The Rosetta Key

wait in a thicket by a tepid stream and marched in with that superior air of a savant, a man who has an opinion on everything and accomplishment in none. “I have a message for Gaspard Monge from his academic colleagues in Cairo,” I told a sentry.

“He’s helping at the hospital.” He pointed. “Visit at your own peril.”

Had we already wounded that many? The eastern sky was beginning to lighten when I found the hospital tents, stitched together like a vast circus canvas. Monge was sleeping on a cot and looked sick himself, a middle-aged scientist-adventurer whom the expedition was turning old. He was pale, despite the sun, and thinner, hollowed out by sickness. I hesitated to wake him.

I glanced about. Soldiers, quietly moaning, lay in parallel rows that receded into the gloom. It seemed too many for the casualties we’d inflicted. I bent to inspect one, who was twitching fitfully, and recoiled at what I saw. There were pustules on his face and, when I lifted the sheet, an ominous swelling at his groin.

Plague.

I stepped back hastily, sweating. There had been rumors it was getting worse, but confirmation brought back historic dread. Disease was the shadow of armies, plague the handmaiden of sieges, and only rarely confined to one side. What if it crossed the walls?

On the other hand, the disease gave Napoleon a tight deadline.

He had to win before plague decimated his army. No wonder he had attacked impetuously.

“Ethan, is that you?”

I turned. Monge was sitting up, tousled and weary, blinking awake.

Again, his face reminded me of a wise old dog. “Once more I’ve come for your counsel, Gaspard.”

He smiled. “First we thought you dead, then we guessed you were the mad electrician somehow inside the walls of Acre, and now you materialize at my summons. You may indeed be a wizard. Or the t h e

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most baffled man in either army, never knowing to which side you belong.”

“I was perfectly happy on the other side, Gaspard.”

“Bah. With a despotic pasha, a lunatic Englishman, and a jealous French royalist? I don’t believe it. You’re more rational than you pretend.”

“Phelipeaux said it was Bonaparte who was the jealous one at school, not he.”

“Phelipeaux is on the wrong side of history, as is every man behind those walls. The revolution is remaking man from centuries of superstition and tyranny. Rationalism will always triumph over superstition. Our army promises liberty.”

“With the guillotine, massacre, and plague.” He frowned at me, disappointed at my intransigence, and then the corners of his mouth twitched. Finally he laughed. “What philosophers we are, at the end of the earth!”

“The center, the Jews would say.”

“Yes. Every army eventually tramps through Palestine, the crossroads of three continents.”

“Gaspard, where did you get this ring?” I held it out, the stone like a bubble of blood in the paleness. “Astiza was wearing it when I last saw her, falling into the Nile.”

“Bonaparte ordered the arrow missive.”

“But why?”

“Well, she’s alive, for one thing.”

My heart took off at full gallop. “And her condition?”

“I haven’t seen her, but I’ve had word. She was in a coma, and under the care of Count Silano for a month. But I’m told she’s recovered better than he has. He entered the water first, I suspect, she on top of him, so he broke the surface. His hip was shattered, and he’ll limp for the rest of his life.”

The beat of my pulse was like drums in my ears. To know, to know . . .

“Now she cares for him,” Monge went on.

It was like a slap. “You must be joking.” 1 6 8

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“Takes care, I mean. She hasn’t given up the peculiar quest you all seem to be on. They were furious to hear you’d been condemned at Jaffa—that was the work of that buffoon Najac; I don’t know why Napoleon wouldn’t listen to me— and horrified that you’d been executed. You know something they need. Then there were rumors you were alive, and she sent the ring. We saw your electrical trick. My instructions were to inquire about angels. Do you know what she means?”

Once more I could feel them pressing my skin. “Perhaps. I must see her.”

“She’s not here. She and Silano have gone to Mount Nebo.”

“Mount what?”

“East of Jerusalem, across the Jordan River. There Moses finally spied the Promised Land, and died before he could enter it. Now why are they so interested in Moses, Ethan Gage?” He was watching me carefully.

So Monge, and probably Bonaparte, didn’t know everything. What kind of game were Silano and Astiza playing? “I have no idea,” I lied.