treasure secrets, ain’t you?”
“What, you’re leaving me to them?”
“Maybe you can lead ’em on like you did us, eh?”
“Damn, Ned, let’s stand together, as the lieutenant said!”
“He’s done, and so are we. Doesn’t pay to cheat honest seamen at cards, guv’nor. Lose your friends, you do.” 1 0 0
w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
“But I didn’t cheat, I outsmarted you!”
“The same bloody thing.”
“Ned, open this gate!”
But there was no reply, just the mute slab.
“Ned!” Lying prone, I hammered on the unyielding iron. “Ned!
Let me in!”
But he didn’t, of course, as I strained to hear their retreat over the city’s tumult. I turned back. The French had crept to just yards away, and several muskets were trained on me. The tallest one smiled.
“We said good-bye beneath the Temple Mount and yet we meet again!” their leader cried. He doffed a tricorn hat and bowed. “You do have a talent of being everywhere, Monsieur Gage, but then so do I, do I not?” His was a torturer’s grin. “Surely you remember me, from the Toulon stage? Pierre Najac, at your service.”
“I remember you: The customs inspector who turned out to be a thief. So is Najac your real name?”
“Real enough. What happened to your friends, monsieur?” Slowly I stood. “Disappointed in a game of cards.”
c h a p t e r
1 0
Iknew I was in hell when Najac insisted on showing me his bullet wound. It was the one I’d given him the year before, red and scabby, on a torso that couldn’t have seen soap or a washcloth for a month. The little crater was a few inches below his left nipple and toward his left side, confirming that my aim had been off by degrees. Now I knew he smelled bad, too.
“It broke a rib,” he said. “Imagine my pleasure when I learned after my convalescence that you might be alive and that I could help my master track you down. First you were stupid enough to make inquiry in Egypt. Then, when we came here we caught a doddering old fool who squealed about meeting a Frank carrying Satan’s gold angels, once we’d roasted him enough. That’s when I knew you must be close.
Revenge is sweeter the longer it is delayed, don’t you think?”
“I’ll let you know when I finally kill you.” He laughed at my little joke, stood, and then kicked the side of my head so hard that the night dissolved into bright bits of light. I toppled over by the fire, bound hand and foot, and it was the smoldering of my clothes and resulting pain that finally jarred me enough to wriggle away. This greatly amused my captors, but then I always 1 0 2
w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
did enjoy being the center of attention. Afterward the burn kept me feverish. It was the night after our departure from Jerusalem, and fear and pain were the only things keeping me conscious. I was exhausted, sore, and frightfully alone. Najac’s party of bullyboys had somehow swelled to ten, half of them French and the rest bedraggled Bedouin who looked like the kitchen grease of Arabia, ugly as toads.
Missing, besides half this complement’s teeth, was the Frenchman I’d stabbed in the fight over Miriam. I hoped I’d finished him, a sign I was getting better at dispatching my enemies. But maybe he was convalescing too, dreaming of the day he could capture and kick me as well.
Najac’s mood wasn’t improved by his discovery that I carried nothing of value but my rifle and tomahawk, which, being a thief, he appropriated. My seraphim I’d entrusted to Miriam, and in all the excitement I hadn’t noticed that someone—Big Ned or Little Tom, I assumed—had also relieved me of my purse. My insistence that we’d found nothing underground, that Jerusalem was as frustrating as Egypt, did not sit well.
What was I doing if nothing was to be found down there?
Seeing the root stone of the world from its other side, I answered.
They pounded on me but hesitated to kill me. The passageways under the Temple Mount were as stirred up as an ant nest, the Muslims probably puzzling over what we’d been looking for. The ruckus eliminated any chance of this French-Arab gang going back, so I was the only clue they had.
“I’d roast you right now if Bonaparte and the master didn’t want you alive,” Najac snarled. He let the Arabs amuse themselves by using their daggers to flick embers on my arms and legs, but not much more. Time enough later to make me scream.
So I finally lapsed into exhausted blackness until I was yanked painfully awake the next morning for a breakfast of chickpea paste and water. Then we continued down a trace from the Jerusalem hills to the coastal plain, the horizon marked by columns of smoke.
The French army was hard at work.
t h e
r o s e t t a k e y
1 0 3
¤
¤
¤
