The Rosetta Key (7 page)

Maid Miriam surprised me one day by asking to measure my arm and shoulder. She, it turned out, would shape the rifle’s stock, which has to be fitted to the rifleman’s size like a coat. She’d volunteered for the job. “She has an artist’s eye,” Jericho explained. “Show her the drop and offset you want in the stock.” There was no maple in Palestine, so she used desert acacia, the same wood used in the ark: heavier than I preferred, but hard and tight-grained. After I’d roughly sketched how I wanted the wood to differ from the design of Arab firearms, she translated my suggestion into graceful curves, reminiscent of Pennsylvania. When she measured my size to get the dimensions of the butt right, I trembled like a schoolboy at the touch of her fingers.

That’s how chaste I’d become.

So I existed, sending vague political and military assessments to Smith that would have confused any strategist foolish enough to pay attention to them, until finally one evening our supper was interrupted by a hammering at Jericho’s door. The blacksmith went to check, and came back with a dusty, bearded traveler from the day’s market caravan. “I bring the American word from Egypt,” the visitor announced.

My heart hammered in my breast.

We sat him at the plain wood trestle table, gave him some water — he was Muslim, and refused any wine — and some olives and bread. While he gave uneasy thanks for our hospitality and ate like a wolf, I waited apprehensively, surprised at the flood of emotion rushing through my veins. Astiza had shrunken in memory during these weeks with Miriam. Now feelings buried for months pounded in my head as if I were still holding Astiza, or watching her desperately dangle on a rope below. I flushed impatiently, feeling the prickle of sweat. Miriam watched me.

There were the obligatory greetings, wishes for prosperity, thanks to the divine, a report on health — “How are you?” is one of the most profound queries of my age, given the prevalence of gout, ague, dropsy, chilblains, ophthalmia, aches, and faints — and recitation of the hardships of the journey.

Finally, “What news of this man’s woman friend?”

The messenger swallowed, flicking bread crumbs from his beard. “There are reports of a French balloon lost during the October revolt in Cairo,” he began. “Nothing about the American aboard; he is said to have simply disappeared, or deserted from the French army. There are a number of stories placing him at this location or that, but no agreement about what happened to him.” He glanced at me, then down at the table. “No one confirms his story.”

“But surely there are reports of the fate of Count Silano,” I said.

“Count Alessandro Silano has similarly disappeared. He was reported investigating the Great Pyramid, and then vanished. Some suspect he may have been killed in the pyramid. Others think that he returned to Europe. The credulous think he disappeared by magic.”

“No, no!” I objected. “He fell from the balloon!”

“There is no report of that, effendi. I am only telling you what is being said.”

“And Astiza?”

“We could find no trace of her at all.”

My heart sank. “No trace?”

“The house of Qelab Almani, the man you call Enoch, where you claimed to have stayed, was empty after his murder and has since been requisitioned as a French barracks. Yusuf al-Beni, who you said hosted this woman in his harem, denies that she ever stayed there. There was rumor of a beautiful woman accompanying General Desaix’s expeditionary force to Upper Egypt, but if so, she too vanished. Of the wounded Mameluke Ashraf that you mentioned, we heard no word. No one remembers Astiza’s presence in either Cairo or Alexandria. There is soldier talk of an attractive woman, yes, but no one claims to have seen her, or known her. It is almost as if she never existed.”

“But she fell into the Nile too! An entire platoon saw it!”

“If so, my friend, she must never have emerged. Her memory is like a mirage.”

I was stunned. Her death, the burial of her drowned body, I had braced for. Her survival, even if she was imprisoned, I had hoped for. But her complete disappearance? Had the river carried her away, never to be seen again or decently buried? What kind of answer was that? Silano gone too? That was even more suspicious. Had she somehow survived and gone with him? That was even greater agony!

“You must know something more than that! My God, the entire army knew her! Napoleon remarked on her! Key savants took her on their boat! Now there’s no word at all?”

He looked at me with sympathy. “I am sorry, effendi. Sometimes God leaves more questions than answers, does he not?”

Humans can adapt to anything but uncertainty. The worst monsters are the ones we haven’t yet encountered. Yet here I was, hearing her last words that rang in my head, “Find it!” and then her cutting the rope, falling away with Silano, the screams, the blinding sun as the balloon soared away… was it all just a nightmare? No! It had been as real as this table.

Jericho was looking at me gloomily. Sympathy, yes, but also the knowledge that the Egyptian woman had kept me at a distance from his sister. Miriam’s gaze was more direct than it ever had been before, and in her eyes I read sorrowful understanding. In that instant I realized she’d lost someone too. This was why no suitors were encouraged, and why her brother remained her closest companion. We were all bonded by grief.

“I just wanted a clear answer,” I whispered.

“Your answer is, what is past is past.” Our visitor stood. “I am sorry that I could not bring better news, but I am only the messenger. Jericho’s friends will keep their ears open, of course. But do not hope. She is gone.”

And with that, he, too, left.

M
y first reaction was to depart Jerusalem, and the cursed East, immediately and forever. The bizarre odyssey with Bonaparte — escaping Paris, sailing from Toulon, the assault on Alexandria, meeting Astiza, and on and on through horrific battles, the loss of my friend Antoine Talma, and the bitter secret of the Great Pyramid — was like a mouthful of ashes. Nothing had come of it — no riches, no pardon for a crime in Paris I’d never committed, no permanent membership with the esteemed savants who had accompanied Napoleon’s expedition, and no lasting love with the woman who’d entranced and bewitched me. I’d even lost my rifle! My only real reason for coming to Palestine was to learn Astiza’s fate, and now that word was that there was no word (could any message be crueler?) my mission seemed futile. I didn’t care about the coming invasion of Syria, the fate of Djezzar the Butcher, the career of Sir Sidney Smith, or the political calculations of Druze, Matuwelli, Jew, and all the rest trapped in their endless cycles of revenge and envy. How had I found myself in such a crazy necropolis of hatred? It was time to go home to America and start a normal life.

And yet… my resolution to get out and be done was paralyzed by the very fact of not knowing. If Astiza seemed not alive, neither was she definitely dead. There was no body. If I sailed away I’d be haunted the rest of my life. I had too many memories of her — of her showing me the star Sirius as we sailed up the Nile, her help in wrestling down Ashraf during the fury of the Battle of the Pyramids, her beauty when seated in Enoch’s courtyard, or her vulnerability and eroticism when chained at the Temple of Dendara. And then possessing her body by the banks of the Nile! With a century or two to spare you might get over memories like that — but you wouldn’t forget them. She haunted me.

As for the Book of Thoth, it might well be a myth — all we’d found in the pyramid, after all, was an empty repository for it, and perhaps Moses’ taunting staff — and yet what if it wasn’t, and really rested somewhere under my feet? Jericho was nearing completion on a rifle that I’d had a hand in building, and which seemed likely to be superior to the one I’d lost. And then there was Miriam, who I guessed had suffered a tragic loss before mine, and who was a partner in sorrow. With Astiza vanished, the woman whose house I shared, whose food I ate, and whose hands were shaping the wood of my own weapon, suddenly seemed more wondrous. Who did I have to return to in America? No one. So despite my frustration I found myself deciding to stay a little longer, at least until the gun was completed. I was a gambler, who waited for a turn of the cards. Maybe a new card would come now.

And I was curious who Miriam had lost.

She treated me with proper reserve as she had before, and yet our eye contact lingered longer now. When she set my plate she stood perceptibly closer, and the tone of her voice — was it my imagination? — was softer, more sympathetic. Jericho was watching both of us more closely, and would sometimes interrupt our conversations with gruff interjections. How could I blame him? She was a beautiful helpmate, loyal as a hound, and I was a shiftless foreigner, a treasure hunter with an uncertain future. I couldn’t help but dream of having her, and Jericho was a man too: he knew what any man would wish. Worse, I might take her away to America. I noticed that he began devoting more hours to my rifle. He wanted to get it finished, and me gone.

We endured the late winter rains, Jerusalem gray and quiet. Reports came that Bonaparte’s best general, Desaix, had reported fresh triumphs and seen spectacular new ruins far up the Nile. Smith was roving at sea between Acre, the blockade off Alexandria, and Constantinople, all to prepare for Napoleon’s spring assault. French troops were assembling at El-Arish, near the border with Palestine. The strengthening sun slowly warmed the city stone, war drew nearer, and then one dusky evening when Miriam set out to the city’s markets to fetch a missing spice for our evening’s supper, I impulsively decided to follow. I wanted an opportunity to speak with her away from Jericho’s protective presence. It was unseemly for a man to trail a single woman in Jerusalem, but perhaps some opportunity for conversation would present itself. I was lonely. What did I intend to say to Miriam? I didn’t know.

I followed at a distance, trying to think of some plausible reason to approach, or a way to circle ahead so our meeting would seem to be coincidence. How odd that we humans have to think so deviously about ways to express our heart. She walked too quickly, however. She skirted the Pools of Hezekiah, descended to the long souk that divided the city, bought food once, passed up goods at two other stalls, and then took the lanes toward the markets of the Muslim Bezetha District, beyond the pasha’s residence.

And then Miriam disappeared.

One moment she was descending the Via Dolorosa, toward the Temple Mount’s Gate of Darkness and the El-Ghawanima Tower, and the next she was gone. I blinked, confused. Had she noticed me following, and was she trying to avoid me? I accelerated my pace, hurrying past locked doorways, until finally realizing I must have gone too far. I retraced my steps and then, from the courtyard adjacent to an ancient Roman arch that bridged the street, I heard talking, rough and urgent. It’s odd how a sound or smell can jar memory, and I could swear there was something familiar about the male voice.

“Where does he go? Where is he looking?” The tone was threatening.

“I don’t know!” She sounded terrified.

I stepped past iron grillwork into a dark, rubble-strewn courtyard, the ruins sometimes used as a goat pen. Four brutes, in French cloaks and European boots, surrounded the frightened young woman. I was, as I have said, weaponless, except for the Arab dagger I carried in my sash. But they hadn’t seen me yet, so I had the advantage of surprise. These didn’t look like the kind of men to bluff, so I glanced around for a better weapon. “To be thrown upon one’s own resources is to be cast into the very lap of fortune,” Ben Franklin used to say. But then he had more resources than most.

I finally spied a discarded stone Cupid, long since defaced and castrated by either Muslims or Christians trying to obey edicts about false idols and pagan penises. It lay on its side in the debris like a forgotten doll.

The sculpture was a third my height — heavy enough — and fortunately not held down by anything but its own weight. I could just barely lift it over my head. So I did, said a prayer to love, and heaved. It struck the huddled rascals in their back like pins in a bowl and they went down in a heap, cursing.

“Run for home!” I cried to gentle Miriam. They’d already ripped her clothing.

So she gave me a fearful nod, took a step to leave, and then swung back as one villain grabbed at her again. I thought maybe he’d pull her down, but even as he clawed she kicked him hard in his cockles as neatly as dancing a jig. I could hear the thump of the impact, and it froze him like a flamingo in a Quebec snowstorm. Then she broke free and sprang past out the gate. Brave girl! She had more pluck, and better knowledge of male anatomy, than I’d imagined.

Now the pack of ruffians rose against me, but meanwhile I’d hauled Cupid up again and had taken the cherub by his head. I swung him in a circle and let go. Two of the devils crashed down again and the statuary shattered. Meanwhile neighbors had heard the ruckus and were raising a hue and cry. A third villain began to draw a hidden sword — obviously sneaked past the police of Jerusalem — so I charged him with my Arab knife before he could clear his scabbard, ramming the blade home. For all my scuffles, I’d never stabbed anyone before, and I was surprised how readily it plunged in, and how eerily it scraped a rib when it did so. He hissed and twisted away so violently that I lost my grip. I staggered. Now I had no weapon at all.

Meanwhile the one who’d been interrogating Miriam had dragged out a pistol. Surely he wouldn’t risk a shot in the sacred city, violating all laws, voices rising!

But the piece went off with a roar, its flash like a flicker of lightning, and something seared the side of my head. I lurched away, half-blinded. It was time to retreat! I tottered out to the street but now the bastard was coming after me, dark, his cape flying like wings, his own sword drawn. Who the devil
was
this? The blow of the pistol ball had left me so woozy I was wading in syrup.

And then, as I turned in the lane to meet him as best I could, a blunt staff thrust past me and struck the bastard smack where throat meets chest. He gave an awful cough and his feet slid out ahead of him, landing him on his backside. He looked up in amazement, gulping. It was Miriam, who’d taken a pole from a market awning and hefted it like a lance! I do have a knack for finding useful women.