Our general shook his head. ‘Except that this focuses – what? Electricity?’ He turned to me.
If I’d grandly said yes, he probably would have given me a reward. Instead, I looked vacant as an idiot.
‘The granite coffer is also interesting,’ Jomard said, to fill the awkward silence. ‘Its interior volume is exactly half its exterior volume. While it seems sized for a man or a casket, I suspect its precise dimensions are no accident.’
‘Boxes within boxes,’ Monge said. ‘First this chamber, then the outside of the sarcophagus, then the inside… for what? We have a host of theories, but no one answer I feel is conclusive.’
I looked up. It felt like millions of tons were pressing down toward us, threatening at any moment to obliterate our existence. For a moment I had the illusion the ceiling was descending! But no, I blinked, and the chamber was as before.
‘Leave me,’ Bonaparte suddenly commanded.
‘What?’
‘Jomard is right. I feel power here. Don’t you feel it?’
‘It feels oppressive and yet alive,’ I offered. ‘Like a grave, and yet you feel light, insubstantial.’
‘I want to spend some time in here alone,’ the general told us. ‘I want to see if I can feel the spirit of this dead pharaoh. Perhaps his body is gone but his soul remains. Perhaps Silano and his magic are real. Perhaps I can feel Gage’s electricity. Leave me with an unlit torch in the dark. I’ll come down when I’m ready.’
Monge looked concerned. ‘Perhaps if one of us remained as guard…’
‘No.’ He climbed over the lip of the black sarcophagus and lay down, staring at the ceiling. We looked down at him and he smiled slightly. ‘It’s more comfortable than you might think. The stone is neither too cold nor hot. Nor am I too tall, are you surprised?’ He smiled at his little joke. ‘Not that I plan to remain here forever.’
Jomard looked troubled. ‘There are accounts of panic…’
‘Never question my courage.’
He bowed. ‘To the contrary, I salute you, my general.’
So we dutifully filed out, each torch in turn disappearing through the low entryway until our commander was left alone in the dark. We worked our way down the Grand Gallery, letting ourselves down by the rope. A bat took flight and flapped down toward us, but an Arab waved a torch and the blind creature veered away from the heat, settling again on the ceiling. By the time we got down to the smaller shaft that led down to the pyramid entrance, I was soaked with sweat.
‘I’ll wait for him here,’ Jomard said. ‘The rest of you file outside.’
I needed no encouragement. The day seemed lit with a thousand suns when we finally emerged on the outside of the pyramid’s sand-and-rubble slope, clouds of dust puffing off our now-filthy clothes. My throat was parched, my head aching. We found shade on the east side of the structure and sat to wait, sipping water. The party members who had remained outside had scattered over the ruins. Some were circuiting the other two pyramids. Some had erected little awnings and were having lunch. A few had climbed partway up the structure above us, and others competed to see how high up the pyramid’s side they could hurl a rock.
I mopped my brow, acutely conscious that I seemed no closer to solving the medallion’s mystery. ‘All this great pile for three little rooms?’
‘It doesn’t make sense, does it?’ agreed Monge.
‘I feel like there’s something obvious we’re not seeing.’
‘I’m guessing we’re to see numbers, as Jomard said. It may be a puzzle meant to occupy humankind for centuries.’ The mathematician took out paper and began his own calculations.
Bonaparte was absent for a full hour. Finally there was a shout and we went back to meet him. Like us he emerged dirty and blinking, skidding down the rubble to the sand below. But when we ran up I saw he was also unusually pale, his eyes having the unfocused, haunted look of a man emerging from a vivid dream.
‘What took you so long?’ Monge asked.
‘Was it long?’
‘An hour, at least.’
‘Really? Time disappeared.’
‘And?’
‘I crossed my arms in the sarcophagus, like those mummies we’ve seen.’
‘ Mon dieu, General.’
‘I heard and saw…’ He shook his head as if to clear it. ‘Or did I?’ He swayed.
The mathematician grasped his arm to hold him up. ‘Heard and saw what?’
He blinked. ‘I had a picture of my life, or I think it was my life. I’m not even sure if it was the future or the past.’ He looked around, whether to be evasive or to tease us, I know not.
‘What kind of picture?’
‘I… it was very strange. I won’t speak of this, I think. I won’t
…’ Then his eyes fell on me. ‘Where’s the medallion?’ he abruptly demanded.
He took me by surprise. ‘It’s lost, remember?’
‘No. You’re mistaken.’ His grey eyes were intent.
‘It went down with L’Orient, General.’
‘No.’ He said it with such conviction that we looked at each other uneasily.
‘Would you have some water?’ Monge asked worriedly.
Napoleon shook his head as if to clear it. ‘I will not go in there again.’
‘But, General, what did you see?’ the mathematician pressed.
‘We will not speak of this again.’
All of us were uncomfortable. I realised how much the expedition relied on Bonaparte’s precision and energy, now that I’d seen him dazed. He was imperfect as a man and a leader, but so commanding, so dominant in purpose and intellect, that all of us had unconsciously surrendered to him. He was the expedition’s spark and its compass. Without him, none of this would be happening.
The pyramid seemed to be looking down on us mockingly, the perfect peak.
‘I must rest,’ Napoleon said. ‘Wine, not water.’ He snapped his finger and an aide ran to fetch a flask. Then he turned to me. ‘What are you doing here?’
Had he lost all his senses? ‘What?’ I was confused by his confusion.
‘You came with a medallion and a promise to make sense of this. You’ve claimed to have lost the one and haven’t fulfilled the other. What is it I felt in there? Is it electricity?’
‘Possibly, General, but I have no instrument to tell. I’m as baffled as anyone.’
‘And I am baffled by you, a suspected murderer and an American, who comes on our expedition and seems to be of no use and yet is everywhere! I’m beginning to not trust you, Gage, and it is not comfortable being a man I don’t trust.’
‘General Bonaparte, I have been working to earn your trust, on the battlefield and here! It does no good to make wild guesses. Give me time to work on these theories. Jomard’s ideas are intriguing, but I’ve had no time to evaluate them.’
‘Then you will sit here in the sand until you do.’ He took the flask and drank.
‘What? No! I have studies in Cairo!’
‘You’re not to return to Cairo until you can come back and tell me something useful about this pyramid. Not old stories, but what it is for and how it can be harnessed. There’s power here, and I want to know how to tap it.’
‘I want nothing less! But how am I to do that?’
‘You are a savant, supposedly. Discover it. Use the medallion you pretend to have lost.’ Then he stalked away.
Our little group watched him in stupefaction.
‘What the devil happened to him in there?’ Jomard said.
‘I think he hallucinated in the dark,’ Monge said. ‘Lord knows I wouldn’t stay in there alone. Our Corsican has guts.’
‘Why did he focus on me?’ His antagonism had shaken me.
‘Because you were at Abukir,’ the mathematician said. ‘I think the defeat is gnawing on him more than he will admit. Our strategic future is not good.’
‘And I’m to camp out here staring at this structure until it is?’
‘He’ll forget about you in a day or two.’
‘Not that his curiosity isn’t warranted,’ Jomard said. ‘I need to read the ancient sources again. The more I learn of this structure, the more fascinating it seems.’
‘And pointless,’ I grumbled.
‘Is it, Gage?’ asked Monge. ‘There’s far too much precision for pointlessness, I think. Not only too much labour, but too much thought. In doing more calculations just now, another correlation occurred to me. This pyramid is indeed a mathematical plaything.’