The Baltic Prize

Chapter 38

Stromsson returned to their small room at the end of the officers’ quarters after spending some time with the adjutant. ‘I don’t like it,’ he told Kydd.

‘The siege?’

‘Cronstedt. I knew him before, but this is not the same man.’ He pulled himself together. ‘I’ll show you Sveaborg and you’ll be happier for it, my friend.’

They strolled around the broad roads that connected the buildings. It was a spacious complex, the storehouses substantial and the defences extensive and in depth.

From a high place Kydd was shown the key points. To the north, not more than a couple of miles distant, was the city of Helsingfors, Helsinki in the native tongue, which covered the low hills for a considerable breadth on either side. Beyond it lay Finland in its shroud of snow.

Kydd made out the Russian siege-lines, at a respectful distance but seeming scattered, insubstantial. A few mounted patrols passed on their eternal round but, apart from them, little was happening. It was odd, jarring, and worried him. ‘Jens, this is a siege and where are their guns?’

All sieges that he’d heard of involved an assault led by heavy pounding with a siege-train, massive guns that could batter down the thickest walls and defences. Here there were none, merely an uncomfortable silence on both sides. Surely the Russians could not be trying to starve them out when in a month or two the ice would have melted and supplies could be brought by sea.

‘I don’t know. This is troubling, a vexing mystery. Why is there not much fighting?’

They walked along slowly, passing scores of the great guns of the fortress – unmanned and laid into the middle distance, all deserted of crews. Then elaborate cantonments with soldiers at their ease, no marching columns or drill parades. Kydd counted the rows of barracks. There must be of the order of five to ten thousand men or more – if the Russians chose to attack frontally they would be butchered, if only by weight of numbers.

They topped a rise and, in the enclosed space where the four islands met, saw the archipelago fleet, iced-in but all of the hundred ships that Stromsson had spoken of, in neat, close-packed rows, secured bow and stern and covered with canvas, ready to throw off their confining and sail when the ice retreated.

‘Your fleet, Jens. A brave sight, if I may say.’

Stromsson smiled for the first time that day. ‘I cannot disagree with that, Thomas. But did you know that all is in the command of a general? The fleet belongs to the army and each ship has its colonel and ensigns, sergeant and privates. They count themselves the elite while I languish in the regular navy, which keeps itself at sea for the larger reckoning.’

There were docks and workshops, churches and schools – an extraordinarily impressive military presence. It was inconceivable that such could ever be overcome, a fortress impregnable in the full sense of the word.

In the roadway there were even women and children going about their daily lives with complete unconcern, probably those who’d fled Helsingfors to seek refuge in the looming citadel.

Stromsson touched Kydd’s arm. ‘Look, I have to find out what’s going on. Stay in our quarters and I shall be back soon.’

Kydd was anxious to know their chances of getting out – to be detained away from his ship was always the hardest thing for a captain. A cartel with the Russians, a form of exchange? He flopped on his small bed and waited with as much patience as he could muster.

After what seemed an interminably long time, Stromsson returned with a grim face. ‘One mystery solved, another in its place. The guns – this is because there is a truce in effect. Cronstedt has been treating with the Russian commander, van Suchtelen. They agree that if we do not fire on Helsingfors, where many of their officers’ wives still live, they will not fire on us.’

‘The mystery?’

‘I cannot understand Cronstedt. Why is he talking to them? Where are his daring sallies to drive them off with his numbers?’

Kydd bit his lip. ‘Jens. I will be frank with you. It is of the greatest importance that I get back to my commander-in-chief – and my ship. Soon.’

‘I understand you, Thomas, and sympathise – but I tell you, there is something rotten at the bottom of things here and I mean to discover it before we trust anyone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The officers. I hear them talk. These are not the same as the ones in Stockholm. They’re melancholy and heartsick at the way the war is going. It can only be the commanding officer who is to blame for this and that is my hero, Admiral Cronstedt, who is surely able to take charge and inspire this great redoubt.’

‘So?’

‘So I have been listening and what I hear is either vile rumour or a terrible condemning of one whom I believed my hero.’

‘Tell me, Jens.’

‘You should know that after Svenskund our king Gustav IV Adolf took envy of the popularity of Olof Cronstedt. He sent him away from Stockholm to take command of this eastern fortress and it’s said that Cronstedt’s never forgiven him, an admiral made to command a land fort, however important. He’s been here since and has been brooding on the injustice.’

‘As I can understand. But this doesn’t-’

‘There are those who say he’s every reason to turn his back on the King, to make things easy for the Russians, to get his own back. I’m not one of those who believe this, but there are hard questions that must be answered. The biggest is that Sveaborg is the key to Finland. And I say that if it falls our province of Finland must fall with it – half Sweden is lost for ever. Would the patriot of Svenskund do this to his native land to satisfy a common grudge?’

‘Surely not!’

‘Then there are the factions. He has an army adviser, one Colonel Jagerhorn, whom you saw with him. He’s of the peace-with-Bonaparte view. He’s ambitious and unscrupulous and wants only for Cronstedt to fail. He fills his ear with every excuse why the army cannot stand and shamefully repeats every cheap rumour, but Cronstedt listens to him.’

‘This is nothing but hearsay,’ Kydd said. ‘All he has to do is hold out for a month or two more – this great bastion with its mighty defences just can’t fall.’

‘Yes, Thomas, but there is one explanation some talk of that touches on all and satisfies in every particular.’

Something in his voice made Kydd hesitate. ‘What’s that, Jens?’

‘That Cronstedt plans to yield up Sveaborg – for personal gain. He made parley with van Suchtelen after just a day or two of peppering with light field guns. He outnumbers the greencoats two to one but still he asked for a truce. Under the white flag he went to Lonna island to talk. Alone. No one knows what was said but a truce took effect immediately and has held since. Why did it? Because he told them that for a great sum in gold he will bring about a capitulation but, first, they must bring up reinforcements to make it appear good. The Russians like this, for a sum of gold is as nothing compared to the great cost of a long siege – and then they have all Finland fall into their lap.’

‘Your greatest sea hero, seen to sell his country into ruin? I can’t believe that!’ Kydd was scandalised.

‘He buries the gold on Lonna and then no one knows.’

Kydd stared at him. ‘And you’re saying that this means there’s an agreement not to fight?’

‘I do. Why give over a fortification that’s damaged and filled with corpses?’

‘No! He couldn’t yield it up without his officers rebel and overthrow him,’ Kydd said, floundering for reason.

‘If he’s in league with the peace faction …’

‘He couldn’t!’

‘He’s going out to parley again soon. If I’m right he’ll go on his own and come back with every ground why he can’t take the war to the Russians.’

If Stromsson was right, it was a dire prospect. Trapped and helpless, Kydd would be handed over to captivity or worse.

‘We have to get away. We can’t-’

‘They’re bringing up Cossacks to throw around Sveaborg. We’d never get through patrols of those brutes. No, my friend, we have to come up with something very soon.’

It was a simple, desperate plan. If there was any indication that the fortress was to capitulate, they would conceal themselves in the clock tower above the church and wait it out until after the surrender, then try to blend in with the Helsingfors refugees being returned to the city. To that end they would stock it with food and water for a few days.