General Dumas shook the young captain’s hand each time they met above deck. André suspected that it was that man, more than any other, who kept him out of irons, kept him from rotting in a cell belowdecks, and he felt full of appreciation for the roguish general. If only he could make it to Egypt, André thought. If only he could take part in Bonaparte’s march through the country, he felt that he could slip from Murat’s grasp and serve with distinction. All he wanted was to serve, to live, and to someday make it home to Sophie.
On the last night of June, Ashar and André sat on the forecastle, looking out over the shimmering moonlit water. A sentry yawned as he paced back and forth on the deck beside them. It was a clear night, the dark sky overhead pierced with thousands of bright, steady stars. The ship rocked in a smooth, constant rhythm, as hypnotizing as a baby’s cradle. André, feeling his own eyelids growing heavy, was about to bid his friend good evening, but Ashar’s voice interrupted the silence. “We are close now.”
André turned to look at his companion, catching his gaze through the milky glow of the moon’s light. “What’s that?”
“We are nearing Egypt.”
“How do you know?”
Ashar smiled, a wise, knowing smile. “My friend, if you were kept away from your land for years, dreaming of your return, longing for a homecoming that you thought you’d never be given, and then, one day, you were this close…you’d know as well.”
Ashar sat beside him in heavy thought, neither one of them speaking for several minutes. “My country”—Ashar finally broke the silence and looked at André—“is a realm that has enticed the ambitions of men and great powers for centuries. I can’t divine what will happen when we arrive there. But, André Valière, my friend, I pray to God that your fate is not written to end in my country.”
The soldiers were roused before dawn and called to stand-to on deck. There, donning his newly provisioned captain’s uniform, André blinked as the first hints of daylight broke over the horizon, slicing the darkness like knife blades of purple, orange, and pink. And there, for the first time in weeks, land awaited them.
“Alexandria!”
“My God, we’ve made it!”
“We’ll make landfall by midday, won’t we?”
All around him, the men on the ship muttered and fidgeted with a nervous, anticipatory energy, like hounds chafing at their leashes at the start of a hunt.
André found Ashar a short while later, leaning on the far railing, his gaze fixed over the bow and on the distant horizon. “There you are,” he said. “The men have been called to breakfast. Shall we go below and eat?”
Ashar didn’t pull his gaze from the nearby shore. Didn’t speak, but only shook his head, no.
“Your homeland.” André stood beside him, looking from the land toward his friend.
“Alexandria,” Ashar finally answered, his voice charged with a stern reverence. “The city built for the great Alexander. The capital fine enough for Cleopatra herself. Called by the ancient Greeks the ‘best and greatest.’ ”
As the ship pulled them closer to the Egyptian shore, bathed now in the ethereal orange glow of the rising sun, André gained a better view of the city. His eyes roved over the land, its shoreline sliced open in the middle by a narrow waterway that issued out into a broad, calm bay. Beyond that, André knew, the desert stretched for leagues without end, a vast dry sea of sand and punishing sun.
“And now General Bonaparte wishes to add his name to that elite and distinguished history.” Ashar turned to look at André for the first time, his voice grave but calm. “He can take Alexandria. He might even hold it for a time. But Alexandria will never be his. Egypt will never be his, no matter how deeply he is seduced by her. Many others, beckoned by the myths and legends, have thought they could possess her. Even if he somehow manages to chase away the Mamelukes, which I doubt he will, there is something in these sands and within the hearts of these people that he does not understand. The deeper he penetrates, the more she will close in around him. She will strangle him with her soft, perfumed hands before he even realizes he is in her grip. You shall see.”
André stared at his friend uneasily for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the city and sighed. “I have seen enough horror to last a lifetime, ten lifetimes. But, Ashar, I must admit, the way you are speaking now…I am uneasy.”
Ashar blinked, his hard features softening into an unexpected smile. “You need not fear. At least, not on account of me. As long as I am a guest of your people, I will do all that is in my power to see that you remain alive. You may be a heathen and an infidel, but you are my friend.”