The Emerald Storm

Chapter 11

We live in an age of science, modernity, change, and odd invention. It’s hard even to keep up. I was assaulting a castle because French and British lunatics thought it might be possible to flap around like birds, upending military strategy and everyday experience. Dangerous missions are often inspired by impossible ideas instead of sensible ones, and the revolutionary fervor that gave rise to notions such as equality have also uncorked the dreams of every tinkerer in Europe and America. Britain leads the world in discovery and experimentation, and I was told the English had come up with scientific sorcery that would make quick work of the iron grill above L’Ouverture’s cell.

“It’s carbon dioxide squeezed at 870 pounds per square inch,” Frotte explained as we prepared for the mission to break the prisoner out.

“Carbon what?”

“It’s a component of air,” said Cayley, the thirty-year-old lunatic who dreamed of flying. He looked the part of inventor, with high forehead, long nose, lip pursed in contemplation, and inquisitive eyes. He seemed as puzzled by my presence as I was by his. “The chemist Priestley published a paper before we were born on how dripping oil of vitriol on chalk can produce the gas in pure form.”

“I think I missed that one.”

“If you condense the resulting carbon dioxide tight enough, it liquefies. Expose it to air again and the liquid flashes into gas. Evaporation turns the carbon dioxide into a snow with a temperature more than a hundred degrees below zero.”

“I can scarcely conceive of more useless information.” Who cares what air is made of?

“We’re going to give you a canister of it to release on the bars,” Frotte explained. “The iron will go brittle from the cold, and a sharp blow with a chisel should snap it like an icicle. You’ll punch through to L’Ouverture in seconds.”

“See what science is for?” Cayley added.

“I’m something of an expert on electricity myself. I’ve used it to fry my enemies, find ancient hiding places, and make the nipples of ladies hard during private demonstrations.”

They ignored this. “The only drawback is that you’ll be carrying a carbon dioxide bomb of such extreme pressure that it could explode, ripping apart your torso and instantly freezing your guts,” cautioned Frotte. “The result would be startling and painful.”

“Not to mention fatal.”

“Which means it’s best to be careful,” added Cayley unnecessarily.

“Why doesn’t one of you carry it?”

“Because you’ve the incentive to rescue your wife, while George here will be busy with his flying machine,” said Frotte. “There’s no room for me, so I’ll organize the horses. Thanks to your emerald, fate has provided us with the hero of Acre and Tripoli for a most truly dangerous part.” He hoped flattery would give me spine.

“It was my emerald. Now that damned French policeman has it.”

“Once you know all of L’Ouverture’s secrets, imagine what you can bargain for!”

With those words in my ear, I scuttled across the castle roof. There was a flat parapet following the walls, towers poking up here and there. The center of the castle was a series of barrel-arched stone vaults over the cells. I’d been briefed on the location of L’Ouverture, and faint light emanated from a hole in the center of his vault. Across the hole were iron bars, and down it, I hoped, were the people I was to break from prison.

“Astiza!” I hissed.

“Here, Ethan.”

“Thank goodness. He hasn’t molested you, has he?”

“He’s so old and sick he can barely stand. Please hurry!”

“Was it hard to have them let you in?”

“The French are bored,” she said impatiently. “They found the idea of seducing him for secrets quite amusing. They’re probably listening for sounds of love.”

I pulled out the canister. “Is L’Ouverture ready?”

“Not really. He thinks us quite mad.”

“Well, he hasn’t lost his judgment, then.”

“The guards are suspicious. Stop talking and act.”

“Moan to buy us time.” Women are good at noises.

The bars formed a cross, meaning I had to break the rods in four places to get my wife and the black general out of their hole. I held the cylinder, used my gloved hands to loosen a screw cap the English had devised, and readied the spout over one of the bars. “Stand back while I release this,” I warned.

A lever freed a cork the final way and something-I suppose it was liquefied carbon dioxide-gushed out, flashing into white snow as promised. I dunked what Frotte had called “dried ice” on the point where an iron rod jutted from the masonry. Snow and steam swirled upward. Then I took my chisel and hammer and struck a blow where I’d frozen the iron. The bar snapped with a ring, surprising me with its glasslike fragility. Maybe this would truly work.

It’s clever being a savant, but noisy, too. I glanced about. No sentry yet.

I repeated the operation on the next bar, and the next.

A prison guard, alerted by the noise, pounded on the cell door below. “Mademoiselle?”

“Please, we are busy!” Astiza protested, feigning breathlessness.

“On the fourth blow, the grill will fall inward. Try to catch it,” I reminded. I froze the final bar and got ready to swing, but what I hadn’t counted on was that the fourth rod snapped all on its own from the weight of the grill, and dropped before I could even tap it.

It bonged like a bell on the floor below and I winced.

“What is going on?” the guard demanded.

“Games,” Astiza called, as if impatient at his interruption. “Do you know nothing of love?”

I poked my head down into L’Ouverture’s prison. It was a rather generous thirty by twelve feet, with a fireplace on one wall, a door at one end, and a narrow bed with rude blankets. A coal-dark face looked up from the bed in amazement, the bright white of his eyes the most arresting feature in the gloom. L’Ouverture looked thin, ill, and rather homely, with graying hair, thick lips, sunken cheeks, and thin limbs. This was a notorious womanizer? The fatalism of his gaze was disconcerting. He looked up at my head, framed in the skylight, as if I were some kind of angel, but not of mercy. Rather, the angel of long-wished-for death.

More guards pounded on the cell door. “Mademoiselle? Is he abusing you?”

“How can I finish my interview with all this knocking, you idiots,” my wife snapped. “Go away and give us privacy! We’re playing a game.”

I dropped a rope into the cell. “Astiza, use the bed to block the door. Toussaint, tie this under your arms.”

“Ethan, he’s too sick to move.”

“Then you move him.”

“No man goes before a lady,” the black general said, his voice deep but raw. He coughed, horribly. Damnation, he was feeble! He stood as if arthritic, grabbed his bed, and manfully dragged it to the wooden cell door to barricade it. “Your wife-whom I have not touched, monsieur-goes first.”

L’Ouverture was the first gentleman I’d encountered in some time.

And no time to argue! She expertly tied a noose (we’d practiced), slipped it under her arms, and I leaned back against the bricks of the barrel roof and heaved her up. Being much lighter than a man, in seconds she was up and beside me, giving me a quick kiss and glancing about as warily as a sparrow. Her eyes were bright, her smile crooked. She was enjoying this, I realized.

No wonder we’d married.

“I’m glad I didn’t have to hear you talk your way in.”

“You simply let men imagine more than they will ever get.”

Women practice that, keeping us constantly befuddled. Now some of those frustrated men were again banging on the door, shouting questions. L’Ouverture limped over to stand beneath the hole. “I am already dying,” he called up. “You are rescuing a corpse.”

“Not before you help freedom with your secrets. For liberty!” I dropped the rope again. With agonizing slowness he stepped into the noose and lifted it to his chest. I yanked to make it tight. The peephole in the cell door opened. Angry cries now, recriminations from an officer, and the squeal of keys. The French guards were unlocking the barricaded door.

Astiza seized the rope, too. “Pull!”

We hoisted. L’Ouverture spun like a top, ascending to heaven, limp with a curious resignation. Did he somehow foresee his end? Then there was a crash, the door butted in, the bed smashed into splinters, and then a volley of gunshots flashed in the gloom. The Haitian hero’s body jerked as it was riddled. Astiza and I looked at each other, horrified.

We dropped the rope in surprise. There was a thud as L’Ouverture’s body hit the floor. Had my hopes of rescuing my son died with him? The smoky room filled with soldiers, some of them glancing up at the hole in the roof. The two of us leaned back so as not to be seen. Their muskets were, for the moment, empty.

“Where’s his mistress?” one asked.

“On the roof somehow. She has an accomplice. Raise the alarm!” A bell began to clang. “Upstairs, you morons!”

“Time to flee.” I grabbed my wife and we sprinted back for the wall where we’d climbed. Cayley had made it up to the parapet there as planned, and had unfolded and assembled his invention behind its crenellation. The glider looked to me a kind of wooden bed frame from which canvas wings jutted, like flaps on the skeleton of a goose. No sturdier than a stack of jackstraws.

He greeted our arrival with relief. “Thank goodness we can go.” He glanced past. “Where’s the general?”

“Shot trying to escape.” I couldn’t keep the despair from my voice.

“Then all this was for nothing?”

“Not entirely,” Astiza murmured.

I didn’t have time to ask her what she meant, because the door opened to the tower room I’d climbed past. My would-be female companion, her hourglass charms on display in a linen shift, stood backlit by revealing candlelight. “Monsieur, what is that bell? Is it time for our rendezvous?”

“No! I told you to wait.”

“Ethan?” My wife’s tone was understandably suspicious.

“I had to tell her something to keep her from crying out.”

“Tell her what? That you were going to cheat on your wife?”

“Wife?” the girl asked, realizing another woman was beside me.

“It’s not what it seems,” I said to both of them.

And now the damsel did scream, screeching for Papa like a fury. Damnation, women are difficult.

Another door from another tower banged open, and more soldiers appeared, their primed muskets tipped with glinting bayonets.

“Time to fly!” Cayley cried. He picked up Astiza, heaved her onto the flimsy frame without apology, and tugged at me. “Lift on the other wing!” We hoisted and climbed up the low crenellated wall at the brink of the castle.

The guards were raising their guns. “They’re after the colonel’s daughter!” one cried.

I held the glider with one arm, pulled a pistol, and fired, my fist bucking, to throw off their aim. One of them actually went down. I threw the empty gun, making them instinctively duck, and then pulled and fired my other pistol.

“Now, now!” Cayley cried.

There was a volley of muskets, bullets tearing toward us.

Or rather, tearing toward where we’d been.

We’d launched into the abyss.