Napoleon's Pyramids

by William Dietrich

  ‘Astiza! Hurry!’

  The ground was slipping beneath us at an alarming speed.

  Her ascent was painfully slow, given her weariness. Silano gained on her, teeth gritted, eyes slit with hatred. I reached down. Just as Astiza’s hand neared mine, he grabbed her ankle. ‘He’s got me!’ She kicked, he cursed and swayed, holding the tether, and then clutched her leg once again. ‘He’s like a leech!’

  I leant over the basket rim to haul. ‘I’ll get you in and cut the rope!’

  ‘Now his other arm is on me! He’s hanging on me as much as the tether!’

  ‘Kick, Astiza! Fight!’

  ‘I can’t,’ she cried. ‘His arms are locked around me.’

  I looked down. The demon was squeezing her legs like a constricting snake, his face bitter with determination. I pulled, but couldn’t lift both of them. Combined, they weighed three hundred pounds.

  ‘Tell me what you learnt, Gage!’ he shouted. ‘Let me in, or we all go down!’

  The balloon continued to lumber along less than a hundred feet off the surface. We passed over the edge of the riverbank and drifted along the shallows of the Nile. Conte was running along the river after us. Ahead I saw a company of French infantry turn and look at this scene in amazement. We’d pass so close that they could kill us all with a volley if they chose.

  ‘It’s the ring!’ Astiza cried. ‘The ring you made me wear! I forgot to take it off! It’s the curse, Ethan, the curse!’

  ‘There is no curse!’

  ‘Take it off me!’

  But her hands were grasped like iron on the rope and out of my reach, and I could no more slip the silly ring off than I could chop off her hand. Meanwhile Silano, clutching her legs, was even farther from me.

  That gave me an idea.

  ‘Take my tomahawk!’ I said. ‘Crack his head like a nut!’

  Desperately she released her right hand, the one without the ring, caught my weapon as I dropped it, and chopped down at Silano. But he’d heard us and as she swung he dropped until his arms were clamped like a vise around her ankles, his head out of range. The blade whistled by his hair. With just one arm holding on she slid down the rope a few feet, palm burning, out of my grasp. I hauled on the tether, but couldn’t lift it.

  ‘Astiza!’ Silano shouted. ‘Don’t! You know I still love you!’

  It was as if the words paralysed her for a moment, and they shocked me as well. Her eyes flickered with memory and a thousand questions roared in my head. He loved her? She’d said she didn’t love him, but …

  ‘Don’t believe him!’ I cried.

  She thrashed the tomahawk at air, her look frantic. ‘Ethan! I can’t hold on! Pull up the rope!’

  ‘You’re too heavy! Shake him off! The soldiers are aiming! They’re going to shoot us all unless we can climb!’ If I somehow climbed down over her to get to Silano, we’d probably all tumble off.

  She jerked but the count was like a barnacle. She slid down another foot.

  ‘Astiza, they’re about to fire!’

  She looked up at me in desperation. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ It was a sob. We lumbered along, too heavy to rise, the Nile glittering below.

  ‘Astiza, please,’ the count pleaded. ‘It’s not too late …’

  ‘Kick! Kick! They’re going to shoot us all!’

  ‘I can’t.’ She was gasping.

  ‘Kick!’

  Astiza looked at me with tears in her eyes. ‘Find it,’ she whispered.

  Then, swinging viciously, she swung the tomahawk against the tether. The line snapped with a crack.

  And in an instant, she and Silano were gone.

  With their weight released the balloon popped up like a champagne cork, soaring so quickly that I lost my footing and toppled into the bottom of the basket. ‘Astiza!’

  But there was no reply, just screams as the pair fell.

  I scrambled up just in time to see a titanic splash in the river. Their fall had distracted the soldiers for a moment, but now the muskets swung in unison back to me. I was soaring away. There was a sharp command, a flash of muzzles, and a huge plume of smoke blew out.

  I heard the hum of bullets, but none arced high enough to hit.

  In despair, I studied the surface of the receding river. The rising sun was in my eyes and the Nile was a dazzling platter of light, every wavelet a mirror. There, was that a head, maybe two? Had one or both of them survived the fall? Or was it all a trick of the light?

  The harder I strained, the less certain I was of what I saw. The soldiers were shouting excitedly and milling on the riverbank. Then all became impossibly blurred, my hope gone, my ambitions dust, my heart profoundly alone.

  For the first time in many years, I was crying.

  The Nile was molten silver, and I was blind.

  * * *

  I kept rising. There was Conte far below, staring in stupefaction at his lost prize. I was high as a minaret, with a panorama of Cairo’s smoking rooftops. The world was shrinking to toys, the sound of battle receding. The wind was taking me north, downriver.

  The balloon climbed higher than the pyramids, and then as high as a mountain. I began to wonder if it would ever stop and if I, like Icarus, would be burnt by the sun. Through morning haze I saw Egypt in all its serpentine glory. A snake of green stretched south until lost in the distance, like a ship’s wake in an ocean of brown desert. To the north, the direction we were drifting, the green opened like a fan to the Nile Delta, the brown flood waters creating a vast lake that was thronged with birds and dotted with date palms. Beyond was the sea glimmer of the Mediterranean. There was a hushed silence, as if everything we’d just experienced was some dark and noisy dream. The wicker creaked. I heard a bird cry. Otherwise, I was alone.

  Why had I made her wear the ring? Now I had no treasure, and no Astiza either.

  Why hadn’t I listened?

  Because I needed Thoth’s bloody book to pound some sense into my own thick head, I thought. Because I was the worst savant in the world.

  I slumped in the wicker basket, dazed. Too much had happened. The pyramid was locked, Bin Sadr gone, the Egyptian Rite defeated. I’d had a measure of revenge for the deaths of Talma and Enoch. Even Ash was reunited with his people in a struggle for Egypt. And I had resolved nothing, except to learn what I believed in.

  The woman I had just lost.

  The pursuit of happiness, I thought bitterly. Any chance of that had just fallen into the Nile. I was furious, heartsick, deadened. I wanted to go back to Cairo and learn Astiza’s fate, whatever it would cost me. I wanted to sleep for a thousand years.

  The balloon permitted neither. Its bag was sewn tight. It was cold this high, my clothes still wet, and I felt dizzy from vertigo. Sooner of later this contraption had to come down, and what then?

  The delta was a fairyland below. Date palms made stately rows. Fields formed quilted patterns. Donkeys trundled on ancient dirt lanes. From the air everything seemed clean, tidy, and untroubled. People pointed and ran after my progress, but I soon left them behind. The sky seemed a deeper blue. I was having, I thought, a glimpse of heaven.

  I kept drifting northwest, at least a mile above the earth. In a few hours I spied Rosetta at the Nile’s mouth, and Abukir Bay where the French fleet had been destroyed. Alexandria was beyond. I crossed the coast, the surf a rim of cream, and drifted out over the Mediterranean. So, I would drown after all.

  Why hadn’t I given up the medallion a lifetime ago?

  And then I saw a ship.

  Ahead on the Mediterranean was a frigate, cruising the coast near Rosetta where the Nile debouched with its long tongue of chocolate. The tiny vessel sparkled in the sun, cutting a foamy wake. The sea was dotted with whitecaps. Flags snapped in the wind.

  ‘It has an English ensign,’ I muttered to myself.

  Hadn’t I promised Nelson I’d return with information? Despite my sorrow, dim thoughts of survival began to beat into my brain.

  But how to come down? I grabb
ed the ropes holding the basket and shimmied to the bag overhead. I no longer had either rifle or tomahawk to pierce it. I looked down. The frigate had changed course to intercept my own, and sailors the size of insects were pointing. But I’d easily outrun him if I didn’t descend to the sea. Then I remembered I still had a stub of candle and a scrap of flint. There was a steel collar to hold the ropes under the gasbag. I peeled some strands of hemp and struck my flint against the collar, generating enough spark to ignite tendrils of rope, which in turn lit peeled strips of wicker, which gave me flame for my wick. Shielding my candle, I reached up toward the gasbag.

  Conte had told me hydrogen was flammable.

  I held the flame to the silk, saw it smoulder, a wink of light …

  Then there was a whoosh and a clout of hot air punched me straight down into the basket, singed and terrified.

  The bag had exploded with fire!

  Flames ran up a seam like a train of gunpowder, boiling skyward. The balloon didn’t burst, the eruption was not that violent, but it burnt like a dry pine bough. I began a sickening plunge, much faster than I wanted. The flames gathered force and I threw all the rock ballast off to slow my descent. It hardly helped. The basket rocked madly as we spiralled down, trailing fire and smoke. Too fast! Now the whitecaps became individual waves, a gull skittered by, the burning bag was falling down around me, and I could see spray whipping off the swell tops.

  I braced, and the basket hit with a jarring crash. A huge fountain of water shot up and the bag fell just past my head, hissing as its heat hit the Mediterranean.

  Fortunately, the fire mostly consumed what might otherwise have been a soggy anchor. The wicker basket leaked, but slowly, and I’d given the frigate a beacon it could hardly miss. It was steering straight for me.

  The basket went down as a longboat was being lowered. I treaded water for only five minutes before being picked up.

  Once again I was deposited soaked and sputtering on launch floorboards, crewmen gaping, a young midshipman peering at me like I was a man from the moon.

  ‘Where the bloody hell did you come from?’

  ‘Bonaparte,’ I gasped.

  ‘And who the bloody hell are you?’

  ‘An English spy.’

  ‘Aye, I remember him,’ one of the crewmen said. ‘Picked him up when we was at Abukir Bay. He pops up like a bloody bobber.’

  ‘Please,’ I coughed. ‘I’m a friend of Sir Sidney Smith.’

  ‘Sidney Smith, eh? We’ll see about that!’

  ‘I know he’s not the navy’s favourite, but if you just put me in touch …’

  ‘You can put your lies to him right now.’

  In short order I was standing dripping on the quarterdeck, so sore, singed, hungry, thirsty, and heartsick that I thought I would faint. The grog they gave burnt like a slap in the face. I learnt I was a guest of Captain Josiah Lawrence, HMS Dangerous.

  I didn’t like that name at all.

  And sure enough, Smith materialised. Dressed in the uniform of a Turkish admiral, he came bounding up on deck from some cabin below when the news of my rescue was passed to him. I don’t know which of us looked more ridiculous: me, the drowned rat, or him, gussied up like an Oriental potentate.

  ‘By God, it is Gage!’ exclaimed the man I’d last seen in a gypsy camp.

  ‘This man claims he’s your spy,’ Lawrence announced with distaste.

  ‘Actually, I prefer to consider myself an observer,’ I said.

  ‘Heart of oak!’ cried Smith. ‘I had word from Nelson that he’d contacted you after the Nile, but neither one of us really believed you’d make it out again.’ He slapped my back. ‘Well done, man, well done! I guess you had it in you!’

  I coughed. ‘I never expected to see you again, either.’

  ‘Small world, is it not? Now then, I hope you got rid of that damned medallion.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I sensed nothing but trouble from that. Nothing but trouble. And what’s the word on Bonaparte?’

  ‘There’s a revolt in Cairo. And Mameluke resistance in the south.’

  ‘Splendid!’

  ‘I don’t think the Egyptians can beat him, however.’

  ‘We’ll give them help. And you’ve flown like a bird from Boney’s nest?’

  ‘I had to borrow one of their observation balloons.’

  He shook his head in admiration. ‘Damn fine show, Gage! Fine show! Had enough of French radicalism, I hope. Back to king and country. No, wait – you’re a colonial. But you have come around to the English point of view?’

  ‘I prefer to think of my view as American, Sir Sidney. Put off by the whole thing.’

  ‘Well. Quite, quite. Yet you can’t capitulate to indecision in desperate times, can you? Have to believe in something, eh?’

  ‘Bonaparte is talking about marching on Syria.’

  ‘I knew it! The bastard won’t rest until he’s occupied the sultan’s palace in Constantinople! Syria, eh? Then we’d best set course for there and give warning. There’s a pasha there, what’s his name?’ He turned to the captain.

  ‘Djezzar,’ Lawrence replied. ‘The name means ‘butcher’. Bosnian by birth, rose from slavery, supposed to be unusually cruel even in a region known for its cruelty. Nastiest bastard in five hundred miles.’

  ‘Just the man we need to face off against the French!’ Smith cried.

  ‘I’ve no more business with Napoleon,’ I interrupted. ‘I simply need to learn if a woman I was with in Egypt survived a terrible fall, and reunite with her if she did. After that, I was hoping to arrange passage to New York.’

  ‘Perfectly understandable! You’ve done your bit! And yet a man of your pluck and diplomatic acumen would be invaluable in warning the wogs about this damned Bonaparte, wouldn’t you? I mean, you’ve seen his tyranny firsthand. Come on, Gage, don’t you want to see the Levant? Scarcely a stone’s throw from Cairo! That’s the place to learn about this woman of yours! We can send word through our damned oily spies.’

  ‘Perhaps an enquiry through Alexandria …’

  ‘Go ashore there and you’ll be shot on sight! Or worse, hanged as a spy and a balloon thief! Ah, the French will be sharpening their guillotine for you! No, no, that option is foreclosed. I know you’re something of a lone wolf, but let the king’s navy here give you some help for a change. If the woman is alive, we can get word through Palestine, and organise a raid with a chance to really get her back. I admire your courage, but now’s the time to use a cool head, man.’

  He had a point. I suppose I’d burnt my bridges with Napoleon, and charging back into Egypt alone might be more suicidal than brave. My balloon ride had left Astiza at least a hundred miles to the south, in Cairo. Maybe I could play along with Sir Sidney until I learnt what had happened. Once ashore in a nearby port like El Arish or Gaza, I’d pawn the cherubim in my crotch for money. Then a card game, a new rifle …

  Smith was going on. ‘Acre, Haifa, Jaffa – historic cities all. Saracens, Crusaders, Romans, Jews – say, I know just the place you could give us a hand!’

  ‘A hand?’ I wanted their help, not the other way around.

  ‘Someone with your skills could slip in and have a look about while making enquiries about this woman. Perfect place, for your purposes and mine.’

  ‘Purposes?’

  He nodded, plans building in his head like a thundercloud, his grin wide as a cannon’s mouth. He grasped my arms as if I’d dropped from the sky to answer all his prayers.

  ‘Jerusalem!’ he cried.

  And as I contemplated the will of the gods and the luck of cards, the bow of our ship began to turn.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 invasion of Egypt was not just one of the great military adventures of all time, it was a turning point in French, Egyptian, and archaeological history. For Bonaparte, Egypt would prove to be both defeat and springboard, giving him the desperation and fame to seize absolute power in France. For Egypt, the French invas
ion was the beginning of the modern era after centuries of Ottoman and Mameluke domination. It not only opened the door to Western technology and trade, but also began a turbulent era of colonialism, independence, modernisation, and cultural tension still playing out today. For archaeology, Napoleon’s inclusion of 167 savants in his invading force was a watershed. Early in 1799, French soldiers discovered a stone at Rosetta with Greek, Demotic, and ancient writing that would prove the key to deciphering hieroglyphics. That, coupled with publication of the savant’s monumental Description de l’Egype, in 23 volumes between 1809 and 1828, gave birth to the science of Egyptology. It started the Romantic era’s enchantment with Egyptian fashion and ignited a global fascination with ancient Egypt that continues to this day. Almost everything we know about ancient Egypt has been learnt since Napoleon’s invasion.

  The idea that the Great Pyramid of Giza functioned as something other than a simple tomb, and that its pharaoh may be buried elsewhere, dates as far back as the ancient Greek historians Herodotus and Diodorus. The puzzle increased when ninth-century Arab grave robbers found no mummy, no treasure, and no inscriptions when they broke into the tomb. In the last two centuries there has been unending fascination with, and debate about, the pyramid’s dimensions, mysteries, and mathematical meaning. While some of the most speculative theorists accuse mainstream Egyptologists of being close-minded, and while some academics have labelled the zaniest of the crackpots as ‘pyramidiots’, there is serious scholarly debate about the pyramid’s structure and purpose. New mysteries are still being discovered by robotic explorers, and hidden chambers are still suspected. The Giza pyramids rest on a limestone plateau that could contain caves, and Herodotus reported an underground lake or river beneath the structure.