battlefield. “Well that’s it, then,” Big Ned remarked gloomily. “If a horde like that can’t stand against a few frogs, what chance do me mates have in Acre? It will be another bloody massacre, like Jaffa.”
“Except that Acre has the Butcher,” I said. “He won’t let anyone run or surrender.”
“And cannon and Phelipeaux and Sidney Smith,” said Mohammad. “Don’t worry, sailor. The city will stand until we get back.”
“Just in time for the final sacking.” He looked at me slyly.
I knew what the sailor was thinking. Find the treasure and run. I can’t say I entirely disagreed.
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French cavalry were still pursuing the remnants of the shattered Ottoman army when we followed their trampled trail and dropped into the valley of the Jordan River. We were past the fields now, in dry goat country except for the groves and meadows along the river. Any number of holy men had followed this stream, John the Baptist holding court somewhere along its fabled banks, but we rode like a company of outlaws. Najac’s dozen French and Arabs bristled with rifles, muskets, pistols, and swords. There were real outlaws as well, and we saw two different bands slink off like disappointed wolves after spying our ordinance. We also passed drowned and shot 1 8 6
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bodies of Ottoman soldiers, bloated like balloons of cloth. We gave them wide berth to avoid the stink and took care to draw water only from springs.
As we rode south, the valley became increasingly arid and the British ships Ned called home seemed ten thousand miles away. One night, he crawled over to whisper.
“Let’s ditch these brigands and strike out on our own, guv’nor,” he urged. “That Najac keeps eyeing you like a crow waiting for a corpse’s eyeball. You could dress these rascals like choirboys and they’d still frighten Westminster.”
“Aye, they have the morality of a legislature and the hygiene of galley slaves, but we need them to lead us to the woman who wore the ruby ring, remember?” He groaned, so I had to settle him. “Don’t think I haven’t retained my electrical powers. We’ll get what we’re coming for, and pay this lot back too.”
“I longs for the day to mash them. I hate frogs. A-rabs too, Mohammad excepted.”
“It’s coming, Ned. It’s coming.”
We trotted past a track Najac said led to the village of Jericho. I saw nothing of it, and the country was so brown it was hard to believe a city with mighty walls had ever been built here. I thought of the ironmonger and again was guilty for my desertion of Miriam. She deserved better.
The Dead Sea was as its name implies: a salt-encrusted shore and brackish, bright blue water that extended to the horizon. No birds thronged its shallows and no fish broke its surface. The desert air was thick, hazy and muggy, as if we’d advanced in season by two months in two days. I shared Ned’s disquiet. This was an odd, dreamlike land, spawning too many prophets and madmen.
“Jerusalem is that way,” Mohammad said, pointing west. Then, swinging his arm in the opposite direction, he said, “Mount Nebo.” Mountains rose precipitously from the Dead Sea shore as if in a hurry to get away from the brine. The tallest was as much a ridge as a peak, speckled with scrub pine. In rocky ravines, which would run with water only in a rain, pink oleander bloomed.
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Najac, who’d said little in our journey, took out a signal mirror and flashed it in the morning sun. We waited, but nothing happened.
“The damn thief has gotten us lost,” Ned muttered.
“Be patient, thickhead,” the Frenchman snapped back. He signaled again.
Then a column of signaling smoke rose from Nebo. “There!” our escort exclaimed. “The seat of Moses!”
We kicked our horses and began to climb.
It was a relief to get out of the Jordan Valley and into less cloying air. We cooled, and the slope began to smell of scrub pine. Bedouin tents were pitched on the mountain’s benches, and I could spy black-robed Arab boys tending wandering herds of scrubby goats. We followed a caravan track upward, hooves plopping in the soft dirt, horses snorting when they passed camel dung.
It took four hours, but finally we breasted the top. We could indeed see the Promised Land back west across the Jordan, brown and hazy from here, looking nothing like milk and honey. The Dead Sea was a blue mirror. Ahead, I saw no cave promising to hold treasure. Instead there was a French tent in a hollow, green grass next to it indicating a spring. The low ruins of something, an old church maybe, were nearby. Several men waited for us by a wisp of campfire smoke, the remains of the signal fire. Was Silano among them? But before I could tell I spied a person sitting on a rocky outcrop below the ruined church, away from the men, and guided my horse out of our file and dismounted.
It was a woman, dressed in white, who’d been watching our approach.
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She stood as I approached on foot, her tresses long and black as I remembered, falling from a white scarf to keep off the sun. Fabric and hair blew slightly in the mountain breeze. Her beauty was more tangible than I was prepared for, vivid in the mountaintop light. I’d turned her into a ghost and yet here she was, made flesh. I’d braced
