Napoleon’s Pyramids

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.

‘He’s dead,’ Casabianca announced, standing. I looked down at the admiral. He seemed white and empty, as if deflated by the blood that had poured out of him, but newly serene. At least he wouldn’t have to answer to Napoleon.

Then another British broadside and another explosion of splinters. This time Casabianca grunted and went down. Another officer’s head had simply disappeared, dissolving at the shoulders into red rain, and a lieutenant caught a ball midbody and was hurled overboard as if catapulted. I was too terrified to move.

‘Father!’ The midshipman who had guided me before suddenly appeared and rushed to Casabianca’s side, eyes wide with fright. In reply, the captain cursed and picked himself up. He was pattered with small splinter wounds, more angry than seriously hurt. ‘Get below like I told you,’ he growled.

‘I’ll not leave you!’

‘You’ll not leave your duty.’ He grasped his son’s shoulder. ‘We are examples to our men and to France!’

‘I’ll take him,’ I said, grabbing the youth and pulling. Now I was anxious to get off this slaughter deck myself. ‘Come, Giocante, you’re worth more fetching powder down there than dead up here.’

‘Let me go!’

‘Do as you’re ordered!’ his father shouted.

The boy was torn. ‘I’m afraid you’ll be killed.’

‘If I am, your responsibility is to help rally the men.’ Then he softened. ‘We’ll be alright.’

The boy and I descended into Hadean gloom. Each of the three gun decks were fogged with choking smoke and cacophonous with noise: the blast of guns, the crash of enemy shot, and the screams of the wounded. The concussions had left many of the gunners’ ears bleeding. The midshipman spied some useful duty and darted off, while I, with nothing to offer, descended farther until I was below the waterline once more. If L’Orient went down, at least I could take the calendar off the ship with me. Here in the pit the surgeons were sawing at limbs to screaming made bearable only by my relative deafness, their lanterns swinging to each rumble of the guns. Sailors passed buckets of water to wash away the blood.

There was a chain of boys like a line of apes passing up sausage-like bagged cartridges from the magazine. I pushed past them to the treasure room, where the light had gone out.

‘I need a lantern!’ I shouted to the sentry.

‘Not near the powder, you fool!’

Swearing, I groped in the dark for the calendar device. Here I was pawing over a king’s ransom, and the only way to get any of it out was through a hurricane of fire. What if we sank? Millions of francs of treasure would go to the bottom. Could I stuff some in my boot? I could feel the roll of L’Orient as each British broadside shoved the warship this way and that. The timbers of the ribs and deck trembled. I hunched like a child, moaning as I searched. The cannonade was like a ram battering a door, sure to eventually stave us in.

And then I heard a sailor’s most dreaded words: ‘Fire!’

I looked out. The magazine door had been slammed shut and the powder monkeys were scampering upward. That meant our own cannons would quickly go silent. Everything was orange overhead. ‘Open the cocks to flood the magazine!’ someone shouted, and I began to hear the gush of water. I put my hand to the deck overhead and flinched. It was already uncomfortably hot. The wounded were screaming in terror.

A head appeared in the hatch above. ‘Get out of there, you crazy American! Don’t you know the ship is on fire?’

There! The calendar! I felt its shape, grasped it, and mounted the ladder in fear, leaving a fortune behind. Flames were everywhere, spreading faster than I’d thought possible. Tar, hemp, paint, dry wood, and canvas: we were fighting on a heap of kindling.

A French marine loomed before me, bayonet fixed, eyes wild. ‘What’s that?’ He looked at the odd thing I carried.

‘A calendar for Bonaparte.’

‘You stole from the treasury!’

‘I’ve orders to save it.’

‘Show them!’

‘They’re with Brueys.’ Or, I thought, on fire.

‘Thief! It’s to the brig with you!’

He’d gone mad. I looked around in desperation. Men were leaping from the gun ports like fleeing rats.

I had only a second to decide. I could fight this lunatic for a ring of metal or trade it for my life. ‘Here!’ I pitched the calendar to him. He let his musket barrel droop to awkwardly catch it and I used the moment to shove past him, scrambling up to the next deck.

‘Come back, you!’

Here the fire and smoke were even worse. It was a charnel house of horror, a butcher’s banquet of mangled bodies beginning to roast in the heat. Sightless eyes stared at me, fingers clutching for succor. Many of the dead were in flames, their tissues sizzling.

I kept climbing and finally gained the quarterdeck again, coughing and gasping. All the rigging was alight, a great pyramid of fire, and even as smoke roiled upward to obscure the moon, burning bits rained down like pitch from hell. The grit of ash crunched under my feet. Gun carriages were smashed, marines lay toppled like ninepins, and gratings were crushed. I staggered toward the stern. On either bulwark, dark forms were hurling themselves into the sea.

I literally stumbled on Captain Casabianca. He was lying down now, a great new sucking wound on his chest, his son once more next to him, the boy’s leg twisted where it had broken. I’d tripped on a father who was a dead man, I knew, but there was still a chance for his son. I crouched next to them. ‘We’ve got to get you out of here, Giocante, the ship may be ready to blow.’ I coughed. ‘I’ll help you swim.’

He shook his head. ‘I won’t leave my father.’

‘You can’t help him now.’

‘I won’t leave my ship.’

There was a crash as a yardarm, flaming, hit and bounced on the deck. The British fired yet another salvo and the French flagship trembled, groaning and creaking.

‘You don’t have a ship anymore!’

‘Leave us, Americain, ’ the captain gasped.

‘But your son…’

‘It is over.’

The boy touched my face in sad farewell. ‘Duty,’ he said.

‘You’ve done your duty! You’ve a whole life ahead!’

‘ This is my life.’ There was a tremble to his voice but his face was as calm as an angel in a grotto of hell. So this is what deciding what to believe in is like, I thought. So this is duty. I felt horror, admiration, inferiority, fury. A wasted young life! Or was it wasted? Blind belief had been the cause of half of history’s miseries. And yet wasn’t it also what saints and heroes were made of? His eyes were as hard and dark as shale, and if I’d had time to look into them, perhaps I would have learnt all the secrets of the world.

‘Abandon ship! Abandon ship!’ It was being shouted again and again by the few surviving officers.

‘Damn it, I won’t let you kill yourself.’ I grabbed him.

The boy pushed me so hard I sprawled. ‘You are not France! Leave!’

And then I heard another voice.

‘You!’

It was the crazed marine, who had staggered to this top deck. His face was burnt, his clothes smoking. Blood soaked half his coat. And yet he was aiming at me!

I ran to the stern rail, veiled by smoke, and took one look back. Father and son were obscured, their forms wavering in the heat. It was insane how wedded they were to their ship, their duty, their fate. It was glorious, monstrous, enviable. Did I care for anything half as much? And was I fortunate not to do so? I prayed they’d go quickly. The marine beyond was blinded by smoke and blood, swaying so pitifully he couldn’t hold his aim, flames reaching to claim him.

So, unable to be anything but the man I am, I jumped.

It was a leap of faith into utter blackness; I couldn’t see a thing but knew the water below would be choked with thrashing men and chunks of debris. Somehow I missed all of it and plunged into the Mediterranean, salt gushing into my nose. The water was a shock of cool relief, a balm for my blisters. I sank into a womb of blackness, and then kicked. When I came up I struck out away from the burning battleship as fast as I could, knowing it was a lethal powder keg if the magazine didn’t flood in time. I could feel its heat on the crown of my head as I stroked. If I could ride some flotsam to shore…

And with that, L’Orient blew up.

None had ever heard such sound. It was a thunderclap in Alexandria some twenty-three miles distant, lighting the town as if by day. The concussion reached the Bedouin watching the contest from the beach and hurled them from their rearing horses. It slapped and deafened me. Masts shot up like rockets. Cannon were tossed like pebbles. There was am explosive penumbra of wood splinters and sea spray driven up and outward, a corona of debris, and then the bits of ship began to rain down for hundreds of yards in every direction, still hitting and killing men. Bent forks fell from the sky to stick into railings. Shoes banged down holding nothing but smoking feet. The very sea flexed, driving me away, and then the hulk below the waterline cracked and went under, sucking all of us back toward its swirling maw. I thrashed desperately and caught at a piece of wood before being yanked back down into darkness. I clung like a lover, feeling the pain in my ears as I spiralled deeper. Lord, it was like being gripped by a monster’s paw! At least the suction saved me from the bombardment of debris that pattered the surface like nails. Looking up at the orange water above, I saw the surface shatter like a broken stained-glass window. What seemed likely to be my last sight had an eerie beauty.

How deep I was dragged I don’t know. My head pounded, my lungs burnt. Then, just when I thought I could hold my breath no more, the sinking ship seemed to release its grasp and the buoyant wood I’d clung to finally began to carry me upward. I burst to the surface with my last air, shrieking with pain and fear, rolling with my stump of yard that had saved my life. And because of my sting and ache, I knew I’d survived once more, for better or worse. I lay on my back, blinking at stars. The smoke was drifting away. Dimly I became aware of what was around me. The sea was carpeted with wood and broken bodies. There was a stunned silence except for a few faint calls for help. So stupendous was the explosion of L’Orient that all firing stopped.

The crew of one British ship tried a cheer, but it stuck in their throats.

I drifted. The calendar was gone. So was all the other treasure in L’Orient ’s hold. The moon illuminated a tableau of smashed and burning ships. Most were hamstrung by missing masts. Surely it was over now. But no, the crews gradually awoke from their stunned horror, as if from a dream, and after a quarter hour the cannon started up again, thuds echoing across the water.

So the battle went on. How can I explain such madness? Savage broadsides echoed through the night like the hammering of the devil’s foundry. Hour after hour I floated in a daze, growing colder, until the guns finally grumbled away in mutual exhaustion and the sea lightened some thousand years later. With dawn men slept, sprawled on their hot artillery.

Sunrise revealed the full extent of the French disaster. The frigate La Serieuse had been the first to sink, settling in the shallows, but didn’t strike her colours until five in the morning. Le Spartiate ceased firing at 11 p.m. Franklin, named for my mentor, surrendered to the British at 11:30. Le Tonnant ’s mortally wounded captain blew his brains out before she surrendered. L’Heureux and Le Mercure were deliberately grounded to prevent their sinking. The frigate L’Artemise blew up after being fired by her captain, and Le Timoleon was driven aground to be burnt by her crew the next day. Aquilon, Le Guerrier, Le Conquerant, and Peuple Souverain simply surrendered. For the French, the Battle of the Nile was not just a loss but an annihilation. Only two battleships and two frigates had got away. Three thousand Frenchmen were killed or wounded in the battle. In a single fight, Nelson had destroyed French naval power in the Mediterranean. Just one month after landing in Egypt, Napoleon was cut off from the outside world.

Hundreds of survivors, some burnt and bleeding, began to be plucked from the sea by British longboats. I watched in numbed fascination, and then dimly realised that I could be rescued too. ‘Over here!’ I finally shouted in English, waving.

They hauled me aboard like a played-out fish. ‘What ship you with, mate?’ they asked me. ‘How the bloody hell did you get in the water?’

‘L’Orient,’ I replied.

They looked at me as if I were a ghost. ‘You a frog? Or a bloody traitor?’

‘I’m an American.’ I was trying to blink the salt from my eyes as I held up the finger that held a unicorn ring. ‘And an agent for Sir Sidney Smith.’

Imagine a pugilist after a hard-won boxing match, and you have my first impression of Horatio Nelson. The lion of England was bandaged and woozy from a nasty head wound above his blind eye, a blow that came within an inch of killing him. He spoke with difficulty because of a sore tooth and, at age forty, had white hair and a face lined with tension. That’s what losing an arm and an eye in earlier fights, and chasing Bonaparte, will do for you. He was barely a shade taller than Napoleon and even slighter in build, his cheeks sunken and his voice nasal. Yet he relished the chance to dish out a thrashing as much as the French general did, and on this day he’d won a victory so decisive as to be unprecedented. He had not just beaten the enemy – he had obliterated them.

His one good eye burnt as if lit by divine light, and indeed Nelson saw himself on a mission from God: a quest for glory, death, and immortality. Put his ambition and Bonaparte’s in the same room and they’d spontaneously combust. Turn them with a crank and they’d throw off sparks. They were Leyden jars of electric charge, set among us mortal kegs of gunpowder.

Like Napoleon, the British admiral could leave a roomful of subordinates entranced by his very presence; but Nelson commanded not just with energy and drive, but with charm, even affection. He had more charisma than a royal courtesan, and some of his captains had the look of happy puppies. They were clustered around him now in his great cabin, regarding their admiral with unabashed worship, and me with deep suspicion.

‘How the devil do you know Smith?’ Nelson asked as I stood before him, damp and exhausted, my ears ringing.

Rum and fresh water had washed some of the salt from my throat. ‘After his escape from Temple Prison, Sir Sidney followed me because of rumours that I’d be accompanying Bonaparte to Egypt,’ I croaked. ‘He helped save my life in a skirmish on the highway to Toulon. He asked if I’d keep an eye on Napoleon. So I got myself back to the French fleet, figuring you’d find it sooner or later. Didn’t know how things would turn out, but if you won…’

‘He’s lying,’ one of the captains said. Hardy, I think his name was.

Nelson smiled thinly. ‘We’ve not much use for Smith here, you know.’

I looked at the unfriendly array of assembled captains. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘The man’s as vain as I am.’ There was dead silence. Then the admiral abruptly laughed, the others joining the joke. ‘Vain as me! We both live for glory!’ They roared. They were exhausted but had that satiated look of men who’d come through a good scrape. Their ships were drifting wrecks, the sea was littered with carnage, and they’d just endured horrors enough for a lifetime of nightmares. But they were proud, too.

I did my best to smile.

‘Good fighter though,’ Nelson amended, ‘if you don’t have to be in the same room with him. His escape made him the talk of England.’

‘He did get back, then.’

‘Yes. And didn’t mention you, as I recall.’

‘Our meeting was inconclusive,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t pledge to be his spy. But he anticipated your scepticism and left me this.’ I held up my right hand. ‘It’s a signet ring, inscribed with his symbol. He said it would prove my story.’

I took it off and passed it around, the officers grunting in recognition.

Nelson held it up to his good eye. ‘It’s the bastard Smith, all right. Here’s his horn, or should I say prick?’ Again, they all laughed. ‘You enlisted with that devil Napoleon?’

‘I’m a member of his team of savants who are studying Egypt. I apprenticed to Benjamin Franklin. I was trying to arrange some trade agreements, there were legal problems in Paris, an opportunity for adventure…’

‘Yes, yes.’ He waved his hand. ‘What’s the situation of Bonaparte’s army?’

‘It has defeated the Mamelukes and is in possession of Cairo.’

There was a murmur of disappointment in the cabin.

‘And yet he now has no fleet,’ Nelson said, to his officers as much as me. ‘Which means that while we can’t get at Boney, quite yet, Boney can’t get to India. There will be no linkup to Tippoo Sahib, and no threat to our army there. He’s marooned.’

I nodded. ‘It would seem so, Admiral.’

‘And the morale of his troops?’

I considered. ‘They grumble, like all soldiers. But they’ve also just conquered Egypt. I suppose they feel like sailors who have conquered Brueys.’

Nelson nodded. ‘Quite. Land and sea. Sea and land. His numbers?’

I shrugged. ‘I’m not a soldier. I know his casualties have been light.’

‘Humph. And supplies?’

‘He resupplies from Egypt herself.’

He slammed his hand down. ‘Damn! It will be like prying out an oyster!’ He looked at me with his one good eye. ‘Well, what do you want to do now?’

What indeed? It was dumb luck I hadn’t already been killed. Bonaparte was expecting me to solve a mystery that still baffled me, my friend Talma was suspicious of my friend Astiza, an Arab cutthroat no doubt wanted to drop more snakes in my bed, and there was a baffling heap of pyramidal stone built to represent the world, or God, or who knows what. Here was my chance to cut and run.

But I wasn’t done figuring out the medallion, was I? Maybe I could get a fist of treasure, or a share of mysterious power. Or keep it from the lunatics of the Egyptian Rite and the Apophis snake cult. And a woman was waiting, wasn’t she?

‘I’m no strategist, admiral, but perhaps this battle changes everything,’ I said. ‘We won’t know how Bonaparte will react until news reaches him. Which I, perhaps, could bear. The French know nothing of my connection to Smith.’ Go back? Well, the battle and the dying boy had shaken me to the core. I had a duty too, and it was to get back to Astiza and the medallion. It was to finish, finally, something I’d started. ‘I’ll explain the situation to Bonaparte and, if that doesn’t move him, then learn what I can in coming months and report back to you.’ A plan had formulated in my mind. ‘A rendezvous off the coast near the end of October, perhaps. Just after the twenty-first.’

‘Smith is scheduled to be in the region then,’ Nelson noted.

‘And your own self-interest in doing this?’ Hardy asked me.

‘I have scores of my own to settle in Cairo. Then I’d like passage to a neutral port. After L’Orient, I’ve had enough of war.’

‘Three months before you report back?’ Nelson objected.

‘It may take that long for Bonaparte to react and form the new French plans.’

‘By God,’ objected Hardy, ‘this man served on the enemy flagship and now he wants to be put ashore? I don’t trust a word he says, ring or no ring.’

‘Not served. Observed. I didn’t fire a shot.’

Nelson thought, fingering my ring. Then he held it out. ‘Done. We’ve smashed enough ships that you hardly make a difference. Tell Boney exactly what you observed: I want him to know he’s doomed. However, it will take months for us to assemble an army to get the Corsican out of Egypt. In the meantime, I want you to make a count of his strength and gauge the mood. If there is any chance of surrender, I want to hear about it immediately.’

Napoleon is about as likely to give up as you are, Admiral, I thought, but I didn’t say that. ‘If you can get me ashore…’

‘We’ll get an Egyptian to put you on the beach tomorrow to erase any suspicion you’ve been talking to us.’

‘Tomorrow? But if you want me to notify Bonaparte…’

‘Sleep and eat first. No need to hurry, Gage, because I suspect the preliminary news has gone ahead of you. We chased a corvette that slipped into Alexandria just ahead of the battle, and I’m sure the diplomat on board had a rooftop view of our victory. He’s the kind of man to already be on his way. What was his name, Hardy?’

‘Silano, the reports said.’

‘Yes, that’s it,’ Nelson said. ‘Some tool of Talleyrand named Alessandro Silano.’