The Barbary Pirates

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

We maneuvered to the outermost boat in a line of docked feluccas and Fulton, Pierre, and I crawled out onto the fishing vessel, clambering from one to another until we were on the stone platform of the harbor. The Nautilus sank out of sight.

Yussef’s palace was ugly as a chopping block, and everywhere there were ramparts with the black snouts of artillery poking toward the sea. Up on a fortified platform just north of the castle, facing the harbor, was a shrouded round disk that was a deeper black against the stars. That would be the mirror, I guessed, and very likely a thousand pirates and janissaries were between it and us.

Pierre looked at the looming walls. “We have to climb these? Perhaps you are not a donkey, but a spider.”

“I propose that we drink our way into the dungeons instead, and make our way upward from our old home by the stairs. Do you remember the taverns, Robert?”

“Aye, the ones run by the Christian slaves and prisoners for Muslims forbidden to sell alcohol on their own.”

“I thought Muhammadans weren’t supposed to drink, either,” said Pierre.

“And cardinals aren’t supposed to have mistresses,” Fulton said, “and yet half could give lessons to Casanova. All men are pious, but find a way around their strictures. Have they repealed human nature in Canada?”

“We men of the woods have limited experience, but not that limited. So we’re to become pious drunkards?”

“To get ourselves in the door,” I said.

He looked up. “A cleverer idea than scaling this fortress.”

Like all cities in all cultures, Tripoli had made accommodation between what men were supposed to do and what they want to do. Islam frowned on usury, so the Jews exiled from Spain had become the bankers. Alcohol was forbidden, so Christian slaves could make an extra living by quietly providing it. The practice had spread to the prisons themselves, where entrepreneurs also provided the chance for the devout to obtain a prostitute, pawn booty hidden from taxation, or buy literature more stimulating than the Koran. The Muhammadan town might be more orderly than a Christian city, but sin could be found among the jailers and janissaries as easily as at the Palais Royal. Accordingly we crept along to the courtyard that abutted Yussef’s prison and slipped into one of the grog shops on its periphery. I ordered in Arabic while scouting for our chance to get beyond the dungeon gates.

Two guards in a corner were very quietly becoming inebriated, and once I was sure they’d become sufficiently muddled, I approached to refill their cups and propose a sale of opium. Drugs go with prisons like hand to glove, with the cottage industries of the inmates devoted mostly to paying for the narcotics needed to make hopelessness tolerable. A dishonest jailer can make more money selling to thieves than a thief can ever get stealing, and guarding the miserable bagnios of North Africa was a sinecure as valuable as being bookkeeper in a treasury. These guards didn’t trust me, of course, but they sensed opportunity and were greedy enough to beckon me to a locked door. When passing through I jammed the keyhole with a nail to prevent the latch from closing. And when the jailers bent to inspect my narcotic—flour and ground tea I’d brought from Sterett’s schooner—my companions crept in and clouted the drunken fools with socks we’d filled with sand from the streets.

We hesitated then, silently debating what to do with the two unconscious guards, until I reluctantly drew my naval cutlass from under my robes and thrust it through both their bodies, finishing them. Fulton gave a little groan.

“We are at war, gentlemen, with fanatics who are holding hostage my innocent son and who hope to declare war on all civilization,” I said. “Steel yourselves. It’s going to be a long night.”

“They won’t show us mercy, either,” Pierre said.

“Certainly they haven’t yet.”

“Let’s get on with it, then,” said Fulton, swallowing as he looked at the dead. Apparently practicing war close-up was not the same as designing its machines, and the deadly consequences of his genius were just occurring to him. I wondered if Archimedes had discovered that, too? Had the old Greek ordered the dismantling of his mirror to not just keep it from the Romans, but from mankind itself? Could his own king have killed him in frustration?

“But first we take their pistols,” said Pierre. “With the mood Ethan’s in, I have a feeling we’re going to need them.”

“And their keys,” I added. “Help me drag the bodies out of sight.”

I felt nauseated as we crept back into the labyrinth of dungeon tunnels under Yussef’s castle. The smell of earth, sewage, and lightless corruption came back like a slap, triggering old fear, and we could hear moaning and the occasional insane scream. Then I reminded myself of Astiza and little Harry, captive somewhere in the harem far above, and resolved to blow this mouth of Hades permanently shut by bringing Yussef’s fortress down on top of it. Let slip the dogs of war!

We passed several iron corridor gates, locking them again to discourage interference or pursuit. Then a flight of stairs upward that I recognized as the way I’d been taken to Yussef’s palace to meet Astiza.

“I think our army of three needs to divide at this point,” I said. “Robert, somehow we’ve got to get your torpedo, or mine, to where the mirror is and set it off.”

“Archimedes might have used a catapult,” he said. “Perhaps something similar will occur to me. How do I get within view?”

“If we can get you to the roof of Yussef’s storage rooms you may be able to look across. Follow this tunnel and hunt for stairs, if you don’t meet a sentry.”

He drew his own cutlass. “Or kill one if I do.”

“What is your assignment, donkey?” Pierre asked.

“Go to the harem where the women are.”

“Of course.”

“That’s where Harry and Astiza should be. I’ll slip in, find them, and bring them down to go out the way we came.”

“And brave Pierre, who never seems to be given the job of rescuing harems of young, nubile, enticingly captive women?”

“Brave Pierre has the most important job of all. Take these keys and release as many prisoners as you can. When we retreat, their escape will create confusion while we make for the plunging boat. Beware, Pierre, an ogre lives in these tunnels. He’s a brute known as Omar the Dungeon Master and we want to avoid him.”

“A presumptuous title. Is he big and ugly, like you?”

“Bigger. And uglier, I dare say. Even homelier than our late giant friend Magnus Bloodhammer.”

“Then I shall be David to this behemoth’s Goliath. I am the great Pierre Radisson, North Man and voyageur, who can stroke twenty hours in a single day and travel a hundred miles before sleeping! None can portage more weight than I, or drink more, or dance more splendidly, or jump higher, or run faster, or more quickly charm a woman! I can find my way from Montreal to Athabasca with my eyes closed!”

I’d heard all this several times before. “Then you’ll do fine in the darkness down here. Quickly, Pierre, and quietly, and run like a deer if Omar hears you. We need you in our submarine to remind us again of your prowess.”

“Of course you need me! Those two savants you left there, while they have undoubtedly concocted eight new harebrained theories of the history of the earth, have probably by now lost all sense of direction, if they haven’t sunk already. Well, Pierre will do all the real work as usual, and meet you at the gates that lead out of this dung hole. Then we will work on your reform!”

And so I turned to climb the castle steps and rescue my son and the woman (I realized with a jolt that I had unconsciously come to think of her this way) who was, for all practical purposes, my wife.

The climb was familiar, taking me up to the reception hall where I’d met Astiza. I passed with disquiet a side tunnel that I remembered led to Omar’s torture chamber. Then I opened the wooden door, pushed aside the concealing tapestry, and entered the throne room. This, I guessed, was close to the harem. The royal chair and pillows were as I remembered them, shadowy in the darkness. Even the African cat was there, locked for the night in its brass cage. I could see the fire of its eyes as I quickly passed through, and the beast made a rumbling purr. I wondered if Dragut’s dragon was lurking about, too, a lizard with the appetite of a polar bear.

In the rear of the cage a third eye gleamed, and I realized a smaller cage held Yussef’s turban and emerald, ably protected by his cat. Even the leopard earned his keep.

At the far end I slipped out into a quiet hallway hung with old brass medieval shields. There was a forbidding stillness to the castle as if the building was waiting, and I puzzled that I hadn’t encountered more guards. It was midnight, yes, but was I really this lucky? Where was everyone?

Up a flight of marble stairs—I must be at the top of the palace now—and there a eunuch doorman, conveniently asleep in the depth of night. There was a flask nearby, and if he was caught in this dereliction he’d no doubt be bastinadoed on the soles of his feet, or hung from a hook on the castle wall. I hesitated, thinking of killing him, but couldn’t do it to a man already cruelly castrated. Instead I tore a drapery and jumped, clouted his head, gagged him, and tied him tight. Another sharp clout put a stop to his squirming.

Then I went to the wood and brass harem door and listened. No trill of female laughter; the harem was asleep. I was ready to smash its lock with a pistol ball if need be, but instead this door opened, too. Clearly, Yussef was either not expecting an imminent American attack—or had faith in his eunuch guards. I slipped inside cautiously, not wanting to risk a riot by startling the girls. Could I find the duo I was looking for? If we could just creep away, I hardly cared about the mirror. It couldn’t really work after all this time, could it?

But it had, burning that Spanish ship. As it could burn ours.

The harem was empty, too.

I passed through an antechamber and entered the lovely harem court, far more opulent than the merchant’s attic I’d once broken into in Cairo. This room had a central pool and a domed roof pierced by inserts of colored glass. In daytime, a rainbow of colors would filter down. Pillars ran around the chamber’s periphery to form an arcade beneath and balcony above, and doorways opened to what I presumed were the separate bedrooms and kitchen of the women who lived here. Flowers filled a score of vases, and lotus petals floated in the pool. The place smelled of perfume and incense. What would it be like when the concubines lounged and laughed, the beauties of a dozen nationalities just lightly clothed? Limbs dangling in the pool, breasts casually exposed, gossiping as they brushed each other’s glossy hair, smooth shoulders, sweet hips, their great almond eyes lined with kohl, their lips picked out with…

Focus, Ethan!

You’re worrying about just one woman now.

And suddenly I had company. There was the light tread of a slipper behind me to which I might have turned, but at the same instant there was a growl ahead, the bass rumble of a heavy muzzle flecked with saliva and blood. Sokar! The grip on my pistol was suddenly slick as I realized why the castle was so quiet. I’d walked into a trap.

“Ethan, Ethan, so predictable,” Aurora’s voice came from the shadows where the dog regarded me with its piss-yellow eyes. “We’ve been waiting for weeks.” And there emerged the wolflike bulk of her brutish mastiff, head lowered, shoulders bunched.

“We were going to let you turn the mirror on your own navy,” another voice said behind me. Dragut! “You could have proved yourself to us, Gage. But now, we’ll just try it on you.” His tone was anticipatory as a gun muzzle as wide as a dog’s mouth nudged my back. “Please don’t move, because I’m holding your friend’s blunderbuss. If my finger slips, the blast will cut you in two.”

“Hell of a mess in this pretty pool.”

“We’ve slaves enough to lick it clean, if necessary.”