‘Serpent,’ she whispered. She glanced at the window. ‘Bedouin.’
She climbed off and I shakily stood. Some kind of viper had been chopped into several portions, I saw, its blood spattered on my pillow. It was as thick as a child’s arm, fangs jutting from its mouth. ‘Someone put this here?’
‘Dropped through the window. I heard the villain scuttling like a roach, too cowardly to face us. You should give me a gun so I can properly protect you.’
‘Protect me from what?’
‘You know nothing, American. Why is Achmed bin Sadr asking about you?’
‘Bin Sadr!’ He was the one who delivered severed hands and ears, and whose voice had sounded like the lantern bearer in Paris, as nonsensical as that seemed. ‘I didn’t know he was.’
‘Every person in Alexandria knows you have made him your enemy. He’s not an enemy you want to have. He roams the world, has a gang of assassins, and is a follower of Apophis.’
‘Who the devil is Apophis?’
‘The serpent god of the underworld who each night must be defeated by Ra, the sun god, before dawn can return. He has legions of minions, like the demon god Ras al-Ghul.’
By Washington’s dentures, here was more pagan nonsense. Had I acquired a lunatic? ‘Sounds like a lot of trouble for your sun god,’ I quipped shakily. ‘Why doesn’t he just chop him up like you did and be done with it?’
‘Because while Apophis can be defeated, he can never be destroyed. This is how the world works. All things are eternally dual, water and land, earth and sky, good and evil, life and death.’
I kicked aside the serpent. ‘So this is the work of some kind of snake cult?’
She shook her head. ‘How could you get in so much trouble so quickly?’
‘But I’ve done nothing to Bin Sadr. He’s our ally!’
‘He’s no one’s ally but his own. You have something he wants.’
I looked at the chunks of reptile. ‘What?’ But of course I knew, feeling the medallion’s weight on its chain. Bin Sadr was the lantern bearer with his snake-headed staff who somehow had a dual identity as a desert pirate. He must have been working for Count Silano the night I’d won the medallion. How had he got from Paris to Alexandria? Why was he some kind of henchman for Napoleon? Why did he care about the medallion? Wasn’t he on our side? I was half tempted to give the thing to the next assailant who came along and be done with it. But what annoyed me is that no one ever asked politely. They shoved pistols in my face, stole boots, and threw snakes at my bed.
‘Let me sleep in your corner, away from the window,’ I asked my protectress. ‘I’m going to load my rifle.’
To my surprise she assented. But instead of lying with me, she squatted at the brazier, fanning its coals and sifting some leaves into it. A pungent smoke arose. She was making a small human figure out of wax, I saw. I watched her push a sliver of wood into the figure’s cheek. I had seen the same thing in the Sugar Isles. Had the magic originated in Egypt? She began to make curious marks on a sheet of papyrus.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Go to sleep. I’m casting a spell.’
Since I was anxious to get out of Alexandria before another serpent landed on my head, I was more than happy when the scientists gave me an early opportunity to move on toward Cairo without having to cross the hot delta of land. Monge and Berthollet were going to make the journey by boat. The savants would sail east to the mouth of the Nile and then ascend the river to the capital.
‘Come along, Gage,’ Monge offered. ‘Better to ride than walk. Bring the scribe Talma, too. Your girl can help cook for all of us.’
We would use a chebek, a shallow-draft sailing craft named Le Cerf, armed with four eight-pounders and skippered by Captain Jacques Perree of the French navy. It would be the flagship of a little flotilla of gunboats and supply craft that would follow the army upriver.
By first light we were underway, and by midday we were skirting Abukir Bay, a day’s march east of Alexandria. There the French fleet had anchored in line of battle, in defence against any reappearance of Nelson’s ships. It was an awesome sight, a dozen ships of the line and four frigates moored in an unbroken wall, five hundred guns pointed at the sea. We could hear the bosun whistles and cries of the sailors float over the water as we passed. Then on we went toward the great river, sailing into the brown plume that curled into the Mediterranean and bouncing over the standing waves at the river bar.
As the day’s heat rose I learnt more about the genesis of the expedition. Egypt, Berthollet informed me, had been the object of French fascination for decades. Sealed from the outside world by the Arab conquest of A.D. 640, its ancient glories were unseen by most Europeans, its fabled pyramids known more by fantastic story than fact. A nation the size of France was largely unknown.
‘No country in the world has history as deep as Egypt,’ the chemist told me. ‘When the Greek historian Herodotus came to record its glories, the pyramids were already older to him than Jesus is to us. The Egyptians themselves built a great empire, and then a dozen conquerors made their mark here: Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Libyans, Nubians, Persians. This country’s beginning is so old no one remembers it. No one can read hieroglyphics, so we don’t know what any of the inscriptions say. Today’s Egyptians say the ruins were built by giants or wizards.’
So Egypt slumbered, he related, until in recent years the handful of French merchants in Alexandria and Cairo had come under harassment from the arrogant Mamelukes. The Ottoman overseers in Constantinople who had governed Egypt since 1517 had shown little desire to intervene. Nor did France wish to offend the Ottomans, its useful ally against Russia. So the situation simmered until Bonaparte, with his youthful dreams of Oriental glory, encountered Talleyrand, with his grasp of global geopolitics. Between them the pair had seized upon the scheme of ‘liberating’ Egypt from the Mameluke caste as a ‘favour’ to the sultan in Constantinople. They would reform a backward corner of the Arab world and create a springboard to contest British advances in India. ‘The European power that controls Egypt,’ Napoleon had written to the Directory, ‘will, in the long run, control India.’ There was hope of recreating the ancient canal that had once linked the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The ultimate goal was to link up with an Indian pasha named Tippoo Sahib, a Francophile who had visited Paris and went by the title ‘Citizen Tippoo,’ and whose palace entertainment included a mechanical tiger that devoured puppet Englishmen. Tippoo was fighting a British general named Wellesley in southern India, and France had already sent him arms and advisers.
‘The war in Italy more than paid for itself,’ Berthollet said, ‘and thanks to Malta, this one is guaranteed to do so as well. The Corsican has made himself popular with the Directory because his battles turn a profit.’
‘You still think of Bonaparte as Italian?’
‘His mother’s child. He told us a story once of how she disapproved of his rudeness to guests. He was too big to paddle, so she waited until he was undressing, unclothed enough to be embarrassed and defenceless, and pounced on him to twist his ear. Patience and revenge are the lessons of a Corsican! A Frenchman enjoys life, but an Italian like Bonaparte plots it. Like the ancient Romans or the bandits of Sicily, his kind believes in clan, avarice, and revenge. He’s a brilliant soldier, but remembers so many slights and humiliations that he sometimes doesn’t know when to stop making war. That, I suspect, is his weakness.’
‘So what are you doing here, Doctor Berthollet? You, and the rest of the scholars? Not military glory, surely. Nor treasure.’
‘Do you know anything at all about Egypt, Monsieur Gage?’
‘It has sand, camels, and sun. Beyond that, very little.’
‘You’re honest. None of us know much about this cradle of civilisation. Stories come back of vast ruins, strange idols, and indecipherable writing, but who in Europe has really seen these things? Men want to learn. What is Maltese gold compared to being the first to see the glories of ancient Egypt? I came for
the kind of discovery that makes men truly immortal.’
‘Through renown?’
‘Through knowledge that will live forever.’
‘Or through knowledge of ancient magic,’ amended Talma. ‘That is why Ethan and I were invited along, is it not?’
‘If your friend’s medallion is truly magical,’ the chemist replied. ‘There’s a difference between history and fable, of course.’
‘And a difference between mere desire for a piece of jewellery and the ruthlessness to kill to possess it,’ the scribe countered. ‘Our American here has been in danger since winning it in Paris. Why? Not because it’s the key to academic glory. It’s the key to something else. If not the secret to real immortality, then perhaps lost treasure.’
‘Which only proves that treasure can be more trouble than it’s worth.’
‘Discovery is better than gold, Berthollet?’ I asked, trying to feign nonchalance at all this dire talk.
‘What is gold but a means to an end? Here we have that end. The best things in life cost nothing: knowledge, integrity, love, natural beauty. Look at you here, entering the mouth of the Nile with an exquisite woman. You are another Antony, with another Cleopatra! What is more satisfying than that?’ He lay back to nap.
I glanced at Astiza, who was beginning to pick up French but seemed content to ignore our chatter and watch the low brown houses of Rosetta as we sailed by. A beautiful woman, yes. But one who seemed as locked and remote as the secrets of Egypt.
‘Tell me about your ancestor,’ I suddenly asked her in English.
‘What?’ She looked at me in alarm, never anxious for casual conversation.
‘Alexander. He was Macedonian like you, no?’
She seemed embarrassed to be addressed by a man in public but slowly nodded, as if to concede she was in the grasp of rustics and had to accede to our clumsy ways. ‘And Egyptian by choice, once he saw this great land. No man has ever matched him.’
‘And he conquered Persia?’
‘He marched from Macedonia to India, and before he was done people thought he was a god. He conquered Egypt long before this French upstart of yours, and traversed the pitiless sands of our desert to attend the Spring of the Sun at the oasis at Siwah. There he was given tools of magic power, and the oracle proclaimed him a god, son of Zeus and Amon, and predicted he would rule the entire world.’
‘Must have been a convenient endorsement to have.’
‘It was his delight with this prophecy that convinced him to found the great city of Alexandria. He marked out its limits with peeled barley, in the Greek custom. When birds flocked to eat the barley, alarming Alexander’s followers, his seers said this meant that newcomers would migrate to the new city and it would feed many lands. They were right. But the Macedonian general needed no prophets.’
‘No?’
‘He was a master of destiny. Yet he died or was murdered before he could finish his task, and his sacred symbols from Siwah disappeared. So did Alexander. Some say his body was taken back to Macedonia, some say to Alexandria, but others say Ptolemy took him to a secret, final resting place in the desert sands. Like your Jesus ascending to Heaven, he seems to have disappeared from Earth. So perhaps he was a god, as the Oracle said. Like Osiris, taking his place in the heavens.’
This was no mere slave or serving girl. How the devil had Astiza learnt all this? ‘I’ve heard of Osiris,’ I said. ‘Reassembled by his sister Isis.’
For the first time she looked at me with something resembling true enthusiasm. ‘You know Isis?’
‘A mother goddess, right?’
‘Isis and the Virgin Mary are reflections of each other.’
‘Christians wouldn’t care to hear that.’
‘No? All kinds of Christian beliefs and symbols come from Egyptian gods. Resurrection, the afterlife, impregnation by a god, triads and trinities, the idea a man could be both human and divine, sacrifice, even the wings of angels and the hooves and forked tail of devils: all this predates your Jesus by thousands of years. The code of your Ten Commandments is a simpler version of the negative confession Egyptians made to profess their innocence when they died: ‘I did not kill.’ Religion is like a tree. Egypt is the trunk, and all others are branches.’
‘That’s not what the Bible says. There were false idols, and the true Hebrew god.’
‘How ignorant you are of your own beliefs! I’ve heard you French say your cross is a Roman symbol of execution, but what kind of symbol is that for a religion of hope? The truth is that the cross combined your saviour’s instrument of death with our instrument of life, the ankh, our ancient key of life everlasting. And why not? Egypt was the most Christian of all countries before the Arabs came.’
By the ghost of Cotton Mather, I could have paddled her for blasphemy if I hadn’t been so dumbfounded. It wasn’t just what she was claiming, but the casual confidence with which she claimed it. ‘No Biblical ideas possibly came from Egypt,’ I sputtered.
‘I thought the Hebrews escaped from Egypt? And that the infant Jesus resided here? Besides, what does it matter – I thought your general assured us yours is not an army of Christians anyway? Godless men of science, are you not?’
‘Well, Bonaparte puts on and takes off faiths like men do a coat.’
‘Or faiths and sciences have more unity than Franks care to admit. Isis is a goddess of knowledge, love, and tolerance.’
‘And Isis is your goddess.’
‘Isis belongs to no one. I am her servant.’
‘You truly worship an old idol?’ My Philadelphia pastor would be apoplectic by now.
‘She is newer than your last breath, American, as eternal as the cycle of birth. But I don’t expect you to understand. I had to flee my Cairo master because he finally didn’t either, and dared corrupt the old mysteries.’
‘What mysteries?’
‘Of the world around you. Of the sacred triangle, the square of four directions, the pentagram of free will and the hexagram of harmony. Have you not read Pythagoras?’
‘He studied in Egypt, right?’
‘For twenty-two years, before being taken by the Persian conqueror Cambyses to Babylon and then finally founding his school in Italy. He taught the unity of all religions and peoples, that suffering was to be endured bravely, and that a wife was a husband’s equal.’
‘He sounds like he saw things your way.’
‘He saw things the gods’ way! In geometry and space is the gods’ message. The geometric point represents God, the line represents man and woman, and the triangle the perfect number representing spirit, soul, and body.’
‘And the square?’
‘The four directions, as I said. The pentagon was strife, the hexagram the six directions of space, and the double square was universal harmony.’
‘Believe it or not, I’ve heard some of this from a group called the Freemasons. It claims to teach as Pythagoras did, and says the ruler represents precision, the square rectitude, and the mallet will.’
She nodded. ‘Precisely. The gods make everything clear, and yet men remain blind! Seek truth, and the world becomes yours.’
Well, this scrap of the world, anyway. We were well into the Nile, that wondrous waterway where the wind often blows south and the current flows north, allowing river traffic both ways.
‘You said you fled Cairo. You’re an escaped slave?’
‘It’s more complicated than that. Egyptian.’ She pointed. ‘Understand our land before you try to understand our mind.’
The pancake plainness of the country outside Alexandria had changed to the lush, more biblical picture I had expected from stories of Moses among the reeds. Brilliantly green fields of rice, wheat, corn, sugar, and cotton formed rectangles between ranks of stately date palms, as straight as pillars and heavy with their orange and scarlet fruit. Banana and sycamore groves rustled in the wind. Water buffalo pulled ploughs or lifted their horns from the river where they bathed, grunting at the fringe of papyrus beds. The frequ
ency of chocolate-coloured mud-brick villages increased, often topped by the needle of a minaret. We passed lateen-rigged felucca boats moored on the brown water. Measuring twenty to thirty feet long and steered by a long oar, these sailing craft were omnipresent on the river. There were smaller paddle skiffs, barely big enough to float an individual, from which fishermen tossed string nets. Harnessed and blindfolded donkeys drudged in a circle to lift water into canals in a scene unchanged for five thousand years. The smell of Nile water filled the river breeze. Our flotilla of gunboats and supply craft paraded past, French tricolour flapping, without leaving any discernible impression. Many peasants hardly bothered to look up.
What a strange place I’d come to. Alexander, Cleopatra, Arabs, Mamelukes, ancient pharaohs, Moses, and now Bonaparte. The entire country was a rubbish heap of history, including the odd medallion around my neck. Now I wondered about Astiza, who seemed to have a more complicated past than I’d suspected. Might she recognise something in the medallion that I would not?
‘What spell did you cast back in Alexandria?’
It took a moment before she reluctantly replied. ‘One for your safety, as a warning to another. A second for the beginning of your wisdom.’
‘You can make me smart?’
‘That may be impossible. Perhaps I can make you see.’
I laughed, and she finally allowed a slight smile. By listening to her, I was getting her to let me inside a little. She wanted respect, not just for her but for her nation.
That languid night, as we lay at anchor and slept on the deck of the chebek under a desert haze of stars, I crept close to where she was sleeping. I could hear the lap of water, the creak of rigging, and the murmur of sailors on watch.
‘Keep away from me,’ she whispered when she woke, squeezing herself against the wood.
‘I want to show you something.’
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