“Catch it with what?” I asked.
“I suggest our boots,” said Smith. “I had to bail a leaky canal boat once and found my footwear quite adequate for the purpose.”
“I can hardly bear to put my feet in my shoes, let alone drink from them.”
“Then we can forgo the experiment and spend the rest of our short lives in slavery and torture.”
“You have a point. Bottoms up.”
We balanced on the barrel, pressed down, forced a leak, collected the overflow in each of our boots—we weren’t friends enough to share, trust me—and drank as much as we could. It was satisfying to steal from Dragut, even if it was only water. We drank until we were bloated and could make our own water, a time-consuming task in the heat.
“Whose shoe should catch the piss?” Fulton asked.
“Ethan’s, of course,” Smith replied.
“Wait,” I objected, “why not yours?”
“Because I didn’t concoct this expedition. Besides, you’re the one who found a palimpsest.”
I did persuade them to take a vote but it went unanimously against me, so our production of urine was collected in my footwear, my companions taking great satisfaction in draining their bladders there. Then we began to scrub the parchment with urine, slowly sloughing the medieval ink away to reveal whatever was underneath.
It was a map, I saw, with a cross-hatching of lines and symbols atop a chart that looked like the outline of a coast. A bay with a narrow neck was shown, and an arcing line like a fence or boundary crossed the interior. The Templars, or whoever had plastered that wall, had left not a book of prayer but a guide to something, or somewhere. Just possibly it had something to do with this ancient weapon—this heat ray of Archimedes—that we’d seen painted. Unfortunately, there were no words on the map, giving no indication what it depicted. I’d produced a urine-soaked treasure map of a place we couldn’t identify.
“Why are there no words?” Fulton asked.
“It’s for men who already know where they’re going,” said Cuvier.
Smith studied it in the dim light. “It looks familiar, somehow.”
“You’re our map man, Smith.”
“I’d say volcanic terrain, by the look of the coastline, but that bay could be anywhere.”
“Not Thira,” said Cuvier. “There are no bays like that.”
“I think you’ve actually found something, Gage,” Fulton said. “Decipher it, man!”
“I’m fairly certain those lines and numbers mean something.”
“Yes?”
“Unfortunately, I’m quite poor at puzzles. I really shouldn’t be a treasure hunter at all.”
And then a shadow fell on the grating. “Gage! Aurora will see you now!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I’ve been known to positively scamper to the side of an inviting woman, but I left our dank hold in dread at the thought of conversing with Lady Somerset. Beauty she might be, but I still bore the calf scar where she’d stabbed me with an Indian spear. Her new pet looked ready to chew on my other shank, and I was in no mood for witty repartee about our past. Nonetheless, her flagship was tacking to pick me up, and apparently I was expected to leap aboard with lusty panache. But Dragut took one whiff of me and yanked me back to wash. “By Allah, did you miss the bucket, or piss yourself in fear?”
“I just smell like a pirate, Hamidou.”
I was stripped and doused with bracing seawater. Then I pulled my tired clothing back on, combed my hair with fingers as best I could, balanced on the rail while the two ships drew abreast of each other, and seized a line swung from a boom on Aurora’s vessel. I did feel some pirate dash, and saw how the trade had its attractions. But then I looked about the flagship.
Aurora’s vessel, Isis, was bigger than Dragut’s, with heavier artillery and a larger crew, but exhibited the housekeeping of an Ohio flatboat. Lines were uncoiled, brass had curdled green, canvas and crates were lashed haphazardly, and bits of food and empty bottles rolled in the corners. Off-duty pirates snored next to gun tackle. Chickens pecked at grain scattered under a lashed longboat.
An American frigate would turn this to matchwood in minutes, I decided. Too bad there wasn’t one about.
“I know it’s not your habit to eat pork, but have you thought of keeping pigs?” I addressed my captors. “You’ve already built a marvelous sty.”
“Silence, slave!” I got lashed across the shoulders for my wit, and then a pock-faced bosun shoved me to the door of the stern cabin, guarded by flanking blacks with the muscled bulk of buffaloes. The sentries were haughty as Mamelukes, and regarded me with disdain bordering on disbelief. They must have thought their mistress could attract better.
“Didn’t have time to dress.”
They wrinkled their noses, checked me for weapons, and shoved me through.
“I’ll tell you what she’s like,” I called back to her goblins.
The corsair’s cabin, high enough to stand upright in, was pleasantly cool. The stern window glass was open and a breeze filtered through grilled wooden shutters. A Persian carpet covered the deck, and more carpets and pillows were piled in the peripheries to provide some Oriental opulence. Aurora herself lay like Cleopatra in a hammock that swung to the rhythm of the waves. She’d shed her fighting clothes for a linen shift that did little to conceal the voluptuousness of her figure. An emerald necklace of Spanish design draped her fine neck, and the matching earrings picked up the color of her eyes. Her fingers were bright with rings, and enough bracelets, armbands, and anklets hung on her limbs to make her a candidate for an anchor, should we have an emergency. Despite my knowledge that she was a hateful harridan, her seductive allure persisted, her lips pursed as she sipped from a golden goblet. Damnation, I felt aroused. But Aurora also held a pistol, and was as different from Astiza as a cobra from a nightingale.
It didn’t help that her mastiff watched me suspiciously from one corner, its growl distant thunder.
“Sokar, be quiet,” Aurora ordered. Sokar, if I recalled, was another Egyptian god of the underworld. This waist-high monster fit the part of nether demon.
“The hold I threw you into is a preview of one way our new relationship can continue,” she began without preamble, always the brisk dominatrix when the veil slipped. “I can assure you the dungeons of Tripoli are far worse, and the life expectancy of a Karamanli slave is shorter than that of a fleet sailor during a yellow jack plague. You never have enough food or water as a slave, it’s impossible to keep clean, and your weakened body breaks out into hideous boils and pustules. Whips and canes raise welts that grow red and leak pus, and your hair falls out in clumps. Your joints ache, your teeth rot, your tongue swells, and your vision goes milky.”
“Sounds like the clap after a night in bed with you.”
Her goblet jerked, hand whitening, and I could tell she wasn’t accustomed to candor. Any pirates who challenged her were probably at the bottom of the Mediterranean, and I suppose I risked that, too. Yet in some strange way I fascinated her. I had no idea why.
“Or, we can rule the world,” she finally managed.
“Aurora, you’ve done well for yourself since our last meeting—I believed you entirely mad and likely to die in the North American wilderness and yet here you are, a regular admiral—but I don’t think you’re on the brink of ruling the world. Capturing me is not on the same level as outdueling Nelson or Napoleon.”
“But capturing you is a step toward finding the mirror of Archimedes.”
“That’s what this is all about? The mythical toy of an eccentric old Greek?”