Ethan Gage Collection # 1 (47 page)

“The compass,” he whispered in Arabic.

“What?”

“Satan's fingers. Allah's mercy be upon you.”

He was clearly as addled as a loon. Still, his look of dismay made me uneasy. “They're personal relics. Not a word of this, now.”

“My imam whispered of these. From the den.”

“The den?” They'd come from under the Great Pyramid.

“Apophis.” And with that, he turned and fled.

Well, I hadn't been so flabbergasted since the danged medallion had actually worked. Apophis! That was the name of a snake god, or demon, that Astiza had claimed was down in the bowels of Egypt. I didn't take her seriously—I am a Franklin man, after all, a man of reason, of the West—but
something
had been down in a smoky pit I'd had no desire to get closer to, and I thought I'd left it and its name long behind in Egypt…. Yet here it had been spoken again! By the snout of Anubis, I'd had quite enough of stray gods and goddesses, mucking up my life like unwanted relatives tracking the floor with mud on their boots. Now a senescent handyman had brought the name up again. Surely it made no sense, but the coincidence was unnerving.

I hurriedly redressed, secreting the seraphim again in my clothing, and hurried outside my cubicle to seek the old man out and ask him what the name meant.

But he was nowhere to be found. The next morning, the innkeeper said the servant had apparently packed his meager belongings and fled.

 

A
nd then at last we came to fabled Jerusalem. I'll admit it was a striking sight. The city is perched on a hill set amid hills, and on three sides the ground falls steeply to narrow valleys. It is on the fourth side, the north, from which invaders always come. Olives, vineyards, and orchards clothe the hillsides, and gardens provide clusters of green within. Formidable walls two miles long, built by a Muslim sultan called Suleiman the Magnificent, entirely enclose the city's inhabitants. Fewer than nine thousand people lived there when
I arrived, subsisting economically on pilgrims and a desultory pottery and soap industry. I'd learn soon enough that about four thousand were Muslims, three thousand Christians, and two thousand Jews.

What picked the place out were its buildings. The primary Muslim mosque, the Dome of the Rock, has a golden cupola that glows like a lighthouse in the setting sun. Closer to where we stood, the Jaffa Gate was the old military citadel, its crenellated ramparts topped by a round tower like a lighthouse. Stones as colossal as the ones I'd seen in Egypt made up the citadel's base. I'd find similar rocks at the Temple Mount, the old Jewish temple plateau that now served as the base of the city's great mosque. Apparently, Jerusalem's foundations had been laid by Titans.

The skyline was punctuated everywhere by domes, minarets, and church towers bequeathed by this crusader or that conqueror, each trying to leave a holy building to make up for his own national brand of slaughter. The effect was as competitive as rival vegetable stalls at a Saturday market, Christian bells tolling as muzzeins wailed and Jews chanted their prayers. Vines, flowers, and shrubs erupted from the ill-maintained wall, and palms marked squares and gardens. Outside, ranks of olive trees marched down to twisting, rocky valleys that were smoky from burning garbage. From this terrestrial hell-dump one lifted the eye to heaven, birds wheeling in front of celestial cloud palaces, everything sharp and detailed. Jerusalem, like Jaffa, was the color of honey in the low sun, its limestone fermenting in the yellow rays.

“Most men come here looking for something,” Mohammad remarked as we gazed across the Citadel Valley toward the ancient capital. “What do you seek, my friend?”

“Wisdom,” I said, which was true enough. That's what the Book of Thoth was supposed to contain, and by Franklin's spectacles I could use some. “And news of one I love, I hope.”

“Ah. Many men search their entire lives without finding wisdom
or
love, so it is well you come here, where prayers for both might be answered.”

“Let's hope so.” I knew that Jerusalem, precisely because it was
reputed to be so holy, had been attacked, burned, sacked, and pillaged more times than any place on earth. “I'll pay you now and seek out the man I'm to stay with.” I tried not to jingle my purse too much as I counted out the rest of his fee.

He took his pay eagerly and then reacted with practiced shock. “Not a gift for sharing my expertise about the Holy Land? No recompense for the safety or your arrival? No affirmation of this glorious view?”

“I suppose you want credit for the weather, as well.”

He looked hurt. “I have tried to be your servant, effendi.”

So, twisting in my saddle so he couldn't see how little was left, I gave him a tip I could ill afford. He bowed and gave effusive thanks.

“Allah smiles on your generosity!”

I wasn't able to keep the grumpiness from my “Godspeed.”

“And peace be upon you!”

A blessing that had no power, it turned out.

J
erusalem was half ruin, I saw when I rode down the dirt track and crossed a wooden bridge to the black iron of the Jaffa Gate, and through it to a market beyond. A
subashi
, or police officer, checked me for weapons—they were not allowed in Ottoman cities—but allowed me to keep my poor dagger. “I thought Franks carried something better,” he muttered, taking me for European despite my clothing.

“I'm a simple pilgrim,” I told him.

His look was skeptical. “See that you remain one.”

Then I sold my donkey for what I'd paid for it—a few coins back, at least!—and got my bearings.

The gate had a steady stream of traffic. Merchants met caravans, and pilgrims of a dozen sects shouted thanksgiving as they entered the sacred precincts. But Ottoman authority had been in decline for two centuries, and powerless governors, raiding Bedouin, extortionate tax collection, and religious rivalry had left the town's prosperity as stunted as cornstalks on a causeway. Market stalls lined major streets, but their faded awnings and half-empty shelves only emphasized the
historical gloom. Jerusalem was somnolent, birds having occupied its towers.

My guide Mohammad had explained the city was divided into quarters for Muslims, Christians, Armenians, and Jews. I followed twisting lanes as best I could for the northwest quadrant, built around the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Franciscan headquarters. The route was depopulated enough that chickens skittered out of my way. Half the houses appeared abandoned. The inhabited homes, built of ancient stone with haphazard wooden sheds and terraces jutting like boils, sagged liked the skin of grandmothers. As in Egypt, any fantasies of an opulent East were disappointed.

Smith's vague directions and my own inquiries took me to a two-story limestone house with a solid wooden wagon gate topped by a horseshoe, its façade otherwise featureless in the Arab fashion. There was a smaller wooden door to one side, and I could smell the charcoal from Jericho's smithy. I pounded on the small entry door, waited, and pounded again, until a small peephole opened. I was surprised when a feminine eye looked out: I'd become accustomed in Cairo to bulky Muslim doormen and sequestered wives. Moreover, her pupils were pale gray, of a translucence unusual in the East.

On Smith's instruction, I started in English. “I'm Ethan Gage, with a letter of introduction from a British captain to a man they call Jericho. I'm here…”

The eyehole shut. I stood, wondering after some minutes whether I even had the right house, when finally the door swung open as if of its own accord and I stepped cautiously through. I was in the work yard of an ironmonger, all right, its pavers stained gray with soot. Ahead I could see the glow of a forge, in a ground-story shed with walls hung with tools. The left of the courtyard was a sales shop stocked with finished implements, and to the right was storage for metal and charcoal. Slightly overhanging these three wings were the living apartments above, reached by an unpainted wooden stair and fronted by a balcony, faded roses cascading from iron pots. A few petals had fallen to the ashes below.

The gate closed behind me, and I realized the woman had been
hidden by it. She ghosted by without speaking, her eyes inspecting me with a sidewise glance and an intense curiosity that surprised me. It's true I'm a handsome rogue, but was I really that interesting? Her dress fell from neck to ankles, her head was covered by a scarf in the custom of all faiths here in Palestine, and she modestly averted her face, but I saw enough to make a key judgment. She was pretty.

Her face had the rounded beauty of a Renaissance painting, her complexion pale for this part of the world, with an eggshell smoothness. Her lips were full, and when I caught her gaze she looked down demurely. Her nose had that slight Mediterranean arch, that subtle curve of the south that I find seductive. Her hair was hidden except for a few escaping strands that hinted at a surprisingly fair coloring. Her figure was trim enough, but it was hard to tell more than that. Then she disappeared through a doorway.

And with that instinctive scouting done, I turned around to see a bearded, hard-muscled man striding from the smithy in a leather apron. He had the forearms of a smith, thick as hams and marked with the inevitable burns of the forge. The smudge from his work didn't hide his sandy hair and startling blue eyes that looked at me with some skepticism. Had Vikings washed ashore in Syria? Yet his build was softened somewhat by a fullness to his lips and ruddiness behind his bearded cheeks (a cherubic youthfulness he shared with the woman), which suggested the earnest gentleness I've always imagined of Joseph the Carpenter. He shed a leather glove and held out a callused hand. “Gage.”

“Ethan Gage,” I confirmed as I shook a palm hard as wood.

“Jericho.” The man might have a woman's mouth, but he had a grip like a vise.

“As your wife might have explained…”

“Sister.”

“Really?” Well, that was a step in the right direction. Not that I was forgetting about Astiza for a moment—it's just that female beauty arouses a natural curiosity in any healthy male, and it's safest to know where one stands.

“She is shy of strangers, so do not make her uncomfortable.”

That was clear enough, from a man sturdy as an oak stump. “Of course. Yet it is commendable that she apparently understands English.”

“It would be more remarkable if she didn't, since she lived in England. With me. She has nothing to do with our business.”

“Charming yet unavailable. The very best ladies are.”

He reacted to my wit with as much animation as a stone idol.

“Smith sent word of your mission, so I can offer temporary lodging and time-tested advice: any foreigner who pretends to understand the politics of Jerusalem is a fool.”

I remained my affable self. “So my job might be brief. I ask, don't understand the answer, and go home. Like any pilgrim.”

He looked me up and down. “You prefer Arab dress?”

“It's comfortable, anonymous, and I thought it might help in the souk and the coffee shop. I speak a little Arabic.” I was determined to keep trying. “As for you, Jericho, I don't see you falling down anytime soon.”

I'd merely puzzled him.

“The biblical story, about the walls of Jericho coming down? Solid as a rock, you seem to be. Good man to have on one's side, I hope?”

“My home village. There are no walls now.”

“And I didn't expect to find blue eyes in Palestine,” I stumbled on.

“Crusader blood. The roots of my family go far back. We should be a paintbox mix, but in our generation the paleness came out. Every race comes through Jerusalem: Crusaders, Persians, Mongols, Ethiopians. Every creed, opinion, and nation. And you?”

“American, ancestry brief and best forgotten, which is one of the advantages of the United States. I understand you learned your English through their navy?”

“Miriam and I were orphaned by the plague. The Catholic fathers who took us in told us something of the world, and at Tyre I signed onto an English frigate and learned ironwork repairs. The sailors gave me my nickname, I apprenticed to a smith in Portsmouth, and sent for her. I felt obligated.”

“But didn't stay, obviously.”

“We missed the sun; the British are white as worms. I'd met Smith while in the navy. For passage back and some pay, I agreed to keep my ears open here. I host his friends. They do his bidding. Little useful is ever learned. My neighbors think I'm simply capitalizing on my English to take in the occasional lodger, and they're not far wrong.”

Bright and blunt, this blacksmith. “Sidney Smith thinks he and I can help each other. I got caught up with Bonaparte in Egypt. Now the French are planning to come this way.”

“And Smith wants to know what the Christians and the Jews and the Druze and the Matuwelli might do.”

“Exactly. He's trying to help Djezzar mount resistance to the French.”

“With people who hate Djezzar, a tyrant who keeps his slipper on their neck. More than a few will regard the French as liberators.”

“If that's the message, I'll take it back. But I also need help for my own cause. I met a woman in Egypt who disappeared. Fell into the Nile, actually. I want to learn if she's dead or alive and, if alive, how to rescue her. I'm told you may have contacts in Egypt.”

“A woman? Close to you?” He seemed reassured by my interest in someone other than his sister. “That kind of inquiry is more costly than listening to political gossip in Jerusalem.”

“How much more costly?”

He looked me up and down. “More, I suspect, than you can afford to pay.”

“So you won't help me?”

“It's my contacts in Egypt who won't help you, not without coin.”

I judged he wasn't trying to cheat me, just tell me the truth. I needed a partner if I was going to get anywhere in my quest, and who better than this blue-eyed blacksmith? So I gave him a hint of what else I was after. “Maybe
you
can contribute. What if I promised, in return, a share of the greatest treasure on earth?”

He finally laughed. “Greatest treasure? Which is?”

“A secret. But it could make a man a king.”

“Ah. And where might this treasure be?”

“Right under our noses in Jerusalem, I hope.”

“Do you know how many fools have hoped to find treasure in Jerusalem?”

“It's not the fools who will find it.”

“You want me to spend
my
money looking for
your
woman?”

“I want you to invest in your future.”

He licked his lips. “Smith found a bold, impudent, rascal, didn't he?”

“And you are a judge of character!” He might be skeptical, but he was also curious. Paying for word of Astiza would not really cost him much, I bet. And he had the same avarice as all of us: Everyone dreams of buried treasure.

“I could see if it's affordable.”

I'd hooked him. “There's another thing I need as well. A good rifle.”

 

J
ericho lived simply, despite some prosperity from his ironmonger trade. Because he was a Christian his house had more furnishings than a Muslim abode: Muhammadans rely on cushions that can be moved so the women can be sequestered when a male guest arrives. The habit of the Bedouin tent has never been left behind. We Christians, in contrast, are accustomed to having our heads closer to the warm ceiling than the cooler floor, and so sit high and formal, in stationary clutter. Jericho had a table, chairs, and armoires instead of Islamic cushions and chests. The carpentry was plain, however, with a Puritan simplicity. The plank floors were bare of carpets, and any decoration on the plaster walls was limited to the odd crucifix or picture of a saint: clean as a convent, and just as disconcerting. Miriam, the sister, kept it spotless. Food was plentiful, but basic: bread, olives, wine, and what greens the woman could buy each day in the market stalls. Occasionally she'd bring meat for her muscled, hungry brother, but it was relatively rare and expensive. Winter was coming, but there was no provision for heat except that given off by the charcoal of the cooking hearth and the forge below. There was no glass in the screened windows, so the coldest were blocked up by bags of sawdust
for the season, adding to the autumn gloom. The basin water was cold, winds penetrating, candles and oil precious, and we slept and rose at farmer hours. For a Parisian layabout like me, Palestine was a shock.

It was the forging of my new rifle that first bonded us. Jericho was steady, skilled, quiet, diligent (all things I should emulate, I suppose) and had earned the town's respect. You could see it in the eyes of the men who came into the sooty courtyard to buy iron implements: Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike. I thought I might have to tutor him in the design of a good gun, but he was ahead of me. “You mean like the German jaegar, the hunting rifle?” he said when I described the piece I'd lost. “I've worked on some. Show me on the sand how long you want the piece to be.”

I sketched out a forty-two-inch barrel.

“Won't that be clumsy?”

“The length gives it accuracy and killing power. Just forty-five caliber is enough; the rifle velocity makes up for bullets smaller than a musket's. I can carry more ammunition for a given weight of shot and powder. Soft iron, deep grooving, a drop to the stock to bring the sights up to my eye for aiming but keep my brow out of the pan flash. The best I've seen can drive a tack three times out of five at fifty yards. It takes a full minute to load and ram, but the first shot will actually hit something.”

“Smoothbores are the rule here. Quick to load and you can shoot with anything—pebbles, if need be. For this gun, we'll need precise bullets.”

“Precision means accuracy.”

“In a close fight, sometimes speed wins.” He had the prejudice of the sailors he had served with, who fought in sharp brawls when boarding.

“And the right shot can keep them from getting close at all. To my mind, trying to fight with an ordinary musket is like going to a brothel blindfolded—you might get the result you want, but you can miss by a mile, too.”

“I wouldn't know about that.” Damned if I could get him to joke.
He looked at the pattern in the sand. “Four hundred hours of work. For which you'll pay me out of this treasure of yours?”

“Double. I'm going to be searching hard while you craft the rifle.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Easy to promise money you don't have. You'll help, and not just with this but other projects. It will be a new experience for you, doing real work. On slow days you can hunt for buried treasure or learn enough gossip to satisfy Sidney Smith. You can bill
him
to satisfy your debt to
me
.”

Honest work? The idea was intriguing—truth be told, I'm sometimes envious of solid men like Jericho—but daunting, too. “I'll help at your forge,” I bargained, “but you have to guarantee me enough hours to peck about. Get me the rifle by the end of winter, when Napoleon comes, and by that time I'll find the treasure and get Smith's money, too.” Squeezing anything out of the Admiralty is like getting gravy from a shoelace, but spring was far off. Things could happen.