Napoleon’s Pyramids

CHAPTER TWENTY

I knew that the notion of galloping into Desaix’s division of French soldiers, shouting for Silano, was unlikely to produce anything other than my own arrest. But what I lacked in power I made up for in possession: I had the medallion, and my rival did not. It would be far easier, I realised, to have Silano come to me.

It was near dusk when I approached a squad of camped sentries, my arms raised. Several ran out with muskets, having learnt to view any approaching Egyptian with suspicion. Too many unwary Frenchmen had died in a war that was becoming crueller.

I gambled that news of my escape from Cairo had not reached these pickets. ‘Don’t shoot! I’m an American recruited to Berthollet’s company of scholars! I’ve been sent by Bonaparte to continue my investigation of the ancients!’

They looked at me suspiciously. ‘Why are you dressed like a native?’

‘Without escort, do you think I’d still be alive if I were not?’

‘You came alone from Cairo? Are you mad?’

‘The boat I was riding hit a rock and has to be repaired. I was impatient to come ahead. I hope there are ruins here.’

‘I recognise him,’ one said. ‘The Franklin man.’ He spat.

‘Surely you appreciate the opportunity to study the magnificent past,’ I said lightly.

‘While Murad Bey taunts us, always a few miles ahead. We beat him. And then we beat him again. And then again. Each time he runs, and each time he comes back. And each time a few more of us will never return to France. And now we wait at ruins while he escapes deeper into this cursed country, as out of reach as a mirage.’

‘If you can even see the mirage,’ joined another. ‘A thousand troops have sore eyes in this dust and sun, and a hundred are hobbling blind. It’s like a jest out of a play. Ready to fight? Yes, here is our rank of blind musketeers!’

‘Blindness! That’s the least of it,’ added a third. ‘We’ve shit twice our weight between here and Cairo. Sores don’t heal. Blisters become boils. There are even cases of plague. Who hasn’t lost half a dozen kilos of flesh on this march alone?’

‘Or been so horny they’re ready to mate with rats and donkeys?’

All soldiers like to grumble, but clearly, disillusionment with Egypt was growing. ‘Perhaps Murad is on the brink of defeat,’ I said.

‘Then let’s defeat him.’

I patted my rifle. ‘My muzzle has been as warm as yours at times, friends.’

Now their interest brightened. ‘Is that the American longrifle? I hear it can kill a Red Indian at a thousand paces.’

‘Not quite, but if you only have one shot, this is the gun you want. I recently hit a camel at four hundred.’ No need to tell them what I’d been aiming at.

They crowded around. Men find unity in admiring good tools and it was, as I’ve said, a beautiful piece, a jewel amid the dross of their regulation muskets.

‘Today my gun stays cold because I have a different task, no less important. I’m to confer with Count Alessandro Silano. Do you know where I could find him?’

‘The temple, I suppose,’ a sergeant said. ‘I think he wants to live there.’

‘Temple?’

‘Away from the river, beyond a village called Dendara. We’ve stopped so Denon can scribble more pictures, Malraux can measure more stone, and Silano can mutter more spells. What a circus of lunatics. At least he brought a woman.’

‘A woman?’ I tried not to betray any particular interest.

‘Ah, that one,’ a private agreed. ‘I sleep with her in my dreams.’ He jerked his fist up and down and grinned.

I restrained the inclination to club him with my rifle. ‘Which way to this temple?’

‘You intend to go dressed like a bandit?’

I straightened. ‘I look, I believe, like a sheikh.’

That drew a laugh. They pointed and offered escort, but I declined. ‘I need to confer with the count alone. If he’s not already at the ruins and you see him, give him this message. Tell him he can find what he’s looking for at midnight.’

Silano wouldn’t arrest me, I gambled. He’d want me to first find what we both were looking for, and then surrender it for Astiza.

The temple glowed under stars and moon, an immense pillared sanctuary with a flat stone roof. It and its subsidiary temples were enclosed by a mud-brick wall a square kilometre in circumference, eroded and half buried. The wall’s primary gateway jutted out of the sand as if half drowned, with clearance just high enough to walk under. It was carved with Egyptian gods, hieroglyphics, and a winged sun flanked by cobras. Beyond, the courtyard was filled with dunes like ocean swells. A waning moon gave pale illumination to sand as smooth as the skin of an Egyptian woman, sensuous and sculpted. Yes, there was a thigh, beyond it a hip, and then a buried obelisk like a nipple on a breast…

I’d been away from Astiza too long, hadn’t I?

The main building had a flat facade, with six immense pillars rearing from the sand to hold up the stone roof. Each column was topped by the eroded visage of a broad-faced goddess. Or rather four faces: on each pillar she looked in the four cardinal directions, her Egyptian headdress coming down behind cowlike ears. With her wide-lipped smile and huge, friendly eyes, Hathor had a bovine serenity. The headdress was coloured with faded paint, I noted, evidence that the structure had once been brilliantly coloured. The temple’s long abandonment was apparent from the dunes that rolled inside. Its front looked like a dock being consumed by a rising tide.

I looked about, but saw no one. I had my rifle, my tomahawk, and no certain plan except that this might be the temple that would house the staff of Min, that Silano might meet me here, and that I might spot him before he spied me.

I slogged up the dune and passed through the central entry. Because of the heaping sand, I wasn’t far from the ceiling as I passed inside. When I lit a candle I had taken from the soldiers, it revealed a roof painted blue and covered with yellow five-pointed stars. They looked like starfish or, I thought, the head, arms, and legs of men who had taken their place in the night sky. There was also a rank of vultures and winged suns decorated in reds, gold, and blues. We seldom look up and yet the entire ceiling was as intricately decorated as the Sistine Chapel. As I went deeper into the temple’s first and grandest hall the sand receded and I descended from the ceiling, beginning to get a sense of just how high the pillars really were. The interior felt like a grove of massive trees, painstakingly carved and painted with symbols. I wandered amid the eighteen gigantic columns in awe, each crowned with the placid faces of the goddess. The pillars banded as they rose. Here was a row of ankhs, the sacred key of life. Then stiff Egyptian figures, giving offerings to the gods. There were the indecipherable hieroglyphics, many enclosed in ovals the French had dubbed cartouches, or cartridges. There were carvings of birds, cobras, fronds, and striding animals.

At either end of this room the ceiling was even more elaborate, decorated with the signs of the zodiac. A huge nude woman, stretched like rubber, curled around them: a sky goddess, I guessed. Yet the sum was bewildering and overwhelming, a crust of gods and signs so thick that it was like walking inside an ancient newspaper. I was a deaf man at an opera.

I studied the sand for tracks. No sign of Silano.

At the rear of this great hall there was an entry to a second, smaller hall, equally high but more intimate. Rooms opened off it, each decorated on walls and ceiling but empty of furniture for millennia, their purpose unclear. Then a step up to another entry, and beyond it another, each room lower and smaller than the one before. Unlike a Christian cathedral, which broadened as one advanced, Egyptian temples seemed to shrink the farther one penetrated. The holier the enclosure, the more it was lightless and exclusive, rays of light reaching it only on rare days of the year.

Could that be the meaning of my October date?

So wondrous were the decorations that for a brief time I forgot my mission. I had flickering glimpses of snakes and lotus flowers, boats that floated in the sky, and fierce and terrible lions. There were baboons and hippos, crocodiles and long-necked birds. Men marched in gloriously decorated processions, carrying offerings. Women offered their breasts like life itself. Deities as regal and patient as emperors stood in sideways poses. It seemed crude and idolatrous, this mix of animals and animal-headed gods, and yet for the first time I recognised how much closer the Egyptians were to their gods than we are to ours. Ours are sky gods, distant, unworldly, while the Egyptians could see Thoth each time an ibis stepped across a pond. They could sense Horus with each flight of a falcon. They could report having talked to a burning bush, and their neighbours would accept the story calmly.

There was still no sign of Silano or Astiza. Had the soldiers led me astray – or was I walking into a trap? Once I thought I heard a footstep, but when I listened there was nothing. I found some stairs and mounted them, ascending in a twisting pattern like the climb of a hawk. Carved on the walls was an upward procession of men carrying offerings. There must have been ceremonies up here. I emerged on the temple’s roof, surrounded by a low parapet. Still not sure what I was looking for, I wandered amid small sanctuaries set on its terrace. In one, small pillars topped by Hathor made a gazebo-like enclosure reminiscent of a Paris park. In the northwest corner was a door leading to a small, two-roomed sanctum. The inner chamber had bas-reliefs showing a pharaoh or god rising from the dead in more ways than one: his phallus was erect and triumphant. It reminded me of the tumescent god Min. Was this the legend of Isis and Osiris I’d been told when we sailed toward Egypt? A falcon floated above the being about to be resurrected. Again, my poor brain could detect no useful clue.

The outer room, however, gave me a tingle of excitement. On the ceiling, two nude women flanked a spectacular circular relief crammed with figures. After studying it for a while, I decided the carving must be a representation of the sacred sky. Upheld by four goddesses and eight representations of the hawk-headed Horus – did they represent the twelve months? – was a circular disc of the symbolic heavens, painted with faded colours of blue and yellow. I spied signs of the zodiac again, not too dissimilar from what had come down to us in modern times: the bull, the lion, the crab, the twin fish. At the circumference was a procession of thirty-six figures, both human and animal. Could these represent the Egyptian and French ten-day weeks?

I craned my neck, trying to make sense of it. At the northern axis of the temple was a figure of Horus, the hawk, who seemed to anchor all the rest. Toward the east was Taurus, the bull, signifying the age in which the pyramids had been built. To the south was a half-fish, half-goat creature, and near it a man pouring water from two jars – Aquarius! This was the sign of the future age, centuries hence, and the symbol for the vital rising of the Nile. Aquarius, like the water symbol on the medallion around my neck, and Aquarius, like the sign on the lost calendar of L’Orient that I’d guessed pointed to October 21 ^ st.

The ceiling’s circle reminded me of a compass. Aquarius was oriented to the southwest.

I stepped outside, trying to get my bearings. A stone stairway led up to the parapet at the rear edge of the temple, so I climbed to look. To the southwest was another smaller temple, more decayed than the one I was in. Enoch had said there would be a small temple of Isis, and within it, perhaps, the mysterious staff of Min. Beyond it the dunes swept over the compound’s periphery wall, and distant hills glowed silver under cold stars.

I felt the medallion against my chest. Could I find its completion?

A second flight of stairs took me back to the ground floor. Its straightness was like the dive of a hawk that had spiralled upward on the other side. Now men with offerings were marching downward. Once again I was in the main temple, but a door to one side led again to the sands of the compound. I looked up. The main temple wall loomed above me, lion heads jutting like gargoyles.

My rifle ready, I walked to the rear, toward the smaller temple I’d seen. To my right, palms grew from the ruins of the sacred lake. I tried to imagine this place in ancient times, the dunes at bay, the causeways paved and shining, the gardens tended, and the lake shimmering as priests bathed. What an oasis it must have been! Now, ruins. At the temple’s rear I turned the corner and stopped short. Gigantic figures were carved on the wall, thirty feet high. A king and queen, I guessed from their headdress, were offering goods to a full-breasted goddess, perhaps Hathor or Isis. The queen was a slim and stylish woman with a towering crown, her arms bare, her legs long and slim. Her wig was braided, and a cobra like a golden tiara was poised above her forehead.

‘Cleopatra,’ I breathed. It had to be her, if Enoch was right! She was opposite her little temple of Isis, which sat about twenty metres to the south of the main building.

I glanced about. Still the compound seemed lifeless, except for me. I had the sense that it was poised, waiting. For what?

The Isis temple was built on a raised terrace, a drift of sand between it and the Cleopatra carving on the main building. Half the small temple was a walled sanctuary like the larger temple I’d just come from. The other half was open and ruined, a shadowy mass of pillars and beams, open to the sky. I climbed up broken blocks to the door of the walled section. ‘Silano?’ My query echoed back at me.

Hesitantly, I stepped inside. It was very dark, the only light coming from the door and two high openings barely big enough to fit pigeons. The room was taller than it was long or wide, and claustrophobic, its smell acrid. I took another step.

Suddenly there was a whir of wings and I instinctively ducked. Warm wind thrashed at me, extinguishing my light. Bats flew by, squeaking, scraping my scalp with leathery wings. Then they funnelled outside. I relit my candle with shaking hand.

Again, the walls were thick with carvings and traces of old paint. A woman I assumed was Isis dominated. I saw no sign of Min and his staff, or anything else. Was I on a wild goose chase? Always I felt like I was groping blind, with clues no reasonable man could understand. What was I supposed to see?

I noticed, finally, that this room was considerably smaller than the enclosed temple’s perimeter. There had to be a second chamber. I stepped back on the stone porch and realised there was a second door and high room, even narrower than the first, and just as baffling. This one, however, had a stone table, like an altar. The pedestal was the size of a small writing desk, perched in the room’s centre. It was plain, unremarkable, and I might have passed it by except for a peculiar occurrence. As I bent over the altar the chain round my neck came loose and snagged the pedestal. The medallion broke free and struck the stone floor with an audible clink. This had never happened before. I swore, but when I bent to retrieve it, what I saw arrested me.

Carved onto a floor slab were two faint Vs, overlapping like compass and square. In the Egyptian style they were geometric, and yet the resemblance was clear.

‘By the Great Architect,’ I muttered. ‘Can it be?’ I remembered Enoch’s script: The crypt will lead to heaven.

I refastened the medallion and stamped on the floor slab. It shifted. Something hollow was under there.

Kneeling in excitement now, my rifle set to one side, I pried with the blade of my tomahawk until I could grasp the slab. It lifted like a heavy trapdoor and released a rush of stale air, an announcement that it hadn’t been opened in a long time. Holding my candle, I leant over. The light glimmered on a floor below. Could there be treasure? Leaving my gun for a moment and sliding feet first, I dropped, falling ten feet and landing like a cat. My heart was hammering. I looked up. Easy enough for Silano to slide the lid back in place if he was watching me. Or was he waiting to see what I might find?

Passages led in two directions.

Again there was a riot of carving. The ceiling bore a field of the five-pointed stars. The walls were thick with gods, goddesses, hawks, vultures, and rearing snakes, a motif repeated again and again. The first passage dead-ended within twenty feet at a mound of clay amphoras – dull, dusty jars that seemed unlikely to hold anything of value. Just to be sure, however, I used my tomahawk to crack one open. When it split apart, I raised my candle.

And jumped. Looking back at me was the hideous face of a mummified baboon, flesh desiccated, eye sockets huge, jaws full of teeth. What the devil?

I broke another jar and found another baboon inside. Another symbol, I remembered, for the god Thoth. So this was a kind of catacomb, full of bizarre animal mummies. Were they offerings? I put my candle near the ceiling so the light would reach farther in the gloom. The clay jars were heaped as far back as the light would reach. Little things moved in the shadows – some kind of insect.

I turned and went the other way, down the other passage. I desperately wanted out of this crypt, yet if Enoch’s clue made any sense there must be something down here. My candle stub was getting low. And then there was more movement, something slithering away on the floor.

I looked with my meagre light. There were tracks on the sand and dust of a damned snake, and a crack into which it had probably crawled. I was sweating. Was Bin Sadr down here too? Why had I left my rifle?

And then something glittered.

The other tunnel ended too, but now there were no jars, but instead a relief carving of the now-familiar priapic figure of Min, probably a figure of some fascination to the sensual Cleopatra. He was stiff as a board, his member erect and startlingly bright.

Min was decorated not with paint, but with gold. His manhood was outlined with twin sticks of gold connected with a hinge at one end, half obscenity, half tool of life. Without knowing about the riddle of the medallion, one would assume the golden shafts were solely sacred decoration.

But I think Cleopatra had another idea. Maybe she left this piece in Egypt if she really took the other medallion to Rome, to ensure its secret stayed in her native country. I pried the gold member loose until it popped into my hand, and worked the hinge. Now the golden shafts formed a V. I took out the medallion, splayed its arms, and laid this new V across them. When I formed the now-familiar Freemason symbol, a compass crossed with a square, the notches on the medallion’s arms locked. The result was a diamond of overlapping arms, swinging below the medallion’s inscribed disc but without, of course, the European letter G, which the Masons used to denote God or gnosis, knowledge.

Splendid. I had completed the medallion, and perhaps found a root symbol of my own fraternity.

And still had no clue what it meant.

‘Ethan.’

The sound was faint, almost like a whisper of wind or trick of the ear, but it was Astiza’s voice, I knew, coming faintly from somewhere outside. The call was as electrifying as a bolt of lightning. I dropped the newly complex medallion around my neck, rushed down the passageway, saw to my relief the slab was still askew, and swiftly wiggled my way up and out the crypt shaft. My gun lay where I had left it, untouched. I picked it up and crouched. All was silent. Had her call been my imagination? I moved quietly to the entrance, peering cautiously outside. I could see Cleopatra on the main temple wall opposite, her carved form picked out by moonlight.

‘Ethan?’ It was a near sob, coming from the open pillars adjacent to the enclosure I was in.

I stepped out on the temple’s porch and advanced as silently as an Indian, rifle ready. On this half of the temple platform, the columns rose to horizontal beams that held up nothing, framing squares of sky. I could see the stars between them. A different face, this of the serene Isis, was carved into the pillars’ design.

‘Astiza?’ My voice echoed among the columns.

‘Do you have it?’

I stepped around a pillar and there she was. I stopped, confused.

She was stripped to my fantasy of a harem girl, her linen translucent, her legs visible through her gown, her jewellery heavy, and her eyes lined. She’d been dressed for seduction. Her arms were lifted because her wrists were chained to shackles that led to a stone beam above. The posture lifted her breasts, twisting her waist and hips, and the effect was an erotic helplessness, a tableau of a princess in peril. I stopped, stupefied by this apparition from a fairy tale. Her own look was pained.

‘Is it complete?’ she asked in a small voice.

‘Why are you dressed like that?’ It was the most mundane of a hundred questions ricocheting like billiard balls in my mind, but I felt I was in a hallucinatory dream.

The answer was the press of a sword point in the small of my back. ‘Because she is distracting,’ Count Silano murmured. ‘Drop your rifle, monsieur.’ The sword pressed more painfully.

I tried to think. My weapon thumped to the stone.

‘Now, the medallion.’

‘It’s yours,’ I tried, ‘if you unchain her and let us flee.’

‘Unchain her? But why, when she can simply lower her arms?’

And Astiza did so, her slim wrists slipping from loose shackles, her look apologetic. The chains swung gently, an empty prop. The gossamer veils draped her body like a classical statue, her undergarments only calling attention to the places they concealed. She looked embarrassed at her fraudulence.

Once more, I felt the fool.

‘Haven’t you realised that she’s with me, now?’ Silano said. ‘But then you’re American, aren’t you, too direct, too trusting, too idealistic, too naive. Did you come all this way fantasising about rescuing her? Not only did you never understand the medallion; you never understood her.’

‘That’s a lie.’ I stared up at her as I said it, hoping for confirmation. She stood trembling, rubbing her wrists.

‘Is it?’ Silano said behind me. ‘Let’s review the truth. Talma went to Alexandria to ask questions about her not just because he was your friend, but because he was an agent for Napoleon.’

‘That’s a lie too. He was a journalist.’

‘Who cut a deal with the Corsican and his scientists, promising to keep an eye on you in return for access to the highest councils of the expedition. Bonaparte wants the secret found, but doesn’t trust anyone. So Talma could come if he spied on you. Meanwhile, the journalist suspected Astiza from the beginning. Who was she? Why did she come with you like an obedient dog, trudging with an army, acquiescing to a harem? Because of infatuation with your clumsy charm? Or because she’s always been in alliance with me?’

He certainly enjoyed boasting. Astiza was looking up at the ruined beams.

‘My dear Gage, have you understood a single thing that’s happened to you? The journalist learnt a disturbing thing about our Alexandrian witch: not that word of your coming was sent by gypsies, as she told you, but by me. Yes, we were in communication. Yet instead of helping kill you, as I recommended, she seemed to be using you to discover the secret. What was her game? When I landed in Alexandria, Talma thought he could spy on me as well, but Bin Sadr caught him. I told the fool he could join me against you and we could sell whatever treasure we found to the highest-bidding king or general – Bonaparte too! – but we couldn’t reason with him. He threatened to go to Bonaparte and have the general interrogate us all. Nor was he a bargaining chip once you insisted on the fiction that the medallion was lost. His last chance was to steal it from whoever had it and deliver it to me, but he refused. In the end, the little hypochondriac was more loyal than you deserved, and a French patriot to boot.’

‘And you are not.’ My voice was cold.

‘The Revolution cost my family everything it had. Do you think I consort with rabble because I care about liberty? Their liberty took everything from me, and now I’m going to use them to get it all back. I do not work for Bonaparte, Ethan Gage. Bonaparte, unwittingly, works for me.’

‘So you sent Talma to me in a jar.’ I was so rigid, fists clenched, that my knuckles were white. The sky seemed to be wheeling, the chains a pendulum like some trick of Mesmer. I had just one chance.

‘A casualty of war,’ Silano replied. ‘If he’d listened to me, he’d have been richer than Croesus.’

‘But I don’t understand. Why didn’t your lantern bearer, Bin Sadr in disguise, just take the medallion that first evening in Paris, the moment I stepped into the street?’

‘Because I thought you’d given it to the whore, and I didn’t know where she lived. But she didn’t confess to it even when the Arab gutted her. Nor did my men find it in your chambers. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure of its importance, not until I asked more questions. I assumed I’d have the leisure to strip you of it in prison. But you ran, allied with Talma, and were on your way to Egypt as a savant – what amusement! – before I was even certain the trinket was what we’d all been looking for. I still don’t know where you hid the medallion that first night.’

‘In my chamber pot.’

He laughed. ‘Irony, irony! Key to the greatest treasure on earth, and you cover it with shit! Ah, what a clown. Yet what uncommon luck you’ve had, eluding an ambush on the Toulon highway and an Alexandrian street, dodging snakes, coming unscathed through major battles, and even finding your way here. You have the devil’s luck! And yet in the end you come to me, bringing the medallion with you, all for a woman who won’t let you touch her! The male mind! She told me that all we had to do was wait, provided Bin Sadr didn’t get you first. Did he ever find you?’

‘I shot him.’

‘Really? Pity. You’ve been a most troublesome man, Ethan Gage.’

‘He survived.’

‘But of course. He always does. You will not want to meet him again.’

‘Don’t forget that I’m still in the company of savants, Silano. Do you want to answer to Monge and Berthollet for my murder? They have the ear of Bonaparte, and he has an army. You’ll hang if you harm me.’

‘I believe it is called self-defence.’ He pushed slightly with his sword and I felt a faint sting through my robes, and a trickle of my own blood. ‘Or is it attempted capture of a fugitive from revolutionary justice? Or a man who lied about losing a magic medallion so he could keep it for himself? Any will suit. But I am a nobleman with my own code of honour, so let me offer you mercy. You’re a hunted fugitive, without friends or allies and no threat to anyone, if you ever were. So, for the medallion I give you back… your life. If you promise to tell me what Enoch learnt.’

‘What Enoch learnt?’ What was he talking about?

‘Your enfeebled mentor threw himself on a bonfire to grasp a book before we could torture him. French troops were coming. So, what did the book contain?’

The villain was referring to the book of Arabic poetry that Enoch had clutched at. I was sweating. ‘I still want the woman, too.’

‘But she doesn’t want you, does she? Did she tell you we were once lovers?’

I looked. Astiza had put her hands to one of the swaying manacles as if to hold herself up, looking at both of us with sorrow. ‘Ethan, it was the only way,’ she whispered.

I tasted the same ashes that Bonaparte must have bit when he learnt of the betrayal of Josephine. I’d come so far – for this? To be held at sword point by an aristocratic braggart? To be humiliated by a woman? Robbed of all I’d struggled for? ‘All right.’ My hands went to my neck and I lifted the talisman clear, holding it out in front of me where it rocked like a pendulum. Even at night it shone coldly. I could hear both of them gasp slightly at its new shape. They had led me, and I had found the part to complete it.

‘So it is the key,’ Silano breathed. ‘Now all we must do is understand the numbers. You will help me, priestess. Gage? Turn slowly now, and give it up.’

I did so, moving back slightly from his rapier. I needed just a moment’s distraction. ‘You’re no closer to solving the mystery than I am,’ I warned.

‘Aren’t I? I solved more than you. My journey around the Mediterranean took me to many temples and libraries. I found evidence that the key would be in Dendara, at the temple of Cleopatra. That I was to look to Aquarius. And here to the south I found the temple of Cleopatra, who would of course worship the lovely and all-powerful Isis, not the cow-faced Hathor with her bovine ears and tits. Yet I couldn’t figure where to look.’

‘There’s a crypt with the phallic god Min. It had the missing piece.’

‘How scholarly of you to find it. Now, give me the trinket.’

Slowly, leaning over the point of his rapier, I handed it to him. He snatched it with the greed of a child, his look triumphant. When he held it up it seemed to dance, this sign of the Freemasons. ‘Odd how sacred memory is passed down even by those who don’t realise its origin, isn’t it?’ Silano said.

And it was then that I threw.

The tomahawk in the small of my back had rested just inches from his sword point, itching beneath my concealing robe. I needed just a moment to steal it out, once my back was turned and he was triumphantly hoisting the medallion. The test, however, would be whether Astiza cried out when she saw what I was doing.

She hadn’t.

Which meant that perhaps she wasn’t on Silano’s side after all. That the man was indeed a liar. That I was not entirely a fool.

So I was quick, very quick. Yet Silano was quicker. He ducked as the hatchet whistled by his ear, spinning to land in the sands beyond the temple terrace. Still, the throw had put him off-balance, requiring an instant to recover. It was enough to seize my rifle! I brought it up…

And he leant forward, lithe and sure, and rammed his rapier blade right into the mouth of the barrel. ‘ Touche, Monsieur Gage. And now we are at an impasse, are we not?’

I suppose we looked ridiculous. I had frozen, my muzzle pointed at his breast, and he was a statue too, neatly balanced, his sword in my weapon’s throat.

‘Except that I,’ he went on, ‘have a pistol.’ He reached beneath his coat.

So I pulled the trigger.

My plugged rifle exploded, the shattered stock kicking back at me and the barrel and broken sword whirling over Silano’s head. We both went sprawling, my ears ringing and my face cut by pieces of the ruptured gun.

Silano howled.

And then there was an ominous creak and rumble.

I looked up. A precariously balanced stone beam, already partly dislodged from its ancient perch from some long-ago earthquake, was rocking against the stars. The chain was wrapped around it, I now noticed, and Astiza was pulling with all her might.

‘You moved the chains,’ Silano said to her stupidly, looking at Astiza in stunned confusion.

‘Samson,’ she replied.

‘You’ll kill us all!’

The beam slid off the column and fell like a hammer, crashing against a leaning pillar and starting it falling, too. The worn columns were a house of cards. There was a grinding creak, a growing roar, and the whole overhead edifice began to give way. I winced and rolled as tons of heavy rock came smashing down, heaving the very ground. I heard a pop as Silano’s pistol went off and bits of shattered rock flew like shrapnel, but its sound was dwarfed by groaning columns that rolled and tumbled. Then Astiza was jerking me upward, pushing me toward the edge of the temple platform amid the chaos. ‘Run, run! The noise will bring the French!’ We leapt, a cloud of dust rolling out with us, and hit the sand just as a section of pillar bounced over us like a runaway barrel. It crashed against Cleopatra’s feet. Back on the ruined terrace, Silano was screaming and cursing, his voice coming from the dust and wreckage of the toppled ruins.

She stooped and handed me the tomahawk I’d hurled. ‘We may need this.’

I looked at her in amazement. ‘You brought the whole temple down.’

‘He forgot to sheer my hair. Or hold his prize.’ The medallion, wide and clumsy in its new assembly, swung from her fist like a cat’s toy.

I hefted the tomahawk. ‘Let’s go back inside and finish him.’

But there were shouts of French from the front of the temple compound, and the signal shots of sentries. She shook her head. ‘There’s no time.’

So we ran, fleeing out a rear gate in the eastern wall and into the desert beyond, weaponless, horseless, without food, water, or sensible clothing. We heard more shouts, and shots, but no bullet buzzed near.

‘Hurry,’ she said. ‘The Nile has almost peaked!’

What did that mean?

We had nothing except the tomahawk and the cursed medallion.

And each other.

But, who was this woman I had rescued, who had rescued me?