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 burned 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 grabbed 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 smolder, 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 burned 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 spiraled 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 favorite, 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 burned like a slap in the face. I learned I was a guest of Captain Josiah Lawrence, HMS Dangerous.
I didn’t like that name at all.
And sure enough, Smith materialized. 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 inquiry 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 organize 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 burned 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 learned 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 inquiries 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 archeological 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 invasion 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, modernization, and cultural tension still playing out today. For archeology, 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 learned 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 labeled 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.
The Great Pyramid’s precise geographic placement, its mysterious relationship to the size of our planet, its relationship to pi, and the fascinating correlations between the dimensions of its chambers and intriguing mathematical concepts are all true. The Fibonacci Sequence is a real phenomena, seen in nature in spiral patterns as Jomard describes, and the pyramid’s embodiment of the golden section, or golden number, is also true. Pascal’s triangle is a real mathematical concept and it yields many more number games than are mentioned in this novel. It does produce a value close to that of the Egyptian value for pi, though I won’t promise the pattern really leads to a secret door. I’ve taken the liberty of allowing my French savants to guess more about pyramid mathematics than was immediately apparent during Napoleon’s invasion. While Jomard really did publish intriguing theories, some of the concepts in this novel came from later scholars after more precise measurements could be made. A fascinating and controversial introduction to these concepts and an exhaustive analysis of pyramid mathematics can be found in the 1971 book Secrets of the Great Pyramid by Peter Tompkins and Livio Catullo Stecchini.
This novel closely follows the early history of Bonaparte’s military invasion of Egypt. Most of the characters are real people, including ten-year-old Giocante Casabianca, whose death at the Battle of the Nile inspired the famed nineteenth Century poem, “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck.” One historical liberty is that I place Desaix’s presence at the temple of Dendara three months earlier than the general actually arrived there. The army paused in late January 1799, and the weary artist Vivant Denon was so entranced by the temple’s glories that he wrote, “What I saw today has paid me back for all my misery.” A few days later, when the French division first saw the ruins of Karnak and Luxor, the troops spontaneously came to a halt, applauded, and presented arms.
Many historical details used in this novel, including the presence of Conte’s balloons, are true. There is scholarly disagreement about whether Napoleon actually entered the Great Pyramid, and what happened to him if he did, but the author has lain in the granite sarcophagus as Bonaparte may have, and found it a remarkable experience.
This story weaves together military and political history, Masonic lore, biblical scholarship, mystic speculation, and information about ancient Egypt. For a general history of the invasion I recommend J. Christopher Herold’s 1962 prizewinning book Bonaparte in Egypt. Fascinating eyewitness accounts of the expedition include those by the artist Vivant Denon, French captain Joseph Marie Mouret, and the Egyptian Al-Jabarti. Some of the quotes attributed to Napoleon in this novel are taken from real life, though not all were spoken during the Egyptian campaign. His own words reveal a man of fascinating complexity.
There are hundreds of scholarly and popular works on scientific Egyptology. Speculative and historical literature on the pyramids, ancient gods, and Egyptian magic is also vast. A good recent introduction to alternative theories about ancient Egypt is the 2005 bo
ok Pyramid Quest by Robert Schoch and Robert McNally. A book that mentions the birth of the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry and gives a sense of mystical yearnings in the Age of Reason is Iain McCalman’s 2003 biography, The Last Alchemist, about Cagliostro. A sprawling, sometimes incoherent, but truly monumental work of mysticism is Manly P. Hall’s 1928 classic, The Secret Teachings of All Ages. It summarizes what enthusiasts label Hermetic lore, after the god Hermes, the Greek adaptation of the Egyptian god Thoth.
I’m indebted to dozens of nonfiction authors for the facts behind this novel, as well as the guide Ruth Shilling of All One World Egypt Tours; Egyptian guides Ashraf Mohie el-Din and Galal Hassan Marghany; and Egyptologist-in-the-making Richard Mandeville of the United Kingdom. What is true in this novel is to their credit, while the fictions are all mine. As always, praise must go to the support and insights of my editors at HarperCollins: Michael Shohl, Jill Schwartzman, and Jonathan Burnham; senior production editor David Koral; copy editor Martha Cameron; and my agent, Andrew Stuart. Special appreciation to my wife and helpmate, Holly, who crawled through the pyramids with me. Finally, thanks go to the hospitality of the people of Egypt, who are so proud of their heritage.
CREDITS
Cover design by Richard Ljoenes.
Portrait of Ethan Gage by Seb Jarnot; ships© Stapleton Collection/Corbis; “Battle of Pyramids, 21 July 1798” (oil on canvas), Watteau, Francois Louis Joseph (1758-1823) / Musee des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library; Map courtesy of Paulus Swaen
COPYRIGHT
NAPOLEAN’S PYRAMIDS. Copyright © 2007 by William Dietrich. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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