by Eric Flint
Van Walbeeck led an impromptu round of applause for their performance, which of course no one had seen. “You are grace personified, Lady Leonora!”
“And you are an inveterate, if completely dear and charming, liar,” she giggled in response.
Eddie wondered if instead of being nonalcoholic, Tromp had slipped him a cup with a double shot in it. Because clearly, his senses were beginning to deceive him. Leonora giggling? What was next? The Second Coming?
There was a different miracle occurring, though: the musicians had completed the last dance without any perceptible wobbles, let alone disasters. They started the next piece almost immediately: the rhythm was slow and stately but you could tell that it was going to pick up. Ladies collected in groups, those who were familiar with the steps helping those who were not as they began to dance together. Which seemed like a really good idea to Eddie, since most men were such awful dancers.
A few of the other notable personages in the great room decided to join in. Governor Warren’s and Lieutenant Governor Jeafferson’s entire families recognized the tune and took to the floor with glad cries, recalling times past. Councilor Coapland was drawn in by the St. Christophers’ contingent. And, entering along with the rest of the women was Sophie Rantzau, who was a striking figure in flowing white. But she took one look at the dancing and swerved away, to the side of the hall opposite Eddie.
Hugh saw her, too: she was impossible to miss. But Eddie had the distinct feeling that the Irishman would have spotted her even if she had been shrunk to half her size and rendered invisible by ancient Norse magic. O’Donnell put aside the punch he had been nursing and clapped a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “You’ll excuse me, gentlemen. I believe I hear my name being called.”
Tromp looked around, baffled. “I hear no such summons.”
Eddie smiled at his big friend and drawled, “I didn’t know you could hear with your eyes, Hugh.”
Hugh’s smile widened. “I’m a man of many strange and unexpected talents, Eddie. Be well; I’m off.” And he was, striding across the great hall toward the tall figure in white.
Mike was grinning after him, took a glass of punch. “Well, we always seem to talk politics at these shindigs, so let’s get to it. I’m not staying long.”
Sehested frowned. “I’m sorry if our sharp words have disinclined you from enjoying the festivities.”
He glanced at the Danish nobleman in surprise. “Has nothin’ to do with it—although those are kind words and I appreciate them, Lord Sehested. In point of fact though, if I stayed, I might dance. And I don’t dare do that.”
“Come, come,” protested van Walbeeck. “I have the musical sensibilities of a rockslide, Mr. McCarthy, and even I shall assay a gavotte, when one is finally played.”
Mike shook his head. “Not afraid to cut a rug.” He saw the confused stares. “I’m fine with dancing. But I’m a married man.”
“Surely,” Sehested said, “that does not preclude the purely social dances done in groups, though?”
Mike shrugged. “I try to keep my life simple. To do that, I live by simple rules. The rule tonight is, if you can’t scratch an itch, then don’t go where you’re going to be tickled by feathers. Like the ones that some of the ladies are wearing in their hair tonight.” He glanced at Eddie. “So what are the topics du jour?”
Eddie shook his head. “Sorry, Mike: no confidential confabs tonight. Too risky, now.”
“Killjoy,” Mike groused.
“OPSEC,” Eddie corrected.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Sehested.
Eddie grinned. “Sorry, ‘OPSEC’ is shorthand for operational security. Spies are going to be thick here, now.”
“You have intercepted some already?”
“Not yet.”
“Then how do you know any will hear us this night?”
“I don’t. But we’ve got to assume that, with all the people passing through here in the past three days, at least one would be willing to trade information for coin. After all, spies are to Spain what corn is to Kansas . . . Uh, well, would have been.” That didn’t help. “Spies are to Spain what wine is to Italy.”
Expressions of sudden understanding quickly transformed into wide grins.
Van Walbeeck struck one heel upon the floor. “Secrets can wait, but celebration cannot. We are alive, gentlemen. Starvation is a distant memory and all is well with us and our little corner of the world. Besides, there is a segment of our population that would have revolted had we not had a party!”
Sehested glanced at the lively dance floor. “The ladies were so insistent?”
“Ladies? My dear Sehested, I fear that your mind is so filled with the calculus of logistics, statecraft, and keeping your mercurial monarch pleased, that the simple math of our local reality has eluded you.” In response to the Danish aristocrat’s puzzled gaze, van Waalbeek threw wide the hurricane shutters and gestured outside. They all looked.
They saw a sea of faces. Flushed faces. Eager faces.
Male faces.
At least three for every woman now inside the hall.
The song ended, the dancers clapped their appreciation, and the doormen began to lift the bars that had shut the doors against the male horde waiting just beyond the threshold.
“And now, gentlemen,” Tromp murmured, “behold bedlam.”
Chapter 26
Oranjestad, St. Eustatia
Anne Cathrine was not a particularly pious person. She felt that, when it came right down to it, God—if there really was one—had a great deal of unpleasantness and injustice to answer for. But this night, she was tempted to believe in deity, because it certainly seemed that her prayers had been answered.
Hugh and Sophie had been dancing for almost an hour. Between their exertions—they were both thrillingly sure-footed—and the music, they only spoke intermittently and in short bursts. But the discourse of their eyes would have been plain to a blind man. And when they did speak, Sophie was either smiling or laughing.
Sophie was laughing: her head back, her fine throat stretched up as if she was finally breaking above water that had been drowning her. And even as the breath was rushing out of her in peals of mirth, her friend knew that she was also gasping greedily at the first breaths of life-giving air her Norn heart had known in years.
Anne Cathrine dabbed away a tear of joy from the corner of one eye, marched over to Eddie, grabbed his arm, and tugged him toward the dance floor, never giving him a chance to resist or refuse.
* * *
Sophie watched Hugh go to get them refreshment, fanned herself with a long hand. This was dancing. Without eyes watching, measuring, judging. Without having to worry who she must partner with and who she must not, which dances were appropriate and which were ill advised. It was a perfect moment—
“Lady Sophie?”
She started, knew the voice before she turned to welcome the unwelcome intruder upon her reveries. “Lord Sehested. Are you enjoying the evening?”
“I am, although not so much as I enjoy seeing others enjoy it.” He edged closer. “There is no courtly way to broach this topic, but I have admired your composure and resolve to remain aloof from the uncharitable comments and . . . and speculations that I have heard, even here, in relation to your mother. Particularly in light of how many of those same calumnies touch upon your good self, as well. With no basis, I know, but it must be quite difficult to—”
“There you are!” cried Leonora, who ran up with Rik Bjelke in tow. It was unclear whether she was on his arm, or he on hers. “Come with us! The musicians have finished resting, the lazy louts! The floor is filling, even now.”
Sophie struggled to keep her composure, emotionally whipsawed between the ominous knowledge that Sehested clearly possessed about her past, and the adolescent enthusiasm of her oblivious friend.
Leonora did not wait for a reply but tugged on her arm. “There is dancing again! Come!”
Sophie allowed herself to be pulled away from Sehested
. Away from the prospect of being forced to relive the wounds and disgrace that, until this moment, she thought she had left behind in Denmark. But clearly, she had not.
She did not look back at Lord Sehested as she joined Leonora and Rik and told herself that she must not vomit.
* * *
Across the dance floor, Eddie saw Hannibal Sehested approach Hugh, who was carrying two drinks and looking around, expectant. As the Danish noble launched earnestly into whatever topic he meant to press upon the Irish earl, the much taller man began to scan the great room, evidently looking for the vanished Sophie. Granted, there were a lot of ladies wearing some shade of white (including age-yellowed) that evening, but none so strikingly as Sophie Rantzau. Or so it seemed to Eddie.
Which was why he was able to quickly pick her out of the crowd on his own side of the room, the musicians blocking Hugh’s line of sight to her.
But she had clearly positioned herself where she could see him and Hannibal Sehested. Actually, from the way she was peering between the musicians, it looked like she was furtively watching the two of them with something like apprehension or even terror. When Sehested eventually nodded farewell and departed, she recoiled, almost bumping into a volunteer bringing in a fresh bowl of punch. Flustered, she moved further away with long, accelerating strides—
“Eddie! Will you not save me from Governor van Walbeeck?”
He looked around, saw his laughing wife abandoning the very red governor who seemed loath to leave the dance floor. Anne Cathrine’s escape ended with her grabbing his arm, glistening and beaming. “Jan is relentless!”
Van Walbeeck’s smile was huge. “I am inspired by my company and overjoyed at this evening’s success! Who would ever want to stop dancing?”
“I would,” Anne Cathrine almost giggled, “unless my husband is ready again.”
“Well, I—”
“Oh, come, come, young Cantrell! If your limbs are weary, put some spirit back into them!” He apparently meant that literally; he handed Eddie a mug of punch.
“Governor? I don’t drink. Remember?”
Van Walbeeck smacked his forehead so sharply that half of the surrounding merrymakers stopped to see what that loud, meaty slap had been. “Apologies, my dear Eddie! It seems unnatural to me, that any man should foreswear those natural spirits that raise our own!” He glanced thoughtfully back at the impromptu down-time equivalent of an open bar. “And such a marvelous diversity of spirits has certainly heightened mine an extra measure!”
“It seems you are not alone,” Tromp observed, watching couples stumbling and laughing as they re-paired for the next allemande courante. “I suspect such high spirits shall lead to spirited courtship.”
Inspecting a newly arrived bottle of calvados, van Walbeeck chuckled at his friend’s comment. “Ironic, how all these different expressions of ‘spirit’ were made possible by our Spanish antagonists. Although certainly not willingly.”
Eddie laughed. As he prepared to follow his wife out to the dance floor, he quipped, “Yeah; I wonder how their spirits are, right about now?”
Chapter 27
Santo Domingo, Hispaniola
Admiral Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo poured his first glass of rioja almost to the rim. It recalled the manners of a peasant, not a hidalgo, but right now, he didn’t care.
To his right, Don Eugenio de Covilla, a captain who had proven invaluable during the previous year, raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Well bred and even better educated, he was judicious enough to genuinely respect his superiors, his elders, and those who held his fate in the palm of their hands. Which meant that he showed Álvarez three times the deference he might have shown another man.
To the left, another captain, Manrique Gallardo, had not even waited for the others to fill their own glasses, and so make a toast. He was already slurping noisily at his own liberal portion. Another hidalgo in name only, Álvarez concluded silently. Of course, there were far more of those in the New World than the real article.
At the other end of the oval table, their host, Governor and Captain-General Juan Bitrian de Viamonte y Navarra, glanced briefly at Gallardo and then at Álvarez with a look of amused resignation. Gallardo was a capable soldier and there was a silver lining to his ignorance or impatience regarding the manners of polite society; he was utterly frank and unstinting in his reports and assessments. For which he’d been included in this gathering.
De Covilla glanced at his host. “Shall we begin, Your Excellency?”
Don Juan Bitrian de Viamonte nodded, suppressing a shiver despite the still, sultry night. There was no breeze off the bay, and in the streets beyond the compound of the Governor’s Villa, the voices were loud and irritable. Tempers were short and emotions ran close to the surface when the humidity reached such levels.
De Covilla waited for de Viamonte’s almost spasmodic trembling to subside. Fadrique stared at his wineglass but through it, was able to assess his friend’s health.
After an absence of three months, it was little changed, at least so far as he could tell. The left arm looked slightly more shriveled, but on the other hand, his color had improved and he seemed to have more energy. He had inquired after the nature of Juan’s ailment during his time in Havana, and learned that it had not been congenital as he had speculated but the strange result of a small wound received in combat over a decade ago. It usually did not make itself felt as anything other than a nuisance, but would occasionally send fevers and chills through him which, at their worst, might confine him to bed for a week. De Viamonte always recovered, but always a little weaker than before.
His shivers either fading or mastered, the invalid governor’s eyes snapped over to catch Fadrique, as if to say, caught you looking! Álvarez simply let a small, sad smile crumple his lips.
De Viamonte’s gaze did not waver. “Normally I would ask Captain de Covilla to provide us with any updates. However, Admiral Álvarez de Toledo has not only received and reviewed the latest intelligence, but is newly returned from Havana, where he was often closeted with Governor Gamboa. So I suspect he best knows the order in which we might most profitably consider the new challenges before us.”
Fadrique nodded, thinking: That may prove to be the most dubious honor that has ever been conferred upon me. Because there was no jest nor irony in his voice when, eyes still upon de Viamonte’s, he asked frankly, “Your Excellency, I know that you have been occupied with many matters here on Hispaniola, so I shall address those matters with which you are least likely to be fully familiar.” He sighed. “Which is to say, which disaster would you prefer me to detail first?”
Even Gallardo stopped slurping his rioja. “It is as bad as all that, sir?”
De Viamonte, maintaining formality since there were subordinates present, simply waved two pale fingers in Fadrique’s direction. “Admiral, you may proceed as you think best.”
Fadrique folded his hands and leaned forward over the reports. “La Flota has been lost. Entirely.”
Gallardo’s mouth hung open for a moment before he snapped it shut. De Covilla’s response was hawkeyed attention; he’d heard the basic news, no doubt, but not the specifics. Which Fadrique did not need to follow on the papers before him; he knew them by heart. Would probably never forget them as long as he lived.
“We do not have all the details of how it happened, or the final fate of several of the ships which escaped, but here is what we do know . . . ”
He set it all before them: the galleons sunk, the hulls suspected as having been taken, the number of estimated survivors who presumably were still marooned on a pair of small islands off the southeast tip of Guadeloupe.
De Covilla leaned forward. “Admiral, a question if I may.”
Fadrique waved casual permission. “A pleasant formality, asking allowance to speak or inquire. These matters are too serious to cling to such frippery. You may both”—he caught Gallardo’s eye as well—“speak when and as you wish.”
De Covilla nodded polite gra
titude. “How do we have this intelligence, sir? Spies? Our . . . auxiliaries?” He stiffened as that sanitized euphemism for pirate slipped through his rigid lips.
Álvarez shook his head. “No. There were three pataches with the Plate Fleet. They escaped.”
“They did not fight?” Gallardo asked indignantly.
Maybe you’re not as smart as Juan claims. “Had they fought, they would have died, and we would only now be wondering if possibly the fleet had been late leaving Seville. As it is, not all of them survived the experience. One was especially bold in keeping the enemy fleet in sight, and once La Flota’s survivors had been marooned, tried to slip in under cover of night to reclaim the most senior among them to convey back here.”
Álvarez waved a fly away from his wine. “All they achieved was their own deaths. A Dutch jacht had apparently been detailed to keep surreptitious watch for just such an attempt. It had the advantage of the wind gauge, guns, and surprise. The outcome was never in question.
“Fortunately, the other two patache captains were more prudent than daring and returned with what they saw. Their information is incomplete. But we do know this: the enemy took great pains to capture rather than sink our ships. We must presume they are being repaired and will be used by the Dutch.”
De Viamonte frowned. “I would have thought the United States of Europe would have claimed and crewed the majority of those prizes. It was their steamships which, according to the account, were the true source of our defeat, and their ports are not blockaded.”
“Neither are the Dutch ports. Not anymore,” Fadrique explained.
“There has been a change in the status of the Netherlands?”
“There has indeed. In addition to persisting in styling himself as King in the Lowlands, Philip IV’s brother has taken further steps which suggest he is consolidating those lands as his own. Including some kind of detente with the Dutch and their Stadtholder General, Prince Hendrik Fredrik.”