Napoleon’s Pyramids

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘When the well runs dry we know the worth of water,’ old Ben Franklin had written. Indeed, the French army’s march to the Nile had been an ill-planned fiasco. Companies trampled each other at every good well and then drank it dry before the next regiment arrived. Men quarrelled, collapsed, became delirious, and shot themselves. They were tantalised and tormented by a new phenomenon the savants dubbed a ‘mirage’, in which distant desert looked like shimmering lakes of water. Cavalry would gallop toward it at full charge, only to find dry sand and the ‘lake’ once more on the horizon, as elusive as the end of a rainbow. It was as if the desert was mocking the Europeans. When troops reached the Nile they stampeded like cattle, plunging into the river to drink until they vomited, even as other men tried to drink around them. Their mysterious destination, fabled Egypt, seemed as cruel as the mirage. The shortage of canteens and the failure to secure wells was a criminal oversight the other generals blamed Napoleon for, and he was not a man to readily shoulder blame. ‘The French complain of everything, always,’ he muttered. Yet the criticism stung because he knew it was just. In his campaign in fertile Italy, food and water was readily obtained on the march and army clothing fit the climate. Here he was learning to bring everything with him, but the lessons were painful. Tempers frayed in the heat.

The French army began marching up the Nile toward Cairo, Egyptian peasants fleeing and reforming behind it like displaced fog. As a column approached each village, the women and children would drive livestock into the desert and hide amid the dunes, peeping over the lip like animals from burrows. The men would linger a little longer, trying to hide food and their meagre implements from the locust-like invaders. As the tricolour entered the village boundary they would finally run for the river, straddling bundles of papyrus reed and paddling out into the water, bobbing offshore in the Nile like wary ducks. Division after division would tramp past their homes, a long caterpillar of dusty blue, red, white, and green uniforms. Doors would be kicked in, stables explored, and anything of use taken. Then the army would march on and the peasants would come back to take up their lives again, scouring our track for useful pieces of military litter.

Our little fleet paralleled the land force, bearing supplies and scouting the opposite bank. Each evening we’d land near Napoleon’s headquarters company so that Monge, Berthollet, and Talma could make notes about the country we were traversing. It was dangerous to roam away from the soldiers’ protection, so they would interview officers on what they’d seen and add to lists of animals, birds, and villages. Their reception was sometimes grumpy because we were envied our place in the boats. The heat was enervating, and the flies a torment. Each time we landed the tension between the army’s officers seemed worse, since many supplies were still back on the ships or docks at Alexandria and no division had all it needed. Constant sniping from the Bedouin marauders and lurid stories of capture and torture kept the troops uneasy.

The tension finally boiled over when a particularly insolent group of enemy warriors managed to penetrate near Napoleon’s tent one evening, whooping and firing from their splendid Arabians, their colourful robes like a taunting cape. When the furious general dispatched some dragoons and a young aide named Croisier to destroy them, the masterful Egyptian horsemen toyed with the troop and then escaped without losing a man. The small desert horses seemed able to run twice as far on half the water as the heavy European mounts, which were still recovering from the long sea voyage. Our commander went into a rage, humiliating the poor aide so badly that Croisier vowed to die bravely in battle to make up for his shame, a promise he would keep within a year. But Bonaparte was not to be mollified.

‘Get me a real warrior!’ he cried. ‘I want Bin Sadr!’

This enraged Dumas, who felt the honour of his cavalry was being impugned. It didn’t help that the shortage of horses meant that many of his troopers remained without mounts. ‘You honour that cutthroat and insult my men?’

‘I want flankers to keep the Bedouin away from my headquarters, not aristocratic dandies who can’t catch a bandit!’ The grim march and jealous seniors were wearing on him.

Dumas was not cowed. ‘Then wait for good horses instead of rushing into the desert without water! It is your incompetence, not Croisier’s!’

‘You dare to challenge me? I will have you shot!’

‘I will break you in half before you do, little man…’

The argument was cut short by the galloping arrival of Bin Sadr and half a dozen of his turbaned henchmen, reining up between the quarrelling generals. Kleber took the opportunity to drag the hotheaded Dumas backward while Napoleon fought to get himself under control. The Mamelukes were making fools of us.

‘What is it, effendi?’ Once more, the Arab’s lower face was masked.

‘I pay you to keep the Bedouin and Mamelukes off my flanks,’ Bonaparte snapped. ‘Why aren’t you doing so?’

‘Maybe because you aren’t paying as you promised. I have a jar of fresh ears, and no fresh gold to show for it. My men are bought men, effendi, and they’ll go to the Mamelukes if the enemy promises quicker coin.’

‘Bah. You’re afraid of the enemy.’

‘I envy them! They have generals who pay when they promise!’

Bonaparte scowled and turned to Berthier, his chief of staff. ‘Why isn’t he paid?’

‘Men have two ears and two hands,’ Berthier said quietly. ‘There’s been disagreement over how many he’s really killed.’

‘You question my honesty?’ the Arab shouted. ‘I will bring you tongues and penises!’

‘For God’s sake,’ Dumas groaned. ‘Why are we dealing with barbarians?’

Napoleon and Berthier began muttering with each other over money.

Bin Sadr scanned the rest of us with an impatient eye and suddenly his gaze fell on me. I could swear the devil was looking for the chain around my neck. I scowled back, suspicious that it was he who’d dropped a snake in my bed. His eye also strayed to Astiza, his look deepening to hatred. She remained impassive. Could this really be the lantern bearer who had tried to betray me in Paris? Or was I succumbing to fear and fantasy like the common foot soldiers? I hadn’t really taken a good look at the man in France.

‘All right,’ our commander finally said. ‘We pay you for the hands to date. There’s double for all your men once we conquer Cairo. Just keep the Bedouin away.’

The Arab bowed. ‘You’ll not be bothered by those jackals again, effendi. I pluck out their eyes and force them to swallow their own sight. I geld them like cattle. I tie their intestines to their horse’s tail and whip the animal across the desert.’

‘Good, good. Let word of that spread.’ He turned away, done with the Arab, his frustration spent. He looked embarrassed at his outburst, and I could see him mentally chastising himself for not maintaining control. Bonaparte made many mistakes, but seldom more than once.

But Bin Sadr was not done. ‘Our horses are swift but our guns are old, effendi. Might we have some new ones as well?’ He gestured toward the short-barreled carbines that Dumas’s cavalry carried.

‘The hell you will,’ the cavalryman growled.

‘New?’ Bonaparte repeated. ‘No, we have none to spare.’

‘How about that man with his longrifle?’ Now he pointed at me. ‘I remember him and his shot at the walls of Alexandria. Give him to me, and together we’ll send the devils who harass you to hell.’

‘The American?’

‘He can shoot the ones who flee.’

The idea intrigued Napoleon, who was looking for a distraction. ‘How about it, Gage? Do you want to ride with a desert sheikh?’

My attempted assassin, I thought, but didn’t say that. I wasn’t about to get near Bin Sadr except to strangle him, after I’d questioned him first. ‘I was invited as a scholar, not a sniper, general. My place is on the boat.’

‘Out of danger?’ Bin Sadr mocked.

‘But not out of range. Come down to the river bank sometime and see how close I can come to hitting you, lantern bearer.’

‘Lantern bearer?’ Bonaparte asked.

‘The American has had too much sun,’ the Arab said. ‘Go, stay on your boat, thinking yourself out of danger, and maybe soon there will be some new use for your rifle. You may wish you had come with Achmed bin Sadr.’ And with that, taking a sack of coins from Berthier, he turned to gallop off.

As he did so the fabric that covered his lower face slipped briefly, and I got a glimpse of his cheek. There was an angry boil, covered by a poultice, at the same point that Astiza had lanced her wax figurine.

We were already halfway to Cairo when word came that a Mameluke ruler named Murad Bey had assembled a force to oppose our passage. Bonaparte decided to seize the initiative. Orders were issued and troops departed on the evening of July 12 ^ th for a surprise night march to Shubra Khit, the next major town on the Nile. At dawn the French approach surprised a still-organising Egyptian army of some ten thousand men, a thousand of them splendid Mameluke cavalry and the rest an unformed rabble of fellahin – peasants armed with little more than cudgels. They milled in uncertainty as the French formed battle ranks, and for a moment I thought the whole mass of them might retreat without a fight. Then some encouragement seemed to stiffen them – we could see their chiefs pointing up the Nile – and they braced for battle as well.

I had a fine grandstand seat on board the anchored Cerf. As a golden sun rose to the east, we watched from the water as a French army band struck up the ‘Marseillaise’, its notes floating out across the Nile. It was a tune that made troops shiver, and under its inspiration the French would come near to conquering the world. There was a throat-catching efficiency to the way the soldiers assembled into their hedgehog squares again, regimental standards tugged by the morning breeze. It is not an easy formation to master, and even harder to hold during an enemy charge, when every man is facing outward and relying on men behind him to hold. There’s a natural tendency to want to back away, threatening to collapse the formation, or for shirkers to drop their weapons to drag back the wounded. Sergeants and the toughest veterans man the rear ranks to keep those in front from quailing. Yet a square that is firm is virtually impregnable. The Mameluke cavalry circled to find a weak point and couldn’t, the French formations clearly baffling the enemy. It appeared this battle would be another lopsided demonstration of European firepower against medieval Arab courage. We waited, sipping Egyptian mint tea, as the morning turned from pink to blue.

Then there were warning shouts and sails appeared from a bend upriver. Cries of triumph came from the Mamelukes on shore. We stood on our deck uneasily. The Nile was carrying an armada of Egyptian river craft from Cairo, their lateen triangles filling the river like a yard of laundry. Mameluke and Islamic banners flew from every masthead, and from hulls crowded with soldiers and cannon came a great clamour of trumpets, drums, and horns. Was this the use of my rifle that Bin Sadr had slyly warned me about? How had he known? The enemy strategy was obvious. They wanted to destroy our little fleet and take Bonaparte’s army by flank from the river.

I emptied my tea over the side and checked the load of my rifle, feeling trapped and exposed on the water. I wasn’t to be a spectator after all.

Captain Perree began snapping orders to raise anchor as the French sailors in his little fleet sprang to their cannon. Talma got out his notebook, looking pale. Monge and Berthollet grasped the rigging and boosted themselves up on the gunwale to watch, as if at a regatta. For some minutes the two fleets slowly closed with stately grace, great swans gliding. Then there was a thud, a blossom of smoke from the prow of the Mameluke flagship, and something sizzled past us in the air, throwing up a geyser of green water off our stern.

‘Don’t we get to parley first?’ I asked lightly, my voice more unsteady than I would have preferred.

As if in reply, the front rank of the entire Egyptian flotilla thundered as its bow cannon fired. The river seemed to heave and splashes erupted all around us, wetting us with warm mist. One ball landed directly on a gunboat to our right, kicking up a rain of splinters. Screams echoed across the water. There was that strange thrumming sound made by passing round shot, and holes opened in our sail like expressions of surprise.

‘I think negotiations have ended,’ Talma said tightly, squatting by the wheel and scribbling notes with one of Conte’s new pencils. ‘This will make an exciting bulletin.’ His fingers betrayed his tremble.

‘Their sailors seem considerably more accurate than their comrades at Alexandria,’ Monge remarked admiringly, jumping down from the rigging. He was as imperturbable as if viewing a cannon demonstration at a foundry.

‘The Ottoman sailors are Greek!’ Astiza exclaimed, recognising her countrymen from their costume. ‘They serve the bey in Cairo. Now you shall have a fight!’

Perree’s men began firing back, but it was hard to swing against the river current to make a proper broadside, and we were clearly outgunned. While we luffed our sails to keep from closing with the enemy too quickly, the rival fleets were inevitably converging. I glanced ashore. The start of this naval cannonade had apparently been the signal for the land-based Mamelukes. They waved their lances and charged toward the picket of French bayonets, galloping straight into hissing sheets of French fire. Horses dashed against the squares like surf against a rocky shore.

Suddenly there was an enormous bang and Astiza and I were thrown from our feet, landing in an ungainly tangle. Given more ordinary circumstances I might have enjoyed this moment of unexpected intimacy, but it had been caused by a cannonball slamming into our hull. When we rolled apart I was sickened. The round had skipped along the main deck, clipping to pieces two of our gunners and spraying the forward half of the vessel with gore. Splinters had wounded several more men, including Perree, and our fire slackened even as that of the Arabs seemed to be increasing.

‘Journalist!’ the captain shouted at Talma, ‘Stop scribbling and take the wheel!’

Talma blanched. ‘Me?’

‘I need to bind my arm and serve the cannon!’

Our scribe sprang to obey, excited and scared. ‘Which way?’

‘Toward the enemy.’

‘Come, Claude-Louis!’ Monge shouted to Berthollet as the mathematician clambered forward to take over another unmanned gun. ‘It’s time to put our science to use! Gage, start using your rifle, if you want to live!’ My God, the scientist was past fifty and seemed determined to win the battle himself! He and Berthollet ran to the forward cannon. Meanwhile I finally fired, and an enemy sailor tumbled out of his rigging. A fog of cannon haze rolled down on us, Arab boats gauzy in its murk. How long before we were boarded and cut to ribbons by scimitars? I noticed dimly that Astiza had crawled forward to help the scientists haul on the gun tackle. Her admiration of Greek marksmanship had apparently been overcome by her instinct for self-preservation. Berthollet himself had rammed home a charge and now Monge aimed the gun.

‘Fire!’

The cannon belched a sheet of flame. Monge sprang up on the bowsprit and stood on his tiptoes to judge his aim, then leapt back disappointed. The shot had missed. ‘We need bearings to accurately calculate distance, Claude-Louis,’ he muttered, ‘or we’re wasting powder and shot.’ He snapped at Astiza. ‘Sponge and reload!’

I aimed my rifle again, squeezing carefully. This time a Mameluke captain pitched out of sight. Bullets pattered around me in return. Sweating, I reloaded.

‘Talma, hold a steady course, damn you!’ Monge shouted back.

The scribe was clutching the wheel with pale determination. The Ottoman fleet was drawing steadily closer, and enemy sailors bunched at their prows, ready to board.

The scientists, I saw, were taking bearings on points ashore and sketching intersecting lines to get an accurate estimate of distance to the enemy flagship. Water was blasting into fountains all around us. Chips of debris buzzed through the air.

I primed my pan, shot a Greek Ottoman gunner through the brain, and ran to the bow. ‘Why don’t you fire?’

‘Silence!’ Berthollet cried. ‘Give us time to check our arithmetic!’ The two scientists were elevating the gun, aiming it as precisely as a surveying instrument.

‘One more degree,’ Monge muttered. ‘Now!’

The cannon barked once more, its ball screamed, I could follow the shadow of its passage, and then – wonder of wonders – it actually struck the Mameluke flagship perfectly amidships, punching a hole into the vessel’s bowels. By Thor, the two savants had actually figured the thing.

‘Hooray for mathematics!’

A moment passed, and then the entire enemy boat blew up.

Apparently the scientists had made a direct hit on the magazine. There was a concussive roar that radiated out a cloud of shattered wood, broken cannon, and human body parts, arcing outward and then sluicing into the opaque surface of the Nile. The clap of air sent us sprawling, and smoke roiled into the blue Egyptian sky in a vast mushroom. And then there was just disturbed water where the enemy flagship had been, as if it had vanished by magic. The Muslim fire immediately went silent in stunned consternation, and then a wail went up from the enemy flotilla as its smaller boats tacked to flee upriver. At the same moment the Mameluke cavalry, forming for a second charge after their first failed, suddenly broke and retreated southward at this seeming sign of French omnipotence. In minutes, what had been a swirling land-and-sea battle turned into a rout. With that single well-placed shot, the battle of Shubra Khit was won, and the wounded Perree was promoted to rear admiral.

And I, by association, was a hero.

When Perree went ashore to receive Bonaparte’s congratulations he generously invited the two scientists, Talma, and me, giving us full credit for the decisive shot. Monge’s precision was something of a marvel. Despite the Greek expertise, the new admiral later calculated that the two fleets had exchanged fifteen hundred cannon shots in half an hour and his flotilla had come away with just six dead and twenty wounded. Such was the state of Egyptian artillery, or ordnance in general, at the close of the eighteenth century. Cannon and musket fire was so inaccurate that a brave man could put himself at the forefront of a charge and actually have a decent chance of survival and glory. Men fired too soon. They fired blind in the smoke. They loaded in panic and forgot to discharge, ramming one bullet atop another without shooting at all, until their musket burst. They shot off the ears and hands of their comrades in the rank ahead of them, broke eardrums, and jabbed each other when fitting bayonets. Bonaparte told me that at least one out of ten battle casualties came from one’s own comrades, which is why uniforms are so bright, to prevent friends from killing each other.

Expensive rifles like mine will someday change all this, I suppose, and warfare shall devolve into men groping in the mud for cover. What glory in murder? Indeed, I wondered what war would be like if savants did all the aiming and every bomb and bullet hit. But this, of course, is a fanciful notion that will forever be impossible.

While Monge and Berthollet were the ones who had laid the key gun, I was applauded for having fought with fervour for the French side. ‘You have the spirit of Yorktown!’ Napoleon congratulated, clapping me on the back. Again, the presence of Astiza enhanced my reputation. Like any good French soldier I’d attached myself to an attractive woman, and a woman moreover with the spirit to haul on cannon tackle. I’d become one of them, while she used her skill or magic – in Egypt, the two seemed to be the same – to help bind the wounded. We males joined Napoleon for dinner in his tent.

Our general was in a good mood from the outcome of the brisk fight, which had settled both him and his army. Egypt might be alien, but France could become its master. Now Bonaparte’s mind was full of plans for the future, even though we were still more than a hundred river miles from Cairo.

‘My campaign is not one of conquest but of marriage,’ he proclaimed as we dined on poultry that his aides had liberated from Shubra Khit, roasting them on the ramrods of their muskets. ‘France has a destiny in the East, just as your young nation, Gage, has a destiny in the West. While your United States civilises the red savage, we’ll reform the Muslim with Western ideas. We’ll bring windmills, canals, factories, dams, roads, and carriages to somnolent Egypt. You and I are revolutionaries, yes, but I’m a builder as well. I want to create, not destroy.’

I think he truly believed this, just as he believed a thousand other things about himself, many of them contradictory. He had the intellect and ambition of a dozen men, and was a chameleon who tried to fit them all.

‘These people are Muslim,’ I pointed out. ‘They won’t change. They’ve been fighting Christians for centuries.’

‘I’m Muslim too, Gage, if there is only one God and every religion is just an aspect of central truth. That’s what we must explain to these people, that we are all brothers under Allah or Jehovah or Yahweh or whomever. France and Egypt will unite once the mullahs see we are their brothers. Religion? It’s a tool, like medals or bonus pay. Nothing inspires like unproven faith.’

Monge laughed. ‘Unproven? I’m a scientist, general, and yet God seemed quite proven once those cannon balls began whizzing by.’

‘Proven or wished, like a child wishes for his mother? Who knows? Life is brief, and none of our deepest questions are ever answered. So I live for posterity: death is nothing, but to live without glory is to die every day. I’m reminded of the story of an Italian duelist who fought fourteen times to defend his claim that the poet Aristo was finer than the poet Tasio. On his deathbed, the man confessed he’d read neither one.’ Bonaparte laughed. ‘Now that is living!’

‘No, General,’ the balloonist Conte replied, tapping his wine cup. ‘ This is living.’

‘Ah, I appreciate a good cup, or a fine horse, or a beautiful woman. Look at our American friend here, who rescues this pretty Macedonian, finds himself in the commander’s tent, and is about to share in the riches of Cairo. He’s an opportunist like me. Don’t think I don’t miss my own wife, who is a greedy little witch with one of the prettiest pussies I’ve ever seen, a woman so seductive that I went at her one time without even noticing that her little dog was biting me on the ass!’ He roared at the memory. ‘Pleasure is exquisite! But it is history that is lasting, and no place has more history than Egypt. You’ll record it for me, eh, Talma?’

‘Writers thrive with their subjects, General.’

‘I will give authors a subject worthy of their talents.’

Talma lifted his cup. ‘Heroes sell books.’

‘And books make heroes.’

We all drank, to what, exactly, I cannot say.

‘You have great ambition, General,’ I remarked.

‘Success is a matter of will. The first step to greatness is to decide to be great. Then men will follow.’

‘Follow you where, General?’ Kleber asked genially.

‘All the way.’ He looked to each of us in turn, his gaze intense. ‘All the way.’

After dinner I paused to say a good-bye to Monge and Berthollet. I’d had quite enough of river boats, having seen one of them explode, and Talma and Astiza wanted to be ashore as well. So we gave temporary farewells to the two scientists, under a desert sky ablaze with countless stars.

‘Bonaparte is cynical but seductive,’ I remarked. ‘You can’t listen to his dreams without being infected by them.’

Monge nodded. ‘He’s a comet, that one. If he’s not killed, he’ll leave his mark on the world. And on us.’

‘Always admire but never trust him,’ Berthollet cautioned. ‘We’re all hanging onto the tiger’s tail, Monsieur Gage, hoping we won’t be eaten.’

‘Surely he won’t eat his own kind, my chemist friend.’

‘But what are his own kind? If he doesn’t quite believe in God, neither does he quite believe in us: that we are real. No one is real to Napoleon but Napoleon.’

‘That seems too cynical.’

‘No? In Italy he ordered a group of his soldiers to a sharp skirmish with the Austrians that left several men dead.’

‘That’s war, is it not?’ I remembered Bonaparte’s comments on the beach.

‘Not when there was no military need for the skirmish, or the deaths. A pretty Mademoiselle Thurreau was visiting from Paris and Bonaparte was anxious to bed her by demonstrating his power. He ordered the fight solely to impress her.’ Berthollet put his hand on my arm. ‘I’m glad you’ve joined us, Gage, you are proving brave and congenial. March with our young general and you’ll march far, as he promised. But never forget that Napoleon’s interests are Napoleon’s, not your own.’

I’d hoped that the remainder of our journey to Cairo would be a stroll down avenues of date palms and through the irrigated greenery of melon fields. Instead, to avoid the bends in the river and the narrow lanes of frequent villages, the French army left the Nile a few miles to the east and hiked through desert and dry farmland once more, crossing sun-baked mud and empty, axle-breaking irrigation canals. The alluvial valley, which the Nile flooded each wet season, sent up a cloud of dry, clinging powder that turned us into a horde of dust men, marching south on blistered feet. The heat in the middle of July routinely exceeded one hundred degrees, and when a hot wind blew the brilliantly azure sky turned milk on the horizon. Sand hissed over the top of sculpted dunes like an undulating sheet. Men began to suffer ophthalmia, temporary blindness from the ceaseless glare. So fierce was the sun that we needed to wrap our hands to pick up a rock or touch a cannon barrel.

It didn’t help that Bonaparte, still fearing a British strike in his rear or more organised resistance to his front, scolded his officers for every pause and delay. While they focused on the march of the moment his mind was always on the greater picture, ticking off the calendar and strategically roaming from the mysterious whereabouts of the British fleet to ally Tippoo, in distant India. He tried to hold all of Egypt in his eye. The genial host we’d seen after the river fight had once more reverted to anxious tyrant, galloping from point to point to urge more speed. ‘The faster the pace, the less the blood!’ he lectured. As a result, all the generals were sweating, dirty, and frequently cursing each other. The soldiers were depressed by the bickering and by the bleakness of the land they’d come to conquer. Many cast off equipment rather than carry it. Several more committed suicide. Astiza and I passed two of their bodies, left by our path because everyone was too hurried to bury them. Only the trailing Bedouin discouraged more men from desertion.

Our torrent of men, horses, donkeys, guns, wagons, camels, camp followers, and beggars flowed toward Cairo in an arrow of dust. When we halted to rest in the farmlands, muddy from sweat, our only amusement was to throw rocks at the innumerable rats. In the desert fringe the men shot at snakes and played with the scorpions, tormenting them into contests against each other. They learnt that the scorpion bite was not as deadly as initially feared, and that crushing the insect against the sting released a goo that worked as a salve to help soothe the pain and hasten the healing.

There was no rain, ever, and rarely a cloud. At night we did not so much camp as sprawl, everyone collapsing in the sequence with which we’d marched, the lot of us immediately assaulted by fleas and midges. We ate cold food as often as hot because there was little wood for fuel. The night would cool toward dawn and we’d wake wet with dew, only half recovered. Then the cloudless sun would rise, remorseless as a clock, and soon we’d all be baking. Astiza, I noticed, lay steadily closer to me as the march went on, but we were both so swaddled, filthy, and exposed in this horde that there was nothing romantic in her decision. We simply sought each other’s warmth at night, and then bemoaned the sun and flies by noon.

At Wardan the army was finally allowed to rest for two days. The men washed, slept, foraged, and bartered for food. Once again Astiza proved her value in being able to converse with the villagers and trade for sustenance. So successful was she that I was able to supply some of the officers at Napoleon’s headquarters with bread and fruit.

‘You’re sustaining the invaders like the Hebrews were sustained by manna from heaven,’ I tried to joke with her.

‘I’m not going to starve ordinary soldiers because of the delusions of their commander,’ she retorted. ‘Besides, fed or starving, you’ll all be gone shortly.’

‘You don’t think the French can beat the Mamelukes?’

‘I don’t think they can beat the desert. Look at all of you, with your heavy uniforms and hot boots and pink skin. Is there anyone but your mad general who doesn’t regret coming here? These soldiers will leave on their own soon enough.’

Her predictions were beginning to annoy me. She was a captive, after all, spoilt by my kindness, and it was high time I reprimanded her. ‘Astiza, we could have killed you as an assassin in Alexandria. Instead, I saved you. Can’t we become not master and servant, or invader and Egyptian, but friends?’

‘A friend of whom? A man foreign to his own army? In alliance with a military opportunist? An American who seems neither true scientist nor soldier?’

‘You saw my medallion. It’s a key to something I’m to figure out.’

‘But you want this key without understanding. You want knowledge without study. Coins without work.’

‘I view this as damned hard work.’

‘You’re a parasite looting another culture. I want a friend who believes in something. Himself, first. And things greater than himself.’

Well, that was presumptuous! ‘I’m an American who believes in all kinds of things! You should read our Declaration of Independence! And I don’t control the world. I just try to make my way in it.’

‘No. What individuals do does control the world. War has put us together, Monsieur Ethan Gage, and you are not an entirely unlikable man. But companionship is not true friendship. First you have to decide why you are in Egypt, what you mean to do with this medallion of yours, what you really stand for, and then we will be friends.’

Well. Quite insolent for a merchant’s slave, I thought! ‘And we will be friends when you acknowledge me as master and accept your new fate!’

‘What task haven’t I done for you? Where haven’t I accompanied you?’

Women! I had no answer. This time we slept an arm’s length away and my mind kept me from sleep until well past midnight. Which was just as well, because I narrowly escaped having a wandering donkey step on my head.

One day after the Egyptian New Year, on July 20 ^ th at the village of Omm-Dinar, Napoleon finally received word of the Mameluke disposition for the defence of Cairo, now just eighteen miles ahead. The defenders had foolishly split their forces. Murad Bey led the bulk of the Mameluke army on our own western side of the river, but a jealous Ibrahim Bey had kept a sizable share on the east. It was the opportunity our general had been waiting for. The order to march came two hours after midnight, the shouts and kicks of officers and sergeants brooking no delay. Like a great beast rousing itself in its cave, the French expeditionary force stirred, rose, and marched south in the dark with a sudden anticipation that called to mind that prickly feeling I get from demonstrating Franklin’s electricity. This would be the great battle, and the coming day would see either the destruction of the main Mameluke army or the rout of our own. Despite Astiza’s lofty lecture about controlling the world, I felt no more in charge of my fate than a leaf on a current.

Dawn came red, with mist on the reeds of the Nile. Bonaparte urged us on, anxious to crush the Mamelukes before they joined forces or, worse, dispersed into the desert. I caught sight of him exhibiting a scowling intensity greater than any I’d yet observed, not just keen on a fight but obsessed with it. A captain made some mild objection and Napoleon snapped back with the bark of a cannon. His mood made the soldiers apprehensive. Was our commander worried about the coming battle? If so, all of us would worry too. None had got enough sleep. We could see another great pall of dust on the horizon where the Mamelukes and their foot soldiers were massing.

It was during a brief stop at a muddy village well that I learnt the reason for the general’s darkness. It was by chance that one of the general’s aides, a recklessly brave young soldier named Jean-Andoche Junot, got down from his horse to drink while I did.

‘The general seems awfully impatient for battle,’ I remarked. ‘I knew this fight must come, and that speed in war is paramount, but to rise in the middle of the night seems uncivilised, somehow.’

‘Stay away from him,’ the lieutenant warned quietly. ‘He’s dangerous after last night.’

‘You were drinking? Gambling? What?’

‘He’d asked me weeks before to make some discreet enquiries because of persistent rumours. Recently, I received some pilfered letters that prove Josephine is having an affair, a secret to none but our general. Last evening, shortly after word came of the Mameluke dispositions, he abruptly demanded what I’d learnt.’

‘She’s betrayed him?’

‘She’s in love with a fop named Hippolyte Charles, an aide to General Leclerc back in France. The woman has been cheating on Bonaparte since they were married, but he’s been blind to her infidelities since he loves her like a madman. His jealousy is unbelievable, and his fury last night was volcanic. I was afraid he was going to shoot me. He looked insane, striking his head with his fists. Do you know what it’s like to be betrayed by the one you love most hopelessly? He told me his emotions were spent, his idealism over, and that nothing remained for him but ambition.’

‘All that over an affair? A Frenchman?’

‘He loves her desperately, and hates himself for that love. He’s the most independent and friendless of men, meaning he’s captive to that trollop he married. He ordered this march immediately, and swore repeatedly that his own happiness was over and that before the sun sets, he would destroy the Egyptian armies to the last man. I tell you, Monsieur Gage, we’re being led into battle by a general who is insane with rage.’

This didn’t sound good at all. If there’s one thing a person hopes for in a commander, it’s a cool head. I swallowed. ‘Your timing wasn’t the best, Junot.’

The lieutenant swung up onto his horse. ‘I had no choice, and my report should have come as no surprise. I know his mind, and he’ll put the distraction aside when battle comes. You’ll see.’ He nodded, as if to reassure himself. ‘I’m just glad I’m not on the other side.’