The Pharaoh's Secret (2 page)

Aboukir Bay, at the mouth of the Nile River

August 1, 1798, shortly before dusk

The sound of cannon fire thundered across the wide expanse of Aboukir Bay as flashes lit up the distant gray twilight. Geysers of white water erupted as iron projectiles fell short of their targets, but the attacking squadron of ships was closing in fast on an anchored fleet. The next barrage would not be fired in vain.

Headed out toward this tangle of masts was a longboat, powered by the strong arms of six French sailors. It was making a direct line for the ship at the center of the battle in what seemed like a suicidal mission.

“We’re too late,” one of the rowers shouted.

“Keep pulling,” the only officer in the group replied. “We must reach
L’Orient
before the British surround her and engage the entire fleet.”

The fleet in question was Napoleon’s grand Mediterranean armada, seventeen ships, including thirteen ships of the line. They returned English volleys with a series of thunderclaps all their own and the entire scene became rapidly shrouded in gun smoke even before dusk fell.

In the center of the longboat, fearing for his life, was a French civilian named Emile D’Campion.

Had he not been expecting to die at any moment, D’Campion might have admired the raw beauty of the display. The artist in him—for he was a known painter—might have considered how best to craft such ferocity onto the stillness of a canvas. How to depict the flashes of silent light that lit up the battle. The terrifying whistle of the cannonballs screaming in toward their targets. The tall masts, huddled together like a thicket of trees awaiting the ax. He might have taken special care to contrast the cascades of white water with the last hint of pink and blue in the darkening sky. But D’Campion was shaking from head to toe, gripping the side of the boat to hold himself steady.

When a stray shot cratered the bay a hundred yards from where they were, he spoke. “Why in God’s name are they firing at us?”

“They’re not,” the officer replied.

“Then how do you explain the cannon shots hitting so close to us?”

“English marksmanship,” the officer said. “It is
extrêmement pauvre
. Very poor.”

The sailors laughed. A little too hard, D’Campion thought. They were also afraid. For months they’d known they were playing the fox to the British hounds. They’d missed each other at Malta by only a week and at Alexandria by no more than twenty-four hours. Now, after putting Napoleon’s army ashore and
anchoring there at the mouth of the Nile, the English and their hunter of choice, Horatio Nelson, had finally caught the scent.

“I must have been born under a dark star,” D’Campion muttered to himself. “I say we turn back.”

The officer shook his head. “My orders are to deliver you and these trunks to Admiral Brueys aboard
L’Orient
.”

“I know your orders,” D’Campion replied, “I was there when Napoleon gave them to you. But if you intend to row this boat in between the guns of
L’Orient
and Nelson’s ships, you’ll only succeed in getting us all killed. We must turn back, either to shore or to one of the other ships.”

The officer turned from his men and gazed over his shoulder toward the center of battle.
L’Orient
was the largest, most powerful warship in the world. She was a fortress on the water, with a hundred and thirty cannon at her disposal, weighing five thousand tons and carrying over a thousand men. She was flanked by two other French ships of the line in what Admiral Brueys considered an unassailable defensive position. Except no one seemed to have informed the British of this, whose smaller ships were charging directly at her undaunted.

Broadsides were exchanged at close range between
L’Orient
and the British vessel
Bellerophon
. The smaller British vessel took the worst of it, as her starboard rail shattered to kindling and two of her three masts cracked and fell, smashing against her decks.
Bellerophon
drifted south, but even as she left the battle, other British ships charged into the gap. In the meantime, their smaller frigates swung around into the shallows and cut between the gaps in the French line.

D’Campion considered rowing into such a melee the equivalent of insanity and he made another suggestion. “Why not just deliver
the trunks to Admiral Brueys once he’s dispatched the British fleet?”

At this, the officer nodded. “You see?” he said to his men. “This is why
Le General
calls him
savant
.”

The officer pointed to one of the ships in the French rear guard, which had yet to be engaged by the attacking British. “Make for the
Guillaume Tell
,” he said. “Rear Admiral Villeneuve is there. He’ll know what to do.”

The rowing resumed in earnest and the small boat turned away from the deadly battle with all due haste. Maneuvering through the darkness and the drifting smoke, the crew brought their boat toward the rear part of the French line where four ships waited, strangely quiet as the battle raged up ahead.

No sooner had the longboat bumped the thick timbers of the
Guillaume Tell
than ropes were lowered. They were rapidly secured and both men and cargo hauled aboard.

By the time D’Campion reached the deck, the ferocity and savagery of the battle had risen to a pitch he could scarcely have imagined. The British had achieved a huge tactical advantage despite being slightly outnumbered. Instead of taking on the entire French fleet broadside to broadside, they’d ignored the rear guard of French ships and doubled up their fire on the forward part of the French line. Each French vessel was now fighting two British ships, one on either side. The results were predictable: the glorious French armada was being battered to ruin.

“Admiral Villeneuve wishes to see you,” a staff officer told D’Campion.

He was ushered belowdecks and into the presence of Rear Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve. The admiral had a full head of white hair, a narrow face marked by a high forehead and a long
Roman nose. He wore an impeccable uniform, dark blue top, embroidered with gold and crossed with a red sash. To D’Campion he seemed more ready for a parade than a battle.

For a few moments Villeneuve toyed with the locks on the heavy trunk. “I understand you’re one of Napoleon’s
savants
.”

Savant
was Bonaparte’s word, annoying to D’Campion and some of the others. They were scientists and scholars, brought together by General Napoleon and ushered to Egypt, where he insisted treasures would be found to satisfy both body and soul.

D’Campion was a budding expert in the new discipline of translating ancient languages and no place offered a greater mystery or potential in that regard than the Land of the Pyramids and the Sphinx.

And D’Campion was not just one of the
savants
. Napoleon had chosen him personally to seek the truth behind a mysterious legend. A great reward was promised, including wealth greater than D’Campion could earn in ten lifetimes and lands that would be given him by the new Republic. He would receive medals and glory and honor, but first he must find something rumored to exist in the Land of the Pharaohs—a way to die and then return to life once again.

For a month D’Campion and his little detachment had been removing all that they could carry from a place the Egyptians called the City of the Dead. They took papyrus writings, stone tablets and carvings of every kind. What they couldn’t move they copied.

“I’m part of the Commission of Science and Art,” D’Campion said, using the official name he preferred.

Villeneuve seemed unimpressed. “And what have you brought aboard my ship, Commissioner?”

D’Campion steeled himself. “I cannot say, Admiral. The trunks are to remain closed on the orders of General Napoleon himself. Their contents are not to be discussed.”

Villeneuve still seemed unimpressed. “They can always be sealed again. Now, hand me your key.”

“Admiral,” D’Campion warned, “the General will not be pleased.”

“The General is not here!” Villeneuve snapped.

Napoleon was already a powerful figure at this time, but he was not yet emperor. The Directory, made up of five men who’d led the Revolution, remained in charge while others jockeyed for power.

Still, D’Campion found it hard to comprehend Villeneuve’s actions. Napoleon was not a man to be trifled with, nor was Admiral Brueys, who was Villeneuve’s direct superior and currently fighting for his life less than a half mile away.
Why was Villeneuve bothering with such matters when he should be engaging Nelson?

“The key!” Villeneuve demanded.

D’Campion snapped out of his hesitation and made the prudent decision. He pulled the key from around his neck and handed it over. “I commit the trunks to your care, Admiral.”

“As well you should,” Villeneuve said. “You may leave me.”

D’Campion turned but stopped in his tracks and risked another question. “Are we to join the battle soon?”

The admiral raised an eyebrow as if the question were absurd. “We have no orders to do so.”

“Orders?”

“There have been no signals from Admiral Brueys on
L’Orient
.”

“Admiral,” D’Campion said, “the English are pounding him from both sides. Surely this is no time to wait for an order.”

Villeneuve stood suddenly and pushed toward D’Campion like a charging bull. “You dare instruct me?!”

“No, Admiral, it’s just—”

“The wind is contrary,” Villeneuve snapped, waving a dismissive hand. “We would have to tack all over the bay to have any hope of joining the fracas. Easier for Admiral Brueys to drift back to our position and allow us to support him. But, as yet, he chooses not to do so.”

“Surely we can’t just sit here?”

Villeneuve snatched a dagger from the top of his desk. “I will kill you where you stand if you speak to me this way again. What do you know about sailing or fighting anyway,
Savant
?”

D’Campion knew he’d overstepped his bounds. “My apologies, Admiral. It’s been a difficult day.”

“Leave me,” Villeneuve said. “And be thankful we don’t sail into battle yet for I would put you out on the foredeck with a bell around your shoulders for the British to aim at.”

D’Campion stepped back, bowed slightly and left the admiral’s sight as quickly as possible. He went topside, found an empty space along the bow of the ship and watched the carnage in the distance.

Even from a distance he found the ferocity almost staggering to behold. For a period of several hours the two fleets blasted at each other from point-blank range; side-by-side, mast-to-mast, sharpshooters abovedecks trying to kill anyone caught out in the open.

“Ce courage,”
D’Campion mused. Such bravery.

But bravery would not be enough. By now, each British ship was firing three or four times for every shot loosed by the French. And, thanks to Villeneuve’s reluctance, they had more ships engaged in the battle.

In the center of the action, three of Nelson’s ships were pounding
L’Orient
, bludgeoning her into an unrecognizable hulk. Her beautiful lines and towering masts were long gone. Her thick oak sides were splintered and broken. Even as the few remaining cannon sounded, D’Campion could tell she was dying.

D’Campion noticed fires running like quicksilver along her main deck. The wicked flames darted here and there, showing no mercy, as they climbed across the fallen sails and dove down through open hatches and into her hold.

A sudden flash lit out, blinding D’Campion even as he shut his eyes against it. A crack of thunder followed louder than anything D’Campion had ever heard. He was thrown backward by a shock wave that singed his face and burned his hair.

He landed on his side, gasping for air, rolled over several times and tamped out flames on his coat. When he finally looked up, he was shocked.

L’Orient
was gone.

Fire burned on the water in a wide circle around the wreckage. So massive was the blast that six other ships were burning, three from the English fleet and three from the French. The din of battle halted as crewmen with pumps and buckets tried desperately to prevent their own fiery destruction.

“The fire must have reached her magazine,” the voice of a saddened French sailor whispered.

Deep in the hold of each warship were hundreds of barrels of gunpowder. The slightest spark was dangerous.

Tears stained the sailor’s face as he spoke, and though D’Campion was sick to his stomach, he was too exhausted for any real emotion to surface.

More than a thousand men had been on
L’Orient
when it arrived at Aboukir. D’Campion had traveled aboard it himself,
dining with Admiral Brueys. Almost every man he’d come to know on this journey had been on that ship, even the children, sons of the officers as young as eleven. Staring at the devastation, D’Campion could not imagine a single one of them had survived.

Gone too—aside from the trunks Villeneuve had now taken possession of—were the efforts of his month in Egypt and the opportunity of a lifetime.

D’Campion slumped to the deck. “The Egyptians warned me,” he said.

“Warned you?” the sailor repeated.

“Against taking stones from the City of the Dead. A curse would follow, they insisted. A curse . . . I laughed at them and their foolish superstitions. But now . . .”

He tried to stand but collapsed to the deck. The sailor came to his aid and helped him to get belowdecks. There, he waited for the inevitable English onslaught to finish them.

It arrived at dawn, as the British regrouped and moved to attack what remained of the French fleet. But instead of man-made thunder and the sickening crack of timbers rendered by iron cannonballs, D’Campion heard only the wind as the
Guillaume Tell
began to move.

He went up on deck to find they were traveling northeast under full sail. The British were following but rapidly falling behind. Occasional puffs of smoke marked their futile efforts to hit the
Guillaume Tell
from so far off. And soon even their sails were nearly invisible on the horizon.