The Rosetta Key

Years from now historians will labor to explain the strategic reasoning for Napoleon’s invasions of Egypt and Syria, for the slaughter at Jaffa and the marches with no clear goal. The scholars’ task is futile. War is nothing about reason and everything about emotion. If it has logic, it is the mad logic of hell. All of us have some evil: deep in most, indulged by a few, universally released by war. Men sign away everything for this release, uncapping a pot they scarcely know is boiling, and then are haunted ever after. The French—for all their muddle of republican ideals, alliances with distant pashas, scientific study, and dreams of reform—achieved above all else an awful catharsis, followed by the sure knowledge that what they’d released must eventually consume them too. War is poisoned glory.

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

“But do you know a friendly ship?” Mohammad asked.

“The British, perhaps, and I have news I need to bring them.” And some scores to settle, too, I thought. “Do you have water?”

“And bread. Some dates.”

“Then we are shipmates, Mohammad.”

He beamed. “Allah has his ways, does he not? And did you find what you were looking for in Jerusalem?”

“No.”

“Later, I think.” He gave me some water and food, as restorative as a tingle of electricity. “You are meant to find it, or you would not have survived.”

How comforting it would be to have such faith! “Or I shouldn’t have looked, and I’ve been punished by seeing too much.” I turned away from the sad glow from shore. “Now then, help me set this sail.

We’ll set course for Acre and the English ships.”

“Yes, once more I am your guide, effendi, in my new and sturdy boat! I will take you to the English!”

I lay back against a thwart. “Thanks for your rescue, friend.” He nodded, “And for this I will charge only ten shillings!”

Part Two

c h a p t e r

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I came to Acre a hero, but not for escaping the mass execution at Jaffa. Rather, I paid back the French with timely information.

Mohammad and I found the British squadron the second day of our sail. The ships were led by the battleships Tigre and Theseus, and when we coasted into the lee of the flagship I hailed none less than that friendly devil himself, Sir Sidney Smith.

“Gage, is that really you?” he called. “We thought you’d gone back over to the frogs! And now you’re back to us?”

“To the French by the treachery of your own British seamen, Captain!”

“Treachery? But they said you deserted!” How’s that for a cheeky lie by Big Ned and Little Tom? No doubt they thought me dead and unable to contradict them. It’s just the kind of truth-twisting I might have thought of, which made me all the more indignant. “Hardly! Locked out from brave retreat by your own bully seamen, I was! You owe us a medal. Don’t they, Mohammad?”

“The French tried to kill us,” my boat mate said. “He owes me ten shillings.”

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“And here you are in the middle of the Mediterranean?” Smith scratched his head. “Damnation. For a man who turns up everywhere, it’s hard to know where you belong. Well, come aboard and let’s sort this out.”

So up we climbed, the eighty-gun ship-of-the-line a behemoth compared to the feeble lighter we’d been sailing in, which was taken in tow. The British officers searched Mohammad as if he might produce a dagger at any moment, and gave sharp looks at me. But I’d already determined to act the wronged one, and had a trump besides.

So I launched into my version of events.

“. . . And then the iron gate slammed shut against me as the ring of French and Arab scoundrels closed in. . . .” Yet instead of the outrage and sympathy I deserved, Smith and his officers regarded me with skepticism.

“Admit it, Ethan. You do seem to go too easily from one side to the other,” Smith said. “And get out of the damndest fixes.”

“Aye, he’s an American rebel, he is,” a lieutenant put in.

“Wait. You think the French let me escape from Jaffa?”

“The reports are that no one else did. It’s rather remarkable, finding you.”

“And who’s this heathen, then?” another officer asked, pointing at Mohammad.

“He’s my friend and savior, and a better man than you, I’ll wager.” Now they bristled, and I was probably on the brink of being called out for a duel. Smith hurriedly intervened. “Now, there’s no need for that. We have the right to ask hard questions, and you have the right to answer them. Frankly, Gage, I hadn’t heard all that much useful from you in Jerusalem, despite the Crown’s investment. Then my sailors report you’d acquired a quite expensive, rather remarkable rifle?

Where’s that?”

“Stolen by a blasted French thief and torturer named Najac,” I said.

“If I’d joined the French, what the devil am I doing in rags, wounded, burned, bobbing in a boat with a Muslim camel driver and without a weapon?” I was angry. “If I’d gone to the French, why am I not sipping t h e

r o s e t t a k e y

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claret in Napoleon’s tent right now? Aye, let’s sort the truth. Call those rascal seamen up right now. . . .”