The Barbary Pirates

“The coin shows a man going in or out. I know it seems callous, but if we’ve got the right church we need to peek inside. If we hurry we’ll have it boxed up and things back in place in time for services.”

“You’d better. I think there’s a crowd forming outside.” We could hear barks, voices, and bumps on the church door.

“But how are we going to get the lid off?” Smith asked.

I looked at Fulton. “Robert, you’re the one who pried that railing off the bridge.”

He swallowed. “I had an oar.”

“Those iron candle stands look sturdy enough to me.” I took out my tomahawk and began chipping at the joint between lid and box, heedless of the damage it was doing to the edge of my blade. “Fetch one and we’ll jam it in this crevice I’m making.” They hesitated. “Quickly, lads, we’ve come this far! Probably nothing to see but bones, and nothing wrong with that, is there? We’ll all be fossils soon enough.”

So we hammered a wedge point into the junction between box and lid and used a sacred manoualia, the candle stand, as a lever and one of the stiff choir chairs as a fulcrum. I was sweating at the thought of what the locals would think if they stumbled in on us, but in for a penny, in for a pound. Someone started hammering on the church door. “Smith, take your blunderbuss into the narthex and discourage them.”

“I don’t even know who I’m shooting at!”

“Best not to ask, I’ve found. If they’re shooting at you, that’s identification enough.”

“I feel like a grave robber,” Cuvier muttered.

“In case you haven’t noticed, gentlemen, that’s exactly what we are.” The other three of us threw our weight on our pry bar, there was a cracking sound, and the lid shifted slightly.

“Yes!” Fulton said.

“Another heave, just enough to look!” With a grind and thump, we managed to shift the massive lid far enough to peer inside. It was dark, of course. “Fetch a candle!” Despite myself, I always get excited when I delve. I still mourned the lost treasure of the pyramid, and secretly hoped I might find another.

Outside, there was a boom and crack as something crashed energetically against the church door.

So I bent and pushed the candle inside, illuminating the interior of the sarcophagus.

It was vacant as a trollop’s wink.

And then Smith’s blunderbuss went off.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“They made a hole in the door and I had a look!” the Englishman cried. “There’s a crowd outside with scimitars and muskets!” He backed to reload. A chunk of the door had been knocked loose by an ax seeking to chop an opening, and Smith had fired through that. The chopping had stopped. We heard shouts and yells outside and then muzzles were pushed through and shots fired blindly. Thankfully, they thudded harmlessly into the stone. The door was too thick to break easily, and the church windows too high and small to easily climb into. Of course, that made them hard to climb out of, as well.

“How many?” I asked.

“More than in Venice or Paris.”

“Who are they?”

“How the devil should I know? I saw hoods, helmets, turbans, and scarves. You seem to make enemies with half the world, Ethan. Too many to fight for very long, at least. So what’s in the sarcophagus?”

“Not a blessed thing,” Fulton said.

“Ah. So we’re trapped in a Greek church on a bleak island at the edge of the Ottoman Empire for absolutely no reason at all?”

“It appears so,” my inventor friend said.

“Maybe we just got the wrong sarcophagus,” I tried.

“I wish I’d stayed in London. My mother warned me about Paris.”

Now a dull boom began to echo through the nave as whoever was outside began to slam some kind of ram against the door. The wood bulged with each strike, the bar beginning to crack.

“Maybe there’s a back door,” I suggested. I could see the reflection of torches through the high, open windows.

“If we go through it and outside we’ll be cut to pieces,” Cuvier said.

“And you don’t think that will happen when they get in here?” Smith glanced up. “You can’t reach the ceiling as you did at the Palais, either.” The dome peaked thirty feet above our heads. “I think Gage has led us into a dead end.”

“We can make a fight of it,” I said, sounding braver than I felt. “If it’s just peasants, they’ll back off.”

“I saw uniforms. And enough cutlery for a palace kitchen.”

“Ethan, if you give me a hand I think I can delay them when they come through that door.” Fulton hefted his bagpipe, and again I heard the curious slosh. “It’s the dragon I’ve been working on. It spits fire.”

“Satan’s brew, Robert?”

“It’s a twist on Greek fire, the ancient combustible. If it works, they’ll hesitate.”

I thought frantically. “All right. We’ll start a conflagration, and then we’ll hide.”

“Where?”

“Cuvier, unlock a back door or tie the altar cloth to a high window to make it look like we’ve fled. Then we’ll secrete ourselves in the sarcophagus, and once they’ve run on by, we’ll escape by running the other way. It’s quite brilliant, really.”

“You want to get in a tomb and close the lid?”

“Just for a moment, to confuse them. Do you have a better idea?”

There was a crash as the bar of the church door cracked through and splintered timbers heaved inward. We could see a boiling mass of men, some turbaned and some not, the glint of steel, and the flame of torches.

“There’s no time!”

“Yes there is!” cried Fulton. “Ethan, take up that candle stand there!” He was steady as a fireman as he aimed one of the pipes of his instrument at the disintegrating door, and I noticed he’d screwed on a tubular extension extending it three more feet. “Even a wolf learns not to touch a hot stove.” There was a technical grimness about him, a willingness to put deviltry to practical use, if it were for a good cause—or self- preservation.

The bar finally burst entirely, the doors flying wide. Hooded, caped men like the crew we’d encountered in Venice pushed into the narthex of the church.

“Now!” Fulton cried. “Hold the candle flame near the tip of my tube!”

He squeezed his bag and instead of song, a jet of mist sprayed from his new nozzle. When I held the candle stand to put a flame into the stream, it ignited into a cone of fire that reached out like dragon’s breath. There was a whoosh as the flame flared out, licking at the broken door and igniting some of the Egyptian Rite minions pushing through.

Men screamed, capes catching fire.

Fulton aimed his pipe like a fire hose and that’s what, I suppose, I should call it, since fire came from its tip instead of water. The bag shot liquid fire thirty feet, igniting the door, its frame, and several attackers. The mob heaved back in terror and confusion and collapsed into a tangle, companions beating at the flames. A preview for the wicked, I thought grimly. The fiery door temporarily protected us with a shield of flame and smoke. Shots came through the murk, bullets pinging.

“Back into the nave!” the inventor cried. He carried the bag with him.

We retreated to the main room of the church and slammed that door, piling psaltery chairs against it. Then we ran for the sanctuary. Cuvier had already sprung a side entrance as if we’d fled that way, and now we slammed shut the sanctuary gates, shoved the heavy sarcophagus lid to make a wider opening, and piled inside, dragging our weapons with us.

“What about air?” the French savant asked.