Napoleon's Pyramids (6 page)

Suddenly there was a shout from the coachman, and something crashed ahead. We reined to a halt. A tree had fallen and the horses had bunched, neighing in confusion. The tree’s butt looked chopped through. Dark figures were emerging from the wood, their arms pointing at the coachman and footman above.

“Robbers!” I shouted, feeling for the tomahawk I still wore under my coat. While my skill had rusted, I felt I could still hit a target from thirty feet. “Quick, to arms! Maybe we can fight them off!”

But as I bounded off the coach I was met by the napping customs officer, who had suddenly come wide awake, jumped nimbly off, and met me by aiming an enormous pistol at my chest. The mouth of its barrel seemed as wide as a scream.

“
Bonjour,
Monsieur Gage,” he addressed. “Throw your savage little hatchet on the ground, if you please. I am to take either you or your bauble back to Paris.”

T
he thieves, or agents—they were too often the same in revolutionary France—lined us up like pupils in a schoolyard and began to strip us of valuables. With the addition of the supposed customs officer, there were six of them, and when I studied them in the dim light I started. Two looked like the gendarmes who had first tried to arrest me in Paris. Was the lantern bearer here too? I didn’t see him. Some held pistols aimed at the coachmen, while the others focused on us passengers, taking purses and pocket watches.

“The police have devised a new way of levying taxes?” I asked caustically.

“I’m not certain he really
is
a customs officer,” the hatter spoke up.

“Silence!” Their leader aimed his weapon at my nose as if I’d forgotten he carried it. “Don’t think I’m not acting for people in authority, Monsieur Gage. If you don’t surrender what I want you’ll meet more police than you care to, in the bowels of a state prison.”

“Surrender what?”

“I believe his name is actually Gregoire,” the hatter added helpfully.

My interrogator cocked his pistol. “You know what! It must go to scholars who can put it to proper use! Open your shirt!”

The air was cold on my breast. “See? I have nothing.”

He scowled. “Then where is it?”

“Paris.”

The muzzle swung to Talma’s temple. “Produce it or I blow your friend’s brains out.”

Antoine blanched. I was fairly certain he’d never had a gun aimed at him before, and I was becoming truly annoyed. “Be careful with that thing.”

“I will count to three!”

“Antoine’s head is hard as a rock. The ball will ricochet.”

“Ethan,” my friend pleaded.

“One!”

“I sold the medallion to finance this trip,” I tried.

“Two!”

“I used it to pay the rent.” Talma was swaying.

“Thr…”

“Wait! If you must know, it’s in my bag atop the coach.”

Our tormentor swung the muzzle back to me.

“Frankly, I’ll be happy to be rid of the trinket. It’s been nothing but trouble.”

The villain shouted up to the coachman. “Throw his bag down!”

“Which one?”

“The brown one,” I called, as Talma gaped at me.

“They’re all brown in the dark!”

“By all the saints and sinners…”

“I’ll get it.”

Now the pistol muzzle was pressed to my back. “Hurry!” My foe glanced down the road. More traffic would be coming soon, and I had a pleasant mental picture of a hay wagon slowly and deliberately crushing him under.

“Can you please ease the hammer down? There’re six of you and one of me.”

“Shut your trap or I’ll shoot you right now, rip open every bag, and find it myself!”

I climbed to the luggage rack on the coach roof. The thief stayed close below.

“Ah. Here it is.”

“Pass it down, Yankee dog!”

I dug and closed one hand around my rifle, tucked under the softer luggage. I could feel the small brass door of its patch box where I’d stuffed a cartridge and ball, and the curl of its nestled powder horn. Pity I hadn’t loaded it since shooting my apartment door: no voyageur would make that mistake. The other hand grasped my friend’s bag. “Catch!”

I heaved, and my aim was good. The bag’s weight hit the pistol and there was a bang as the cocked hammer came down, shooting Talma’s laundry to flinders. Stupid sod. The coach horses reared, everyone shouting, as I tumbled off the coach roof on the side away from the thieves, pulling the rifle as I fell and landing on the highway margin. There was another shot and a splintering of wood over my head.

Instead of lurching into the dark forest, I rolled under the carriage, dodging the grinding wheels as the coach rocked back and forth. Lying in its shadow, I feverishly began to load my rifle while prone, a trick I’d learned from the Canadians. I bit, poured, and rammed.

“He’s getting away!” Three of the bandits ran around the rear of the coach and plunged into the trees on the side I’d leaped, assuming I was escaping that way. The passengers looked ready to bolt as well, but two of the thieves commanded them to stand where they were. The fake customs inspector, cursing, struggled to reload his pistol. I finished my own ramming, poked my rifle barrel out, and shot him.

The flash was blinding in the darkness. As the bastard buckled I got a startling glimpse of something that had been hanging inside his own shirt, now dangling free. It was a Masonic emblem, no doubt expropriated by Silano’s Egyptian Rite, of crossed compass and square. There was a familiar letter in the middle. So that explained it!

I rolled, stood, and swung my weapon by the barrel as hard as I could, clubbing another thief with my gun butt. There was a satisfying crack as eleven pounds of maple and iron trumped bone. I scooped up my tomahawk. Where was the third rascal? Then another gun went off and someone howled. I started running toward the trees in the opposite direction from where the first three had gone. The other passengers, including Talma, scattered as well.

“The bag! Get his bag!” the one I’d shot was shouting through his pain.

I grinned. The medallion was safe in the sole of my boot.

T
he woods were dark and getting darker as night fully descended. I trotted as best I could, alone, my rifle a makeshift prod to keep me from running into trees. Now what? Were the robbers in league with some arm of the French government, or entirely imposters? Their leader had the correct uniform and knowledge of my prize and position, suggesting that someone with official connections—an ally of Silano, and a member of the Egyptian Rite—was tracking me.

It wasn’t just the thief ’s readiness to cock a pistol in my face that disturbed me. Inside his Masonic symbol, I’d been reminded, was the standard letter said to represent God, or gnosis, knowledge, or perhaps geometry.

The letter
G
.

My initial, and the same letter which poor Minette had scrawled in her own blood.

Was such an emblem her last sight on earth?

The more anxious others were for my trinket, the more determined I was to keep it. There must be some reason for its popularity.

I stopped in the woods to reload, ramming down the ball and listening after I did so. A branch snapped. Was someone following? I’d kill them if they got close. But what if it was poor Talma, trying to find me in the gloom? I hoped he’d simply stay with the coach, but I dared not shoot, shout, or tarry either, so I went deeper into the forest.

The spring air was cool, the nervous energy of escape evaporating and leaving me chill and hungry. I was debating circling back to the road in hopes of finding a farmhouse when I saw the steady glow of a lantern, then another lamp and another, amid the evening trees. I crouched and heard the murmur of voices in a language distinctive from French. Now here was a way to hide myself! I’d stumbled upon an encampment of the Rom. Gypsies—or, as many pronounced the word, Gyptians, reputed to be wanderers from Egypt. Gypsies did nothing to discourage this belief, claiming they were descended from the priests of the pharaohs, even though others considered them a plague of nomadic rascals. Their assertion of ancient authority encouraged lovers and schemers to pay money for their augury.

Again, a sound behind me. Here my experience in the forests of America came into play. I melted into the foliage, using a shadow cast by the lantern light to cloak myself. My pursuer, if that’s what he was, came on oblivious to my position. He stopped after spying the glow of the wagons, considered as I had, and then came ahead, no doubt guessing I’d sought refuge there. When his face came into the light I didn’t recognize him as either an assailant or a passenger, and now was more confused than ever.

No matter, his intentions were plain enough. He, too, had a pistol.

As the stranger crept toward the nearest wagon, I slid noiselessly behind him. He was looking at the multicolored marvel that was the nearest gypsy
vardo
when my muzzle eased over his shoulder and came to rest on his skull.

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” I said quietly.

There was a long silence. Then, in English, “I’m the man who just helped save your life.”

I was startled, uncertain whether to reply in my native tongue.
“Qui êtes-vous?”
I finally demanded.

“Sir Sidney Smith, a British agent fluent enough in the tongue of France to recognize that your accent is worse than mine,” he replied again in English. “Get the gun barrel off my ear and I’ll explain everything, friend.”

I was stunned. Sidney Smith? Had I encountered the most famous prison fugitive in France—or a mad imposter? “Drop your pistol first,” I said in English. Then I felt something poke my own back, pointed and sharp.

“As you will drop your rifle, monsieur, when you are at my home.” In French again, but this time with a distinctive Eastern accent: A gypsy. A half-dozen more emerged from the trees around us, their heads covered in scarves or broad-brimmed hats, sashes on their waist, and boots to their knees, looking raffish and tough. All had knives, swords, or clubs. We stalkers had become the stalked.

“Be careful,” I said. “There may be other men chasing me.” I laid my rifle on the ground as Smith surrendered his pistol.

A handsome, swarthy man came around to my face, sword in hand, and gave a grim smile. “Not anymore.” He drew a finger across his throat as he collected the rifle and pistol. “Welcome to the Rom.”

W
hen I stepped into the light of the gypsy campfires, I stepped into another world. Their barrel-roofed wagons with paint-box colors created an elfin village amid the trees. I smelled smoke, incense, and cooking spicy enough to be exotic, heavy with garlic and herbs. Women in colorful dresses, with black lustrous hair and golden hoops in their ears, glanced up from steaming pots to evaluate us with eyes as deep and unfathomable as ancient pools. Children crouched by the colored wheels like watching imps. Shaggy gypsy wagon ponies stamped and snorted from the shadows. All was cast in amber by the glow from their lamps. In Paris all was reason and revolution. Here was something older, more primitive, and free.

“I am Stefan,” said the man who’d disarmed us. He had dark, wary eyes, a grand moustache, and a nose so shattered in some past fight that it was as rumpled as a mountain range. “We do not care for guns, which are expensive to buy, costly to maintain, noisy to use, tedious to reload, and easy to steal. So explain yourselves, bringing them to our home.”

“I was en route to Toulon when our coach was accosted,” I said. “I’m fleeing from bandits. When I saw your wagons I stopped and heard him”—I pointed to Smith—“coming up behind me.”

“And I,” said Smith, “was trying to speak to this gentleman after helping save his life. I shot a thief who was about to shoot him. Then our friend ran like a rabbit.”

So that had been the other shot I’d heard. “But how?” I objected. “I mean, where did you come from? I don’t know you. And how could you be Smith? Everyone assumes you escaped to England.” In February, the flamboyant British naval captain, scourge of the French coastline, had with female help escaped from Paris’s Temple Prison, built from a former castle of the Knights Templar. He’d been missing since. Smith had originally been captured while trying to steal a French frigate from the mouth of the Seine, and was so bold and notorious a raider that the authorities had refused to ransom or exchange him. Engravings of his handsome likeness were sold not just in London, but in Paris as well. Now, here he claimed to be.

“I was following in hopes of warning you. That I came upon your coach shortly after the moment of ambush was no coincidence; I’d been trailing all day at a mile or so behind, with plans to contact you at your inn tonight. When I saw the brigands I feared the worst and crept up on the group. Your work at getting away was brilliant, but you were outnumbered. When one of the villains took aim, I shot him.”

I remained suspicious. “Warn me of what?”

He glanced at Stefan. “People of Egypt, can you be trusted?”

The gypsy straightened, his feet planted as if ready to box. “While you are a guest of the Rom, your secrets stay here. As you protected this fugitive, Englishman, in like manner we protected you. We, too, saw what unfolded, and we make a distinction between criminals and their victims. The thief who attempted to follow the pair of you will not return to his fellows.”

Smith beamed. “Well, then, we are all fellow men at arms! Yes, I did escape from Temple Prison with royalist help, and yes, I fully intend to soon reach England. I’m simply waiting for the necessary documents to be forged so I can slip out of a Normandy harbor. New battles wait. But while held in that hideous edifice I whiled away some of my time talking with the prison governor, who was a student of the Templars, and was told all kinds of stories of Solomon and his masons, of Egypt and its priests, and of charms and powers lost in the mists of time. Pagan nonsense, but interesting as all hell. What if the ancients knew of powers now lost? Then, while I was in hiding after my escape, royalists brought rumors that French forces are being gathered for some expedition to the East, and that an American had been invited to join them. I’d heard of you, Mr. Gage, and your expertise in electricity. Who would not have heard of a confederate of the great Franklin? Agents reported not only your departure south, but also that rival factions in the French government had a special interest in you and some artifact you carried: something to do with the same legends I’d heard from my warden. Factions within the government hoped to seize you. It seemed we might have common enemies, and the idea of enlisting your help before we both departed France occurred to me. I decided to discreetly follow. Why would an American be invited on a French military expedition? Why would he accept? There were stories of Count Alessandro Silano, a wager in a gambling hall…”