“Safest place t’be, I’d imagine, my lord,” Lewrie japed back. “As safe as any, should the Danes be surly this morning. If you will not go to the orlop, then, on your heads be it,” he said, waving them up, too excited by what might come to pay them much mind.
“Forgive us our curiosity, should the Danes attempt to deny us passage, Kapitan, but . . . ,” Count Rybakov said with a deprecating shrug as he extended an expensive-looking telescope of his own, one chased in gilt, and its tubes overlaid with ivory. “Look there, Anatoli. Is it not fascinating? Shall we be among the living an hour from now, ha ha?”
“Oh, the Danes,” Count Levotchkin said with a sickly sneer upon his face. At least some colour was coming back to his cheeks, from his first exposure to fresh air and the chill in nigh two days. “As dull as Hamburg traders, with no spines. They would not dare.”
Damme, what’s his coat and hat made of? Lewrie took a moment to ponder; Is that . . . seal skin? Dirty bastard. Must’ve taken four or more hides t’keep his skinny arse warm.
“They most-like will not, my lord,” Lewrie said, his attention on Rybakov, not the whey-faced irritation. “Do ye look close, you’ll see one of our packet brigs at anchor under the fort. Were the Danes of a mind t’shoot at us, they’d have given her twenty-four hours to be gone . . . or taken her as good prize.”
“So the diplomats still correspond,” Count Rybakov said, looking bemused, “and the Danish court and your Foreign Office still attempt to find a mutually pleasing compromise?”
“It very well could be, my lord,” Lewrie said with an impish grin.
“Ready, sir!” Mr. Tunstall announced.
“Carry on, Mister Tunstall!” Lewrie shouted back.
“Number one gun . . . fire!” the Master Gunner barked, and an 18-pounder far up forward bellowed and jerked back to the limit of the breeching ropes. “If I weren’t a gunner, I wouldn’t be here . . . number three gun . . . fire!” Tunstall intoned, pacing slowly aft from the first discharged cannon. Boom! went the second, and Tunstall jerked his right hand, jutting out his middle finger to go alongside his index finger. “I’ve left my wife, and all that’s dear . . . number five gun . . . fire!” and ring finger joined its mates.
On down the deck he paced, chanting the old timing cadence lyrics over and over, with pinky, then thumb of his right hand extended. He clenched that fist and began on the left hand as he reached sixth through the tenth round of the salute, clenching the left fist at last and returning to the right, working his way right aft to the break of the quarterdeck, into that now-empty covered space where Lewrie’s cabins usually stood. As soon as the fourteenth starboard-side cannon had discharged, Tunstall showed a remarkable turn of speed to dash forward to the re-loaded first gun of the salute. “. . . a gunner, I wouldn’t be here . . . number one gun . . . fire!”
The final crash and bellow, the last gush of gunpowder, and the echo of salute faded away, ghosting with the haze of sickly yellow-white smoke that was whisked beyond the frigate’s bows by the wind on their quarter.
“Re-load, Mister Tunstall!” Lewrie ordered in the sudden silence. “Powder and shot . . . just in case!”
More flags were flying from Kronborg Castle’s towers, plain red flags with a white cross extending to all four edges, offset towards the seam closest to the poles from which they flew. Thankfully, there was no smoke rising from the fort’s chimneys to indicate that round-shot was quickly being heated.
Boom! came a far off bellow from the nearest square bastion and a matching eruption of spent powder smoke. Ten seconds later, there came a second. Lewrie tucked his tongue in one side of his mouth and listened for the deep wail of approaching iron, but heard none. With a quick glance about, he could not see any feathery water spouts from rounds fired short, or the skip of First Graze, and certainly not the Second-Graze, as if gun-captains were dapping a flat stone ’til it hit their intended target. Boom! came a third, followed ten seconds later, steady as a metronome on a young miss’s harpsichord, or the clapping of a dancing master’s hands, by a fourth, a fifth, a sixth . . . !
“They’re returning our salute!” the Sailing Master, Mr. Lyle, exclaimed. “Well, just damn my eyes!”
“Well of course they are, Mister Lyle,” Lewrie hooted with glee. “The Danes’re a civilised lot. Can’t just begin a war does your breakfast not suit! Takes reams o’ scribblin’, stern diplomatic overtures and warnin’s. Like postin’ the Banns, ’stead o’ runnin’ off t’marry. It’s the done thing.”
“Eleven . . . and, twelve,” Lt. Ballard counted, but there were no more shots fired from Kronborg Castle. “Twelve for a Post-Captain.”
“They didn’t know the dignity of our honoured guests, Mister Ballard,” Lewrie replied, feeling like laughing out loud, snapping his fingers under Ballard’s nose, and doing a little dance. “How long at this speed to Copenhagen, Mister Lyle?”
“Uhm . . . twenty more miles, sir,” Lyle answered after a moment. “Say, uhm . . . does the wind stay out of the East-Nor’east . . . another three and a half hours. Four at the outermost, does it prove necessary to reduce sail, or work our way though any merchant traffic.”
“Just about my dinnertime, then,” Lewrie jested. “Desmond! A lively tune, there! Secure the hands from Quarters, Mister Ballard. I doubt we’ll face anything to match us at sea . . . not ’til we near the Trekroner forts above Copenhagen. The Three Crowns’ batteries. They’ll know of our coming.”
“No rider can gallop that fast,” Anatoli Levotchkin scoffed, in better fiddle than when he first appeared on deck. Perhaps gunpowder agreed with him; he was back to a live-human pallor, and back to his usually haughty self, evincing an air of part disinterested boredom about the activities of the frigate’s operation, and the gun salutes, and part simmering resentment—most of it directed at Lewrie, in sidelong sneers and slitted eyes.
“No galloper, no, my lord,” Lewrie countered, pointing ashore. “They’ve a semaphore tower, which this minute is whirlin’ away like a Dervish.”
“Ah,” Count Rybakov realised, chuckling, “the wonders of technology.”
“Warnin’ the Trekroner Fort above Copenhagen of our arrival,” Lewrie told him, “which is reputed t’be even more formidable than the Kronborg. We’ll take the Holland Deep, of course . . . you’re familiar with Copenhagen, and the other narrows there? The Holland Deep lies on the Swedish side, with a very shallow Middle Ground, where I’m told many ships have gone aground, dividin’ the narrows from the King’s Deep, which might as well be Copenhagen’s main harbour. We’ll even sail to the East’rd of Saltholm Island, very far out of the reach of Danish artillery. Do they not have any warships ready for sea yet, we should be fairly safe.”
Liam Desmond on his lap-pipes, with the ship’s fiddler and the Marine fifer, struck up a jaunty reel, and, of a sudden Thermopylae’s crew began to clap, cheer, and dance about the decks; from relief that Kron-borg had not opened fire on them, perhaps; from “by Jingo” pride that perhaps the Danes did not dare match their weight of metal versus a British frigate . . . their frigate!
Some men, now freed from the secured guns, scampered atop the starboard sail-tending gangway to mock and jeer the Kronborg, now receding astern, to shake their fists and hoot belated bravery. And some began to bark, to extend their arms stiffly out in front of them, and clap their hands together, palms turned outward, in emulation of the Laeso Island seals . . . along with those who hoisted index and middle fingers of their right hands in the age-old “Fuck you, mate!” gesture.
“Uhm, Mister Ballard,” Lewrie called for his First Officer.
“Sir?” Ballard replied, looking a bit piqued by such a crude display. Exuberant enthusiastic displays of emotion had never been to his taste; there was no fear that Lt. Arthur Ballard would ever become a “Leaping Methodist.” He was a staid High Church man.
“Let’s let ’em have about a minute more o’ that, then rein ’em back to discipline,” Lewrie ordered. “I will be below.”
“Good cess, indeed,” Count Rybakov whispered to himself, shaking his head in genial wonder. Such an odd thing, he thought, that a single eerie incident could be the making of this mercurial Angliski Kapitan. So new to this ship, and its crew, which could have resented his arrival, and his new ways of doing things, yet . . . could it be that the Laeso seals had blessed him in command? For it appeared that the seals’ fey actions, combined with the peaceful passing of Kronborg Castle and its gigantic cannon—so easily explainable to civilised, rational people who understood the diplomatic niceties and the mores of behaviour between nation-states—had won Lewrie the trust and affection of his men. “A good cess, indeed, ah ha!”
“What is . . . cess?” Count Anatoli Levotchkin asked, snapping in impatience with the foolish antics of peasants, and quietly approving of Lt. Ballard and the officers and Midshipmen as they called the men back to duty, and to stop all that noise.
“Something British, Anatoli,” Rybakov told him. “Said of a man with more luck than usual . . . luck awarded by God, well . . . an ancient god . . . upon one of his champions, his blessed. Kapitan Lewrie here, his men believe, has received a good cess from the seals we encountered . . . who came at the bidding of an ancient Irish sea god, to welcome him. To bless his new ship, and his voyage. Our voyage.”
“Superstitious nonsense!” Anatoli gravelled. “These Angliski sailors are as stupid as our serfs. Seeing signs and portents in the yolks of eggs, or imagining that their grandfathers live on in the body of a light-furred wolf! Before we leave this ship, that bastard will have no luck left. I must see to it,” Levotchkin insisted with his chin lifted in long-simmering anger.
“Then, I think, Anatoli, that you will be the one to die, all for your lust for a whore,” Rybakov warned him with sadness. “A whore whom anyone can have. As your elder kinsman, I stand for your father and mother, and warn you to let it go! Once our mission is finished, you will have a golden future ahead of you. Do not throw it away for so little. The world is full of pretty whores, if they are what you desire. Though I wish you aspired to better things.
“Think long and hard, Anatoli,” Rybakov pressed, his pleasant and merry face grim, and inches from the younger’s, “for I do believe that Kapitan Lewrie’s cess will prevail.”
“Now who is the superstitious one?” Count Levotchkin rejoined with a sneer of cold amusement, taking one step backwards and striking a noble stance. “He has wronged me, and insulted me, and I will not abide it. He must die. I have sworn it. If anything counts as a blessing, uncle, the Holy Mother of Kazan will uphold me against any pagan god. I am a loyal son of the true Church, while this Lewrie is of the degraded Protestant Church of England, which we both know is a joke even to the British, observed only once or twice a year, by rote. I doubt Lewrie even adheres to that! He is as faithless as the Tsar!”
“Anatoli . . . !” Rybakov barked, a hand raised in warning. “This must not be done. Before you try, I will ask the Kapitan to put you in irons and chain you below. I will keep the keys until we set foot ashore . . . all the way to Saint Petersburg, if I have to! . . . until you come to your senses, and obey me. Too much is riding on our arrival, and I will not allow anything to prevent our success! Ya paneemayu?”
“Uncle, I . . . !” Count Levotchkin stammered, looking strangled.
“Swear to me you will swallow your pride over such a trivial matter, and obey me in all things,” Rybakov demanded, drawing attention from the quarterdeck officers and men of the after-guard, who did not understand their Russian, but thought the obvious argument odd. “You pledged your wholehearted aid to me in London. What, a gentleman of the aristocracy will go back on his word?” he sneered.
“Uncle, for the love of God, please . . . !”
“Nyet!”
“I will seek him after,” Count Levotchkin stated. “You cannot deny me that.”
“After?” Count Rybakov puzzled, head cocked to one side. “What do you mean, after?”
“Once all is done, and there is peace, I will return to London and confront him,” Levotchkin vowed, in all seeming earnestness.
“After your marriage to the Countess Ludmilla Vissaroninova?” Count Rybakov enquired, a wry brow raised. “And how will you explain that to her, her family . . . or yours? Pah, Anatoli. Once ashore on our own holy soil, your little whore in London will mean nothing to you, nor will your grudge against Kapitan Lewrie. Once in command of a regiment of Guards cavalry, well-married and welcome in every rich house in Saint Petersburg or Moscow . . . and with a guaranteed place in the New Court, this will seem to you nothing. A quibble!”
“But . . . ,” Levotchkin tried to explain, his imagination flooded with images of the delectable, the biddable Tess.
“Swear to uphold me in all things, and obey me in this matter.”
And, after a long moment, Count Anatoli Levotchkin, mind still asquirm with fantasies of bloody revenge, acceded, and swore. Though he did cross the fingers of one hand behind his back.
BOOK 4
Quaeritor belli exitus, non causa.
“Of War men ask the outcome, not the cause.”
—LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
HERCULES FURENS 407–9
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Blessed, HMS Thermopylae seemed indeed to be, for no Danish vessel larger than a fishing smack stood guard in the Holland Deep as she sailed tranquilly on past Saltholm Island, far beyond the range of the forts protecting Copenhagen; the Trekroner, the Castellet, the Amager, the Lynetten, or the bastions that anchored the city’s walls.
Even so, Thermopylae could espy, from the very mast-tops, that the navy yard, girded by those walls, did not yet contain all that many warships with masts set up and yards crossed; those yards that were in place looked bare of sails, as well. Oh, on the Danish side, in the Copenhagen Roads, and in the King’s Deep, officers and lookouts aloft could count the number of warships and odd-looking floating batteries—bulwarked rafts with stumpy masts meant for signalling, and to fly their national ensign, only—arrayed from the Trekroner Fort down to the city proper, to guard the northern entrance to the Roads, but . . . oddly . . . none of them stirred as Thermopylae passed, on the other side of the Middle Ground shoals.
As if they were bewitched and blinded, some fearfully whispered.
South of Copenhagen, ’tween the Danish town of Dragor on Amager Island, and the Swedish coast and the town of Malmö, lay the Grounds, where Captain Hardcastle and Sailing Master Lyle both cautioned that a steady wind for several days could reduce the depth by as much as three feet over the shallow throat of the Baltic, and the largest vessels of the deepest draught might have to anchor and lighten themselves of cargo, water butts, or guns to get over.
With several days of Northerly winds, though, the leadsmen swinging their leads from the fore-chains found sufficient depth for Thermopylae; even drawing eighteen feet, she passed over the Grounds with at least two fathom to spare, and did not even feel the brush of sand, silt, or mud under her false keel.
By twilight, the frigate, on a steady course of South by East, with perhaps only half a point of Southing, rounded the lattermost tip of Swedish territory at the point of Falsterbo, and stood out into the frigid Baltic itself, at last. It was only at midnight, and the beginning of the Middle Watch, that Lewrie ordered course altered to Due East . . . sail taken in and speed reduced to a scant four knots, and extra lookouts posted to spot any drifting fields of ice.
With the dawn came a shift in wind, at last, starting to back round 3 A.M., an hour before All Hands was piped to wake the ship for another day of seafaring, of stowing hammocks topside, sweeping and mopping decks, and going to Quarters to guard against any foe revealed by the dawning sun. It changed to Nor’westerly, then quickly Westerly, and by Four Bells of the Morning Watch, had swung round to Sou’westerly. By the time Lewrie came to the quarterdeck for the third time of a sleepless night, so swathed in fur and undergarments that he resembled an Greenland E
skimo, it was from South by West, sweeping over the coastal plains of Prussia that lay to the South . . . and it felt just a tad warm, though none too strong.
“We’ll not be able to pass between Sweden and the Danish island of Bornholm, sir,” Mr. Lyle reported as they pored over the chart upon the traverse board. “By my reckoning, we’ve made twenty-five nautical miles since weathering Falsterbo last night, and—”
“No chance of sun-sights, of course,” Capt. Harcastle stuck in.
“No. Of course not, not in this eternal overcast,” Mr. Lyle agreed, though through clenched teeth to be interrupted. “I’d suggest we alter course to the Sou’east, and leave Bornholm broad to larboard.”
“Sheltered waters, ’twixt Sweden and Bornholm, d’ye see, sir?” Hardcastle continued between sips of hot tea from his battered old pewter mug. “Calmer waters, more chances for ice floes to form. No one chances that passage, past November. Ye’ve seen the drift ice that we encountered during the night, Captain Lewrie?”
“Not really,” Lewrie replied. “It was reported to me, but . . .”
“Rotten,” Capt. Hardcastle declared. “Thin, and looking as if rats had been gnawing at the few pieces I saw, close enough aboard for me to judge. Damned near soft as pie crust, I’d imagine. Do we espy more this morning, it might not be a bad idea to put down a boat, and row out to give it a closer look-see.”
“The thaw’s set in for certain, then,” Lewrie said, wondering how soon it might be that Thermopylae encountered Swedish or Russian warships at sea . . . or Danish, had they despatched one or two in chase of them.
“Oh, ’tis still too early for Karlskrona or the other Swedish ports to have clear passage,” Hardcastle assured him with a smile and a wink. “And the Russian ports up the Gulf of Finland, well . . . they’re weeks behind the Swedes. But we’re getting there, sir, believe you me. And with this warm wind outta the mainland . . . ,” he said, turning his face to it for a second before shrugging his inability to give an exact estimate, “mayhap the thaw will come even earlier this season. Were I back in England, I’d be loaded and stowed, just waiting for a favourable wind to start the first trading voyage of the Spring.”
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