The Rosetta Key

by William Dietrich

  Smith, Mohammad, and I pushed through a crowd close to panic.

  Most were women and children, but not a few were rich merchants who’d paid Djezzar steep bribes to leave. In war, money can mean survival, and stories of slaughter had raced up the coast. People clutched the few belongings they could carry and bid for passage on the mer-chantmen offshore. A sweating woman cradled a silver coffee service, her toddlers clutching at her gown and howling. A cotton merchant had stuffed loaded pistols into a sash sewn with golden coins. A lovely dark-eyed girl of ten with trembling mouth held a squirming puppy.

  A banker used a wedge of African slaves to push his way to the fore-front.

  “Never mind this rabble,” Smith said. “We’re better without them.”

  “Don’t they trust their own garrison?”

  “Their garrison doesn’t trust itself. Djezzar has spine, but the French have crushed every army they’ve met. Your cannon will help. We’ll have bigger guns than Boney has, and we’ll put a battery of them right at the Land Gate, where the sea and land walls meet. But it will be the corner tower that’s the nut the devil cracks his tooth on. It’s the farthest from the support of our naval artillery, yet the strongest point in the wall. It’s Acre’s bloody knuckle, and our real secret is a man who hates Boney even more than we do.”

  “You mean Djezzar the Butcher.”

  “No, I mean Napoleon’s classmate from the Ecole Royale Mili-taire in Paris. Our Louis-Edmond le Picard de Phelipeaux shared a desk with the Corsican rascal, believe it or not, and the aristocrat and provincial kicked each other’s legs blue when they were teens. It was Phelipeaux who always bested Bonaparte on tests, Phelipeaux who graduated with higher honors, and Phelipeaux who got the best military assignments. If the revolution hadn’t occurred, forcing our royalist friend out of France, he’d likely be Napoleon’s superior. He slipped into France as a clandestine agent last year and rescued me from Temple Prison, posing as a police commissioner who pretended he was transferring me to a different cell. He’s never lost to Napoleon, and won’t this time. Come and meet him.”

  Djezzar’s “palace” looked like a transplanted Bastille. The Crusader keep had been remodeled to include gunports, not charm, and two-thirds of the Butcher’s ordinance was aimed at his own people, not the French. Square and stolid, the citadel was as implacable as Djezzar’s iron-fisted rule.

  “There’s an armory in the basement, barracks on the ground floor, administrative offices in the next, Djezzar’s palace above that, and the harem at the very top,” Smith said, pointing. I could see grilled harem windows, like the cage of pretty birds. As if in sympathy, swallows flitted between them and the palms below. Having broken into a harem in Egypt, I had no desire to explore this one. Those women had been scary.

  We passed hulking Ottoman sentries and a massive wooden door studded with iron, and entered the gloomy interior. After the dazzling light of the Levant, the inside had the air of a dungeon. I blinked as I looked about. This was the level that was quarters for Djezzar’s loyal-ist guards, and there was a military sparseness about it. The soldiers looked at us shyly from the shadows, where they were cleaning muskets and sharpening blades. They looked about as cheerful as recruits at Valley Forge. Then there were quick footsteps from the stairs and a lithe and more energetic Frenchman bounded down, in a rather stained and careworn white uniform of the Bourbons. This must be Phelipeaux.

  He was taller than Napoleon, elegant in his movements, and with that languid self-confidence that comes with high birth. Phelipeaux gave a courtly bow, his wan smile and dark eyes seeming to measure everything with an artilleryman’s calculation. “Monsieur Gage, I am told you may have saved our city!”

  “Hardly that.”

  “Your captured French guns will be invaluable, I assure you. Ah, the irony of it. And an American! We are Lafayette and Washington! What an international alliance we are forming here: British, French, American, Mameluke, Jew, Ottoman, Maronite … all against my former classmate!”

  “Did you really school together?”

  “He peeked at my answers.” He grinned. “Come, let’s peek at him now!”

  I liked his dash already.

  Phelipeaux led us up a winding stair until we came out on the roof of Djezzar’s castle. What a magnificent view! After the rain of recent days the air was dazzling, distant Mount Carmel a blue ridge far across the bay. Nearer, the assembling French were as sharp as lead soldiers.

  Tents and awnings were blossoming like a spring carnival. From Jaffa, I knew what life would be like in their lines: plentiful food, imported drink to bolster the courage of assault groups, and cadres of prostitutes and servant women to cook, clean, and provide warmth at night, all at exorbitant prices cheerfully paid by men who felt there was a good chance they were about to die. About a mile inland was a hill a hundred feet in height, and there I could see a cluster of men and horses amid flapping banners, out of range of any of our fire.

  “I suspect that is where Buonaparte will set his headquarters,”

  Phelipeaux said, drawing out the Italian pronunciation with aristocratic disdain. “I know him, you see, and know how he thinks. We both would do the same. He’ll extend his trenches and try to mine our walls with sappers. So I know that he knows the tower is key.”

  I followed the sweep of his finger. Cannon were being swung up onto the walls, and there was a stone-lined dry moat just beyond, about twenty feet deep and fifty wide. “No water in the moat?”

  “It hasn’t been designed for it—the bottom is above sea level—but our engineers have an idea. We’re building a reservoir on the Mediterranean near the city’s Land Gate that we’ll pump full of seawater. It could be released into the moat at a time of crisis.”

  “That plan, however, is still weeks from completion,” Smith said.

  I nodded. “So in the meantime, you’ve got your tower.” It was massive, like a promontory at the edge of a sea. I imagined it looked even taller from the French side.

  “It’s the strongest on the wall,” Phelipeaux said, “but it can also be fired upon and assaulted from two sides. If the republicans break it, they will be into the gardens and can fan out to seize our defenses from behind. If they cannot, their infantry will perish uselessly.”

  I tried to survey the scene with his engineer’s eye. The ruined aqueduct ran off from the walls toward the French. It broke just short of our wall near the tower, having once delivered water. I saw the French were digging trenches alongside it because it provided cover from harassing fire. To one side was what looked like a dried pond.

  The French were setting survey stakes inside it.

  “They’ve drained a reservoir to provide themselves a protective depression to site a battery,” Phelipeaux said as if reading my mind.

  “Soon it will be filled with the lighter guns they brought overland.”

  I looked down. The garden was an oasis of shade amid the military preparation. The harem women were probably accustomed to visiting there. Now, with so many soldiers and sailors manning the ramparts above, they’d be locked away.

  “We’ve added nearly a hundred cannon to the city’s defenses,”

  Phelipeaux said. “Now that we’ve captured the heaviest French guns, we must keep them at a distance.”

  “Which means not allowing Djezzar to give up,” Smith amended.

  “And you, Gage, are the key to that.”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve seen Napoleon’s army. I want you to tell our ally it can be beaten, because it can be if he believes. But first you have to believe it yourself. Do you?”

  I thought a moment. “Bonaparte buttons his breeches like the rest of us. He just hasn’t met anyone yet as pugnacious as himself.”

  “Exactly. So come meet the Butcher.”

  We did not have to wait for an audience. After Jaffa, Djezzar recognized his own survival depended on his new European allies.

  We were ushered into his audience chambers, a finely decorated but none
theless modest room with an ornately carved ceiling and a carpet of overlapping oriental rugs. Birds tweeted from golden cages, a small monkey hopped about on a leather leash, and some kind of large jungle cat, spotted, eyed us sleepily from a cushion, as if deciding whether we were worth the trouble of eating. I had much the same sense from the Butcher, who was sitting erect, his aging torso still conveying physical power. We sat cross-legged before him while his Sudanese bodyguards watched us carefully, as if we might be assassins instead of allies.

  Djezzar was seventy-five and looked like a fiery prophet, not a kindly grandfather. His bushy beard was white, his eyes flint, and his mouth had a cruel set. A pistol was tucked in his sash, and a dagger lay near to hand. Yet his gaze also betrayed the self-doubt of a bully up against another tough: Napoleon.

  “Pasha, this is the American I told you about,” Smith introduced.

  He took me in at a glance—my borrowed seaman’s clothing, stained boots, skin leathered by too much sun and saltwater—and didn’t try to hide his skepticism. Yet he was curious, too. “You escaped Jaffa.”

  “The French meant to kill me with the other prisoners,” I said. “I swam out to sea and found a small cave in the rocks. The massacre was horrible.”

  “Still, survival is the mark of remarkable men.” The Butcher himself was a wily survivor, of course. “And you helped capture the enemy’s artillery?”

  “Some of it, at least.”

  He studied me. “You are resourceful, I think.”

  “As are you, Pasha. As resourceful as any Napoleon.”

  He smiled. “More so, I think. I have killed more men and fucked more women. So now it is a test of wills. A siege. And Allah has forced me to use infidels to fight infidels. I don’t trust Christians. They are always conspiring.”

  This seemed ungrateful. “Right now we’re conspiring to save your neck.”

  He shrugged. “So tell me about this Bonaparte. Is he a patient man?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “But he’s energetic at pushing for what he wants,” Phelipeaux amended.

  “He’ll come at your city hard, early, even without the guns,” I said. “He believes in a quick strike of overpowering force to break an enemy’s will. His soldiers are good at what they do, and their fire is accurate.”

  Djezzar took a date from a cup and examined it as if he’d never seen one before, then popped it in his mouth, chewing it to one side as he talked. “So perhaps I should surrender. Or flee. He outnumbers my garrison two to one.”

  “With the British ships you outgun him. He’s hundreds of miles from his Egyptian base and two thousand miles from France.”

  “So we can beat him before he gets more cannon.”

  “He has almost no troops to garrison anything he captures. His soldiers are homesick and tired.”

  “Sick in another way, too,” Djezzar said. “There have been rumors of plague.”

  “A few cases appeared even in Egypt,” I confirmed. “I heard there were more at Jaffa.” The Butcher was a shrewd one, I saw, not some Ottoman weakling imposed by the Sublime Porte in Constantinople.

  He gathered information about his enemies like a scholar. “Napoleon’s weakness is time, Pasha. Every day he stays in front of Acre, the sultan in Constantinople can order more forces to surround him.

  He gets no reinforcements, and no resupply, while the British navy can bring both to us. He tries to accomplish in a day what other men require a year to complete, and that’s his weakness. He’s trying to conquer Asia with ten thousand men, and no one knows better than he that it’s all bluff. The moment his enemies stop fearing him, he’s finished. If you can hold …”

  “He goes away,” Djezzar finished. “This little man no one has beaten.”

  “We will beat him here,” Smith vowed.

  “Unless he finds something more powerful than artillery,” another said from the shadows.

  I started. I knew that voice! And indeed, emerging from the gloom behind Djezzar’s cushioned perch was the hideous countenance of Haim Farhi! Smith and Phelipeaux blinked at this mutilation but did not recoil. They’d seen it before, too.

  “Farhi! What are you doing in Acre?”

  “Serving his master,” Djezzar said.

  “We left Jerusalem an uncomfortable place, Monsieur Gage. And with no book, there was no reason to stay there.”

  “You went with us for the pasha?”

  “But of course. You know who modified my appearance.”

  “It was a favor to him,” the Butcher rumbled. “Good looks allow vanity, and pride is the greatest sin. His scars let him concentrate on his numbers. And get into heaven.”

  Farhi bowed. “As always, you are generous, master.”

  “So you escaped Jerusalem!”

  “Narrowly. I left you because my face draws too much attention, and because I knew further research was required. What do the French know of our secrets?”

  “That Muslim outrage bars them from further exploration of the tunnels. They know nothing, and threatened me with snakes to try to learn what I knew. We’ve all come away empty-handed, I think.”

  “Empty-handed of what?” Smith asked.

  Farhi turned to the British officer. “Your ally here did not go to Jerusalem merely to serve you, Captain.”

  “No, there was a woman he inquired about, if I recall.”

  “And a treasure desperate men are seeking.”

  “Treasure?”

  “Not money,” I said, annoyed at Farhi’s casual sharing of my secret.

  “A book.”

  “A book of magic,” the banker amended. “It’s been rumored for thousands of years, and sought by the Knights Templar. When we asked for your sailor allies, we weren’t looking for a siege door into Jerusalem. We were looking for this book.”

  “As were the French,” I added.

  “And me,” said Djezzar. “Farhi was my ear.”

  It was appropriate he used the singular, since the scoundrel had cut off his minister’s other one.

  Smith was looking from one to the other of us.

  “But it wasn’t there,” I said. “Most likely, it doesn’t exist.”

  “And yet agents are making inquiries up and down the province of Syria,” Farhi said. “Arabs, mostly, in the employ of some mysterious figure back in Egypt.”

  My skin prickled. “I was told Count Silano is still alive.”

  “Alive. Resurrected. Immortal.” Farhi shrugged.

  “What’s your point, Haim?” Djezzar said, with the tone of a master long impatient with the meanderings of his subordinates.

  “That, as Gage said, what all men seek might not exist. Yet if it does, we have no way to look for it, locked up as we are by Napoleon’s army. Time is his enemy, yes. But it’s our challenge too. If we are besieged too long, it may be too late to find first what Count Alessandro Silano is still seeking.” He pointed at me. “This one must find a way to look for the secret again, before it is too late.”

  I followed the smell of charcoal to find Jericho. He was in the bowels of the armory in the basement of Djezzar’s palace, his muscles illuminated by the glow of a smithy furnace, hammering like Thor on the tools of war: swords, pikes, forked poles to push off scaling ladders, bayonets, ramrods. Lead cooled in bullet molds like black pearls, and scrap was piled for conversion into grapeshot and shrapnel. Miriam was working the bellows, her hair curled on her cheeks in sweaty tendrils, her shift damp and disturbingly clingy, perspiration glistening in that vale of temptation between neck and breasts. I didn’t know what my reception would be, given that they’d lost their Jerusalem house in the tumult I’d caused, but when she saw me her eyes flashed bright greeting and she flew to me in the hellish glow, hugging. How good she felt! It was all I could do to keep my hand from slipping onto her round bottom, but of course her brother was there. Yet even taciturn Jericho allowed a reluctant smile.

  “We thought you dead!”

  She kissed my cheek, setting it on f
ire. I held her a safe distance away lest my own enthusiasm at our reunion be too physically obvious.

  “And I feared the same for the two of you,” I said. “I’m sorry our adventure has left you trapped here, but I really thought we’d find treasure. I escaped from Jaffa with my friend Mohammad in a boat.” I looked at Miriam, realizing how much I’d missed her, and how angelically beautiful she really was. “The news of your survival was like nectar to a man dying of thirst.”

  I thought I saw a blush beyond the soot, and certainly I’d erased her brother’s smile. No matter. I wouldn’t release her waist, and she wouldn’t release my shoulders.

  “And now here we all are, alive,” Jericho said. “All three of us.”

  I finally let her go and nodded. “With a man called the Butcher, a half-mad English sea captain, a mutilated Jew, a disgruntled schoolmate of Bonaparte, and a Muslim guide. Not to mention a burly blacksmith, his scholarly sister, and a ne’r-do-well American gambler. Quite the merry men, we are.”

  “And women,” Miriam said. “Ethan, we heard what happened at Jaffa. What happens if the French break in here?”

  “They won’t,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “We don’t have to beat them—we just have to hold them off until they’re compelled to retreat. And I have an idea for that. Jericho, is there any spare heavy chain in the city?”

  “I’ve seen some about, used by ships, and to chain off the harbor mouth. Why?”

  “I want to drape it from out towers to welcome the French.”

  He shook his head, convinced I was daft as ever. “To give them a hand up?”

  “Yes. And then charge it with electricity.”

  “Electricity!” He crossed himself.

  “It’s an idea I had while in the boat with Mohammad. If we store enough spark in a battery of Leyden jars, we could transfer them with a wire to a suspended chain. It would give the same jolt I demonstrated in Jerusalem, but this time it would knock them into the moat where we could kill them.” I’d become quite the sanguinary warrior.

  “You mean they wouldn’t be able to hold onto the chain?” Miriam asked.