They watched me in fear and fascination.
I began moving around their dim quarters looking for the medallion. Hidden to be seen? Did she mean by a window? All were shielded with mashrabiyya screens. The harem had one large central room and a warren of small ones, each with a rumpled bed, chest, and pegs hung with clothes, some revealing and others concealing. It was a world turned upside down, all colour turned inward, all thought confined, all pleasure locked.
Where had I hidden it? In a shoe, a cannon, a chamber pot. None of those were ‘hidden to be seen’, it seemed to me. I bent to lift up a bed covering, but the young woman who was my guide stayed my hand. They were waiting for me to spot it, I realised, to prove that I knew what I was looking for. And then of course the obviousness of my task became clear to me. I straightened, looking around more boldly. Hidden in plain sight, she’d meant. Round a neck, on a table, on…
A jewellery rack.
If there is one thing universal in human culture, it’s the love of gold. What these women would never display on the street they would drape on their skin for Yusuf and each other: rings, coins, bracelets and bangles, earrings and anklets, tiaras and waist chains. On a dressing table was a waterfall of gold, a yellow delta, a treasure like a small echo of L’Orient ’s. And there in the midst of it all, thrown as casually as a copper in a tavern, was the medallion, its shape obscured by the necklaces atop it. Bin Sadr and Silano never got in here, of course, and no one else had bothered to look.
I untangled it. As I did so, a heavy bangle of an earring came off the table and dropped to the floor like a gong.
I froze. Suddenly other heads came up from beds, these faces older. One started at the sight of me and leapt out, pulling street robes around her.
She spoke sharply. The young one replied impatiently. A hissing conversation broke out in rapid Arabic. I began easing toward the window. The older one gestured at me to put the medallion down, but instead I slid it over my neck and inside my shirt. Isn’t this what they’d expected? Apparently not. The older one gave a shout, and several of the women began to wail and scream. Now I heard a eunuch’s cry from outside the door, and male shouts from below. Was that the scrape of drawn steel? It was time to go.
As I made for the window the older woman tried to block me, arms flailing, sleeves wide, like a huge black bat. I shoved past, even as her fingers scrabbled creepily at my neck. She fell away, yelling. A bell began clanging, and there was a gunshot of alarm. They’d rouse the whole city! I grabbed the frame and kicked, busting out half the wooden screen. Pieces rattled down into the alley below. I rolled out the window and started slithering down the rope. Below, I saw the rear door burst open and servants, armed with clubs and staves, stream out. Other men burst into the harem behind me. Even as I descended, someone began trying to haul the rope back up.
‘Jump!’ Ashraf shouted. ‘I will catch you!’
Did he know what I weighed? And I didn’t want to simply let go because I figured we might use the line I’d bought just that afternoon. I grabbed the tomahawk from my belt and chopped at the rope above my head. It snapped and I fell the last thirty feet, landing with a whump in something soft and stinking. It was in an alley cart that Ash had wheeled to catch my fall. I heaved myself over the side, clutching the remains of the rope, and braced to fight.
There was a bang, the sound of Ashraf’s musket, and one of the servants charging from the rear door pitched backward. My rifle was shoved into my hands and I shot a second man, then whooped like an Indian and cracked the head of a third with the tomahawk. The others fell back in confusion. Ashraf and I dashed the other way, vaulting a low wall and sprinting down twisting lanes.
Yusuf’s men came in a mob after us, but were shooting blind. I paused to reload my own rifle. Ash had his sword out. Now we had only to escape the city…
‘There they are!’
It was a French military patrol. We cursed, wheeled, and fled back the way we had come. I heard the French commands to aim and fire, so I grabbed Ash to pitch both of us down to the dirt of the street. There was a roar, and several bullets sizzled overhead. Then cries and screams ahead. They’d hit Yusuf’s men.
We crawled into a side street, using the smoke as cover. Now we could hear shouts of alarm and wild shots in all directions.
‘What was that excrescence I fell into?’ I panted to Ash.
‘Donkey dung. You have fallen into what the Franks call merde, my friend.’
Another bullet wanged off a stone post. ‘I can’t disagree.’
At length we rose to a crouch and rounded a corner. Then we trotted until we entered a wider avenue leading more or less to the southern gate. We seemed to have lost immediate pursuit.
‘We’ve also lost my provisions. Damn that old woman!’
‘Moses found manna in the desert.’
‘And King George will find crumpets at his tea table, but I’m not him, am I?’
‘You’re becoming surly.’
‘It’s about time.’
We were almost to Cairo’s wall when a squadron of French cavalry turned onto our street. They were on routine patrol, not yet spotting us, but they blocked our path.
‘Let’s hide in that alcove,’ Ashraf suggested.
‘No. Don’t we need horses? Tie our rope to that pillar, as high as the shoulder of a mounted officer.’ I took the other end and did the same on the opposite side of the street. ‘When I shoot, get ready to steal a horse.’
I strode to the middle of the street, facing the approaching cavalry, and casually waved my rifle to let them see me in the dark.
‘Who goes there?’ an officer called. ‘Identify yourself!’
I fired, plucking off his cap.
They charged.
I darted toward a pool of shadow, slung my rifle, jumped to catch a pole, and swung myself up to an awning and sill. The cavalry patrol hit the rope at a dead run. The lead troopers were plucked from their saddles like puppets, colliding with the rank just behind. Horses reared, men toppled. I leapt, knocking a rider loose from his plunging mount. Ashraf had wrestled his way onto another horse. Pistols went off in the dark but the bullets whined harmlessly. We lashed our way out of the tangle.
‘The French are going to begin wondering whose side you’re on,’ Ash gasped as we began our gallop, looking back at the shouting troopers.
‘So am I.’
We rode for the wall and the gate. ‘Open wide! Couriers for Bonaparte!’ I cried in French. They saw the cavalry horses and tack before they spied us, lying low in our Arab robes. By then it was too late. We burst through the sentries toward the desert beyond, shots buzzing overhead as we galloped into the night.
I was out, the medallion mine, free to rescue Astiza, find the Book of Thoth, and become master of the world – or at least its saviour!
And I was now prey for every Bedouin, Mameluke, and French cavalryman in Egypt.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Egyptian desert west of the Nile is a trackless ocean of sand and rock, interrupted by only a few oasis islands. The desert east of the Nile and south of Cairo – a sterile plateau separated from the Red Sea by moonlike mountains – is emptier yet, a roasting pan seemingly unchanged from the birth of the world. The blue sky bleaches to a dull haze on the shimmering horizon, and dryness threatens to mummify an intruder each pitiless afternoon. There is no water, no shade, no birdcall, no plant, no insect, and seemingly no end. For millennia, monks and magi retreated here to find God. When I fled I felt I’d left him far behind, in the waters of the Nile and the great green forests of home.