The Barbary Pirates

by William Dietrich

  I thought of Napoleon’s Little Red Man and shivered, despite myself. The animal-headed denizens of this hazy hold were murmuring at my hesitation, and I was determined not to give them the satisfaction of seeing me retreat.

  “It’s just a damned lizard.”

  “Give your soul to us, Ethan, and we’ll erase the boundary between hell and heaven. You’ll live in an eternal now of endless power over all men, and all women, and worship magic and depravity. Fiends and angels will be your slaves. Nothing will be forbidden, and no whim denied. Evil will be indistinguishable from good, and justice will be what you decide it to be.”

  “Isis and Osiris!” the bizarre throng cried.

  “Come with me past the dragon, to a new kind of light!”

  We pushed toward the stern of the ship, the great lizard regarding me with pitiless gaze as it yanked against its tether, its tongue testing the air for carrion. The animal was something from those depths of time that Cuvier longed to discover.

  I think the bestial past should sleep.

  Now filling my dazed sight were the costumes of ravens, bears, toads, blind moles, sharp-toothed wolverines, and horned bulls, nostrils wide. Hands pawed me. People chanted my name. Hands horny and scaled slid over the torsos of other costumed animals, and snouts sucked on pipes of pungent smoke. Monsters caressed, and turned in little dances. And then I was being pushed up another companionway, still choking on the swirling mist, and into the ship’s stern cabin.

  Aurora Somerset waited.

  Here another hundred candles blazed, the cabin dancing with light, hot and close. Shimmering silks had been hung to turn it into a Persian pavilion, the deck paved with the arabesques of intricate carpets. Corners were stuffed with pillows and bright scarves. There were figurines of long-forgotten gods watching from the shadows: a jackal-headed Anubis, a hawklike Horus, a hideous gaping thing I guessed might be Baal, and of course a sculpted snake with gold and green scales that must be my old friend Apophis, serpent of the underworld and counterpart to the dragon Nidhogg of Scandinavia. Aurora stood erect, draped with a blue velvet robe trimmed in gold, the tumble of her red hair aflame in the candlelight. Her throat and ears and fingers were arrayed with Egyptian jewelry, and her eyes lined with kohl and her lips with vermilion. She was regal as a queen and disturbingly exotic, like some false copy of Astiza. I realized there was a half circle of men in the cabin who had formed behind me, naked to the waist and wearing counterfeit Masonic aprons below that. They shuffled to push me forward, Osiris directly at my back. And then I saw a small, overdressed child to Aurora’s left, who stood in recognition as I came into the light and gave a half-hopeful, half-fearful smile and squeak.

  “Papa!”

  Harry was dressed like some kind of midget potentate, with silly turban, baggy pants, and jeweled vest. The absurdity broke my heart. We were props in a play, tools of an occult fantasy, and I knew all this must end very badly. Thank the ghost of George Washington that Astiza wasn’t here to see all this! Or old Ben Franklin, either, who had little use for mysticism or folderol, although he did like a good party.

  “Come over here, Harry,” I tried, swaying from my disorientation.

  “No,” Aurora said in a tone of imperious command. “Stay, my son.”

  The boy hesitated.

  “Your father must come to us.”

  So forward I went, as Osiris slipped around to stand behind Aurora and take the cloak off her shoulders with his own jeweled fingers. The intake of breath by the men in the room was audible, for the diaphanous shift of Egyptian linen she wore, cinched at the waist by a linked belt of solid gold, left nothing to the imagination. Aurora was as beautiful as ever, ripe as a peach, and some trick of the light seemed to give her white-gauze body an odd glow, as if she were supernatural. She smiled triumphantly, her look possessive.

  “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 heavier 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.