1634: The Baltic War (assiti chards)

by Eric Flint

  "Psst!" he hissed. "Hey, lady!"

  He opened one side of his Lee Van Cleef style coat. "Wanna see some feelthy pictures?"

  The couple came to an abrupt half. There was silence, for a moment. Then Julie said: "Harry, you're a jackass."

  "Hey, it worked, didn't it?"

  ***

  On their way to the house where the crew was staying-the Mackays had rented quarters on the other side of the theater district-Julie was full of complaints.

  "Jesus, that theater stinks. If that was Shakespeare, you can have it. The audience were pigs. And since when"-her voice got a bit shrill-"does Juliet get played by a guy?"

  Alex cleared his throat. "I did try to warn you, love."

  "I thought you were pulling my leg. Juliet-played by a guy? So was every so-called woman in the play-including the nun! Jesus! Why don't they just call it the Drag Queen Palace and quit pretending they're doing legitimate theater? It's disgusting!"

  Thankfully, the skies were overcast and it was quite dark. So Harry didn't think Julie could see his smile. "Well, tell me. Did you find out the truth? Did Balthazar have it right? Shakespeare wasn't actually written by Shakespeare?"

  "Who cares?" Julie hissed. "Whoever the hell wrote that play, he was a fucking pervert. Juliet-played by a guy."

  Once they arrived at the house, Julie quickly became the center of attention. For a wonder, given the group of men there, that wasn't because she was young and pretty. Testosterone can work in mysterious ways.

  "Did you bring the rifle?" Felix asked. He said "the rifle" much the same way that a breathless child speaks of a wondrous magic item.

  "Sure," said Julie. She jerked her head over her shoulders. "Got it hidden back at our place."

  Harry thought for a moment that the guys were almost going to say "ooh" and "aah." None of them except Harry and Gerd had been there when Julie carried out her now-legendary feats of marksmanship. But by now they knew about them-down to every last detail, in fact. They could be a little obsessive, that way.

  "Where'd you learn to shoot like that?" asked Matija.

  "My grandma, mostly. She was the best rifle shot in the area in her day, too."

  Donald looked skeptical. "One small town produced two women who are great shots?"

  Hurriedly, before Julie could get her dander up, Harry intervened. "Hey, man, she's just telling it just the way it is. Her grandmother was Anna Lou Ballew, although I only knew her as Mrs. McQuade. She was the national teenage rifle champion at Camp Perry twice-first time when she was fourteen-and she qualified for the U.S. Olympic team." Harry gave Julie a sly smile. "They wouldn't let her go, of course, men being men in those days and her being a girl and all. But she was sure as hell good enough. She was appointed West Virginia athlete of the year, too. I can't remember which year."

  "1940," said July. "First woman ever got the honor. And the only one who's ever done it in Marksmanship. She kept shooting on her company team until she retired, and she spent every summer traveling to Camp Perry for the nationals."

  Julie paused, for a moment, her face scrunching up a little. "She's probably still doing it, in fact, wherever she is. She was still alive and in good health last time I saw her-and so was Grandpa. They were living in Florida by then, though, so they got left behind when the Ring of Fire hit us."

  By now, Julie's initial ire had vanished. She even gave Harry an appreciative little nod. "Yup, that was my grandma. Anyway, she's the one who taught me. 'Course-not wanting to sound like I'm a braggart like Harry here-there was some natural talent involved. Mine, I mean."

  Harry took her by the arm. "Come on, Julie. Let's go upstairs and I'll show you the shooting gallery."

  Julie peered out the window in the corner room upstairs that was closest to the Tower, looking across the Thames. "Can't see a damn thing, in this light. What's the range?"

  "Oh, hell, I was kidding. I didn't actually mean you'd be shooting from here."

  "What's the range?" she asked again, very firmly.

  He started to say too far but decided that was risky. With Julie, you never knew. She might insist on trying it, just to prove she could make the shot.

  "Look, Julie, it doesn't matter. You might be able to make the shot-except it won't be 'the shot,' it's likely to be a lot of them. You have heard the term 'getaway,' haven't you? We're not exactly going to be nestled in the palm of our own army here, with the emperor himself looking over your shoulder, the way he was at the Alte Veste. Once it's done, we've gotta get out of here. Mucho pronto. And this house is hardly the best place to start from, taking it on the lam-wise."

  She chewed her lip, for a moment. "Okay, that makes sense. Where do I set up, then? You have heard the term 'gun rest,' haven't you? Across this big a river, you can't make a good shot just standing up. Not me, not anybody."

  "Relax, willya? Tomorrow we'll look around. We'll find something suitable."

  Julie looked at Sherrilyn, who'd come up to the room with them. "Does this Great Commando Leader always plan his operations with such careful and deliberate precision?"

  "Oh, hell no, girl. Usually Harry just wings it."

  "You're ganging up on me," Harry complained.

  "Sure we are," said Sherrilyn. "We're girls. You're a guy."

  Julie patted her arm. "Still, we oughta ease up. At least Harry's a guy playing a guy. Now that I've seen the pervert ways of London, I figure that's gotta count for something."

  By the time they got back downstairs, Juliet and George Sutherland were back.

  "Something is wrong," Juliet said. "Liz has three men staying with her."

  "Ah…" Harry tried to find the right way to say it. This could get delicate.

  "Oh, leave off!" snapped Juliet. "You and your nasty mind. Sure, in times past there might have been the odd fellow coming and going, of an evening. What was that, George?" The last question had been addressed rather sharply at her husband.

  "Nothing, dearest. Just talking to myself. Thoughtless habit of mine, now and then."

  What he'd actually murmured-Harry had heard it, quite clearly-was several odd fellows, and at any time of day or night. But he thought that remark was best left buried. Perhaps run a herd of horses back and forth across it too, to obliterate all traces, the way he'd heard the Mongols had made sure nobody could find the grave of Genghis Khan and dig him up.

  Fortunately, Juliet seemed inclined to let it go. "As I was saying, while it's true that Liz was not exactly what you might call a proper lady, she'd never have had three strange men staying in her lodgings at once. And they look to be settled in, too."

  "Especially one of them," added George. That got him another sharp look from his wife, but this one he didn't evade. "Dearest," he said, spreading his hands, "it's just a fact. You saw it as well as I did. Whoever those other two fellows were, she certainly wasn't unhappy with the presence of that one."

  "How do you know?" asked Harry.

  Juliet looked a bit embarrassed. George, however, was pretty much a stranger to that sentiment. "How do you think? Once we found out where she was living-which wasn't hard, seeing as how it's the same place she was living when we left some years back-we crept up and peered through the window. The bedroom window, to be specific. Juliet, when you speak to Liz again, you should caution her that cheap curtains don't really provide much in the way of privacy. It would have helped if she and her unknown paramour had put out the lamps before they started-well, no need to get into the details."

  Harry ran fingers through his hair. "All right, fine. So she's glad the one guy is there, and who knows why the other two are. But I can't see where any of this has anything to do with us. I mean, I didn't mind the two of you going out to set your minds at rest regarding your old friend-or not-but that was just because I thought we had plenty of time to kill. Now that Julie's here, we really oughta get rolling. You know. The Tower. The Great Escape. Stalag 17. Von Ryan's Express. That is why we're here, after all. Not to play Sherlock Holmes."

  "Yes, o
f course," said George. He laid a hand on his wife's shoulder. "He is right, dearest."

  Juliet looked very unhappy, but all she did was nod.

  Harry offered to walk Julie and Alex back to their quarters. Insisted, in fact, after Alex told him it really wouldn't be necessary.

  "I want to get a good look at the Globe. I barely had a chance, earlier, since Julie was in such an allfire hurry to get away from the place."

  "Since when did you give a damn about high culture?" Julie demanded. She pronounced it kult-cha.

  "Hey, I spent months with Giulio Mazarini. Rome, Paris, places like that. You wouldn't believe how much culture I got exposed to." He pronounced it the same way.

  "Oh, bullshit! You were just checking out the red light districts, don't lie to me, Harry. And you'd be wasting your time at the Globe, for sure. Any whores hanging around there would most likely be guys pretending to be girls." The expression that now came to her face was one of Dawning Comprehension. Like Juliet Sutherland, Julie Mackay would never get any plaudits from devotees of method acting. "Unless…"

  Neither was Harry, come down to it. His shrug exuded Shameful Confession.

  "Yeah, I been corrupted." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "It's Sherrilyn's fault. She's been playing so hard to get lately that it's twisting me inside."

  "Harry, you're a jackass," said Sherrilyn.

  "Two women in one night," said Harry smugly. "Maybe there's hope for me yet."

  Julie and Sherrilyn blew simultaneous raspberries.

  "It's true," Harry insisted stoutly. "A real man measures his macho by the number of times women dump on him. That's why we only watch chick flicks under protest. Might screw up the readings on the wimp-o-meter."

  Julie and Sherrilyn looked simultaneously cross-eyed, trying to follow the logic. "What the hell is a wimp-o-meter?" Julie demanded.

  "You wouldn't understand. It's a guy thing."

  Chapter 26

  "She says she wants us to lock everything down, for the moment, until she can find out what's happening with Wentworth. Do nothing until she gives us the word." The expression on Paul Maczka's face was just as dubious as the tone of his voice. In some indefinable manner, so was the way he tossed the radio note onto the kitchen table.

  "What the hell for?" demand Donald Ohde, sitting at the far end. "Who cares which minister they throw in the Tower this week? Give it a few days, and you'll see Wentworth out and Cork inside, staring at the walls." Irritably, he slapped the table. "You ask me, I think the woman's just losing her nerve."

  Harry Lefferts wagged his fingers in a gesture of restraint. "Easy, Don, easy. I know Melissa Mailey; you don't. High school kids don't call her the Devil's Bitch for nothing. She is one tough old broad." A little reminiscent smile came to his face. "I always liked her myself, even if none of the other guys did. Even after she made me write I will not be a smartass in front of a way smarter teacher two hundred times on the blackboard. What the hell, I had been a smartass-and, more to the point here, she is smarter than me."

  Ohde made a face. "Fine. I still say, so what? She can be the Devil's counselor as well as his bitch, what difference does it make? We're commandos, for Christ's sake, not monks in a cell. We don't meditate patiently, we break things."

  Like all of Harry's unit, whatever seventeenth-century inhibitions against blasphemy Ohde had ever possessed, he'd long since cast aside.

  Harry repeated the finger-wagging gesture. "I think she's got something in mind. And if I'm right…"

  Slowly, a huge grin spread across his face. Amazingly huge, given that there was really not a trace of humor in the expression at all. "Great Escape, indeed. Stalag 17,000. Von Ryan's great big long freight train. Piss on 'Express.' "

  Ohde stared at him. So did everyone else gathered around the table. Maczka looked around for a vacant chair; finding none, he leaned back against a wall.

  "Holy shit," he said. "Are you serious?"

  "I told you. She is one tough broad-and don't ever let that prim and proper manner of hers fool you any. Underneath it all, she's got a temper like you wouldn't believe, even if she's the only person I ever knew who could chew you up one side and down the other in grammatically correct sentences and never use a single cuss word."

  He glanced around the table. "Guys, we're talking about a sixty-year-old woman who's spent her whole life giving the finger to the establishment. And now that same establishment"-this time, he waved his whole hand, not just the fingers-"close enough, anyway, the Devil's Bitch never saw much distinction between one establishment and another-just went and locked her up for over half a year."

  The grin came back, though not as large and with some actual humor in it. "I don't remember it myself, 'cause I was just a little kid then. But she got herself tossed in jail during the big '78-'79 coal miners strike for heckling the cops too much. Soon as they let her out she went home just long enough to make up a picket sign and then-I mean, she didn't stop for a hamburger, nothing-she made a beeline right to the big police station in Fairmont and started up a one-woman picket line of her own. Sign read: You're STILL assholes."

  Everybody laughed. "I thought you said she never used cuss words," said Felix.

  "Well… she never did, dealing with kids. Not even a 'damn.' But I guess she figured it was okay if she was picking on somebody bigger'n her."

  "Did they arrest her again?"

  "Naw. Truth is, the Fairmont cops weren't really bad guys. I think most of them thought it was pretty funny themselves. And what would be the point, anyway? They'd have to let her out sooner or later, and-given Melissa-who knows what she'd have come up with next?"

  Smiling now, Ohde shook his head. "All right, I get the point. But do you really think she's seriously considering springing anybody but them?"

  "Yup. I think she's mad enough she wants to get even as well as get out."

  "Why not?" said George Sutherland heavily. "We were already planning to get Cromwell out. What's one more man?"

  "Be more than that," his wife mused. "Wentworth's wife and kids are in the Tower, too. I can't imagine he'd leave without them."

  Harry scratched his chin. "Good point." He stood up and waved at Paul, summoning him to follow. "Let's back up there and find out exactly how many people she's got in mind. I only figured on two boats. We might need another one."

  The answer came back immediately. Paul didn't bother writing it down, with Harry at the receiver. He'd only written down the first one out of habit, anyway. At this close range, they were in direct verbal communication, not using Morse code.

  "Don't know yet, Harry. From what we can tell, everything's up in the air. But we haven't been able to find out much, beyond the obvious fact that a coup d'etat is in progress. The Warders aren't talking to us, but Darryl says Vicky's whole family is edgy. 'Tenser'n cats at a dog convention,' is the way he put it."

  Harry frowned. "Who's Vicky-and why's her family figure into this?"

  "Oh. Forgot to tell you. Darryl got engaged. Vicky's his fiancee. Most of her family-men, that is-are members of the Yeoman Warders."

  "You're shitting me!"

  "Still cussing, huh? If there's a blackboard over there, write on it fifty times 'I will not use bad language in front of my ex-schoolteacher.' No, I'm not shitting you. Why is that a surprise, anyway? A lot of the men in the Tower are Warders."

  "Not that! Darryl got engaged?"

  "Sure did. Hey, we're in the seventeenth century, Harry. Age of miracles. If Darryl were a statue, he'd probably be leaking tears of blood."

  Blankly, Harry stared out the window. The Tower was quite visible in the bright winter sunlight. The weather had finally cleared up.

  "We're talking about Darryl McCarthy, right? I mean, you didn't get something criss-crossed and wind up with a different Darryl?"

  "Don't be silly. How many other Darryls did I ever have write on a blackboard three hundred times 'My name is Darryl McCarthy, not Redd Foxx'?" And then make him correct his spelling because he kept d
ropping the extra d's and x's."

  Harry chuckled. "All right, good point. He was pissed as hell about it. Didn't stop crabbing for two weeks afterward. Still. I had him figured for a lifelong righteous bachelor."

  "Like you, I take it?"

  Even though she couldn't see him, Harry twisted his face into something that was halfway between a grimace and a questioning expression.

  "Not actually sure any more, Ms. Mailey. The seventeenth century makes a man think about things a lot more carefully. God, I love this time and place." A bit hurriedly, he added: "Not that I'm in any hurry to get married, y'all understand."

  "You would love this time and place, you young rascal."

  "Damn right I do. Back home I would've just been calculating how long I could stay in the mines before I started getting black lung and had to quit and go flip hamburgers for minimum wage. Get to look forward to retirement, sitting on a rocking chair on a beat-up old porch wheezing to my buddies about the good old days. Hell with that. This here's like being in Las Vegas-the old, real one I'm talking about-except the bouncers've got swords and guns and the cops use red hot tongs instead of handcuffs. Just makes the odds more of a thrill."

  "God help us."

  "He might have to-if we're supposed to spring Darryl's whole pack of new in-laws too. I mean, jeez, Ms. Mailey, I was figuring on a couple of little riverboats, not a cruise ship."

  "I don't think it would be all of them. They're Yeoman Warders, don't forget. Just Vicky. In fact, I'm not even sure-hold on a minute, Harry. From the sounds outside, I think something's happening."

  Paul had drifted to the window, as he listened to the conversation-Melissa's end of which he could hear clearly from the microphone.

  "Something sure is happening," he said sharply. "Better come here and look at this, Harry."

  Harry came over to the window. Unlike late twentieth-century cities, which didn't use wood for heating, London in the seventeenth century had very few trees. So he had an unimpeded view of the Tower across the Thames-and he'd picked this house to rent partly because it had a good view of the fortress' main entrance on its western side.