The Rosetta Key

At the moat’s end I slid over its edge like a Maine otter on a snow bank, tumbling to the dry bottom. The stench was nauseating. There were rotting bodies, broken ladders, and the abandoned weapons that make up the detritus of war. The breach in the tower had been sealed and there was no way up the wall. Men were peering down at me, but none seemed to realize yet who I was. No rope was offered. Not knowing what else to do, I ran down the moat’s dusty course toward where it joined the Mediterranean. I could see the masts of British ships, and guns continued to go off above my head. Hadn’t Smith said they were building a reservoir of seawater at the moat’s head?

New shouts! I looked back. The damned Arab daredevils had spurred some of their horses down into the moat with me and now they were galloping along, heedless of the soldiers overhead trying to shoot them, determined to take me. Silano clearly knew I had the book! Ahead was the ramp over the moat by the Land Gate, and a black, moist seawall of the new reservoir beyond it. Trapped!

And then there was another explosion, straight ahead. A roar, pieces flying, and the black wall dissolved in front of me. The blast knocked me backward, and I stared stupefied as a wall of green seawater turned to foam and began rushing down the moat at me and my pursuers. I got to my knees just as the flood hit. It knocked me back the way I’d come, carrying me like a leaf in a gutter.

I was in a tumble of foam, unable to get proper breath, unsure what was up and down. I tumbled. The water swept me into a tangle with my pursuers and something big struck me, a horse I guessed, 2 4 6

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fortuitously knocking me toward air. We were being washed down the moat back toward the central tower, all of us tangled with half-decayed corpses and the flotsam of siege debris. I thrashed, coughing.

And then I saw my chain! Or a chain, at any extent, drooping down the tower wall like a garland, and when we swept by I grabbed it.

It plucked me out of the water like a well bucket and began dragging me up the rough tower walls, scraping like sandpaper.

“Hang on, Gage. You’re almost home!”

It was Jericho.

Now bullets began banging off the wall around me and I realized I was a hanging target for the entire French army. One lucky shot and I’d fall off.

I tucked into a ball. If I could have shriveled any smaller I’d have disappeared.

Cannon boomed, and a ball that seemed big as a house crashed into the masonry a few yards from me, dissolving to shrapnel. The entire tower shuddered and I swung like a bead on a string. Grimly, I held on. Then another ball, and another. Each time the entire tower shook and the chain swayed, me dangling. Was this ever going to end?

I looked down. The flow of water was slowing but the Arab horsemen were gone, washed to who knows where. Wreckage dotted the water’s surface. A man floated belly up, like a fish.

“Heave!” Jericho cried.

And then strong hands were grabbing me and I was dragged, wheezing, over the crenellation and onto the Acre battlements, half drowned, scraped, burned, cut, bruised, heartsick at the love and companions I had lost, and yet miraculously unpunctured. I had the lives, and bedraggled look, of an alley cat.

I sprawled, chest heaving, unable to stand. People clustered around: Jericho, Djezzar, Smith, Phelipeaux.

“Bloody hell, Ethan,” Smith said in greeting. “Whose side are you on now?”

But I looked beyond them to the one who had instinctively caught my eye, hair golden, eyes wide and stunned, dress smeared with smoke and powder.

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“Hello, Miriam,” I croaked.

And then the French guns really started up.

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In my experience, it’s when you need to collect thoughts most carefully that there are the greatest distractions. In this case it was a hundred French artillery pieces, venting frustration at my survival. I stood and looked out shakily. There was a lot of activity in Napoleon’s encampments, units forming and moving to the trenches. I had, it seemed, something Bonaparte wanted back. Badly.

The wall was trembling under our feet.

Miriam was looking at me with an expression that was a cross between shock and relief, with a rising tide of indignation, a tributary of confusion, a reservoir of compassion, and more than a pitcher of suspicion. “You left with no word?” she finally managed.

It sounded worse the way she put it. “It was difficult to explain why.”

“What was the Christian running from?” Djezzar wanted to know.

“It appears to be the entire French army,” Phelipeaux observed mildly. “Monsieur Gage, they do not appear to like you very much.

And we were thinking of shooting you as well, for desertion and treachery. Do you have any friends at all?”

“It’s that woman, isn’t it?” Miriam had developed a way of getting to the point. “She’s alive, and you went to her.” I looked back. Was Astiza alive? I’d just seen my Muslim friend killed by my own gun, and Astiza turn back toward that villain Silano.