The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8)

by William Dietrich

  “Yes,” said Duckworth slowly. “This scoundrel is an ambassador of sorts, whether we like it or not. But I’ll not let him scamper off to give warning either, since our only hope is to slip through the Dardanelles unexpected. Lock Gage in the purser’s cabin until we decide whether to proceed. Tell Marine Lieutenant Greeley that it’s his head if the American escapes. And if you make any trouble, Mr. Gage, I’ll hang you myself.” He rubbed his eyes. “Gentlemen, I’ll decide this headache in the morning.”

  I hoped Duckworth might see reason once he was away from the accursed Von Bonin, but fortune continued to twist. First, I awoke to the grind of chains and creak of rope as the ship swung on her anchor. When I was allowed a half hour’s exercise on deck, I saw that the wind had shifted during the night to blow down the Dardanelles. The English fleet couldn’t sail into the teeth of the wind, and neither could I. We had to wait until the wind blew fair. That meant my palavering had bought Sebastiani and the Ottomans precious time to make the Dardanelles a fearsome gantlet, but it also meant the foul weather was blamed on me.

  The shift made Duckworth’s immediate decision for him. Since he couldn’t sail anyway, he felt safe to announce that the time for negotiation had passed and that he’d follow the Admiralty’s orders to force the straits. This decisiveness managed to satisfy his restless captains while the admiral knew they’d remain at anchor for at least another week, given February’s prevailing weather. By that time circumstances might change.

  The weather also meant I wasn’t set free, even though the British could have rowed me to the mainland. While the English were stalled, I’d wait on board in order to preserve surprise and extend Turkish uncertainty. I paced the maindeck impatiently, even as Duckworth stalked back and forth on the quarterdeck above, eye first to the obstinate breeze and then balefully at me. “If I have to wait for the damned wind to swing, then so do you, Gage.” After each day’s exercise I was locked back in the purser’s cabin.

  Von Bonin, meanwhile, had the run of the ship. When I persisted in asking what the Prussian was doing on board, I was told only that he had “a critical diplomatic mission” in Constantinople. This likely meant either thievery or assassination, I assumed.

  Then bad luck worsened my predicament even more.

  Five nights after my arrival, the squadron battleship Ajax accidentally caught fire. Flames are a constant hazard on naval ships since they are basically a tinderbox of wood, tar, and gunpowder. The crew’s valiant attempt to battle the blaze turned tragic. The northern gale fanned the flames like a bellows, the captain delayed launching his boats lest he be judged a coward for abandoning ship, and with terrifying rapidity the entire vessel became an inferno. Sailors began leaping to get clear, but since most seamen famously refuse to learn how to swim—the tars regard the skill as merely extending the agony of drowning if they fall overboard in the open ocean—the result was disaster. While three hundred were eventually saved with the assistance of other fleet longboats, two hundred and fifty burned or drowned. Ajax was abandoned, and in early morning blew up with a roar.

  This calamity should’ve been taken as a sign to quit the campaign. Instead, it too was unfairly blamed on me.

  “A Jonah below and this one up on deck,” Duckworth’s sailors muttered. “Had we sailed with the good wind, Ajax would still be floating. We’d be at the bloody harem by now if not for Gage’s snake-like tongue.”

  This was monumentally unfair since I didn’t control wind, accidental fire, or the swimming skills of British personnel. But Duckworth found me a convenient scapegoat for his frustrations. I was blamed for delay, delay was blamed for fire, sailors became menacing, and Von Bonin smirked as I was finally dragged and chained below, “for your own safety.” The orlop deck is the ship’s lowest where the cables are stowed, and it boasts the worst stink of bilge water and dry rot.

  There was another odd, disquieting odor as well.

  It was only after long hours in the dark, cursing Von Bonin and his bewildering reappearance, that I remembered that some other mysterious passenger was supposedly living here below the waterline—and that he was a treasure hunter too. Had some other unfortunate run afoul of the Prussian madman? There was no one confined to the bulkhead where I was, and I could see only a short way. There was only a single lantern. Listening to sounds forward, I occasionally heard the shift of ponderous weight and the drag and ring of metal as if from a caged beast. Was that my neighbor?

  “Hello? Anyone there?’

  There was no answer, my greeting faltering in the dark. Yet I had the curious sensation that this mysterious passenger had heard me and was listening. Warily. Malevolently. Like a wild animal with instincts more acute than my own.

  “Hello?” I said it quietly this time.

  No reply.

  So I asked the seaman who descended to give me a dinner of hardtack and stale water. He glanced toward the bow with a nervous grimace and confided in low tones.

  “Some Romanian nobleman, we’re told, who don’t like the sea and don’t like the light, so they put ‘im down here where he can’t scare the crew or be scared by them. Caged up, he is, like an ugly beast. I’d put you both overboard, were it up to me.”

  “Scare the crew?”

  “Lug of a man, with pointed teeth.”

  My heart began to hammer.

  “Aye,” he nodded to himself. “Big as a bloody bear.”

  Was it even possible? With Von Bonin, too?

  The sailor leaned close to whisper. “Hardly seems human and the men think it bad luck to carry him, but the officers have told us to hush.”

  “His name?”

  “Caesar, I think, like the name you’d give a big mastiff. Yeah, odd name for an odd fellow. Caesar something, like an old mutt. Don’t look like no Roman to me.”

  What insane conspiracy was this? Had England gathered all my enemies on this ship in case I, by chance, wandered on board? Were the gods laughing at my noble pretensions? I yanked on my chains in frustration. Then I lay back against the planking to think things through with racing heart.

  Cezar Dalca was apparently still alive, I was tethered like a sacrificial goat only paces from him, and I‘d no way to get warning to my wife and son.

  The monster had somehow found Von Bonin, the two had partnered, and they’d tempted the British navy with the best prize of all.

  The pair had come after us, and after this Trojan icon.

  CHAPTER 32

  On February 19 the wind turned favorable for the British and Canopus raised anchor to lead Duckworth’s flotilla to Constantinople. Our course would take us between the fortresses of Sestos and Abydos, and thus past the enormous Turkish guns I’d so glibly suggested be put to use. I’d have warned the admirals if anyone had bothered to ask, but I’d gone from negotiator to distrusted prisoner, locked near a muttering monster for reasons I couldn’t fathom. The more I hollered to be heard, the more I was ignored.

  I yanked furiously to somehow stretch my chains and confirm that my neighbor was indeed the Transylvanian villain and, if possible, to finish him off. But the manacles were far too short to give me a view and I was left baffled by how both Von Bonin and Cezar Dalca could contrive to be on the same British flagship. It was evil squared.

  The familiar sounds of sea came down: the groan of windlass as the anchor hawser came in, the pounding of feet as men ran to unfurl sail and pull lines, the creak of rigging as the wind pushed, the accelerating splash of waves against the hull, and then the disciplined quiet as ensigns relayed the calm commands of their superiors.

  “Let me talk to the Turks!” I shouted. “No need for mayhem!”

  “Silence, or you’ll get no tack!”

  After a couple hours I began to hear the thud of Ottoman guns on shore and, at length, the answering crash of British artillery from the decks above, the long toms leaping and slamming as men cheered and swore. My drea
d competed with hope. From the lean of the hull I judged the wind was blowing brisk, so maybe we’d clear the fortress gantlet in a few terrible minutes. Yet this optimistic thought was subsumed by the foul stench of Dalca in the orlop, and my fear that he’d get loose. What if one of my granite cannonballs hit home?

  Painfully, I counted the seconds as the guns roared, listening to the battle and praying we’d slip by. And then the flagship was slammed by something as big as the fist of God. The vessel heeled like a toy, I heard a spray of lethal splinters as big as arrows, and men screamed.

  It’s one of the peculiarities of nature that the granite cannonball smashed into us before its sound did. The titanic blow of its impact was followed a full ten seconds later by the gun’s deep and ominous boom. Smoke drifted down into our wooden dungeon. “We’re ablaze!” I heard the hiss of water and thrown sand. Dismounted gun barrels clanked and rolled. I tensed for the gush of incoming water, but the strike must have been above the waterline. Duckworth’s artillery momentarily fell silent at the shock. Dalca made no sound.

  I listened to the groan of the ship’s timbers. Would we sink? Would an upyr break loose? Would we burn? A long minute ticked away.

  At length, a couple guns started up again, boots thumped down a companionway, and two marines unchained and grabbed me. “So you led us into a trap, American.”

  “On the contrary, I tried to warn you of it.”

  “Of what? Come explain the havoc!” And before I could fully get blood into my numb limbs, they dragged me to the deck above.

  I gaped. Naval round shot typically makes a modest hole as it peppers a ship. It is the explosion of iron and splinters inside the hull that causes the real damage. But what I saw in the hull of Canopus was a gaping cavity big enough to walk through, the shoreline of the Dardanelles clearly visible a mile away. Two naval guns were overturned, blood was splashed like pots of paint, and jagged wood hung like stalactites. I shrugged free of the marines and leaned out through the wreckage. The fortress of Sestos was wreathed in smoke as its cannons fired, and a similar cloud fogged Duckworth’s flotilla as it thundered in reply. Waterspouts sprang up as ordinary Turkish cannonballs narrowly missed, but periodically there was a crash as shot slammed home. It was a hot fight.

  I turned back inside. The light pouring through the gap in the ship’s side illuminated an enormous granite cannonball and the broken cannon barrel it had carried with it. The ball had cracked in two.

  Duckworth descended. “What did the Ottomans shoot at us, Gage?”

  “Granite.” I pointed. “It weighs as much all by itself as a full deck broadside. The enemy has cannon as big as houses.” My use of the word ‘enemy,’ was deliberate, since I didn’t want to be associated with this destruction. I guessed a dozen men had been killed or wounded.

  “They have a muzzle that can handle that? And they’re shooting rocks?”

  “Many muzzles. It’s the same kind of cannon the Turks used to conquer Constantinople more than three hundred years ago. Not very nimble, but enormously powerful. Can’t imagine who could have suggested dragging them out of retirement, but maybe this is why the Russians are hanging back. Somehow Senyavin heard of the old bombards and decided to let the English risk their fire.”

  There was another enormous boom off our port stern quarter. Another huge gun had fired, and while it missed we gaped at its towering splash.

  “My entire flotilla is in peril. Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “No one has been willing to talk with me for a week.”

  He scowled. “You’re going to help navigate for me now. Get him up on the quarterdeck.” He looked at the marines. “If the American does the least bit of villainy, shoot him.”

  They looked as if they’d relish the idea.

  By the time we emerged from the companionway into the breeze of the uppermost deck, our own ship had run past the forts. The wind had blown our own smoke clear so that I could see several Turkish naval ships anchored in a bay past Abydos. I wondered if Caleb was there.

  “Signal Smith to destroy those vessels,” Duckworth ordered.

  Flags began to run up halyards to convey the command.

  Repairs began immediately on Canopus. It took six men to heave the broken cannons and granite cannonball halves overboard. The wounded were carried below, their terror rising as the doctor went to work on them. The ship’s carpenter began sawing away the ends of splintered boards and measuring for new timbers that could be brought up from storage.

  Meanwhile, I took in the battle. Sidney Smith began hammering the haplessly anchored Turkish ships, and several were soon either sinking, aground, or on fire. A column of Turkish cavalry galloped on the European shore, tracking our sail northeast toward Constantinople. Merchant vessels in the Sea of Marmara scattered like ducks before our pugnacious advance. Behind, Duckworth’s ships were battered but floating. As we escaped the gantlet the firing from the forts growled away.

  “A bit of roughhouse, but we’re done with those big guns,” the admiral said, as much to himself as to me.

  “Unless you have to fight your way back out.”

  His glance was meant as a rebuke, but he couldn’t hide his continued doubt about this naval sally. He’d sailed into the sack, and retreat would be as dangerous as advance. “Not enough ships, not enough men,” he muttered.

  The fleet advanced up the small Sea of Marmara to the Bosporus Straits, the second narrow passage between the Mediterranean and Black Seas. As the day waned, Duckworth took my suggestion and the bloodied ships anchored off the Prince Islands, a small archipelago at the entrance to this second strait. Constantinople was visible in the distance but the British didn’t want to risk a blind attack in the dark. After my bombard surprise, they were wary.

  “There’s still opportunity to negotiate,” I urged.

  The admiral ordered Captain Capel in the frigate Endymion to anchor closer to Constantinople to convey demands to the sultan. But by now the southerly wind had exhausted itself and a cold current swirled down the Bosporus from the Black Sea. Capel made little progress, stopping at midnight just four miles ahead.

  All but the night watch turned in, the men exhausted from the day’s sailing and fighting. Stern lanterns marked the line of British ships where they anchored. Longboats ferried between vessels, bearing casualty reports and conveying orders. Turkish bonfires lit the shores on both the European and Asian sides of the strait, showing the camps of Ottoman troops. A scouting party sent by longboat reported that thousands of soldiers and civilians were throwing up earthen redoubts just below the city. Further away a few dim lights shone where Constantinople waited.

  Duckworth had run one gantlet, but victory would require that he run another. There were Ottoman guns ahead and Ottoman guns behind.

  The admiral paced the quarterdeck.

  I couldn’t sleep either; Astiza and Harry were so near! And in danger, since Von Bonin and Dalca were so close. Marines left on errands or to sleep, and eventually I was forgotten in my corner of quarterdeck. I belatedly realized that my cage door was open if I crept quietly away. I resolved to go for a cold swim to the nearest island and find a fishing boat to get me to the European shore. I’d report to Sebastiani and Selim and, with their permission, reunite with my family. At the very least I could send Astiza warning.

  But first I had to grapple with our wicked cargo. Somewhere on board were Cezar Dalca and Lothar Von Bonin, and I couldn’t believe the mission of either creature wasn’t connected to my own. Best to settle our hash now. My rifle and horse pick were back in Constantinople, given that I’d arrived as a diplomat, so I quietly looked for a weapon. This wasn’t an easy task since the marines carefully guarded all small arms to discourage theft or mutiny. I finally settled on a marling-spike, a two-foot long iron awl used to untie knots in the ship’s massive ropes. It was a crude dagger, but serviceable. I also found a cleaver jutting from the
gundeck where it had been used to chop a sailor’s ankle free from an overturned cannon.

  I crept back down to the orlop where I’d been chained, keeping out of sight of the powder magazine’s weary sentries. The only light was that single lantern. The hold was silent as a tomb. Feeling I was probing the den of a bear, I took the lantern and crept forward to where Dalca was secreted. I listened. Nothing. I cautiously lifted the light. A door was open on a wood and iron box, but whatever it had held was gone. Had Dalca really been there?

  “Looking for someone, Gage?” The Prussian accent was unmistakable.

  Von Bonin’s silhouette was blocking my way out.

  “Some thing would be a better way to put it,” I replied. I set the lantern down and put the spike in one fist, the cleaver in the other.

  “Our passenger has an appointment in Constantinople with a woman who eluded him,” the Prussian taunted. “It’s been quite the exhausting journey for my new colleague, who is hungry as the devil. He needs restoration. That cannonball hole, however, made it easier for him to exit the ship to a partner’s boat. Dalca best travels by water.”

  “Surely you don’t trust that monster.”

  “I trust no one. You’d be wise to do the same.”

  “How did you two scoundrels get together?”

  “Yes, who suggested our partnership? I’ll let you ponder that one. I’ve trailed all of you for months, you know. The blustering prince, the mercenary brother, and the naïve American. Quite the clumsy cabal! Quite the bonfire you lit at Balbec! Since you risked everything to go into Dalca’s lair, I decided there must be some value to Cezar. I watched his vermin flee the castle gorge and found the odd duke as a refugee on the Danube River, thirsty for renewal and quite rational about our plight. We had something in common, him and me: our desire for revenge. We sailed south from the Black Sea to the Aegean, and eventually sought alliance with the British. They think we’re all going to share!”