I seek your blessing.”
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He stared at me a long time, his expression inscrutable. Then his face twisted in a strange way.
“Jericho?”
It crinkled, and finally he burst into laughter. He howled, tears streaming down his face, and Miriam began laughing too, looking at me with something disturbingly close to pity.
What was going on?
“My blessing!” He roared. “As if I’d ever give it to you!” Then he winced, reminded by the pain of the hole in his shoulder.
“But I’ve reformed, you see . . .”
“Ethan.” Miriam reached out and touched my hand with hers. “Do you think the world stands still while you go on these adventures of yours?”
“Well, no, of course not.” I was more and more confused.
Jericho got himself under control, gasping and wheezing. “Gage, you have the timing of a broken chronometer.”
“What are you telling me?” I looked from one to the other. “Do I have to wait until the war’s over?”
“Ethan,” Miriam said with a sigh, “do you remember where you left me when you went to find Astiza?”
“In a house here in Acre.”
“In a doctor’s house. A physician in this hospital.” She opened her eyes, looking past me. “A man who found me in tears, confused and self-hating when he came home to finally snatch a few hours of sleep.”
Slowly, I turned. Behind me was the Levantine surgeon, dark, young, handsome, and altogether more reputable-looking, despite his bloodstained hands, than a gambler and wastrel like me. By John Adams, I’d been played the fool once again! When the gypsy Sarylla had given me the Fool tarot card, she’d known what she was about.
“Ethan, meet my new fiancé.”
“Doctor Hiram Zawani at your service, Mr. Gage,” the man said with that kind of educated accent I’ve always envied. It makes them sound three times as smart as you, even if they don’t have the sense of a dobbin. “Haim Farhi said you’re not quite the rascal you seem.” 2 6 2
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“Doctor Zawani made an honest woman of me, Ethan. I was lying to myself about what I wanted and needed.”
“He’s the kind of man my sister needs,” Jericho said. “No one should know that better than you. And you brought them together!
You’re a confused, shallow human being, Ethan Gage, but for once you did something right.”
They smiled, as I tried to figure out if I’d been complimented or insulted.
“But . . .” I wanted to say she was in love with me, that surely she must have waited, that I had two women vying for my attention and my problem was sorting between them . . .
In half a day, I’d gone from two to none. The ruby and the gold were gone, too.
Well, hang.
And yet it was liberating. I hadn’t been to a good brothel since fleeing Paris, and yet here it was, the chance to be a free bachelor again. Humiliating? Yes. But a relief? I was surprised how much so.
“It’s splendid how these things work out,” Smith had said. Lonely?
Sometimes. But less responsibility, too.
I’d take ship home, give the book to the Philadelphia Library to scratch their heads over, and get on with my life. Maybe Astor had need of help in the fur trade. And there was a new capital being built in the swamps of Virginia, out of sight of any honest Americans. It sounded like just the kind of future den of opportunism, fraud, and skullduggery for a man of my talents.
“Congratulations,” I squeaked.
“I should still break you in two,” Jericho said. “But given what’s happened, I think I’ll just let you help us hock this.” And he gave Zawani a peek at the gold.
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One day later the French, having used up much of their ammunition in a final furious bombardment that left their strategic plight unchanged, began to retreat. Bonaparte depended on moment h e
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tum. If he couldn’t surge forward and keep his enemies off-balance, he was hopelessly outnumbered. Acre had stopped him. His only alternative was to return to Egypt and claim victory, citing battles he’d won and ignoring those he’d lost.
I watched them skulk off with my glass. Hundreds of men, the sick and wounded who were unable to walk, were on wagons or slumped on horseback. If left behind they were doomed, so I spotted even Bonaparte walking, leading a horse that carried a bandaged soldier.
They set fire to the supplies they couldn’t take, great columns of smoke rising into the May air, and blew up the Na’aman and Kishon bridges.
The French were so short of adequate animal transport and fodder that two dozen cannon were abandoned. So were crowds of Jews, Christians, and Matuwelli who had sided with the French in hopes of liberation from the Muslims. They were wailing like lost children, because now they could expect only cruel revenge from Djezzar.
The French vindictively began burning farms and villages along the path of their coastal retreat, to slow a pursuit that never came.
Our dazed garrison was in no shape to follow. The siege had lasted sixty-two days, from March 19 to May 21. Casualties had been heavy on both sides. The plague that had riddled Napoleon’s army had come inside the walls, and the immediate concern was to clear out the dead.
It was hot, and Acre reeked.
I moved with dazed weariness. Astiza was gone again, captive or dead. I put the book in a leather satchel and hid it in the quarters I took at the Merchant’s Inn, Khan a-Shawarda, but I bet I could have left it in the main market and not had it taken, so useless did its strange writing appear. Slowly, reports filtered back of Napoleon’s retreat. He abandoned Jaffa, won at such terrible cost, a week after leaving Acre. The worst French plague cases were given opium and poison to hasten their deaths so they wouldn’t fall into the hands of pursuing Samaritans from Nablus. The defeated soldiers staggered into El-Arish in Egypt on June 2, reinforcing its garrison, and then the bulk of the army went on toward Cairo. A thermometer put on the desert sands recorded a temperature of 133 degrees. When they reached the Nile the march stopped, men resting and refitting: Napo-2 6 4
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leon couldn’t afford to present a defeated army. He reentered Cairo on June 14 with captured banners, claiming victory, but the claims were bitter. I learned that the one-legged artillery general Caffarelli had an arm shattered by a Turkish cannonball and died of infection outside Acre, that the physicist Etienne Louis Malus had sickened with plague in Jaffa and had to be evacuated, and that both Monge and his chemist friend Berthollet contracted dysentery and were among the sick evacuated by wagon. Napoleon’s adventure was turning into a disaster for everyone I knew.
Smith, meanwhile, was anxious to finish his archenemy off. Turkish reinforcements from Constantinople had not arrived quickly enough to help Acre, but early in July a fleet arrived with nearly twelve thousand Ottoman troops, ready to sail on to Abukir Bay and regain Egypt. The English captain had pledged his own squadron in support of the attack. I had no interest in joining this expedition, which I doubted could defeat the main French army. I still had plans for America. But on July 7 a trade boat delivered to me a missive from Egypt. It was closed with red sealing wax with an image of the beaked god Thoth, and was addressed to me in a feminine hand. My heart beat faster.
When I opened it, however, the script was not by Astiza but in a strong male scrawl. Its message was simple.