The Baltic Gambit

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Though, one might imagine that the body heat they generate, along with the warmth of the galley fires trapped below, would provide some heat,” Mountjoy speculated, facing about to thaw his own bottom. “Hallo, you’ve made an addition! Hallo, Toulon, you old rascal. And who’s the new one, sir?”

  “That’s Chalky,” Lewrie told him as the cats tricky-trotted to greet the new arrival. “Came off a French brig we made prize in the West Indies. Well, the Americans took her, but Chalky came aboard as a gift.”

  “The Quasi-War ’twixt the United States and France, yes, sir,” Mountjoy replied, kneeling and wiggling his fingers to attract Lewrie’s cabin-mates. “My mentor, James Peel, wrote me of it, and your part.”

  Peel tell you my American bastard gave me the cat? Lewrie wondered, for Mountjoy’s tone bordered on the cryptic again, as if he was smirking.

  “Too bad Guillaume Choundas got away,” Mountjoy commented, once Toulon had taken a tentative sniff, and had decided that Mountjoy was vaguely familiar.

  “The American navy defeated his ship, so they had custody of th’ shit,” Lewrie explained, heading for the settee. “I tried to lay our claim on him, but . . .”

  “Well sir, with the disagreement with France settled, the Yankees no longer had reason to hold him on his parole,” Mountjoy said. “I think he’s back in France . . . though in none too good odour with their new First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte. Our sources say that Choundas is pensioned off from their navy, and no longer much of a threat. Lurking round Paris, looking for active employment, Mister Twigg said.

  “It was most diplomatic of you, the way you acceded to the American claims, sir,” Mountjoy said, looking up from his kneeling position on the floor, where Toulon was now rubbing him and purring as he was stroked. “The manner in which you cooperated with the United States Navy gained their trust, and kept our tacit support of them from public purview, as well.”

  “So I can be diplomatic, can I?” Lewrie scoffed. “Meanin’ this should be a walk in the park?”

  “Something like that, sir . . . oww!” Mountjoy meant to say in compliment . . . before Chalky, feeling left out, nipped him for attention.

  “Should’ve warned ye ’bout Chalky, he’s the jealous sort,” Lewrie said. “Well damme, Mister Mountjoy, here it is almost Old Boys’ Week. First my old First Officer, Arthur Ballard, turns up as Thermopylae’s First Lieutenant, and now you. Makes one wonder, do ye hang about in Yarmouth long enough, ye run into everyone ye ever knew. Ah, coffee!” he exclaimed as Pettus appeared with the black-iron pot, and cups. As soon as Mountjoy took seat in a chair across from him, before the cats could claim a lap, Pettus poured the coffee for them, then sat the pot atop the Franklin stove, tautly lashed down in the middle of the great-cabins, and firmly embedded in a tin-lined wood box filled with sand.

  “Diplomatic, ye say,” Lewrie said after a warming sip, once he had laced his drink with fresh-grated sugar, and some cream drawn from the frigate’s nanny goat, kept in the forecastle manger up forward.

  “Uhm . . . ,” Mountjoy cautioned, casting a glance at Pettus.

  “One of those ‘mum’s the word’ moments, Pettus,” Lewrie said to his new servant. “You and Whitsell take a turn on deck for a bit. Now,” he said, once they’d departed. “Just who is it does Twigg wish me to murder? Or, would shovin’ ’em over the side in the dark of night do?”

  “In your orders from Admiralty, sir,” Mountjoy uneasily began, glancing about for hidden witnesses, or for ears pressed to the windows of the coach-top overhead, “which you shall open and read shortly, you are directed to sail for the Baltic, preceding the fleet, and reconnoiter the ports of Copenhagen, Karlskrona, Kronstadt, and Reval to determine the thickness and condition of the ice which, at present, prevents the ships opposing us from sailing, and combining.”

  “All by our lonesome little selves, Mister Mountjoy?” Lewrie had to gawp and goggle. “Just who the bloody Hell dreamt that up?”

  “I believe it was a suggestion from Admiral Nelson, sent to Captain Thomas Troubridge, who is now seconded to a seat on the Board at Admiralty, and relayed to Lord Saint Vincent, the First Lord, sir,” Mr. Mountjoy related in a low, conspiratorial tone. “Whilst neither I, nor anyone at the Foreign Office, are privy to the thought behind the plan, I gather that the consensus was that, should a lone British frigate enter the Baltic, her presence would not be cause for much alarm among the powers in the Armed League of the North, do you see. Even with a war in the offing, it is only natural that, in the pursuit of a diplomatic solution to our contretemps with the Danes, Swedes, and Russians, messages from His Majesty’s Government would still be delivered to our ambassadors ’til the very last moment, and their delivery by a fast frigate, not a packet brig, would elicit no undue response.”

  He’s grown a lot since last I saw him, Lewrie thought, remembering the hen-headed, utterly landlubberly callow young cully who had stumbled over every ring bolt and coiled line, who, after one taste of adventure and mayhem ashore in pursuit of that French counterpart to Twigg—Gillaume Choundas—and their escape from the utter rout of the Austrian army, had been gulled into taking a more active part for King and Country than scribbling in ledgers and account books, to take employment, and training, under Twigg’s, and Jemmy Peel’s, arcane tutelage.

  “Though, Mister Mountjoy, the presence of a British frigate to recall our ambassadors before the shootin’ starts’d make ’em scramble t’snap us up,” Lewrie cynically pointed out.

  “Well, that would be an act outside the diplomatic niceties, sir,” Mountjoy took delight in countering quickly, “as beyond the pale of conduct between civilised nations as would our arrest and imprisonment of their embassies and legations. It just isn’t done, sir.

  “Besides,” Mountjoy continued, legs now crossed in clubman fashion, one ankle resting on the other knee, with Chalky up in his lap, and his cup and saucer balanced on the bent knee, as serene as a man taking high tea with his doting mother. “With the navies of the Armed Neutrality iced up in port, the odds of encountering any of their ships already brought out of ordinary, manned, and got to sea . . . perhaps by chopping open channels through a mile of three-foot-thick ice . . . are rather low, sir,” he said with a charming grin. “Why, it’d take thousands of workers to get one ship out. A task better suited to the Egyptians piling up the Pyramids . . . or the Chinese erecting, well . . . whatever it was the Chinese built, with a round million coolies, what?”

  “There is that.” Lewrie cautiously allowed him the point, loath though he was to admit it. Thermopylae might run a greater risk from punching her hull open on a stray floe or berg, of foundering on some badly charted shoal or small island . . . of which the Baltic boasted an appalling plenty. Ice, once the sun rose, just naturally created fog, like London spewed coal smoke. “Slow as the fleet for the Baltic is gatherin’, it might be different in a few weeks, but do we sail today, or before the end of the week . . . ,” he mused, shrugging. “Oh!

  “That’s the straightforward, naval mission, Mister Mountjoy,” Lewrie said, once the other shoe figuratively dropped. “Go in, scout, then sail back out and meet Parker and Nelson somewhere in the Skagerrak, or the Kattegat, and report what we’ve seen. But ye said there is a diplomatic side to my orders? Are there letters to be delivered to foreign capitals?”

  “Not . . . letters, sir, exactly,” Mountjoy said, going all cutty-eyed and putting Lewrie back on his guard in a trice. “At least, not letters from Foreign Office that you will personally deliver, no. We have entrusted the plan for a possible peaceful solution to people who possess more influence with the Tsar and his court than our ambassador, John Proby, Lord Carysfort, at the moment. Well, actually . . . ,” Mister Mountjoy went on, squirming in a way that just naturally forced Lewrie to cross his own legs to protect his “nutmegs” against an imaginary boot.

  “At this moment, His Majesty’s Government does not have an ambassador resident in Saint Petersburg,” Mountjoy confessed. “Lord Carysfort
is our ambassador to Berlin, and the Russians, but . . . he’s used to dealing with the Russians, even at long distance, by post.”

  “I’m to pick up Lord Carysfort and take him to Russia?” Lewrie asked. “Save him a long troika ride through the snow, is it? Spare him from the packs of wolves?” he added, the sarcasm in full flow.

  “Ah, no sir. You are to embark a pair of eminent Russian nobles, who are to deliver His Majesty’s offer for a peaceful solution to the Tsar themselves,” Mountjoy explained. “Tsar Paul’s recent affection for Napoleon, and France, his eager acceptance of support for his spurious claim to the island of Malta, and his acceptance of the title of Commander of the Knights of Saint John . . . a Catholic honour awarded by a very small, heretical batch of courtiers . . . well, it goes against the grain for nobles steeped in the Russian Orthodox Church, sir. And what France, and Bonaparte, stand for . . . Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality . . . are anathema to the structure of Russian society, sure to cause bloody revolution, the overthrow of aristocratic authority, rebellion of their millions of serfs nationwide, perhaps a wholesale slaughter of the rich, landed, and titled as vicious as the French Revolution, and The Terror which it engendered. There is great concern that the Tsar’s recent capricious actions, and the Armed Neutrality, might present the Russian Empire with war on two fronts, and with our Navy allied with the Ottoman Turks in the Black Sea, they might lose all their conquests of the last hundred years, entire, sir. There is the possibility that, should the unofficial embassy you carry to Russia succeed in contacting key members of the Court, and swaying them to stand up to the Tsar . . .”

  “But the Tsar is daft, Mister Mountjoy,” Lewrie took great glee in quickly pointing out, “as mad as a hatter . . . as a March Hare! And anyone who gainsays him’d have t’be even crazier than he is. Or, have a desire t’have his head chopped off. I can’t see anyone sane opposing the Tsar. Might as well insult a Genghis Khan with a toothache or a bad breakfast, and ‘whop’ goes your head.”

  “Well, it may be slim odds, sir, but there’s always the hope,” Mountjoy said, “and if the mission fails, then at least we tried. Lord Hawkesbury, our new Foreign Secretary, has determined that the avoidance of a costly new war in addition to the present one against France, is best in the long run.”

  “Hmm,” Lewrie mused, puzzling that one out. Toulon climbed into his lap and kneaded for “pets,” which Lewrie gave, distractedly. “The only snag, Mister Mountjoy, is, is the ice so thick that the Russians can’t yet get out, how the Devil am I to get in with my passengers?”

  “If Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, Reval, or any major ports are unavailable, it is my understanding that any small fishing port will do, sir,” Mountjoy told him. “Sleds could be summoned over the ice if even the small harbours are unreachable, and the embassy may proceed by land. Anyplace will suit, just so long as they are landed as close to Saint Petersburg as possible.”

  “And you’ll be going along on this neck-or-nothing jaunt, Mister Mountjoy?” Lewrie asked. “To speed ’em on their way?”

  “In point of fact, no, sir,” Mountjoy answered, close to squirming again. “The presence of a British subject in company with the embassy would poison its chances of success, immediately,” he was quick to explain, and for a second Lewrie could almost (but not quite) take that as believable. Yet . . .

  “You’ll sail with us, ’til landfall, at least, won’t you?” he skeptically enquired.

  “Sorry, sir,” Mountjoy said with a stab at a dis-arming smile and a hapless shrug of disappointment to be missing a grand adventure. “I was instructed to escort them down from London, explain the matter to you, then return. Deliver them into your capable hands, then dash back to my superiors.”

  “Oh Christ,” Lewrie gawped. “I smell a rat, Mountjoy. A great big, toothy, Twigg-scented rat.”

  “Rather . . . ‘something rotten in Denmark,’ sir? To quote the Bard,” Mountjoy breezily replied, attempting a chuckle. “No, Mister Twigg, as I said, was consulted in this matter, only to the extent of advising Lord Hawkesbury as to who might best be approached in Saint Petersburg, and, who might best serve as the emissaries. Frankly, I’d he delighted to go along, sir. Working for our particular branch of the Foreign Office is not quite as exciting as Mister Peel made it out to be, when first he and Mister Twigg recruited me. I spend the most of my time office-bound in London, with only the occasional adventure.”

  “Uh-huh!” Lewrie scoffed at that. “Mean t’say my ‘live-lumber’ is already here in Yarmouth?”

  “They are, sir,” Mountjoy said, “warming their fundaments in a hotel for the moment. Another fellow coached down with Mister Keane and me . . . a Captain Hardcastle, a merchant master very familiar with the Baltic, and the ice conditions. All told, there will be six men to make room for. Admiralty was also to send down a Lieutenant Ricks, who took service with the Russian navy for several years, also in the Baltic. I’m told he wintered over with them at least two of his years, so he should prove most informative about how soon in the Spring they get their ships re-masted, re-armed, and brought out of ordinary.”

  “Six men?” Lewrie asked, wondering where Lt. Ballard would find room for them all. There would be some disgruntled officers in the gun-room if turfed out to accommodate foreigners.

  “Two servants, sir,” Mountjoy explained. “Only one manservant per emissary. They wished to have three apiece, but we finally convinced them they’d be going by frigate, not a yacht.”

  “Do they fetch a lot o’ dunnage with ’em?” Lewrie pressed for more information; would the aristocrats be separated from their servants, even for the night, or must Thermopylae shift all her stores on the orlop at the last moment, too?

  “We also convinced them to limit themselves to but one waggon-load of goods, sir . . . in addition to their trunks and bags,” Mountjoy told him. “Rather a lot of it consists of wine and other spirits. I’d advise you, sir,” Mountjoy said, leaning forward, “to not match them drink for drink, especially do they offer their national spirit, which is called vodka. It’s powerfully intoxicating, and will sneak up and swat you ’tween the eyes before you even notice.”

  “Well, I survived slivovitz and Serbian pirates’ plum brandy so I might essay at least a taste,” Lewrie allowed, resigned to the fact that nothing outside Damnation to Hell lasts forever. He supposed he could tolerate a half-dozen lubbers for a month or so, even if he had to subdivide his great-cabins to accommodate some of them.

  “Speak English, do they?” Lewrie quipped.

  “Passably, sir,” Mountjoy said with a grin, relieved, perhaps, that Lewrie was not kicking furniture or ranting over the sudden revelation of his orders . . . or Mr. Twigg’s slight connexions to them. “You will have Captain Hardcastle and Lieutenant Ricks, both fluent in Russian, to carry you over the stickier translations. Of course, all Russian nobility . . . the Tsar’s Court, especially . . . speak French in lieu of their own tongue. After several days of listening to the two gentlemen slang away in Russian, I can see why. A beastly language.”

  “Tell me about it,” Lewrie commiserated, recalling Eudoxia and her father when they spatted with each other.

  “Then, of course, sir, there is your own partial mastery of Russian,” Mountjoy said with a smile and a nod.

  “What mastery, Mister Mountjoy?” Lewrie said in surprise.

  “I, uh . . . we were led to believe you had a smatter, sir, so . . .”

  “I can tell when I’m bein’ cursed. Beyond, that, not a bloody word,” Lewrie took some joy in telling him.

  “Oh, my,” Mountjoy muttered.

  BOOK 3

  Movenda iam sunt bella; clarescit dies ortuque Titan lucidus creceo subit.

  Now must my war be set in motion; the sky is brightening and the shining sun steals up in saffron dawn.

  —LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA

  HERCULES FURENS, 123–24

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Oh, springing joy,” Lewrie dourly said as a hired barge came alo
ngside Thermopylae’s starboard, cleared to make way for their passengers and goods, about ten in the morning of the day after Mountjoy had brought his news aboard. The two Russian nobles had found their coaching journey from London too exhausting, though Mountjoy had said that they’d been in no urgent rush, and had made stops every two hours for warm-ups, late-morning starts each day, and early-afternoon halts at only the best coaching inns or hotels from London onwards.

  After reaching Great Yarmouth, they’d lodged themselves in the Wrestler’s Arms, the same hotel where Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and his “little batter pudding” still enjoyed their honeymoon; where the gravely ill Capt. Speaks, his wife, retainers, physician, and parrot, strove for his recovery, and where there were several large fireplaces and deep-piled soft beds. They had sent word aboard that they would rest for a night, then join Thermopylae at first light, this morning.

  Evidently, first light to a pair of Russian nobles meant closer to “Clear Decks And Up Spirits” at Seven Bells of the Forenoon, almost nigh to Noon Sights, than “Crack of Dawn,” “First Sparrow Fart,” even Eight Bells of the Morning Watch, at 8 A.M.

  Forewarned, Lt. Ballard had concentrated upon the loading of any last-minute purchases by the Purser, the Master Gunner, Sailmaker or Armourer, the Cooper or Carpenter, for the officer’s and Midshipmen’s messes, and the Captain’s Cook.

  Lt. Ballard surreptitiously pulled out his pocket-watch to take a squint at it, then heaved a small, fretful sigh before stowing it away again.