Read Online The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) by William Dietrich - Free Book Online
Authors: William Dietrich
Tags: Historical fiction
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They were all in shelter. I scampered out, burrowed in the snow to my coffin and its supplies, and left the container empty for poor Count Podlowski. By dawn, wind and fresh flakes would cover my disturbance.
Then I barred myself inside the cathedral again.
The luminescence of foxfire allowed me to check my pocket watch, a necessary gift from Czartoryski. I’d consumed an hour.
More burglary followed. I picked the lock to the bell tower door and began portaging my equipment up steep, ladder-like steps, obsessively keeping track of time. The carillon would ring at 7:30 a.m. to wake the fort and city for prayers, just enough before winter dawn to make my scheme feasible. I counted at least fifty carillon bells, stacked and ranked to churn out coordinated clamor, and was glad I’d thought to bring stuffing for my ears. Then I ascended to a higher chamber that displayed the gearing of four tower clocks that faced the compass points. They were pointed near midnight.
I was now high above the fortress walls, but went still higher. As architectural plans had promised, a ladder led to a platform above the clocks that served as staging area for maintenance of the needle spire. Louvered doors gave access to the outside.
I’d no need to ascend all the way to angel and cross; I was already three hundred feet above the frozen river. I opened the louvers that faced east and peered out. Snow sifted down, so I waited for my eyes to find form in the void. Yes: I could barely make out the rear of the cathedral. Beyond was the squat treasury building with its brick domed roofs like snowy hillocks.
While it seemed like an elaborate detour to break into one building to enter another, I’d given the matter great thought. The treasury was always guarded. The cathedral was not. The treasury’s windows were bricked, while the cathedral’s glass could be opened. The treasury was impenetrable, while the church invited entry.
I couldn’t very well ask for admission to Russia’s vault, or storm it, or chip a hole in the side. A thousand Russian soldiers were sure to object. But what if I came silently from the sky? And then didn’t enter at all?
I’d purchased in St. Petersburg some spliced Cossack lariat, thin and strong, and a small deck windlass of the kind used on a fishing schooner to crank in an anchor. Clay jugs held hydrogen gas that Astiza and I had liberated by pouring sulfuric acid on iron, as Jacques Charles had done when making the world’s first hydrogen balloon in 1783. Peasants attacked that inventor’s flying machine with pitchforks when it came down fourteen miles from Paris, but Franklin had concluded that hydrogen was more reliable than heated air.
I later acquired ballooning experience of my own in Egypt and France, making me a reluctant aeronaut. I also needed a reliable wind, a good shot, and some luck with fortress masonry. As my reward, Czartoryski would convince the tsar to give me respectability that I could pass onto my son.
Such was the plan, anyway.
Astiza had sewn two contraptions. I carefully laid and smoothed the first, the skin of a small balloon. We’d neither time nor resources to build one big enough to lift a man, and that would be too conspicuous anyway. The steeple provided an alternate way to climb. I braced the windlass, readied my tools, and settled down to study my watch. Periodically I’d stand to windmill my arms and squat my legs to keep warm, my breath a white cloud. Then I’d sit down to wait yet again.
At seven, the day still dark, I suspended the balloon skin out the louvered opening and began to inflate it with hydrogen, using a copper spigot from the jugs I’d pumped full of gas. It was dark, wet, cold, my fingers were numb, the wind was pesky, and the balloon fidgeted as it swelled. I used a bowline to tie my lariat to a grappling hook, lashed this to the underside of the balloon, and tied the other end of the rope to the windlass, which would serve as reel. I wound the line
Then I barred myself inside the cathedral again.
The luminescence of foxfire allowed me to check my pocket watch, a necessary gift from Czartoryski. I’d consumed an hour.
More burglary followed. I picked the lock to the bell tower door and began portaging my equipment up steep, ladder-like steps, obsessively keeping track of time. The carillon would ring at 7:30 a.m. to wake the fort and city for prayers, just enough before winter dawn to make my scheme feasible. I counted at least fifty carillon bells, stacked and ranked to churn out coordinated clamor, and was glad I’d thought to bring stuffing for my ears. Then I ascended to a higher chamber that displayed the gearing of four tower clocks that faced the compass points. They were pointed near midnight.
I was now high above the fortress walls, but went still higher. As architectural plans had promised, a ladder led to a platform above the clocks that served as staging area for maintenance of the needle spire. Louvered doors gave access to the outside.
I’d no need to ascend all the way to angel and cross; I was already three hundred feet above the frozen river. I opened the louvers that faced east and peered out. Snow sifted down, so I waited for my eyes to find form in the void. Yes: I could barely make out the rear of the cathedral. Beyond was the squat treasury building with its brick domed roofs like snowy hillocks.
While it seemed like an elaborate detour to break into one building to enter another, I’d given the matter great thought. The treasury was always guarded. The cathedral was not. The treasury’s windows were bricked, while the cathedral’s glass could be opened. The treasury was impenetrable, while the church invited entry.
I couldn’t very well ask for admission to Russia’s vault, or storm it, or chip a hole in the side. A thousand Russian soldiers were sure to object. But what if I came silently from the sky? And then didn’t enter at all?
I’d purchased in St. Petersburg some spliced Cossack lariat, thin and strong, and a small deck windlass of the kind used on a fishing schooner to crank in an anchor. Clay jugs held hydrogen gas that Astiza and I had liberated by pouring sulfuric acid on iron, as Jacques Charles had done when making the world’s first hydrogen balloon in 1783. Peasants attacked that inventor’s flying machine with pitchforks when it came down fourteen miles from Paris, but Franklin had concluded that hydrogen was more reliable than heated air.
I later acquired ballooning experience of my own in Egypt and France, making me a reluctant aeronaut. I also needed a reliable wind, a good shot, and some luck with fortress masonry. As my reward, Czartoryski would convince the tsar to give me respectability that I could pass onto my son.
Such was the plan, anyway.
Astiza had sewn two contraptions. I carefully laid and smoothed the first, the skin of a small balloon. We’d neither time nor resources to build one big enough to lift a man, and that would be too conspicuous anyway. The steeple provided an alternate way to climb. I braced the windlass, readied my tools, and settled down to study my watch. Periodically I’d stand to windmill my arms and squat my legs to keep warm, my breath a white cloud. Then I’d sit down to wait yet again.
At seven, the day still dark, I suspended the balloon skin out the louvered opening and began to inflate it with hydrogen, using a copper spigot from the jugs I’d pumped full of gas. It was dark, wet, cold, my fingers were numb, the wind was pesky, and the balloon fidgeted as it swelled. I used a bowline to tie my lariat to a grappling hook, lashed this to the underside of the balloon, and tied the other end of the rope to the windlass, which would serve as reel. I wound the line
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