Harry clung tight as a limpet. “Who these people, Papa?”
“The local asylum.”
A hundred candles illuminated the grotto with smoky light. Animal-headed gods had been placed in niches, and pentagrams were drawn in the sand. There were muskets, pikes, cutlasses, and axes stacked in corners, and pipes and ram’s horns for music. Great coils of rope were stacked along with kegs of gunpowder and twists of fuse. The cloaks and hoods gave a sinister anonymity to the gathering, as if nobody wanted to be recognized as part of such foolery.
“Where did these people come from, Aurora?”
“You told Osiris in Paris that you were curious about the Egyptian Rite,” she replied. “Here we are, drawn at my summons from the lodges and temples of Europe. This is a rebirth of Templar and Pythagorean wisdom, Ethan, of Babylonian astrology and Cabbalistic mysticism! These men and women are some of the finest minds in Europe, and unlike other scholars we are open to new ideas and experiences. We have dukes and duchesses, savants and theologians, merchants and sea traders, highborn ladies and brilliant courtesans. They are here by merit. We induct tradesmen as readily as aristocrats, if they have proven themselves in the study of hermetic lore and the willingness to undergo ceremonial trials. There are English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, united by their thirst for knowledge and reform.”
“What kind of reform?”
“The kind that comes from establishing our own rule. We’re a superior order, as far above the common man today as judges among the apes. It is our privilege, and our burden, to reform this planet, and to exterminate as many of the unilluminated as necessary.”
“Unilluminated?”
“Ancient truth is there to be rediscovered, but some turn their back on it or refuse to recognize what must be changed. The obstinate will be disposed of. The Rite will initiate a pure society, where everyone agrees on truth.”
“By eliminating anyone who doesn’t.”
“That’s a basic principle of governing. One achieves harmony by unanimity. There is nothing more chaotic, or inefficient, than people who question their rulers. Doubters by definition are not part of the exalted race. Those commoners who survive will serve as slaves to our priesthood.”
“I see. And am I exalted?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“And you’re going to achieve this consensus by burning all the world’s navies?”
“The world will be better without any navies, except ours.”
“A pirate navy.”
“A navy of entrepreneurs, mystics, and seekers of the light.”
“And what are all these fanatics doing here, Aurora?”
“They are not fanatics. They are the holiest of the holy, the ones who adhere most faithfully to our cause. They are patriots, Ethan, patriots who want to rediscover the secret powers of the civilization that came before our own, and bring back a lost golden age. We want to walk as the gods walked, with their powers and sensuous freedoms. We will do whatever we wish, with whomever we choose, and our slaves will rejoice that our tyranny is a thousand times sweeter than any liberty in today’s myopic world! When we finish our investigations, we of the Rite are going to be incapable of wrong, and will rule with perfect understanding. We’ll have visions through our opiates, and enlightenment through our ecstasies. We will be gods ourselves, perfect beings! And you can still join us! You and young Horus!”
“And Astiza?” I had to put a brake to Aurora’s fantasies.
Her lips narrowed. “If you still want her, after having seen the light.”
Here it was, then. Bored aristocrats, passed-over scientists, shunned deviants, bankrupt merchants, indebted gamblers, poxed libertines, the eccentric, and the wicked: all had finally found family in this monstrous perversion of Freemasonry founded by the charlatan Cagliostro more than a generation before. This bunch wanted magic and technology, yes, but even more they wanted to persecute every man and woman who had ever snubbed them. How sublime to be convinced that everyone who disagreed with you was your inferior! How satisfying to deem yourself a chosen race, without need for the scruples of lesser men! It was audacious and ludicrous, and yet what if we did find some death ray from old Archimedes? What if my own nation’s small navy was about to burst into flame because I, Ethan Gage, was helping this menagerie of megalomaniacs along? I dare not do it, except that little Harry was clinging to my neck, eyes instinctively wide at these robed conspirators. And then there was the dark snuffing shape of the attack dog Sokar padding in the shadows. How could I get us safely away?
By playing along until chance offered escape.
“We’re going to return to Syracuse,” Aurora said. “Dionysus will lead a parade of penitents, our own Egyptian Rite army, into the city to aid us. They’ll pose as pilgrims coming to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption, when Mary rose into heaven. Hamidou will have the new ships ready and bring them to the city at the precise moment. We’ll break the mirror loose, even if we have to bring the entire duomo down to do so.”
“You’re going to blow up a church during a Catholic holiday?”
“Just part of it, as quietly as possible.”
“This is balmy, Aurora. Give it up! Even if it’s there, you can’t get at it, or you’ll be sunk if you do.”
“We’ll get at it. You already suggested a way to get past the castle’s guns so that your child is not stung with flying splinters. You can plot the details with Hamidou while we conduct the Ceremony of Baal here. Then you’re going to help me steal the fire of Barbary.” Her eyes gleamed. “We’ll erect it in Tripoli, Ethan, on Karamanli’s ramparts, and when it is ignited by the sun we’ll have taken the first step toward world harmony!”
She turned from me to start readying some age-old occult ritual, the Muslim pirates eyeing this blasphemy with disquiet.
Harry whispered in my ear, “I want Mama.”
“So do I, son. So do I.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Once more I was breaking into a church in the middle of the night, committing so many sins on this quest that I feared I’d find the mouth of Hades in the most literal and unpleasant way. In addition to common sacrilege, I was assisting pirates and fanatics, I had dragged my son into the worst kind of danger, I was betraying the interests of my country, and I had gone back on my pledge to my three friends to keep our map secret. And this was my record when trying to do the right thing. If I ever consciously turn to infamy, my soul will be so threadbare that it won’t fill in a gale.
We used a bar to break in through a side door of the duomo from the Via Minerva, Aurora’s monstrous dog coming with us this time on an iron chain. Other Rite members passed through the city’s dark streets like a procession of pilgrims and then hid in the shadows of the duomo’s vestibule, crouching to wait by its twisted pillars entwined with carved grapevines.
Inside, the church nave seemed even higher and plainer in the midnight gloom, while the silver altar of Saint Lucia glowed like ice in starlight. Every footstep seemed like a transgression, every foot-step a heresy. The dog’s huffing wheeze was like an invasion of older beasts from demon times. We crossed to the chapel and the door that had led us upward. Its lock was still shattered, but a wooden bar had been nailed to close it.
Dragut took out a pry bar and pulled, the nails a shriek in the night.
Suddenly there was a shout. “By the grace of God, stop!”
An elderly priest was hurrying toward us from the shadows of the main altar, half dressed and agitated. One arm was lifted either in supplication or anger, and his shouts echoed in the vast space.
“What are you doing, blasphemers?”
Aurora froze for only a moment. Then: “Sokar, strike!”
The dog’s chain was dropped and the animal whipped away, running silently at the frantic holy man dashing toward us, its metal tether skipping on the floor. I tried to cry warning but Dragut’s hand clamped over my mouth. The dog leaped, a blur in the dark, and then the priest yelled and went dow
n, sliding backward on the stone floor as the animal’s momentum carried them toward the sacristy. There was a savage snarling, muffled screams, and the sounds of bones snapping under powerful jaws. The priest thrashed wildly, his agony muffled by the animal’s gnawing of his head, and then the poor man was still. The dog trotted back with a self-satisfied growl, its jaws bloody.
Little Harry clung, terrified.
“That’s not a dog, it’s a monster.” My voice was shaking. “You’re damned for all eternity, all of you.”
“Sokar protects an older, finer religion. It is men like that who will be labeled sacrilegious and eliminated.”
“That’s it.” Sokar was snuffling as Osiris patted his head. “I quit. I’ll have nothing to do with this. I resign, before we all go to hell.”
“You can’t resign, or I’ll sic my dog on your son. You know you can’t quit, not now and not ever. You’re one of us, and the sooner you help us the sooner we can leave Syracuse so nobody else has to die.”
“Aurora, please!” I groaned.
“Someday you’ll see the beauty of our desecration.”
There was a click as Dragut held one of Cuvier’s pistols to my head, to reinforce the point, and a growl as Sokar shook his massive head, blood and spittle flying.
“We’re all partners, now,” the pirate reiterated.
For a band of sybarites, perverts, addled mystics, and amateur magicians, the Egyptian Rite proved frighteningly efficient at rigging the demolition of a sacred chapel. With the priest dead, Dragut opened a main door and Aurora’s confederates swept in like a silent tide, pulling ropes, gunpowder, and wrecking tools from under their robes. Directly beneath the dome was a small shelf running around its circumference, high above the chapel. The heretic monks daringly crawled out on this, oblivious to the thirty-foot drop, to string ropes and place charges of gunpowder. A web of stout line was tied horizontally to form a net to catch whatever was blown free. This was no attempt at delicate surgery; it was a quick snatch and run before the good citizens of Syracuse realized we were sabotaging their principal place of worship. Banks of votive candles were lit to provide lurid illumination. The work was done in choreographed silence. There was a last scramble up, fuses were unreeled to the chapel floor, and the hooded men waited for her order, each holding a candle.
Aurora walked to the middle of the chapel, looked upward at the placed gunpowder, and pirouetted beneath the dome and its dark angels, arms outstretched as if to catch the mirror herself.
“Now!”
The fuses were lit, sparking and smoking, and the Rite members backed into the main nave. Aurora was the last to come. Points of fire danced upward toward the chapel dome and a low hum rose up from those assembled, a hivelike chant.
“What if you destroy the mirror as well?”
“Our readings say it’s sturdy as a shield. Besides, there’s no other way. We don’t have the men to seize and hold this city while we chip it out.”
“This won’t just wake the town, it will wake the dead.”
“Then they can wave good-bye to a relic they didn’t even know they possessed.”
The light from the fuses disappeared, and there was a moment of suspense while we waited. Then a staccato roar as the circle of charges went off. Even Sokar jumped. Plaster and stone erupted downward, destroying the grimy angels in the ceiling, and a stinking cloud of smoke and dust rolled out from the chapel into the main church. Then, with a screech, something clanged and fell.
We ran through the choking fog and peered upward. Through the haze a disk vast and round was lying on the net of ropes that had been strung across the chapel. It was bronze, twenty feet in diameter, and bright where its metal had scraped as the mirror came loose.
My heart hammered. Two thousand years after Archimedes was slain by a Roman sword, his most terrifying invention—or was it a copy of an even earlier invention—had suddenly been rediscovered.
“Hurry, lower it!” Aurora shouted. “Every moment counts!” Bells began ringing in the city. Some of the Rite’s monks pulled pistols and muskets from their robes and crouched by the main cathedral entry, looking out at the dark piazza beyond. Others clambered up to the mirror. Ropes were cut and slowly the makeshift hammock and its burden were lowered to a marble floor covered with debris. High above, the joists of the domed ceiling jutted like broken branches.
The prize was about half an inch thick and shaped like a shallow upside-down bowl. Nestled inside this bowl were more bronze panels, hinged inward from the rim so that the mirror looked like an upside-down folded flower. The Rite’s henchmen lashed a hawser cable around the rim to make a crude tire. Then more ropes to pull the mirror upright onto its edge. Some of the monks were dancing with excitement, and their chants rose in volume. The brass weighed a ton, at least. It trembled, a giant wheel, men on both sides helping balance it. Like a wobbly plate, it was rolled out the duomo doors—just fitting!—and down the steps to the piazza. A dozen of the Rite’s hooded monks had to corral the mirror just to keep it from careening away.
While attention was fixed on the rolling mirror, I crouched in the ruined chapel and hastily scratched a word on the dusty floor.
Tripoli.
I straightened before Osiris noticed, picked up Harry, and followed the crowd outside.
Torches appeared where the Via Santo Landolina debouched into the square, and we heard shouts to stop. The city’s constabulary guard was coming, and no wonder: We might as well have brought an orchestra for all the noise we were making. We’d desecrated the city’s duomo, had a dog eat one of the local priests, and were trying to steal something too big to fit on a hay wagon. Shutters were banging open all over Syracuse. The Rite’s monks halted for a moment, hesitant, guns half raised, looking to Aurora for an order.
Then there was thunder. Grapeshot rattled down the length of the piazza and into the advancing Italians. A number fell, torches winking out.
Dragut had hauled a cannon from one of the ships and fired it down the length of the Landolina. “Come, do you think you’re a frozen sculpture!” he shouted to the robed pilgrims. “Roll the mirror, roll it!” He was waving Smith’s blunderbuss, the muzzle of which was smoking as well.
“Give me a weapon,” I told Aurora. “I need my rifle back.”
“You’ll get it when you prove yourself.”
We retreated as the monks did, the Rite’s members pushing the giant disk so that it began to wheel downhill toward the eastern end of the piazza. That street led to the Fountain of Arethusa, the natural spring where Horus had played with his ducks. There was a quay adjacent, two ships waiting there.
Dragut turned to me. “Now we’ll see if your plan works, Gage.”
There were more shouts behind and gunfire began to chase us, bullets pinging and passing by with that peculiar hot buzz. The breath of their passage makes survival exhilarating. One Rite member yelped and went down, others pausing to help him.
“Leave him!” Aurora shouted. “The mirror! The mirror!”
“It’s Anthony!”
She pointed a pistol at her wounded follower and fired, the man jerking and then lying still. “None can be left alive to betray our plans.”
The others began pushing the mirror even faster.
I sprinted ahead, holding young Harry. Sokar’s baying had started dogs barking all over the city and the child clung to me in confusion, bewildered by the excitement but intrigued, too. Yes, there the new ship was, just as I’d suggested and Dragut had promised! I bounded aboard a square-rigged brig the Barbary ruffians had captured, its crew set adrift in its boats. Zephyr, its name was. And, as I’d proposed, Aurora’s Isis was in tow behind for sacrifice. I looked back and heard the pirate cannon go off again, keeping pursuers at bay. Like some vast coin, the great bronze mirror came rolling down the street, chased by the monks as if it were a child’s hoop. Its weight and bulk made a grinding noise as it turned.
Just beyond us at the Castello Maniace fort at the tip of Syracuse, torch
es were flaring as that garrison came awake. It would be their guns we’d have to slip past to clear the harbor. If I wanted to keep my son from drowning, my trick had to succeed.
I stood by the stern rail as the mirror was wheeled across a wooden gangplank and maneuvered between main and mizzen. A dozen men gently lowered it to lie on the deck, the platter so big that its rim extended over the gunwales on either side. Once the Rite members and their pirate allies piled on board, Dragut had the gangplank rotated and lashed to make a bridge between main deck and poop so sailors could get across the top of the mirror. Lines were cast off, sails blossomed, and oars crabbed the merchant vessel away from the dock. Fortunately, there was a night breeze and the canvas bellied, even as carabinieri, soldiers, and outraged priests charged the quay where we’d been moored. Two cannons went off from the corsair being towed, scattering our pursuers again. Our ship broke out the flag of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, while the pirate craft unfurled the banner of the Tripolitan pirates. It was a ruse I prayed would work long enough in the dark to keep my boy from harm.
“Harry, remember when I told you to go hide in the sails in a scrape. Now is the time!”
“No! Watch!” He was spellbound.
“Too dangerous! More sugar if you’re a good boy and go below!”
It was a few hundred paces down the seawall of Syracuse to the fortress we must get past, and I could see more and more torches flaring there. Men ran back and forth on the ramparts as the great land guns were run out. They were 24-pounders, capable of ripping the bowels out of our tubby ship and its ancient cargo. As we gathered speed, sliding past the shallows at a brisk walking pace, I turned to Dragut.
“Now, if you hope to fool them.”
He waved.
Behind us Aurora’s corsair, connected by a towrope that was invisible in the dark, unfurled its own sail. A bow gun loaded with nothing more lethal than old rags gave a sharp report as if shooting at us, and we fired with equal pretense from light stern guns, both of us banging away as if the pirate corsair were chasing the Zephyr. Bits of burning rag flew in the air. The monks and pirates who’d jammed aboard the merchant vessel sank behind the gunwales to make us look lightly manned, while behind us the scarecrows I’d suggested for the corsair were propped up by the handful of brave pirates left aboard the Isis. In the dark, the impression was of a preying craft crammed with eager buccaneers.
The Barbary Pirates Page 21