1634: The Baltic War (49 page)

The king's daughter sniffed. "He
is
delicate. Partly why I'm so fond of him. Not coarse and crude, like some people I know."

Norddahl smiled thinly. "You wouldn't think that, if you'd been introduced to the lad the way I was. Watching the berserk steer a speedboat into a warship and barely managing to jump off at the last minute."

Eddie had only fragmentary memories of all that. What he did remember for sure, though, was that he
hadn't
been steering the speedboat. The overpowered Outlaw had simply been running wild, after Larry was killed, and had hit the Danish warship by accident.

On the other hand, he'd never told anyone that, either. He would, when and if the time came to report to Admiral Simpson. But as long as he was in Danish captivity, he'd figured the legend worked to his advantage.

Probably, anyway. It was hard to tell, sometimes. But he thought he could detect, more often than not, that ancient Norse spirit lying under the seventeenth-century patina. Barely lying under it, in Baldur's case.

Eddie Cantrell, the Delicate Berserk. There were times he thought he might go mad, in this new world.

Then again—in his more honest moments—he'd admit that he'd never felt quite so alive in West Virginia. "Wild, Wonderful," was the proud claim on the state's license plates—but he'd never met a girl like Anne Cathrine there, now had he?

Or a prince like Ulrik, for that matter. Or an adventurer like Baldur Norddahl. Talk about wild and wonderful.

"Agreed?" he asked.

Ulrik nodded. "Yes, agreed."

Eddie looked down at the sketch again. "It's too late now for any of it to matter, anyway. Well, except—"

He gave Ulrik a sharp glance. "What do you know about our people locked in the Tower of London? I want a straight answer, Ulrik, or I'm not saying anything more."

The prince shook his head. "We know very little, Eddie. Not even my father. That's the truth. More to the point, perhaps, we don't
care,
either."

He made a little grimace, then. "Charles is hardly what you'd call a bosom friend of Denmark. About all I can tell you is that, at last report—a week ago, perhaps—your embassy was still locked in the Tower."

Before Eddie could say anything, Ulrik added, "I will not pass anything on to anyone who might pass it on further to the English. My solemn vow, on that, Lieutenant Cantrell. I care only for Denmark. The whole League of Ostend can go to hell in a handbasket, to use your charming expression. With that idiot Charles leading the rest."

"Fair enough. The answer to your question is that, no, it's not exactly a lie." Eddie tapped the sketch. "For the purpose of general broadcasting to a large audience, you really do need something like this. Especially in this day and age, when we're in the Maunder Minimum. But for a lot of military or diplomatic purposes, you don't. When all you want to do is transmit narrowly to specific locations or parties."

Ulrike sighed, his head sagging. "In other words, my father's assumption—everyone's assumption, all along—that there was no way for Gustav Adolf to coordinate his various forces was completely baseless."

"Well . . . I wouldn't say 'completely' baseless. It's still not that easy to do, you know, not even with radio. And there's a pretty tight range limit. But, yes, you're basically right. The admiral has radio capability, and he'll be able to notify the emperor in Luebeck once he's entered the Kattegat and is within range of a radio carried by one of the airplanes. Which . . ."

Eddie looked back out the window. "Should be any day now, I figure. Unless you were lying last week when you told me he'd gotten out of the Elbe. Or unless there was a huge storm in the North Sea I haven't heard about."

Norddahl chuckled. "You wouldn't
have
to 'hear about it.' You'd know, believe me, if there had been a big storm. What's to stop it from striking Copenhagen? The towering mountains of Denmark? The highest spot in the whole country is Yding Skovhøj, and that's maybe six hundred feet tall. If that."

"And I didn't lie to you," Ulrik added. "One of the timberclads was apparently left behind, due to some problem or another. I didn't tell you that, simply because we only found out ourselves three days ago." He got a tight look on his face. "The stinking French pass as little information to us as possible. We found out from one of our own couriers."

Sighing, he began rolling up the sketch. "So once Gustav Adolf knows that Simpson has passed through the Great Belt—that's the route I'm assuming he'll take, anyway—he will be able to notify Torstensson by radio. And since he must have set up a radio link to Stockholm, he'll also be able to notify Oxenstierna and Admiral Gyllenhjelm."

He cocked an eye at Eddie. "Yes?"

Eddie hesitated, but . . . it really
didn't
matter, any more. And, who knows? Maybe King Christian might decide to sue for peace. The truth was, Eddie wasn't real happy himself at the thought of Simpson leveling Copenhagen. And wouldn't have been, even if he weren't perched in the Blue Tower, which was the most visible part of Copenhagen from the waterfront and almost sure to be a prime target for those ten-inch guns.

"No, you're right. You can tell your father—"

"I'm not telling the king anything," Ulrik said bluntly.
"You think he'd listen? Don't be stupid, Eddie. We're long past that point, if it ever existed at all, which I doubt. He's a wonderful father, in many ways, believe it or not. But his pride is involved, and he's just not given to being sensible on such matters. Maybe after . . ."

The prince shrugged. "We'll see. Or you'll see, at least. I may very well not."

Eddie squinted at him. "What does that mean?"

"Never mind. Just accept that there are times a prince must act like a prince, or he'll be able to do nothing thereafter. Leave it at that."

He tucked the rolled-up sketch under his arm and scanned the room. "No place here," he muttered. Then, after sticking his head into the alcove that passed as a toilet, he shook his head. "And not here, obviously."

He came back into the center of the room. "The original plan, then. Baldur, have you seen to it?"

The Norwegian nodded. "Yes, Your Highness. They've been very well paid. And the carriage will be ready, when the time comes."

Ulrik nodded, and turned to his half-sister. "Any last hesitations?"

She shook her head, looking far more solemn than a fifteen-year-old really should.

"What are you all talking about?" Eddie asked.

Ulrik turned to face him. "Amazing, really. What
did
they teach you in those famous up-time schools, beyond mechanical matters?"

"What are you talking about?" Eddie repeated. Feeling, not for the first time since he'd fallen into captivity, like a dunce.

"I read a charming story about those schools," Baldur said. "The really dumb and inattentive ones, they'd make sit in a corner. With a tall pointed hat on his head that said 'dunce.' "

All of them laughed. To rub salt into the wounds, none more loudly than Anne Cathrine.

The North Sea

White water curled back on either side of SSIM
Constitution
's blunt bows as the ironclad butted her way through the North Sea waves. Sea conditions were actually quite good, Simpson thought, standing on
Constitution
's bridge wing while the chilly wind hummed around his ears. Wave height was only about three and a half or four feet, which was practically millpond-smooth compared to typical Atlantic conditions. Not that any of his ships had been
designed
for typical Atlantic conditions, of course.

Fortunately, he thought, turning to look astern to where
President
followed along in
Constitution
's wake, he'd at least had coastal operations in mind when he designed the ironclads. Flooded down, they drew almost ten feet, and he'd built them around what was effectively a double hull. Each of the propulsive pumps—and the tunnel in which it worked—occupied its own individual "pod," separated from the rest of the hull (and from one another) in order to prevent them from being disabled by a single hit or hull breach. It was almost a catamaran effect, and he'd used the flood tanks to further subdivide the portion of both pods which was submerged at maximum draft, giving himself as many of the advantages of watertight compartmentalization as he could. The fuel tanks were nested inside the flood tanks, and the magazines and powerplant were, in turn, nested inside them.

While he'd been at it, he'd taken advantage of the "pod" configuration to incorporate a centerboard feature into the design. Forward and aft of the magazines and the huge, thundering diesel, he'd added a pair of centerboards between the pods, each of them basically a big wooden plank, fifteen feet from front edge to rear edge, which could be lowered vertically to add ten more feet to the ship's draft. That additional stability, "twin screw" maneuverability, and their much better power-to-weight ratio, made Simpson's ironclads far more stable and seaworthy than the majority of the original river ironclads—several of the later Civil War monitors had even been sailed across the
Atlantic
, which was generally rougher than typical North Sea conditions. He'd known all of that, but it was still a great relief to discover that the USE's ironclads were having no trouble handling the requirements of their current voyage.

Of course
, he thought dryly, looking back to where
Ajax
and
Achilles
steamed gamely along behind the larger, deeper-draft ironclads,
it's being a more pleasant experience for some than for others
.

The timberclads
hadn't
been designed for coastal waters—not really. They were typical, flat-bottomed, shoal-draft riverboats, designed to operate in shallow waters. Their bulky steam-powered plants had imposed design constraints of their own, as well. He'd had to locate the boilers as low in the limited hull volume as possible in order to protect them from hostile fire if they got close enough to something with guns heavy enough to penetrate their thick timbers. One of the greatest dangers to the original ironclads' crews had been the threat of fatal scalding when their boilers were breached, and he'd done everything he could to minimize that particular risk. Then he'd had to squeeze in their magazines around the boilers, for the same protective considerations. And after
that
, he'd had to find a place to put their coal bunkers, although he'd actually managed to use those to strengthen the side protection of the powerplant and ammunition. But there'd been neither space, nor pumps, nor surplus power available to worry about features like flood tanks, or variable draft, and their paddle wheels were simply a less efficient means of propulsion.

Taken altogether, those considerations made the timberclads slower, less nimble, and less
stable
than their larger, more sophisticated big sisters.

Which means they're rolling their guts out, even in this chop
, Simpson thought.

It wasn't really all that bad, he supposed. No doubt it looked worse to him than it actually was, since he bore the responsibility for having designed them in the first place, not just the responsibility for getting them safely to Luebeck. Still, with wind and wave coming in from almost broad on the port beam this way, they really were rolling more heavily than he—or their crews, no doubt—liked.

Well
, he told himself,
they'll only have to put up with it for another
ten hours or so
.
Then they'll get to take
the seas on their port quarters, instead
,
and won't
that
be better?

Louis Franchot stood on the deck of his fishing boat beside his worthless, lazy brother-in-law and watched in amazement as the long line of impossible ships sailed past them.

He'd heard rumors about the preposterous warships the Americans were supposed to be building, but he hadn't really believed them. Everybody was always talking about something new and impossible the Americans were supposed to be inventing, or building, or conjuring out of thin air, after all.

Still, when the Crown officially offered fat rewards to anyone who actually saw and reported them, it had been clear
someone
took them seriously. Now Franchot was forced to do the same thing.

They went past him, moving with total disregard for wind or weather, and they had to be making at least ten knots, probably more. In fact, he was positive it was more than that; he just didn't know how
much
more, because he'd never seen anything move that fast. Nor had he ever seen
any
ship move without sails or oars or any other visible means of propulsion. He simply had no experience to apply to estimating how fast these ships were moving.

He'd thought at first that the two in the back must be on fire, judging from all the smoke they were emitting. Obviously, though, they weren't. The smoke was coming from what were clearly purpose-built chimneys, and even if it hadn't been, the ships were continuing blithely on their way, which they would scarcely have been doing if they'd been on fire!

He estimated their course carefully, then nodded to himself. Everyone knew this so-called League of Ostend had the Swedish emperor locked up in Luebeck. From everything Franchot had heard, that was rather like a herd of belligerent sheep getting together to besiege a large, particularly hungry wolf, but that hadn't been any of his concern. It still wasn't, but it was obvious even to a simple fishermen like him, that the warships keeping watch on Luebeck were about to get a truly nasty surprise.

He shook himself as the line of ships disappeared over the horizon.

"Get the net in, Emile!" he said sharply.

His brother-in-law gaped at him, and Franchot clouted him on the ear with one gnarly fist.

"Move, imbecile! That—" he waved an arm at the plumes of smoke still visible to the northeast "—is worth a
month's
worth of fish to the first ones to report it!"