Where the Light Falls

by Allison Pataki

  André, like many of the sailors and soldiers on board, was eager for information of that distant land, and no one seemed better able to provide it than the Egyptian within their ranks.

  Was there really gold hidden away in the ancient tombs? they asked Ashar. Were the women truly the most beautiful in the world? Would the Mamelukes, Egypt’s legendary and mysterious warriors, choose to fight or flee to the desert when the French and their fearsome commander arrived?

  Ashar enjoyed fielding these questions and did his best to stoke the imaginations of the bored Frenchmen. Yes, the tombs belonging to the dead pharaohs were stocked with riches enough to put even the Bourbon court to shame; and yet, they were guarded by ancient curses and magic that no Frenchman could possibly hope to understand. Yes, the women of Egypt would bring these foreign invaders to their knees.

  But for the Mameluke warriors, Ashar showed only a mystifying respect, even a reluctance to speak of them. He assured André, and once or twice admitted frankly to the generals aboard, that they would not fear General Bonaparte’s reputation at all. The Mamelukes were brought up with fierce principles of courage and loyalty; fear was not part of their tradition.

  Some of the officers scoffed at the Egyptian’s warnings, claiming that he was a mere Bedouin Arab, enamored by the power of his overlords, and that his fears were exaggerated. But André could not help but feel unease toward this arrogant way of thinking; what had become of his countrymen who had foolishly undervalued and dismissed the opinions of peasants? And what would become of a force that disregarded the ancient wisdom of the local forces it sought to conquer?

  André’s main objective those days was to remain out of the path of General Murat. The general, though he had seen André several times since his sudden release, had refrained from acknowledging him in any way. And yet André, as well acquainted as he was with the general’s loathing, knew it was only a matter of time before his senior’s gray-eyed gaze alighted on him once more; Murat was not one to forget a grievance.

  General Dumas shook the young captain’s hand each time they met above deck. André suspected that it was that man, more than any other, who kept him out of irons, kept him from rotting in a cell belowdecks, and he felt full of appreciation for the roguish general. If only he could make it to Egypt, André thought. If only he could take part in Bonaparte’s march through the country, he felt that he could slip from Murat’s grasp and serve with distinction. All he wanted was to serve, to live, and to someday make it home to Sophie.

  On the last night of June, Ashar and André sat on the forecastle, looking out over the shimmering moonlit water. A sentry yawned as he paced back and forth on the deck beside them. It was a clear night, the dark sky overhead pierced with thousands of bright, steady stars. The ship rocked in a smooth, constant rhythm, as hypnotizing as a baby’s cradle. André, feeling his own eyelids growing heavy, was about to bid his friend good evening, but Ashar’s voice interrupted the silence. “We are close now.”

  André turned to look at his companion, catching his gaze through the milky glow of the moon’s light. “What’s that?”

  “We are nearing Egypt.”

  “How do you know?”

  Ashar smiled, a wise, knowing smile. “My friend, if you were kept away from your land for years, dreaming of your return, longing for a homecoming that you thought you’d never be given, and then, one day, you were this close…you’d know as well.”

  Ashar sat beside him in heavy thought, neither one of them speaking for several minutes. “My country”—Ashar finally broke the silence and looked at André—“is a realm that has enticed the ambitions of men and great powers for centuries. I can’t divine what will happen when we arrive there. But, André Valière, my friend, I pray to God that your fate is not written to end in my country.”

  The soldiers were roused before dawn and called to stand-to on deck. There, donning his newly provisioned captain’s uniform, André blinked as the first hints of daylight broke over the horizon, slicing the darkness like knife blades of purple, orange, and pink. And there, for the first time in weeks, land awaited them.

  “Alexandria!”

  “My God, we’ve made it!”

  “We’ll make landfall by midday, won’t we?”

  All around him, the men on the ship muttered and fidgeted with a nervous, anticipatory energy, like hounds chafing at their leashes at the start of a hunt.

  André found Ashar a short while later, leaning on the far railing, his gaze fixed over the bow and on the distant horizon. “There you are,” he said. “The men have been called to breakfast. Shall we go below and eat?”

  Ashar didn’t pull his gaze from the nearby shore. Didn’t speak, but only shook his head, no.

  “Your homeland.” André stood beside him, looking from the land toward his friend.

  “Alexandria,” Ashar finally answered, his voice charged with a stern reverence. “The city built for the great Alexander. The capital fine enough for Cleopatra herself. Called by the ancient Greeks the ‘best and greatest.’ ”

  As the ship pulled them closer to the Egyptian shore, bathed now in the ethereal orange glow of the rising sun, André gained a better view of the city. His eyes roved over the land, its shoreline sliced open in the middle by a narrow waterway that issued out into a broad, calm bay. Beyond that, André knew, the desert stretched for leagues without end, a vast dry sea of sand and punishing sun.

  “And now General Bonaparte wishes to add his name to that elite and distinguished history.” Ashar turned to look at André for the first time, his voice grave but calm. “He can take Alexandria. He might even hold it for a time. But Alexandria will never be his. Egypt will never be his, no matter how deeply he is seduced by her. Many others, beckoned by the myths and legends, have thought they could possess her. Even if he somehow manages to chase away the Mamelukes, which I doubt he will, there is something in these sands and within the hearts of these people that he does not understand. The deeper he penetrates, the more she will close in around him. She will strangle him with her soft, perfumed hands before he even realizes he is in her grip. You shall see.”

  André stared at his friend uneasily for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the city and sighed. “I have seen enough horror to last a lifetime, ten lifetimes. But, Ashar, I must admit, the way you are speaking now…I am uneasy.”

  Ashar blinked, his hard features softening into an unexpected smile. “You need not fear. At least, not on account of me. As long as I am a guest of your people, I will do all that is in my power to see that you remain alive. You may be a heathen and an infidel, but you are my friend.”

  Summer 1798

  “You must eat, even if you have no appetite.” Jean-Luc sat beside Sophie on the small rusty bench in the courtyard. He was visiting her in the prison that had once housed her fiancé. The air was uncharacteristically chilly on this summer morning, with a biting damp that felt more like late winter. They sat in a small garden reserved for the female prisoners, their bench tucked beneath the limbs of an ancient plane tree. “Eat whatever food they bring you; do you understand?”

  “I would hardly call what they offer us food,” Sophie said, trying to smile even though her eyes were devoid of mirth. She looked thin and pale, and her small frame shivered more than it should have, even in the damp morning air. Jean-Luc peeled off his coat and draped it over her slumped shoulders.

  “All the same, you must force yourself to eat. You must keep up your health. For when you are set free.”

  Sophie exhaled a short, apathetic laugh. Lifting her gaze from the puddled ground, she looked up at him, her eyes encased in shadow. “Have you found out anything more?”

  Jean-Luc sighed, breaking from her stare. “Seems the only things they have on you are some vague conspiracy charges of consorting with a ‘criminal’ and eluding your guards and captors.”

  “I hadn’t even been arrested or charged! I was just trying to avoid my uncle because I know what he is capable of.�
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  “On technical grounds your relations with André at that time can be construed as ‘criminal.’ But thankfully, according to the recent laws, your offense is not a capital one. I promised you, and I hold to it: I will do everything in my power to get you out of here.” Jean-Luc paused, knitting his hands together in his lap. “Have you given any further thought to what I proposed?”

  Sophie let her eyes slide away as she shook her head, a barely perceptible gesture.

  “Come now, Sophie, I think it might be our best chance. Please allow me to write to your uncle.”

  “I told you—I suspect that he has as much to do with my being in here as that old snake, Guillaume Lazare. Who else would be charging me with ‘eluding guards’? Why, he’s the very man who chased me from the city.”

  Jean-Luc thought about this, sighing. The last couple of months had been the strangest and most troubling time since the Terror and the trials of General Kellermann and André. His mind ceaselessly returned to that night when Guillaume Lazare had appeared outside his door—the same night that Mathieu had gone missing. How the old man had demanded that Jean-Luc turn in Sophie, and how Sophie had willingly gone, exchanging herself for the little boy.

  And now, weeks later, Sophie still sat in prison, enduring the stifling, pestilent-ridden summer, as neither she nor Jean-Luc came any closer to understanding how or why they had become entangled in this strange game of cat and mouse with Guillaume Lazare.

  Jean-Luc stared past the prison walls and up at the patch of visible sky, closing his eyes for a moment. “It’s likely, I suspect, that your uncle was angry with you for defying him, and he hoped to teach you a lesson. I think you’ve learned it well enough.” He brought his eyes down and looked back at Sophie.

  “I am certain that he wants me locked up in here until he returns home from…wherever it is. Where is the army now? Italy?”

  “Somewhere in the Mediterranean, from what I’ve read, and heading toward Egypt. Seems Bonaparte wants to make a play for Cairo.”

  Sophie’s entire face sagged. “Cairo? But that’s an entire world away. Even farther than Malta. Is André there as well?”

  Jean-Luc reached for her hand, taking it in his. Overhead the sun slipped behind a cloud, casting a pall over the courtyard that added to Jean-Luc’s sense of hopelessness. Neither of them had heard from André in many months, but he forced a buoyant tone as he answered: “I’ve reason to believe he is with that army, yes. Or at least was nearby when they departed from Toulon and Marseille.”

  “How can you be sure he is safe?”

  Jean-Luc thought about this, knowing that there was no honest way to answer her. “I cannot be completely certain, but none of the letters I’ve sent to him have been returned. And I always addressed them to the port of call at Toulon, where a greedy Temple prison guard tracked him for me, in exchange for a fee.”

  “Have you heard any news of his mother?” Sophie asked. Jean-Luc felt heavy at the question—he had put off telling Sophie, wanting to keep her spirits lifted. But perhaps it was time she knew—perhaps it would give her the determination she seemed to be losing.

  “My contacts in London have replied, yes.”

  “And?” Sophie’s eyes perked up ever so slightly. “What news of Madame Valière?”

  Jean-Luc swallowed, clearing his throat. “I am sorry to say that…Madame Valière has…not survived to enjoy a reunion with her son.”

  Sophie brought a hand to her pale cheek. “Dead?”

  “Some sort of pox, perhaps smallpox.”

  Sophie’s stare went blank as she picked at a piece of rust on the old bench beneath them. After a long pause, she sighed. “She escaped the Terror only to perish of smallpox. Will you tell André?”

  “I will try. If I can figure out where he has been sent.”

  Sophie nodded.

  “All the more reason why you must take care of yourself. My dear girl, don’t you see? His father lost, his brother gone, most likely dead, and now his mother. You are all that André has left to return to.”

  If, he thought, André ever returns at all.

  Sophie nodded her distracted agreement. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “And you will be free when he returns, Sophie.”

  “Free. Yes.” But then a shadow passed over her face, bringing with it the indication of renewed agony.

  “What is it?” Jean-Luc leaned toward her.

  She trembled, as if unsure whether to speak. And then, her voice at barely a whisper, she looked into his eyes and said: “He came here again. To visit me.”

  Jean-Luc looked away, suppressing the curse that rose to his lips like bile. “Bastard!” Turning back to Sophie, he tried to smooth over his features. “Did you speak with him?”

  “I did what you told me: I received him. I was cordial. But I told him nothing. Nothing of our visits. I answered no questions.”

  “Good,” Jean-Luc said, swallowing hard. “And did he offer a reason for his visit?”

  “He always seems to be coming as a friend. At least, he tells me that he’s coming as a friend. That he hopes to help me.”

  “And the devil comes dressed as an angel. But Guillaume Lazare is no friend, Sophie. Do not believe the words he speaks.”

  “I know, I know,” Sophie said, her eyes shutting with fatigue. “Believe me, I know.”

  “I’d rest easier if you were not forced to receive him when he visited, Sophie. But whatever his purpose is in detaining you like this…whether it’s your uncle behind it or not…we cannot risk agitating him further.”

  Sophie nodded, understanding. And then she paused. “I don’t like…the way he looks at me.”

  “How does he look at you?”

  “I can’t explain it, really. He talks of his home in the south. Of his desire to go back there, and ‘return to a simple life apart from politics.’ ” Sophie sneered at those words. “He tells me that he never had a wife and children but that he hopes it’s not too late for that. It’s bizarre, really.”

  Jean-Luc felt discomfort rising up from his belly like water bubbling to a boil. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve seen men look at me before with love in their eyes,” Sophie said, her voice faltering over the words, and Jean-Luc knew that she thought of André as she said it. Sophie inhaled, steeling herself to go on. “And I’ve seen men look at me before with hatred in their eyes. But never before—at least not until Guillaume Lazare—have I seen a man look at me with what appeared to be both love and hatred at the same time.”

  That particular afternoon, having sensed Sophie’s worsening despondency at their morning visit, Jean-Luc was gripped with dread even more tightly than usual. Outside of Madame Grocque’s tavern he spotted the familiar covered coach waiting on the cobblestoned street below his window. He froze in his steps.

  Perhaps he hadn’t been seen yet, Jean-Luc calculated; perhaps he could slip down the nearby alley. But the thought of leaving Mathieu and Marie alone within sight of that man was too much for him to allow. Jean-Luc turned to quietly dart inside when he heard the coach door open. He turned in time to see Guillaume Lazare hop down onto the street, his aged frame appearing uncharacteristically nimble, even peppy. “Greetings, Citizen St. Clair!”

  Jean-Luc clenched his jaw and nodded. “Citizen Lazare.”

  “Your wife is getting nice and round.”

  Jean-Luc’s heart thumped in his chest as he stood, motionless, outside the tavern door. Sensing that he had the young lawyer’s attention, Lazare continued. “Tell me, do you hope for a daughter? Or would you like another son?”

  Now Jean-Luc wheeled around, turning to face the man. “What is it that you want?”

  Lazare, apparently satisfied that he had succeeded in baiting his prey, smiled. He leaned back against the coach as he considered the question. He took his time before answering. “A great many things, I suppose. But where should I begin?”

  “Why don’t you begin by telling me why you’ve imprisoned th
at poor woman.”

  “Citizeness de Vincennes? The count’s widow? I’d hardly call her poor.”

  “Good lord, what has she done wrong?”

  “You know what she has done. She consorted with a known enemy of the state, citizen.”

  “What of it? Has that man not been tried, and permitted to leave this place and start a new life?”

  Lazare sighed. Behind him, Jean-Luc heard the tavern door creak open. Madame Grocque, feigning disinterest, emerged on the street and began sweeping her stoop.

  “I’ll go after her”—Lazare paused, smoothing a fold in his glove—“because that will draw him back.”

  Jean-Luc could not conceal the concern on his features. “André? But he’s serving his sentence.”

  “He has not paid,” Lazare hissed, his pale lips curling around each word. “He’s not dead, as I believe he should be. And it was you, Citizen St. Clair, who made it so.”

  “He’s paying every single day; he’s served our Republic for years. Why must you persecute André further? What has he ever done to earn your hatred?”

  Lazare laughed, slowing his pace, reining in his features, even as Jean-Luc saw the purple vein that pulsed behind the otherwise pale flesh of the old man’s neck. “Come now, I don’t hate him. I don’t even know the man. But he was the first one to—how shall I put this?—slip through my grasp. You managed to spare his life.”

  Jean-Luc was no nearer to understanding. “That was just business. Your dislike of him can’t be personal.”

  “My dear fellow, St. Clair, it’s all personal. Don’t you understand that? Why, you’ll never achieve the status you so greedily covet if you have not learned that by now.”

  Jean-Luc stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Then your feud should be with me. I am the one who thwarted you in that case.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” Lazare shrugged. There was a long pause before the old man, still examining his pristine gloves, looked up. “It started out that I planned to convict the man—Valière—as a favor to a powerful general. Nothing more. Oh, not because I have any special fondness for Nicolai Murat. Au contraire, the man is a brute who can’t help but act on his aversions and impulses, but I have indulged him because our interests have always been mutual. His hatred for the noble class impresses even me.” Lazare paused, his voice dropping in volume and pitch. “But now…now, I must finish the work that Nicolai Murat began.”