The Rosetta Key

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.

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“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 t h e

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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 crawl 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.

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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.

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