The Dakota Cipher

It’s hard to fight back with your trousers about your ankles, and I was too surprised in any event to react. Damnation! Had General Leclerc come back from his cantonment after all? I could try to explain we were merely dusting the bottles, but I didn’t think he’d believe me, given that both Pauline and I were both more exposed than a Maine lighthouse in a howling nor’easter.

‘He assaulted me!’ she shrieked, which was no more likely to be believed, given her amorous reputation.

‘You shouldn’t thrust yourself in where you do not belong,’ one of my assailants said with an accent I couldn’t place, just before a clout to the head blurred my vision and buckled my knees. My manhood was wilting and my longrifle and tomahawk had been checked with my greatcoat in the anteroom upstairs. I have an all too fervent imagination of what various enemies might do to me and woozily tried to cross my legs.

‘I know what this looks like …’ I began.

A gag went into my mouth.

Instead of having my throat or something even more valuable cut, they seemed determined to truss me like a sausage. Ropes were thrown around me as they pummelled and kicked, and in my daze I had the wit to do only one thing: fetch a handful of the chocolates I’d filched from my waistcoat pocket and slip them into my shirtsleeve just as my wrists were being bound. Having been tied before, I’d spent time giving the problem some thought.

I dimly saw Pauline was allowed to flee, pulling up and pushing down her filmy garment. One does not tie up Napoleon’s sister! Then, my own pants hauled up as well, I was dragged down a dark corridor to a cellar door that led to the gardens beyond. Given the situation, I didn’t expect her to call for my rescue.

So I tried to reason my way out. Unfortunately, my gag reduced my logic to muffled mumphs and growls.

‘Save your breath, American. You don’t even understand what you’re involved in.’

Hadn’t I been in the first consul’s sister? Or was this about something else entirely? I’d assumed I was being manhandled by the vengeful minions of Pauline’s husband or brothers, but perhaps some other retribution was going on. I tried to review who else might want me dead. Had someone really seen me leave that ruined Italian farmhouse, and was Renato just the first attempt at Egyptian Rite retribution, given that I’d incinerated Count Alessandro Silano? Had the Apophis snake cult from Egypt somehow trailed me to Paris? The British might be annoyed that I was once more with the French, like a shuttlecock in the wind. Then there were a few young ladies less than satisfied with the circumstances of our parting, a gambling victim or two, the occasional creditor, the entire Austrian army, the English sailors from HMS Dangerous whose pay I had taken in cards, the angry Muslims from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem …

For someone as likeable as me, I’d acquired an astonishing list of potential enemies. I suppose it doesn’t much matter who kills you, given that you will be dead anyway. Still, one likes to know.

I was dragged down a garden path like a log, thrown in a small, saucer-shaped coracle about as seaworthy as a leaf, and towed by rowboat across the chateau lake. I half expected to be weighted and tossed in the water, but, no, they beached our craft on the island where the fireworks were to ignite and bundled me past the shrubbery to where the combustibles were mounted. As near as I could tell, Despeaux had stockpiled enough incendiaries to light the Second Coming.

‘You always want to be at the centre of things. Now you will end that way, too,’ my assailants said. I was lashed to a stake in the middle of the display of rockets and mortars as if I, too, were a rocket set to shoot skyward. I realised that at the climax of the celebration of the Convention of Mortefontaine I would go up in flames like a roman candle. If anyone could identify my remains, they’d conclude poking around fireworks was just the thing the bold, foolish electrician Ethan Gage would try.

‘When the gag burns through you can scream, because by that time it will be impossible to hear you over the explosions,’ a captor said, not altogether helpfully. ‘Each shout will suck burning air into your lungs.’ And then they lit a slow fuse and departed without so much as an adieu, their oars quietly dipping as they made for shore.

I was doomed, unless my chocolate melted.

Having been tied before, upon return to Paris I’d made some study of the matter. It seems that the knack of getting out of knots is to have some slack, and that expanding the chest and bulging the muscles is a trick escape artists use to get them started on their bonds. In the case of my wrists, the chocolate in my sleeves had made their circumference bigger. Now, as the hard candy turned liquid, I squeezed my wrists together and the confection squirted out, loosening my ropes. Thank goodness for culinary invention! Being able to twist and move my hands, however, was not the same thing as being free. I saw with growing panic that the crowd from the party had come outside the chateau to watch the fireworks, their gaiety backlit by the glowing windows. Flirtatious laughter floated across the water and paper lanterns were set afloat on the lake. I could smell the burning fuse.

Sweating, unable to call out, I worked my wrists raw, thumbs pulling at strands, the mess of chocolate both lubricating the ropes and making them sticky. Finally, a key cord came loose.

Then there was a flash at the corner of my vision, and a sizzle. The pyrotechnics were about to ignite!

Thrashing my lower arms, I got the last bonds off my aching hands, freeing my arms to my elbows. By reaching up I managed to snag my gag and haul it to one side. ‘Help!’

The bloody orchestra, however, had broken into a rousing version of ‘Yankee Doodle,’ as cacophonous as a flight of geese. The crowd whooped as the fuse flamed towards the arsenal, its spark bright as a tiger’s eye.

So I clawed at the ropes holding my torso to the pole. My upper arms were still tied to my chest, but I had enough freedom below my elbows to get one end of the bond free and begin to awkwardly fling it to unwind myself, moaning at my own slowness. There was a whistle of powder and the first cluster of skyrockets soared up, smoke blinding anyone to my presence on the island. They exploded in a galaxy of stars, bright bits raining down. Some of the mortars coughed and burped, shells soaring. It was getting damnably hot damnably fast, and I was sweating. On and on the loose rope flew, growing longer and beginning to burn, even as the vile choir of exploding fireworks increased. If the climax was reached and the ground display turned the island into a fountain of flame, I was cooked, and dead.

‘Help!’ I called again.

Now they were playing the ‘Marseillaise’!

Finally I unwound myself free of the pole, went to run, and fell. My feet were still bound! Something was still strapped to my back! I didn’t have time for this! Skyrockets were screaming up in every direction, hot sparks were raining on my hair and clothes, and I was dazed and half-blinded by the excruciating light. I began hopping towards the water, clawing at the bonds at my chest.

Then the island seemed to erupt.

To the shrieking delight of the crowd, the ground display went off like a sun’s corona. Huge sheets of sparks shot up in pulsing arcs, the air a hell of sulphur, smoke, and stinging ash. The cords around my ankles caught fire, and if I hadn’t still had my boots on (Pauline and I had been in a hurry) I would have been badly burnt. On I hopped like a panicked rabbit, until I spied the saucer-shaped coracle I’d been towed out in. I collapsed on it, my momentum pushing it into the lake and dragging my own feet into the water. The flames extinguished with a hiss. Now I had my arms mostly free, but some rope still around my chest and biceps. My hair was smoking, and I threw water on that and got the now-burnt-through ropes off my feet. Finally I knelt, barely balancing in the wobbly craft, and hand-paddled towards the crowd, Hades in tumult behind me.

‘Look, what’s that! Something’s coming from the island!’

The damned idiots began to applaud, drowning my complaints once again. They thought I was part of the show! And just when I finally got near enough to shout about brigands and kidnappers, my hair nearly ignited again!

Or, rather, a molten fountain my torturers had cruelly stuck to my back, held by cords still around my chest, went off with a whoosh. The wooden tail was tucked in the back waist of my trousers, and apparently its fuse had ignited as I was fleeing the island. Now it – I – was a flaming torch. I reached behind and yanked the missile out of my bonds before it could finish roasting me and desperately held the spouting tube away from me by its hot nose, sparks shooting great, pulsing gouts of flame out the tail. The exhaust illuminated my figure, and actually gave me slight propulsion as I drifted towards the onlookers. Now everyone was cheering.

‘It’s Gage! What a character! Look, he’s holding up a torch to celebrate our convention!’

‘They say he’s a sorcerer! Lucifer means ‘light-giver,’ you know!’

‘Did he plan the entire show?’