The Barbary Pirates

CHAPTER NINE

I don’t know why beauty disappoints so regularly, but I daresay women usually don’t pitch bombs in my direction until we’ve been acquainted for an hour or two. This one was galloping away before I could even say hello, and her sole purpose seemed to be to shred our lowest and most vital extremities. With the instinct that comes from being misunderstood so frequently in love, I scooped up the smoking grenade, looked wildly about, and pitched it into the only depository I could spot—our tavern’s brick oven.

The resulting explosion, which coughed out a spray of brick, bread dough, charcoal, and fragments of rotisserie duck, could still have lacerated our top halves if I hadn’t tackled my comrades into a heap, our table toppling over as a shield. We were enveloped in a cloud of brick dust, but fortunately the oven had absorbed the worst of the blast and the patrons we shared the place with escaped with just a fright.

“It’s the Egyptian Rite!” I cried, my ears ringing and my brain addled by the explosion. “To the horses!”

“Ethan, we’re on an island,” Cuvier said, coughing. “We have no horses.”

“Aye.” I shook my head and blurrily saw caped men entering the other side of the Campo, dressed in black and brandishing things that glinted in the dark. One was waving his arm to direct the others. “To the gondolas, then!”

“I don’t think they’re giving us bloody time,” Smith said.

We picked ourselves up, grabbed our scattered weapons and bags, and bunched to run as the strangers charged toward us. People were screaming, I realized as my hearing returned.

Then there was a roar that made everyone in the piazza jump and Smith slammed backward against the half-ruined oven. He’d fired his blunderbuss, packed with eight balls, and three of the attackers went sprawling. Bullets ricocheted like fleas in a bottle. The other scoundrels yelped, ducked, and broke toward cover.

“By thunder, Englishman, there’s a naval broadside!” Cuvier cried.

Agreeing that our rock hound had set a good example, I took up my longrifle and aimed for the man who seemed to be the leader. I stilled my breath, aimed to lead him as he sprinted for the shadows, squeezed, and fired. He went down, too, skidding on the cobbles, and I was rewarded with cries of dismay.

“Always load before dinner,” I said.

“And with a blunderbuss, it doesn’t matter much how much you drink during it,” Smith said, and burped.

We retreated, me halfheartedly clawing at the rapier strapped to my back and cursing that I hadn’t bothered to carry it on my hip after all. The good thing about swords is you don’t have to load them with powder and ball. The bad is you have to get damnably close to people trying to kill you. Now bullets came our way, making a smacking sound as they chewed into wood and stucco. We ran faster.

At the Giuffa Canal we didn’t hesitate. A gondola was sweeping by with a paying client, its gondolier warbling a song, and so we sprang like pirates, crashed aboard, and pitched the poor passenger overboard.

“For your own safety!” I called as he splashed into the dirty water, his hat drifting away like a little raft.

Then I finally got my rapier clear and pointed at the gondolier’s throat. “The Grand Canal! Don’t worry, there’s a tip in it for you!”

Our helmsman looked goggle-eyed at my blade. “Should I sing, signor?”

“Save your breath for the stroke. We’re rather in a hurry.” As he began powering us down the canal, I turned to the others. Smith was already swabbing out his blunderbuss and pouring in fresh powder. “Cuvier, get out those pretty pistols of yours and shoot the rascals when they reach the canal. Fulton, please don’t play a song.”

“They put a hole in my bagpipes, damn it.”

“Then invent something else.” I tried to remember the city’s confusing spaghetti of canals. “We’ll go to San Marco harbor and see if we can buy our way onto a ship out of here.”

“My God, who was that woman?” Smith asked, his hand trembling slightly as he tamped down a fresh fusillade of shot. Killing is a jolt, especially the first time.

“Not one to flirt, I guess. It’s a bet she’s working for our enemies. I think we’re in a race to the secret of Thira, which means that I’m afraid we shouldn’t have tarried after all. I expected better of Venice. Especially after the price of our inn.”

“I see something following us,” Cuvier said, peering back into the dark. There was a flash as his pistols went off, blinding us to whatever he had aimed at. I couldn’t believe he’d hit a thing with his popguns, but we heard a wang of ricocheting lead, and a yell.

“By mastodon tusks, they work!” he cried. “We’re quite the dangerous men!”

We swept past a curve and back into darkness, then squirted out of the small canal into the broad one that makes a sweeping “S” through the city. It’s a canyon of grand mansions four and five stories high, candles and lanterns gleaming behind tall windows to reveal aged munificence within, the leftovers of glittering empire. I saw centuries-old tapestries, crystal chandeliers, brocaded curtains, and white, moonlike faces peering out in curiosity at our noise. We sculled under the Rialto Bridge, lovers strolling its arched promenade, and headed toward the city’s main harbor and the anchored ships off the Piazza San Marco. Domes and towers loomed up against the stars, and the sound of opera floated across dark water.

“I think we discouraged them,” Smith ventured, looking back.

“I’m afraid I must disagree, Monsieur Smith,” Cuvier replied, pointing ahead with one of his pistols, the ramrod jutting from its barrel because he was reloading. “Our pursuers seem to have a lot of company.”

A line of gondolas was sweeping down to intercept us from the canal ahead, blocking our intended escape. We spied enough gleaming metal to fill an armory. There was a ripple of flashes and spouts of water kicked up around us as the reports of the shots echoed off the buildings. Chips of wood flew off our gondola, and our helmsman froze.

“I’ll skewer you if you try to jump!” I warned him, my rapier aimed again at this throat. “Steer into that side canal there, before they get off another volley!”

We turned into a small channel that cut across the island by a different path. Maybe we could lose our pursuers in the liquid labyrinth that was Venice. This narrow tributary was dark, the houses seeming to lean in. Only the water gleamed.

A lantern appeared behind as the gondolas in pursuit followed us. We could hear the furious thrashing of their oars. I fired my rifle again at the lead boat and its light danced, but didn’t go out. Someone fell into the water, and more guns fired back. Bullets pinged off the stonework and we involuntarily flinched. “Wish I could see to aim for their gondolier,” I muttered as I reloaded.

“Please leave us out of this, signor,” our own said with quavering voice. Realizing he was a logical target, our gondolier was driving us with more ambition than customary. Dark buildings zipped by as if he were powered by Fulton’s steam. Shutters were banging open as occupants leaned out to see what was going on, but everything was in shadow. What they observed was a parade of racing phantoms, our nearest pursuer less than fifty yards behind. The occasional twist or low bridge prevented either of us from getting a clear shot.

Bells began ringing, but no authorities came to our aid.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Fulton. He was eyeing a gondola unwittingly coming the other way, beginning to drift as its gondolier paused in confusion at the echo of shots and our own maddened pace. As we passed them the inventor reached out and neatly snatched the scull from the confused boatman, leaving him to drift into the path of our pursuers. Fulton clambered to the bow of our boat.

“What’s your plan?”

“Wait for me on the far side of this bridge.”

The bridge was a low arched stone one, typical for the city. As we came to it, the American suddenly thrust the oar down, planted it on the bottom of the shallow canal, and vaulted himself onto the roadbed above. We slid under him, and I ordered the gondolier to halt on the bridge’s far side. The boat skewed as we stopped and then slowly backed toward Fulton. Meanwhile the inventor had jammed the pole of his captured oar into the stone railing he had just jumped over, and was prying. “I wish I had a fulcrum.” Then there was a grunt and a crack.

We heard curses in three languages as the lead gondola of our pursuers collided with the one we’d left drifting. There was a cry and another splash. Then our assailants came toward us again, and Smith, Cuvier, and I readied to give a volley.

“Wait for my command!” whispered Fulton, who had hidden behind the balustrade.

The enemy boat was speeding for the bridge, pistols and swords pointed at us in a bristling hedge that just caught the starlight.

Then, with a groan, the stone railing gave way. Blocks as heavy as anvils were levered off the bridge lip by Fulton and fell just as the gondola was passing underneath, crashing into the vessel and snapping it to pieces. The occupants tumbled into the water.

The inventor, oar still in hand, leaped from the other side of the bridge to a water-washed porch and scrambled toward our boat. “Fire at the next one!” he ordered.

I liked his cool head.

So when the second attacking gondola came out of the gloom, slowing at the sight of comrades thrashing in the water, we let loose a volley: Cuvier’s two pistols, my rifle, and Smith’s blunderbuss all went off at once. There were screams, more oaths, and the second pursuing boat tipped as dead and wounded spilled into the canal.

“Now, now, go for the harbor!” Fulton cried as he jumped aboard. Our gondolier sculled as if he were on fire.

“Nice work, Robert,” I congratulated.

“It’s all in the leverage. Archimedes showed how it could be done. ‘Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth,’ the old Greek said.”

“Clever bastard, wasn’t he?”

At the next bridge, where the canal narrowed because of the structure’s abutments, Fulton had us stop while he wedged the extra oar at an angle widthwise across the canal behind us, just at water level where it could catch a gondola’s bow. “That will block the rest until they chop it away,” he said. “It may give us enough time.”

Then we hurried on, our gondolier panting.

“Being with you is proving to be consistently dramatic, Monsieur Gage,” Cuvier said, in order to say something. He was getting quicker, I noticed, at reloading.

“Bloody exciting,” Smith agreed. “Who are those devils?”

“Egyptian Rite, I assume. Or their hired mercenaries. Anxious, persistent, and hostile. Lucky they didn’t cut us off.”

Finally we broke from the narrow canal and glided out into the broader lagoon. The domes of the Basilica were a geometric symphony against the sky, and moored gondolas bobbed in the light chop. But how to find a ship in the middle of the night?

Then a lantern glowed in the stern of a xebec.

“Here, here! This is the one you want!”