The Rosetta Key E-Book

William Dietrich

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Ethan Gage
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 564

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Last seen in Napoleon's Pyramids, fleeing the forces of evil in a runaway hot-air balloon over Egypt, Ethan Gage undergoes further life-threatening adventures in this rollicking sequel. Nine months before the balloon incident, Gage arrived in the Holy Land with his benefactor, Napoleon Bonaparte. After various misunderstandings involving the secrets of the Great Pyramid, Bonaparte became his implacable enemy. Now, accused of treason by Napoleon's minions, Pierre Najac and Najac's boss, the French-Italian count and sorcerer Alessandro Silano, Gage flees to Jerusalem, where he searches for his former lover, Astiza, who he fears has fallen into Silano's hands. Gage is also hunting clues that may lead him to the fabled Book of Toth, an ancient tome that promises to reveal the secrets of the universe. Ever the incorrigible gambler and all-around scamp, Gage makes an irresistible anti-hero.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR WILLIAM DIETRICH

‘A magnificent adventure, shot through with mystery … a marvellous tale!’ Bernard Cornwell

‘Unbeatable adventure rivalling the exploits of George MacDonald Fraser’s Harry Flashman’Publishers Weekly

‘Rich in period detail and ancient mythology … A big, exciting romp that will keep high-concept thriller fans on the edge of their seats’Booklist

‘Dietrich is becoming a leader among historical novelists … Rousing, swashbuckling fun’ Library Journal

‘Historical fiction meets thriller here, with plenty to interest fans of both genres. The action is nearly non-stop, the humour is plentiful, and the intrigue is more than enough to keep the pages turning’School Library Journal

‘Fast moving … The descriptions of the myriads of cities and landscapes and cultures that Gage encounters are marvellous and filled with colour … The Rosetta Key is action packed, reads easily, and is ideal for the big screen’Historical Novels Review

Contents

PraiseTitle PageDedicationMapPART ONECHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENPART TWOCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEENCHAPTER NINETEENCHAPTER TWENTYCHAPTER TWENTY-ONECHAPTER TWENTY-TWOPART THREECHAPTER TWENTY-THREECHAPTER TWENTY-FOURCHAPTER TWENTY-FIVECHAPTER TWENTY-SIXCHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENCHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTHISTORICAL NOTEACKNOWLEDGEMENTSBy William DietrichAbout the AuthorCopyright

Map

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Eyeing a thousand musket barrels aimed at one’s chest does tend to force consideration of whether the wrong path has been taken. So I did consider it, each muzzle bore looking as wide as the bite of a mongrel stray in a Cairo alley. But no, while I’m modest to a fault, I have my self-righteous side as well – and by my light it wasn’t me but the French army that had gone astray. Which I could have explained to my former friend, Napoleon Bonaparte, if he hadn’t been up on the dunes out of hailing distance, aloof and annoyingly distracted, his buttons and medals gleaming in the Mediterranean sun.

The first time I’d been on a beach with Bonaparte, when he landed his army in Egypt in 1798, he told me the drowned would be immortalised by history. Now, nine months later outside the Palestinian port of Jaffa, history was to be made of me. French grenadiers were getting ready to shoot me and the hapless Muslim captives I’d been thrown in with, and once more I, Ethan Gage, was trying to figure out a way to sidestep destiny. It was a mass execution, you see, and I’d run afoul of the general I once attempted to befriend.

How far we’d both come in nine brief months!

I edged behind the biggest of the wretched Ottoman prisoners I could find, a Negro giant from the Upper Nile who I calculated might be just thick enough to stop a musket ball. All of us had been herded like bewildered cattle onto a lovely beach, eyes white and round in the darkest faces, the Turkish uniforms of scarlet, cream, emerald, and sapphire smeared with the smoke and blood of a savage sacking. There were lithe Moroccans, tall and dour Sudanese, truculent pale Albanians, Circassian cavalry, Greek gunners, Turkish sergeants – the scrambled levies of a vast empire, all humbled by the French. And me, the lone American. Not only was I baffled by their babble; they often couldn’t understand each other. The mob milled, their officers already dead, and their disorder a defeated contrast to the crisp lines of our executioners, drawn up as if on parade. Ottoman defiance had enraged Napoleon – you should never put the heads of emissaries on a pike – and their hungry numbers as prisoners threatened to be a crippling drag on his invasion. So we’d been marched through the orange groves to a crescent of sand just south of the captured port, the sparkling sea a lovely green and gold in the shallows, the hilltop city smouldering. I could see some green fruit still clinging to the shot-blown trees. My former benefactor and recent enemy, sitting on his horse like a young Alexander, was (through desperation or dire calculation) about to display a ruthlessness that his own marshals would whisper about for many campaigns to come. Yet he didn’t even have the courtesy to pay attention! He was reading another of his moody novels, his habit to devour a book’s page, tear it out, and pass it back to his officers. I was barefoot, bloody, and only forty miles as the crow flies from where Jesus Christ had died to save the world. The past several days of persecution, torment, and warfare hadn’t persuaded me that our Saviour’s efforts had entirely succeeded in improving human nature.

‘Ready!’ A thousand musket hammers were pulled back.

Napoleon’s henchmen had accused me of being a spy and a traitor, which was why I’d been marched with the other prisoners to the beach. And yes, circumstance had given a grain of truth to that characterisation. But I hadn’t set out with that intent, by any means. I’d simply been an American in Paris, whose tentative knowledge of electricity – and the need to escape an utterly unjust accusation of murder – resulted in my being included in the company of Napoleon’s scientists, or savants, during his dazzling conquest of Egypt the year before. I’d also developed a knack for being on the wrong side at the wrong time. I’d taken fire from Mameluke cavalry, the woman I loved, Arab cutthroats, British broadsides, Muslim fanatics, French platoons – and I’m a likeable man!

My latest French nemesis was a nasty scoundrel named Pierre Najac, an assassin and thief who couldn’t get over the fact that I’d once shot him from beneath the Toulon stage when he tried to rob me of a sacred medallion. It’s a long story, as an earlier volume will attest. Najac had come back into my life like a bad debt, and had kept me marching in the prisoner rank with a cavalry sabre at my back. He was anticipating my imminent demise with the same feeling of triumph and loathing that one has when crushing a particularly obnoxious spider. I was regretting that I hadn’t aimed a shave higher and two inches to the left.

As I’ve remarked before, it all seems to start with gambling. Back in Paris, it had been a card game that won me the mysterious medallion and started the trouble. This time, what had seemed a simple way to get a new start – taking the bewildered seamen of HMS Dangerous for every shilling they had before the British put me ashore in the Holy Land – had solved nothing and, it could be argued, had actually led to my present predicament. Let me repeat: gambling is a vice, and it is foolish to rely on chance.

‘Aim!’

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I, Ethan Gage, have spent most of my thirty-four years trying to keep out of too much trouble and away from too much work. As my mentor and onetime employer, the late, great Benjamin Franklin, would no doubt observe, these two ambitions are as at odds as positive and negative electricity. The pursuit of the latter, no work, is almost sure to defeat the former, no trouble. But that’s a lesson, like the headache that follows alcohol or the treachery of beautiful women, forgotten as many times as learnt. It was my dislike of hard labour that reinforced my fondness for gambling, gambling that got me the medallion, the medallion that got me to Egypt with half the planet’s villains at my heels, and Egypt that got me my lovely lost Astiza. She in turn had convinced me that we had to save the world from Najac’s master, the French-Italian count and sorcerer Alessandro Silano. All this, without my quite expecting it to, put me on the wrong side of Bonaparte. In the course of things I fell in love, found a secret way into the Great Pyramid, and made the damnedest discoveries ever, only to lose everything I held dear when forced to escape by balloon.

I told you it was a long story.

Anyway, the gorgeous and maddening Astiza – my would-be assassin, then servant, then priestess of Egypt – had fallen from the balloon into the Nile along with my enemy, Silano. I’ve been desperately trying to learn their fate ever since, my anxiety redoubled by the fact that my enemy’s last words to Astiza were, ‘You know I still love you!’ How’s that for prying at the corners of your mind at night? Just what was their relationship? Which is why I’d agreed to allow the English madman Sir Sidney Smith to put me ashore in Palestine just ahead of Bonaparte’s invading army, to make inquiries. Then one thing led to another and here I stood, facing a thousand gun muzzles.

‘Fire!’

But before I tell you what happened when the muskets blazed, perhaps I should go back to where my earlier tale left off, in late October of 1798, when I was trapped on the deck of the British frigate Dangerous, making for the Holy Land with her sails bellied and a bone in her teeth, cutting the frothy deep. How hearty it all was, English banners flapping, burly seamen pulling at their stout lines of hemp with lusty chants, stiff-necked officers in bicorne hats pacing the quarterdeck, and bristling cannon dewed by the spray of the Mediterranean, droplets drying into stars of salt. In other words, it was just the kind of militant, masculine foray I’ve learnt to detest, having narrowly survived the hurtling charge of a Mameluke warrior at the Battle of the Pyramids, the explosion of L’Orient at the Battle of the Nile, and any number of treacheries by an Arab snake worshipper named Achmed bin Sadr, who I finally sent to his own appropriate hell. I was a little winded from brisk adventure and more than ready to scuttle back home to New York for a nice job as a bookkeeper or a dry goods clerk, or perhaps as a solicitor attending to dreary wills clutched by black-clad widows and callow, undeserving offspring. Yes, a desk and dusty ledgers – that’s the life for me! But Sir Sidney would hear none of it. Worse, I’d finally figured out what I cared about in this world: Astiza. I couldn’t very well take passage home without finding out if she’d survived her fall with that villain Silano and could, somehow, be rescued.

Life was simpler when I had no principles.

Smith was gussied up like a Turkish admiral, plans building in his brain like an approaching squall. He’d been given the job of helping the Turks and their Ottoman Empire thwart the further encroachment of Bonaparte’s armies from Egypt into Syria, since young Napoleon’s hope was to carve an eastern empire out for himself. Sir Sidney needed allies and intelligence, and, after fishing me out of the Mediterranean, he’d told me it would work to both our advantage if I joined his cause. It was foolhardy for me to try to return to Egypt and face the angry French alone, he pointed out. I could make inquiries about Astiza from Palestine, while simultaneously assessing the various sects that might be lined up to fight Napoleon. ‘Jerusalem!’ he’d cried. Was he mad? That half-forgotten city, an Ottoman backwater encrusted by dirt, history, religious lunatics, and disease, had – by all reports – survived only by foisting obligatory tourism on the credible and easily cheated pilgrims of three faiths. But if you’re an English schemer and warrior like Smith, Jerusalem had the advantage of being a crossroad of the complicated culture of Syria, a polyglot den of Muslim, Jew, Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Druze, Maronite, Matuwelli, Turk, Bedouin, Kurd, and Palestinian, all of them remembering slights from each other going back several thousand years.

Frankly, I’d never have ventured within a hundred miles of the place, except that Astiza was convinced that Moses had stolen a sacred book of ancient wisdom from the bowels of the Great Pyramid and that his descendants had carried it to Israel. That meant Jerusalem was the likeliest place to look. So far this Book of Thoth, or the rumours of it, had been nothing but trouble. Yet if it did hold keys to immortality and mastery of the universe, I couldn’t quite forget about it, could I? Jerusalem did make a perverse kind of sense.

Smith imagined me a trusted accomplice, and in truth we did have an alliance of sorts. I’d met him in a gypsy camp after I’d shot Najac. The signet ring he gave had saved me from a yardarm noose when I was hauled before Admiral Nelson after the fracas at the Nile. And Smith was a genuine hero who’d burnt French ships and escaped from a Paris prison by signalling one of his former bedmates from a barred window. After I’d picked up a pharaoh’s treasure under the Great Pyramid, lost it again to keep from drowning, and stolen a balloon from my friend and fellow savant Nicolas-Jacques Conte, I’d crash-landed into the sea and found myself wet and penniless on the quarterdeck of the Dangerous, fate putting me face-to-face with Sir Sidney once more, and as much at the mercy of the British as I’d been the French. My own feelings – that I’d had quite enough of war and treasure and was ready to go home to America – were blithely ignored.

‘So while you make inquiries from Syrian Palestine about this woman you took a fancy to, Gage, you can also feel out the Christians and Jews for possible resistance to Bonaparte,’ Smith was telling me. ‘They might side with the frogs, and if he’s taking an army that way, our Turkish allies need all the help they can get.’ He put his arm around my shoulder. ‘You’re just the man for this kind of work, I judge: clever, affable, rootless, and without any scruples or belief. People tell you things, Gage, because they figure it doesn’t matter.’

‘It’s just that I’m American, not British or French …’

‘Exactly. Perfect for our uses. Djezzar will be impressed that even a man as shallow as you has enlisted.’

Djezzar, whose name meant ‘the Butcher,’ was the notoriously cruel and despotic pasha in Acre whom the British were depending on to fight Napoleon. Charmed, I’m sure.

‘But my Arabic is crude and I know nothing of Palestine,’ I pointed out reasonably.

‘Not a problem for an agent with wit and pluck like you, Ethan. The Crown has a confederate in Jerusalem by the code name of Jericho, an ironmonger by trade who once served in our own navy. He can help you search for this Astiza and work for us. He has contacts in Egypt! A few days of your artful diplomacy, a chance to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ hisself, and you’re back with nothing more than dust on your boots and a holy relic in your pocket, your other problems solved. It’s really quite splendid how these things work out. Meanwhile I’ll be helping Djezzar organise the defence of Acre in case Boney marches north, as you’ve warned. In no time we’ll both be bloody heroes, feted in the chambers of London!’

Whenever people start complimenting you and using words like ‘splendid,’ it’s time to check your purse. But, by Bunker Hill, I was curious about the Book of Thoth and tortured by the memory of Astiza. Her sacrifice to save me was the worst moment of my life – worse, honestly, than when my beloved Pennsylvania long rifle blew up – and the hole in my heart was so big you could fire a cannonball through it and not hit a thing. Which is a good line to use on a woman, I figured, and I wanted to try it out on her. So of course I said yes, the most dangerous word in the English language.

‘I am lacking clothes, weapons, and money,’ I pointed out. The only things I’d managed to retain from the Great Pyramid were two small gold seraphim, or kneeling angels, which Astiza contended came from the staff of Moses and which I’d stuffed rather ingloriously into my drawers. My initial thought had been to pawn them, but they’d acquired sentimental value despite their tendency to make me scratch. At the very least they were a reserve of precious metal I preferred not to reveal. Let Smith give an allowance, if he was so anxious to enlist me.

‘Your taste for Arab rags is perfect,’ the British captain said. ‘That’s quite the swarthy tan you’ve developed, Gage. Add a cloak and turban in Jaffa and you’ll blend like a native. As for an English weapon, that might get you clapped in a Turkish prison if they suspect you of spying. It’s your wits that will keep you safe. I can lend you a small spyglass. It’s splendidly sharp and just the thing to sort out troop movements.’

‘You didn’t mention money.’

‘The Crown’s allowance will be more than adequate.’

He gave me a purse with a scattering of silver, brass, and copper: Spanish reales, Ottoman piastres, a Russian kopek, and two Dutch rix-dollars. Government budgeting.

‘This will hardly buy breakfast!’

‘Can’t give you pound sterling, Gage, or it will give you away in an instant. You’re a man of resources, eh? Stretch the odd penny! Lord knows the Admiralty does!’

Well, resourcefulness can start right now, I said to myself, and I wondered if I and the off-duty crewmen might while away the hours with a friendly game of cards. When I was still in good standing as a savant on Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition, I’d enjoyed discussing the laws of probability with famed mathematicians such as Gaspard Monge and the geographer Edmé François Jomard. They’d encouraged me to think in a more systematic way about odds and the house advantage, sharpening my gambling skills.

‘Perhaps I can interest your men in a game of chance?’

‘Haw! Be careful they don’t take your breakfast, too!’

CHAPTER TWO

I started with brelan, which is not a bad game to play with simple sailors, contingent as it is on bluff. I had some practice at this in the salons of Paris – the Palais Royale alone had one hundred gambling chambers on a mere six acres – and the honest British seamen were no match for the man they soon called a Frankish dissembler. So after taking them for as much as they’d tolerate by pretending I had better cards – or letting slip my vulnerability when the hand actually left me better armed than the weapon-stuffed sash of a Mameluke bey – I offered games that seemed to be more straightforward luck. Midshipmen and gunner mates who’d lost half a month’s pay at a card game of skill eagerly came forward with a full month’s wager on a game of sheer chance.

Except that it wasn’t, of course. In simple lansquenet, the banker – me – places a bet that other players must match. Two cards are turned, the one to the left my card, the one to my right the player’s. I then start revealing cards until there’s a match with one of the first two. If the right card is matched first, the player wins; if the left card is matched first, the dealer wins. Even odds, right?

But if the first two cards are the same, the banker wins immediately, a slight mathematical advantage that gave me a margin after several hours, and finally had them pleading for a different game.

‘Let’s try pharaon,’ I offered. ‘It’s all the rage in Paris, and I’m sure your luck will turn. You are my rescuers, after all, and I am in your debt.’

‘Yes, we’ll have our money back, Yankee sharp!’

But pharaon is even more advantageous to the banker, because the dealer automatically wins the first card. The last card in the deck of fifty-two, a player’s card, is not counted. Moreover, the dealer wins all matching cards. Despite the obviousness of my advantage they thought they’d wear me down through time, playing all night, when exactly the opposite was true – the longer the game went on, the greater my pile of coins. The more they thought my loss of luck to be inevitable, the more my advantage became inexorable. Pickings are slim on a frigate that has yet to take a prize, yet so many wanted to best me that by the time the shores of Palestine hove into view at dawn, my poverty was mended. My old friend Monge would simply have said that mathematics is king.

It’s important when taking a man’s money to reassure him of the brilliance of his play and the caprice of ill fortune, and I daresay I distributed so much sympathy that I made fast friends of the men I most deeply robbed. They thanked me for making four high-interest loans back to the most abject losers, while tucking away enough surplus to put me up in Jerusalem in style. When I gave back a sweetheart’s locket that one of the fools had pawned, they were ready to elect me president.

Two of my opponents remained stubbornly uncharmed, however. ‘You have the devil’s luck,’ a huge, red-faced seaman who went by the descriptive name of Big Ned observed with a glower, as he counted and recounted the two pennies he had left.

‘Or the angels,’ I suggested. ‘Your play has been masterful, mate, but providence, it seems, has smiled on me this long night.’ I grinned, trying to look as affable as Smith had described me, and then tried to stifle a yawn.

‘No man is that lucky, that long.’

I shrugged. ‘Just bright.’

‘I want you to play with me dice,’ the Jack tar said, his look as narrow and twisted as an Alexandrian lane. ‘Then we’ll see how lucky you are.’

‘One of the marks of an intelligent man, my maritime friend, is reluctance to trust another man’s ivory. Dice are the devil’s bones.’

‘You afraid to give me a chance of winning back?’

‘I’m simply content to play my game and let you play yours.’

‘Well, now, I think the American is a bit the poltroon,’ the seaman’s companion, a squatter and uglier man called Little Tom, taunted. ‘Scared to give two honest sailors a fighting chance, he is.’ If Ned had the bulk of a small horse, Tom carried himself with the compact meanness of a bulldog.

I began to feel uneasy. Other sailors were watching this exchange with growing interest, since they weren’t going to get their money back any other way. ‘To the contrary, gentlemen, we’ve been at arms over cards all night. I’m sorry you lost, I’m sure you did your best, I admire your perseverance, but perhaps you ought to study the mathematics of chance. A man makes his own luck.’

‘Study the what?’ Big Ned asked.

‘I think he said he cheated,’ Little Tom interpreted.

‘Now, there’s no need to talk of dishonesty.’

‘And yet the men are challenging your honour, Gage,’ said a lieutenant whom I’d taken for five shillings, putting in with more enthusiasm than I liked to hear. ‘The word is that you’re quite the marksman and fought well enough with the frogs. Surely you won’t let these sailors impugn your reputation?’

‘Of course not, but we all know it was a fair …’

Big Ned’s fist slammed down on the deck, a pair of dice jumping from his grip like fleas. ‘Gives us back our money, play these, or meet me on the waist deck at noon.’ It was a growl with just enough smirk to annoy. Clearly he was of a size not accustomed to losing.

‘We’ll be in Jaffa by then,’ I stalled.

‘All the more leisure to discuss this between the eighteen-pounders.’

Well. It was clear enough what I must do. I stood. ‘Aye, you need to be taught a lesson. Noon it is.’

The gathering roared approval. It took just slightly longer for the news of a fight to reach from stem to stern of Dangerous than it takes a rumour of a romantic tryst to fly from one end of revolutionary Paris to the other. The sailors assumed a wrestling match in which I’d writhe painfully in the grip of Big Ned for every penny I’d won. When I’d been sufficiently kneaded, I’d then plead for the chance to give all my winnings back. To distract my all-too-fervent imagination from this disagreeable future, I went up to the quarterdeck to watch our approach to Jaffa, trying my new spyglass.

It was a crisp little telescope, and the principal port of Palestine, months before Napoleon was to take it, was a beacon on an otherwise flat and hazy shore. It crowned a hill with forts, towers, and minarets, its dome-topped buildings terracing downward in all directions like a stack of blocks. All was surrounded by a wall that meets the harbour quay on the seaward side. There were orange groves and palms landward, and golden fields and brown pastures beyond that. Black guns jutted from embrasures, and even from two miles out we could hear the wails of the faithful being called to prayer.

I’d had Jaffa oranges in Paris, famed because their thick skin makes them transportable to Europe. There were so many fruit trees that the prosperous city looked like a castle in a forest. Ottoman banners flapped in the warm autumn breeze, carpets hung from railings, and the smell of charcoal fires carried on the water. There were some nasty-looking reefs just offshore, marked by ringlets of white, and the little harbour was jammed with small dhows and feluccas. Like the other large ships, we anchored in open water. A small flotilla of Arab lighters set out to see what business they could solicit, and I readied to leave.

After I’d dealt with the unhappy seaman, of course.

‘I hear your famous luck got you into a tangle with Big Ned, Ethan,’ Sir Sidney said, handing me a bag of hard biscuit that was supposed to get me to Jerusalem. The English aren’t known for their cooking. ‘Regular bull of a man with a head like a ram, and just as thick, I wager. Do you have a plan to fox him?’

‘I’d try his dice, Sir Sidney, but I suspect that if they were weighted any more, they’d list this frigate.’

He laughed. ‘Aye, he’s cheated more than one pressed wretch, and has the muscle to shut complaints about it. He’s not used to losing. There’s more than a few here pleased you’ve taken him. Too bad your skull has to pay for it.’

‘You could forbid the match.’

‘The men are randy as roosters and won’t get ashore until Acre. A good tussle helps settle them. You look quick enough, man! Lead him a dance!’

Indeed. I went below to seek out Big Ned and found him near the galley hearth, using lard to slick his imposing muscles so he’d slide out of my grip. He gleamed like a Christmas goose.

‘Might we have a word in private?’

‘Trying to back from it, eh?’ He grinned. His teeth seemed as big as the keys of a newfangled piano.

‘I’ve just given the whole matter some thought and realised our enemy is Bonaparte, not each other. But I do have my pride. Come, let’s settle out of sight of the others.’

‘No. You’ll pay not just me back, but every Jack tar of this crew!’

‘That’s impossible. I don’t know who is owed what. But if you follow right now, and promise to leave me alone, I’ll pay you back double.’

Now the gleam of greed came to his eyes. ‘Damn your eyes, it will be triple!’

‘Just come to the orlop where I can show my purse without causing a riot.’

He shambled after me like a dim but eager circus bear. We descended to the lowest part of the frigate, where the stores are kept.

‘I hid the money down here so no one could thieve it,’ I said, lifting a hatch to the bilge. ‘My mentor Ben Franklin said riches increase cares, and I daresay he had a point. You should remember it.’

‘Damn the rebel Franklin! He should have hanged!’

I reached down. ‘Oh dear, it shifted. Fell, I think.’ I peered about and looked up at the looming Goliath, using the same art of feigned helplessness that any number of wenches had used on me. ‘Your losses were what, three shillings?’

‘Four, by God!’

‘So triple that …’

‘Aye, you owe me ten!’

‘Your arm is longer than mine. Can you help?’

‘Reach it yourself!’

‘I can just brush it with my fingertips. Maybe we could find a gaff?’ I stood, looking hapless.

‘Yankee swine …’ He got down and poked his head in. ‘Can’t see a bloody thing.’

‘There, to the right, don’t you see that gleam of silver? Reach as far as you can.’

He grunted, torso through the hatch, stretching and groping.

So with a good hearty heave I tipped him the rest of the way. He was heavy as a flour sack, but once I got him going that was an advantage. He fell, there was a clunk and a splash, and before he could get off a good howl about greasy bilgewater, I had the hatch shut and bolted. Gracious, the language coming from below! I rolled some water casks over the hatch to muffle it.

Then I took the purse from where it was really hidden between two biscuit barrels, tucked it in my trousers, and bounded up to the waist deck, sleeves rolled. ‘It’s noon by the ship’s bells!’ I cried. ‘In the name of King George, where is he?’

A chorus of shouts for Big Ned went up, but no answer came.

‘Is he hiding? Can’t blame him for not wanting to face me.’ I boxed the air for show.

Little Tom was glowering. ‘By Lucifer, I’ll thrash you.’

‘You will not. I’m not matching every man on this ship.’

‘Ned, give this American what he deserves!’ Tom cried.

But there was no answer.

‘I wonder if he’s napping in the topgallants?’ I looked up at the rigging, and then had the amusement of watching Little Tom clamber skyward, shouting and sweating.

I spent some minutes below behaving like an impatient rooster, and then as soon as I dared I turned to Smith. ‘How long do we have to wait for this coward? We both know I’ve business ashore.’

The crew was clearly frustrated, and deeply suspicious. If I didn’t get off Dangerous soon, Smith knew he’d likely lose his newest, and only, American agent. Tom dropped back down to the deck, panting and frustrated. Smith checked the hourglass. ‘Yes, it’s a quarter past noon and Ned had his chance. Be gone, Gage, and accomplish your task for love and freedom.’

There was a roar of disappointment.

‘Don’t play cards if you can’t afford to lose!’ Smith shouted.

They jeered, but let me pass to the ship’s ladder. Tom had disappeared below. I’d not much time, so I dropped onto the dirty fishing nets of an Arab lighter like an anxious cat. ‘To shore now, and an extra coin if you make it fast,’ I whispered to the boatman. I pushed us off myself, and the Muslim captain began sculling for Jaffa’s harbour with twice his usual energy, meaning half what I preferred.

I turned to wave back to Smith. ‘Can’t wait until we meet again!’ Blatant lie, of course. Once I learnt Astiza’s fate and satisfied myself about this Book of Thoth, I had no intention of going near either the English or the French, who’d been at each other’s throats for a millennium. I’d sail for China first.

Especially when there was a boil of men at the gun deck and Big Ned’s head popped up like a gopher, red from rage and exertion. I gave him a look from the new glass and saw he was wearing a baptism of slime.

‘Come back here, yellow dog! I’ll rip you limb from limb!’

‘I think the yellow is yours, Ned! You didn’t keep our appointed time!’

‘You tricked me, Yankee sharp!’

‘I educated you!’ But it was getting hard to hear as we bobbed away. Sir Sidney lifted his hat in wry salute. The English seamen scrambled to lower a longboat.

‘Can you go a little faster, Sinbad?’

‘For another coin, effendi.’

It was a sharp little race, given that the beefy sailors churned the waves like a waterwheel, Big Ned howling at the bow. Still, Smith had told me about Jaffa. It has just one land gate in, and you needed a guide to find your way back out. Given a head start, I’d hide well enough.

So I took one of my ferryman’s fishing nets and, before he could object, heaved it in the path of the closing longboat, snarling their starboard oars so they began turning in circles, roaring insults in language that would make a drill sergeant blush.

My ferryman protested, but I had coins enough to pay double for his sorry net and keep him rowing. I leapt onto the stone quay a good minute ahead of my complainants, determined to find Astiza and get back out – and vowing never to see Big Ned or Little Tom again.

CHAPTER THREE

Jaffa rises like a loaf from the Mediterranean shore, empty beaches curving north and south into haze. Its importance as a trading port had been superseded by Acre to the north, where Djezzar the Butcher has his headquarters, but it is still a prosperous agricultural town. There is a steady stream of Jerusalem-bound pilgrims in and oranges, cotton, and soap back out. Its streets are a labyrinth leading to the towers, mosques, synagogues, and churches that form its peak. House additions arch illegally over dim lanes. Donkeys clatter up and down stone steps.

Questionably got though my gambling gains might be, they quickly proved invaluable when a street urchin invited me to the upstairs inn of his disappointingly homely sister. The money bought me pita bread, falafel, an orange, and a screened balcony to hide behind while the gang of British seamen rushed up one alley and down another, in futile search of my vile carcass. Blown and hot, they finally settled in a Christian quayside inn to discuss my perfidy over bad Palestinian wine. Meanwhile, I snuck about to spend more winnings. I bought a sleeved Bedouin robe of maroon and white stripes, new boots, bloused trousers (so much more comfortable in the heat than tight European breeches!) sash, vest, two cotton shirts, and cloth for a turban. As Smith had predicted, the result made me look like one more exotic member of a polyglot empire, so long as I took care to stay away from the arrogant, questioning Ottoman janissaries in their red and yellow boots.

I learnt there was no coach to the holy city, or even a decent highway. I was too financially prudent – Ben, again – to buy or feed a horse. So I purchased a docile donkey sufficient to get me there, and not much farther. For a meagre weapon, I economized with a curbed Arab knife with a handle of camel horn. I have little skill with swords, and I couldn’t bear to purchase one of the Muslims’ long, clumsy, elaborately decorated muskets. Their inlaid mother-of-pearl is lovely, but I’d seen how indifferently they performed against the French musket during Napoleon’s battles in Egypt. And any musket is far inferior to the lovely Pennsylvania rifle I’d sacrificed at Dendara in order to escape with Astiza. If this Jericho was a metallurgist, maybe he could make a replacement!

For guide and bodyguard to Jerusalem I chose a bearded, sharp-bargaining entrepreneur named Mohammad, a moniker seemingly given to half the Muslim men in this town. Between my elementary Arabic and Mohammad’s primitive French, learnt because Frankish merchants dominated the cotton trade, we could communicate. Still conscious of money, I figured that if we left early enough I could shave a day off his fee. I’d also slip out of town unseen, in case any seamen were still lurking about.

‘Now then, Mohammad, I would prefer to depart about midnight. Steal a march on the traffic and enjoy the brisk night air, you see. Early to rise, Ben Franklin said.’

‘As you wish, effendi. You are fleeing enemies, perhaps?’

‘Of course not. I’m told I’m affable.’

‘It must be creditors then.’

‘Mohammad, you know I’ve paid half your extortionate fee in advance. I’ve money enough.’

‘Ah, so it is a woman. A bad wife? I have seen the Christian wives.’ He shook his head and shuddered. ‘Satan couldn’t placate them.’

‘Just be ready at midnight, will you?’

Despite my sorrow at losing Astiza and my anxiety to learn her fate, I’ll confess it crossed my mind to seek an hour or two of female companionship in Jaffa. All varieties of sex from the dullest to the most perverse were advertised with distracting persistence by Arab boys, despite condemnation from any number of religions. I’m a man, not a monk, and it had been some days. But Smith’s ship remained anchored offshore, and if Big Ned had any persistence it would be just my luck that he’d find me entwined with a trollop, too single-minded to outwit him. So I thought better of it, congratulated myself for my piety, and decided I would wait for relief in Jerusalem, even though copulating in the Holy Land was the kind of deed that would choke my old pastor. The truth is, abstinence and loyalty to Astiza made me feel good. My trials in Egypt had made me determined to work on self-discipline, and here I was, past the first test. ‘A good conscience is a continual Christmas,’ my mentor Franklin liked to say.

Mohammad was an hour late, but finally led me through the dark maze of alleys to the landward gate, its paving stained with dung. A bribe was required to get it opened at night, and I passed through its archway with that curious exhilaration that comes from starting a new adventure. I had, after all, survived eight kinds of hell in Egypt, restored myself to temporary solvency with gambling skills, and was off on a mission that bore no resemblance to real work, despite my fantasies of becoming a ledger clerk. The Book of Thoth, which believers contended could confer anything from scientific wisdom to life everlasting, probably no longer existed … and yet it might just be found somewhere, giving my trip the optimism of a treasure hunt. And despite my lustful instincts, I truly longed for Astiza. The opportunity to somehow learn her fate through Smith’s confederate in Jerusalem made me impatient.

So off we strode through the gate – and stopped.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked the suddenly recumbent Mohammad, wondering if he’d had a fainting spell. But no, he lay down with the deliberation of a dog circling a fireplace rug. No one can relax like an Ottoman, their very bones melting.

‘Bedouin gangs infest the road to Jerusalem and will rob any unarmed pilgrim, effendi,’ my guide said blithely in the dark. ‘It’s not just risky to proceed alone, it is insane. My cousin Abdul is leading a camel caravan there later today, and we will join him for safety. Thus do I and Allah look after our American guest.’

‘But what about our early start?’

‘You have paid, and we have started.’ And with that he went back to sleep.

Well, tarnation. It was the middle of the night, we were fifty yards outside the walls, I had little notion which way to go, and it was entirely possible he was right. Palestine was notorious for being overrun by brigands, feuding warlords, desert raiders, and thieving Bedouins. So I stewed and steamed for three hours, worried the seamen might somehow wander this way, until at last Abdul and his snorting camels did indeed congregate at the gate, well before the sun rose. Introductions were made, I was loaned a Turkish pistol, charged five more English shillings both for it and my added escort, and then another shilling for feed for my donkey. I’d been in Palestine less than twenty-four hours and already my purse was growing thin.

Next we brewed some tea.

At last there was a glimmer of light as the stars faded, and we were off through the orange groves. After a mile we passed into fields of cotton and wheat, the road lined with date palms. The thatched farmhouses were dark in early morning, barking dogs signalling their location. Camel bells and creaking saddles marked our own passage. The sky lightened, bird call and rooster crow started up, and as the dawn pinked I could see the rugged hills ahead where so much biblical history had taken place. Israel’s trees had been depleted for charcoal and ashes to make soap, yet after the waterless Egyptian desert this coastal plain seemed as fat and pleasant as Pennsylvania Dutch country. Promised Land, indeed.

The Holy Land, I learnt from my guide, was nominally a part of Syria, a province of the Ottoman Empire, and its provincial capital of Damascus was under the control of the Sublime Porte in Constantinople. But just as Egypt had really been under the control of the independent Mamelukes until Bonaparte threw them out, Palestine was really under the control of the Bosnian-born Djezzar, an ex-Mameluke himself who’d ruled from Acre with notorious cruelty for a quarter century, ever since putting down a revolt of his own mercenary troops. Djezzar had strangled several of his wives rather than put up with rumours of infidelity, maimed his closest advisers to remind them who was boss, and drowned generals or captains who displeased him. This ruthlessness, Mohammad opined, was necessary. The province was splintered among too many religious and ethnic groups, each about as comfortable with the other as a Calvinist at a Vatican picnic. The invasion of Egypt had hurled even more refugees into the Holy Land, with Ibrahim Bey’s fugitive Mamelukes seeking a toehold. Fresh Ottoman levies were pouring in to anticipate a French invasion, while British gold and promises of naval aid were stirring the pot even thicker. Half the population was spying on the other half, and every clan, sect, and cult was weighing its best chances between Djezzar and the so-far-invincible French. Word of the astonishing Napoleonic victories in Egypt, the latest of which had been suppression of a revolt in Cairo, had shaken the Ottoman Empire.

I knew, too, that Napoleon still hoped to eventually link up with Tippoo Sahib, the Francophile sultan fighting Wellesley and the British in India. The fervently ambitious Bonaparte was organising a camel corps he hoped could eventually cross the eastern deserts more efficiently than Alexander had done. The thirty-year-old Corsican wanted to do the Greek one better by galloping all the way to southern India to link with Citizen Tippoo and deprive Britain of its richest colony.

According to Smith, I was to make sense of this porridge.

‘Palestine sounds like a regular rat’s nest of righteousness,’ I remarked to Mohammad as we rode along, me three sizes too big for my donkey, which had a spine like a hickory rail.

‘As many factions here as a New Hampshire town council.’

‘All men are holy here,’ Mohammad said, ‘and there is nothing more irritating than a neighbour, equally holy, of a different faith.’

Amen to that. For another man to be convinced he is right is to suggest you may be wrong, and there is the root of half the world’s bloodshed. The French and British are perfect examples, firing broadsides at each other over who is the most democratic, the French republicans with their bloody guillotine, or the British parliamentarians with their debtor prisons. Back in my Paris days, when all I had to care about was cards, women, and the occasional shipping contract, I can’t recall being very upset with anybody, or they with me. Then along came the medallion, the Egyptian campaign, Astiza, Napoleon, Sidney Smith, and here I was, urging my diminutive steed towards the world capital of obstinate disagreement. I wondered for the thousandth time how I’d got to such a point.

Because of our delay and the caravan’s stately pace, we were three long days getting to Jerusalem, arriving at dusk on the third. It’s a tiresome, winding route on roads that would be snubbed by any self-respecting goat – there obviously hadn’t been a repair since Pontius Pilate – and in little time the brown, scrub-cloaked hills had acquired the steepness of the Appalachians. We climbed up the valley of the Bab al-Wad into pine and juniper, the grass brown this fall season. The air got noticeably cooler and drier. Up and down and roundabout we went, past braying donkeys, farting, foam-flecked camels, and cart drovers whose oxen butted head-to-head while the two drivers argued. We passed brown-robed friars, cassocked Armenian missionaries, Orthodox Jews with beards and long sidelocks, Syrian merchants, one or two French expatriate cotton traders, and Muslim sects beyond number, turbaned and carrying staffs. Bedouin drove flocks of sheep and goats down hillsides like a spill of water, and village girls swayed interestingly by on the road’s fringe, clay jars balanced carefully on their heads. Bright sashes swung to the rock of their hips, and their dark eyes were bright as black stones on the bottom of a river.

What passed for hostels, called khans, were considerably less appealing: little more than walled courts that served chiefly as corrals for fleas. We also encountered bands of tough-looking horsemen who on four different occasions demanded a toll for passing. Each time I was expected by my companions to contribute more than what seemed my fair share. These parasites looked like simple robbers to me, but Mohammad insisted they were local village toughs who kept even worse bandits away, and each village had a right to a portion of this toll, called a ghafar. He was probably telling the truth, since being taxed for protection against robbers is something all governments do, isn’t it? These armed louts were a cross between private extortionists and the police.

When I wasn’t grumbling about the unceasing drain upon my purse, however, Israel had its charm. If Palestine didn’t quite carry the atmosphere of antiquity that Egypt had, it still seemed well-trodden, as if we could hear the echoes of long-past Hebrew heroes, Christian saints, and Muslim conquerors. Olive trees had the girth of a wine cask, the wood twisted by countless centuries. Odd bits of historic rubble jutted from the prow of every hill. When we paused for water, the ledges leading down to spring or well were concave and smooth from all the sandals and boots that had gone before us. As in Egypt, there was a clarity to the light, very different from foggy Europe. The air had a dusty taste as well, as if it had been breathed too many times.

It was at one of these khans that I was reminded that I hadn’t left the world of the medallion entirely behind. A geezer of indeterminate faith and age was given meagre sustenance by the innkeeper for doing the odd chore about the place, and he was so meek and unassuming that none of us paid him much mind except to ask for a cup of water or an extra sheepskin to sprawl on. I would have had eyes for a serving wench, but a raggedy man pushing a twig broom did not capture my attention, so when I was undressing in the wee hours and had my golden seraphim momentarily exposed, I backed into him and jumped before I knew he was there. He was staring goggle-eyed at my little angels, wings outstretched, and at first I thought the old beggar had spied something he longed to steal. But instead he stepped back in consternation and fear.

I flipped my linen over the seraphim, the brightness vanishing as if light had gone out.

‘The compass,’ he whispered in Arabic.

‘What?’

‘Satan’s fingers. Allah’s mercy be upon you.’

He was clearly as addled as a loon. Still, his look of dismay made me uneasy. ‘They’re personal relics. Not a word of this, now.’

‘My imam whispered of these. From the den.’

‘The den?’ They’d come from under the Great Pyramid.

‘Apophis.’ And with that, he turned and fled.

Well, I hadn’t been so flabbergasted since the danged medallion had actually worked. Apophis! That was the name of a snake god, or demon, that Astiza had claimed was down in the bowels of Egypt. I didn’t take her seriously – I am a Franklin man, after all, a man of reason, of the West – but something had been down in a smoky pit I’d had no desire to get closer to, and I thought I’d left it and its name long behind in Egypt … Yet here it had been spoken again! By the snout of Anubis, I’d had quite enough of stray gods and goddesses, mucking up my life like unwanted relatives tracking the floor with mud on their boots. Now a senescent handyman had brought the name up again. Surely it made no sense, but the coincidence was unnerving.

I hurriedly redressed, secreting the seraphim again in my clothing, and hurried outside my cubicle to seek the old man out and ask him what the name meant.

But he was nowhere to be found. The next morning, the innkeeper said the servant had apparently packed his meagre belongings and fled.

And then at last we came to fabled Jerusalem. I’ll admit it was a striking sight. The city is perched on a hill set amid hills, and on three sides the ground falls steeply to narrow valleys. It is on the fourth side, the north, from which invaders always come. Olives, vineyards, and orchards clothe the hillsides, and gardens provide clusters of green within. Formidable walls two miles long, built by a Muslim sultan called Suleiman the Magnificent, entirely enclose the city’s inhabitants. Fewer than nine thousand people lived there when I arrived, subsisting economically on pilgrims and a desultory pottery and soap industry. I’d learn soon enough that about four thousand were Muslims, three thousand Christians, and two thousand Jews.

What picked the place out were its buildings. The primary Muslim mosque, the Dome of the Rock, has a golden cupola that glows like a lamp in the setting sun. Closer to where we stood, the Jaffa Gate was the old military citadel, its crenellated ramparts topped by a round tower like a lighthouse. Stones as colossal as the ones I’d seen in Egypt made up the citadel’s base. I’d find similar rocks at the Temple Mount, the old Jewish temple plateau that now served as the base of the city’s great mosque. Apparently, Jerusalem’s foundations had been laid by Titans.

The skyline was punctuated everywhere by domes, minarets, and church towers bequeathed by this crusader or that conqueror, each trying to leave a holy building to make up for his own national brand of slaughter. The effect was as competitive as rival vegetable stalls at a Saturday market, Christian bells tolling as muzzeins wailed and Jews chanted their prayers. Vines, flowers, and shrubs erupted from the ill-maintained wall, and palms marked squares and gardens. Outside, ranks of olive trees marched down to twisting, rocky valleys that were smoky from burning garbage. From this terrestrial hell-dump one lifted the eye to heaven, birds wheeling in front of celestial cloud palaces, everything sharp and detailed. Jerusalem, like Jaffa, was the colour of honey in the low sun, its limestone fermenting in the yellow rays.

‘Most men come here looking for something,’ Mohammad remarked as we gazed across the Citadel Valley towards the ancient capital. ‘What do you seek, my friend?’

‘Wisdom,’ I said, which was true enough. That’s what the Book of Thoth was supposed to contain, and by Franklin’s spectacles I could use some. ‘And news of one I love, I hope.’

‘Ah. Many men search their entire lives without finding wisdom or love, so it is well you come here, where prayers for both might be answered.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ I knew that Jerusalem, precisely because it was reputed to be so holy, had been attacked, burnt, sacked, and pillaged more times than any place on earth. ‘I’ll pay you now and seek out the man I’m to stay with.’ I tried not to jingle my purse too much as I counted out the rest of his fee.

He took his pay eagerly and then reacted with practiced shock. ‘Not a gift for sharing my expertise about the Holy Land? No recompense for the safety or your arrival? No affirmation of this glorious view?’

‘I suppose you want credit for the weather, as well.’

He looked hurt. ‘I have tried to be your servant, effendi.’

So, twisting in my saddle so he couldn’t see how little was left, I gave him a tip I could ill afford. He bowed and gave effusive thanks. ‘Allah smiles on your generosity!’

I wasn’t able to keep the grumpiness from my ‘Godspeed.’

‘And peace be upon you!’

A blessing that had no power, it turned out.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jerusalem was half ruin, I saw when I rode down the dirt track and crossed a wooden bridge to the black iron of the Jaffa Gate, and through it to a market beyond. A subashi, or police officer, checked me for weapons – they were not allowed in Ottoman cities – but allowed me to keep my poor dagger. ‘I thought Franks carried something better,’ he muttered, taking me for European despite my clothing.

‘I’m a simple pilgrim,’ I told him.

His look was sceptical. ‘See that you remain one.’

Then I sold my donkey for what I’d paid for it – a few coins back, at least! – and got my bearings.

The gate had a steady stream of traffic. Merchants met caravans, and pilgrims of a dozen sects shouted thanksgiving as they entered the sacred precincts. But Ottoman authority had been in decline for two centuries, and powerless governors, raiding Bedouin, extortionate tax collection, and religious rivalry had left the town’s prosperity as stunted as cornstalks on a causeway. Market stalls lined major streets, but their faded awnings and half-empty shelves only emphasized the historical gloom. Jerusalem was somnolent, birds having occupied its towers.

My guide Mohammad had explained the city was divided into quarters for Muslims, Christians, Armenians, and Jews. I followed twisting lanes as best I could for the northwest quadrant, built around the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Franciscan headquarters. The route was depopulated enough that chickens skittered out of my way. Half the houses appeared abandoned. The inhabited homes, built of ancient stone with haphazard wooden sheds and terraces jutting like boils, sagged liked the skin of grandmothers. As in Egypt, any fantasies of an opulent East were disappointed.

Smith’s vague directions and my own inquiries took me to a two-story limestone house with a solid wooden wagon gate topped by a horseshoe, its façade otherwise featureless in the Arab fashion. There was a smaller wooden door to one side, and I could smell the charcoal from Jericho’s smithy. I pounded on the small entry door, waited, and pounded again, until a small peephole opened. I was surprised when a feminine eye looked out: I’d become accustomed in Cairo to bulky Muslim doormen and sequestered wives. Moreover, her pupils were pale grey, of a translucence unusual in the East.

On Smith’s instruction, I started in English. ‘I’m Ethan Gage, with a letter of introduction from a British captain to a man they call Jericho. I’m here …’

The eyehole shut. I stood, wondering after some minutes whether I even had the right house, when finally the door swung open as if of its own accord and I stepped cautiously through. I was in the work yard of an ironmonger all right, its pavers stained grey with soot. Ahead I could see the glow of a forge, in a ground-story shed with walls hung with tools. The left of the courtyard was a sales shop stocked with finished implements, and to the right was storage for metal and charcoal. Slightly overhanging these three wings were the living apartments above, reached by an unpainted wooden stair and fronted by a balcony, faded roses cascading from iron pots. A few petals had fallen to the ashes below.

The gate closed behind me, and I realised the woman had been hidden by it. She ghosted by without speaking, her eyes inspecting me with a sideways glance and an intense curiosity that surprised me. It’s true I’m a handsome rogue, but was I really that interesting? Her dress fell from neck to ankles, her head was covered by a scarf in the custom of all faiths here in Palestine, and she modestly averted her face, but I saw enough to make a key judgement. She was pretty.

Her face had the rounded beauty of a Renaissance painting, her complexion pale for this part of the world, with an eggshell smoothness. Her lips were full, and when I caught her gaze she looked down demurely. Her nose had that slight Mediterranean arch, that subtle curve of the south that I find seductive. Her hair was hidden except for a few escaping strands that hinted at a surprisingly fair colouring. Her figure was trim enough, but it was hard to tell more than that. Then she disappeared through a doorway.

And with that instinctive scouting done, I turned around to see a bearded, hard-muscled man striding from the smithy in a leather apron. He had the forearms of a smith, thick as hams and marked with the inevitable burns of the forge. The smudge from his work didn’t hide his sandy hair and startling blue eyes that looked at me with some scepticism. Had Vikings washed ashore in Syria? Yet his build was softened somewhat by a fullness to his lips and ruddiness behind his bearded cheeks (a cherubic youthfulness he shared with the woman), which suggested the earnest gentleness I’ve always imagined of Joseph the Carpenter. He shed a leather glove and held out a calloused hand. ‘Gage.’

‘Ethan Gage,’ I confirmed as I shook a palm hard as wood.

‘Jericho.’ The man might have a woman’s mouth, but he had a grip like a vice.

‘As your wife might have explained …’

‘Sister.’

‘Really?’ Well, that was a step in the right direction. Not that I was forgetting about Astiza for a moment – it’s just that female beauty arouses a natural curiosity in any healthy male, and it’s safest to know where one stands.

‘She is shy of strangers, so do not make her uncomfortable.’

That was clear enough, from a man sturdy as an oak stump. ‘Of course. Yet it is commendable that she apparently understands English.’

‘It would be more remarkable if she didn’t, since she lived in England. With me. She has nothing to do with our business.’

‘Charming yet unavailable. The very best ladies are.’

He reacted to my wit with as much animation as a stone idol. ‘Smith sent word of your mission, so I can offer temporary lodging and time-tested advice: any foreigner who pretends to understand the politics of Jerusalem is a fool.’

I remained my affable self. ‘So my job might be brief. I ask, don’t understand the answer, and go home. Like any pilgrim.’

He looked me up and down. ‘You prefer Arab dress?’

‘It’s comfortable, anonymous, and I thought it might help in the souk and the coffee shop. I speak a little Arabic.’ I was determined to keep trying. ‘As for you, Jericho, I don’t see you falling down anytime soon.’

I’d merely puzzled him.