The Rosetta Key

Her face had the rounded beauty of a Renaissance painting, her complexion pale for this part of the world, with an eggshell smooth-ness. 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 coloring.

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 skepticism. 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 cal-lused 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 vise.

“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.” 3 2

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

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.

“The biblical story, about the walls of Jericho coming down? Solid as a rock, you seem to be. Good man to have on one’s side, I hope?”

“My home village. There are no walls now.”

“And I didn’t expect to find blue eyes in Palestine,” I stumbled on.

“Crusader blood. The roots of my family go far back. We should be a paintbox mix, but in our generation the paleness came out. Every race comes through Jerusalem: Crusaders, Persians, Mongols, Ethio-pians. Every creed, opinion, and nation. And you?”

“American, ancestry brief and best forgotten, which is one of the advantages of the United States. I understand you learned your English through their navy?”

“Miriam and I were orphaned by the plague. The Catholic fathers who took us in told us something of the world, and at Tyre I signed onto an English frigate and learned ironwork repairs. The sailors gave me my nickname, I apprenticed to a smith in Portsmouth, and sent for her. I felt obligated.”

“But didn’t stay, obviously.”

t h e

r o s e t t a k e y

3 3

“We missed the sun; the British are white as worms. I’d met Smith while in the navy. For passage back and some pay, I agreed to keep my ears open here. I host his friends. They do his bidding. Little useful is ever learned. My neighbors think I’m simply capitalizing on my English to take in the occasional lodger, and they’re not far wrong.”

Bright and blunt, this blacksmith. “Sidney Smith thinks he and I can help each other. I got caught up with Bonaparte in Egypt. Now the French are planning to come this way.”

“And Smith wants to know what the Christians and the Jews and the Druze and the Matuwelli might do.”

“Exactly. He’s trying to help Djezzar mount resistance to the French.”

“With people who hate Djezzar, a tyrant who keeps his slipper on their neck. More than a few will regard the French as liberators.”

“If that’s the message, I’ll take it back. But I also need help for my own cause. I met a woman in Egypt who disappeared. Fell into the Nile, actually. I want to learn if she’s dead or alive and, if alive, how to rescue her. I’m told you may have contacts in Egypt.”

“A woman? Close to you?” He seemed reassured by my interest in someone other than his sister. “That kind of inquiry is more costly than listening to political gossip in Jerusalem.”

“How much more costly?”