The Rosetta Key

by William Dietrich

  She put her arms around my neck and clung. “Ethan, it’s so horrible.”

  “Maybe they won’t come back.”

  She shook her head. “You told me Bonaparte is implacable.”

  I knew it would take more than an electric chain to defeat Napoleon.

  Miriam looked down at herself. “I look like a butcher.”

  “You look beautiful. Beautiful and bloody.” It was true. “Let’s get you inside.” I boosted her up and she leaned against me, one arm around my shoulders for support. I wasn’t quite sure where to take her, but I wanted to get away from Jericho’s foundry and the combat wall. I began to walk us toward the mosque.

  Then Jericho appeared, led by an anxious Ned.

  “My God, what happened?” the ironmonger asked.

  “She got caught up in the fighting in the breach. She performed like an Amazon.”

  “I’m all right, brother.”

  His voice was accusatory. “You said she’d simply help with your sorcery.”

  She interceded. “The men needed ammunition, Jericho.”

  “I could have lost you.”

  Then there was silence, and the strain of two men wanting a woman for different reasons. Ned stood mutely to one side, looking guilty as if it was his fault.

  “Well, come back down to the foundry, then,” Jericho said tightly.

  “No cannonballs will reach us there.”

  “I’m going with Ethan.”

  “Going? Where?”

  They both looked at me, as if I knew. “Going,” I said, “where she can get some rest. It’s noisy as a factory at your forge, Jericho. Hot and dirty.”

  “I don’t want you with her.” His voice was flat.

  “I’m with Ethan, brother.” Her voice was soft but insistent.

  And so we went, she leaning on me, the metallurgist left standing in the garden in frustration, his hands closing on nothing. Behind us, artillery rumbled like distant drums.

  My friend Mohammad had taken quarters at Khan el-Omdan, the Pillars Inn, rather than sail away and leave us to Napoleon. In the excitement of working on the chain I’d forgotten about him, but I sought him out now. I’d wrapped a cloak around Miriam, but when we appeared at his apartment we both looked like refugees: smoke-stained, filthy, and torn.

  “Mohammad, we need to find a place to rest.”

  “Effendi, all the rooms are taken!”

  “Surely …”

  “Yet something can always be found for a price.”

  I smiled wryly. “Could we share your room?”

  He shook his head. “The walls are thin and water scarce. It’s no place for a lady. You don’t deserve better, but she does. Give me the rest of the money Sir Sidney gave you for your medal and your winnings at the duel.” He held out his hand.

  I hesitated.

  “Come, you know I won’t cheat you. What good is money, unless you use it?”

  So I handed it over and he disappeared. In half an hour he was back, my purse empty. “Come. A merchant has fled the city and a young physician has been using his home to sleep, but rarely gets to. He rented me the keys.”

  The house was dark, its shutters drawn, its furnishing draped and pushed against the wall. Its desertion by its owner had left a desolate air, and the doctor who had taken his place was only camped there. He was a Christian Levantine from Tyre named Zawani. He shook my hand and looked curiously at Miriam. “I’ll use the money for herbs and bandages.” We were far enough from the walls that the guns were muted. “There’s a bath above. Rest. I won’t be back until tomorrow.” He was handsome, his eyes kind, but already hollowed from exhaustion.

  “The lady needs to recover …”

  “There’s no need to explain. I’m a doctor.”

  We were left alone. The top floor had a bathing alcove with a white masonry dome above its pool that was pierced by thick panes of colored glass. Light came through in shafts of multiple colors like a dismantled rainbow. There was wood to heat the water, so I set to work while Miriam dozed. The room was full of steam when I woke her. “I’ve prepared a bath.” I made to leave but she stopped me, and undressed us both. Her breasts were small but perfect, firm, her nipples pink, her belly descending to a thatch of pale hair. She was a virginal Madonna, scrubbing both of us of the dirt of battle until she was once more alabaster.

  The merchant’s mattress was elevated as high as my waist on an ornately carved bed, with drawers underneath and a canopy overhead.

  She crawled up first and lay back, so I could see her in the pale light.

  There’s no sight lovelier than a welcoming woman. The sweetness of her swallows you, like the embrace of a warm sea. The topography of her body was a snowy mountain range, mysterious and unexplored.

  Did I even remember what to do? It felt like a thousand years. An odd, sudden memory of Astiza intruded—a knife to the heart—but then Miriam spoke.

  “This is one of those moments I told you about, Ethan.”

  So I took her, slowly and gently. She wept the first time, and then clung fiercely, crying out, the second. I clung too, shaking and gasping at the end, my eyes wetting when I thought first of Astiza, then of Napoleon, then of Miriam, and how long it would be before the French came again, as furious now as they’d been at Jaffa. If they got inside, they’d kill us all.

  I turned my head so she couldn’t see any tear or worry, and we slept.

  Near midnight, I was jostled awake. I clutched a pistol, but then saw it was Mohammad.

  “What the devil?” I hissed. “Can’t we have some privacy?”

  He put his finger to his lips and beckoned with his head. Come.

  “Now?”

  He nodded emphatically. Sighing, I climbed out, the floor cold, and followed him out to the main room.

  “What are you doing here?” I grumbled, holding a blanket around myself like a toga. The city seemed quiet, the guns taking a rest.

  “I’m sorry, effendi, but Sir Sidney and Phelipeaux said this shouldn’t wait. The French used an arrow to fire this over the wall. It has your name on it.”

  “An arrow? By Isaac Newton, what century are we in?”

  A small piece of burlap was tied to the arrow. Sure enough, a tag, with fine pen, read, “Ethan Gage.” Franklin would have admired the postal efficiency.

  “How do they know I’m here?”

  “Your electric chain is like a banner announcing your presence. The whole province is talking about it, I would guess.”

  True enough. So what could our enemies be sending me that was so small?

  I unwrapped the burlap and rolled its content onto the palm of my hand.

  It was a ruby ring, its jewel the size of a cherry, with a tag attached that read, simply, “She needs the angels. Monge.” My world reeled.

  The last time I’d seen the jewel, it had been on Astiza’s finger.

  CHAPTER 15

  M ohammad was watching me closely. “This ring means something to you, my friend?”

  “This is it? No other message?” Monge undoubtedly was Gaspard Monge, the French mathematician I’d seen at Jaffa.

  “And it is not just the size of the jewel, is it?” Mohammad pressed.

  I sat down heavily. “I knew the woman who wore it.” Astiza was alive!

  “And the French army would catapult her ring for what reason, exactly?”

  What reason indeed? I turned the ring over, remembering its origin. I’d insisted Astiza take it from the subterranean treasure trove we’d found under the Great Pyramid, despite her protestations that such loot was cursed. Then we’d briefly forgotten it until she was trying to climb the tether of Conte’s runaway balloon into my wicker basket, a desperate Count Silano clinging to her ankles. She remembered the curse and pleaded with me to get the ring off, but I couldn’t.

  So, rather than drag me down within range of French soldiers, she cut the tether and fell with Silano, screaming, into the Nile. The balloon shot up so tumultuously that I didn’t see their la
nding, there was a volley from the French troops, and by the time I peered into the sun-dazzled waters … nothing. It was as if she’d vanished from the earth. Until now.

  And the angels? The seraphim we’d found. I’d have to take them back from Miriam. “They want me to come looking.”

  “So it is a trap!” my companion said. “They fear you and your electrical magic.”

  “No, not a trap, I think.” I didn’t flatter myself that they considered me such a formidable enemy that they had to lure me outside the walls simply to shoot me. What I did suspect is that they hadn’t given up our mutual quest for the Book of Thoth. If there was one way to enlist me again, it was the promise of Astiza. “They simply know I’m alive, because of the electricity, and they’ve learned something I can add to. It’s about what I was searching for in Jerusalem, I’m guessing. And they know that the one thing that would make me come back to them is news of this woman.”

  “Effendi, you cannot mean to leave these walls!”

  I glanced back to where Miriam was sleeping. “I have to.”

  He was baffled. “Because of a woman? You have one, right here.”

  “Because there’s something out there waiting for rediscovery, and its use or misuse will affect the fate of the world.” I thought. “I want to help the French find it, but then steal it from them. For that I need help, Mohammad. I’ll have to escape through Palestine once I have Astiza and the prize. Someone with local knowledge.”

  He blanched. “I barely escaped Jaffa, effendi! To go amid the Frankish devils …”

  “Might give you a share of the greatest treasure on earth,” I said blandly.

  “Greatest treasure?”

  “Not guaranteed, of course.”

  He considered the matter. “What share?”

  “Well, five percent seems reasonable, don’t you think?”

  “For getting you through the Palestinian wilderness? A fifth, at least!”

  “I intend to ask other help. Seven percent is the absolute maximum I can afford.”

  He bowed. “A tenth, then, is utterly reasonable. Plus a small token if we get the help of my cousins and brothers and uncles. And expenses for horses and camels. Guns, food. Hardly a pittance, if it’s really from the greatest treasure.”

  I sighed. “Let’s just see if we can get to Monge without being shot, all right?”

  There was, of course, a nagging matter as we began our brisk planning. I’d just slept with the sweetest woman I’d ever met, Miriam, and was planning to take back my seraphim and sneak off to learn the truth about Astiza without leaving the poor woman so much as a word. I felt like a cad, and hadn’t the faintest idea how to explain myself without sounding caddish. It wasn’t that I was disloyal to Miriam, I was simply also loyal to the memory of the first woman, and loved them both in different ways. Astiza had become to me the essence of Egypt, of ancient mystery, a beauty whose quest for ancient knowledge had become my own. We’d met when she helped try to assassinate me, Napoleon himself leading the little charge that captured her. Then she’d saved my life, more than once, and filled my empty character with purpose. We’d not just been lovers, we’d become partners in a quest, and nearly died in the Great Pyramid.

  It was perfectly reasonable to go looking for Astiza—the ring had ignited memories like a match to a trail of gunpowder—but a trifle awkward to explain to Miriam. Women can be grumpy about this kind of thing. So I’d go find the meaning of Astiza’s ring, rescue her, put the two of them together, and then …

  What? Well, as Sidney Smith had promised, it’s splendid how these things work out. “So convenient it is to be a reasonable creature,” Ben Franklin had said, “since it enables one to do everything one has a mind to do anyway.” Old Ben had entertained the ladies himself, while his wife stewed back in Philadelphia.

  “Should we wake your woman?” Mohammad asked.

  “Oh no.”

  When I asked Big Ned to come along, he was as hard to convince as a dog called for a walk by its master. He was one of those men who do nothing by halves; he was either my most implacable enemy or my most faithful servant. He’d become convinced I was a sorcerer of rare power, and was merely biding my time before distributing the wealth of Solomon.

  Jericho, in contrast, had long since given up all talk of treasure.

  He was intrigued when I woke him to explain that the ruby ring had belonged to Astiza, but only because the distraction might keep me away from his sister.

  “So you must take care of Miriam while I’m gone,” I told him, trying to salve my conscience by leaving him in charge. He looked so pleased that for a moment I considered whether he’d somehow sent me the ring himself.

  But then he blinked and shook his head. “I can’t let you go alone.”

  “I won’t be alone. I have Mohammad and Ned.”

  “A heathen and a lunkhead? It will be a contest to see which of the three leads you into disaster first. No, you need someone with a level head.”

  “Who is Astiza, if she’s alive. Smith and Phelipeaux and the rest of the garrison need you more than I do, Jericho. Defend the city and Miriam. I’ll still cut you in when we’ve found the treasure.” You can’t dangle wealth in a man’s mind and not have him think nostalgically about the prospect, however slim.

  He looked at me with new respect. “It’s risky, crossing French lines. Maybe there’s something to you after all, Ethan Gage.”

  “Your sister thinks so too.” And before we could quarrel about that issue, I set off with Mohammad and Ned. We’d be caught in cross fire if we simply strolled outside the walls, so we took the boat Mohammad had fled Jaffa in. The city was a dark silhouette against the stars, to give the French as few aiming points as possible, while the glow of enemy campfires produced an aurora behind the trenches. Phosphorescence was silver in our wake. We landed on the sandy beach behind the semicircle of French lines and crept to their camp the back way, crossing the ruts and trampled crops of war.

  It’s easier than you might guess to walk into an army from its rear, which is the province of the wagon masters, sutlers, camp followers, and malingerers who aren’t used to reaching for a gun. I told my compatriots to 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 th
e 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.”

  “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?”