Napoleon's Pyramids

by William Dietrich

  ‘The mind of the Egyptians? What use is that?’

  ‘The pyramids are so remarkable that we don’t understand how they were built. This instrument is one of many clues.’

  He looked sceptical. ‘A clue if we wanted to build pyramids.’

  ‘My visit to your ship will be brief, Admiral. I have papers giving me permission to take the antiquity to Cairo.’

  He nodded wearily. ‘I apologise I am not more gracious, Monsieur Gage. It is not easy working with Bonaparte, and I’ve been plagued with dysentery since we came to this godforsaken country. My belly aches, my ships are beggared for supplies, and my undermanned crews are made up chiefly of those too invalided for the army.’

  The sickness explained his pallor. ‘Then I’ll not be more of a burden than I must. If you could give me escort to the hold …’

  ‘But of course.’ He sighed. ‘I’d have you to dinner if I could eat. What interruption are you when we sit here at anchor, waiting for Nelson to find us? It’s madness to keep the fleet in Egypt, yet Napoleon clings to my ships like an infant to a blanket.’

  ‘Your ships are critical to all his plans.’

  ‘So he has flattered me. Well, let me give you the captain’s son, he’s a bright lad of promise. If you can keep up with him, you’re fitter than I.’

  The midshipman Giocante, a boy of ten, was the son of ship’s captain Luce Casabianca. A bright, dark-haired lad who had explored every cranny of L’Orient, he led me down to the treasury with the agility of a monkey. Our descent was brighter than the last time I’d gone this way with Monge, sunlight flooding through open gunports. There was a strong smell of turpentine and sawdust. I saw paint cans and oak lumber.

  It didn’t get dim until we descended to the orlop deck below the waterline. Now I could smell bilge water and the cheesy odour of stores going rancid in the climate. It was cooler down here, dark and secretive.

  Giocante turned and gave a wink. ‘You’ll not fill your pockets with gold pieces, now?’ the boy teased me with the cheek of a captain’s son.

  ‘I wouldn’t get away with you watching me, would I?’ I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Unless you want to go in double, boy, and we’ll both sneak ashore, rich as princes!’

  ‘No need of that. My father says we’ll capture a fat English prize one day.’

  ‘Ah. Your future is taken care of, then.’

  ‘My future is this ship. We are bigger than anything the English have, and when the time comes, we will teach them a lesson.’ He snapped orders at the marines who guarded the magazine and they began to unlock the treasury.

  ‘You sound as confident as Bonaparte.’

  ‘I’m confident in my father.’

  ‘Still, it’s a challenging life for a boy at sea, is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s the best life because we have clear duty. That’s what my father says. Things are easy if you know what you must do.’ And before I could consider or reply to this philosophy, he saluted and scampered up the ladder.

  An admiral in the making, I thought.

  The treasury had both a wooden door and an iron grill. Both were shut behind to lock me in. It took me some rooting in the dim lantern light amid boxes of coin and jewels to find the device that Monge and Jomard had shown me. Yes, there it was, tossed in one corner as the least valuable of all the treasures. It was, as I have described, the size of a dinner plate but empty in its centre. The rim was made of three flat rings, covered in hieroglyphics, zodiac signs, and abstract designs, that rotated within each other. A clue, perhaps, but of what? I sat, enjoying the cool dampness, and worked them one way and another. Each twist aligned different symbols.

  I studied the inner ring first, which was the plainest with just four designs. There was an inscribed sphere hovering above a line, and on the opposite side of the circle another sphere below a line. At ninety degrees from each, dividing the calendar into quarters, there were half-spheres, like half-moons, one pointed up and the other down. The pattern reminded me of four cardinal markings on a compass or clock, but the Egyptians had neither, so far as I knew. I pondered. The one on top looked like a rising sun. So at length I guessed this innermost band must be a wheel of the year. The summer and winter solstice was represented by the sun being above and below the lines, or horizon. The half-suns were the March and September equinoxes, when day and night are roughly equal. Simple enough, if I was right.

  And it told me absolutely nothing.

  A wheel outside the first one turned a zodiac, I saw. I traced the twelve signs that were not so very different when this device was made than they are today. Then a third ring, the outermost, held strange symbols of animals, eyes, stars, sun rays, a pyramid, and the Horus symbol. In places, inscribed lines divided each wheel into sections.

  My guess was that this calendar, if that’s what it was, was a way to align the position of the constellations relative to the rising sun throughout the solar year. But what use was it to my medallion? What had Cagliostro seen in it, if indeed it had been his? Back and forth I played, trying combinations in hopes something would occur to me. Nothing did, of course – I’ve always hated puzzles, even though I’ve enjoyed figuring the odds at cards. Perhaps the astronomer, Nouet, could figure it out if I could bring it back with me.

  Finally I decided to call the summer solstice, if that’s what it was, the top, and then put the third ring’s five-pointed star – not entirely unlike that on our American flag, or in Masonic symbolism – atop that. Like the polar star! Why not play with symbols I knew? And the zodiac ring I rotated until Taurus, the bull, was between the other two: the age, Monge had said, in which the pyramid had supposedly been built. There had been the age of the bull, the age of the ram, the age of the fish, Pisces, which we now occupied, and, ahead, the age of Aquarius. Now I examined the other signs. There seemed no particular pattern.

  Except … I stared, my heart beating. When I arranged the rings so that summer, bull, and star were atop each other, the ends of the tilted inscribed lines connected to make two longer diagonal lines. They angled outward from the innermost circle like the splayed legs of the medallion – or the slope of the pyramid. It was enough of a resemblance that I felt like I was looking at an echo of what I’d left with Astiza and Enoch.

  But what did it mean? I saw nothing at first. Crabs, lions, and Libra scales made senseless patterns. But wait! There was a pyramid on the outer ring, and this was now just below the sign for the fall equinox, directly adjacent to that sloping inscribed line. And there was a symbol for Aquarius on the second ring, and this, too, was adjacent to a time that, if I was reading the device correctly, occupied the four o’clock position on the ring, just below the three o’clock position that represented the autumn equinox, September 21st.

  The four o’clock position should correspond to one month later, or October 21st.

  If I’d guessed right, October 21st, Aquarius, and the pyramid had some kind of link. Aquarius, Nouet had said, was a sign created by the Egyptians to celebrate the rising of the Nile, which would crest sometime in the fall.

  Could October 21st be a holy day? The peak of the Nile flood? A time to visit the pyramid? The medallion had its wavelike symbol for water. Was there a connection? Did it reveal something on that particular day?

  I sat back, uncertain. I was grasping at straws … and yet here was something, a date plucked out of nonsense. It was wild conjecture, but perhaps Enoch and Astiza could make sense of it. Tired of the puzzle, I found myself wondering about this strange woman who seemed to have secrets in layered depths I hadn’t suspected. Priestess? What was her mission in all this? Were Talma’s suspicions justified? Had she really known Silano? It seemed impossible, and yet the people I was meeting seemed oddly connected. But I didn’t fear her – I missed her. I remembered a moment in Enoch’s courtyard in the cool of early evening, the shadows blue, the sky a dome, the scent of spices and smoke from the house kitchen mingling with that of dust and fountain water. She sat on a ben
ch without speaking, meditating, and I stood by a pillar not speaking. I simply gazed at her hair and cheek and she gave me leave and time to look. We were not master and servant then, nor Westerner and Egyptian, but man and woman. To touch her would have broken the spell.

  So I simply watched, knowing this was a moment I’d carry with me the rest of my life.

  Ship noise brought me back from my reverie. There were cries, running feet, and the rumble of drums. I glanced at the beams overhead. What now? Some drill for the fleet? I tried to concentrate, but the excitement only seemed to increase.

  So I hammered to be let out. When the door opened, I spoke to the marine. ‘What’s going on?’

  His own head was tilted up, listening. ‘English!’

  ‘Here? Now?’

  He looked at me, his face sombre in the dim lantern light. ‘Nelson.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I left the calendar and joined a tide of men climbing to the gun decks, sailors cursing the ship’s lack of readiness. Our flagship was half warehouse, with no time now for careful stowage. Men were scrambling to reattach cannons to their proper tackle, hoist yards, and take down scaffolding.

  I came up to the bright air of the main deck. ‘Get those awnings down!’ Captain Casabianca was bawling. ‘Signal the men ashore to come back!’ Then he turned to his son, Giocante. ‘Go organise the powder monkeys.’ The boy, who showed more anticipation than fear, disappeared below to supervise the transfer of ammunition to the hungry guns.

  I went up to Admiral Brueys on the quarterdeck, who was studying the sea with his telescope. The horizon was white with sail, the wind swiftly blowing trouble our way. Nelson’s squadron had every inch of canvas up and straining, and before long I could count fourteen ships of the line. The French had thirteen, plus four frigates – even enough odds – but we were anchored and half unready. Six were in line ahead of L’Orient, six behind. It was midafternoon, surely too late for battle, and perhaps Brueys could work out to sea during the night. Except that the British showed no sign of heaving to. Instead they were racing down on us like a pack of anxious hounds, spray flying from their bows. They meant to start a fight.

  Brueys glanced aloft.

  ‘Admiral?’ I ventured.

  ‘Hundreds of men ashore, our supplies unsecured, our yards and sails down, our crews half sick,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I warned of this. Now we must fight in place.’

  ‘Admiral?’ I tried again, ‘I think my investigation is finished. Should I go ashore?’

  He looked at me blankly for a moment, and then remembered my mission. ‘Ah, yes, Gage. It’s too late, American. All our boats are engaged retrieving sailors.’

  I went to the leeward rail and looked. Sure enough, the fleet longboats were making for the beach to pick up men stranded there. To my eye, they didn’t seem in any great hurry to get back.

  ‘By the time the boats return, the English will be upon us,’ Brueys said. ‘You’ll be our guest for the battle, I’m afraid.’

  I swallowed and looked again at the English ships, great leaning cloud castles of taut canvas, men inching along the yardarms like ants, every gun run out, their battle flags flapping red. Damned if they didn’t look like an eager lot. ‘The sun’s going down,’ I said uneasily. ‘Surely the British won’t attack in the dark.’

  The admiral watched the approaching squadron with a mouth set in resignation. I decided now that he looked positively gaunt from his dysentery, and about as ready for a hard fight as a man who has just run twenty miles. ‘No sane man would,’ he replied. ‘But this is Nelson.’ He snapped the telescope shut. ‘I suggest you get back down to the treasury. It’s below the waterline and safest there.’

  I didn’t want to fight the English, but it seemed cowardly not to. ‘If you could spare a rifle …’

  ‘No, don’t get in the way. This is the navy’s fight. You are a savant, and your mission is to return to Bonaparte with your information.’ He clapped my shoulder, turned, and began snapping more orders.

  Too curious to scurry below yet, I moved to the rail, feeling perfectly useless and silently cursing the impatient Nelson. Any normal admiral would have shortened sail as the sky turned orange, manoeuvred his fleet into a tidy line of battle, and given his men a warm meal and a good night’s sleep before starting a tangle. But this was Nelson, who had famously boarded not just one French ship but the next one beyond, leaping from one to the other and capturing both. Once again, he showed no signs of slowing. The nearer he got, the more cries of consternation went up among the French sailors. This was madness! And yet it was increasingly obvious that the battle was going to begin at day’s end.

  The sailors on shore were still climbing into the longboats, trying to get back to their ships.

  A few cannon thumped, to no effect. I could see the lead English vessels making for the western end of the French line near Abukir Island, where the French had sited a land battery. That end of the bay was thick with shoals, and Brueys had been confident that the English fleet couldn’t negotiate it. Yet no one had told Nelson that, and two English battleships, aptly named Zealous and Goliath, were racing each other for the privilege of running aground. Insanity! The sun was on the horizon, blood red, and the French shore howitzers were firing, except they couldn’t reach the English ships with their arcing shells. The Goliath pulled ahead in its little race, nicely silhouetted against the sinking orb, and instead of striking a rock it slipped neatly between Le Guerrier and the shore. Then it turned smartly and sailed up the French line on the leeward side, between Brueys and the beach! It luffed sails as it came abreast the second ship of the formation, Le Conquerant, neatly dropped anchor as if it had arrived in port, and promptly let loose a broadside at the unready side of the French ship. There was a clap of thunder, a huge gush of smoke roiling out to envelop both vessels. Le Conquerant heeled as if punched by a fist. I could see great sprays of splinters arcing skyward as the French ship was pounded. Then screams began to float down the line. Anchored as we were, the wind against us, we could do nothing but wait our turn.

  The Zealous anchored opposite Le Guerrier, and the British ships Orion, Audacious, and Theseus followed into Abukir Bay, also taking the French on their unprotected flank. Brueys’s formidable wall suddenly seemed hapless. Gunsmoke rose to form thunderheads, and what had at first been the distant thudding of guns drew closer and closer, climbing to a roar. The sun had gone down, the wind dying, the sky dusk. Now the rest of the English fleet slowed to a crawl and menacingly drifted down the seaward side, meaning each French ship at the head of Brueys’s anchored line was being raked from both sides, outnumbered two to one. While the first six French ships were being pounded, the ships in the rear of the assembly had no means of getting into battle. They sat at anchor, their crews watching helplessly. It was plain bloody murder. I could hear raw English cheering in the dusk, while the French cries were of horror and hatred at the growing butchery. Napoleon would be cursing if he could see it.

  There is a horrible stateliness to a sea battle, a languid ballet that heightens the tension before each broadside. Boats materialise out of the smoke like looming giants. Cannons roar, and then long seconds tick by while batteries are reloaded, wounded dragged aside, and buckets thrown on smouldering fires. Here at the Nile, some of the ships hammered at each other from anchor. Smoke created a vast fog, barely penetrated by the light of a rising full moon. Those ships that remained mobile manoeuvred half blinded. I saw an English ship emerge near our own – Bellerophon, it read – and heard English shouts of aim. It drifted as ponderously as an iceberg.

  ‘Get down!’ Brueys shouted to me. On the deck below I could hear Captain Casabianca crying, ‘Fire! Fire!’ I flattened myself on the quarterdeck and the world dissolved to a roar. L’Orient heeled, both from the discharge of her own guns and the weight of the answering English shot slamming home. The ship quaked beneath me and I could hear splintering sounds as our ship was gutted. Yet the French tactics of aiming for the rigging
caused havoc on the other side as well. Like a fall of axed timber, Bellerophon’s masts came down in a huge creaking tangle, smothering its top deck with a terrifying crash. The British battleship began to float away. Now it was the turn of the French sailors to cheer. I shakily stood up, embarrassed that no one else had dropped to the deck. Yet at least a score were dead or wounded, and Brueys was bleeding from head and hand. He refused to be bandaged, dripping bright blood on the deck.

  ‘I meant get down to the hold, Monsieur Gage,’ he amended.

  ‘Maybe I’m good luck,’ I said shakily, watching Bellerophon disappear in the bank of gun smoke.

  Yet I’d no sooner said so than one of the British guns stabbed orange in the dark and a cannon ball came whistling across to clear the rail and neatly clip the admiral in the thigh. His lower leg was plucked off like a tooth jerked by a string, flying away into the night in a fine mist of blood, tumbling and white. Brueys stood momentarily on one leg, looking at his absent member with disbelief, and then slowly toppled like a broken stool, hitting the deck with a thud. His officers cried out and gathered around him. Blood ran like spilt sauce.

  ‘Get him to the infirmary!’ Captain Casabianca roared.

  ‘No,’ Brueys gasped. ‘I want to die where I can see.’

  Everything was chaotic. A sailor staggered by with half his scalp gone. A midshipman lay thrown against a gun like a piece of litter, a one-foot splinter through his chest. The main deck had become a perfect hell of flying splinters, falling rigging, evisceration, and gore. Men trod on their companions’ ruptured organs. Powder boys skidded on sheets of lubricating blood, gushing faster than the sand thrown across it could soak it up. Cannons barked, muskets cracked, shot screamed by, and the sheer concentration of havoc seemed far worse than a land battle. The night throbbed with the flashes of the guns, so that one saw the battle in flickering glimpses. I could barely hear anymore, and all I could smell and taste was smoke. Two more British ships had anchored near us, I realised, and were beginning to pound us with fresh broadsides. L’Orient was shuddering from the impact of round shot like a chastened dog, and our own barking was slower as French cannon were disabled.