“It’s dangerous to let the American be armed,” Najac warned.
“It isn’t a weapon, it’s a tool.”
“Give it to him, Najac. If you can’t control the American with a dozen men when all he has is a hatchet, perhaps I should send you back to the constabulary.”
The man grimaced, but gave it up. “This is an instrument for savages, not savants. You look like a rustic, carrying it about.” I hefted its pleasing weight. “And you look like a thief, brandishing my rifle.”
“Once we find your damned secret, Gage, you and I will settle once and for all.”
“Indeed.” My rifle was already nicked and marked—Najac was as much an oaf with firearms as he was unkempt in clothing—but it still looked as slim and smooth as a maiden’s limb. I longed for it. “Do me a favor, Najac. Escort me from a distance where I won’t have to smell you.”
“But within rifle shot, I promise.”
“Alliances are never easy,” Bonaparte quipped. “But now, Najac has the rifle and Gage the glass. You can aim together!” The annoying joke made me want to discomfit the general. “And I suppose you want me to hurry?” I gestured at the sick.
“Hurry?”
“The plague. It must be panicking your troops.” But I could never get him off-balance. “It gives them urgency. So yes, make haste. But do not concern yourself too deeply with my campaign timing. Greater things than you know are afoot. Your quest is not just about Syria, but Europe. France herself waits for me.”
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I’d assumed we’d travel directly to Mount Nebo with Najac’s band of cutthroats, but he laughed when I suggested it. “We’d have to cut our way through half the Ottoman army!” Ever since Napoleon had invaded Palestine, the Sublime Porte of Constantinople had been gathering soldiers to stop the French. Galilee, Najac informed me, was swarming with Turkish and Mameluke cavalry. Gallic liberation was not being embraced in the Holy Land with any more enthusiasm than it had been in Egypt.
Now General Jean-Baptiste Kléber, who had landed with Bonaparte on the beach in Alexandria nearly a year ago, would take his division to brush these Muslims away. My companions and I would accompany his troops eastward to the Jordan River, which flows southward from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. Then we’d strike south on our own, following the fabled Jordan until it passed by the foot of Mount Nebo.
Mohammad and Ned were not happy at having to march with the French. Kléber was a popular commander, but he could also be an impetuous hothead. Yet we had no choice. The Ottomans were directly in our path and in no mood to differentiate between one 1 7 4
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group of Europeans and another. We’d rely on Kléber to bludgeon a path through.
“Mount Nebo!” Mohammad exclaimed. “It’s for ghosts and goats!”
“Treasure, I’d guess,” Ned said shrewdly. “Why else would our magician here be signing on again with the frogs? The hoard of Moses, eh, guv’nor?”
For a lummox, he guessed entirely too much. “It’s a meeting of antiquity scholars,” I said. “A woman I knew in Egypt is alive and waiting. She’ll help solve the mystery we tried to answer in the tunnels beneath Jerusalem.”
“Aye, and I hear you already have a pretty bauble.” I shot a look at Mohammad, who shrugged. “The sailor wanted to know what prompted our expedition, effendi.”
“Then know this is bad luck.” I took the ring from my pocket.
“It’s from the grave of a dead Pharaoh, and such plunder is always cursed.”
“Cursed? That’s a life’s wages right there,” Ned said in wonder.
“But you don’t notice me wearing it, do you?”
“Wouldn’t match your color,” Ned agreed. “Too gaudy, that is.”
“So we march with the French until we can break free. There’s likely to be a scrape or two. Are you willing?”
“A scrape without a scrap of steel between us, except that sausage chopper of yours,” Ned said. “And you do have a poor choice of escorts, guv’nor. That Najac character looks like he’d boil his children, if he could get a shilling for the broth. Still, I likes being outside the walls. Felt boxed, I did.”
“And now you will see the real Palestine,” Mohammad promised.
“The whole world wishes to possess her.” Which was exactly the problem, as near as I could tell.
Were we French allies—or prisoners? We were weaponless except for my tomahawk, with no freedom of movement, guarded by both escorting chasseurs and Najac’s gang. Yet Kléber sent a bottle of wine and his compliments, we were given good mounts and treated as guests of the march, riding ahead of the main column to escape the worst of the dust. We were prized dogs on a leash.
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Ned and Najac took an immediate disliking to each other, the sailor remembering the fracas that had killed Tentwhistle and Najac jealous of the giant’s strength. If the villain came near us he’d swing his coat wide to display the two pistols crammed in his sash, remind-ing us he was not to be trifled with. In turn, Ned announced loudly that he hadn’t seen a frog so ugly since a mutant croaker in the privy pond behind Portsmouth’s sleaziest brothel.
“If your brain was even half the size of your bicep I might be interested in what you have to say,” Najac said.
“And if your pudding was even half the size of your flapping tongue, you wouldn’t have to look so hard for it every time you drop your breeches,” Ned replied.
Despite the quarreling, I relished our release from Acre. The Holy Land arouses uncommon passion, well watered in the north and bright spring green. Wheat and barley grew like wild grass, and broad paint strokes of color came from red poppies and yellow mustard.
There was purple flax, golden chrysanthemum in natural bouquets of twisted stems, and tall Easter lilies. Was this God’s garden? Away from the sea the sky was the blue of the Virgin’s scarf, and light picked out the mica and quartz like tiny jewels.
“Look, a yellow bunting,” Mohammad said. “The bird means summer is coming.”
Our division was a blue snake slithering through Eden, the French tricolor heralding our improbable penetration of the Ottoman Empire.
Drifts of sheep divided like the sea for our passage. Light field guns bounced in the sun, their bronze winking like a signal. White covered wagons swayed. Somewhere to the northeast was Damascus, and to the south, Jerusalem. The soldiers were in a good mood, happy to get away from tedious siege duty, and the division had money enough—
captured at Jaffa—to eat well, instead of stealing. At the end of the second day we climbed a final ridge and I had a glimpse of the Sea of Galilee, blue soup in a vast green and brown bowl, far, far below. It is a huge lake sunken below sea level, hazy and holy. We didn’t descend but instead followed ridges south to famous Nazareth.
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dirt cart track and its traffic mainly goats. A mosque and a Franciscan monastery stand brow to brow, as if keeping an eye on each other. We drew water from Mary’s Well and visited the Church of the Annun-ciation, an Orthodox grotto with the kind of gewgaws that give Prot-estants indigestion. Then we marched down again to the rich, lazy vale of the Jezreel Valley, the breadbasket of ancient Israel and a thoroughfare for armies for three thousand years. Cattle grazed on grassy mounds that once were great fortresses. Carts clattered on roads that Roman legions had traversed. My companions were impatient at this military meandering, but I knew I was experiencing what few Americans can ever hope to see. The Holy Land! Here, by all accounts, men come closer to God. Some of the soldiers crossed themselves or muttered prayers at sacred places, despite the revolution’s official atheism.