His men, chastened, started firing again. As frightened as they were of the formidable French, they were terrified of Djezzar.
Then a flaming meteor fell from the tower.
It was the keg of gunpowder I’d suggested. It hit, bounced, and exploded.
There was a thunderous roar and a radiating cloud of wood splinters and metal bits. The clustered grenadiers reeled, the closest blown to bits, others severely wounded, and still more stunned by the blast.
Djezzar’s men whooped and began firing into the milling French in earnest, adding to the havoc below.
The assault thus ended before it could properly begin. With their own cannon unable to fire too close to their charge, their ladders too short, the breach too small, and the resistance newly stiffened, the French had lost momentum. Napoleon had gambled on speed over tedious siege preparation, and lost. The attackers turned and began scrambling back the way they’d come.
“See how they run?” Djezzar shouted to his men.
And indeed, the Turkish troops began to shout in amazement and new confidence. The ruthless Franks were retreating! They were not invincible after all! And from that moment a new confidence seized the garrison, a confidence that would sustain them in the long dark weeks to come. The tower would become the rallying point not just for Acre but for the entire Ottoman Empire.
When the sun finally crested the eastern hills and fully lit the scene, the havoc was apparent. Nearly two hundred of Napoleon’s troops lay dead or wounded, and Djezzar refused to slacken fire to let the French recover their injured. Many died, screaming, before the survivors could finally be carried to safety the next night.
“We have taught the Franks Acre’s hospitality!” the Butcher crowed.
Phelipeaux was less satisfied. “I know the Corsican. That was just a probe. Next time he will come stronger.” He turned to me. “Your little experiment had better work.”
The failure of Napoleon’s first assault had a curious effect on the garrison. The Ottoman soldiers were heartened by their successful repulse, and for the first time attended to their duties with proud determination instead of fatalistic resignation. The Franks could be beaten! Djezzar was invincible! Allah had answered their prayers!
The British sailors, in contrast, sobered. A long succession of naval victories had made them cocky about “facing the frogs.” The courage of the French soldiers, however, was noted. Bonaparte had not retreated. Instead his trenches were being dug forward more vigorously than ever. The seamen felt trapped on land. The French used scarecrows to draw our fire and dug out our cannonballs to fire back at us.
It didn’t help that Djezzar was convinced the Christians in Acre must be plotting against him, even though the attacking French were from a revolution that had abandoned Christianity. He had several dozen, plus two French prisoners, sewn into sacks and cast into the sea. Smith and Phelipeaux could no more stop the pasha than Napoleon could have stopped his troops at the sack of Jaffa, but many English concluded their ally was a madman who could not be controlled.
Djezzar’s restless enmity was not limited to followers of the cross.
Salih Bey, a Cairo Mameluke and old archenemy, had fled Egypt after Napoleon’s victory there and came to make common cause with Djezzar against the French. The pasha greeted him warmly, gave him a cup of poisoned coffee, and threw his corpse into the sea within half an hour of his arrival.
Big Ned told his fellows to put their trust in “the magician”—me.
The same trickery that had allowed me to defeat him, a man twice my size, would help us prevail against Napoleon, he promised. So at our direction, the sailors built two crude wooden capstans on either side of the tower. The chain would be hung like a garland across its face, the elevation controlled by these hoists. Next I moved my Leyden jars and cranking apparatus to a floor halfway up the tower, which contained the sally door from which I’d challenged Big Ned. A smaller chain with a hook would link with the larger one, and that chain in turn would be touched by a copper rod connected to my jars.
“When they come, Ned, you must crank like the very devil.”
“I’ll light the frogs up like a fire at All Hallows, guv’nor.”
Miriam helped set the apparatus up, her quick fingers ideal for linking the jars. Had the ancient Egyptians known such sorcery, too?
“I wish old Ben was here to see me,” I remarked when we rested in the tower one evening, our metal sorcery gleaming in the dim light from the tower’s arrow slits.
“Who’s old Ben?” she murmured, leaning against my shoulder as we sat on the floor. Such physical closeness no longer seemed remarkable, though I dreamt of more.
“An American wiseman who helped start our country. He was a Freemason who knew about the Templars, and some think he had their ideas in mind when he made the United States.”
“What ideas?”
“Well, I don’t know, exactly. That a country is supposed to stand for something, I guess. Believe in something.”
“And what do you believe, Ethan Gage?”
“That’s what Astiza used to ask me! Do all women ask that? I ended up believing in her, and as soon as I did, I lost her.”
She looked at me sadly. “You miss her, don’t you?”
“As you must miss your betrothed who died in the war. As Jericho misses his wife, Big Ned his Little Tom, and Phelipeaux the monarchy.”
“So here we are, our circle of mourning.” She was quiet a moment.
Then, “Do you know what I believe in, Ethan?”
“The church?”
“I believe in the Otherness the church stands for.”
“You mean God?”
“I mean there’s more to life’s madness than just madness. I believe that in every life there are rare moments when we sense that Otherness that is all around us. Most of the time we are sealed up, lonely and blind, like a chick in its egg, but occasionally we get to crack the shell for a peek. The blessed have many such moments, and the wicked not one. But when you do—when you’ve sensed what is truly real, far realer than the nightmare we live in—everything is bearable.
And I believe that if you can ever find someone who believes like you do, who strains against the egg that constrains us—well, then the two of you together can smash the shell entirely. And that’s the most we can hope for in this world.”
I shivered inwardly. Was the monstrous war I’d been trapped in the past year some false dream, some enclosing shell? Did the ancients know how to crack open the egg? “I don’t know if I’ve ever had even a single moment. Does that make me wicked?”
“The wicked would never admit it, not even to themselves.” Her hand felt my stubbled jaw, her blue eyes like the abyss off the reef at Jaffa. “But when the moment comes you must seize it, to let in the light.”
And so she kissed me, fully this time, her breath hot, her body straining against mine, her breasts flattened against me, and her torso trembling.
I fell in love then, not just with Miriam, but with everyone. Does that sound insane? For the briefest of breaths I felt linked to all the other troubled souls of our mad world, a weird sense of community that filled me with heartbreak and love. So I kissed her back, clinging.
Finally, I was forgetting the pain of long-lost Astiza.
“I kept your golden angels, Ethan,” she murmured, pulling a velvet pouch that she had hung between her breasts. “You can have them back now.”
“Keep them, as a present.” What use did I have for them?
And then there was a roar, a spit of mortar, and our entire tower quaked as if a giant hand was shaking it to spill us out. For a moment I feared it would go over, but it slowly stopped swaying and just settled slightly, its floor at a slight tilt. Bugles sounded.
“They set off a mine! They’re coming!”
It was time to try the chain.
CHAPTER 14
I peered out the sally port into a fog of smoke and dust. “Stay here,” I told Miriam. “I’m going to try to s
ee what’s happening.” Then I galloped for the top of the tower.
Phelipeaux was already there, hatless, leaning over the edge of the parapet and heedless of French bullets pattering about.
“The sappers dug a tunnel under the tower and packed it with gunpowder,” he told me. “They misjudged, I think. The moat is rubble, but we only breached. I don’t see cracks all the way up.” He pulled himself back and grasped my arm. “Is your devilry ready?” He pointed. “Bonaparte is determined.”
As before a column of troops trotted beside the ancient aqueduct, but this time it looked like a full brigade. Their ladders were longer than last time, bobbing as they jogged. I leaned out myself. There was a large gap at the base of the tower and a new causeway of rubble in the moat.
“Rally your best men at the breach,” I told Phelipeaux. “I’ll hold them with my chain. When they bunch, hit them with everything we have from down there and up here.” I turned to Smith, who’d come up breathless. “Sir Sidney, ready your bombs!”
He gulped air. “I’ll drop the fire of Zeus on them.”
“Don’t hesitate. At some point, I’ll lose power and they’ll break my contraption.”
“We’ll finish them by then.”
Down Phelipeaux and I dashed, he to the breach and I to my new companion. “Now, Ned, now! Come to our room and crank for all you’re worth! They’re coming, and our battery of jars must be fully charged!”
“You lower the chain, guv’nor, and I’ll give it a spark.”
I put a few sailors at each of the capstans, telling them to crouch until it was time to lower. A full-scale artillery duel had broken out since the mine explosion, and the scale and fury of the battle was breathtaking. Cannon were firing everywhere, making us shout against their thunder. As balls smashed into the city, bits of debris would fly into the air. Sometimes the shadowy stream of the missiles could be spied sailing overhead, and when they struck there was a great crash and puff of dust. Our own balls were throwing up great gouts of sand where they fell amid the French positions, occasionally flipping or destroying a field piece or powder wagon. The leading French grenadiers were breaking into a run, ladders like lances, making for the moat.
“Now, now!” I shouted. “Lower the chain!” At both ends, my sailors began letting the capstan cables out. The suspended chain, like a holiday garland, began scraping and sliding down the side of the tower toward the breach at its base.
When it reached the gap I had them tie it off, the chain hanging across the hole in the tower like an improbable entry bar. The French must have thought we’d gone mad. Whole companies of them were firing volleys at our heads atop the wall, while we returned the compliment with grapeshot. Metal whined and buzzed. Men screamed or gasped in shock as they were hit, and the ramparts were becoming slick with blood.
Djezzar appeared, still in his old mail like a crazed Saracen, striding up and down past the sprawled or crouched bodies of his soldiers, heedless of enemy fire. “Shoot, shoot! They’ll break when they realize we won’t run! Their mine didn’t work! See, the tower still stands!”
I dashed down the tower stairs to the room where my companions were. Ned was cranking furiously, his shirt off, his great torso gleaming with sweat. The glass disk spun like a galloping wheel, the frictional pads buzzing like a hive. “Ready, guv’nor!”
“We’ll wait for them to get to the chain.”
“They’re coming,” Miriam said, peering out an arrow slit.
Running madly despite the withering fire decimating their ranks, the lead grenadiers charged across the causeway of rubble that half filled the moat and began clambering toward the hole their mine had made, one of them holding a tricolor banner. I heard Phelipeaux shout a command and there was a rippling bang as a volley from our men inside the base of the tower went off. The lead attackers pitched backward and the standard fell. New attackers scrambled over their bodies, shooting back into the breach, and the flag was raised again.
There was that familiar thud of lead hitting flesh, and the grunts and shouts of wounded men.
“Almost there, Ned.”
“All my muscle is in those jars,” he panted.
The leading attackers reached my iron garland and clung. Far from a barrier, it was more like a climbing aid as they reached back to hoist up comrades behind them. In no time the chain was thick with soldiers, like wasps on a line of treacle.
“Do it!” Miriam cried.
“Give a prayer to Franklin,” I muttered. I pushed a wooden lever that rammed a copper rod from the batteries against the small chain connected to the big one. There was a flash and crackle.
The effect was instantaneous. There was a shout, sparks, and the grenadiers flew off the chain as if kicked. A few could not detach themselves, screaming as they burned, and then hanging on the chain shuddering, their muscles putty. It was ghastly. I could smell their meat. Instantly, confusion reigned.
“Fire!” Phelipeaux shouted from below. More shots from our tower, and more attackers fell.
“There is strange heat in that chain!” the grenadiers were shouting.
Men touched it with their bayonets and recoiled. Soldiers tried to lift or tug it and dropped like stunned oxen.
The contraption was working, but how long would the charge hold? Ned was wheezing. At some point the attackers would notice how the chain was suspended and break it down, but now they were milling uncertainly, even as more troops poured into the moat behind them. As they bunched, more of them were shot down.
Suddenly I realized an absence and looked wildly about. “Where’s Miriam?”
“She went to carry powder to Phelipeaux below,” Ned grunted.
“No! I need her here!” The breach would be a butcher’s shop. I ran for the door. “Keep cranking!”
He winced. “Aye.”
Two floors below, I stepped into the full fury of battle. Phelipeaux and his band of Turks and English marines, with fixed bayonets, were jammed in the tower’s base, firing and fencing through the ragged breach with French grenadiers trying to get under or over the chain.
Both sides had hurled grenades, and at least half our number were down. On the French side, the dead lay like shingles. From here the breach looked like a yawning cave open to the entire French army, a hideous hole of light and smoke. I spied Miriam at the very front, trying to drag one of the wounded back from French bayonets.
“Miriam, I need you above!”
She nodded, her dress torn and bloody, her hair a wild tangle, her hands red with gore. Fresh troops rushed, touched the chain and screamed, and hurled backward. Crank, Ned, crank, I prayed under my breath. I knew the charge would become exhausted.
Phelipeaux was slashing with his sword. He took a lieutenant through the chest, then slashed at another’s head. “Damned republicans!”
A pistol went off, narrowly missing his face.
Then there was a female scream and Miriam was being dragged from us. A soldier had crawled under and caught her legs. He began hauling her back with him as if to throw her on my device. She’d be cooked!
“Ned, stop cranking! Pull back the copper rod!” I shouted. But there was no chance he could hear me. I plunged after her.
It was a charge into a wedge of Frenchmen who had crawled under. I grabbed a dropped musket and swung wildly, knocking men aside like tenpins, until it broke at the stock’s wrist. Finally I grabbed Miriam’s kidnapper and the three of us began to writhe, she clawing at his eyes.
We stumbled in the debris, hands clutching at us from both sides, and then I received a blow and she was pulled from me and hurled against the chain.
I braced, waiting for my witchcraft to kill what I now loved.
Nothing happened.
The metal had gone dead.
There was a great cheer, and the French surged forward. They hacked at the chain ends and it fell. A dozen men dragged it away, inspecting it for the source of its mysterious powers.
Miriam had fallen with the chain. I tried to cr
awl under the surging grenadiers to reach her, but was simply trampled. I grasped the hem of her dress, even as booted soldiers charged and stumbled over the top of us. I could hear shots and cries in at least three languages, men snorting and going down.
And then there was another roar, this one even louder than the mine because it was not confined underground. A massive bomb made from gunpowder kegs had finally been hurled from the tower top by Sidney Smith. It fell into the mass of Frenchmen who had bunched before the chain and now it exploded, its force redoubled by the moat and tower that bounded it. I hugged the rubble as the world dissolved into fire and smoke. Limbs and heads flew like chaff. The men who had been trampling us turned into a bloody shield, their bodies falling on us like beams. I went briefly deaf.
And then hands were digging at us to drag us backward. Phelipeaux was mouthing something I couldn’t hear, and pointing.
Once more, the French were retreating, their casualties far heavier than before.
I turned back, shouting a shout I couldn’t hear myself. “Miriam! Are you alive?”
She was limp and silent.
I carried her from the wreckage and out of the tower to the pasha’s gardens, my ears ringing but beginning to clear. Behind, Phelipeaux was shouting orders for engineers and laborers to begin repairing the breach. The garden air was smoky. Ash sifted down.
I lay my helpmate on a bench beside a fountain and put my ear to her lips. Yes! A whisper of tremulous breath. She was unconscious, not dead. I dipped a handkerchief in the water, pink from blood, and wiped her face. So soft, so smooth, under the grime! Finally the coolness brought her back. She blinked, shivering a little, and then abruptly jerked up. “What happened?” She was shaking.
“It worked. They retreated.”
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