We did try standing on each other’s shoulders to reach the lip, but even with a precarious pyramid that had Cuvier, the lightest of us, reaching for the top, we were still too short. There was no shovel to pile sand, and no sand to pile in any event. There was, in short, no possibility of escape, and no communication. Didn’t they want ransom? Had they given up trying to corrupt us to betray the secret of Archimedes?
And then they did break my will, but in an entirely unexpected way.
Time had disappeared, and existence in the hole had become synonymous with eternity. Then, without warning, a chain rattled down, rusty and thick. Omar shouted in a deep voice, “Gage, alone!”
“What’s this?” Cuvier asked, with just a hint of suspicion.
“Perhaps I’m the first to be shot.” I could think of worse things, like staying where I was.
“I read they decapitate,” Smith said.
“Oh.”
“It’s very quick.”
“Ah.”
“Maybe they want to torture you,” Cuvier speculated.
“Remember our pledge, Ethan,” Fulton warned. “We dare not help them.”
“You remember it, too, when you hear my screams.” And with that I grasped the chain, wrapped my legs around its links, and shouted. Omar hauled me up the slimy walls of our well, with me rotating so I was thoroughly smeared with filth. I was weak by now from lack of proper food and water, and had a hard time even holding on. My companions feared for me but also followed my ascent with envy, as if I’d been given leave to levitate to someplace that wasn’t just an endless, hopeless now.
I knew better.
The Dungeon Master seemed to fill the pit’s tight chamber, his teeth yellow, his breath stinking, and the skin of his palms thick and hard as boot leather. He clamped his paws on the back of my neck as if it were the scruff of a kitten, half lifting and paralyzing me, and I’d no doubt that should I not go where he pushed, my head would be snapped from its stalk. He began shoving me up a rock passageway.
“Torture doesn’t work with me,” I tried in Arabic.
He used his other hand to cuff me with the power of a bear, the blow leaving my ears ringing. “Silence, pretty one. Time enough for noise.”
I saw no advantage in following his advice. “I have powerful friends, Omar, with money to buy not only the escape of us savants but a life for you, too, if you go with us.”
Now he stopped, holding me at arm’s length, and regarding me with squinted disbelief. “Look at me. Where else could I possibly be?” And then he slammed me back against the tunnel wall, my poor head bouncing, and dragged me even more roughly than before. “I told you not to talk. It makes it worse.”
I was taken past horrid iron machines stained dark with blood, and heavy doors with small barred windows from which insane gibbering escaped. How can people invent such places, let alone administer them? Then we turned into a side rat hole and he pushed me ahead down a tight spiral to a new chamber lit by a tiny slit far, far above. The single ray of light just emphasized the grotto’s darkness, its vaulted ceiling stained black by the smoke of two millennia of torches. There was a rude wooden table in the chamber’s center, with manacles at each of its corners. To one side was the glow of a forge on which sat a bubbling pot, giving off noxious fumes. Iron implements were thrust into the coals. My courage, never all that vast to begin with, was starting to shrivel.
I was slammed down on the table and chained helplessly in place, my throat and belly and privates exposed to whatever deviltry this dim monster could invent. Never had I felt so helpless! The tiny window made things worse, reminding me there was a different world beyond. From a beam overhead swung metal implements designed to pierce, pinch, and cut. I wanted to scream already, and nothing had yet been done.
“Soon you will talk more than you believed possible.” Omar, clinical as a doctor, pumped air into the coals with a bellows, sparks dancing. He slipped on a heavy leather glove and lifted out an iron bar like a fireplace poker and brought it over to where I helplessly waited.
He held it above my eyes, letting me see its glow. “Each time I do this, I learn ways to prolong the pain. Victims can live for days. Yes, Omar is not as clumsy as he once was!” The hulking brute nodded. “By the time I’ve had the last of your friends, I will make it last a very long time indeed; so long that I will become bored before they finally die.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” I managed. My throat was dry as dust, my muscles cracking from tension. “Finish us quickly, is my advice.”
“You are lucky you are first, while I am still learning. We will experiment with pain. And a handsome man like you needs a mirror, so I will bring one after my branding so that you can weep at the ruin I make of your face. My goal is to make you even more hideous than me. You will blister and infect, but I keep maggots to eat the corruption. It makes you last longer.”
“Thank goodness for maggots.” It was a wheeze.
“I am told you pride yourself with women, so I have tools to mutilate those parts as well. The groin is a locus of agony, and always elicits the greatest screaming.”
I was near to fainting. “Can’t you just kill me? Beheading, Smith read.”
There was a hiss and I jumped, the poker thrust into a pail of water and then reinserted in the coals. “Why would they need the skill of a Dungeon Master to do that? Anyone can hack off a head with a sword. It is torture that is an art. The shame of mutilation. The peeling of flesh.”
“Omar, please, I’ll pay anything…”
He was rummaging about, clanging and clattering his tools of torment. I squeezed my eyes shut. I could hear the scrape of coals, and smell the fumes. Something hissed like acid. Then there was a long silence. I tensed to wait for the first excruciating assault.
“Of course,” Omar said as if the idea had just occurred to him, “there is one other way.”
My eyes opened. “What? What?”
“Perhaps you would once more speak to the mistress.”
“Mistress?”
“The pirate queen, Lady Somerset.”
I was sweating. “Yes, yes! To her and Yussef! We’re the kind of men who should be ransomed, not tortured! Omar, let me see them, please! I’ll explain it is all a misunderstanding! We are really quite valuable!”
“I think they will find you as annoying as I do, and give you back to me to do as I wish. Unless you please them very much.”
“But that’s exactly what I do! I please people!”
“While you talk with them I will think of new ways to hurt your friends, in case you can’t come to agreement. I would like to hurt your friends very much.” He grinned like a maniac.
“No, don’t hurt my friends! Let me talk to Aurora!” By thunder, I’d tup the girl sideways and upside down, clenching my teeth while I did it, if that’s what it took to get off this torture table. No need to talk about ancient mirrors when I could just rely on my charm…
Suddenly janissaries entered and the manacles were unlocked from my shaking limbs. I felt utterly depleted, even though not a scratch had been inflicted. Omar lumbered off to attend to some other wretch while the Tripolitan guards hauled me upright with looks of disgust. I was shuddering. None of them called me pretty.
“Strip off your rags, American,” they ordered.
My hands were shaking so badly that they ripped my garments for me. Then they sluiced me with buckets of water again, the same rude bath I’d had on Dragut’s pirate ship. Filth streamed off until I finally stood abject and naked, shivering, ashamed at my weakness, and terrified of what might come next.
“Put these on.”
I was dressed in Moorish bloused trousers and a sleeveless vest, my chest bare, and given sandals for my raw feet. Maybe I’d have to turn Muslim after all! Then four of the soldiers formed a little box around me and we went up a flight of stairs. Realizing it must lead to the castle, I began to take note of where we were.