Napoleon’s Pyramids

CHAPTER FOUR

The thieves, or agents – they were too often the same in revolutionary France – lined us up like pupils in a schoolyard and began to strip us of valuables. With the addition of the supposed customs officer, there were six of them, and when I studied them in the dim light I started. Two looked like the gendarmes who had first tried to arrest me in Paris. Was the lantern bearer here too? I didn’t see him. Some held pistols aimed at the coachmen, while the others focused on us passengers, taking purses and pocket watches.

‘The police have devised a new way of levying taxes?’ I asked caustically.

‘I’m not certain he really is a customs officer,’ the hatter spoke up.

‘Silence!’ Their leader aimed his weapon at my nose as if I’d forgotten he carried it. ‘Don’t think I’m not acting for people in authority, Monsieur Gage. If you don’t surrender what I want you’ll meet more police than you care to, in the bowels of a state prison.’

‘Surrender what?’

‘I believe his name is actually Gregoire,’ the hatter added helpfully.

My interrogator cocked his pistol. ‘You know what! It must go to scholars who can put it to proper use! Open your shirt!’

The air was cold on my breast. ‘See? I have nothing.’

He scowled. ‘Then where is it?’

‘Paris.’

The muzzle swung to Talma’s temple. ‘Produce it or I blow your friend’s brains out.’

Antoine blanched. I was fairly certain he’d never had a gun aimed at him before, and I was becoming truly annoyed. ‘Be careful with that thing.’

‘I will count to three!’

‘Antoine’s head is hard as a rock. The ball will ricochet.’

‘Ethan,’ my friend pleaded.

‘One!’

‘I sold the medallion to finance this trip,’ I tried.

‘Two!’

‘I used it to pay the rent.’ Talma was swaying.

‘Thr…’

‘Wait! If you must know, it’s in my bag atop the coach.’

Our tormentor swung the muzzle back to me.

‘Frankly, I’ll be happy to be rid of the trinket. It’s been nothing but trouble.’

The villain shouted up to the coachman. ‘Throw his bag down!’

‘Which one?’

‘The brown one,’ I called, as Talma gaped at me.

‘They’re all brown in the dark!’

‘By all the saints and sinners…’

‘I’ll get it.’

Now the pistol muzzle was pressed to my back. ‘Hurry!’ My foe glanced down the road. More traffic would be coming soon, and I had a pleasant mental picture of a hay wagon slowly and deliberately crushing him under.

‘Can you please ease the hammer down? There’re six of you and one of me.’

‘Shut your trap or I’ll shoot you right now, rip open every bag, and find it myself!’

I climbed to the luggage rack on the coach roof. The thief stayed close below.

‘Ah. Here it is.’

‘Pass it down, Yankee dog!’

I dug and closed one hand around my rifle, tucked under the softer luggage. I could feel the small brass door of its patch box where I’d stuffed a cartridge and ball, and the curl of its nestled powder horn. Pity I hadn’t loaded it since shooting my apartment door: no voyageur would make that mistake. The other hand grasped my friend’s bag. ‘Catch!’

I heaved, and my aim was good. The bag’s weight hit the pistol and there was a bang as the cocked hammer came down, shooting Talma’s laundry to flinders. Stupid sod. The coach horses reared, everyone shouting, as I tumbled off the coach roof on the side away from the thieves, pulling the rifle as I fell and landing on the highway margin. There was another shot and a splintering of wood over my head.

Instead of lurching into the dark forest, I rolled under the carriage, dodging the grinding wheels as the coach rocked back and forth. Lying in its shadow, I feverishly began to load my rifle while prone, a trick I’d learnt from the Canadians. I bit, poured, and rammed.

‘He’s getting away!’ Three of the bandits ran around the rear of the coach and plunged into the trees on the side I’d leapt, assuming I was escaping that way. The passengers looked ready to bolt as well, but two of the thieves commanded them to stand where they were. The fake customs inspector, cursing, struggled to reload his pistol. I finished my own ramming, poked my rifle barrel out, and shot him.

The flash was blinding in the darkness. As the bastard buckled I got a startling glimpse of something that had been hanging inside his own shirt, now dangling free. It was a Masonic emblem, no doubt expropriated by Silano’s Egyptian Rite, of crossed compass and square. There was a familiar letter in the middle. So that explained it!

I rolled, stood, and swung my weapon by the barrel as hard as I could, clubbing another thief with my gun butt. There was a satisfying crack as eleven pounds of maple and iron trumped bone. I scooped up my tomahawk. Where was the third rascal? Then another gun went off and someone howled. I started running toward the trees in the opposite direction from where the first three had gone. The other passengers, including Talma, scattered as well.

‘The bag! Get his bag!’ the one I’d shot was shouting through his pain.

I grinned. The medallion was safe in the sole of my boot.

The woods were dark and getting darker as night fully descended. I trotted as best I could, alone, my rifle a makeshift prod to keep me from running into trees. Now what? Were the robbers in league with some arm of the French government, or entirely imposters? Their leader had the correct uniform and knowledge of my prize and position, suggesting that someone with official connections – an ally of Silano, and a member of the Egyptian Rite – was tracking me.

It wasn’t just the thief’s readiness to cock a pistol in my face that disturbed me. Inside his Masonic symbol, I’d been reminded, was the standard letter said to represent God, or gnosis, knowledge, or perhaps geometry.

The letter G.

My initial, and the same letter which poor Minette had scrawled in her own blood.

Was such an emblem her last sight on earth?

The more anxious others were for my trinket, the more determined I was to keep it. There must be some reason for its popularity.

I stopped in the woods to reload, ramming down the ball and listening after I did so. A branch snapped. Was someone following? I’d kill them if they got close. But what if it was poor Talma, trying to find me in the gloom? I hoped he’d simply stay with the coach, but I dared not shoot, shout, or tarry either, so I went deeper into the forest.

The spring air was cool, the nervous energy of escape evaporating and leaving me chill and hungry. I was debating circling back to the road in hopes of finding a farmhouse when I saw the steady glow of a lantern, then another lamp and another, amid the evening trees. I crouched and heard the murmur of voices in a language distinctive from French. Now here was a way to hide myself! I’d stumbled upon an encampment of the Rom. Gypsies – or, as many pronounced the word, Gyptians, reputed to be wanderers from Egypt. Gypsies did nothing to discourage this belief, claiming they were descended from the priests of the pharaohs, even though others considered them a plague of nomadic rascals. Their assertion of ancient authority encouraged lovers and schemers to pay money for their augury.

Again, a sound behind me. Here my experience in the forests of America came into play. I melted into the foliage, using a shadow cast by the lantern light to cloak myself. My pursuer, if that’s what he was, came on oblivious to my position. He stopped after spying the glow of the wagons, considered as I had, and then came ahead, no doubt guessing I’d sought refuge there. When his face came into the light I didn’t recognise him as either an assailant or a passenger, and now was more confused than ever.

No matter, his intentions were plain enough. He, too, had a pistol.

As the stranger crept toward the nearest wagon, I slid noiselessly behind him. He was looking at the multicoloured marvel that was the nearest gypsy vardo when my muzzle eased over his shoulder and came to rest on his skull.

‘I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,’ I said quietly.

There was a long silence. Then, in English, ‘I’m the man who just helped save your life.’

I was startled, uncertain whether to reply in my native tongue. ‘Qui etes-vous?’ I finally demanded.

‘Sir Sidney Smith, a British agent fluent enough in the tongue of France to recognise that your accent is worse than mine,’ he replied again in English. ‘Get the gun barrel off my ear and I’ll explain everything, friend.’

I was stunned. Sidney Smith? Had I encountered the most famous prison fugitive in France – or a mad imposter? ‘Drop your pistol first,’ I said in English. Then I felt something poke my own back, pointed and sharp.

‘As you will drop your rifle, monsieur, when you are at my home.’ In French again, but this time with a distinctive Eastern accent: A gypsy. A half-dozen more emerged from the trees around us, their heads covered in scarves or broad-brimmed hats, sashes on their waists, and boots to their knees, looking raffish and tough. All had knives, swords, or clubs. We stalkers had become the stalked.

‘Be careful,’ I said. ‘There may be other men chasing me.’ I laid my rifle on the ground as Smith surrendered his pistol.

A handsome, swarthy man came around to my face, sword in hand, and gave a grim smile. ‘Not anymore.’ He drew a finger across his throat as he collected the rifle and pistol. ‘Welcome to the Rom.’

When I stepped into the light of the gypsy campfires, I stepped into another world. Their barrel-roofed wagons with paint-box colours created an elfin village amid the trees. I smelt smoke, incense, and cooking spicy enough to be exotic, heavy with garlic and herbs. Women in colourful dresses, with black lustrous hair and golden hoops in their ears, glanced up from steaming pots to evaluate us with eyes as deep and unfathomable as ancient pools. Children crouched by the coloured wheels like watching imps. Shaggy gypsy wagon ponies stamped and snorted from the shadows. All was cast in amber by the glow from their lamps. In Paris all was reason and revolution. Here was something older, more primitive, and free.

‘I am Stefan,’ said the man who’d disarmed us. He had dark, wary eyes, a grand moustache, and a nose so shattered in some past fight that it was as rumpled as a mountain range. ‘We do not care for guns, which are expensive to buy, costly to maintain, noisy to use, tedious to reload, and easy to steal. So explain yourselves, bringing them to our home.’

‘I was en route to Toulon when our coach was accosted,’ I said. ‘I’m fleeing from bandits. When I saw your wagons I stopped and heard him’ – I pointed to Smith – ‘coming up behind me.’

‘And I,’ said Smith, ‘was trying to speak to this gentleman after helping save his life. I shot a thief who was about to shoot him. Then our friend ran like a rabbit.’

So that had been the other shot I’d heard. ‘But how?’ I objected. ‘I mean, where did you come from? I don’t know you. And how could you be Smith? Everyone assumes you escaped to England.’ In February, the flamboyant British naval captain, scourge of the French coastline, had with female help escaped from Paris’s Temple Prison, built from a former castle of the Knights Templar. He’d been missing ever since. Smith had originally been captured while trying to steal a French frigate from the mouth of the Seine, and was so bold and notorious a raider that the authorities had refused to ransom or exchange him. Engravings of his handsome likeness were sold not just in London, but in Paris as well. Now, here he claimed to be.

‘I was following in hopes of warning you. That I came upon your coach shortly after the moment of ambush was no coincidence; I’d been trailing all day at a mile or so behind, with plans to contact you at your inn tonight. When I saw the brigands I feared the worst and crept up on the group. Your work at getting away was brilliant, but you were outnumbered. When one of the villains took aim, I shot him.’

I remained suspicious. ‘Warn me of what?’

He glanced at Stefan. ‘People of Egypt, can you be trusted?’

The gypsy straightened, his feet planted as if ready to box. ‘While you are a guest of the Rom, your secrets stay here. As you protected this fugitive, Englishman, in like manner we protected you. We, too, saw what unfolded, and we make a distinction between criminals and their victims. The thief who attempted to follow the pair of you will not return to his fellows.’

Smith beamed. ‘Well, then, we are all fellow men at arms! Yes, I did escape from Temple Prison with royalist help, and yes, I fully intend to soon reach England. I’m simply waiting for the necessary documents to be forged so I can slip out of a Normandy harbour. New battles wait. But while held in that hideous edifice I whiled away some of my time talking with the prison governor, who was a student of the Templars, and was told all kinds of stories of Solomon and his masons, of Egypt and its priests, and of charms and powers lost in the mists of time. Pagan nonsense, but interesting as all hell. What if the ancients knew of powers now lost? Then, while I was in hiding after my escape, royalists brought rumours that French forces are being gathered for some expedition to the East, and that an American had been invited to join them. I’d heard of you, Mr Gage, and your expertise in electricity. Who would not have heard of a confederate of the great Franklin? Agents reported not only your departure south, but also that rival factions in the French government had a special interest in you and some artifact you carried: something to do with the same legends I’d heard from my warden. Factions within the government hoped to seize you. It seemed we might have common enemies, and the idea of enlisting your help before we both departed France occurred to me. I decided to discreetly follow. Why would an American be invited on a French military expedition? Why would he accept? There were stories of Count Alessandro Silano, a wager in a gambling hall…’

‘I think you know entirely too much about me, sir, and are entirely too quick to repeat it aloud. What is your purpose?’

‘To learn yours, and enlist your service for England.’

‘You are insane.’

‘Hear me out. My new friend Stefan, might we share some wine?’

The gypsy agreed, snapping an order to a comely lass named Sarylla who had swirling dark hair, liquid eyes, a figure fit for museum statuary, and a flirtatious manner. I suppose it’s to be expected: I am a bit of a handsome rogue. She fetched a wineskin. Christ, I was thirsty! Children and dogs squatted in the shadows by the wagon wheels while we drank, watching us intently as if we might soon sprout horns or feathers. Quenching his own thirst, Smith leant forward. ‘Now, there’s some jewel or instrument you hold, is there not?’

Good heavens, was Smith interested in my medallion too? What had the poor strangled French captain found in Italy? Was I, too, going to end up throttled and in some river because I’d won his trinket? Was it truly cursed? ‘You are misinformed.’

‘And others want it, is this not so?’

I sighed. ‘You, too, I suppose.’

‘On the contrary, I want to ensure you dispose of it. Bury it. Lock it away. Throw it, melt it, hide it, or eat it, but just keep the damned thing out of sight until this war is over. I don’t know if my Temple jailer knew more than fairy tales, but anything that tips this contest against Britain threatens civilised order. If you think the piece has monetary value, I will get the Admiralty to compensate you.’

‘Mr Smith…’

‘Sir Sidney.’

His knighthood was from mercenary service to the king of Sweden, not England, but he did have a reputation of being vain and self-aggrandizing. ‘Sir Sidney, all we share is language. I’m American, not British, and France sided with my own nation in our recent revolution against yours. My country is neutral in the present conflict, and on top of that I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Gage, listen to me.’ He cocked forward like a falcon, the very picture of anxious intensity. He had a warrior’s build, straight and broad-shouldered, a sturdy chest tapering to a hard waist, and now that I thought about it, maybe Sarylla was being solicitous to him. ‘Your colonial revolution was one of political independence. This one in France is about the very order of life. My God, a king guillotined! Thousands sent to slaughter! Wars unleashed on every French border! Atheism enshrined! Church lands seized, debts ignored, estates confiscated, rabbles armed, riots, anarchy, and tyranny! You have as much in common with France as Washington has with Robespierre. You and I share not only a language but a culture and political system of law and justice. The madness that has seized France is going to unhinge Europe. All good men are allies, unless they believe in anarchy and dictatorship.’

‘I have many French friends.’

‘As do I! It’s their tyrants I can’t abide. I’m not asking you to betray anyone. I’m hoping you still go wherever this young Napoleon chap leads. All I’m asking is that you keep this talisman secret. Keep it for yourself, not for Boney, or this Silano, or anyone else who asks. Consider that your nation’s commercial future is inevitably with the British Empire, not a revolution bent on ruin. Keep your French friends! Make me your friend as well, and perhaps we’ll someday aid each other.’

‘You want me to spy for England?’

‘Absolutely not!’ He looked hurt, glancing at Stefan as if the gypsy should support his protestations of innocence. ‘I simply offer help. Go where you must and pay attention to what you see. But if you ever tire of Napoleon and are looking for aid, contact the British navy and share what any man could have observed. I’m giving you a signet ring inscribed with a symbol of a unicorn, my coat-of-arms. I’ll notify the Admiralty of its authenticity. Use it as a token of safe passage.’

Smith and Stefan looked at me expectedly. Did they think me a fool? I could feel the lump of the object in the false sole of my boot.

‘First, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I lied again. ‘Second, I’m allies with nobody, neither France nor England. I am merely a man of science, recruited to observe natural phenomena while some legal trouble I have is sorted out in Paris. Third, if I did have what you speak of, I wouldn’t admit it, given the lethal interest everyone seems to display. And fourth, this entire conversation is useless, because whatever I may once have had, even though I never had it, I have no longer, since the thieves plundered my baggage when I fled.’ There, I thought. That should shut them up.

Smith grinned. ‘Good man!’ he shouted, slapping my arm. ‘I knew you had the instincts! Fine show!’

‘And now we feast,’ Stefan said, also apparently approving of my performance. ‘Tell me more of your lessons from Temple Prison, Sir Sidney. We Rom trace our origins to the pharaohs, and to Abraham and Noah. We have forgotten much, but we remember much as well, and we can still sometimes tell the future and bend the whims of fate. Sarylla there is a drabardi, a fortune-teller, and maybe she can cast your future. Come, come, sit, and let us talk of Babylon and Tyre, Memphis and Jerusalem.’

Was everyone but me lost in the ancient world? I slipped on Smith’s ring, reasoning it couldn’t hurt to have another friend.

‘Alas, I threaten all of you the longer I stay,’ Smith said. ‘To tell the truth, a troop of French dragoons has been on my own trail. I wanted this quick word, but must be on my way before they encounter the robbery, hear the story of my timely shot, and look in these woods.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what to make of this fascination with the occult, frankly. My jailer, Boniface, was the worst kind of Jacobin tyrant, but he constantly hinted at mystic secrets. All of us want to believe in magic, even if we adults have been told we shouldn’t. A learned man would dismiss it, and yet sometimes too much learning makes us blind.’

It sounded like what Talma had said.

‘The Rom have kept the secrets of our Egyptian ancestors for centuries,’ Stefan said. ‘Yet we are mere children in the ancient arts.’

Well, their Egyptian connection seemed dubious to me – their very name suggested Romania as a more probable homeland – but then again it was a dusky and colourful group, of vests and shawls and scarves and jewellery, including an ankh here and a figurine of dog-headed Anubis there. Their women might not be Cleopatra, but they certainly had an alluring beauty. What lovemaking secrets might they know? I pondered that question for some moments. I am, after all, a scientist.

‘Adieu, my new friends,’ Smith said. He gave Stefan a purse. ‘Here is payment to conduct Monsieur Gage and the talisman he doesn’t have to safety in Toulon. He will escape detection in your slow wagons. Agreed?’

The gypsy regarded the money, flipped and caught it, and laughed. ‘For this much I would take him to Constantinople! But for a man pursued, I would also take him for free.’

The Englishman bowed. ‘I believe you would, but accept the Crown’s generosity.’

Going with the gypsies would separate me from Talma until we reached Toulon, but I reasoned this would be safer for my friend as well as me. He’d worry, but then he always worried.

‘Gage, we will meet again,’ Smith said. ‘Keep my ring on your finger; the frogs won’t recognise it – I kept it out of sight in prison. In the meantime, keep your wits about you and remember how quickly idealism can turn to tyranny and liberators can become dictators. You may find yourself, eventually, on your mother country’s side.’ Then he melted into the trees as quietly as he’d come, an apparition no one would believe I’d encountered.

Meet again? Not if I had anything to say about it. I didn’t dream how Smith would eventually re-enter my life, a thousand miles from where we stood. I was simply relieved the fugitive was gone.

‘And now we feast,’ said Stefan.

The term ‘feast’ was an exaggeration, but the camp did serve us a rich stew, sopped with thick and heavy bread. I felt safe amid these strange nomads, if a little astonished at their ready hospitality. They seemed to want nothing from me but my company. I was curious if they might really know anything about what was in the sole of my boot.

‘Stefan, I’m not admitting that Smith was right about this pendant. But if some such trinket did exist, what about it would make men so covetous?’

He smiled. ‘It would not be the necklace itself, but the fact that it is some kind of clue.’

‘A clue to what?’

The gypsy shrugged. ‘All I know are old stories. The standard tale is that ancient Egyptians at the dawn of civilisation caged a power that they deemed dangerous until men had the intellectual and moral quality to correctly harness it, but left a key in the form of a neckpiece. Alexander the Great reputedly received this when he made his pilgrimage to the desert oasis of Siwah, where he was declared a son of Amon and Zeus before his march into Persia. He subsequently conquered the known world. How did he accomplish so much so quickly? Then he died a young man in Babylon. Of disease? Or murder? The rumour is that Alexander’s general, Ptolemy, took the key back to Egypt, hoping to unlock great powers, but he couldn’t understand what the token meant. Cleopatra, Ptolemy’s descendant, took it with her when she accompanied Caesar to Rome. Then Caesar was assassinated too! On it goes through history, great men grasping and coming to their doom. Kings, popes, and sultans began to believe it cursed, even as wizards and sorcerers believed it could unlock great secrets. Yet none remembered anymore how to use it. Was it a key to good or to evil? The Catholic Church takes it to Jerusalem during the Crusades, again in futile quest. The Knights Templar become its custodians, hiding it first in Rhodes, then in Malta. There are confusing quests for a holy grail, obscuring the truth of what was sought. For centuries the medallion lay forgotten until someone recognised its significance. Now perhaps it has come to Paris… and then walked into our camp. Of course, this you have denied.’

I didn’t like this medallion bringing death to all. ‘You really think an ordinary man like me could stumble across the same key?’

‘I’ve pawned a hundred pieces of the True Cross and scores of fingers and teeth of the great saints. Who is to say what is real and what is false? Just be aware that some men are in earnest about this trinket you claim not to carry.’

‘Maybe Smith is right. Supposing I had it, I should throw it away. Or give it to you.’

‘Not me!’ He looked alarmed. ‘I’m not in a position to use or understand it. If the stories are true, the medallion will only make sense in Egypt where it was crafted. Besides, it brings bad luck to the wrong man.’

‘I can testify to that,’ I confessed gloomily. A beating, murder, escapes, a holdup… ‘Yet a savant like Franklin would say it’s all superstitious nonsense.’

‘Or maybe he would use your new science to investigate it.’

I was impressed with Stefan’s seeming lack of greed, particularly since his tales had helped fuel my own avarice. Too many other parties wanted this medallion, or wanted it buried: Silano, the bandits, the French expedition, the English, and this mysterious Egyptian Rite. This suggested it was so valuable that I should be determined to keep it until I could either unload it at a profit or figure out what the devil it was for. That meant going on to Egypt. And, meanwhile, watching my back.

I glanced at Sarylla. ‘Could your lass, here, tell my fortune?’

‘She is a mistress of the Tarot.’ He snapped his fingers, and she fetched her deck of mystic cards.

I’d seen the symbols before, and the illustrations of death and the devil remained disturbing. In silence she dealt some before the fire, considered, and turned some others: swords, lovers, cups, the magician. She looked puzzled, making no forecast. Finally she held one up.

It was the fool, or jester. ‘He is the one.’

Well, I had it coming, didn’t I? ‘That’s me?’

She nodded. ‘And the one you seek.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The cards say you will learn what I mean when you get where you must go. You are the fool who must find the fool, becoming wise to find wisdom. You are a seeker who must find the first to seek. Beyond that, it is better you don’t know.’ And she’d say nothing more. That’s the knack of prophecy, isn’t it: to be vague as a fine-written contract? I had more wine.

It was well past midnight when we heard the tread of big horses. ‘French cavalry!’ a gypsy sentry hissed.

I could hear their clink and rattle, branches snapping under the hooves. All but one lamp was extinguished and all but Stefan melted toward their wagons. Sarylla took my hand.

‘We must get these clothes off you so you can pretend to be Rom,’ she whispered.

‘You have a disguise for me?’

‘Your skin.’

Well, there was an idea. And better Sarylla than Temple Prison. She took me by the hand and we crept into a vardo, her lithe fingers helping me shed my stained clothing. Hers slipped off as well, her form luminescent in the dim light. What a day! I lay in one of the wagons next to her warm and silken body, listening to Stefan murmur with a lieutenant of cavalry. I heard the words ‘Sidney Smith,’ there were growled threats, and then much tramping about as wagon doors were jerked open. When ours had its turn, we looked up in feigned sleepiness and Sarylla let our blanket slip off her breasts. You can trust they took a good long look, but not at me.

Then, as the horsemen moved off, I listened to what she suggested we do next. Curse or no curse, my journey to Toulon had taken a decided turn for the better.

‘Show me what they do in Egypt,’ I whispered to her.