we thrashed and cursed on the floor, the jeweler’s workbench turning over. And then, as I clawed for one of their pistols in hopes of using it as a club, hands grabbing my throat and ankles, something struck my head, and everything went black.
Chapter 7
I awoke in a vaulted cellar of smoky stone, suspended upside down like an unhappy possum and annoyed that the police, if that’s who they were, wanted me, since I knew not a whit.
As I woozily came to, I got an upside-down look at my assailants, including Martel, recognizable because he had a bandaged nose and foul expression. Corruption had hardened him. His jaw was shovel-shaped, as if in the habit of digging into others’ affairs, and his skin was cribbaged from some kind of pox. I theorized this cruelty of fate made flirtation difficult and kept him in bad humor; people who don’t have frequent congress are sour and mean. Martel’s Gallic skin was dark from sun and weather, and his thick, unruly hair was barely controlled by a cord on his queue. Dark brows met over his now-broken nose, heavy lips tended toward a sneer, and his face had the overall grimness that comes from a desperate childhood, too much drink and disappointment, or both. He was the sort of man who either guards a prison or inhabits it. Not a cat, I decided, but a feral rodent. While useful to superiors, he can never be one of them because his edges are too rough. I could tell Martel knew that, and it gnawed at him. He could rise only so high.
“Where did the emerald originate, Gage?” His breath was like that of a diseased Neapolitan whore who subsists on cheap wine and suspect foods like tomato and eggplant. Italians, I’d learned, would eat anything.
Not that I necessarily know anything about diseased Italian whores.
“Where’s Astiza?” I countered.
It seemed a reasonable question, but one of his henchmen hit me with a carriage whip for asking it. I yelped. Martel stuck his bandaged nose in my face again. The man needed a good toothbrush, and a pick, too. “What do you know of the flying machines?”
“The what?” It occurred to me that I’d been captured by lunatics, which is always more dangerous than the merely covetous. “Say, did my wife get away?”
The switch struck again, which I took to be an answer in the affirmative. They were angry at how things had gone, which was encouraging. But they also plunged me into cold, filthy water, which was not.
I didn’t even have time to take a breath that first time, and began choking immediately. They hauled me back up as I wheezed and coughed, shaking my head like a dog so I could spray their breeches. It was all the defiance I could muster.
“Who the devil are you?” I gasped. “You’re not just thieves. You’re worse.”
“We’re the police, I told you. Inspector Leon Martel. Remember that name, because in time I’ll make you pay for my nose with your own, unless you tell me what I want to hear. The fact we’ve lost our patron in the ministry doesn’t erase our loyalty to France. We act on our own for the good of the state.”
A criminal with a badge is the very worst kind. “Your superiors have no idea what you’re up to here?”
“They’ll thank us for it.”
It’s never good when evil thinks it’s doing the right thing.
“I do know one secret,” I tried. “I have friends trying to build a steamboat, which is a vessel powered by one of Watt’s clamorous engines. It’s going to be demonstrated for Napoleon on the Seine this summer. I wouldn’t care to fetch the boiler wood myself, but it may prove a brilliant investment opportunity, though personally I can’t see the logic, yet men like you wagering on the idea at this opportune stage-”
I was plunged down into the water again.
Their questions hammered at me. How had I learned about the jewel? Where was the treasure of the Aztecs? What did I know about flying machines? Oh, they were balmy, all right, and not a little happy to keep me so rattled that it gave them an excuse to dunk me again and again. They were having a jolly good time of it, whereas I experienced the shock of cold water, the dark and helplessness, the agonizing holding of breath, the terrible sensation of drowning, excruciating resurrection back to the light… how precious is the air we so take for granted! Searing pain of lung, raw throat, leaking nostrils, the dread of extinction…
I’ve had better conversations.
“I took it from a heathen pasha!” I sputtered. “It’s only proper recompense for serving the first consul. He’s a friend, I warn you!” And down they sank me again.
Each time was longer, but instead of loosening my lips, the torture was turning me insensible. They began to realize this, as Martel started pacing.
“Maybe he’s really as stupid as he says,” one of his henchmen suggested.
“The great Ethan Gage? Hero, explorer, and negotiator? He makes fools of men by playing the fool. The one man in the world to find this emerald just happens to be the one who has roamed from the Holy Land to Canada? Who befriends savants and politicians? Who served the foul Englishman Sir Sydney Smith? No, Gage knows far more than he’s telling us. Look at him hang there, playing the idiot.”
“But I am an idiot,” I tried. And down I plummeted again.
Living a significant life is terribly overrated.
“I believe the treasure is in the Great Pyramid of Egypt,” I tried the next time, making up nonsense just to get them to stop. “The Aztecs and Egyptians were one happy bunch, you see, with nearly the same kind of architecture. Of course I’ve no idea how to get back inside, but with enough gunpowder-”
They lashed me again, grunting each time they swung the switch. Flogging never works, but we live in an age when it’s the first solution to everything. Lord, it hurt! But at least they didn’t dunk me, since I truly was on the brink of drowning.
“What do we do now, Martel?” the accomplice said. “Fouche can’t protect us anymore, and Bonaparte will be impatient. I warned you that no man brings his wife on a treasure hunt, or dawdles in Paris while riches await.”
“Silence!” He glared at me. “He must know more than he’s telling.”
Why do people assume this? Men never want my advice when I have any, and whip me for it when I don’t.
“To hell with him,” Martel went on. “Let’s drown Gage and throw the body into the Seine.”
“His wife had Bonaparte’s ornament.”
“And Gage his iron collar. By the time anyone finds him he’ll be rotted to cheese.”
An unpleasant picture. “Why don’t you just keep the emerald?” I countered. “I promise not to tell, and if I hear of any more riches, I’ll be sure to let you know…”
Then there was a shot, loud and shocking in the close cellar, and a bullet hit the rope I was suspended by, twanging it like a harpsichord string. It frayed, I twirled, it broke, and then I dropped like an anchor toward the tub of water, hitting the bottom with a great splash. Even submerged, I heard a blaze of other shots ring out. And then I truly began to drown.
I should have sold the thing in Naples.
Chapter 8
A t first, being shot down into water deep enough to drown seemed worse than being deliberately dunked, since there was no block and tackle to haul me out and the iron collar kept my head hard against the bottom. I wiggled in my ropes like a worm, but I’d awkwardly jammed.
Thinking further, I remembered the gunfire and considered whether staying under for a spell might not be the safest strategy after all. Instead of thrashing, I tried to be inconspicuous while hard things pounded the tub’s sides.
Soon I neared the limit of how long I could hold my breath. There was an unholy clamor through tin and water, and I wondered what the devil was going on.
