Napoleon's Pyramids (7 page)

“I think you know entirely too much about me, sir, and are entirely too quick to repeat it aloud. What is your purpose?”

“To learn yours, and enlist your service for England.”

“You
are
insane.”

“Hear me out. My new friend Stefan, might we share some wine?”

The gypsy agreed, snapping an order to a comely lass named Sarylla who had swirling dark hair, liquid eyes, a figure fit for museum statuary, and a flirtatious manner. I suppose it’s to be expected: I
am
a bit of a handsome rogue. She fetched a wineskin. Christ, I was thirsty! Children and dogs squatted in the shadows by the wagon wheels while we drank, watching us intently as if we might soon sprout horns or feathers. Quenching his own thirst, Smith leaned forward. “Now, there’s some jewel or instrument you hold, is there not?”

Good heavens, was Smith interested in my medallion too? What had the poor strangled French captain found in Italy? Was I, too, going to end up throttled and in some river because I’d won his trinket? Was it truly cursed? “You are misinformed.”

“And others want it, is this not so?”

I sighed. “You, too, I suppose.”

“On the contrary, I want to ensure you dispose of it. Bury it. Lock it away. Throw it, melt it, hide it, or eat it, but just keep the damned thing out of sight until this war is over. I don’t know if my Temple jailer knew more than fairy tales, but anything that tips this contest against Britain threatens civilized order. If you think the piece has monetary value, I will get the Admiralty to compensate you.”

“Mr. Smith…”

“Sir Sidney.”

His knighthood was from mercenary service to the king of Sweden, not England, but he
did
have a reputation of being vain and self-aggrandizing. “Sir Sidney, all we share is language. I’m American, not British, and France sided with my own nation in our recent revolution against yours. My country is neutral in the present conflict, and on top of that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Gage, listen to me.” He cocked forward like a falcon, the very picture of anxious intensity. He had a warrior’s build, straight and broad-shouldered, a sturdy chest tapering to a hard waist, and now that I thought about it, maybe Sarylla was being solicitous to
him
. “Your colonial revolution was one of political independence. This one in France is about the very order of life. My God, a king guillotined! Thousands sent to slaughter! Wars unleashed on every French border! Atheism enshrined! Church lands seized, debts ignored, estates confiscated, rabbles armed, riots, anarchy, and tyranny! You have as much in common with France as Washington has with Robespierre. You and I share not only a language but a culture and political system of law and justice. The madness that has seized France is going to unhinge Europe. All good men are allies, unless they believe in anarchy and dictatorship.”

“I have many French friends.”

“As do I! It’s their tyrants I can’t abide. I’m not asking you to betray anyone. I’m hoping you still go wherever this young Napoleon chap leads. All I’m asking is that you keep this talisman secret. Keep it for yourself, not for Boney, or this Silano, or anyone else who asks. Consider that your nation’s commercial future is inevitably with the British Empire, not a revolution bent on ruin. Keep your French friends! Make me your friend as well, and perhaps we’ll someday aid each other.”

“You want me to spy for England?”

“Absolutely not!” He looked hurt, glancing at Stefan as if the gypsy should support his protestations of innocence. “I simply offer help. Go where you must and pay attention to what you see. But if you ever tire of Napoleon and are looking for aid, contact the British navy and share what any man could have observed. I’m giving you a signet ring inscribed with a symbol of a unicorn, my coat-of-arms. I’ll notify the Admiralty of its authenticity. Use it as a token of safe passage.”

Smith and Stefan looked at me expectedly. Did they think me a fool? I could feel the lump of the object in the false sole of my boot.

“First, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied again. “Second, I’m allies with nobody, neither France nor England. I am merely a man of science, recruited to observe natural phenomena while some legal trouble I have is sorted out in Paris. Third, if I did have what you speak of, I wouldn’t admit it, given the lethal interest everyone seems to display. And fourth, this entire conversation is useless, because whatever I may once have had, even though I never had it, I have no longer, since the thieves plundered my baggage when I fled.” There, I thought. That should shut them up.

Smith grinned. “Good man!” he shouted, slapping my arm. “I knew you had the instincts! Fine show!”

“And now we feast,” Stefan said, also apparently approving of my performance. “Tell me more of your lessons from Temple Prison, Sir Sidney. We Rom trace our origins to the pharaohs, and to Abraham and Noah. We have forgotten much, but we remember much as well, and we can still sometimes tell the future and bend the whims of fate. Sarylla there is a
drabardi,
a fortune-teller, and maybe she can cast your future. Come, come, sit, and let us talk of Babylon and Tyre, Memphis and Jerusalem.”

Was everyone but me lost in the ancient world? I slipped on Smith’s ring, reasoning it couldn’t hurt to have another friend.

“Alas, I threaten all of you the longer I stay,” Smith said. “To tell the truth, a troop of French dragoons has been on my own trail. I wanted this quick word, but must be on my way before they encounter the robbery, hear the story of my timely shot, and look in these woods.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of this fascination with the occult, frankly. My jailer, Boniface, was the worst kind of Jacobin tyrant, but he constantly hinted at mystic secrets. All of us want to believe in magic, even if we adults have been told we shouldn’t. A learned man would dismiss it, and yet sometimes too much learning makes us blind.”

It sounded like what Talma had said.

“The Rom have kept the secrets of our Egyptian ancestors for centuries,” Stefan said. “Yet we are mere children in the ancient arts.”

Well, their Egyptian connection seemed dubious to me—their very name suggested Romania as a more probable homeland—but then again it was a dusky and colorful group, of vests and shawls and scarves and jewelry, including an ankh here and a figurine of dog-headed Anubis there. Their women might not be Cleopatra, but they certainly had an alluring beauty. What lovemaking secrets might they know? I pondered that question for some moments. I am, after all, a scientist.

“Adieu, my new friends,” Smith said. He gave Stefan a purse. “Here is payment to conduct Monsieur Gage and the talisman he doesn’t have to safety in Toulon. He will escape detection in your slow wagons. Agreed?”

The gypsy regarded the money, flipped and caught it, and laughed. “For this much I would take him to Constantinople! But for a man pursued, I would also take him for free.”

The Englishman bowed. “I believe you would, but accept the Crown’s generosity.”

Going with the gypsies would separate me from Talma until we reached Toulon, but I reasoned this would be safer for my friend as well as me. He’d worry, but then he always worried.

“Gage, we will meet again,” Smith said. “Keep my ring on your finger; the frogs won’t recognize it—I kept it out of sight in prison. In the meantime, keep your wits about you and remember how quickly idealism can turn to tyranny and liberators can become dictators. You may find yourself, eventually, on your mother country’s side.” Then he melted into the trees as quietly as he’d come, an apparition no one would believe I’d encountered.

Meet again? Not if I had anything to say about it. I didn’t dream how Smith would eventually re-enter my life, a thousand miles from where we stood. I was simply relieved the fugitive was gone.

“And now we feast,” said Stefan.

The term “feast” was an exaggeration, but the camp did serve us a rich stew, sopped with thick and heavy bread. I felt safe amid these strange nomads, if a little astonished at their ready hospitality. They seemed to want nothing from me but my company. I was curious if they might really know anything about what was in the sole of my boot.

“Stefan, I’m not admitting that Smith was right about this pendant. But if some such trinket did exist, what about it would make men so covetous?”

He smiled. “It would not be the necklace itself, but the fact that it is some kind of clue.”

“A clue to what?”

The gypsy shrugged. “All I know are old stories. The standard tale is that ancient Egyptians at the dawn of civilization caged a power that they deemed dangerous until men had the intellectual and moral quality to correctly harness it, but left a key in the form of a neckpiece. Alexander the Great reputedly received this when he made his pilgrimage to the desert oasis of Siwah, where he was declared a son of Amon and Zeus before his march into Persia. He subsequently conquered the known world. How did he accomplish so much so quickly? Then he died a young man in Babylon. Of disease? Or murder? The rumor is that Alexander’s general, Ptolemy, took the key back to Egypt, hoping to unlock great powers, but he couldn’t understand what the token meant. Cleopatra, Ptolemy’s descendant, took it with her when she accompanied Caesar to Rome. Then Caesar was assassinated too! On it goes through history, great men grasping and coming to their doom. Kings, popes, and sultans began to believe it cursed, even as wizards and sorcerers believed it could unlock great secrets. Yet none remembered anymore how to use it. Was it a key to good or to evil? The Catholic Church takes it to Jerusalem during the Crusades, again in futile quest. The Knights Templar become its custodians, hiding it first in Rhodes, then in Malta. There are confusing quests for a holy grail, obscuring the truth of what was sought. For centuries the medallion lay forgotten until someone recognized its significance. Now perhaps it has come to Paris…and then walked into our camp. Of course, this you have denied.”

I didn’t like this medallion bringing death to all. “You really think an ordinary man like me could stumble across the same key?”

“I’ve pawned a hundred pieces of the True Cross and scores of fingers and teeth of the great saints. Who is to say what is real and what is false? Just be aware that some men are in earnest about this trinket you claim not to carry.”

“Maybe Smith is right. Supposing I had it, I should throw it away. Or give it to you.”

“Not me!” He looked alarmed. “I’m not in a position to use or understand it. If the stories are true, the medallion will only make sense in Egypt where it was crafted. Besides, it brings bad luck to the wrong man.”

“I can testify to that,” I confessed gloomily. A beating, murder, escapes, a holdup…“Yet a savant like Franklin would say it’s all superstitious nonsense.”

“Or maybe he would use your new science to investigate it.”

I was impressed with Stefan’s seeming lack of greed, particularly since his tales had helped fuel my own avarice. Too many other parties wanted this medallion, or wanted it buried: Silano, the bandits, the French expedition, the English, and this mysterious Egyptian Rite. This suggested it was so valuable that I should be determined to keep it until I could either unload it at a profit or figure out what the devil it was for. That meant going on to Egypt. And, meanwhile, watching my back.

I glanced at Sarylla. “Could your lass, here, tell my fortune?”

“She is a mistress of the Tarot.” He snapped his fingers, and she fetched her deck of mystic cards.

I’d seen the symbols before, and the illustrations of death and the devil remained disturbing. In silence she dealt some before the fire, considered, and turned some others: swords, lovers, cups, the magician. She looked puzzled, making no forecast. Finally she held one up.

It was the fool, or jester. “He is the one.”

Well, I had it coming, didn’t I? “That’s me?”

She nodded. “And the one you seek.”

“What do you mean?”

“The cards say you will learn what I mean when you get where you must go. You are the fool who must find the fool, becoming wise to find wisdom. You are a seeker who must find the first to seek. Beyond that, it is better you don’t know.” And she’d say nothing more. That’s the knack of prophecy, isn’t it: to be vague as a fine-written contract? I had more wine.

It was well past midnight when we heard the tread of big horses. “French cavalry!” a gypsy sentry hissed.

I could hear their clink and rattle, branches snapping under the hooves. All but one lamp was extinguished and all but Stefan melted toward their wagons. Sarylla took my hand.

“We must get these clothes off you so you can pretend to be Rom,” she whispered.

“You have a disguise for me?”

“Your skin.”

Well, there was an idea. And better Sarylla than Temple Prison. She took me by the hand and we crept into a
vardo,
her lithe fingers helping me shed my stained clothing. Hers slipped off as well, her form luminescent in the dim light. What a day! I lay in one of the wagons next to her warm and silken body, listening to Stefan murmur with a lieutenant of cavalry. I heard the words “Sidney Smith,” there were growled threats, and then much tramping about as wagon doors were jerked open. When ours had its turn, we looked up in feigned sleepiness and Sarylla let our blanket slip off her breasts. You can trust they took a good long look, but not at me.

Then, as the horsemen moved off, I listened to what she suggested we do next. Curse or no curse, my journey to Toulon had taken a decided turn for the better.

“Show me what they do in Egypt,” I whispered to her.

O
ne month later, on May 19, 1798, I stood on the quarterdeck of the French flagship
L’Orient,
120 guns, not far from the shoulder of the most ambitious man in Europe. Together we and an assembly of officers and savants watched the majestic parade of 180 vessels putting out to sea. The Egyptian expedition was under way.

The blue Mediterranean was white with sail, the ships heeling in the face of a fresh breeze, and the decks still gleamed from the aftermath of a gale we hoped would keep a rumored British squadron at bay. As the ships bit into the swell past the harbor entrance at Toulon, foam gave each bow a set of teeth. Military bands had assembled on the foredeck of the biggest ships, their brass instruments sparkling, and they competed with each other in noise as they sailed past, playing French patriotic tunes. Cannon from the city’s fortresses boomed a salute, and thirty-four thousand embarked soldiers and sailors gave thunderous cheers as their vessels scudded by Bonaparte’s flagship. He had issued a bulletin promising each of them enough spoils to buy six acres of land.

This was only the beginning. Smaller convoys from Genoa, Corsica’s Ajaccio, and Civitavecchia in Italy would add more French divisions to the Egyptian invasion force. By the time we mustered at Malta there would be four hundred ships and fifty-five thousand men, plus a thousand horses, hundreds of wagons and field artillery, more than three hundred certificated washerwomen expected to provide other morale-building services, and hundreds more smuggled wives and concubines. Aboard as well were four thousand bottles of wine for the officers as a whole and eight hundred choice ones from Joseph Bonaparte’s personal cellar, brought to help his brother entertain. Our commander had also packed a fine city carriage with double harness so he could survey Cairo in style.

“We are a French army, not an English one,” he’d told his staff. “We live better on campaign than they do in a castle.”

The remark would be remembered with bitterness in the months ahead.

I’d come to Toulon after a meandering gypsy journey on their slow wagons. It had been a pleasant interlude. The “priests of Egypt” showed me simple card tricks, explained the Tarot, and told me more tales of treasure caves and temples of power. None had ever been in Egypt, of course, or knew if their stories had a grain of truth, but story spinning was one of their chief talents and source of income. I watched them cast optimistic fortunes for milkmaids, gardeners, and constables. What they couldn’t earn with fantasy, they stole, and what they couldn’t steal, they did without. Accompanying the band to Toulon was a far more enjoyable way to complete my escape from Paris than the highway coach, despite knowing that my separation and delay would cause anxiety for Antoine Talma. It was a relief not to have to listen to the journalist’s Masonic theories, however, and I left the warmth of Sarylla with regret.

The port had been a madhouse of preparation and excitement, crammed with soldiers, sailors, military contractors, tavern keepers, and brothel madams. One could spot the famous savants in their top hats, excited and apprehensive, clumping in sturdy boots still stiff from newness. The officers were bright as peacocks in their resplendent uniforms, and ordinary soldiers were excited and cheerfully fatalistic about an expedition with no announced destination. I was reasonably anonymous in such a crowd, my clothes and green coat more stained and worn than ever, but to be safe I swiftly boarded
L’Orient
in order to stay out of the reach of bandits, antiquarians, gendarmes, lantern bearers, or anyone else who might offer me harm. It was on board that I was finally reunited with Talma.

“I feared I was entering into peril and adventure in the East without a friend!” he exclaimed. “Berthollet has been concerned as well!

Mon dieu,
what happened?”

“I’m sorry I had no way to get word to you. It seemed best to travel quietly. I knew you’d be worried.”

He embraced me. “Where’s the medallion?” I could feel his breath at my ear.

By this time I was cautious. “Safe enough, my friend. Safe enough.”

“What’s that on your finger? A new ring?” He was looking at the token from Sidney Smith.

“A gift from gypsies.”

Talma and I briefed each other on our separate adventures. He said the surviving brigands had scattered in confusion after my escape from the coach. Then cavalry came, on the hunt for some other fugitive—“it was all bewildering in the dark”—and the horsemen plunged into the woods. Meanwhile, the coachmen used their team to drag the blocking tree out of the way and the traveling party finally pushed on to an inn. Talma decided to wait for the next day’s stage in case I emerged from the forest. When I didn’t, he went on to Toulon, fearing me dead.

“Gypsies!” he now cried, looking at me in wonder. “You do have talent for finding mischief, Ethan Gage. And the way you just shot that man! I was astounded, exultant, frightened!”

“He almost shot you.”

“Of course you have been among the Red Indians.”

“I’ve met a lot of people in my travels, Antoine, and learned to keep one palm open in greeting and the other on a weapon.” I paused. “Did he die?”

“They carried him away bleeding.”

Well, one more thing to wonder about in the dark hours of the night.

“Are the gypsies scoundrels, like their reputation?” Talma asked.

“Not in the least, if you watch your pockets. They saved my life. Their spicing awakens senses that their women satisfy. No home, no job, no ties…”

“You found your own kind! I’m surprised you came back!”

“They think they’re descended from the priests of Egypt. They’ve heard legends of a lost medallion, saying it is a key to some ancient secret there.”

“But of course, that would explain the interest of the Egyptian Rite! Cagliostro saw himself in competition with ordinary Freemasonry. Perhaps Silano believes this could give his branch an advantage. But to openly rob us? The secret must be potent indeed.”

“And what word of Silano? Doesn’t he know Bonaparte?”

“The word is that he’s gone to Italy—to look for clues to what you won, perhaps? Berthollet has told our general about the medallion and he seemed quite interested, but Bonaparte has also called Masons imbeciles, consumed by fairy tales. His brothers Joseph, Lucien, Jerome, and Louis, who are all in our fraternity, argue the point. Napoleon said he’s as interested in your opinions of Louisiana as your choice of jewelry, but I think he’s flattered an American is along. He appreciates your ties to Franklin. He hopes you may someday help explain his schemes to the United States.”

Talma introduced me as a celebrity fugitive to the fellow savants who had boarded the flagship. We were part of a group of 167 civilian professionals whom Bonaparte had invited to accompany his invasion. The number included nineteen civil engineers, sixteen cartographers, two artists, one poet, an orientalist, and a grand assortment of mathematicians, chemists, antiquarians, astronomers, mineralogists, and zoologists. I met Berthollet again, who had recruited most of this group, and in due course was introduced to our general. My nationality, my slim connection to the famed Franklin, and the story of how I’d escaped ambush all impressed the young conqueror. “Electricity!” Bonaparte exclaimed. “Imagine if we could harness your mentor’s lightning bolts!”

I was impressed that Napoleon had won the leadership of so ambitious an expedition. The most famous general in Europe was lean, short, and disconcertingly young. At twenty-nine he was junior to all but four of his thirty-one generals, and while the difference between English and French measures meant that British propagandists had exaggerated his lack of height—he was actually a respectable five-six—still, there was so little to him in terms of breadth that he seemed swallowed by boots and dragging sword. The tittering ladies of Paris had nicknamed him “Puss-n-Boots,” a teasing he never forgot. Egypt would make this young man into the Napoleon who would take the world by storm, but on the decks of
L’Orient
he was not quite Napoleon yet; he was viewed as much more human, more flawed and striving, than the later marble titan. Historians invent an icon, but contemporaries live with a man. In fact, Napoleon’s rapid ascent during the Revolution was as annoying as it was breathtaking, and it made more than one of his seniors hope he would fail. Yet Bonaparte himself was confident to the point of vanity.

And why not? Here at Toulon, he had risen from captain of artillery to brigadier general in days after situating the cannon that drove the British and the royalists from the city. He had survived the Terror and a brief stint in prison, married a social climber named Josephine whose first husband had been guillotined, helped slaughter a counterrevolutionary mob in Paris, and led the ragtag French army to a series of astounding victories over the Austrians in Italy. His troops had warmed to him as if he were Caesar, and the Directory was delighted by the tribute he sent their bankrupt treasury. Napoleon wanted to emulate Alexander, and his civilian superiors wanted his restless ambition out of France. Egypt would serve both just fine.

What a hero he looked then, long before his days of palaces and cream! His hair was a shock of black across his forehead, his nose Roman, his lips pursed like a classical statue’s, his chin cleft, and his eyes a dark, excited gray. He had a flair for addressing troops, understanding the human thirst for glory and adventure, and carried himself in the way we all imagined heroes should stand: torso erect, head high, eyes on a mystic horizon. He was the kind of man whose manner, as much as his words, persuaded that he must know what he is doing.

I was impressed because he’d clearly risen by merit, not birth, which fit the American ideal. He was, after all, an immigrant like us, not really French, having come from the island of Corsica to the barracks of a French military school. He’d spent the early years of life wanting nothing more ambitious than his homeland’s independence. By all reports he was a middling student in all but mathematics, socially awkward, lonely, without a mentor or powerful patron, and faced upon graduation with the daunting upheaval of the Revolution. Yet while so many were bewildered by the turmoil, Bonaparte thrived on it. The intelligence that had been smothered by the rigidities of military school erupted when the need was for improvisation and imagination, when France was under siege. The prejudice he’d encountered, as a rustic islander from third-rate nobility, melted away when his competence at meeting crises was demonstrated. The diffidence and hopelessness of adolescence had been shed like a clumsy cloak, and he’d worked to turn awkwardness to charm. It was the unlikely Napoleon who’d come to embody the idealism of the Revolution, where rank was won by ability and there was no limit to ambition. Though conservatives like Sidney Smith couldn’t see it, this is where the two revolutions, American and French, were alike. Bonaparte was a self-made man.

Yet Napoleon’s relationship to individuals was one of the strangest I’ve ever seen. He’d developed undeniable charisma, but it was always practiced—shy, removed, wary, tense—as if he were an actor playing a role. When he looked at you it was with the brilliance of a chandelier, energy emanating from him like a horse radiates heat. He could focus with an intensity both flattering and overwhelming—he did it to me a dozen times. Yet a moment later he’d swing his entire attention to the next person and leave you feeling as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun, and seconds after that he might disappear into himself even in a crowded room, staring just as intently at the floor as he had at you, eyes downcast, lost in thought and a world of his own. One Parisian female had described his brooding countenance as the type one dreaded meeting in a dark alley. There was a thumb-stained copy of Goethe’s
The Sorrows of Young Werther
that he carried in his pocket, a novel of suicide and hopeless love that he’d read six times. I would see his dour passions play out at the Battle of the Pyramids, in triumph and in horror.

It took eight hours for the last ship to parade by, the tricolor streaming from every mast. We’d reviewed a dozen ships of the line, forty-two frigates, and hundreds of transports. The sun was already low when our flagship finally set out like a mother duck after her brood. The fleet covered two square miles of water, the larger warships shortening sails to let the smaller merchant tubs keep pace. When the other convoys joined us we covered four square miles, plodding at little more than three knots.

All but the veteran sailors were miserable. Bonaparte, knowing he was prone to seasickness, spent much of his time in a wooden bed suspended by ropes that stayed level during the ship’s rolls. The rest of us were queasy whether standing or trying to sleep. Talma finally didn’t have to imagine sickness, he had it, and confided several times that he was almost certainly near death. Soldiers didn’t have time to reach the upper deck and lee rail to heave out their guts, so buckets filled to overflowing, every ship reeking of vomit.
L’Orient
’s five decks were crammed with two thousand soldiers, one thousand sailors, cattle, sheep, and so many supplies that we squeezed, rather than walked, from bow to stern. Ranking savants like Berthollet had cabins of red damask, but they were so small it was like occupying a coffin. We lesser intellectuals made do with closets of damp oak. When we ate, we were packed so tightly on benches we barely had room to raise hand to mouth. A dozen stabled horses stamped, whinnied, and pissed in the hold, and every bit of clothing was damp. The lower gun ports had to be closed against the swells, so it was dim below, making reading impossible. We preferred to stay topsides anyway, but the sailors working to drive the ship would periodically become exasperated at the crowding and order us back down. Within a day everyone was bored; within a week we all prayed for the desert.

Added to the discomfort was the anxiety of watching for British ships. A firebrand named Horatio Nelson, already missing an arm and an eye but no less enthusiastic for it, was reputed to be hunting us with his squadron. Since the Revolution had stripped the French navy of many of its best royalist officers, and since our lumbering transports and gun decks were jammed with army supplies, we dreaded any naval duel.