The Rosetta Key (36 page)

“Did Silano tell you to say that?”

She looked disappointed. “Why can’t you believe I love you? I rode with you all the way to Acre, and it was a cannon shot that separated us, not choice. It was fate that brought us both together again. Just have faith a little longer.”

“You sound like Napoleon. ‘I have made all the calculations. Fate will do the rest.’”

“Bonaparte has his own wisdom.”

And with that we came to the headquarters building, a one-story stucco structure with a shed roof of tile and a porch thatched with palm. It was cool and dim inside. As my eyes adjusted from the glare, I saw Silano waiting at a plain table with two officers. The older one I’d known since the French landing at Alexandria. General Jacques de Menou had fought bravely and later, by report, had converted to Islam. He was fascinated with Egyptian culture, but he was not a particularly commanding officer with his pencil moustache, round accountant’s face, and balding pate. The other, a handsome captain, I didn’t know. On either side of the room were closed doors, with locks.

Silano stood. “Always you are trying to escape me, Monsieur Gage, and always our paths entwine!” He gave a slight, courtly bow. “Surely you recognize destiny by now. Perhaps we’re meant to be friends, not enemies?”

“I’d be more persuaded of that if your other friends didn’t keep shooting at me.”

“Even the best friends quarrel.” He gestured. “General de Menou you know?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t expect to see you again,
Américain.
How poor Nicolas was angry about his stolen balloon!”

“That came from the shooting part,” I told the general.

“And this is Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard,” Silano went on.

“He was in charge of construction at the fort here when his men dug up a piece of rubble. Fortunately, Captain Bouchard was quick to recognize its significance. This Rosetta Stone may change the world, I think.”

“A stone?”

“Come. Let me show you.”

Silano led us to the room on the left, unlocked its door, and ushered us inside. It was dim; the slit window looking out onto the courtyard draped for privacy. The first thing that caught my eye was the wooden coffin of a mummy. Brightly painted and remarkably preserved, it bore paintings that looked like a depiction of a soul’s journey through the land of the dead.

“Is there a body inside?”

“Of Omar, our sentry,” Menou joked. “He is tireless.”

“Sentry?”

“I brought this downriver and told the soldiers we found it at this fort site,” Silano said. “Fear surrounds these mummies, and this one is now reputed to haunt Rosetta. It’s better than a cobra for keeping the curious out of this room.”

I touched the lid. “Amazing how bright the colors are.”

“Magic too, perhaps. We can’t do the same now, just as we’ve lost the formula for the leaded glass in the medieval cathedrals. We can’t match either beauty.” He pointed to some paint pots in one corner of the room. “I’m experimenting. Maybe Omar in there will give me a hint one night.”

“And you don’t believe in curses?”

“I believe I’m about to control them. With this.” Beside the wooden sarcophagus, something bulky, about five feet high and a little less than three feet wide, was shrouded with a tarpaulin. With a dramatic gesture, Silano whisked the cover off. I bent, peering in the dim light. There was writing in different languages. I’m not a linguist, but one block of words looked Greek, and another like writing I’d seen in Egyptian temples. A third script I couldn’t identify but the fourth, at the top, just above the temple writing, made my heart beat faster. It was the same curious symbols I’d read on the scroll I’d found in the City of Ghosts. I realized what Silano had meant with his cryptic message. He could compare the Greek words to the secret ones of Thoth and possibly unravel the language!

“What’s this text here?” I pointed to the one I didn’t recognize.

“Demotic, the Egyptian language that followed the ancient hieroglyphs,” Silano said. “My guess is that these are in order of time — the oldest language, that of Thoth, at the top, and the newest, Greek, at the bottom.”

“When Alessandro brought me here I recognized what we’d seen on the scroll, Ethan,” Astiza said. “See? I was
meant
to be captured again.”

“And now you want me to help you decipher it,” I summarized.

“We want you to give us the book so
we
can help
you
decipher it,” Silano corrected.

“And I get?”

“The same that I offered before.” He sighed, as if I were a particularly dim child. “Partnership, power, and immortality if you want it. The secrets of the universe, perhaps. The reason for existence, the face of God, and the world in your palm. Or, nothing, if you prefer not to cooperate.”

“But if I don’t cooperate, you don’t have the book, right?”

I saw Menou make a small gesture. Captain Bouchard maneuvered behind me, and I noticed he had a pistol in his belt.

“On the contrary, monsieur,” Silano said. He nodded and my satchel was yanked from my shoulder and roughly opened.

“Merde,”
Bouchard said. He turned my leather bag upside down and a wooden rolling pin fell out, making a dent in the building’s packed-earth floor. The general and the captain looked puzzled and Astiza stifled a laugh. Silano’s look grew dark.

“You didn’t really think I’d deliver it like Franklin’s post, did you?”

“Search him!”

But there was no scroll. They even peered in my rifle barrel, as if I could have somehow stuffed it down there. They pried open the soles of my boots, checked the bottom of my feet, and grabbed at places that left me indignant.

“Are you going to look in my ears, too?”

“Where is it?” Silano’s frustration was plain.

“Hidden, until we form a true partnership. If we Americans and French represent liberty and reason, then the translation is for all mankind, not the Egyptian Rite of renegade Freemasons. Or ambitious generals like Napoleon Bonaparte. I want it given to the institute of savants in Cairo for dissemination to the world. The British Academy, as well. And I want Astiza once and for all. I want you to give her up, Silano, to trade her for the book, no matter how much power you have over us. And I want her to promise to go with me, wherever I choose to go. Now and forever. I want Bonaparte to know we’re all here, working together for him, so that none of us conveniently disappear. And I want the bloodshed to end. We’ve both lost friends. Promise me all that, and I’ll fetch your book. We’ll both have our dreams.”

“Fetch it from where? Acre?”

“You can have it within the hour.”

He bit his lip. “I’ve already had your felucca and wretched captain searched. They even hauled the boat to check its keel. Nothing!” Again, some of that impatient frustration I’d glimpsed the year before in Egypt broke through his urbane mask.

I smiled. “Such trust, Count Silano.”

He turned to Astiza. “Do you agree with his condition for you?”

It was the second proposal I’d made in a month, I realized. Neither of them had been terribly romantic, but still… I must be getting old to want commitment from a woman, which meant commitment from me. “Yes,” she said. She was looking at me with hope. I felt happy and panicked at the same time.

“Then damn it, Gage, where is it?”

“Do
you
agree to my conditions?”

“Yes, yes.” He waved his hand.

“On your honor as a nobleman and a savant? These soldiers are your witness.”

“On my word, to an American with more treacheries than I can count. The important thing is to break the linguistic code and translate the book. We’ll enlighten the entire world! But not if you don’t have it.”

“It’s on the boat.”

“Impossible,” Bouchard said. “My men searched every inch.”

“But they didn’t raise sail.”

I led them out of the fort and down to the Nile. The sun was drawing low, warm light spilling through date palms that waved in the hot breeze. The green water looked soupy, egrets standing in its shallows. My boat captain had crawled into one corner of his beached craft, looking as if he expected execution any second. I couldn’t blame him. I have a way of bringing bad luck to companions.

I snapped an order and the sail, bordered top and bottom by wooden booms, was cranked up the mast until it filled and turned in the wind.

“There. Do you see it?”

They looked close. Faint, in the horizontal light, was a strip from the bottom to the highest point of the sail with faint, odd characters.

“He sewed the thing into the cotton,” Menou said with a certain admiration.

“It was on display all the way upriver,” I announced. “Not one person noticed.”

W
e had two tasks. One was to use the Rosetta Stone to translate the symbols of Thoth’s scroll into French. The second, even more time-consuming job, was to then actually translate the book and make sense of it.

Now that he had his hands on a scroll he’d been seeking for years, Silano exhibited some of that genteel charm with which he’d seduced the ladies in Paris. Lines disappeared from his face, his limp became less pained, and he was eagerly animated as he began charting symbols and trying to find connections. He had charm, and I began to understand what Astiza had seen in him. There was a courtly intellectual energy that was seductive. Even better, he seemed content to concede Astiza to me, even though I caught him looking at her longingly at times. She too seemed accepting of our treaty. What an odd triumvirate of researchers we’d become! I didn’t forget the death of my friends at Silano’s hands, but I admired his diligence. The count had brought trunks of musty books, and each educated guess would send one of us to another volume to check the plausibility of whether this grammar might work or that reference made sense. The dim prehistory when this book was supposedly written was slowly being illuminated.

Laboriously, we puzzled out chapter titles on the scroll.

“On the diaphanous nature of reality and bending it to one’s will,” read one. The disturbing promise excited me, despite myself.

“On Freedom and Fate,” read another. Well, there was a question.

“On Teaming Mind, Body, and Soul.”

“On Summoning Manna from Heaven.” Had Moses read that? I didn’t see any sections on parting the sea.

“On Life Everlasting, in Its Various Forms.” Why hadn’t that worked for him?

“On Underworld and Overworld.” Hell and heaven?

“On Bending Men’s Minds to One’s Will.” Oh, Bonaparte would like that one.

“On Eliminating Ills and Curing Pain.”

“On Winning the Heart of a Lover.” Now that could be sold faster than Ben’s Almanac.

“On the Forty-Two Sacred Scrolls.”

That last was enough to make me groan. This book, apparently, was just the first of forty-one other volumes, which my Egyptian mentor Enoch had claimed were but a sampling of 36,535 scrolls — one hundred for each day of the year — scattered around the earth. They were to be found only by the worthy when the time was right. Thank the saints that I wasn’t particularly worthy! Just getting this first one had nearly killed me. Silano, however, was dreaming of new quests.

“This is astonishing! This book I’m guessing is a summary, a list of topics and first principles, with knowledge and mystery deepening with each volume. Can you imagine having them all?”

“The pharaohs thought even this one needed to be sealed away,” I reminded.

“The pharaohs were primitive men who didn’t have modern science or alchemy. All human progress comes from knowledge, Gage. From fire and the wheel, our world is a culmination of a million ideas, shared and recorded. What we have here is a thousand years of scientific advancement, left by someone, a god or wizard or some exalted being from who knows where — Atlantis, or the moon — who started civilization and now can restore it. For five millennia the greatest library was lost, and now it’s found again. This scroll will lead us to others. And then the wisest men, like me, can rule and put things in order. Unlike kings and tyrants, I will decree with perfect knowledge!”

No one was going to accuse Silano of humility. Stripped of his fortune by the revolution, forced to crawl back into favor by courting democrats who’d been mere lawyers and pamphleteers, the count was a man driven by frustration. Sorcery and the occult would win back what republicanism had taken away.

While we had some chapter headings, the actual text was proving tedious to piece together. Its construction was utterly foreign, and simply identifying words did not make the meaning clear.

“This is the work of whole universities,” I told the count. “We’ll spend the rest of our lives trying to puzzle this out here in Rosetta. Let’s give it to the National Institute or the British Academy.”

“Are you a complete fool, Gage? Letting a common savant have at this is like storing gunpowder in a candle shop. I thought you were the one who feared its misuse? I’ve studied the traditions around these words for decades. Astiza and I have labored long and hard to be worthy.”

“And me?”

“You were necessary, oddly, to finding the scroll. Only Thoth knows why.”

“A gypsy told me once I was a fool. The fool who sought the fool.”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard those charlatans be right.”

And as if to prove the point, that night he had me poisoned.

I
’m not the most gentle and contemplative of men, and generally don’t give much thought to God’s creatures unless I want to hunt or trap or ride them. But there are hounds I’ve warmed to, cats I’ve appreciated for their mousing, and birds with feathers to take one’s breath away. That’s why I fed the mouse.

I stayed up later with the book than Silano and Astiza, puzzling whether this word fit that one, and if oddities such as “in your world, random chance is the foundation of fatalistic predetermination” made any sense at all. I finally took a brief break on our porch, the stars thick in the moist close darkness of the summer sky, and asked an orderly for some food to be brought. It took too long, but finally I was given a plate and went back inside to sit at our table and nibble at
fuul
, boiled beans mashed with tomatoes and onions. I spotted in a corner a periodic visitor that had amused me before, an Egyptian spiny mouse: so named because its hairs prick the mouth of any predator. Feeling companionable in the quiet night, I idly threw it some mash, even though the presence of such rodents was one reason we encased the book in a strongbox.