Ethan Gage Collection # 1 (44 page)
Read Ethan Gage Collection # 1 Online
Authors: William Dietrich
“Purposes?”
He nodded, plans building in his head like a thundercloud, his grin wide as a cannon's mouth. He grasped my arms as if I'd dropped from the sky to answer all his prayers.
“Jerusalem!” he cried.
And as I contemplated the will of the gods and the luck of cards, the bow of our ship began to turn.
N
apoleon Bonaparte's 1798 invasion of Egypt was not just one of the great military adventures of all time, it was a turning point in French, Egyptian, and archeological history. For Bonaparte, Egypt would prove to be both defeat and springboard, giving him the desperation and fame to seize absolute power in France. For Egypt, the French invasion was the beginning of the modern era after centuries of Ottoman and Mameluke domination. It not only opened the door to Western technology and trade, but also began a turbulent era of colonialism, independence, modernization, and cultural tension still playing out today. For archeology, Napoleon's inclusion of 167 savants in his invading force was a watershed. Early in 1799, French soldiers discovered a stone at Rosetta with Greek, Demotic, and ancient writing that would prove the key to deciphering hieroglyphics. That, coupled with publication of the savant's monumental
Description de l'Egype,
in 23 volumes between 1809 and 1828, gave birth to the science of Egyptology. It started the Romantic era's enchantment with Egyptian fashion and ignited a global fascination with ancient Egypt that continues to this day. Almost everything we know about ancient Egypt has been learned since Napoleon's invasion.
The idea that the Great Pyramid of Giza functioned as something other than a simple tomb, and that its pharaoh may be buried elsewhere, dates as far back as the ancient Greek historians Herodotus and
Diodorus. The puzzle increased when ninth-century Arab grave robbers found no mummy, no treasure, and no inscriptions when they broke into the tomb. In the last two centuries there has been unending fascination with, and debate about, the pyramid's dimensions, mysteries, and mathematical meaning. While some of the most speculative theorists accuse mainstream Egyptologists of being close-minded, and while some academics have labeled the zaniest of the crackpots as “pyramidiots,” there is serious scholarly debate about the pyramid's structure and purpose. New mysteries are still being discovered by robotic explorers, and hidden chambers are still suspected. The Giza pyramids rest on a limestone plateau that could contain caves, and Herodotus reported an underground lake or river beneath the structure.
The Great Pyramid's precise geographic placement, its mysterious relationship to the size of our planet, its relationship to pi, and the fascinating correlations between the dimensions of its chambers and intriguing mathematical concepts are all true. The Fibonacci Sequence is a real phenomena, seen in nature in spiral patterns as Jomard describes, and the pyramid's embodiment of the golden section, or golden number, is also true. Pascal's triangle is a real mathematical concept and it yields many more number games than are mentioned in this novel. It does produce a value close to that of the Egyptian value for pi, though I won't promise the pattern really leads to a secret door. I've taken the liberty of allowing my French savants to guess more about pyramid mathematics than was immediately apparent during Napoleon's invasion. While Jomard really did publish intriguing theories, some of the concepts in this novel came from later scholars after more precise measurements could be made. A fascinating and controversial introduction to these concepts and an exhaustive analysis of pyramid mathematics can be found in the 1971 book
Secrets of the Great Pyramid
by Peter Tompkins and Livio Catullo Stecchini.
This novel closely follows the early history of Bonaparte's military invasion of Egypt. Most of the characters are real people, including ten-year-old Giocante Casabianca, whose death at the Battle of the Nile inspired the famed nineteenth Century poem, “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck.” One historical liberty is that I place Desaix's
presence at the temple of Dendara three months earlier than the general actually arrived there. The army paused in late January 1799, and the weary artist Vivant Denon was so entranced by the temple's glories that he wrote, “What I saw today has paid me back for all my misery.” A few days later, when the French division first saw the ruins of Karnak and Luxor, the troops spontaneously came to a halt, applauded, and presented arms.
Many historical details used in this novel, including the presence of Conte's balloons, are true. There is scholarly disagreement about whether Napoleon actually entered the Great Pyramid, and what happened to him if he did, but the author has lain in the granite sarcophagus as Bonaparte may have, and found it a remarkable experience.
This story weaves together military and political history, Masonic lore, biblical scholarship, mystic speculation, and information about ancient Egypt. For a general history of the invasion I recommend J. Christopher Herold's 1962 prizewinning book
Bonaparte in Egypt
. Fascinating eyewitness accounts of the expedition include those by the artist Vivant Denon, French captain Joseph Marie Mouret, and the Egyptian Al-Jabarti. Some of the quotes attributed to Napoleon in this novel are taken from real life, though not all were spoken during the Egyptian campaign. His own words reveal a man of fascinating complexity.
There are hundreds of scholarly and popular works on scientific Egyptology. Speculative and historical literature on the pyramids, ancient gods, and Egyptian magic is also vast. A good recent introduction to alternative theories about ancient Egypt is the 2005 book
Pyramid Quest
by Robert Schoch and Robert McNally. A book that mentions the birth of the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry and gives a sense of mystical yearnings in the Age of Reason is Iain McCalman's 2003 biography,
The Last Alchemist,
about Cagliostro. A sprawling, sometimes incoherent, but truly monumental work of mysticism is Manly P. Hall's 1928 classic,
The Secret Teachings of All Ages
. It summarizes what enthusiasts label Hermetic lore, after the god Hermes, the Greek adaptation of the Egyptian god Thoth.
I'm indebted to dozens of nonfiction authors for the facts behind
this novel, as well as the guide Ruth Shilling of All One World Egypt Tours; Egyptian guides Ashraf Mohie el-Din and Galal Hassan Marghany; and Egyptologist-in-the-making Richard Mandeville of the United Kingdom. What is true in this novel is to their credit, while the fictions are all mine. As always, praise must go to the support and insights of my editors at HarperCollins: Michael Shohl, Jill Schwartzman, and Jonathan Burnham; senior production editor David Koral; copy editor Martha Cameron; and my agent, Andrew Stuart. Special appreciation to my wife and helpmate, Holly, who crawled through the pyramids with me. Finally, thanks go to the hospitality of the people of Egypt, who are so proud of their heritage.
Cover design by Richard Ljoenes.
Portrait of Ethan Gage by Seb Jarnot; ships© Stapleton Collection/Corbis; “Battle of Pyramids, 21 July 1798” (oil on canvas), Watteau, Francois Louis Joseph (1758-1823) / Musee des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library; Map courtesy of Paulus Swaen
NAPOLEAN'S PYRAMIDS
. Copyright © 2007 by William Dietrich. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition December 2013 ISBN 9780062378552
Version 12132013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my daughter, Heidi
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The possession of knowledge does not kill
the sense of wonder and mystery.
There is always more mystery.
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yeing a thousand musket barrels aimed at one's chest does tend to force consideration of whether the wrong path has been taken. So I did consider it, each muzzle bore looking as wide as the bite of a mongrel stray in a Cairo alley. But no, while I'm modest to a fault, I have my self-righteous side as wellâand by my light it wasn't me but the French army that had gone astray. Which I could have explained to my former friend, Napoleon Bonaparte, if he hadn't been up on the dunes out of hailing distance, aloof and annoyingly distracted, his buttons and medals gleaming in the Mediterranean sun.
The first time I'd been on a beach with Bonaparte, when he landed his army in Egypt in 1798, he told me the drowned would be immortalized by history. Now, nine months later outside the Palestinian port of Jaffa, history was to be made of
me.
French grenadiers were getting ready to shoot me and the hapless Muslim captives I'd been thrown in with, and once more I, Ethan Gage, was trying to figure out a way to sidestep destiny. It was a mass execution, you see, and I'd run afoul of the general I once attempted to befriend.
How far we'd both come in nine brief months!
I edged behind the biggest of the wretched Ottoman prisoners I could find, a Negro giant from the Upper Nile who I calculated might be just thick enough to stop a musket ball. All of us had been herded like bewildered cattle onto a lovely beach, eyes white and round in the darkest faces, the Turkish uniforms of scarlet, cream, emerald, and sapphire smeared with the smoke and blood of a savage sacking. There were lithe Moroccans, tall and dour Sudanese, truculent pale Albanians, Circassian cavalry, Greek gunners, Turkish sergeantsâthe scrambled levies of a vast empire, all humbled by the French. And me, the lone American. Not only was I baffled by their babble; they often couldn't understand each other. The mob milled, their officers already dead, and their disorder a defeated contrast to the crisp lines of our executioners, drawn up as if on parade. Ottoman defiance had enraged Napoleonâyou should never put the heads of emissaries on a pikeâand their hungry numbers as prisoners threatened to be a crippling drag on his invasion. So we'd been marched through the orange groves to a crescent of sand just south of the captured port, the sparkling sea a lovely green and gold in the shallows, the hilltop city smoldering. I could see some green fruit still clinging to the shot-blown trees. My former benefactor and recent enemy, sitting on his horse like a young Alexander, was (through desperation or dire calculation) about to display a ruthlessness that his own marshals would whisper about for many campaigns to come. Yet he didn't even have the courtesy to pay attention! He was reading another of his moody novels, his habit to devour a book's page, tear it out, and pass it back to his officers. I was barefoot, bloody, and only forty miles as the crow flies from where Jesus Christ had died to save the world. The past several days of persecution, torment, and warfare hadn't persuaded me that our Savior's efforts had entirely succeeded in improving human nature.
“Ready!” A thousand musket hammers were pulled back.
Napoleon's henchmen had accused me of being a spy and a traitor, which was why I'd been marched with the other prisoners to the beach. And yes, circumstance had given a grain of truth to that characterization. But I hadn't set out with that intent, by any means.
I'd simply been an American in Paris, whose tentative knowledge of electricityâand the need to escape an utterly unjust accusation of murderâresulted in my being included in the company of Napoleon's scientists, or savants, during his dazzling conquest of Egypt the year before. I'd also developed a knack for being on the wrong side at the wrong time. I'd taken fire from Mameluke cavalry, the woman I loved, Arab cutthroats, British broadsides, Muslim fanatics, French platoonsâand I'm a likable man!
My latest French nemesis was a nasty scoundrel named Pierre Najac, an assassin and thief who couldn't get over the fact that I'd once shot him from beneath the Toulon stage when he tried to rob me of a sacred medallion. It's a long story, as an earlier volume will attest. Najac had come back into my life like a bad debt, and had kept me marching in the prisoner rank with a cavalry saber at my back. He was anticipating my imminent demise with the same feeling of triumph and loathing that one has when crushing a particularly obnoxious spider. I was regretting that I hadn't aimed a shave higher and two inches to the left.
As I've remarked before, it all seems to start with gambling. Back in Paris, it had been a card game that won me the mysterious medallion and started the trouble. This time, what had seemed a simple way to get a new startâtaking the bewildered seamen of HMS
Dangerous
for every shilling they had before the British put me ashore in the Holy Landâhad solved nothing and, it could be argued, had actually led to my present predicament. Let me repeat: gambling is a vice, and it is foolish to rely on chance.
“Aim!”
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I, Ethan Gage, have spent most of my thirty-four years trying to keep out of too much trouble and away from too much work. As my mentor and onetime employer, the late, great Benjamin Franklin, would no doubt observe, these two ambitions are as at odds as positive and negative electricity. The pursuit of the latter, no work, is almost sure to defeat the former, no trouble. But that's a lesson, like the headache that follows alcohol or the treachery of beautiful
women, forgotten as many times as learned. It was my dislike of hard labor that reinforced my fondness for gambling, gambling that got me the medallion, the medallion that got me to Egypt with half the planet's villains at my heels, and Egypt that got me my lovely lost Astiza. She in turn had convinced me that we had to save the world from Najac's master, the French-Italian count and sorcerer Alessandro Silano. All this, without my quite expecting it to, put me on the wrong side of Bonaparte. In the course of things I fell in love, found a secret way into the Great Pyramid, and made the damndest discoveries ever, only to lose everything I held dear when forced to escape by balloon.
I told you it was a long story.
Anyway, the gorgeous and maddening Astizaâmy would-be assassin, then servant, then priestess of Egyptâhad fallen from the balloon into the Nile along with my enemy, Silano. I've been desperately trying to learn their fate ever since, my anxiety redoubled by the fact that my enemy's last words to Astiza were, “You know I still love you!” How's
that
for prying at the corners of your mind at night? Just what
was
their relationship? Which is why I'd agreed to allow the English madman Sir Sidney Smith to put me ashore in Palestine just ahead of Bonaparte's invading army, to make inquiries. Then one thing led to another and here I stood, facing a thousand gun muzzles.
“Fire!”
Â
B
ut before I tell you what happened when the muskets blazed, perhaps I should go back to where my earlier tale left off, in late October of 1798, when I was trapped on the deck of the British frigate
Dangerous
, making for the Holy Land with her sails bellied and a bone in her teeth, cutting the frothy deep. How hearty it all was, English banners flapping, burly seamen pulling at their stout lines of hemp with lusty chants, stiff-necked officers in bicorne hats pacing the quarterdeck, and bristling cannon dewed by the spray of the Mediterranean, droplets drying into stars of salt. In other words, it was just the kind of militant, masculine foray I've learned to detest,
having narrowly survived the hurtling charge of a Mameluke warrior at the Battle of the Pyramids, the explosion of
L'Orient
at the Battle of the Nile, and any numbers of treacheries by an Arab snake worshipper named Achmed bin Sadr, who I finally sent to his own appropriate hell. I was a little winded from brisk adventure and more than ready to scuttle back home to New York for a nice job as a bookkeeper or a dry goods clerk, or perhaps as a solicitor attending to dreary wills clutched by black-clad widows and callow, undeserving offspring. Yes, a desk and dusty ledgersâthat's the life for me! But Sir Sidney would hear none of it. Worse, I'd finally figured out what I cared about in this world: Astiza. I couldn't very well take passage home without finding out if she'd survived her fall with that villain Silano and could, somehow, be rescued.
Life was simpler when I had no principles.
Smith was gussied up like a Turkish admiral, plans building in his brain like an approaching squall. He'd been given the job of helping the Turks and their Ottoman Empire thwart the further encroachment of Bonaparte's armies from Egypt into Syria, since young Napoleon's hope was to carve an eastern empire out for himself. Sir Sidney needed allies and intelligence, and, after fishing me out of the Mediterranean, he'd told me it would work to both our advantage if I joined his cause. It was foolhardy for me to try to return to Egypt and face the angry French alone, he pointed out. I could make inquiries about Astiza from Palestine, while simultaneously assessing the various sects that might be lined up to fight Napoleon. “Jerusalem!” he'd cried. Was he mad? That half-forgotten city, an Ottoman backwater encrusted by dirt, history, religious lunatics, and disease, hadâby all reportsâsurvived only by foisting obligatory tourism on the credible and easily cheated pilgrims of three faiths. But if you're an English schemer and warrior like Smith, Jerusalem had the advantage of being a crossroad of the complicated culture of Syria, a polyglot den of Muslim, Jew, Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Druze, Maronite, Matuwelli, Turk, Bedouin, Kurd, and Palestinian, all of them remembering slights from each other going back several thousand years.
Frankly, I'd never have ventured within a hundred miles of the
place, except that Astiza was convinced that Moses had stolen a sacred book of ancient wisdom from the bowels of the Great Pyramid and that his descendants had carried it to Israel. That meant Jerusalem was the likeliest place to look. So far this Book of Thoth, or the rumors of it, had been nothing but trouble. Yet if it did hold keys to immortality and mastery of the universe, I couldn't quite forget about it, could I? Jerusalem did make a perverse kind of sense.
Smith imagined me a trusted accomplice, and in truth we did have an alliance of sorts. I'd met him in a gypsy camp after I'd shot Najac. The signet ring he gave had saved me from a yardarm noose when I was hauled before Admiral Nelson after the fracas at the Nile. And Smith was a genuine hero who'd burned French ships and escaped from a Paris prison by signaling one of his former bedmates from a barred window. After I'd picked up a pharaoh's treasure under the Great Pyramid, lost it again to keep from drowning, and stolen a balloon from my friend and fellow savant Nicolas-Jacques Conte, I'd crash-landed into the sea and found myself wet and penniless on the quarterdeck of the
Dangerous
, fate putting me face-to-face with Sir Sidney once more, and as much at the mercy of the British as I'd been the French. My own feelingsâthat I'd had quite enough of war and treasure and was ready to go home to Americaâwere blithely ignored.
“So while you make inquiries from Syrian Palestine about this woman you took a fancy to, Gage, you can also feel out the Christians and Jews for possible resistance to Bonaparte,” Smith was telling me. “They might side with the frogs, and if he's taking an army that way, our Turkish allies need all the help they can get.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “You're just the man for this kind of work, I judge: clever, affable, rootless, and without any scruples or belief. People tell you things, Gage, because they figure it doesn't matter.”
“It's just that I'm American, not British or French⦔
“Exactly. Perfect for our uses. Djezzar will be impressed that even a man as shallow as you has enlisted.”
Djezzar, whose name meant “the Butcher,” was the notoriously cruel and despotic pasha in Acre whom the British were depending on to fight Napoleon. Charmed, I'm sure.
“But my Arabic is crude and I know nothing of Palestine,” I pointed out reasonably.
“Not a problem for an agent with wit and pluck like you, Ethan. The Crown has a confederate in Jerusalem by the code name of Jericho, an ironmonger by trade who once served in our own navy. He can help you search for this Astiza and work for us. He has contacts in Egypt! A few days of your artful diplomacy, a chance to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ hisself, and you're back with nothing more than dust on your boots and a holy relic in your pocket, your other problems solved. It's really quite splendid how these things work out. Meanwhile I'll be helping Djezzar organize the defense of Acre in case Boney marches north, as you've warned. In no time we'll both be bloody heroes, feted in the chambers of London!”
Whenever people start complimenting you and using words like “splendid,” it's time to check your purse. But, by Bunker Hill, I was curious about the Book of Thoth and tortured by the memory of Astiza. Her sacrifice to save me was the worst moment of my lifeâworse, honestly, than when my beloved Pennsylvania long rifle blew upâand the hole in my heart was so big you could fire a cannonball through it and not hit a thing. Which is a good line to use on a woman, I figured, and I wanted to try it out on her. So of course I said yes, the most dangerous word in the English language.
“I
am
lacking clothes, weapons, and money,” I pointed out. The only things I'd managed to retain from the Great Pyramid were two small gold seraphim, or kneeling angels, which Astiza contended came from the staff of Moses and which I'd stuffed rather ingloriously into my drawers. My initial thought had been to pawn them, but they'd acquired sentimental value despite their tendency to make me scratch. At the very least they were a reserve of precious metal I preferred not to reveal. Let Smith give an allowance, if he was so anxious to enlist me.