The Baltic Gambit l-15

by Dewey Lambdin

  "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 Kronborg 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."

  "Aye-aye, sir."

  "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 contai
n 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 Malmц, 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 Eskimo, 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."

  "Oh joy," Lewrie griped, looking up from the chart to peer over the bows, and the hobby-horsing jib-boom and bow sprit for the island of Bornholm, still lost in the overcast and winter haze. By Mr. Lyle's reckoning, it lay perhaps twenty sea-miles East. He was tempted to go as close as he dared to the passage between the isle and Sweden, but there were his passengers, and their diplomatic mission, to consider. Hardcastle's assurance that the passage would not be usable for a few more weeks would have to do, for now.

  "Very well," he reluctantly said, looking about for the officer of the watch, then trying to determine which of the swathed and muffled individuals that might be. "Mister Fox, sir?"

  "Aye, sir?" the wool-covered figure in a bright red muffler and knit wool cap replied, lowering the scarf to ba B A scarf tore all his face.

  "We will alter course to Sou'east, and make more sail," Lewrie directed. "All plain sail, first, then 'all to the royals,' perhaps."

  "Directly, Captain," Lt. Fox crisply replied. "Bosun, pipe 'All Hands,' then 'Stations To Come About.' "

  By mid-day, as the last of Eight Bells chimed, they stood with sextants and slates ready, hoping for a peek at the sun, but that orb refused to appear clearly, veiling itself as a bright, vague smudge in a sky solidly clouded over. The best they could do was agree that the various chronometers still kept the same time, within half a minute of each other, and that it was Noon, indeed, when the day officially began aboard a ship at sea; not at Midnight, but at Noon Sights.

  "At least we see Bornholm, sir," Lt. Farley said, lowering his telescope after a peek over the larboard beam, "and can reckon by its presence just where we are. Its southernmost tip, yonder, 'twixt… ah, Aakirkeby and, ah… Nekso? And who picks the names for foreign towns, I ask you? Can't pronounce the half of 'em," he muttered.

  "Do you concur, Captain Hardcastle?" Lewrie asked the civilian merchant master.

  "That it be, sir," Hardcastle told them, chuckling. "Bless me, sirs, but you think they're hard to say, you ought to see how they're spelled in Swedish or Danish! All sorts of umlauts and hyphen strokes through the odd vowels. In Russian waters, it's even worse, for they use the Cyrillic alphabet… the old Greek, and thank God for Anglicised British charts."

  "Ice!" cried a main-mast lookout from the cross-trees. "Do ye hear, there? Broken ice, two points off the larboard bows! A mile or more off!"

  "You still wish to examine the ice, Captain Hardcastle?" Lewrie asked him.

  "We must, sir," Hardcastle assured him.

  "Mister Fox, we'll fetch-to, and lower a boat for Captain Hardcastle. Pass word for my Cox'n and boat crew," Lewrie ordered.

  Thermopylae had been able to post about six or seven knots on the Sutherly winds, but now it was tossed away as the helm was put over and the sails trimmed to turn the frigate's bows about, into the wind, with squares'ls backed to check her forward motion, and with fore-and-aft sails cupping and drawing wind to counter any sternward drive. A rowing boat, the cutter, was seized up, and, with the employment of the main course yard for a crane, hoisted off the cross-deck boat-tier beams and carefully lowered overside, then manned below the starboard entry-port. Captain Hardcastle and Midshipman Tillyard joined the boat crew and began to row off towards the ice floes, now clearly visible from the decks. Lewrie paced the quarterdeck, from taffrail to the hammock nettings, and back again, stopping now and then to peer out and drum impatient mittened fingers on the cap-rails, knowing that such was as slow as "church work," as the saying went.

  "Pardons, sir," Midshipman Plumb said by his side.

  "What?" Lewrie impatiently snapped.

  "Uhm… your man, Pett
us, begs tell you that your dinner is ready, sir," the boy reported, looking a tad daunted.

  "My pardons, Mister Plumb," Lewrie apologised, "but the state of the ice in the Baltic matters a great deal for Admiral Parker, and Admiral Nelson, and I'm anxious t'know what they discover," he added, jutting an arm at the slowly moving cutter. "Dinner, d'ye say? Hmm."

  Proper Post-Captains did not fret; not where people could see them, they didn't. They were to show the world glacial serenity, even in hurricanes, he chid himself.

  "Mister Fox, you have the deck," Lewrie called out over his shoulder as he tramped for the larboard gangway. "I will be dining in my cabins, 'til the boat returns. Send word when it does."

  "Aye-aye, sir."

  "A nice slab of last night's sea-pie, sir," Pettus told him as he helped him disrobe his winter garb. "Pity the Russian gentlemen didn't fancy it much, but more for you, there is. A scalding-hot soup… beef broth, diced onion, melted cheese and crumbled biscuit, and Nettles fried you some lovely potato patties, with lots of crumbled bacon. The cats have got their share of that, sir, no fear." Pettus cheerfully chattered away as Lewrie sat down at the table. A moment later, and there was a rum-laced, sweetened, and milked mug of coffee before him; even if it was goat's milk. "Wine, too, sir?"

  "Think I'll wait 'til supper for wine, today, Pettus," Lewrie decided as he dug in with his fork. His hunger was alive, clawing at his innards, but he forced himself to go slow, as he'd forced himself to come below, and pretend to ignore the boat, and the ice. One very good reason to dally over his victuals was the absence of both of the Russian counts, and their servants; they had dined earlier, together, with Count Levotchkin coming out of his self-enforced exile aft, and thus avoiding having to dine with Lewrie, in proper manner, for once. The brief spell of privacy, free of Rybakov's ever-cheerful prattle, was splendid!