The Barbary Pirates

by William Dietrich

  “Whose shoe should catch the piss?” Fulton asked.

  “Ethan’s, of course,” Smith replied.

  “Wait,” I objected, “why not yours?”

  “Because I didn’t concoct this expedition. Besides, you’re the one who found a palimpsest.”

  I did persuade them to take a vote but it went unanimously against me, so our production of urine was collected in my footwear, my companions taking great satisfaction in draining their bladders there. Then we began to scrub the parchment with urine, slowly sloughing the medieval ink away to reveal whatever was underneath.

  It was a map, I saw, with a cross-hatching of lines and symbols atop a chart that looked like the outline of a coast. A bay with a narrow neck was shown, and an arcing line like a fence or boundary crossed the interior. The Templars, or whoever had plastered that wall, had left not a book of prayer but a guide to something, or somewhere. Just possibly it had something to do with this ancient weapon—this heat ray of Archimedes—that we’d seen painted. Unfortunately, there were no words on the map, giving no indication what it depicted. I’d produced a urine-soaked treasure map of a place we couldn’t identify.

  “Why are there no words?” Fulton asked.

  “It’s for men who already know where they’re going,” said Cuvier.

  Smith studied it in the dim light. “It looks familiar, somehow.”

  “You’re our map man, Smith.”

  “I’d say volcanic terrain, by the look of the coastline, but that bay could be anywhere.”

  “Not Thira,” said Cuvier. “There are no bays like that.”

  “I think you’ve actually found something, Gage,” Fulton said. “Decipher it, man!”

  “I’m fairly certain those lines and numbers mean something.”

  “Yes?”

  “Unfortunately, I’m quite poor at puzzles. I really shouldn’t be a treasure hunter at all.”

  And then a shadow fell on the grating. “Gage! Aurora will see you now!”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I’ve been known to positively scamper to the side of an inviting woman, but I left our dank hold in dread at the thought of conversing with Lady Somerset. Beauty she might be, but I still bore the calf scar where she’d stabbed me with an Indian spear. Her new pet looked ready to chew on my other shank, and I was in no mood for witty repartee about our past. Nonetheless, her flagship was tacking to pick me up, and apparently I was expected to leap aboard with lusty panache. But Dragut took one whiff of me and yanked me back to wash. “By Allah, did you miss the bucket, or piss yourself in fear?”

  “I just smell like a pirate, Hamidou.”

  I was stripped and doused with bracing seawater. Then I pulled my tired clothing back on, combed my hair with fingers as best I could, balanced on the rail while the two ships drew abreast of each other, and seized a line swung from a boom on Aurora’s vessel. I did feel some pirate dash, and saw how the trade had its attractions. But then I looked about the flagship.

  Aurora’s vessel, Isis, was bigger than Dragut’s, with heavier artillery and a larger crew, but exhibited the housekeeping of an Ohio flatboat. Lines were uncoiled, brass had curdled green, canvas and crates were lashed haphazardly, and bits of food and empty bottles rolled in the corners. Off-duty pirates snored next to gun tackle. Chickens pecked at grain scattered under a lashed longboat.

  An American frigate would turn this to matchwood in minutes, I decided. Too bad there wasn’t one about.

  “I know it’s not your habit to eat pork, but have you thought of keeping pigs?” I addressed my captors. “You’ve already built a marvelous sty.”

  “Silence, slave!” I got lashed across the shoulders for my wit, and then a pock-faced bosun shoved me to the door of the stern cabin, guarded by flanking blacks with the muscled bulk of buffaloes. The sentries were haughty as Mamelukes, and regarded me with disdain bordering on disbelief. They must have thought their mistress could attract better.

  “Didn’t have time to dress.”

  They wrinkled their noses, checked me for weapons, and shoved me through.

  “I’ll tell you what she’s like,” I called back to her goblins.

  The corsair’s cabin, high enough to stand upright in, was pleasantly cool. The stern window glass was open and a breeze filtered through grilled wooden shutters. A Persian carpet covered the deck, and more carpets and pillows were piled in the peripheries to provide some Oriental opulence. Aurora herself lay like Cleopatra in a hammock that swung to the rhythm of the waves. She’d shed her fighting clothes for a linen shift that did little to conceal the voluptuousness of her figure. An emerald necklace of Spanish design draped her fine neck, and the matching earrings picked up the color of her eyes. Her fingers were bright with rings, and enough bracelets, armbands, and anklets hung on her limbs to make her a candidate for an anchor, should we have an emergency. Despite my knowledge that she was a hateful harridan, her seductive allure persisted, her lips pursed as she sipped from a golden goblet. Damnation, I felt aroused. But Aurora also held a pistol, and was as different from Astiza as a cobra from a nightingale.

  It didn’t help that her mastiff watched me suspiciously from one corner, its growl distant thunder.

  “Sokar, be quiet,” Aurora ordered. Sokar, if I recalled, was another Egyptian god of the underworld. This waist-high monster fit the part of nether demon.

  “The hold I threw you into is a preview of one way our new relationship can continue,” she began without preamble, always the brisk dominatrix when the veil slipped. “I can assure you the dungeons of Tripoli are far worse, and the life expectancy of a Karamanli slave is shorter than that of a fleet sailor during a yellow jack plague. You never have enough food or water as a slave, it’s impossible to keep clean, and your weakened body breaks out into hideous boils and pustules. Whips and canes raise welts that grow red and leak pus, and your hair falls out in clumps. Your joints ache, your teeth rot, your tongue swells, and your vision goes milky.”

  “Sounds like the clap after a night in bed with you.”

  Her goblet jerked, hand whitening, and I could tell she wasn’t accustomed to candor. Any pirates who challenged her were probably at the bottom of the Mediterranean, and I suppose I risked that, too. Yet in some strange way I fascinated her. I had no idea why.

  “Or, we can rule the world,” she finally managed.

  “Aurora, you’ve done well for yourself since our last meeting—I believed you entirely mad and likely to die in the North American wilderness and yet here you are, a regular admiral—but I don’t think you’re on the brink of ruling the world. Capturing me is not on the same level as outdueling Nelson or Napoleon.”

  “But capturing you is a step toward finding the mirror of Archimedes.”

  “That’s what this is all about? The mythical toy of an eccentric old Greek?”

  “That toymaker invented an early form of calculus almost two thousand years before Newton! Calculated the value of pi closer than the pharaohs! He was so excited when he discovered the principle of displacement in his bath that he cried ‘Eureka!’ and ran naked through the streets.”

  “Most famous people have a flair for publicity. I’m too modest to ever succeed.”

  “His mirror, if harnessed again, could incinerate any battle fleet sent against it. It would beam its death ray endlessly, never needing to be reloaded. We could pillage the merchant fleets of any nation and they’d be helpless to retaliate against us. In time we could mount the devices on ships and burn any port or fort we went against. Batteries of guns would explode. Ammunition wagons would be torn apart. Sailors and soldiers could be flung, screaming and burning, into the sea.”

  “Such imagination, Aurora. But all that was two millennia ago. Ancient history, eh?”

  “Unless the mirror was saved and eventually stored by someone like the Templars, in a place like Thira.”

  “It wasn’t. I checked.”

  “Maybe you didn’t look long enough. Or maybe you know more than
you admit. Come, lie beside me, Ethan.” She wiggled. “It’s a broad hammock.”

  “Actually, I’ve sworn off women. I think you’ll understand why better than anyone.”

  “You begged for it once!”

  “That was before you killed all my friends. And I did shoot your cousin, I believe. I mean brother. Or half brother…by the end, I wasn’t quite sure what to believe about Cecil. All in all, we haven’t had an easy time of it.”

  “Those people would be alive if you’d shared your mission as I asked at the beginning! We’d be partners, making the world a better place with the wisdom of the Egyptian Rite. Have you noticed, Ethan, that every time you try to do the right thing, it accomplishes the wrong thing? You have no love, no money, no home. Yet I can offer all that, and more! Tell us what you know and join a cause bigger than yourself! Make something of your life!”

  Sokar rumbled again, just to remind me what the choice really was. Then he went back to gnawing and cracking a bone, probably from the last sailor who turned Aurora down. I walked to a small sea desk, piled with books and scrolls about ancient history, alchemy, and magic. Say what you will about the Egyptian Rite, they were certainly readers. “Aurora, I’m as useless as I always was. You saw what we discovered on Thira: a medieval prayer guide. We found old ruins as vacant as Versailles, and managed to cave in the ceiling. You’re entirely right, I’m a complete failure, and you’d save yourself time and trouble by chasing someone more successful for once.”

  “Yet you’re the one always one step ahead of us—in the pyramid, in Jerusalem, in the American frontier, and now on Thira. You want to know as fiercely as we do, Ethan!”

  “And just who is this ‘we’? How do you get membership in such a cabal of lunatics and scoundrels anyway? Do you have to apply? Is it a question of genealogy?”

  “We are serious seekers of the past who by possession of ancient wisdom deserve to rule. We choose to defy convention, and elect to follow occult knowledge anywhere it might lead. We trade ordinary conformity for wisdom. Perfect harmony will be achieved by having everyone in the world answer to us. To you and me, Ethan!”

  There was something odd here. Why would Aurora Somerset, English aristocrat and renegade explorer, want anything more than to pick up on the tortures where she’d left off? If I honestly possessed some useful knowledge I could see her pretending temporary interest, until she got whatever she needed and could safely slit my throat. But why suggest we had a chance of partnership? I couldn’t stand the girl, and certainly she had no warmer feelings for me. She’d already seen my parchment of prayers, and didn’t know yet that it might contain something of value. No, there was something else going on, some wickedness afoot I couldn’t even guess at. “If there’s one thing I’m poor at, it’s harmony.”

  She was becoming impatient, her recline in the hammock no longer languorous, her eyes eclipsing from the seductive to the dangerous. “You’d rather rot as a slave?”

  “Let my friends go. Then maybe I’ll try to help with this mirror of yours.”

  “My crew has to be paid, Ethan. Your friends are a type to ransom. But you can save yourself. Think of yourself. Escape by yourself.”

  It was annoying she thought so little of my character that she assumed such a course would appeal to me—and even more annoying that she was half right. Here I was, single, rootless, an expatriate from my own country in the employ of another, caught up in the web of my old lover, and peeing on grubby sheepskin in hopes the latest sojourn underground wasn’t entirely worthless. What did I ever do but think of myself? And yet it sounded hollow and ashen to hear it come from Aurora Somerset: the kind of craven self-preservation that came from men not yet grown up. The rare times I’d shown character and backbone I felt better for it, so maybe it was time to make it a habit. Not just to reform outwardly, but to start a construction project on my soul! Lord knows I’m good at resolutions, if not always quite as fine in carrying them out.

  “But I’m not by myself, am I? I’ve got three good friends captive on Dragut’s ship, and they’re imperiled solely because of my unfortunate history with you. No, Aurora, I think I’ll choose their company in that stifling hold over yours in the hammock, and enjoy it better, too. The fact is, you’ve captured impoverished savants, not merchant captains, and we aren’t worth the trouble of a ransom note.”

  “Then you’ll die as slaves!” She’d rolled out of her horizontal throne now and stood, trembling with frustration, her eyes green fire, and by Venus the form she cast in her linen shift would tempt a pope. I don’t know how those who vow celibacy do it, frankly. The translucent gauze seemed to make her even more naked than if she wore nothing at all, and I wanted that flesh despite myself. Yet she was a devil’s temptress, a fire I dared not touch.

  “You’ll never get Archimedes’ mirror. It would be like giving a keg of gunpowder to a pyromaniac. You won’t get your weapon, you won’t get me, and you won’t get whatever twisted goal you’re after. You’ll get this cabin, a crew of Muslim cutthroats, biscuit, bilge-water, and a lonely life seeking the peace you threw away.”

  “You know nothing!” Her dog jumped up and barked, making me jump again, and I longed for my tomahawk to play fetch with the mastiff.

  “Exactly,” I managed. “So sell me, drown me, or jail me, but please just let me be.”

  A wish that neither of us could keep, as it turned out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  From the sea, Tripoli looked inviting as a lion’s mouth. Dragut brought us up to the deck to watch our approach so that we could fully understand the futility of rescue. The heat of North Africa clawed as we neared land, the sky yellow above the desert and milk blue over the gardens and date palms that surrounded the city’s walls. The forts and towers of the strongest pirate lair in the Mediterranean wavered in the heat like a bad dream. The lion’s jaws were the reefs that girded the city as we approached, emerald and gold amid the darker blue of the Mediterranean, and the teeth were the cannon that jutted from embrasures in the ramparts: hundreds and hundreds of cannon, it seemed. Beneath their protection, the corsairs, xebecs, and feluccas of the Barbary pirates bobbed placidly, huddled like cubs.

  I’d hoped to see the proud black frigates of my own navy by now, given that I’d sailed back to Europe with the powerful American squadron. But any blockade was nowhere to be seen, and Dragut’s taunt that the United States flotilla was hiding at Malta seemed dismayingly true. If Tripoli was truly at war with my own infant nation, it was hard to see any sign of it.

  “See,” said Dragut, as if reading my mind. “Your ships draw too much water to even come close.”

  Midday heat and sun were dazzling, adding to the hallucinatory effect of what Napoleon’s savants had labeled “mirage.” The land scent was of sand and spices, excrement and oranges, the wool of piled carpets and stink of drying fish. Tripoli is on a green plain that gives way to desert waste, and in the shimmering light its flat-roofed houses are whitewashed ice blocks that gleam like snow. This glacier is crevassed with winding streets so narrow and confused that they seem more like natural channels than planned thoroughfares. The city’s flatness is punctuated by the bulbous domes of mosques and upright stalks of minarets, topped by conical green roofs like witches’ hats. At the city’s southeastern edge, near the harbor, is the squat, massive, crenellated castle of the bashaw, Yussef Karamanli. Beyond is a rocky outcrop with a fort that commands both city and sea: a fine place for a mirror.

  Karamanli, Dragut told us with pride, was as ruthless a prince as Attila the Hun. “He came to power seven years ago when he drove out the pirate Ali Bourghal. Before that he murdered his brother Hassan in the palace harem, shooting off his mother’s fingers when she raised her arm to try to protect her eldest son. Yussef dragged Hassan’s pregnant wife off the dying body of her husband by her hair. Then he cut off Hassan’s privates and threw them to his dogs.”

  “No wonder you joined up with him.”

  “And yet he is also a pious man—he we
ars scripture from the Koran, written in strips, wound into his turban.”

  “Now there’s a commitment.”

  “When Yussef took the city from the pirate Bourghal, his other brother Hamet agreed to exile in Alexandria. However, Hamet’s wife and children remain as hostages. Yussef views Hamet with contempt, and controls him by terrorizing his family. Yussef himself has two wives, a fair-skinned Turk and an ebony black.”

  The white Madonna and the black, I thought, remembering my adventures beneath Jerusalem with Miriam and my teachings from Astiza.

  “Plus a harem of concubines. Yussef is a stallion. He also has a pet leopard, an Italian band to serenade him with music, and jewels the size of robin’s eggs.”

  “I still can’t see him winning an election.”

  “He doesn’t have to. He is loved and feared because his rule is Allah’s will. We Muslims are content with our lot because, as the Prophet said, ‘It is written.’ Christians are tormented because they don’t really believe in fate and are always trying to change things. We faithful are happy with oppression if it is God’s will. Tripoli is tranquil in tyranny.”

  “So you put up with a lunatic who murders his brother, wounds his mother, and drags his pregnant sister-in-law by the hair?”

  “All the world pays tribute to Yussef Karamanli.”

  “By God, England and France don’t,” Smith put in.

  “This is as it should be. The English and French keep other navies weak. Did not Nelson just destroy the Danish fleet at Copenhagen? We cannot fight their battleships, nor can they close in with our shallow coast. So we leave their flag alone and they leave ours alone, while allowing us to prey on the merchant ships of their commercial rivals. Shippers learn there is safety paying extra to sail under the English or French flag. Here again we see the wisdom of God, with each nation assigned to its rightful place. The only people who do not see reason are the Americans, but look—do you see their frigates? They bluster but hide.”