William Dietrich - The Emerald Storm

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.

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.

Should I surface?

The decision was made for me when my nose emerged of its own accord. Bullets had pierced the tub, missing me, and the receptacle was rapidly draining.

Strong hands grasped and hauled me upright.

“I know nothing!” I sputtered again. Which was close enough to the truth.

“Good God, Gage,” someone said in English, “you’re just as much trouble as Sidney Smith said you’d be.”

Sidney Smith? My old savior (or was it nemesis) from the Holy Land? I’d fought for him against Napoleon until fate cast me again on the French side, and he seemed to have retained a fondness despite my confusion of alliances. I am profoundly likable. “You’re English?” I asked the men, more baffled than ever.

“A French Anglophile. Charles Frotte, sir, at your service, with compliments of Sir Sidney.” He began sawing at my bonds with a knife large enough to make me hope his energy was matched by precision. Two bodies of renegade gendarmes were sprawled on the floor, and the others had fled. Frotte’s companions were reloading their guns. “I’m afraid Martel has gotten away and is no doubt mustering help. We must hurry.”

My veins stung as circulation began to return. “I’m afraid I’m not up for running.”

“We have a coach.”

Frotte had that intensity common to small, wiry men that can be wearying except in an emergency, which was now. My bonds fell away, and one of his confederates worked the latch on the iron collar at the back of my neck. It toppled with a clang, narrowly missing a toe. My boots had disappeared. The magnifying glass had dropped from my neck to the bottom of the tub, and I instinctively snatched it up again, in case I somehow got my gem back. When your income is as uncertain as mine, you don’t forget anything that might help preserve your fortune.

Frotte’s men half carried me from the cellar. Dark and caped, they looked exactly like the ruffians I’d just escaped from. There’s uniformity to the spy trade; its practitioners have far more in common with one another than whichever nation they serve.

A black coach waited in an alley, its hubs almost touching each wall. Two heavily muscled black horses were in harness, snorting and steel-shod, with a restlessness conjured out of a nightmare. Vapor huffed from the animals’ nostrils, and a coachman hooded like death hunched on the driver’s seat. I looked about. Unfortunately, there was no frilly cabriolet.

“We have to save my wife, too,” I finally managed as my wits returned.

“Your wife, Monsieur Gage, has saved you. We’re off to confer with her.” Frotte shoved me into the coach with him, a shotgun and musket leaning against its seats. Two companions hung off the back, and with a crack of the coachman’s whip we were off.

“Who the devil-” I began.

“They’re running to block us, sir!” the coachman shouted from above.

“Excuse me,” said Frotte politely. He picked up the shotgun, leaned out the carriage door, and fired ahead.

There were howls, answering shots, a pop as a bullet hole dilated our coach cabin a foot from my head, and then we bumped over something prone and yelling on the muddy street. I heard a crack of bone. The horses galloped, mud spraying. One of our saviors grunted in pain and fell off the rear of our vehicle with a thud. Our wheels skidded, then held.

There are proposals to pave Paris’s streets, but it’s a faddish and wayward idea. A dirt lane can be repaired by anyone with a shovel, and swallows its own manure and refuse. Stone cobbles, in contrast, keep horse droppings on display, like one of Nitot’s jewels. Dirt isn’t clattery like cobbles, and horses can get up a good grip. Paving sounds very smart, but it’s as questionable a strategy as steamboats and submarines. Dandies complain of the mud, but that’s what boots and planks are for.