The Barbary Pirates

CHAPTER FOUR

Wax tapers went flying as the heavy gold ornament and chain sliced into the pretty array, flame arcing like fire arrows. Osiris, or whatever his real name was, stumbled back against his trolls with a curse and a snarl, blood flowing through the hand clutched to his cheek. He reached for a hidden pistol with the other, but as silk curtains ignited from the scythed candles, I toppled Ottoman lamps on the floor. Oil spilled, and before he could draw and shoot, I hopped back through a gush of flame.

Smoke bloomed behind me as the fire flared, and my would-be captors cried out and retreated. Madame Marguerite was screaming. In seconds I’d turned her little anteroom into a merry inferno, and as I retreated deeper into the brothel smoke rolled against the ceiling. The trollops behind me began shrieking as well.

So I’d set fire in front and had stone walls to my back. Not ideal. And where the devil were my savants? “Georges! Robert! William!”

“Here!” I heard Fulton shout. “Damn it, Gage, what have you done now?”

I found him coatless but otherwise presentable, a half-dressed strumpet crawling away on her hands and knees. My, she had a fetching bottom. “I was just explaining the process of adding oxygen to my Nautilus,” the inventor said, coughing, “when all the shouting started. Cuvier and Smith are insensible, I’m afraid. They drank from those Turkish vessels, and I think there’s something in the wine.” He looked past me at the lurid light coming from the room from which I’d retreated, the smoke orange in its glow. “By Zeus and Jupiter, Ethan, have you been drinking, too? I believe you’ve started quite the alarming fire.”

“It was the only way I could prevent being manacled by the henchmen of that madman Osiris,” I explained hastily. “He’s of the Egyptian Rite, a nasty bunch I’ve encountered before.” To emphasize the point, shots sounded and bullets buzzed through the smoke to ping against the stone walls of the cellar. I dropped, yanking Fulton down. “Best to stay low. Most men shoot high, and there’s less smoke at the floor.”

“Very informative, Gage. Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, the only door out is on the other side of your inferno.”

“It’s true I didn’t have time to entirely think my plan through. But the bonfire is rather like the panorama you painted, don’t you think?”

There was a whoosh as more curtains caught. Settees sprouted flames as if they were logs on a Christmas fire. Heat pulsed like a throbbing heart.

“Considerably hotter.”

We retreated back another room to where Cuvier and Smith lay blearily, drugged and hacking. Three other half-naked male patrons and their prostitutes were crawling about, all of them bawling in terror. “Surely there’s a back door,” I said, trying not to join the panic. I grabbed a trollop and shook her. “You! Which way out?”

“She bricked it up to control us!”

Well, damnation. I still didn’t have a clue where Astiza was, either. When I finally perfect my character, I’m going to conduct a more placid life. “Unless we can find a great deal of water, it seems I’ve cooked us,” I conceded.

“Or we can re-create that door,” Fulton said grimly. “Where did they brick up the second entrance?” he asked the girl.

“It’s two feet thick of heavy stone,” she wailed. “You’d need a day to break it!”

Fulton looked at me with exasperation. “What’s below us?” he asked me.

“How the devil would I know? Smith’s the rock man.”

“And above?”

“A gambling salon, I think. We’re in the cellar foundation of one wing of the Palais.”

“Then that’s the solution! To the tent! We go for the keystone, Ethan!”

I had no idea what he meant but followed his lead still deeper into the bordello, thankful to get farther from my fire. In another room was an erected tent of the Arabian type, piled with cushions and carpets to make a desert fantasy. Stout poles that reached nearly to the vaulted stone ceiling held the fabric up.

“Those are our battering rams,” the inventor said. “Our only hope is to bring the ceiling down on top of us.”

“Start a collapse? Are you mad?”

“Would you rather cook? If we can drop the floor of the gambling den, we can crawl out.”

I glanced upward. “But the stonework looks sturdy as a castle.”

“Which you didn’t consider before setting us ablaze, did you? However, the ceiling will be thinner than the walls, and every fortress has a weak point. Now wrap the tent and some of the pillows round that pole there, like a giant torch. Smith, Cuvier!” He slapped them into some semblance of stuporlike action. “Find water, or at least wine! No spirits that might ignite! Hurry, if you don’t want to roast! Ethan, go stick this matchstick into your fire and set it aflame!”

“Then what?”

“Carry it back to me.”

Not having a better idea, I advanced toward the inferno. The gunshots had ended; presumably because Osiris and Isis had the sense to flee out the main door. My ten-foot-long “torch” caught like a match and I retreated from the heat with the end of the tent pole blazing, Fulton helping me swing it up against the ceiling. “The keystone in this vault looked weakest,” he said, panting, letting the flames roar up against the central part of our roof. There the vault met at a central stone, the compression keeping the entire building steady. We squinted as bits of flaming fabric rained down. “We need to imitate quarrymen and use heat and cold to crack it.”

“I can hardly breathe,” I wheezed.

“Then work faster!”

The flare of silk and cotton burned out against the stone overhead just as Cuvier and Smith came dragging in a jar of liquid. Fulton grabbed it, swung, and hurled the water or wine—I was never sure which—against the heated ceiling, cool liquid against hot stone.

There was a snap, and cracks appeared, bits of rock spitting out. The keystone at the arched ceiling’s center was fractured.

“Now, now, the other tent pole! Hurry, before we pass out!”

I understood. I took a second pole, not yet burned, and rammed it against the stone highest in the ceiling with all my might. More rock rained down.

“Harder, harder!” Fulton shouted, helping me bang against the ceiling.

“Blazes, this is hard work,” I gasped, wondering what we were supposed to do if the ceiling truly gave way on top of us.

“Get the whores to help!”

As smoke swirled and the main fire licked toward us, the girls joined our battering, aided slightly by the woozy zoologist and drugged canal surveyor. Grunting, we rammed like pistons, driven by the energy that comes from fear and desperation. Finally there was another crack and the central stone suddenly plunged down, hitting the brothel floor with a bang. A girl shrieked and jumped aside. There was a dark gap overhead, the ceiling’s domed vault leaning in toward nothing.

“More, more, before we’re consumed!”

The fire’s heat kept rising. We rammed like maniacal besiegers and more stones began to drop and bounce, the women shouting warning as each came down. We could hear yells of confusion from the gambling hall above. Finally there was a grumble of grinding stone and cracking wood, building to a roar.

“Back, back, toward the fire!” We retreated out of the way as the ceiling suddenly caved, the vault collapsing of its own weight. Its crash shot out a cloud of dust. As it did so, there was a crack of beams and the casino floor above parted and gave way as well. A shaft of light broke in like a ray of heaven, even as splintered wood, gaming tables, chips, and playing cards plunged and fluttered into the new crater. Two or three stunned gamblers tumbled with it, dropping into our little cook pot as we cheered.

As blessed air rushed in, the fire behind bellowed.

“Up,” I gasped. “Climb the beams before the fire consumes them!”

We came out of the column of smoke like a hive of demons, the naked women black as coal, the stumbling savants drunk and punchy, and the swallowed gamblers screeching from their little preview of hell. Fulton leaped clear like a devil-king, singed but triumphant. We’d broken free!

I crawled out on the casino floor, eyes streaming, as patrons stampeded this way and that. Despite the confusion I had the presence of mind to salvage a coin or two.

French fire wagons had pushed to the door of the bordello and salon and were beginning to pump water into the hole we’d made. Beyond, a bleeding Osiris and half a dozen of his henchmen were crouched in the garden shadows in case by some miracle we might emerge. What did he truly want? What did he know about Astiza?

I pointed to Fulton. “There are our enemies.”

“What enemies?” He was hacking and wheezing. “I thought we came to be entertained.”

“I’m never entirely sure what’s going on myself. But we need a way out of the Palais. He meant to seize me, one way or the other, and drug you.”

“But how do we get out of his place? We can’t outrun them with Cuvier and Smith half sensible and a thousand people between us and the street. Can we fetch the police?”

“They don’t come here. If they did, they’d arrest us with that other lot and sort it out later. We might be strangled by our cellmates. And any scandal won’t help our causes with Napoleon.”

Water began to spout from the leather fire hoses as the fire brigade pumped fiercely. A chain of people were passing water in buckets from a Palais fountain to the copper tub mounted on the back of the fire wagon. It was a splendidly modern idea, although it didn’t seem to be making much progress against my fire.

“I’d propose a larger fire wagon and a horse-driven pump,” the inventor observed. “Or perhaps steam. But at least the authorities are trying.”

“That’s it! We’ll seize a fire wagon.”

“Are you serious? We won’t be arrested, we’ll be shot. And they need it for the fire.”

“They’ve no weapons, and Madame Marguerite deserves a few more flames for trying to entrap us. Look, more engines are coming, more than the fountains can feed, and that one there is simply waiting in line. We’ll pretend we’re dashing to get more water. Once we get past the men who tried to manacle me, we’ll give the fire wagon back.”

“It’s hardly bigger than a chariot!” Indeed, the two-wheel contraption was not much wider or longer than a field gun and hardly looked capable of putting out a campfire.

“We’ll have to squeeze.” And, collaring the dazed Cuvier and Smith, we charged. Fulton untwisted the hose loose from a wagon’s brass spigot while I heaved our two friends into a tub they didn’t really fit into. Their displacement slopped water over the rim. Then I seized the reins and, to cries of protest, lashed the two engine ponies out into the park and tables of the Palais. Diners scattered, prostitutes ran, and chess pieces went flying as we careened through the cafés. Then we were dashing pell-mell down the palace’s quarter-mile central courtyard, smashing aside chairs and batting lanterns as we made for the main entrance, which was an arched carriageway leading to the street beyond. Osiris saw our charge and ran to intercept us. Behind him, still hunched in pain and waddling as he hurried, was the man I’d kicked.

I rode them down.

I’d dealt with the Rite before, and they’d haunted my life like a recurring nightmare. I didn’t know what Osiris wanted and didn’t care, I only wanted to break free of his breed once and for all. So I balanced on the wagon and shook the reins as if flapping a blanket, horses stampeding, Fulton roaring as he hung on, Cuvier and Smith moaning. The riddler fell under my team. We bounced as we hit him, swerved, and skewed through the gate, hub scraping. I heard a shot and dared not look back.

We clattered out onto the broader rue Saint-Honoré, Palais patrons protesting behind us, pedestrians scattering ahead. The immense Louvre was a cliff in the dark. Paris is a mess of traffic at the best of times, delivery wagons blocking lanes and horses backing and pissing, so we came up against some trucks and carts, our horses getting tangled in their harnesses. Giving up the reins, I hauled our party from their perch. “Now, now, run!” We had to hide!

And that was when a languid man with black cane stepped in front of us with an air of utter authority. He held up his hand and said simply, “On the contrary, I command you to stop, Monsieur Gage.”

“Stop?”

“I’m afraid you’re all under arrest.” Around us materialized a dozen gendarmes. We’d run from Egyptian Rite to the Paris police.

“By whose orders?” I tried to bluster.

“By those of the first consul himself, Napoleon Bonaparte.”