‘Enoch, what happened?’
He couldn’t hear me in his delirium. I went upstairs to his fountain and used an ancient bowl to get some water, even though the fountain ran pink from spilt blood. I dripped some on his face and then gave him a sip. He sputtered, and then sucked like a baby. Finally his eyes focused.
‘They tried to burn it all.’ It was a groaning whisper.
‘Who did?’
‘I broke free to run into the blaze and they didn’t dare follow.’ He coughed.
‘My God, Enoch, you threw yourself on the fire?’
‘These books are my life.’
‘Was it the French?’
‘Bin Sadr’s Arabs. They kept asking where it was, without saying what they meant. I pretended not to know. They wanted the woman, and I said she’d gone with you. They didn’t believe me. If I hadn’t run into the fire they would have forced me to tell far more. I hope the household didn’t talk.’
‘Where is everybody?’
‘The servants were herded into storerooms. I heard screams.’
I felt utterly futile: foolish gambler, dilettante soldier, and pretend savant. ‘I’ve brought all this on you.’
‘You brought nothing the gods did not wish.’ He groaned. ‘My time is over. Men are becoming greedier. They want science and magic for power. Who wants to live in a time like that? But knowing and wisdom are not the same things.’ He clutched me. ‘You must stop them.’
‘Stop them from what?’
‘It was in my books after all.’
‘What? What are they after?’
‘It’s a key. You must insert it.’ He was fading.
I leant closer. ‘Enoch, please: Astiza. Is she safe?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where’s Ashraf?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you learn anything about the twenty-first of October?’
He grasped my arm. ‘You need to believe in something, American. Believe in her.’
Then he died.
I sat back, hollowed. First Talma, now this. I was too late to save him, and too late to learn what he’d learnt. I used my fingers to close his eyes, shaking with rage and impotence. I’d lost my best link to the mysteries. Was there anything left in this library to explain the medallion? Amid the ashes, how could I know?
Cradled to Enoch’s breast was a particularly thick volume, bound in leather and blackened at the edges. Its writing was Arabic. Had it been of particular importance in deciphering our quest? I pried it loose and looked in ignorance at its ornate script. Well, perhaps Astiza could make sense of it.
If she was still in Cairo. I had a grim idea who the small, shrouded figure was who’d been riding next to Silano as Desaix’s troops marched south.
Anxious and lost in my own worries, I trudged back up the stairs and into the antiquities room without caution. It almost cost me my life.
There was a high, anguished cry and then a lance thrust out from behind a statue of Anubis the jackal like a bolt of lightning. It crashed into my chest, knocking me backward, and I collided with a stone sarcophagus, my wind gone. As I slid down, dazed, I looked at the shaft. Its spear point had pierced Enoch’s book, only the last pages stopping it from thrusting into my heart.
Ashraf was at the end of the spear. His eyes widened.
‘You!’
I tried to speak but could only gasp.
‘What are you doing here? I was told you were held by the French at the pyramids! I thought you were one of the assassins, looking for secrets!’
I finally found enough air to speak. ‘I spied Silano leaving the city with General Desaix, riding south. I didn’t know what that meant, so I hurried back.’
‘I almost killed you!’
‘This book saved me.’ I pushed it, and the spear point, aside. ‘Can’t even read it, but Enoch was cradling it. What’s it about, Ash?’
Using his boot to hold the book while he wrenched the lance free, the Mameluke stooped and opened it. Fragments puffed out like spores. He read a moment. ‘Poetry.’ He threw it aside.
Ah. What we choose to die with.
‘I need help, Ashraf.’
‘Help? You’re the conqueror, remember? You who are bringing science and civilisation to poor Egypt! And this is what you’ve brought to my brother’s house: butchery! Everyone who knows you dies!’
‘It was Arabs, not French, who did this.’
‘It was France, not Egypt, which upset the order of things.’
There was no answer to that, and no denying that I’d become a part of it. We choose for the most expedient of reasons, and upend the world.
I took a laboured breath. ‘I have to find Astiza. Help me, Ash. Not as prisoner, not as master and slave, not as employee. As a friend. As a fellow warrior. Astiza has the medallion. They’ll kill her for it as brutally as they killed Talma, and I don’t trust asking the army for help. Napoleon wants the secret too. He’ll take the medallion for himself.’
‘And be cursed like everyone who touches it.’
‘Or discover the power to enslave the world.’
Ashraf’s reply was silence, letting me realise what I’d just blurted about the general I’d been following. Was Bonaparte a Republican saviour? Or a potential tyrant? I’d seen hints of both in his character. How did one tell the difference between the two? Both required charm. Both required ambition. And maybe a feather on the scales of Thoth would tip a leader’s heart one way or the other. But of course it didn’t matter, did it? I had to decide for myself what I believed. Now Enoch had given me an anchor: believe in her.
‘My brother gave you help and look where it got him,’ Ashraf said bitterly. ‘You are no friend. I was wrong to have led you into Cairo. I should have died at Imbaba.’
I was desperate. ‘Then if you won’t help as a friend, I order you to help me as my captive and servant. I paid you!’
‘You dare lay claim to me after this?’ He took out a purse and hurled it at me. Coins exploded, rolling away on the stone floor. ‘I spit on your money! Go! Find your woman yourself! I must prepare the funeral of my brother!’
So I was alone. At least I had the integrity to leave his money where it had scattered, despite knowing how few coins I had of my own. I took what I had cached in an empty coffin: my longrifle and my Algonquin tomahawk. Then I stepped again over Mustafa’s body and went back into Cairo’s streets.
I wouldn’t be coming back.
The house of Yusuf al-Beni, where Astiza had been secreted in a harem, was more imposing than Enoch’s, a turreted fortress that shadowed its narrow street with brooding overhangs. Its windows were high on its face, where sun shone and swallows glided, but its door was shadowed by a heavy arch as thick as the entrance to a medieval castle. I stood before it in disguise. I’d wrapped my weapons in a cheap, hastily purchased carpet and dressed myself in Egyptian clothes in case the French might be looking to return me to Jomard at the pyramid. The loose-fitting riding trousers and galabiyya were infinitely lighter, more anonymous, and more sensible than European garb, and the head scarf provided welcome shelter from the sun.
Was I once more too late?
I pounded on Yusuf’s door and a doorman the size of Mustafa confronted me. Shaved, huge, and as pale as Enoch’s servant had been dark, he filled the entry like a bale of Egyptian cotton. Did every rich house have a human troll?
‘What do you want, rug merchant?’ I could understand the Arabic by now.
‘I’m no merchant. I need to see your master,’ I replied in French.
‘You’re a Frank?’ he asked in the same tongue.
‘American.’
He grunted. ‘Not here.’ He began to close the door.
I tried to bluff. ‘The sultan Bonaparte is looking for him.’ Now cotton bale paused. It was enough to make me believe Yusuf was somewhere in the house. ‘The general has business with the woman who is a guest here, the lady called Astiza.’
‘The general wants a slave?’ The tone was disbelief.
‘She’s no slave, she’s a savant. The sultan needs her expertise. If Yusuf is gone, then you must fetch the woman for the general.’