Free Napoleon's Pyramids by William Dietrich Page A

friends! Make me your friend as well, and perhaps we’ll someday aid each other.”
    “You want me to spy for England?”
    “Absolutely not!” He looked hurt, glancing at Stefan as if the gypsy should support his protestations of innocence. “I simply offer help. Go where you must and pay attention to what you see. But if you ever tire of Napoleon and are looking for aid, contact the British navy and share what any man could have observed. I’m giving you a signet ring inscribed with a symbol of a unicorn, my coat-of-arms. I’ll notify the Admiralty of its authenticity. Use it as a token of safe passage.”
    Smith and Stefan looked at me expectedly. Did they think me a fool? I could feel the lump of the object in the false sole of my boot.
    “First, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied again. “Second, I’m allies with nobody, neither France nor England. I am merely a man of science, recruited to observe natural phenomena while some legal trouble I have is sorted out in Paris. Third, if I did have what you speak of, I wouldn’t admit it, given the lethal interest everyone seems to display. And fourth, this entire conversation is useless, because whatever I may once have had, even though I never had it, I have no longer, since the thieves plundered my baggage when I fled.” There, I thought. That should shut them up.
    Smith grinned. “Good man!” he shouted, slapping my arm. “I knew you had the instincts! Fine show!”
    “And now we feast,” Stefan said, also apparently approving of my performance. “Tell me more of your lessons from Temple Prison, Sir Sidney. We Rom trace our origins to the pharaohs, and to Abraham and Noah. We have forgotten much, but we remember much as well, and we can still sometimes tell the future and bend the whims of fate. Sarylla there is a drabardi, a fortune-teller, and maybe she can cast your future. Come, come, sit, and let us talk of Babylon and Tyre, Memphis and Jerusalem.”
    Was everyone but me lost in the ancient world? I slipped on Smith’s ring, reasoning it couldn’t hurt to have another friend.
    “Alas, I threaten all of you the longer I stay,” Smith said. “To tell the truth, a troop of French dragoons has been on my own trail. I wanted this quick word, but must be on my way before they encounter the robbery, hear the story of my timely shot, and look in these woods.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of this fascination with the occult, frankly. My jailer, Boniface, was the worst kind of Jacobin tyrant, but he constantly hinted at mystic secrets. All of us want to believe in magic, even if we adults have been told we shouldn’t. A learned man would dismiss it, and yet sometimes too much learning makes us blind.”
    It sounded like what Talma had said.
    “The Rom have kept the secrets of our Egyptian ancestors for centuries,” Stefan said. “Yet we are mere children in the ancient arts.”
    Well, their Egyptian connection seemed dubious to me—their very name suggested Romania as a more probable homeland—but then again it was a dusky and colorful group, of vests and shawls and scarves and jewelry, including an ankh here and a figurine of dog-headed Anubis there. Their women might not be Cleopatra, but they certainly had an alluring beauty. What lovemaking secrets might they know? I pondered that question for some moments. I am, after all, a scientist.
    “Adieu, my new friends,” Smith said. He gave Stefan a purse. “Here is payment to conduct Monsieur Gage and the talisman he doesn’t have to safety in Toulon. He will escape detection in your slow wagons. Agreed?”
    The gypsy regarded the money, flipped and caught it, and laughed. “For this much I would take him to Constantinople! But for a man pursued, I would also take him for free.”
    The Englishman bowed. “I believe you would, but accept the Crown’s generosity.”
    Going with the gypsies would separate me from Talma until we reached Toulon, but I reasoned