Napoleon's Pyramids (17 page)

It was as if we’d been rammed by a ship. The square bent from the onslaught, horses dying even as they crushed Bonaparte’s infantry beneath their weight. Some men fell back in panic. Other French rushed from the square’s inner sides to reinforce the front before it buckled. There was a sudden desperate brawl of Mameluke sword, lance, and pistol against French bayonet and point-blank musket. Still perched on my caisson, I shot into a tossing sea. I had no idea who or what I was hitting.

Suddenly, as if fired from a cannon, a horse and gigantic warrior broke through, hurdling the entangled warriors. The Arabian mount was streaked with blood and its turbaned Mameluke spattered with gore, yet he fought with unstoppable frenzy. Infantry rushed to intercept him and his scimitar sliced through their musket barrels as if they were straw. The crazed animal was kicking and trampling, whirling in a circle like a dervish, its rider impregnable to bullets. The scientists scattered before the hooves, men toppling and shouting. Most disquieting of all, the attacker seemed to have his eye fixed on me, balanced as I was on the artillery supply wagon in my distinctive, unmilitary coat.

I took aim but before I could fire the steed crashed into my caisson and catapulted me into the air. I came down hard, the wind knocked out, and the wild-eyed stallion danced toward me, eyes rolling, hooves thrashing. Its master seemed intent on me to the exclusion of all the hundreds around him, as if he’d decided to pick a personal enemy.

Then there was a cry and the horse reared and went down. Talma, I saw, had grabbed a lance and stabbed the animal’s hindquarter. The rider slid off and landed as hard as I had, momentarily stunned. Before he could scramble up, Astiza gave a ferocious yell and with Talma’s help pushed the caisson at him. Its wheels lodged against the crippled horse, pinning the fanatic rider between his saddle and the iron rims. The Mameluke had shoulders like an ox; he thrashed like an animal but was suddenly helpless. I crawled over and threw myself over the horse and onto him, my tomahawk at his throat. Astiza piled on as well, shouting in Arabic, and either her words or her gender seemed to freeze him. Then exhaustion overcame his frenzy and he slumped, looking dazed.

“Tell him to surrender!” I cried to Astiza.

She shouted something and the Mameluke nodded in defeat, his head falling backward against the sand. I’d won my first prisoner! It was an unexpectedly heady feeling, even more satisfying than a particularly lucky hand of whist. By Jove, I was beginning to understand the soldiers’ enthusiasms. Living, after a whiff of death, is a heady thing.

Swiftly disarming the Arab, I borrowed an officer’s pistol to finish the suffering horse. Other horsemen had also broken through, I saw, but each was eventually clubbed and hacked to earth by the French infantry. The exception was one bold chap who cut down two men, took a ball himself, and then jumped his horse back over the chaotic front rank to gallop away, warbling in desperate, wounded triumph. That was the kind of courage these devils had, and it led Napoleon to remark that with a handful of them, he’d whip the world. He would eventually recruit Mameluke survivors into his personal bodyguard.

Still, the escape of that warrior was a rare occurrence, and most of the enemy simply couldn’t break through our hedge of men. Their horses were gutted on the rows of bayonets. Finally the survivors broke in despair, French grapeshot chasing their retreat and cutting still more from their saddles. Despite Egyptian bravery, it had been a massacre. The Europeans had dozens of casualties but the Mamelukes had thousands. The sand was clotted with their dead.

“Search his clothing,” Astiza said as we sat on our captive. “They carry their wealth into battle, to be lost if they are lost.”

Indeed, my prisoner proved a treasure chest. His turban was cashmere, and I knocked it aside to reveal a skullcap sewn with gold pieces like a yellow helmet. More gold was in a sash around his waist, his pistols were inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gems, and his scimitar had a black Damascus blade and a handle of rhinoceros horn inlaid with gold. In the span of a few seconds I’d become rich, but then so had much of the army. The French would later estimate that each Mameluke could be robbed, on average, of fifteen thousand francs. Men were capering over the dead.

“My God, who is he?” I said.

She gripped to turn his hand, looking at his rings, and stopped. “A son of Horus,” she murmured. On his finger was the same symbol she wore as an amulet. It was not an Islamic sign.

He jerked his hand away. “That’s not for you,” he suddenly growled in English.

“You speak our language?” I asked, once more startled.

“I’ve had dealings with European merchants. And I’ve heard of you, the British in a green coat. What is a British doing with the Franks?”

“I’m American. Antoine is French, Astiza Egyptian and Greek.”

He absorbed this. “And I a Mameluke.” He was on his back, looking up at the sky. “So does war and destiny bring us together.”

“What’s your name?”

“I am Ashraf el-Din, a lieutenant of Murad Bey.”

“And what’s a son of Horus?” I asked Astiza.

“A follower of the ancients. This man is not the typical Mameluke from the Caucasus. He’s of the old families here, aren’t you?”

“The Nile runs in my veins. I’m a descendant of the Ptolomies. But I was sworn into Mameluke ranks by Murad Bey himself.”

“The Ptolomies? You mean Cleopatra’s clan?” I asked.

“And the generals of Alexander and Caesar,” he said proudly.

“The Mamelukes despise the Egyptians they rule,” Astiza explained, “but occasionally they’ve recruited from the great old families.”

All this seemed a curious coincidence. I’m attacked by the rare Mameluke who swears by a pagan god and speaks English? “Can I trust you if we let you up?”

“I am your prisoner, taken in battle,” Ashraf said. “I submit to your mercy.”

I let him stand. He swayed a moment.

“Your name is a mouthful,” I said. “I think I shall call you Ash.”

“I will answer.”

And all this good fortune would evaporate if I couldn’t satisfy my colleagues by making sense of the medallion. Astiza with her Horus pendant had made a useful guess about it, and maybe this devil could too. With the division cheering and everyone’s eyes on the battle, I took the medallion from my shirt and dangled it before him. Talma’s eyes widened.

“I’m more than a warrior, son of Horus,” I said. “I’ve come to Egypt to understand this. Do you recognize it?”

He blinked in wonder. “No. But another might.”

“Who in Cairo knows what this means? Who knows the old Egyptian gods and your nation’s history?”

He glanced at Astiza. She nodded at him and they jabbered together in Arabic. Finally she turned to me.

“More gods than you know are walking your shadow, Ethan Gage. You have captured a warrior who claims to know a man I’ve only heard of as rumor, who takes as his name that of one long lost.”

“Who?”

“Enoch the wise, also known as Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes the trice-great, scribe of the gods, master of arts and sciences.”

“My, my.” Enoch was also the name of the Old Testament father of Methuselah. A long-lived bunch. My Masonic memories also recalled a supposed Book of Enoch, source of ancient wisdom. It had been lost several millennia ago. I peered at my bloody captive. “He knows this sage?”

She nodded as our prisoner blinked at my medallion in wonder. “Enoch,” she said, “is his brother.”

S
uddenly we were advancing. The square reformed into columns and we marched toward the Egyptian fortifications at Imbaba, literally climbing up and over a windrow of the dead. I tied Ash’s hands behind his back with a golden cord taken from his waist and left him bareheaded. His head was shaven except for the standard small tuft at the crown by which it was said that the Prophet Muhammad would, at their last breath, come and seize Mamelukes to raise them to paradise. His skullcap of coins was tucked into my own belt, and Astiza carried his fabulous sword. If I felt guilty about exposing my defeated enemy to the hot sky, the feeling was assuaged by the fact that the atmosphere was becoming more and more obscured by dust. While it was only about 4 P.M., the midsummer day was becoming dark.

As we moved across the wreckage of the battlefield, I got a better view of what had happened. While our square and that of Jean-Louis Raynier had borne the brunt of the Mameluke cavalry attacks, other divisions had moved forward. One broke through enemy lines near the shore of the Nile and began raking the rear of the Egyptian infantry with cannon fire. Two more assaulted Imbaba directly to put an end to Egyptian batteries there. The surviving Mameluke cavalry had been split, some seeking refuge in the fortified town and others pushed westward into the desert with Murad Bey. This latter group was now scattering. The battle was turning into a rout, and the rout to slaughter.

The French had carried the breastworks of Imbaba in their first emotional charge, the Albanian infantry disintegrating. Turning to flee, the Ottoman soldiers were shot down or forced into the Nile. Whenever there was any pause on the part of the French, they were ordered to keep firing by the commander-in-chief himself. Here was Napoleon’s grim fury. At least a thousand Mamelukes were caught up in this panic and were pushed with their infantry into the river, swiftly sinking under the weight of their personal fortunes. Those who tried to stand their ground were killed. This was war at its most primeval. I saw some of the French emerge from the carnage so stained with blood that it looked as if they’d wallowed in a wine vat.

Our general galloped by, eyes shining. “Now! Crush them now, or we will pay more dearly later!”

We bypassed Imbaba and marched rapidly the last miles until we were between the pyramids and Cairo, the city a fairyland of minarets and domes on the far side of the Nile. The half of the Mameluke army still safe there followed us on the opposite shore, screaming at our formations as if words would accomplish what bullets had not. We were out of range of each other. Then, when they came abreast of the fleet of feluccas moored at the quays of Cairo, the bravest of the Mamelukes embarked to set off across the river to try to attack us.

It was too late. Imbaba had become a charnel house. Murad Bey was already fleeing for the desert. The makeshift Mameluke armada of boats sailed toward a shore lined with French infantry, a watery charge even more hopeless than that of the Muslim cavalry. They sculled into a storm of bullets. Even worse, the entire battlefield was being swallowed by an oncoming wall of sand and dust, as if God, Allah, or Horus had decided on a final intervention. The boats were reaching into the teeth of the wind.

The storm was like a wall, blotting out the west. The light was growing dim as if from an eclipse of the sun. The western sky had grown black from the oncoming sandstorm, and the mighty pyramids, stupefying in their size and simplicity, were enveloped in brown fog. Toward this tempest rowed Ibrahim Bey and his bravest followers, their overloaded boats leaning farther and farther in the rising wind, the Nile frothy with whitecaps, and long lines of dusty French infantry drawn up on the bank with a storm of sand hammering their backs. The French fired again and again, in steady, disciplined volleys. Egyptians screamed, grunted, and toppled out of the boats.

The dust storm drew higher and higher, an infinite cliff, blotting out of the sky. Now I could see nothing of the fleeing Arabs on the western bank, or of the pyramids, or even of Napoleon and his staff. It was like the end of the world.

“Get down!” Ashraf cried. He, Astiza, Talma, and I crouched together, drawing up clothing to cover our mouths and noses.

The full power of the wind hit like a punch, shrieking, and then came sand like stinging bees. It was bad enough for the French, who crouched with their backs to the tempest, but the oncoming Mamelukes were face to it and caught on small, unstable boats. The arena went dark. The wind consumed all other noise. The battle stopped. The four of us held each other, trembling and praying to an assortment of gods, reminded at last that there are powers higher than our own. For several long minutes the sandstorm beat at us, seeming to rob our chests of air. Then, almost as quickly as it had come, it snuffed itself out and the noise died. Dust sifted down from the air above.

Slowly, shakily, thousands of French soldiers rose back up from their shallow graves of sand, seemingly resurrected but entirely brown. To a man they were speechless, overwhelmed, horrified. Overhead, the sky cleared. To the west, the sun was red as a ripped heart.

We looked out at Cairo and the river. The water was swept clean of boats. All the Mamelukes who had tried to attack us by water were drowned or shipwrecked on the eastern bank. Every boat had capsized. We could hear the wails of the survivors, and Astiza translated. “Now we are slaves of the French!” They fled into the city and through it, gathered wives and valuables, and disappeared into the growing dusk. The strange storm, supernatural in nature, had seemed to erase one group of conquerors and install another. The wind had extinguished the past and introduced a strange European future.

Flames flickered along the waterfront of the city as the few feluccas still moored there began to burn. Someone was hoping to delay the French crossing by firing the boats, a futile hope given the other craft available up and down the Nile. The feluccas flamed into the night, illuminating the city we were about to occupy like the lamps of a theater, the fantastic Moorish architecture flickering and dancing with the light of conflagration.

The French soldiers, having survived both battle and storm, were triumphant, exhausted, and filthy. They crowded into the Nile to wash and then sat in melon fields to eat and clean their muskets. Clumps of naked Arab dead were everywhere, stripped for booty. The French had suffered a few score dead and two hundred wounded; the Arabs countless thousands. Ordinary French soldiers were newly rich with loot. Napoleon’s victory was complete, his hold on the army confirmed, his gamble rewarded.