Read Online The Rosetta Key by William Dietrich - Free Book Online Page B

voice.
    “Where does he go? Where is he looking?” The tone was threatening.
    “I don’t know!” She sounded terrified.
    I stepped past iron grillwork into a dark, rubble-strewn courtyard, the ruins sometimes used as a goat pen. Four brutes, in French cloaks and European boots, surrounded the frightened young woman. I was, as I have said, weaponless, except for the Arab dagger I carried in my sash. But they hadn’t seen me yet, so I had the advantage of surprise. These didn’t look like the kind of men to bluff, so I glanced around for a better weapon. “To be thrown upon one’s own resources is to be cast into the very lap of fortune,” Ben Franklin used to say. But then he had more resources than most.
    I finally spied a discarded stone Cupid, long since defaced and castrated by either Muslims or Christians trying to obey edicts about false idols and pagan penises. It lay on its side in the debris like a forgotten doll.
    The sculpture was a third my height — heavy enough — and fortunately not held down by anything but its own weight. I could just barely lift it over my head. So I did, said a prayer to love, and heaved. It struck the huddled rascals in their back like pins in a bowl and they went down in a heap, cursing.
    “Run for home!” I cried to gentle Miriam. They’d already ripped her clothing.
    So she gave me a fearful nod, took a step to leave, and then swung back as one villain grabbed at her again. I thought maybe he’d pull her down, but even as he clawed she kicked him hard in his cockles as neatly as dancing a jig. I could hear the thump of the impact, and it froze him like a flamingo in a Quebec snowstorm. Then she broke free and sprang past out the gate. Brave girl! She had more pluck, and better knowledge of male anatomy, than I’d imagined.
    Now the pack of ruffians rose against me, but meanwhile I’d hauled Cupid up again and had taken the cherub by his head. I swung him in a circle and let go. Two of the devils crashed down again and the statuary shattered. Meanwhile neighbors had heard the ruckus and were raising a hue and cry. A third villain began to draw a hidden sword — obviously sneaked past the police of Jerusalem — so I charged him with my Arab knife before he could clear his scabbard, ramming the blade home. For all my scuffles, I’d never stabbed anyone before, and I was surprised how readily it plunged in, and how eerily it scraped a rib when it did so. He hissed and twisted away so violently that I lost my grip. I staggered. Now I had no weapon at all.
    Meanwhile the one who’d been interrogating Miriam had dragged out a pistol. Surely he wouldn’t risk a shot in the sacred city, violating all laws, voices rising!
    But the piece went off with a roar, its flash like a flicker of lightning, and something seared the side of my head. I lurched away, half-blinded. It was time to retreat! I tottered out to the street but now the bastard was coming after me, dark, his cape flying like wings, his own sword drawn. Who the devil
was
this? The blow of the pistol ball had left me so woozy I was wading in syrup.
    And then, as I turned in the lane to meet him as best I could, a blunt staff thrust past me and struck the bastard smack where throat meets chest. He gave an awful cough and his feet slid out ahead of him, landing him on his backside. He looked up in amazement, gulping. It was Miriam, who’d taken a pole from a market awning and hefted it like a lance! I do have a knack for finding useful women.
    “You!” he gagged, his eyes on me, not her. “Why aren’t you dead?”
    Neither are you, I thought, my own shock as great as his. For in the dusky light of the cobbled lane, I recognized first the emblem that Miriam’s thrust had knocked out of his shirt — a Masonic compass and square, with the letter G inside — and then the swarthy face of the “customs inspector” who had accosted me on the stage to Toulon during my flight from Paris last year. He’d tried to take