The Baltic Gambit

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The ship is at Quarters, sir," Lt. Ballard reported, once the last noisy rumbles and thuds had died away. Decks were sanded, water butts between the guns were full; seamen's chests and stowage bags had been struck down to the orlop, along with all the deal and canvas partitions, captain's and officers' furniture. The Misdshipmen's mess on the orlop had been converted to a surgery.

The 18-pounders of both batteries had been run in, un-bowsed from the gun-port sills, and the ports ready to be lowered. Captains and quarter-gunners had selected the truest, roundest shot from among the balls stowed in the thick rope shot-garlands, or the shot-racks by the hatchways. Tompions had been removed from the muzzles, and powder charges had been rammed down to the breeches, followed by shot and wadding.

Gun tools had been fetched up from the racks over the tables in the mess, the tables swung up against the overheads, and flint-lock strikers fetched from the magazines. The arms chests had been opened, and muskets, pistols, and cutlasses were ready to hand. The boarding pike racks round the bases of the masts had been un-locked and un-chained, making them ready to grab.

Sailors serving the guns had bound their neckerchiefs over their ears to preserve their hearing, and most had stuffed oakum into their ears, as well. Officers and Warrants had dressed, in the wee hours of the pre-dawn, in their cleanest clothing, exchanging their usual linen or cotton shirts and stockings for silk, which was easier to draw from wounds.

HMS Thermopylae was ready for battle, no matter how out-gunned they might be by the monster cannon of Kronborg Castle; ready to sell their lives dearly, should Thermopylae be dis-masted, crippled, and captured. She would not go down without a fight.

"Very well, Mister Ballard," Lewrie replied, fingers of his left hand flexing on the hilt of his hanger.

"Sorry, sir… they don't care much for their basket," Pettus apologised as he emerged from the great-cabins with both cats "bagged" at last, on his way to the orlop where he would assist the Surgeon, Mr. Harward, and his Mates, should it come to it.

"They'll get used to you, Pettus," Lewrie called down to him from the cross-deck hammock nettings of the quarterdeck, "and let you shove 'em in, as meek as baa-lambs."

He thumped the top of the nettings to assure himself that they were tight-packed with rolled-up sailors' hammocks and bedding, passed through the ring-measure that required them to be as snug as sausages. Cross the forrud edge of the quarterdeck, down the bulwarks from bow to stern on each beam, the snugly packed iron stanchions and nettings might stop lighter shot, grape, and langridge, or flesh-flaying clouds of wood splinters from hits. The Marines, in full red kit for a rare once unless posted as sentries, could shelter behind them and fire their muskets at enemy sea soldiers, not out in the open like the Army did, and shoulder-to-shoulder.

The night before, Thermopylae had come to anchor in Swedish waters, bows pointing Northerly to best and second bower, just a bit South of the long, narrow peninsula that marked the deep inlet named the Koll, for Lewrie had no wish to try to skulk through the Narrows in the dark. And he wished to measure the rate of the outflow from the Baltic that they would face in the morning, after nigh a week of Northerly winds to slow it. He had pored over his charts once more, in private, without Hardcastle or Lyle, and scribbling on a blank sheet of paper, estimating the strength of the next day's winds, and Thermopylae's possible speed "over the ground" in varying circumstances… and, how long his frigate would be under fire in that one-and-three-quarter-mile oval of vulnerability. With the ship safely anchored, the chip-log streamed from the bow had shown only a two-knot current that night, and with any luck (and his fingers crossed) Lewrie estimated that they might make at least five or six knots South. The simple mathematics was stark, though; that meant seventeen to twenty minutes under fire, if the Danes were feeling particularly bellicose, if the Swedes decided to join in, as they had vowed to when the Armed Neutrality was formed… as they had so long ago when Denmark, Sweden, and Danish Norway had been referred to as "The Three Crowns."

The mood of the ship had been sombre, the crew on the gun-deck singing to the accompaniment of fiddle and fife, or the strains of Liam Desmond's uilleann lap-pipes; "Admiral Hosier's Ghost," "The False Young Sailor," "Spanish Ladies," "One Morning in May," all the lachrymose and sad dirges they knew. Oh, Desmond had struck up some lively tunes, but it hadn't sounded as if they rise to them, not full-voiced and eager as they usually might. There was no rhythmic thud of dancing to the horn-pipes, chanteys, or "stamp and goes."

Wonder if there's any horn-pipes of gloom? Lewrie had wondered.

Supper with Count Rybakov had been a sullen affair, too; thankfully without Count Levotchkin's presence, for both of them had more on their minds than sparkling and witty conversation. Count Rybakov had pressed him for more lore about selkies, Lir, and the particular instances when seals had appeared to him, but that subject was simply too eerie a matter on the possible eve of battle. The highlight, if one could call it that, occurred when Rybakov had expressed curiosity about Lewrie's Kentucky Bourbon whisky, and Lewrie had, in turn, had to taste several varieties of vodka, including a Polish version flavoured with buffalo grass. Neither had come away with a favourable opinion of the other's "tipple."

"And do you believe in this… cess of yours, Kapitan Lewrie?" Count Rybakov had finally asked.

"Believe?" Lewrie had gloomed. "No, not really, my lord. That would make me a heathen, though I will admit that there've been times that the presence of seals made me wonder. Eerie as it is, whenever they've turned up, I've been… thankful for the warning. There's an host of mysteries that happen at sea, so…," he had concluded with a shrug.

By the first bell of the Evening Watch, at 8:30 P.M., both of them were more than ready to turn in. Thankfully (again) Count Levotchkin had dined alone in his sleeping-space, had picked over the reconstituted "portable" vegetable soup, the roast chicken and boiled potatoes and the last of the fresh-baked bread, and had washed it all down with more wine, more champagne, and at least half a bottle of vodka, and had babbled, muttered, fumed, and fussed himself to an early slumber matching their own, sparing everyone but for his manservant, Sasha.

Two Bells of the Forenoon chimed from the foc's'le belfry, a terse ding-ding, as Thermopylae sailed along with a steady breeze from the East-Nor'east on her larboard quarters, the snow gales gone, and replaced by a mostly cloudy morning, with only a brief glimmer of sunlight now and then. She was under all plain sail, with two reefs in her forecourse to aid the fore tops'l in lifting her bows, so she did not "snuffle" too deeply, and slow her progress. Her main course was fully spread, a peaceful thing to an outside observer, for a main course sail would only be brailed up for combat, so it would not catch fire from the discharge of her own guns, if fully deployed. Not that it could not be fully reefed in a moment, should it prove necessary!

Lewrie looked up to assure himself that the anti-boarding nets were rigged, but not yet hauled aloft; and to assure himself that all yards had been re-enforced with chain slings to hold them aloft, should halliards and lifts be shot away, to keep them from plunging down to the deck and smothering the gun crews, cannon, and ports in canvas and rope rigging.

Looking forrud, then aft, he noted that their largest flags of the new Union pattern were flying; one from the truck of the foremast, and the largest aft from the spanker. The Danes could not mistake her nationality, nor accuse them of trying to sneak past Kronborg Castle by employing a dishonourable false flag.

"Eight knots, sir!" Midshipman Privette cried from the taffrail. "Eight knots and an eighth, really!"

"Six knots over the ground, then," Lt. Ballard commented as he rocked on the balls of his boots; more-like mooed in a grim-lipped way.

"Seventeen minutes," Lewrie muttered under his breath. "Very well, Mister Privette," he called out in a louder voice, to an unsuspecting world the epitome of calmness.

"There's Elsinore, sir," Capt. Hardcastle pointed out as the old royal residence of Danish kings loomed up on their starboard bows. "Beyond, that'll be Kronborg Castle."

"That's a fortress, by God?" Lewrie marvelled. "I expected… something grimmer."

Kronborg Castle, formidable though it must be, looked more like a fairy castle, the sort of thing illustrated in a children's book, or a large toy to spur the imagination of the kiddies in their playroom.

It had four large, square bastions, with stout walls spanning the distances between them, all of red brick, not granite or limestone. Lighter-coloured, window-like apertures below the bastions and along the walls revealed a lower-storey casemate. Yet Kronborg sprouted spires and towers more like those rising from Muslim mosques, like minarets, and every steep roof was of copper; mostly gone verdigris green, but here and there as bright as a new-minted penny!

It sat at the end of a long, low peninsula, atop a built-up earthen base, with shallow-angled embankments that led straight into the sea, to the beach, all covered in grass as green as the criquet pitch at Lord's, and, overall, looked more like the country mansion of some incredibly wealthy, and eccentric, viscount, earl, or duke!

"For what we're about to receive…" Mr. Simms, the senior-most Quartermaster at the double-helm, whispered the old saw for steeling oneself to stand manful under the enemy's first broadside.

"Receive, Hell, Mister Simms," Lewrie scoffed. "What, ye think it's Christmas?"

"Ship off the star-board bow, d'ye hear there?" a lookout in the main-mast cross-trees shouted down. "She be a brig! Anchored by the fort!"

Everyone with access to a telescope raised it to look the brig over, Lewrie included. She lay quite near the shore, about a quarter-mile off from a substantial stone quay and landing, anchored from the bows and a single kedge astern, and though there was a thin skein of smoke from her, it was a single source, not the general haze arising from burning slow-match.

"Galley smoke, I make it, sir," Lt. Ballard said.

"Ah ha!" Lewrie exclaimed as a fluke of wind close inshore at last swung round to match their own, baring the nature of the flag at her stern. "The 'Post-Boy,' by God! One of our mail packets!"

Sure enough, the brig flew a red flag with a Union insignia in the canton, and the bulk of the fly covered by a large white square, in which a post-boy with a long trumpet astride a galloping horse was depicted.

"We're still talkin' with the Danes, it seems," Lewrie explained to the quarterdeck. "Mister Fox, Mister Farley!" he shouted down to the waist over the hammock nettings. "Draw shot from the starboard battery, quick as you can! Mister Tunstall… prepare to fire a salute to the castle. How many guns… anyone?" he asked, in a quandary.

"Twenty-one for their king, sir?" Midshipman Sealey, their eldest, guessed with his fingers crossed.

"I doubt he's there in the castle," Lewrie chuckled. "And their Crown Prince ain't, either."

"There's a Colonel Stricker, in command of Kronborg Castle, sir," Capt. Hardcastle supplied. "What'd a Colonel rate?"

"Uhm… fifteen, sir?" Midshipman Privette meekly piped up.

"I do believe that a Colonel does merit fifteen guns in salute, sir," Lt. Ballard gravely intoned, though there was, at last, some merriment in his dark eyes.

"Fifteen it is, then," Lewrie agreed, hoping that was the right number. "Mister Tunstall… fifteen-gun salute to the Colonel of the bloody fort! Soon as we're abeam!"

"Aye-aye, sir!" the Master Gunner cried back, beyond puzzled by then. To fire a salute with blank charges would be to cede the enemy first honours, the carefully aimed first broadside should the fortress open upon them.

"You will permit us to come to the quarterdeck, Kapitan?" Count Rybakov asked from the foot of the starboard gangway ladder. He had a somewhat sober Count Levotchkin with him, swaying like a scarecrow in a stiff breeze in a grain field, and looking pasty-sick.

"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 speeed 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 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.