxes where I kept my greased wadding. Pushed by the bullet, it cleans the barrel of powder resi-due with each shot. The seraphim crouched with wings outstretched like those on the Ark. She also made me a new tomahawk. I was so pleased I gave a dubious Jericho some instruction on how to win at pharaon, should he ever find a game, and bought a small golden Spanish cross for Miriam. I also wasn’t entirely surprised, when our evening of adventure came, that Miriam insisted she come along, despite 7 2

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the custom to cloister women in Jerusalem. “She knows old legends that bore me,” Jericho admitted. “She sees things I don’t, or won’t.

And I don’t want to leave her alone with the French thieves skulking about.”

“We agree on that,” I said.

“Besides, the two of you need a woman’s sense,” she said.

“It’s important we move stealthily,” Jericho added. “Miriam said you have red Indian skills.”

Truth be told, my red Indian skills had consisted primarily of avoiding the savages whenever I could, and buying them off with presents when I couldn’t. My few scrapes with them had been terrifying. But I had exaggerated my frontier exploits to Miriam (a bad habit of mine), and it wouldn’t do to set the record straight now.

Farhi also came, dressed in black. “My presence may be even more important than I thought,” he said. “There are Jewish mysteries too, and since our conversation I’ve been studying what the Templars studied, including the numerology of the Jewish kabbalah and its Book of Zohar.”

“Another book? What’s this one for?”

“Some of us believe the Torah, or your Bible, can be read at two levels. One is the stories we all know. The second is that there is another story, a mystery, a sacred story—a story hidden between the lines—embedded in a number code. That is Zohar.”

“The Bible is a code?”

“Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet can be represented by a number, and there are ten more numbers beyond, representing the sacred sefiroth. These are the code.”

“Ten what?”

“Sefiroth. They are the six directions of reality—the four cardinals of east, west, north, and south, plus up and down—and the makings of the universe, being fire, water, ether, and God. These ten sefiroth and twenty-two letters represent the thirty-two ways of wisdom, which in turn point toward the seventy-two sacred names of God.

Can this Book of Thoth perhaps be read in the same way? What is its key? We will see.”

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Well, here was more of the same gibberish I’d encountered ever since I’d won the damned Egyptian medallion in Paris. Lunacy, apparently, is contagious. So many people seem to believe in legends, numerology, and mathematical marvels that I’d begun to believe too, even if I could rarely make heads or tails of what people were talking about. But if a disfigured banker like Farhi was willing to muck about in the bowels of the earth because of Jewish numerology, then it seemed worth my time, too.

“Well, welcome. Try to keep up.” I turned to Jericho. “Why are you shouldering a bag of mortar?”

“To brick up whatever we break into. The secret to stealing things is to make it look like no theft has occurred.” That’s the kind of thinking I admire.

We slipped out the Dung Gate after dark. It was early March, and Napoleon’s invasion had already begun. Word had come that the French had marched from El-Arish at the border between Egypt and Palestine on February 15, won a quick victory at Gaza, and were approaching Jaffa. Time was short. We made our way down the rocky slope to the Pool of Siloam, a plumbing fixture since King David’s time, me breezily giving advice to crouch here and scurry there as if it were really trusty Algonquin lore. The truth is, I’m more at home in a gambling salon than wilderness, but Miriam seemed impressed.

There was a new moon, a sliver that left the hillside dark, and the early spring night air was cold. Dogs barked from the hovels of a few shepherds and goatherds as we clambered over old ruins. Behind us, forming a dark line against the sky, were the city walls that enclosed the south side of the Temple Mount. I could see the form of El- Aqsa up there, and the walls and arches of its Templar additions.

Were Muslim sentries peering down? As we crept along, I had an uneasy feeling of being watched. “Someone’s out there,” I whispered to Jericho.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I feel them, but can’t see them.” He looked around. “I’ve heard nothing. I think you frightened the French away.”

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