The Barbary Pirates eg-4

by William Dietrich

  “Behold, Isis and Athena!” Osiris cried. “The black Madonna and the white, goddess of the earth, queen of the sea, bringer of the light! We elevate her to replace the fallen, and consecrate to her a new husband and new son, so that she might take her place as leader of the Egyptian Rite and founder of a sublime tyranny! All princes shall someday bow before her, and all knights of the Rite shall be glorified as she is glorified, and rule in her name. She is mother, she is harlot, she is priestess, she is seer, and her mate shall be her servant for all eternity!”

  Well, the harlot part I could agree with, but I was damned if Aurora Somerset was going to go around without proper underwear pretending to be Harry Gage’s mother, or my master. I was snapping more awake. This entire ceremony was not just illusionary, it was ridiculous. It didn’t surprise me that Dragut’s Barbary pirates were nowhere to be seen. They knew blasphemy when they saw it, and my guess was they were perched on the bowsprit waiting fearfully for Allah to put a quick end to this ludicrous affair. Except no divine lightning bolts sang down, and no false idols toppled. I was stuck in a nightmare for which there seemed no awakening, with a pack of enthusiasts who seemed several thousand years out of sync. Now a woman who first spurned me and then speared me was proposing permanent matrimony, so long as it was certain that I’d be utterly miserable till death do us part.

  “Shall we unite the sacred”—Osiris pointed at Aurora—“and the profane?” You can guess where he pointed next, and I was none too flattered by it.

  “It is prophesied!” the men in the crowded cabin shouted.

  “Shall we unite the Wisdom and the Fool?”

  “It is prophesied!”

  “Earth mother, do you take this seed?” The bald-headed bastard pointed at me.

  “I do.”

  I waited politely for the question to be put to me so I could spit back. And waited. But I was of no consequence, you see, which was Aurora’s point.

  “Then I pronounce this union made when it is consummated on the Altar of Apophis below and witnessed by the Heir of Unity here.” He gestured at Harry.

  “Now just a damn minute…” I began, not at all amused at the notion I was supposed to perform with this witch in front of one hundred of her closest friends, not to mention my toddler son! Even barristers make more sense than that. But then a wooden bit was slapped in my mouth before I could object further and its leather thongs twisted tight against the back of my head: a wedding custom different from most, I’d wager. Aurora stepped near, gorgeous as the moon, repulsive as a serpent’s fangs, and whispered her particular brand of venom in my ear. “This is the start of your eternal degradation, my dear. You will copulate with me before our assembly and our dragon to seal our marriage on an idolatrous altar. If you don’t, I will hurt our son.”

  There’s a way to put you in the mood.

  “You’ll see,” she continued. “I’m going to make you love me.”

  And then she passed by to begin to descend to the hold I’d come from, and where people seemed to be losing clothing of their own in a heretic’s idea of Mass and matrimony.

  I was doomed to some kind of new humiliating captivity just marginally better than Omar’s.

  And then a voice called warning from the deck outside.

  “American ship!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  My would-be bride and her assortment of Satanists and miscreants momentarily froze, giving me time to duck past the Oriental draperies and glance out the stern windows. There my savior was under the moon, black hull, white ports, gently pulling sails, and a glorious fifteen-striped, fifteen-starred United States flag bigger than a bedsheet that glowed with luminescent glory. Somehow the warship must have been near Syracuse and gotten my dusty clue that Tripoli, to the south, was our destination. Now here she came after us, guns run out, and I couldn’t help but silently rejoice at the prospect of this whole lot being blown to flinders. That would end my marriage!

  Then I remembered innocent little Horus.

  My boy and I had to get off this pirate tub, and fast. I began wheezing and mumbling past my wooden gag, and at Aurora’s sharp, irritated command, someone pulled the bit free. I coughed, taking breath. Above, bare feet were hammering on the deck as the Barbary pirates ran to loosen lines, drop sails, and raise anchor. Our few guns were run out, but all knew our captured merchant vessel was no match for even this small American schooner.

  “You’ve got to let Harry and me go,” I said. “The boy has no part in this.”

  Her response was to snatch up my child. “He’s in this by your blood, and his deed. You’d better think how we can escape that schooner, Ethan, because our son’s life depends on it.”

  “My son.”

  “I told you in America. We are nowhere near the end.” Her smile was a grimace, clenching my child to her with the determined greed of a child clutching a doll. He squirmed against her body and its thin shift, tired at last of the silly clothes she’d dressed him up in, but her grip was like iron. Outside there was a splash of a cannon ball, and an instant later the report of the American gun that fired it. They were seeking the range.

  So I charged her.

  I rammed Aurora as if she were a stout oaken door, my head deliberately butting into hers and poor Harry screaming as we collided and went down, silks ripping down with us. The idols of long-forgotten gods toppled and rolled on the deck. Flames ignited as some of the fabric caught from the candles, and men began yelling and beating at the sparks. I grabbed Harry and tried to pull him away from the squirming woman beneath me, but she clung like a cat ready to bite and scratch, hissing hatred.

  I’d bloodied her nose, which gave me immense satisfaction.

  Then someone was lifting me off her and hurling me across the cabin. I hit the bulkhead with a grunt and went down.

  It was Osiris, looking murderous. He wanted to hurt me for running over his leg, and finally had his excuse. I could feel our own ship beginning to move, hoping to get distance from the American schooner.

  Dragut appeared in the companionway. “We’ll lure them on the reef!”

  Another splash and thud of a ranging cannon ball, and then the roar of one of our own guns. Where was Harry! Aurora had picked herself up and retreated into a corner to hold him like a shield, looking hateful. It was the only honest glance she’d given me all evening.

  Suddenly I realized that the collapse of the silk trappings had revealed a rack of arms, including my confiscated rapier. I snatched it up, smiling at its remembered balance. Maybe my fencing lessons would do some good after all!

  Osiris grinned as well, evilly, and stepped back to fetch from behind a settee his own sword, a thicker cutlass. It was shorter and more efficient in the tight killing ground of a ship’s cabin. I’d given him an excuse to gut me, and he intended to take full advantage. By the same token, I needed to get through him to save my son.

  We sprang and fenced. The blades rang and I let mine slide off to keep it from breaking against the heavier sword, sidestepping in the narrow space and trying to remember what I’d been taught in Paris. It was more formal there, the spacing neatly defined, rules spelled out, and without low ceiling, swinging lanterns, and little fires burning in the corners. I stumbled over a statue of Bastet, the cat goddess, and tried a strike at my opponent’s thighs, but he parried.

  Then Osiris came in after me, trying to box me in a corner so his cutlass could do its work. He chopped back and forth, driving me backward, but I was quicker than he and got in a jab toward his eyes that made him recoil. As he arched backward I squeezed away, trying to catch Aurora. She’d picked up a silver knife to hold near my son’s throat.

  “Just give me the boy!”

  “Only wound him,” she instructed Osiris. “I want to make it last.”

  “Papa!” Harry was screeching. Barely weaned and he was in a duel and a naval gunfight? What kind of father was I?

  Our waltz continued, only the speed of my fencing keeping the bigger Osiris and his hea
vier sword at bay. He was beginning to pant and sweat. I feinted, again and again, to force him to swing. He was frustrated, but no less dangerous for that.

  So I stooped and threw Baal at him. It banged off the cabin wall near Aurora.

  As he ducked, there was an opening to pink his sword arm. He cursed, spitting, and hopped back on his good foot, blood running down to the hilt of his cutlass now. He looked frustrated, the two of us circling while overhead the pirate crew was attempting to claw out of the anchorage. He was tiring—cutlasses are heavy—so he came at me thrusting hard, wanting to end it. The heavier weapon took a moment more to swing, however, so I checked and parried, getting more confident as Aurora began calling for help. Finally I exaggerated his parry of my sword, letting it slip sideways farther than I needed to, and the riddle master who’d taunted me in Paris risked raising up his cutlass for a final blow. It was just enough exposure. As his blade started down I whipped mine back, got underneath his stroke, and took him through the heart. He was a dead man before his cutlass sang past my ear and sank uselessly into the deck.

  I leaped over his toppling form with my bloody rapier and rushed Aurora. “Just give me my son!”

  The cabin door burst open and Dragut was there with what I realized was Smith’s blunderbuss. I lurched backward and fell flat on the carpets as the big gun went off with a roar, kicking the pirate backward. A ball or more hit my blade and yanked the hilt from my hands, while more bullets shattered the stern windows, glass spraying out over the water. I was stunned by the wind of the shot blowing over me, the bloody heap of Osiris beneath. Now I was weaponless.

  Aurora lifted a naval pistol and cocked.

  She wanted me alive. She aimed for my head at first, and then shifted to my splayed middle, aiming at that tender spot men prefer to protect at all costs. Then, thinking better of it—well, the girl had experienced me in bed—shifted yet lower to blow off one of my knees and merely leave me shankless, her mouth a cruel curl.

  And then she shrieked and danced.

  Little Harry had stuck her foot with her own silver knife!

  The pistol went off, its ball embedding itself in a bulkhead, and even as she snatched my son by the hair in howling rage, ready to do who knows what, I leaped up with Osiris’s cutlass in hand. I’d run the harridan through!

  Then there was a black blur, a snarl and leap, and Sokar the dog from hell was crashing against me to bite, even while a cannon ball blasted through the sidelights and screamed between Aurora and me, crashing into the opposite wall in a spray of splinters. The dog was spun away from the wind of its passage, and I was kicked by the concussion out the shattered stern windows to fall, end over end. Before I understood what had happened, I plunged into the sea.

  “Harry!” It was a thought, because I was underwater and couldn’t scream.

  I came thrashing up, desperate to get back aboard to learn the fate of my son, but the Zephyr was already going, sails full, gathering momentum, the savage dog up there barking madly at me from the broken stern windows. The American bow chasers were throwing up spouts where the ship had just been. My son, if he was still alive, was sailing away from me. I’d lost the mirror, lost my family, and probably lost what little reputation I had by consorting with a witches’ brew of Barbary pirates and cultists.

  And then there was a crunch I could hear from five hundred yards off. I turned, sickened, to watch the pursuing schooner lurch as it slammed into the reef where Dragut had led it. The collision was so hard that men pitched out of the rigging. The foremast snapped at the top and came down in a tangle. There were shouts, curses, and howls of frustration.

  The Americans had grounded and Aurora and her acolytes were drawing off into the night, headed for Tripoli.

  I hadn’t stopped them from getting the mirror, and I hadn’t saved my own son.

  I treaded water, ashamed by my own impotence, and then with no other choice began slowly swimming for the grounded schooner. It took me a full hour to work my way there but it hardly mattered, since the ship wasn’t going anywhere until it worked off in the morning. The wind had died, and the flag that so excited me hung limply, as if in defeat.

  I came close enough to shout. The ship had already lowered long-boats to sound the reef, so men hauled me aboard a cutter.

  “You a pirate?”

  “I escaped them.”

  They let me clamber up the ship’s ladder to the deck.

  There I came face-to-face with Lieutenant Andrew Sterett, whom I’d heard about on the Atlantic crossing. As commander of this ship Enterprise, he had scored the only unambiguous victory of the war the year before by capturing the corsair Tripoli, killing or wounding sixty of its crew. The Enterprise had returned to Baltimore last winter so the exploit could be trumpeted. Now here he was, back in the Mediterranean.

  “Lieutenant Sterett,” I gasped. “I trust you remember me: we met in America and I sailed for Europe with Commodore Morris. Ethan Gage, the American envoy?”

  He looked me up and down in amazement and distaste. I dripped water like a dunked cat and my skin was spotted with cuts and splinters. “Where the devil did you come from?”

  “I was blown off the pirate ship. It’s imperative we catch them.”

  “And how am I to do that, caught on a bloody rock?”

  I looked over the side. “Wait for tide and wind, of which there is very little.”

  Another voice suddenly came from the dark that I recognized with a start. “That’s the one!” it shouted. “He’s the one I told you about!”

  And Robert Fulton, inventor and fellow adventurer, rushed up to see me.

  “Robert, you’ve saved me!”

  “He’s the one! Ethan Gage, the traitor who needs to hang!”

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  My admiration for the military discipline of my nation’s small navy was dampened by the crew’s efficiency in rigging a hemp noose. The sailors, frustrated by their grounding on the reef, seized with enthusiasm the idea of throttling at least one passenger of the escaping pirate ship. Sterett, I remembered, had become famous for running one of his own crewmen through with a saber as a response to cowardice, during a 1799 battle between the Constellation he served on and the frigate L’Insurgente. This was an episode in the undeclared naval war with France that I’d helped put a stop to. Republican newspapers had clamored for Sterett’s punishment, but he’d coolly replied, “We put men to death for even looking pale on this ship.” Of course the Navy liked that so much, they gave him a promotion. Now he was to be my nemesis as well.

  “Fulton, explain to them who I am!”

  “I already have. He’s a scoundrel American who threw in with the Barbary rogues like another Benedict Arnold. I don’t care how badly Omar tortured you, Ethan—how could you go back on your pledge to keep the mirror secret? Are you coward, or traitor?”

  “Likely both,” Sterett said, sizing me up.

  “Dammit, man, who do you think got you sprung free from that Tripoli hellhole?”

  “By a devil’s bargain! Didn’t you just aid yonder pirates in stealing an infernal machine from Syracuse, when we expressly promised each other not to?”

  “I did it to save your life!”

  “Death before dishonor, Ethan. That was our pledge. It’s your bad luck I volunteered to help these brave Americans intercept your mission, and my bad luck we were a few hours late.” He turned to Sterett. “Hanging may be too good for him. He has very few principles at all.”

  “Then the devil will finish the job for us.”

  I struggled against the sailors holding me. “I’m stuffed full of principle! I just fall in with the wrong kind of women! And spend a little too much time looking for treasure, since I don’t have what you’d call a proper career. I drink, I gamble, I scheme, but I do know something of electricity and firearms. And I mean well.” It seemed a feeble defense even to me.

  “Do you deny you’re a turncoat to the United States of America and every
man on this ship?” Sterett had his sword out and looked like a farmer who has cornered vermin in a larder. Excitable people should never be armed.

  “On the contrary, I’m trying to be a hero!”

  “By throwing in with pirates?” cried Fulton. The rope cinched against my throat.

  “By trying to save my son!”

  That stopped them.

  “My boy, who I didn’t even know I had until a few days ago, is still aboard that pirate ship and in the clutches of the weirdest bunch of cultists, fanatics, magicians, mesmerists, and megalomaniacs this side of the House of Representatives. His mother is captive in Yussef’s harem, and if I hadn’t played along they’d both be sold into the worst kind of slavery. And you, Cuvier, and Smith would already be dead! While you were running for the reef, I just killed one of the more annoying of the bunch, that Osiris I met in Marguerite’s Palais Royal brothel. I gave Aurora Somerset a bloody nose, and was plotting how to sink their whole scheme when one of your cannon balls knocked me overboard. You and I and the fiery lieutenant here are the only ones who can fix things now, but only if you stop pulling on this damned noose!” It was getting hard to talk.

  “You and us how?”

  “By using your genius and my pluck, Robert, to slip back into the heart of Tripoli and destroy that mirror once and for all!” I nodded eagerly, as if going back to that den of slavers and extortionists was the brightest idea I’d ever had.

  The crew was grumpy about having no one to hang, but a length I got Fulton and Sterett settled down enough to hear me out. By the time we kedged off the reef there was no chance of catching Aurora and Dragut anyway, and the ambitious lieutenant was interested in any proposition to erase the ignominy of running aground, which is a mortal sin for any captain. The navy reasons that with so much ocean, it shouldn’t be that hard to avoid the shallow parts.

  “How are you going to get into Tripoli?” Sterett asked skeptically. “Commodore Morris won’t risk our squadron in those reef-strewn waters for the exact reason we’ve seen tonight.”