The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8)

by William Dietrich

  Or perhaps it was all hoary myth, as false as a fairy tale.

  I came close. There was still power emanating from this carved fossil, I sensed, the same spiritual radiance I’ve felt from representations of Mary, Isis, and Sophia. Athena power. Female power. The power of the mother protectress, the lady lion. This wood held the spirit of the mother-gods worshipped since prehistory, when barbarians stared in wonder and terror at the cold night sky.

  I touched the wood. It seemed to buzz and my fingers sprang away, lightly burned. Her worn wooden eyes were blind, and yet she looked at me. Looked through me. My breath came quick and shallow. I half-feared I’d go blind, but no curse fell.

  I considered. Clearly the Ottomans no longer recognized the importance of this relic.

  Which meant the palladium wouldn’t be missed.

  And at that, my fear and doubt slid away. Athena wanted liberation. Veneration. I touched her arms, the wood polished smooth by century after century of trembling and stroking hands. She felt warm, alive, and protective. I took faith from her serenity.

  There’s always a way out.

  Pay attention to find it.

  I snuffed out my lamp yet again, waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark, and listened and smelled.

  The scent of the sea.

  The dark allowed me to notice the dimmest of glimmers that emanated from behind a bronze warhorse. I crouched between its legs and spied a low passage that led toward the Bosporus. Some ancient ruler had prepared his wriggle-hole.

  I measured the opening with my hands and calculated. Just big enough, perhaps, to squeeze through the Trojan palladium. Perhaps Ethan and I could drag her together.

  An iron grate guarded the end of the tunnel but a lever inside released a latch. I pushed it outward and crawled into thick brush, invisible to anyone watching from the palace walls or the sea. Dusk was falling. Before I let go of the grill I jammed a stick to keep it from locking. Then I pushed through brambles to the water’s edge and looked back. Topkapi Palace loomed. I’d already lost the precise spot of the tunnel grill, so artfully was it hidden. I looked out at the water. Few ships sailed because of the English blockade. Looking south toward the Sea of Marmara I could see a line of Turkish warships, beyond which were the threatening British. On the walls above I could hear the chants of sweating soldiers as they levered more cannon into position, readying for naval attack.

  Could Constantinople fall to the English if it had the palladium?

  Would we cause the fall if we took it?

  I waited until full dark and cautiously made my way along the shoreline to a gate and the main city, hurrying to catch a ferry back to the French embassy. It was only when I was seated in the boat, finally certain I wasn’t pursued, that I belatedly remembered the message pressed into my hands as I left the harem. I took it out and broke the seal.

  It was from Ethan. My heart leapt, because I hadn’t heard from him for two weeks. But then I read the brief words.

  Cezar Dalca may be alive and roaming in Constantinople. If you are in the harem, summon Harry. And don’t leave.

  CHAPTER 34

  Harry

  I had a scary dream.

  Pig Man was back. He was somewhere in my room, breathing hard in the dark. He wanted to find Mama and would use me to get her. There was a dark thing in the Pig Man’s mind, and it throbbed.

  The Pig Man is always unhappy, and always bad.

  He wishes he could die, but he’s afraid to.

  He makes other people die instead.

  In my nightmare I touched the dark thing in his head and it squirmed like a wild animal. Sunken eyes suddenly glowed like red coals. I had to fight! But then I woke up.

  I was hot and shivery. At first I was afraid to peek from my covers, but then I remembered how Papa tells me to be brave and protect Mama. I finally looked. Pale light from the big city made my room shadowy.

  Pig Man wasn’t there.

  He was somewhere, though. Somewhere near. I could feel him.

  I wanted Papa, but he’s off fighting.

  So I decided to go to Mama’s room. Sometimes she lets me in her bed.

  I stood in my nightgown on the cold tile floor. My feet curled as I listened. There were dogs barking, and far-off sounds of lowing animals and grumbly wheels. Something smelled like spoiled food.

  “Pig Man?”

  There was no answer.

  The house creaked and groaned.

  “Mama?” It was too quiet.

  I crossed my room to listen. Nothing. I opened the door. The hall outside was empty.

  Sometimes servants sleep there, or creep quietly on night errands. Tall French soldiers stand guard. If they see me, they lift a pipe in greeting.

  But nobody was there. I only felt Pig Man. I only heard my heart.

  I was afraid to go out my bedroom and down the hall to Mama’s room. But I made myself brave, counted to five, and rushed to open her door.

  I stopped. What if the Pig Man was in there? What if he’d killed Mama?

  Maybe I was still dreaming.

  It was scary to go into Mama’s room, but scary in the hall and scary to go back to bed. So I went in.

  Something was in her bed. The something was very still, and for a moment I was afraid Mama was dead. But I touched, and she was warm, so I scrambled in, my heart beating fast.

  “Horus?”

  “It’s the Pig Man, Mama.”

  She bolted upright so suddenly that it startled me. She put a finger to my lips. “Hush. We have to listen.”

  I stopped snuffling. The big French house sighed in the wind. The dogs had gone quiet. I heard steps. Someone was coming.

  “I got a note from your Papa.”

  Mama slid out of bed and listened at the door. Then she dragged a table and chest against it.

  “Did you see our guards?”

  I shook my head. “Everyone is gone.”

  She looked anxious but fierce. “Janissaries. Somehow they’ve gotten in. Bribed by Dalca. We have to leave.”

  Mama cracked the shutters of her window and peeked out at the big city. Then she ripped the blanket off her bed. “Horus, bring me the sheets.” She began to tie them all together.

  A candle burned but she snuffed it out. Shadows swelled in the corners.

  I heard boots. The Janissaries wear bright red and yellow boots and tall, scary hats. They have long mustaches like pirates.

  Mama hung the sheets out the window.

  Someone tried her door. Men began to pound.

  It was inky dark in the garden. I feared Pig Man was down there.

  “Açik kapi!”

  “Don’t listen to them, Horus. Don’t open the door.”

  Something heavy crashed against the door and it shook and wobbled the table. Light shone through cracks. It crashed again.

  Mama clutched me so tight that I couldn’t breathe. We swung into space.

  CHAPTER 35

  “The English have sailed into a sack, Ethan, and the way to get them out is to threaten to close the end. That’s your job.” I’d escaped Canopus and reported to the ambassador, but Sebastiani and the Turks wouldn’t let me go to my family. I was ordered to complete placement of the bombards at the mouth of the Dardanelles to threaten the enemy ships. We had to frighten them into fleeing.

  I couldn’t explain my bizarre fear of Cezar Dalca, since that would entail explaining how I knew him and what he might have come to Constantinople to obtain. A monster in a warship hold? The story sounded absurd. I did warn that a Prussian agent named Lothar Von Bonin might be at large.

  “But you set fire to him, correct?” Sebastiani clarified. We conferred at a Constantinople bunker with a new battery of cannon.

  “Yes, but the Prussian jumped into the sea.”

  “Did you see him when you
jumped as well?”

  “No.”

  “Drowned,” Sebastiani concluded. “I understand your concern, Gage, and certainly agree we must protect your wife.”

  “And son.”

  “But the best way to protect your family is to beat off these English bastards and solidify Selim’s rule. Dash off a quick line instructing Astiza to stay with the sultana in the harem, which is safe as a bank vault.”

  “She said it was full of dwarves and eunuchs and scheming women.”

  “She told me it was more like a convent. You must not fret. Now listen, Turkish cavalry will escort you to Fort Sestos. The Sultan is stalling negotiations while our fortification goes forward. Once we threaten Duckworth with more of your genius, he’ll be pressured to sail away. If this Prussian survived at all, he’ll be alone and helpless.”

  “Von Bonin only has one arm and one eye and yet is the most tenacious villain imaginable. Better I remain in town, ambassador. I can help with cannon here.”

  “No, the big bombards were your idea and their placement has stalled since you left. You’re needed at Sestos. No soldier gets to run home to his family. You’re ordered by Selim himself to return to the Dardanelles.”

  So once again I was the tool of other men, hustled against my will back to the Turkish fort. More massive bombards were dutifully mounted. Patrolling British frigates brought warning to Duckworth anchored off Constantinople. It became obvious that the Ottoman government was stalling as its military position strengthened. I could imagine the English admiral pacing the quarterdeck, glowering at his predicament. The Turks were obstinate. Von Bonin, Dalca, and Ethan Gage had all mysteriously disappeared from Canopus after a fiery altercation. A trap was closing.

  I was hardly the sole hero. It was eventually calculated that the Turks studded their waterways with 520 new cannon, including several of my bombards, and 110 mortars. The English ships had already been damaged. My brother’s Ottoman fleet blocked the Bosporus.

  And so, ever so briefly, we won. On March 1, 1807, Duckworth and Smith gave up their diplomatic bluster, weighed anchor, and set sail back through the Sea of Marmara to escape the chokepoint I’d help prepare.

  This time the gantlet was worse than I’d experienced, and I was safely on shore to watch. The huge cannons were not quick, but there were enough to average a gargantuan cannonball every fifteen minutes, each concussive roar bringing frenzied cheers from the bombarding Turks. The English ships seemed to physically flinch when one of the powerful shots struck home. One 850-pound ball of granite sliced the mainmast of Windsor Castle in two, and British casualties were twice as high as when they’d sailed the other way. Total losses reached 254 for no diplomatic advantage. Sultan Selim had triumphed.

  Adding to British frustration, Admiral Senyavin’s Russian fleet finally arrived in the Aegean just as the English were retreating. Duckworth refused Senyavin’s proposal for another try together. “Where were you a month ago?” The Russians were too late. The English had had enough. They set sail for Alexandria.

  So the old cannon had worked, the Ottomans had won, Selim was saved, my wife was safe, and my new sinecure as French aide and Ottoman advisor in the opulent East was firmer than ever.

  I allowed myself a moment’s optimism. Maybe a different kind of title, and a different kind of palace, but fortune still seemed within my grasp. I was ordered by Sebastiani to remain on duty at the Turkish forts while being assured that my family was secure in the harem, out of reach of any enemy.

  And then the pugnacious Senyavin blockaded the Dardanelles all by himself, daring the Turkish fleet to fight.

  The danger in giving advice is that someday somebody might actually take it, and the Russian admiral had clearly remembered my vivid description of Admiral Nelson’s victories a year and a half before. If he couldn’t get the help of the English ships to run past the forts, he’d lure the Turkish ships beyond them into a Nelson-style melee. The Russian blockade once more threatened Constantinople with famine and now time was against the Ottomans. Admiral Pasha Seid Ali was forced to try to drive Senyavin away with a sea battle. I assumed Caleb tried with him.

  The result was Turkish disaster. Senyavin in his flagship Tverdyi maneuvered his ten ships-of-the-line against Ali’s eight, the Ottomans led by the gigantic 120-gun Mesudiye, or Sultan’s Majesty. The Russian copied Nelson at the Battle of the Nile by pressing his attack as night was falling, and copied Nelson at Trafalgar by dividing his formation into two lines that split the Turkish formation like spears. He then proceeded to gang up on and destroy individual Ottoman vessels in a dark, pell-mell battle.

  Wind and tide carried the fleets to within cannon shot of the Turkish batteries on the European side of the strait, but the ships were too entangled to risk using the bombards. We simply watched, with sinking hearts. By dawn, most of the Turkish ships had either sunk or fled and the Russians used the chaos to get past my gantlet of guns. Once again, a foreign navy was in Marmara and could threaten Constantinople.

  A Turkish vice admiral was beheaded for not obeying Ali’s signals to fully engage, but the execution was little more than an act of despair. Ottoman victory in March had been followed by Ottoman fiasco in May, and still no wheat ships could reach the city. Where Duckworth’s bold thrust had failed, Senyavin’s remorseless squeeze had succeeded.

  Had Caleb survived the battle? There was no word of his even being on board. Where was my brother?

  Three days later I finally received new orders from Sebastiani. “Return to Constantinople at once. Riots have begun since the naval defeat, and triumph has turned to despair. The Janissaries are pounding their cauldrons. Revolt is finally at hand.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Astiza

  We were supposed to be safe, but our gilded cage is under siege.

  Fires are burning in the city. We hear the echo of rioting crowds through the harem’s thick walls. Eunuchs run this way and that without purpose. Some of the dwarves are weeping. Instead of lounging by the pools the women cluster in fearful flocks, repeating absurd rumors to each other. The mutes manage to moan.

  We can hear the drumming of the Janissaries, rising against their masters.

  They are rising against Selim and Aimée.

  It was Aimée who first saved us. When Dalca’s new henchmen began to break down our embassy door the night Harry came to my bed, we escaped out the window and fled to the harbor. I gripped a curved Turkish dagger to plunge into the monster’s heart, but he didn’t materialize. What I felt instead was the palpable presence of his evil, like a miasma.

  I don’t know what Dalca is, but he’s no longer human. His spirit exudes malevolence and frustration like the odor of the damned. He desires, without knowing what he really wants. He lives without knowing why he lives, except that foul life isn’t terrifying death. So he abides in misery, a bloated parasite that feeds on the innocent.

  I almost smothered Horus as I clutched him to swing out the window. Every shadow seemed a threat as we ran down the lanes toward the Golden Horn. Every sound seemed a warning. But I was soon panting at my boy’s weight, reminded again that he is growing up. He wriggled from my grasp.

  “I’m almost seven.”

  Constantinople seemed suspended, waiting on events. Harbor shipping had stilled under the enemy blockade and the poor were starving. Disease had come back. Soldiers of uncertain loyalty roamed like gangs, extorting and raping. People hid inside, no lamps burned, and the city was dark. The palace was a distant dream across the water.

  I stole a kayik and awkwardly began to row. The craft are as large as a longboat and almost impossible for a lone woman to handle, but Horus had no experience with oars. We managed to drift into the bay, ships ghostly, minarets silent, the city and its empire holding breath.

  Behind us I could hear and see angry Janissaries spill down the embassy hill, shouting and waving swords. Where were our French guar
ds? Had they been massacred? No, lured away somehow: I saw a cluster trooping tiredly back toward our embassy after some false emergency.

  I’d no diplomatic protection, no country, no servant, no husband, and no advice. I heaved so hard at the oars that they popped out of the water and thrashed in the air like the legs of an overturned beetle. I wept in frustration.

  The Janissaries leaped in a boat to pursue us. A foolish kayik owner rushed up to protest and was cut down by a scimitar. The soldiers wanted to catch and kill us. Or worse, bring us back to Dalca.

  How could that cancer still be alive?

  How could Ethan know it, and yet linger at the Dardanelles?

  But then he assumed us safe in the harem. I’d been impatiently awaiting another invitation from Aimée so that I could report on the secret passage, but communication has been suspended by chaos.

  I pulled again and managed to make headway, the current taking us out toward Seraglio Point. Harry watched the men striving to overtake us. “Row faster, Mama!” He paddled with his arms.