Had I avoided them? Or were they escaping me?
I looked again at the smaller, shrouded figure and felt disquiet. Had I been too obedient, lingering at the pyramids too long? Who was that riding at Silano’s side?
I knew of him, she had confirmed.
And she had never explained what, precisely, that meant.
I snapped the telescope shut. ‘I have to get back to Cairo.’
‘You can’t go, by Bonaparte’s orders. We need a compelling hypothesis first.’
But something disastrous had happened in my absence, I feared, and I realised that by staying out so long, I’d unconsciously been putting off the task of tackling the medallion and avenging Talma. My procrastination may have been fatal. ‘I’m an American savant, not a French private. To hell with his orders.’
‘He could have you shot!’
But I was already running down the slope, past the Sphinx, toward Cairo.
The city seemed more ominous on my return. Even as Desaix’s division had emptied some houses of French troops, thousands of inhabitants who’d fled after the Battle of the Pyramids were returning. Cairo was emerging from post-invasion shock into being the centre of Egypt again. As the city grew more crowded, the inhabitants regained their urban confidence. They carried themselves as if the city still belonged to them, not us, and their numbers dwarfed ours. While French soldiers could still cause pedestrians to scatter as they rode racing donkeys or marched on patrol, there was less scuttling out of the way of lone foreigners such as myself. As I hurried through the narrow lanes I was bumped and jostled for the first time. Again I was reminded of the oddities of electricity, that strange prickling in the air after the parlour experiments that women found so erotic. Now Cairo seemed electric with tension. News of the defeat at Abukir Bay had reached everyone, and no longer did the Franks seem invincible. Yes, we were dangling on a rope all right, and I could see it beginning to fray.
Compared to the bustle of adjacent lanes, the street at Enoch’s house seemed far too quiet. Where was everyone? The home’s façade looked much as I’d left it, its face as unreadable as that of the Egyptians. Yet when I got near I sensed something was amiss. The door wasn’t tight against its frame, and I spied the bright yellow of splintered wood. I glanced around. Eyes watched me, I sensed, but I could see no one.
When I pounded on the entry it gave slightly. ‘Salaam.’ My greeting’s echo was answered by the buzzing of flies. I pushed, as if shoving against someone holding the door on the other side, and finally it yielded enough that I could squeeze in. It was then I saw the obstruction. Enoch’s gigantic Negro servant, Mustafa, was lying dead against the door, his face shattered by a pistol shot. The house had the sickeningly sweet scent of recent death.
I looked at a window. Its wooden screen had been shattered by intruders.
I went on, room by room. Where were the other servants? There were spatters and streaks of blood everywhere, as if bodies had been dragged after battle and butchery. Tables had been toppled, tapestries ripped down, cushions overthrown and cut. The invaders had been looking for something, and I knew what it was. My absence had saved no one. Why hadn’t I insisted that Enoch hide, instead of staying with his books? Why had I thought my absence and that of the medallion would protect him? At length I came to the antiquities room, some of its statuary broken and its caskets overthrown, and then the stairs to the musty library. Its door had been staved in. Beyond was dark, but the library stank of fire. Heartsick, I found a candle and descended.
The cellar was a smoky shambles. Shelves had been toppled. Books and scrolls lay heaped like piles of autumn leaves, their half-burnt contents still smouldering. At first I thought this room was empty of life too, but then someone groaned. Paper rustled and a hand came up from the litter, fingers painfully curled, like an avalanche victim reaching from snow. I grasped it, only to elicit a howl of pain. I dropped the swollen digits and shovelled blackened papers aside. There was poor Enoch, sprawled on a pile of smouldering books. He was badly scorched, his clothes half-gone, and his chest and arms roasted. He’d thrown himself onto a bonfire of literature.
‘Thoth,’ he was groaning. ‘Thoth.’
‘Enoch, what happened?’
He couldn’t hear me in his delirium. I went upstairs to his fountain and used an ancient bowl to get some water, even though the fountain ran pink from spilt blood. I dripped some on his face and then gave him a sip. He sputtered, and then sucked like a baby. Finally his eyes focused.
‘They tried to burn it all.’ It was a groaning whisper.
‘Who did?’
‘I broke free to run into the blaze and they didn’t dare follow.’ He coughed.
‘My God, Enoch, you threw yourself on the fire?’
‘These books are my life.’
‘Was it the French?’
‘Bin Sadr’s Arabs. They kept asking where it was, without saying what they meant. I pretended not to know. They wanted the woman, and I said she’d gone with you. They didn’t believe me. If I hadn’t run into the fire they would have forced me to tell far more. I hope the household didn’t talk.’
‘Where is everybody?’
‘The servants were herded into storerooms. I heard screams.’
I felt utterly futile: foolish gambler, dilettante soldier, and pretend savant. ‘I’ve brought all this on you.’
‘You brought nothing the gods did not wish.’ He groaned. ‘My time is over. Men are becoming greedier. They want science and magic for power. Who wants to live in a time like that? But knowing and wisdom are not the same things.’ He clutched me. ‘You must stop them.’
‘Stop them from what?’
‘It was in my books after all.’
‘What? What are they after?’
‘It’s a key. You must insert it.’ He was fading.
I leant closer. ‘Enoch, please: Astiza. Is she safe?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where’s Ashraf?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you learn anything about the twenty-first of October?’
He grasped my arm. ‘You need to believe in something, American. Believe in her.’
Then he died.
I sat back, hollowed. First Talma, now this. I was too late to save him, and too late to learn what he’d learnt. I used my fingers to close his eyes, shaking with rage and impotence. I’d lost my best link to the mysteries. Was there anything left in this library to explain the medallion? Amid the ashes, how could I know?
Cradled to Enoch’s breast was a particularly thick volume, bound in leather and blackened at the edges. Its writing was Arabic. Had it been of particular importance in deciphering our quest? I pried it loose and looked in ignorance at its ornate script. Well, perhaps Astiza could make sense of it.
If she was still in Cairo. I had a grim idea who the small, shrouded figure was who’d been riding next to Silano as Desaix’s troops marched south.
Anxious and lost in my own worries, I trudged back up the stairs and into the antiquities room without caution. It almost cost me my life.
There was a high, anguished cry and then a lance thrust out from behind a statue of Anubis the jackal like a bolt of lightning. It crashed into my chest, knocking me backward, and I collided with a stone sarcophagus, my wind gone. As I slid down, dazed, I looked at the shaft. Its spear point had pierced Enoch’s book, only the last pages stopping it from thrusting into my heart.
Ashraf was at the end of the spear. His eyes widened.
‘You!’
I tried to speak but could only gasp.
‘What are you doing here? I was told you were held by the French at the pyramids! I thought you were one of the assassins, looking for secrets!’
I finally found enough air to speak. ‘I spied Silano leaving the city with General Desaix, riding south. I didn’t know what that meant, so I hurried back.’
‘I almost killed you!’
‘This book saved me.’ I pushed it, and the spear
point, aside. ‘Can’t even read it, but Enoch was cradling it. What’s it about, Ash?’
Using his boot to hold the book while he wrenched the lance free, the Mameluke stooped and opened it. Fragments puffed out like spores. He read a moment. ‘Poetry.’ He threw it aside.
Ah. What we choose to die with.
‘I need help, Ashraf.’
‘Help? You’re the conqueror, remember? You who are bringing science and civilisation to poor Egypt! And this is what you’ve brought to my brother’s house: butchery! Everyone who knows you dies!’
‘It was Arabs, not French, who did this.’
‘It was France, not Egypt, which upset the order of things.’
There was no answer to that, and no denying that I’d become a part of it. We choose for the most expedient of reasons, and upend the world.
I took a laboured breath. ‘I have to find Astiza. Help me, Ash. Not as prisoner, not as master and slave, not as employee. As a friend. As a fellow warrior. Astiza has the medallion. They’ll kill her for it as brutally as they killed Talma, and I don’t trust asking the army for help. Napoleon wants the secret too. He’ll take the medallion for himself.’
‘And be cursed like everyone who touches it.’
‘Or discover the power to enslave the world.’
Ashraf’s reply was silence, letting me realise what I’d just blurted about the general I’d been following. Was Bonaparte a Republican saviour? Or a potential tyrant? I’d seen hints of both in his character. How did one tell the difference between the two? Both required charm. Both required ambition. And maybe a feather on the scales of Thoth would tip a leader’s heart one way or the other. But of course it didn’t matter, did it? I had to decide for myself what I believed. Now Enoch had given me an anchor: believe in her.
‘My brother gave you help and look where it got him,’ Ashraf said bitterly. ‘You are no friend. I was wrong to have led you into Cairo. I should have died at Imbaba.’
I was desperate. ‘Then if you won’t help as a friend, I order you to help me as my captive and servant. I paid you!’
‘You dare lay claim to me after this?’ He took out a purse and hurled it at me. Coins exploded, rolling away on the stone floor. ‘I spit on your money! Go! Find your woman yourself! I must prepare the funeral of my brother!’
So I was alone. At least I had the integrity to leave his money where it had scattered, despite knowing how few coins I had of my own. I took what I had cached in an empty coffin: my longrifle and my Algonquin tomahawk. Then I stepped again over Mustafa’s body and went back into Cairo’s streets.
I wouldn’t be coming back.
The house of Yusuf al-Beni, where Astiza had been secreted in a harem, was more imposing than Enoch’s, a turreted fortress that shadowed its narrow street with brooding overhangs. Its windows were high on its face, where sun shone and swallows glided, but its door was shadowed by a heavy arch as thick as the entrance to a medieval castle. I stood before it in disguise. I’d wrapped my weapons in a cheap, hastily purchased carpet and dressed myself in Egyptian clothes in case the French might be looking to return me to Jomard at the pyramid. The loose-fitting riding trousers and galabiyya were infinitely lighter, more anonymous, and more sensible than European garb, and the head scarf provided welcome shelter from the sun.
Was I once more too late?
I pounded on Yusuf’s door and a doorman the size of Mustafa confronted me. Shaved, huge, and as pale as Enoch’s servant had been dark, he filled the entry like a bale of Egyptian cotton. Did every rich house have a human troll?
‘What do you want, rug merchant?’ I could understand the Arabic by now.
‘I’m no merchant. I need to see your master,’ I replied in French.
‘You’re a Frank?’ he asked in the same tongue.
‘American.’
He grunted. ‘Not here.’ He began to close the door.
I tried to bluff. ‘The sultan Bonaparte is looking for him.’ Now cotton bale paused. It was enough to make me believe Yusuf was somewhere in the house. ‘The general has business with the woman who is a guest here, the lady called Astiza.’
‘The general wants a slave?’ The tone was disbelief.
‘She’s no slave, she’s a savant. The sultan needs her expertise. If Yusuf is gone, then you must fetch the woman for the general.’
‘She is gone too.’
It was an answer I didn’t want to believe. ‘Do I have to bring a platoon of soldiers? The sultan Bonaparte is not a man who wants to be left waiting.’
The doorman shook his head in dismissal. ‘Go away, American. She is sold.’
‘Sold!’
‘To a Bedouin slave trader.’ He went to slam the door in my face, so I jammed the end of the carpet in it to stop him.
‘You can’t sell her, she’s mine!’
He grasped the end of my carpet with a hand that had the span of a frying pan. ‘Take your rug from my door or you will leave it here,’ he warned. ‘You have no business with us anymore.’
I rotated the carpet to aim at his midriff and slipped my hand up the other end of the roll, grasping my rifle. The click of its hammer being pulled back was clearly audible, and that checked his arrogance. ‘I want to know who bought her.’
We studied each other, wondering if either was quick enough to overcome the other. Finally he grunted. ‘Wait.’
He disappeared, leaving me feeling like a fool or a penitent. How dare the Egyptian sell Astiza? ‘Yusuf, come out here, you bastard!’ My cry echoed in the house. I stood for long minutes, wondering if they would simply ignore me. If they did, I’d go in shooting.
Finally I heard the heavy tread of the doorman returning. He filled the doorway. ‘It’s a message from the woman’s buyer, and is simple to relate. He says you know what is needed to buy her back.’ Then the door slammed shut.
That meant Silano and Bin Sadr had her. And it meant they didn’t have the medallion, and must not know I didn’t either.
Yet wouldn’t they keep her alive in hopes I’d bring it? She was a hostage, a kidnap victim.
I stepped back from the entryway, trying to think what to do. Where was the medallion? And with that something tiny fell past my ear, landing with a soft splat in the dust. I looked up. A grilled opening in an ornate screen far above was being closed by a feminine hand. I picked up what had been dropped.
It was a packet of paper. When I unrolled it I found Astiza’s golden eye of Horus and a message, this time in English in Astiza’s writing. My heart soared:
‘The south wall at midnight. Bring a rope.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There was no wider gulf between the invading French army and the Egyptians than the subject of women. To the Muslims, the arrogant Franks were dominated by crass European females who combined vulgar display with imperious demands to make a fool of every man who came into contact with them. The French, in turn, thought that Islam locked its greatest source of pleasure away in opulent but shadowy prisons, foregoing the titillating wit of female company. If the Muslims thought the French slaves to their women, the French thought the Muslims frightened of theirs. The situation was made even tenser by the decision of some Egyptian females to form liaisons with the conquerors and to be displayed, without veil, arms and necks bare, in officers’ carriages. These new mistresses, giddy at the freedoms the French had granted them, would call up gaily to the screened windows their carriages trotted past, shouting, ‘Look at our freedom!’ The imams thought we were corrupting, the savants thought the Egyptians medieval, and the soldiers simply wanted the pleasures of the bed. While under strict orders not to molest Muslim women, there was no such prohibition against paying for them, and some were more than willing to be bought. Other Egyptian damsels defended their virtue like vestal virgins, withholding favours unless an officer promised marriage and life in Europe. The result was a great deal of friction and misunderstanding.
The grain-sack draping of Muslim women, designed to control male lust
, instead made every passing female, her age and form unknown, a subject of intense speculation among the French soldiers. I was not immune to such discussion, and in my imagination the glories of Yusuf’s female household were fuelled by stories of Scheherazade and the Arabian Nights. Who had not heard of the famed seraglio of the sultan in Constantinople? Or of the skilled concubines and castrated eunuchs of this strange society, in which the son of a slave could grow up to be a master? It was a world I struggled to understand. Slavery had become a way for the Ottomans to inject fresh blood and loyalty into a stultified and treacherous society. Polygamy had become a reward for political loyalty. Religion had become a substitute for material self-improvement. The remoteness of Islamic women made them all the more desired.
Was the medallion still inside the harem’s walls, even if Astiza was not? This was my hope. She had persuaded her captors that I still held it, and then left a message for me behind. Clever woman. I found an alley alcove to temporarily hide my rifle, covering it with my rug, and set off to buy a rope and provisions. If Astiza was a prisoner of Silano, I wanted her back. We had no proper relationship, yet I felt a mix of jealousy, protectiveness, and loneliness that surprised me. She was the closest thing I had left to a true friend. I’d already lost Talma, Enoch, and Ashraf. I’d be damned if I lost her too.
My European complexion under Arab dress drew only casual glances, given that the Ottoman Empire was a rainbow of colours. I entered the dim warren of corridors in the Khan al-Khalili bazaar, the air redolent with charcoal and hashish, piled spices making brilliant pyramids of green, yellow, and orange. After buying food, a rope, and a blanket for the desert nights, I carried these supplies to my depository and set off again to bargain for a horse or camel with the last of my money. I’d never ridden the latter, but knew they had more endurance for a long chase. My mind was boiling with questions. Did Bonaparte know that Silano had taken Astiza? Was the count after the same clues I was? If the medallion was a key, where was the lock? In my haste and preoccupation, I stumbled onto a French patrol before remembering to squeeze into shadow.
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