The Rosetta Key

The Rosetta Key

Wi l l i a m D i e t r i c h

To my daughter, Heidi

The possession of knowledge does not killthe sense of wonder and mystery.

There is always more mystery.

—Anaïs Nin

Contents

Epigraph iii

Map viii

Part One 1

Chapter 1

Eyeing a thousand musket barrels aimed at one’s chest does…

3

Chapter 2

I started with brelan, which is not a bad game…

11

Chapter 3

Jaffa rises like a loaf from the Mediterranean shore, empty…

19

Chapter 4

Jerusalem was half ruin, I saw when I rode down…

29

Chapter 5

To pass the winter, I did my best to tease…

39

Chapter 6

My first reaction was to depart Jerusalem, and the cursed…

49

Chapter 7

I expected Haim Farhi would have some of the Aristotle-like…

63

Chapter 8

“You should be honored, guv’nor,” Big Ned said.

75

Chapter 9

We ran back upstairs to the statue as if to…

91

Chapter 10

I knew I was in hell when Najac insisted on…

101

Chapter 11

Atrocities cannot be justified, but sometimes they can be explained. 112

Part Two 123

Chapter 12

I came to Acre a hero, but not for escaping…

125

Chapter 13

I needed to generate an electric charge on a scale…

139

Chapter 14

I peered out the sally port into a fog of…

153

Chapter 15

Mohammad was watching me closely. “This ring means something

to…

162

Chapter 16

I’d assumed we’d travel directly to Mount Nebo with Najac’s…

173

Chapter 17

With his instinct for the political, Bonaparte immediately named

our…

183

Chapter 18

The entrance to the City of Ghosts was a slit…

201

Chapter 19

We pretended to descend as if we were making for…

216

Chapter 20

The level exit from the City of Ghosts would take…

230

Chapter 21

We were on the coastal plain as the sun rose,…

241

Chapter 22

And then Colonel Phelipeaux died. Did he really comprehend his… 257

Part Three 265

Chapter 23

I arrived back in Egypt on July 14, 1799, one…

267

Chapter 24

We had two tasks. One was to use the Rosetta…

276

Chapter 25

Fleeing at the pace of a donkey cart is not…

287

Chapter 26

Astiza and I landed on the southern coast of France…

298

Chapter 27

There was irony in being imprisoned in a “temple” first…

312

Chapter 28

Astiza and I were both weaponless. The woman, for lack…

326

Historical Note 337

Acknowledgments 341

About the Author

Other Books by William Dietrich

Credits

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

Map

Part One

c h a p t e r

1

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 hail-ing 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 immor-talized 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!

4

w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h

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.