Ethan Gage Collection # 1

by William Dietrich

  The relief from the heat was immediate. We passed through a small open atrium to a courtyard with murmuring fountain and shading orange trees. The home’s architecture seemed to create a gentle breeze. An ornate wooden stair climbed one side of the court to screened rooms above. Beyond was the main living room, floored in intricate Moorish tile and covered at one end with oriental carpets and cushions, where guests could lounge. At the opposite end was a screened balcony where women could listen to the conversation of the men below. The beamed ceiling was ornate, the arches pleasingly peaked, and the sculpted bookcases crammed with volumes. Draperies billowed in puffs of desert air. Talma mopped his face. “It’s what I dreamed.”

  We didn’t stop here, however. Mustafa led us through a smaller courtyard beyond, bare except for an alabaster pedestal carved with mysterious signs. Above was a square of brilliantly blue sky at the top of towering white walls. The sun illuminated one side like snow and cast the opposite into shadow.

  “It’s a light well,” Astiza murmured.

  “A what?”

  “Such wells at the pyramids were used for measuring time. At the summer solstice, the sun would be directly overhead, casting no shadow. That is how the priests could pinpoint the longest day of the year.”

  “Yes, that is right!” Ashraf confirmed. “It told the seasons and predicted the rising of the Nile.”

  “Why did they need to know that?”

  “When the Nile rose, the farms flooded and labor was freed for other projects, like building pyramids,” Astiza said. “The Nile’s cycle was the cycle of Egypt. The measurement of time was the beginning of civilization. People had to be assigned to keep track of it, and became priests, and thought of all kinds of other useful things for people to do.”

  Beyond was a large room as dim as the courtyard was bright. It was crowded with dusty statuary, broken stone vessels, and chunks of wall with colorful Egyptian painting. Red-skinned men and yellow-skinned women posed in the stiff yet graceful poses I’d seen on the tablet in the hold of L’Orient. There were jackal-headed gods, the cat goddess Bastet, stiffly serene pharaohs, black-polished falcons, and blocky wooden cases with life-sized paintings of humans on the outside. Talma had already described these elaborate coffins to me. They held mummies.

  The scribe stopped before one in excitement. “Are these real?” he exclaimed. “A source like this could cure all my illnesses…”

  I pulled. “Come on before you choke to death.”

  “These are cases from which the mummies have been removed,” Ashraf told him. “Thieves would discard the coffins, but Enoch has let it be known he will pay to collect them. He thinks their decoration is another key to the past.”

  I saw that some were covered with hieroglyphics as well as drawings. “Why write on something that would be buried?” I asked.

  “It may be to instruct the dead through the perils of the underworld, my brother says. For us the living, they are useful to store things in because most people are too superstitious to look inside. They fear a curse.”

  A narrow stone staircase at the rear of the room led down to a large vaulted cellar lit by lamps. At Ashraf ’s invitation, we descended to a large library. It was roofed with barrel vaults and floored with stone, dry and cool. Its wooden shelves were crammed floor to ceiling with books, journals, scrolls, and sheaves of parchment. Some bindings were sturdy leather, light glinting on gold lettering. Other tomes, often in strange languages, seemed held together by tendrils of old fabric, their smell as musty as the grave. At a central table, half the size of a barn door, sat the bent figure of a man.

  “Greetings, my brother,” Ashraf said in English.

  Enoch looked up from his writing. He was older than Ashraf, bald, with a fringe of long gray locks and a heavy beard, looking as if Newton’s gravity had tugged all his hair toward his sandals. Dressed in gray robes, he was hawk-nosed and bright-eyed and his skin was the color of the parchment he’d been bent over. He carried an air of serenity few people achieve, his eyes betraying a hint of mischief.

  “So the French are occupying even my library?” The tone was wry.

  “No, they come as friends, and the tall one is an American. His friend is a French scribe…”

  “Who is interested in my dehydrated companion,” Enoch said with amusement. Talma was staring, transfixed, at a mummy posed upright in an open coffin in one corner. This casket, too, was covered with fine, indecipherable writing. The mummy was stripped of bandages, some of the old linen in a tangle at its feet, and incisions had been made in its chest cavity. There was nothing reassuring about the body, a dark brownish gray looking starved from the drying, the eyes closed, the nose a snub, the mouth open in a rictus that showed small, white teeth. I found it disturbing.

  Talma, however, was happy as sheep in clover. “Is this truly ancient?” he breathed. “An attempt at everlasting life?”

  “Antoine, I think they failed,” I observed dryly.

  “Not necessarily,” Enoch said. “To the Egyptians, the preservation of the dead physical body was a requirement for everlasting life. According to accounts that have come down to us, the ancients believed the individual consisted of three parts: his physical body, his ba—which we might call character—and his ka, or life force. These last two combined are equivalent to our modern soul. Ba and ka had to find each other and unite in a perilous underworld as the sun, Ra, journeyed each night through it, in order to form an immortal akh that would live amid the gods. The mummy was their daytime home until this task was completed. Instead of separating the material and the spiritual, Egyptian religion combined them.”

  “Ba, ka, and Ra? Sounds like a firm of solicitors.” I was always uncomfortable with the spiritual.

  Enoch ignored me. “I have decided the journey of this one should be completed by now. I’ve unwrapped and cut him to investigate ancient embalming techniques.”

  “There is talk these tissues could have medicinal qualities,” Talma said.

  “Which distorts what Egyptians believed,” Enoch replied. “The body was a home to be animated, not the essence of life itself. Just as you are more than your ailments, scribe. You know, your trade as scribe was that of the wise Thoth.”

  “I’m actually a journalist, come to record Egypt’s liberation,” Talma said.

  “How artfully you put that.” Enoch looked at Astiza. “And we have another guest, as well?”

  “She is a…” Ashraf began.

  “Servant,” Enoch finished. He looked at her curiously. “So you have come back.”

  Blimey, did these two know each other as well?

  “The gods appear to have willed it.” She cast her eyes down. “My master is dead, killed by Napoleon himself, and my new master is the American.”

  “An intriguing twist of fate.”

  Ashraf moved forward to embrace his brother. “It is also by the grace of all the gods and the mercy of these three that I’ve seen you again, brother! I’d made my peace and prepared for paradise, but then I was captured!”

  “You’re now their slave?”

  “The American has already set me free. He’s hired me as his bodyguard and guide with the money he took from me. He wants to hire you as well. Soon I will have back all that I lost. Is this not fate as well?”

  “Hire me for what?”

  “He’s come to Egypt with an ancient artifact. I told him you might recognize it.”

  “Ashraf is the bravest warrior I’ve ever seen,” I spoke up. “He hurtled a French infantry square and it took all of us to bring him down.”

  “Bah. I was captured by a woman pushing a wagon wheel.”

  “He has always been brave,” said Enoch. “Too much so. And vulnerable to women, as well.”

  “I am a man of this world, not the next, my brother. But these people seek your knowledge. They have an ancient medallion and want to know its purpose. When I saw it I knew I must bring them to you. Who knows more of the past than wise Enoch?”

  “A me
dallion?”

  “The American obtained it in Paris but thinks it Egyptian,” Astiza said. “Men have tried to kill him to obtain it. The bandit Bin Sadr desires it. French savants are curious about it. Bonaparte favors him because of it.”

  “Bin Sadr the Snake? We’d heard he rides with the invaders.”

  “He rides with whoever pays him enough,” Ashraf scoffed.

  “And who truly pays him?” Enoch asked Astiza.

  Again, she looked down. “Another scholar.” Did she know more than she’d told me?

  “He’s a spy for this Bonaparte,” Ashraf theorized, “and an agent, perhaps, for whoever wants this medallion most.”

  “Then the American should be most careful.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And the American threatens the peace of whatever home he comes into.”

  “As usual, you are quick with the truth, my brother.”

  “And yet you bring him to me.”

  “Because he may have what has long been rumored!”

  I didn’t like this talk at all. I’d just survived a major battle and yet was still in peril? “Just who is this Bin Sadr?” I asked.

  “He was such a relentless grave robber that he became an outcast,” Enoch said. “He had no sense of propriety or respect. Men of learning despised him, so he joined with Europeans investigating the dark arts. He became a mercenary and, by rumor, an assassin and began roaming the world in the company of powerful men. He disappeared for a time. Now he appears again, apparently working for Bonaparte.”

  Or for Count Alessandro Silano, I thought.

  “Sounds like a splendidly interesting newspaper story,” said Talma.

  “He would kill you if you wrote it.”

  “But perhaps too complicated for my readers,” the journalist amended.

  Maybe I should just give the medallion to this Enoch, I thought. After all, like the booty I had seized from Ash, it had cost me nothing. Let him deal with snakes and highwaymen. But no, what if it led to real treasure? Berthollet might think the best things in life are free, but in my experience the people who say that are ones who already have money.

  “So you’re seeking answers?” Enoch asked.

  “I’m seeking someone to trust. Someone to study it but not steal it.”

  “If your neckpiece is the kind of guidepost I think it is, I don’t want it for myself. It is a burden, not a gift. But perhaps I can help understand it. Can I see it?”

  I took it off and let it swing from its chain, everyone looking curiously. Then Enoch gave it the same inspection everyone else had, turning it, splaying the arms, and using a lamp to shine light through its perforations. “How did you get this?”

  “I won it at cards from a soldier who claimed it once belonged to Cleopatra. He said it was carried by an alchemist named Cagliostro.”

  “Cagliostro!”

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “He was in Egypt once.” Enoch shook his head. “He sought secrets no man should learn, entered places no man should enter, and uttered names no man should say.”

  “Why shouldn’t he say a name?”

  “To learn a god’s real name is to know how to call him to do your bidding,” Ashraf said. “To say the name of the dead is to summon them. The old ones believed words, especially written words, were magic.”

  The old man looked from me to Astiza. “What is your role here, priestess?”

  She bowed slightly. “I serve the goddess. She brought me to the American just as you have been brought, for her own purposes.”

  Priestess? What the devil did that mean?

  “Which maybe is to hurl this necklace into the Nile,” Enoch said.

  “Indeed. And yet the ancients forged it so that it might be found, did they not, wise Hermes? And it has come to us in this unlikely way. Why? How much is chance, and how much is destiny?”

  “A question I haven’t answered in a life of learning.” Enoch sighed, perplexed. “Now then.” He studied the medallion anew, pointing to the perforations in the disc. “Do you recognize the pattern?”

  “Stars,” Astiza offered.

  “Yes, but which ones?”

  We all shook our heads.

  “But it is easy! It is Draconis, or Draco. The dragon.” He traced a line along the stars that looked like a writhing snake or a skinny dragon. “It is a star constellation, meant to guide the owner of this medallion, I suspect.”

  “Guide him how?” I asked.

  “Who knows? The stars revolve in the night sky and shift position with the seasons. A constellation means little unless correlated with a calendar. So what good is this?”

  We waited for an answer to what we hoped was a rhetorical question.

  “I don’t know,” Enoch admitted. “Still, the ancients were obsessed with time. Some temples were built only to be illuminated on the winter solstice or the autumn equinox. The journey of the sun was like the journey of life. Did this come with no time piece?”

  “No,” I said. But I was reminded of the calendar that Monge had shown me in the hold of L’Orient, the one captured in the same fortress that had imprisoned Cagliostro. Maybe the old conjurer had carried the pair together. Could it be a clue?

  “Without knowing when it should be used, this medallion may be worthless. Now, this line that bisects the circle, what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “These zigzag lines here are almost certainly the ancient symbol for water.” I was surprised. I thought maybe they were mountains, but Enoch insisted they were the Egyptian symbol for waves. “But this little pyramid of scratches, it baffles me. And these arms…ah, but look here.” He pointed and we bent closer. There was a notch or indentation halfway down each arm that I’d never really noticed, as if part of the arm had been filed away.

  “Is it a ruler?” I tried. “That notch could mark a measurement.”

  “A possibility,” Enoch said. “But it could also be a place to fit another piece onto this one. Perhaps the reason this medallion is so mysterious, American, is because it’s not yet complete.”

  It was Astiza who suggested that I leave the medallion with the old man for study so that he could look for similar ornaments in his books. At first I was dubious. I’d gotten used to its weight and the security of knowing where it was at all time. Now I was going to give it up to a near-stranger?

  “It’s no good to any of us until we know what it is and what it’s for,” she reasoned. “Wear it and it can be taken from you in the streets of Cairo. Leave it in the cellar of a reclusive scholar and you’ve left it in a vault.”

  “Can I trust him?”

  “What choice do you have? How many answers have you gotten in your weeks of possession? Give Enoch a day or two to make some progress.”

  “What I am supposed to do in the meantime?”

  “Start asking questions of your own savants. Why would the constellation Draco be on this piece? A solution will come faster if we all work together.”

  “Ethan, it’s too big a risk,” Talma said, looking at Astiza with distrust.

  Indeed, who was this woman who’d been called priestess? Yet my heart told me Talma’s fears were exaggerated, that I’d been lonely in this quest and that now, unbidden, I had some allies to help unravel the mystery. The goddess’s will indeed. “No, she’s right,” I said. “We need help or we’re not going to make any progress. But if Enoch runs with my medallion, he’ll have the entire French army after him.”

  “Run? He has invited us to stay in his house with him.”

  My bed chamber was the finest I’d enjoyed in years. It was cool and shadowy, the bed high off the floor and surrounded by gauze curtains. The tile was layered with carpets, and the washbasin and ewer were silver and brass. What a contrast to the grime and heat of campaigning! Yet I felt myself being seduced into a story I didn’t understand, and found myself going back over events. Wasn’t it fortuitous that I’d met a Greek-Egyptian woman who spoke English? That
the brother of this strange Enoch had charged straight at me after breaking into the middle of the square at the Battle of the Pyramids? That Bonaparte had not just permitted, but approved, this addition to my retinue? It was almost as if the medallion was working magic as a strange attractant, drawing people in.

  Certainly it was time to put more questions to my supposed servant. After we’d bathed and rested I found Astiza in the main courtyard, now shadowy and cool. She was sitting by the fountain in expectation of my interrogation. Washed, changed, and combed, her hair shone like obsidian. Her breasts were cupped in folds of linen, their nubs distractingly draped, and her feet were slim and sandaled, her ankles crossed demurely. She wore bracelets, anklets, and an ankh at her throat, and was so breathtaking it was hard to think clearly. Nonetheless, I must.

  “Why did he call you priestess?” I said without preamble, sitting next to her.

  “Surely you didn’t think my interests are limited to cooking and washing for you,” she said quietly.

  “I knew you were more than a serving girl. But priestess of what?”

  Her eyes were wide, her gaze solemn. “Of faith that has run through every religion for ten thousand years: that there are worlds beyond the ones we see, Ethan, and mysteries beyond what we think we understand. Isis is a gate to those worlds.”

  “You’re a bloody pagan.”

  “And what is a pagan? If you look at the origin of the word, it means country dweller, a person of nature who lives to the rhythm of seasons and the sun. If that is paganism, then I am a fervent believer.”

  “And a believer in what else, exactly?”

  “That lives have purpose, that some knowledge is best left guarded, and some power sheathed and unused. Or, if released, that it be used for good.”