The Rosetta Key

by William Dietrich

“Madness!” said Mohammad. “We’re too far away to surprise them. We’ll find the Turks just as the sun is coming up in our eyes.”

  Indeed, the path around Mount Tabor was far longer than Kleber had anticipated. Instead of attacking at 2:00 a.m., as planned, the French encountered the first Turkish pickets at dawn. By the time we had drawn up ranks for an assault, our prey had time for breakfast.

  Soon there were swarms of Ottoman cavalry dashing hither and yon, and Kleber’s ambition began to be tempered by common sense. The rising sun revealed that he had led three thousand troops to assault twenty-five thousand. I do have an instinct for the wrong side.

  “So the ring is bad luck,” Mohammad muttered. “Is it possible Bonaparte is still trying to execute you, effendi, but merely in a more complicated way?”

  The three of us gaped at the huge herd of menacing cavalry, horses half swallowed by the tall spring wheat as their riders pointlessly fired guns in the air. The only thing that prevented us from being overrun immediately was the enemy’s confusion; no one seemed to be in charge. Their army was stitched from too many corners of the empire.

  We could see the rainbow colors of the various Ottoman regiments, great trains of wagons behind them, and tents pitched bright as a carnival. If you want a pretty sight, go see war before the fighting starts.

  “It’s like the Battle of the Pyramids all over again,” I tried to reassure. “Look at their disarray. They have so many soldiers they can’t get organized.”

  “They don’t need organization,” Big Ned muttered. “All they need is stampede. By barnacle, I wish I were back on a frigate. It’s cleaner, too.”

  If Kleber had proved rash in underestimating his opponents, he was a skilled tactician. He backed us up a hill called Djebel-el-Dahy, giving us the high ground. There was a ruined Crusader castle called Le-Faba near the top that overlooked the broad valley, and the French general put one hundred of his men on its ruined ramparts.

  The remainder formed two squares of infantry, one commanded by Kleber and the other by General Jean-Andoche Junot. These squares were like forts made of men, each man facing outward and the ranks pointing in all four directions so that it was impossible to turn their flank. The veterans and sergeants stood behind the newest troops to prevent them from backing and collapsing the formation. This tactic had baffled the Mamelukes in Egypt, and it was about to do the same to the Ottomans. No matter which way they charged, they would meet a firm hedge of musket barrels and bayonets. Our supply train and our trio, with Najac’s men, were in the center.

  The Turks foolishly gave Kleber time to dress his ranks and then made probing charges, galloping up near our men while whooping and swinging swords. The French were perfectly silent until the command rang out to “Fire!” and then there was a flash and rippling bang, a great gout of white smoke, and the closest enemy cavalry toppled from their horses. The others steered away.

  “Blimey, they have more pluck than sense,” Ned said, squinting.

  The sun kept climbing. More and more enemy cavalry poured into the gentle vale below us, shaking lances and warbling cries. Periodically a few hundred would wheel and charge toward our squares.

  Another volley, and the results would be the same. Soon there was a semicircle of dead around us, their silks like cut flowers.

  “What the devil are they doing?” Ned muttered. “Why don’t they really charge?”

  “Waiting for us to run out of water and ammunition, perhaps,” Mohammad said.

  “By swallowing all of our lead?”

  I think they were waiting for us to break and run—their other enemies must be less resolute—but the French didn’t waver. We bristled like a hedgehog, and they couldn’t get their horses to close.

  Kleber stayed mounted, ignoring the whining bullets, slowly riding up and down the ranks to encourage his men. “Hold firm,” he coached.

  “Hold firm. Help will come.”

  Help? Bonaparte at Acre was far away. Was this some kind of Ottoman game, to let us sweat and worry until they finally made the penultimate charge?

  Yet as I sighted through the scope that Sir Sidney had given me, I began to doubt such an attack would come. Many Turks were holding back, inviting others to break us first. Some were sprawled on the grass to eat, and others asleep. At the height of a battle!

  As the day advanced, however, our endurance sapped and their confidence grew. Powder was growing short. We began to hold our volleys until the last second, to give precious bullets the surest target.

  They sensed our doubt. A great shout would go up, spurs would be applied to horses, and waves of cavalry would come at us like breakers on a beach. “Hold … hold … let them come … fire! Now, now, second rank, fire!” Horses screamed and tumbled. Brilliantly cos-tumed janissaries tumbled amid clods of earth. The bravest would spur onward, weaving between their toppling fellows, but when they reached the hedge of bayonets their horses would rear. Pistols and muskets pocked our ranks, but the carnage was far worse on their side. So many horse carcasses littered the fields that it was becoming difficult for the Turks to hurtle past to get at us. Ned, Mohammad, and I helped drag French wounded into the center of the squares.

  Now it was noon. The French injured were moaning for water and the rest of us longed for it. Our hill seemed dry as an Egyptian tomb.

  The sun had halted its arc across the sky, promising to beat down on us forever, and the Turks were taunting each other on. A hundred French had fallen, and Kleber gave orders for the two squares to join into one, thickening the ranks and giving the men badly needed reassurance. It looked like all the Muslims in the world were massed against us. The fields had been trampled into soil and dust rose in great pillars. The Turks tried sweeping over the crest of Djebel-el-Dahy and coming down on us from above, but chasseurs and carabiniers in the old Crusader castle forced them to diverge and they spilled uselessly down both sides of our formation, letting us thin them by firing into their flanks.

  “Now!” A volley would roar out, smoke acrid and blinding, bits of wadding fluttering like snow. Horses, screaming and riderless, would go galloping away. Then teeth would tear at cartridges, pouring in precious powder. The ground was white with paper.

  By midafternoon my mouth was cotton. Flies buzzed over the dead.

  Some soldiers fainted from standing in place too long. The Ottomans seemed impotent, and yet we could go nowhere. It would end, I supposed, when we all died of thirst.

  “Mohammad, when they overrun us pretend you’re dead until it’s over. You can emerge as a Muslim. No need to share the fate of addled Europeans.”

  “Allah does not tell a man to desert his friends,” he replied grimly.

  Then a fresh cry rose up. Men claimed they’d spied the glimmer of bayonets in the valley to the west. “Here comes le petit caporal !”

  Kleber was disbelieving. “How could Bonaparte get here so soon?”

  He gestured to me. “Come. Bring your naval spyglass.” My English telescope had proven sharper than standard French army issue.

  I followed him out of the comfort of the square and onto the exposed slope of our hill. We passed a ring of bodies of fallen Muslims, some groaning in the grass, their blood a scarlet smear on the green wheat.

  The Crusader ruins gave a panoramic view. If anything, the Turks looked even more numerous now that I could see farther over their ranks. Thousands trotted this way and that, gesturing as they argued what to do. Hundreds of their comrades already carpeted the hill below us. In the distance their tents, supplies, and thousands of servants and camp followers were visible. We were like a blue rock in a sea of red, white, and green. One determined charge and surely they would crack our formation open! Then men would run, and it would be the end.

  Except they hadn’t yet. “There.” Kleber pointed. “Do you see French bayonets?”

  I peered until my eye ached. The high grass billowed in the west, but whether from the passage of infantry or wind I didn’t know. The lush earth had swallowed th
e antlike maneuvering of armies. “It could be a French column, because the high grass is moving. But as you say, how could it come so quickly?”

  “We’ll die of thirst if we stay here,” Kleber said. “Or men will desert and have their throats cut. I don’t know if there are reinforcements that way or not, but we are going to find out.” He trotted back down, with me following.

  “Junot, start forming columns. We’re going to meet our relievers!”

  The men cheered, hoping against hope that they were not simply opening themselves to being overrun. As the square dissolved into two columns, the Turkish cavalry became more animated. Here was a chance to swoop down on our flanks and rear! We could hear them shouting, horns blaring.

  “Forward!” We began marching downhill.

  Turkish lances waved and danced.

  Then there was a cannon shot in the distance. The businesslike crack was as French as a shouted order in a Parisian restaurant, so dis-tinct are calibers of ordnance. We looked and saw a plume of smoke drift off. Men began crying with relief. Help was indeed coming! The French began to cheer, even sing.

  The enemy cavalry hesitated, peering west.

  The tricolors rippled as we tramped down Djebel-el-Dahy, as if on parade.

  Then smoke began rising from the enemy camp. There were shots, faint screams, and the triumphant wail of French bugles. Napoleon’s cavalry had broken into the Turkish rear and was sowing panic. Precious supplies began to go up in flames. With a roar, stored ammunition exploded.

  “Steady!” Kleber reminded. “Keep ranks!”

  “When they come at us, crouch and fire on command!” Junot added.

  We saw a small lake by the village of Fula. Our excitement grew.

  There was an Ottoman regiment in front of it, looking irresolute.

  Now the officers galloped up and down the columns, giving orders to ready a charge.

  “Strike!” With a cheer, the bloodied French swept the rest of the way down the hill and toward the Samaritan infantry that garrisoned the village. There were shots, a plunge of bayonets and clubbed muskets, and then the enemy was running. Meanwhile Turks were fleeing from whatever had appeared in the west as well. Miraculously, in minutes an army of twenty-five thousand was collapsing into panic, fleeing east before a few thousand Frenchmen. Bonaparte’s cavalry galloped past us, giving chase toward the valley of the Jordan. Ottomans were hunted and slain all the way to the river.

  We plunged into the Fula pond, slaking our thirst, and then stood wet and dripping like drunken men, our cartridge pouches empty.

  Napoleon galloped up, beaming like the savior he was, his breeches gray from dust.

  “I suspected you’d get yourself into trouble, Kleber!” he shouted. “I set out yesterday after reading the reports!” He smiled. “They ran at the crack of a cannon!”

  CHAPTER 17

  W ith his instinct for the political, Bonaparte immediately named our near-disaster the Battle of Mount Tabor—a much more imposing and pronounceable peak than modestly sloping Djebel-el-Dahy, though several miles distant—and proclaimed it “one of the most lopsided victories in military history. I want the full details dispatched to Paris as soon as we can.”

  I was certain he hadn’t been as prompt in relaying news of the massacre at Jaffa.

  “A few more divisions and we could march to Damascus,” Kleber said, intoxicated by his improbable victory. Instead of being jealous, he now seemed dazzled by his commander’s timely rescue. Bonaparte could work miracles.

  “A few more divisions, General, and we could march to Bagh-dad and Constantinople,” Napoleon amended. “Damn Nelson! If he hadn’t destroyed my fleet, I would be master of Asia!”

  Kleber nodded. “And if Alexander hadn’t died in Babylon, or Caesar been stabbed, or Roland been too far behind …”

  “For want of a nail the battle was lost,” I piped up.

  “What?”

  “Just something my mentor Ben Franklin used to say. It’s the little things that trip us up. He believed in attention to detail.”

  “Franklin was a wise man,” Napoleon said. “Scrupulous attention to detail is essential to a soldier. And your mentor was a true savant. He’d be anxious to solve ancient mysteries, not for his own sake but for science. Which is why you’ll now go on to meet Silano, correct, Monsieur Gage?”

  “You seem to have brushed the opposition out of the way, General,” I said amiably. Bonaparte sundered armies the way Moses parted the sea. “Yet we’re still at the lip of Asia, thousands of miles from India and your ally there, Tippoo Sahib. You’ve not even taken Acre. How, with so few men, can you emulate Alexander?”

  Bonaparte frowned. He did not like doubt. “The Macedonians were not much more numerous. And Alexander had his own siege, at Tyre.” He looked pensive. “But our world is bigger than theirs, and events progress in France. I have many calls on my attention, and your discoveries may be more important in Paris than here.”

  “France?” Kleber asked. “You think of home when we’re still fighting in this dung hole?”

  “I try to think of everything, always, which is why I thought to bring relief to your expedition before you needed it, Kleber,” Bonaparte said crisply. He clapped the shoulder of the general that loomed over him, great hair like a lion’s mane. “Just be assured there’s a purpose to what we’re doing. Stand your duty and we’ll rise together!”

  Kleber looked at him suspiciously. “Our duty is here, not France. Isn’t it?”

  “And this American’s duty is to finish, finally, what we brought him here for—to solve the mystery of the pyramids and the ancients with Count Alessandro Silano! Ride hard, Gage, because time weighs on all of us.”

  “I’m more anxious to get home than anyone,” I said.

  “Then find your book.” He turned and stalked off with his staff of officers, finger jabbing as he fired off orders. I, meanwhile, was chilled. It was the first I’d heard him mention any book. Clearly, the French knew more than I hoped.

  And Astiza had told them more than I wished.

  So we were in it now, tools of Silano and his discredited Egyptian Rite of Freemasons. The Templars had found something and been burned at the stake by tormentors hoping to get it. I hoped my own fate would be kinder. I hoped I wasn’t leading my comrades to destruction.

  We dined on captured Turkish meats and pastries, trying to ignore the stench already rising from the dark 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.

  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 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 o
ur 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.

  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!”