The scheme was to make our ship look like a desperate, fleeing merchantman and to concentrate the Sicilian fire on the nearly empty corsair.
I looked anxiously at the fort. The excited shouts within the Castello died down as officers applied discipline. Door after door of the fortress gun ports banged opened. We heard the groan of tackle as each behemoth cannon was hauled out, its muzzle pointing at our vulnerable hull. We tensed, waiting for a barrage of fire that would gut us, but none came.
Now the corsair was coming abreast of the fort’s guns.
Its tiny crew slipped into a cutter on the side of the ship and pushed off with oars in the dark.
Finally there was a cry of command and a ripple of cannon fire thundered from the fortress. Metal screamed and punched through the towed pirate vessel as though it were paper, heeling the decoy.
Aurora swung her cutlass and chopped the towrope away, even as Dragut winced at the pummeling of the graceful flagship. Its rudder had been lashed, and it began ghosting on a course of its own.
“Fuoco! Sparare!” The excited commands to fire and shoot could be heard from the fort.
More cannon balls crashed into the pirate craft’s hull, sending up showers of wood splinters. The sail was slashed to ribbons, ending the ship’s motive power, and then the entire rigging cracked and crashed down, spilling tackle and shredded canvas over the side. The corsair began to drift and wallow. Cheers began in the fort.
Not a shot had come our way.
Another command, and another roar of fortress artillery. Pieces of Aurora’s old ship erupted, a barrel of gunpowder went off, and the vessel began to burn. The flames made it an even easier target, and more shot struck it solidly amidships. A mob had formed on the city’s shoreline and a fusillade of musket shots came from there, too, the crowd peppering the empty vessel and its scarecrows with bullets. The corsair’s stern began to settle.
We’d slipped by the tip of the fort and were gaining speed, on our way to safety.
Aurora looked from the Isis to the mirror. “A fair trade,” she murmured. “You destroyed my vessel, Ethan, and I salute you for it. That’s the kind of ruthless wisdom we’ll bring to all affairs.”
Perhaps they expected our merchant vessel to stop fleeing and turn around upon our apparent rescue from the destructive pirates. Perhaps they expected us to slow, or dip our flag in acknowledgment, or light a lantern, or give a cheer to our saviors.
Instead a score of pirates and monks clambered silently up our rigging to unfurl yet more sail. Faster and faster we slid into the dark, the mirror of Archimedes rocking where it balanced. The brightest light was the burning corsair, and it drew the eyes of fort and town ever more hypnotically as we faded into the night.
By the time the Sicilians put out in small boats and realized they’d battered an empty target, the skeleton pirate crew that had abandoned the corsair had hoisted their own cutter sail to race to catch up with us. We hoisted them aboard and were out the harbor mouth, reaching down the coast of Sicily without so much as a bullet in our hull. The island’s greatest prize was ours, to be resurrected in Tripoli.
“If the gods didn’t want this, why would it be so easy?” Aurora told her followers.
They laughed.
Now the Barbary pirates could set the world’s navies on fire.
CHAPTER THIRTY
We sailed south across the Gulf of Noto, apparently having confused any pursuit. Once we cleared Syracuse, I went below and found Harry in the sail locker just as the sun was coming up. Both of us curled into the folds of canvas, the little lad cradled in my arms, but despite my exhaustion, sleep eluded me. Having performed my part of the bargain by finding the mirror, would Astiza, Horus, and I be allowed the freedom to try to find peace while the Rite reassembled its diabolical machine? My only hope was that I could warn the world in time to make up for the bargain I’d struck. Yet Aurora, Dragut, and Osiris seemed more convinced than ever that we’d become partners.
I eventually dozed fitfully. I got up by late morning to see that despite their tumultuous night, the “monks” couldn’t keep away from the mirror. They were inspecting it more closely and speculating how it might work. The crew rigged an awning over the weapon as the sun climbed, because even covered in dust and tarnish it was blindingly bright. The pirates feared it might accidentally set their own rigging aflame.
We anchored that evening off Sicily’s southeastern tip, at a small, flat island called Capo Passero. As the sun descended behind the Sicilian hills to the west, the Rite members worked to better secure the mirror and prepare a celebration in the hold below. Oddly, I found myself a pirate hero, thanks to my idea to sacrifice Aurora’s corsair to enable our escape. Even my young son, cheerful after his sleep, was celebrated as a swashbuckler in the making. The attention pleased Harry because they gave him a hat.
There was no pursuit from Syracuse. Chances were that the city’s ministers and priests were uncertain just what it was we’d even taken. So we risked some lanterns as the mirror was lashed more securely. Carpenters cut out a section of each gunwale so it could sit firmly on the deck, while members of the Rite began to sketch and measure the ancient contraption. It was more complex than we initially imagined. The main surface was shaped like a huge shallow bowl, but it had been forged or hammered with a complex system of hexagonal facets like the pattern of a honeycomb; a thousand small mirrors linked into one. Then there were hinged sections that folded like a closed flower over the main mirror. If unfolded, they would double its diameter. They pivoted as well. There was also some kind of engraving on the back, Dragut announced after crawling underneath. It showed a complex scaffolding to support and turn the device, with lines suggesting how to orient the mirror and its “petals” in relation to the sun.
“It’s as simple as a magnifying glass and as complex as a watch,” he said. “The Rite’s savants will have a challenge mounting this properly. There are more ropes than on an opera stage.”
Hard to operate, easy to sabotage, I thought, but didn’t say that.
“Osiris will figure it out,” Aurora said, looking exultant. She’d finally slept, too, and emerged radiant. Her Egyptian Rite lieutenant limped around the circumference of the mirror to calculate and draw. “Osiris and Ethan together, masterminds of a new age!”
“Not the most natural of partnerships, given that I crippled your engineer,” I commented.
“A wound of battle, no different from the one I gave you in America,” she said cheerfully. “Wounds heal, minds forgive. Right, Osiris?”
“We’ll see what your electrician has to contribute.”
“Yes, my electrician!”
“Your helper, your sycophant, your lover, your slave.”
“I’m not any of those things,” I told him. “I and my family are free, now that I’ve done my part of the bargain. Right? And what’s your real name, when you’re not made up like a eunuch in an emirate? Is it Dunbottom? Lord Lack-Purse? Prince Preposterous?”
“You’re not entirely free,” Aurora interrupted.
“Come. You said if I helped you find the mirror, you’d let Horus and Astiza go. There the bronze platter is, to incinerate whom you wish. Now keep your part of the bargain.”
“Oh, young Horus will not be sold into slavery. And your Egyptian wench can wander wherever she wishes. But there is one thing more you and I must complete before we give her final leave from Yussef’s harem. There’s still unfinished business between you and me, as I told you in America.”
“What? I’ve done exactly what you asked.”
“I’ve decided that we’re going to be married, Ethan.”
“Married!” I was as dumbfounded as when presented with my son. I thought she would break into laughter at her joke, but she looked quite businesslike.
“Marriage will give Horus a proper mother and legitimacy. I will raise him as an acolyte of the Rite, and when he comes of age he’ll be a prince ready to inherit the world.”
“But we hate
each other!”
“That’s a crude, simplistic way of explaining our relationship.” She fingered the edge of the mirror. “We repel, and yet we attract. We extinguish, and yet we ignite. We loathe, and yet I will make you a little king yourself because I know how much you’d dread such responsibility, even as you long for me. Don’t deny your longing! I saw it in that cave of echoes in Syracuse. I saw it in my cabin on the Isis. We’re bound, Ethan, and the success of this quest only proves it. We’re chained by destiny. I’m going to marry you and weld you to me forever, and if you’re unhappy with that, as you watch me indoctrinate your son—well, so much the better!” Her eyes flashed. “You will marry me so you must serve me!” All good humor had disappeared. “You will marry me so you can never escape again!”
No wonder I’ve never galloped to the altar. “I’m a poor bet as a husband.”
“If you don’t marry me tonight, on this ship, Horus and Astiza will be sold into the worst kind of slavery you can imagine, and you’ll be given back to Omar the Dungeon Master to break. But if you do marry me, and help us erect and operate the mirror, you’ll rule by my side and your son will inherit powers that not even Bonaparte has ever dreamed of. King George and Jefferson will be his minions, and the emperors of Austria and Russia will prostrate themselves.”
“That makes no sense. From one weapon?”
“This is but the beginning of the ancient secrets we are working to relearn, and just the first mirror of a million—if we need them! We will set nations on fire like your Norwegian’s Ragnarok, his end of the world. And you and I, Ethan, will be freed of all law, all hypocritical rules, all morals, all restraint. We’ll do anything we want with anyone we want to, because we will have acquired the magic of gods who once walked this earth. We will be perfect beings, because it will be us who define perfection.”
I knew she was balmy, but not to the extent of this megalomaniac ranting. She was a cult courtesan on a merchant tub of pagans and cutthroats, and yet boasted like she was Queen of Sheba. I wasn’t on a pirate ship, I was in a house of the addled. I closed my eyes in frustration. “I won’t marry you, Aurora. You’re not the mother of my son.”
“You will marry me, this midnight, or I will give your son to Dragut’s Moors this very night to begin to use as they will! You will marry me or hear his screams, and then you’ll explain what you’ve done to your Egyptian slut of a harem whore before Yussef sells her away to the worst kind of degradation!”
“This wasn’t our bargain!”
“You never asked what the full terms of the bargain were. And I couldn’t tell you, because you’re too stupid to grasp the chance to be a king. So I’ll force it on you, and force you into my bed, and in time you’ll worship me as I deserve.”
She certainly had a high opinion of herself, which is a problem with lovely women. Admittedly, I’m sometimes guilty of the same vice. I stared out at the sea, thinking furiously. No union consecrated by this rabble would be recognized anywhere as either holy or legal. Should I go along with this sham until I could finally get Astiza and Harry away from this treacherous bitch? She wanted to marry me to torment me, to keep me close enough to make every day a misery of regret for what I’d done to her brother. Climb into a bridal bed with a woman who’d slain my friends? I couldn’t even pretend to function. And yet what choice did I have with little Harry still a hostage? I was surrounded by a hundred hostile fanatics and fantasists, and my former friends probably believed I’d betrayed my own country.
“I will make it as hateful for you as it will be for me.”
“I don’t think so, Ethan. No, I don’t think there is any chance of that.” And she turned to Osiris. “The ritual, at midnight! Bring the boy so he can see!” She smiled back at me. “I’m ever so certain I can corrupt you both.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The moon rose orange over the desolate island, as big as the captured mirror itself, and then as it climbed and brightened, the sea and ship turned silver. The Egyptian Rite contingent had commandeered the hold below the main deck, and its hatch glowed orange as well. The pirates drew uneasily toward the bow and muttered to each other about serving under the shadow of Satan, pagans, and Christian blasphemers. Cutthroats they might be, but Aurora and the Egyptian Rite unnerved them. These self-styled exalted ones seemed more ruthless than any buccaneers, and the Moors were nervous.
I wasn’t about to reassure. “These men and women are the disciples of hell, Dragut,” I told my captor. “You’re dooming your own souls to consort with them.”
“Silence, American. No man is more confused about good and evil than you.”
“Do you think they’ll use their mirror solely on Christian enemies? Aurora wants to control the world, and the Ottoman Turks are closer than Europe. You’re equipping a diabolical monster who will prey on your own people.”
“I have no people. I, Hamidou Dragut, rely on myself.”
“Nonsense. You’ve sold your manhood to power-mad pagans.”
“As you are about to sell yours!”
“I have no choice. My God, to use my son to blackmail me into marrying her? So she can play harridan the rest of my life? Where’s the sense in that?”
“Those people obey a different law. There’s nothing we can do when we’re in their world, and down that hatch is their world. Like all of us, you made the bargain you must. Aurora promises she can give Tripoli victory. Perhaps, as they said, it is written.”
“I don’t think it’s written for a bundle of blasphemers to turn the planet on its head. Tripoli is going to infuriate England and France into a war against it, Dragut. This woman you’ve allied yourself to is going to pull all of you down with her.”
“No, she promises we’ll be rich. You can’t see a future even when it’s a temptress!”
“I see the future, and it’s all on fire.”
And then Osiris appeared, stumping across the deck with that limp that continued to give me some satisfaction. Maybe I could chop away at other body parts, too. He looked at me with distaste. “It’s time, American. I’m to take you on a trip through the underworld to judge you worthy, as dictated by the Egyptian Book of the Dead.”
“Underworld?”
“When the British cornered Blackbeard in the Carolinas, he forced his crew into the hold and lit matches so the smoke and stink would give them a preview of hell. He wanted his sailors to fear the afterlife so much that they’d never surrender to the gallows. The inferno caused them to fight like demons, out of terror. We of the Rite have a different kind of journey, to purify and inform. It will prepare you for Aurora.”
“What, I’m to be a vestal virgin now?”
He gestured toward the hatch with its lurid light. “Virginity, I presume, is out of reach. What we weigh is your courage and your soul.”
“Weigh my soul! Your own is a lump of coal!”
“This is about you and Aurora.”
Sometimes the only thing to do is play along and look for the odd chance. So I went over to the opening, considered the haze of incense and smoke drifting from the hatch, and decided to take a stroll in Hades after all. With Osiris behind me, I descended to the deck below, hot and smoky from a hundred flickering candles.
What I encountered was a dreamworld, populated by creatures from a pharaoh’s nightmare. The Rite’s members—I assumed that’s what they were—had donned the heads of a witch’s bestiary. Their robes were white, black, and scarlet, and their heads were of jackals, hawks, serpents, dogs, and lions. The eye sockets were blank cutouts, utterly unrevealing, and their cloaks so shapeless as to leave me uncertain if the wearer was man or woman. Beaks and white teeth gleamed in the haze of this hell, and fingers decorated with long, artificial talons clacked and tapped as they reached out for me, pulling me down and in. I coughed, eyes streaming, while they turned me in dizzying circles. Odd music, pagan and primitive, came from their pipes and drums. Some potion was pushed upon me and I drank, increasing my disorientation.
Fin
ally I was pushed to stumble deeper into their gathering, the man-beasts pulling at my sleeves. A gypsy crone loomed, and whether a noble lady in costume or some witch from the Carpathians, I know not. She held a tiny brass scale. “Shall we weigh your sins on one pan, and a feather on the other, pilgrim?” she asked with a glassy gleam to her eyes. She laid a fluff of down. “The crocodile consumes those whose good deeds don’t tip the scale in their favor.”
“I did my best.”
She laughed, shrill and disbelieving.
And then a dragon lurched out of the throng and grunted, brought up short by a bright yellow leash.
Not a dragon, exactly, but the biggest and ugliest lizard I’d ever seen. It was some kind of primeval monster a good eight feet long, with darting forked tongue and bright pink mouth lined with bloody teeth. He was terrifying as a crocodile! The beast lunged at my crotch, nostrils flared, and as I fell backward the assembly shrieked with delight. This was a real animal, its feet armed with wicked claws, but nothing like I’d ever seen or imagined. Its skin was made up of glittery scales as dry and hard as chain armor, and the monster smelled of rotted meat. The beast was medieval nightmare come to life, its tail swishing on the deck.
“The dark forests of the world have all kinds of creatures that men have half dreamed of,” Osiris whispered in my ear. “We brought this one from the jungles of the Spice Islands, where the boundary between world and underworld is not as firm as we think. Nor is the barrier to heaven as absolute as established religions would have us believe. Strange beings watch us, and sometimes can be summoned. Demons can give power.”
The Barbary Pirates Page 22