The Rosetta Key (21 page)

“Almost there, Ned.”

“All my muscle is in those jars,” he panted.

The leading attackers reached my iron garland and clung. Far from a barrier, it was more like a climbing aid as they reached back to hoist up comrades behind them. In no time the chain was thick with soldiers, like wasps on a line of treacle.

“Do it!” Miriam cried.

“Give a prayer to Franklin,” I muttered. I pushed a wooden lever that rammed a copper rod from the batteries against the small chain connected to the big one. There was a flash and crackle.

The effect was instantaneous. There was a shout, sparks, and the grenadiers flew off the chain as if kicked. A few could not detach themselves, screaming as they burned, and then hanging on the chain shuddering, their muscles putty. It was ghastly. I could smell their meat. Instantly, confusion reigned.

“Fire!” Phelipeaux shouted from below. More shots from our tower, and more attackers fell.

“There is strange heat in that chain!” the grenadiers were shouting. Men touched it with their bayonets and recoiled. Soldiers tried to lift or tug it and dropped like stunned oxen.

The contraption was working, but how long would the charge hold? Ned was wheezing. At some point the attackers would notice how the chain was suspended and break it down, but now they were milling uncertainly, even as more troops poured into the moat behind them. As they bunched, more of them were shot down.

Suddenly I realized an absence and looked wildly about. “Where’s Miriam?”

“She went to carry powder to Phelipeaux below,” Ned grunted.

“No! I need her here!” The breach would be a butcher’s shop. I ran for the door. “Keep cranking!”

He winced. “Aye.”

Two floors below, I stepped into the full fury of battle. Phelipeaux and his band of Turks and English marines, with fixed bayonets, were jammed in the tower’s base, firing and fencing through the ragged breach with French grenadiers trying to get under or over the chain. Both sides had hurled grenades, and at least half our number were down. On the French side, the dead lay like shingles. From here the breach looked like a yawning cave open to the entire French army, a hideous hole of light and smoke. I spied Miriam at the very front, trying to drag one of the wounded back from French bayonets. “Miriam, I need you above!”

She nodded, her dress torn and bloody, her hair a wild tangle, her hands red with gore. Fresh troops rushed, touched the chain and screamed, and hurled backward.
Crank, Ned, crank,
I prayed under my breath. I knew the charge would become exhausted.

Phelipeaux was slashing with his sword. He took a lieutenant through the chest, then slashed at another’s head. “Damned republicans!”

A pistol went off, narrowly missing his face.

Then there was a female scream and Miriam was being dragged from us. A soldier had crawled under and caught her legs. He began hauling her back with him as if to throw her on my device. She’d be cooked!

“Ned, stop cranking! Pull back the copper rod!” I shouted. But there was no chance he could hear me. I plunged after her.

It was a charge into a wedge of Frenchmen who had crawled under. I grabbed a dropped musket and swung wildly, knocking men aside like tenpins, until it broke at the stock’s wrist. Finally I grabbed Miriam’s kidnapper and the three of us began to writhe, she clawing at his eyes.

We stumbled in the debris, hands clutching at us from both sides, and then I received a blow and she was pulled from me and hurled against the chain.

I braced, waiting for my witchcraft to kill what I now loved.

Nothing happened.

The metal had gone dead.

There was a great cheer, and the French surged forward. They hacked at the chain ends and it fell. A dozen men dragged it away, inspecting it for the source of its mysterious powers.

Miriam had fallen with the chain. I tried to crawl under the surging grenadiers to reach her, but was simply trampled. I grasped the hem of her dress, even as booted soldiers charged and stumbled over the top of us. I could hear shots and cries in at least three languages, men snorting and going down.

And then there was another roar, this one even louder than the mine because it was not confined underground. A massive bomb made from gunpowder kegs had finally been hurled from the tower top by Sidney Smith. It fell into the mass of Frenchmen who had bunched before the chain and now it exploded, its force redoubled by the moat and tower that bounded it. I hugged the rubble as the world dissolved into fire and smoke. Limbs and heads flew like chaff. The men who had been trampling us turned into a bloody shield, their bodies falling on us like beams. I went briefly deaf.

And then hands were digging at us to drag us backward. Phelipeaux was mouthing something I couldn’t hear, and pointing.

Once more, the French were retreating, their casualties far heavier than before.

I turned back, shouting a shout I couldn’t hear myself. “Miriam! Are you alive?”

She was limp and silent.

I
carried her from the wreckage and out of the tower to the pasha’s gardens, my ears ringing but beginning to clear. Behind, Phelipeaux was shouting orders for engineers and laborers to begin repairing the breach. The garden air was smoky. Ash sifted down.

I lay my helpmate on a bench beside a fountain and put my ear to her lips. Yes! A whisper of tremulous breath. She was unconscious, not dead. I dipped a handkerchief in the water, pink from blood, and wiped her face. So soft, so smooth, under the grime! Finally the coolness brought her back. She blinked, shivering a little, and then abruptly jerked up. “What happened?” She was shaking.

“It worked. They retreated.”

She put her arms around my neck and clung. “Ethan, it’s so horrible.”

“Maybe they won’t come back.”

She shook her head. “You told me Bonaparte is implacable.”

I knew it would take more than an electric chain to defeat Napoleon.

Miriam looked down at herself. “I look like a butcher.”

“You look beautiful. Beautiful and bloody.” It was true. “Let’s get you inside.” I boosted her up and she leaned against me, one arm around my shoulders for support. I wasn’t quite sure where to take her, but I wanted to get away from Jericho’s foundry and the combat wall. I began to walk us toward the mosque.

Then Jericho appeared, led by an anxious Ned.

“My God, what happened?” the ironmonger asked.

“She got caught up in the fighting in the breach. She performed like an Amazon.”

“I’m all right, brother.”

His voice was accusatory. “You said she’d simply help with your sorcery.”

She interceded. “The men needed ammunition, Jericho.”

“I could have lost you.”

Then there was silence, and the strain of two men wanting a woman for different reasons. Ned stood mutely to one side, looking guilty as if it was his fault.

“Well, come back down to the foundry, then,” Jericho said tightly.

“No cannonballs will reach us there.”

“I’m going with Ethan.”

“Going? Where?”

They both looked at me, as if I knew. “Going,” I said, “where she can get some rest. It’s noisy as a factory at your forge, Jericho. Hot and dirty.”

“I don’t want you with her.” His voice was flat.

“I’m with Ethan, brother.” Her voice was soft but insistent.

And so we went, she leaning on me, the metallurgist left standing in the garden in frustration, his hands closing on nothing. Behind us, artillery rumbled like distant drums.

My friend Mohammad had taken quarters at Khan el-Omdan, the Pillars Inn, rather than sail away and leave us to Napoleon. In the excitement of working on the chain I’d forgotten about him, but I sought him out now. I’d wrapped a cloak around Miriam, but when we appeared at his apartment we both looked like refugees: smoke-stained, filthy, and torn.

“Mohammad, we need to find a place to rest.”

“Effendi, all the rooms are taken!”

“Surely…”

“Yet something can always be found for a price.”

I smiled wryly. “Could we share your room?”

He shook his head. “The walls are thin and water scarce. It’s no place for a lady. You don’t deserve better, but she does. Give me the rest of the money Sir Sidney gave you for your medal and your winnings at the duel.” He held out his hand.

I hesitated.

“Come, you know I won’t cheat you. What good is money, unless you use it?”

So I handed it over and he disappeared. In half an hour he was back, my purse empty. “Come. A merchant has fled the city and a young physician has been using his home to sleep, but rarely gets to. He rented me the keys.”

The house was dark, its shutters drawn, its furnishing draped and pushed against the wall. Its desertion by its owner had left a desolate air, and the doctor who had taken his place was only camped there. He was a Christian Levantine from Tyre named Zawani. He shook my hand and looked curiously at Miriam. “I’ll use the money for herbs and bandages.” We were far enough from the walls that the guns were muted. “There’s a bath above. Rest. I won’t be back until tomorrow.” He was handsome, his eyes kind, but already hollowed from exhaustion.

“The lady needs to recover…”

“There’s no need to explain. I’m a doctor.”

We were left alone. The top floor had a bathing alcove with a white masonry dome above its pool that was pierced by thick panes of colored glass. Light came through in shafts of multiple colors like a dismantled rainbow. There was wood to heat the water, so I set to work while Miriam dozed. The room was full of steam when I woke her. “I’ve prepared a bath.” I made to leave but she stopped me, and undressed us both. Her breasts were small but perfect, firm, her nipples pink, her belly descending to a thatch of pale hair. She was a virginal Madonna, scrubbing both of us of the dirt of battle until she was once more alabaster.

The merchant’s mattress was elevated as high as my waist on an ornately carved bed, with drawers underneath and a canopy overhead. She crawled up first and lay back, so I could see her in the pale light. There’s no sight lovelier than a welcoming woman. The sweetness of her swallows you, like the embrace of a warm sea. The topography of her body was a snowy mountain range, mysterious and unexplored. Did I even remember what to do? It felt like a thousand years. An odd, sudden memory of Astiza intruded — a knife to the heart — but then Miriam spoke.

“This is one of those moments I told you about, Ethan.”

So I took her, slowly and gently. She wept the first time, and then clung fiercely, crying out, the second. I clung too, shaking and gasping at the end, my eyes wetting when I thought first of Astiza, then of Napoleon, then of Miriam, and how long it would be before the French came again, as furious now as they’d been at Jaffa. If they got inside, they’d kill us all.

I turned my head so she couldn’t see any tear or worry, and we slept.

Near midnight, I was jostled awake. I clutched a pistol, but then saw it was Mohammad.

“What the devil?” I hissed. “Can’t we have some privacy?”

He put his finger to his lips and beckoned with his head. Come.

“Now?”

He nodded emphatically. Sighing, I climbed out, the floor cold, and followed him out to the main room.

“What are you doing here?” I grumbled, holding a blanket around myself like a toga. The city seemed quiet, the guns taking a rest.

“I’m sorry, effendi, but Sir Sidney and Phelipeaux said this shouldn’t wait. The French used an arrow to fire this over the wall. It has your name on it.”

“An arrow? By Isaac Newton, what century are we in?”

A small piece of burlap was tied to the arrow. Sure enough, a tag, with fine pen, read, “Ethan Gage.” Franklin would have admired the postal efficiency.

“How do they know I’m here?”

“Your electric chain is like a banner announcing your presence. The whole province is talking about it, I would guess.”

True enough. So what could our enemies be sending me that was so small?

I unwrapped the burlap and rolled its content onto the palm of my hand.

It was a ruby ring, its jewel the size of a cherry, with a tag attached that read, simply, “She needs the angels. Monge.” My world reeled.

The last time I’d seen the jewel, it had been on Astiza’s finger.

M
ohammad was watching me closely. “This ring means something to you, my friend?”

“This is it? No other message?” Monge undoubtedly was Gaspard Monge, the French mathematician I’d seen at Jaffa.

“And it is not just the size of the jewel, is it?” Mohammad pressed.

I sat down heavily. “I knew the woman who wore it.” Astiza was alive!

“And the French army would catapult her ring for what reason, exactly?”

What reason indeed? I turned the ring over, remembering its origin. I’d insisted Astiza take it from the subterranean treasure trove we’d found under the Great Pyramid, despite her protestations that such loot was cursed. Then we’d briefly forgotten it until she was trying to climb the tether of Conte’s runaway balloon into my wicker basket, a desperate Count Silano clinging to her ankles. She remembered the curse and pleaded with me to get the ring off, but I couldn’t. So, rather than drag me down within range of French soldiers, she cut the tether and fell with Silano, screaming, into the Nile. The balloon shot up so tumultuously that I didn’t see their landing, there was a volley from the French troops, and by the time I peered into the sun-dazzled waters… nothing. It was as if she’d vanished from the earth. Until now.

And the angels? The seraphim we’d found. I’d have to take them back from Miriam. “They want me to come looking.”

“So it is a trap!” my companion said. “They fear you and your electrical magic.”

“No, not a trap, I think.” I didn’t flatter myself that they considered me such a formidable enemy that they had to lure me outside the walls simply to shoot me. What I did suspect is that they hadn’t given up our mutual quest for the Book of Thoth. If there was one way to enlist me again, it was the promise of Astiza. “They simply know I’m alive, because of the electricity, and they’ve learned something I can add to. It’s about what I was searching for in Jerusalem, I’m guessing. And they know that the one thing that would make me come back to them is news of this woman.”