1634: The Baltic War (48 page)

So, she'd been on edge for weeks. Lefferts and his people were ready to carry out the jailbreak whenever Melissa gave the word. They could have done it anytime over the past month, in fact. But what was the point of getting out of the Tower if they couldn't get out of England? The small party that would accompany Cromwell into the Fens could probably manage that task, well enough. But that was because the much larger party making its escape to the estuary of the Thames would draw most of the pursuit. Even leaving that aside, there was simply no way fifty-some-odd people could evade capture if they had to spend weeks moving through the English countryside. Perhaps in the Fens, they could—but they'd never get that far in the first place.

Willy-nilly, the escape from the Tower had to wait on the war being waged on the continent. Only at the point when Gustav Adolf and Mike Stearns could afford to divert warships across the North Sea did it become a feasible proposition.

Now, the wait had become easy. Even for Melissa, who didn't handle waiting well.

Darryl's grin had subsided into something more along the lines of a smug smile. For
him,
of course, the wait hadn't been hard at all. Since the alliance with his fiancée's family had been forged, Victoria had evidently put down her foot in light of the new circumstances. So to speak. Darryl had been through that window so many times since that Tom Simpson was starting to call him Peter Pan.

Nearby, in the Bloody Tower, Thomas Wentworth studied the ravens on the grounds below, ignoring the guards at the open door and the cleaning woman going about her duties in his chambers.

They were quite fascinating birds, actually. In a macabre sort of way.

After he heard the last of the bolts close, Wentworth went immediately to the bread and broke open the loaf.

Two passages, this time, both from Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

Chapter 14, verse 5:

One man esteemeth one day above another: another estemeeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.

And chapter 15, verse 4:

For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

The meaning was clear enough. Frustrating, of course. But at least she'd stopped citing that tedious business about time and seasons. Thomas had never been partial to Ecclesiastes.

Copenhagen
May 1634

Eddie Cantrell stared out the window, reflecting sourly that the worst part of the new accommodations was the so-called toilet. The rest, he didn't much care about. In some ways, the comparatively stark nature of his new prisoner's room in Copenhagen Castle's notorious Blue Tower was something of a relief, after the opulence of his quarters in Frederiksborg. For a young man who'd spent most of his life living in a trailer park in West Virginia, royal Danish notions of "stark" were hardly the severe punishment that King Christian IV must have thought they'd be.

Except for the damn toilet. Granted, the sanitary arrangements in Frederiksborg hadn't been anything to write home about. But at least Frederiksborg had been a modern castle—"modern," that is, for the seventeenth century—designed by Dutch Renaissance architects. It had running water, and the toilets had a crude but reasonably effective flushing arrangement.

Copenhagen Castle, on the other hand, was over two hundred years old. Practically medieval, as far as Eddie was concerned. It didn't help any that the current king of Denmark hadn't paid much attention to the castle's upkeep. Being no slouch when it came to his own comfort, Christian IV had decided that he needed something more modern and fancy for a royal residence when he stayed in Copenhagen instead of at his favored Frederiksborg, some thirty miles out of town.

So, he'd built Rosenborg Castle, in the center of the city. Also designed in the Dutch Renaissance style, and also with its elaborate gardens surrounding the palace. And also, needless to say, with modern plumbing.

Not for Eddie, such digs, however—not now that Christian was furious at him. No, no. Eddie got to stay in the old castle perched on a small island in the city's harbor.
Slotsholmen
, the Danes called it, which translated into English as "castle island." With a view from the Blue Tower that was a long step down from overlooking fancy gardens. Now, Eddie got to look out the window at Copenhagen's commercial seaport. What was worse, he had to
smell
the city's harbor.

Worst of all, in his old quarters at Frederiksborg he'd been able to sit on a toilet. Here, in the finest medieval tradition, squatting was considered
de rigeur
, and flushing was a synonym for gravity.

So be it. In retrospect, Eddie knew he was lucky that he hadn't fallen afoul of the king's temper much sooner. He'd known that Christian IV had a complete edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
in his possession, since the king bragged about it constantly. But Eddie had assumed that since the king of Denmark had spent a small fortune to get his hands on a copy of the entire
Britannica
, he'd had enough sense to get the great 1911 edition, which was by far the most useful one for down-timers.

What an idiot he'd been! With Christian's obsession with gadgetry and all things modern, Eddie should have realized the Danish king would have insisted on the most recent edition in Grantville. That was the 1982 edition, if he remembered correctly.

Which, of course—once someone checked—had plenty of references to the various individuals that Eddie had mentioned in his sundry lies to the king. At the time, especially with his brain pickled in alcohol half the time since the king insisted he carouse with him, Eddie had thought he'd been very clever.

Ah, yes, Your Majesty, we have superb armaments technicians. The best are probably Walt Disney, Harpo Marx, and Clint Eastwood.

Oh, and by far the best gunsmith is Elvis Presley.

He rubbed his face. Then, to make things worse, Mike Stearns—him and his idiot Agent 007 schemes—had referred in a response to Christian's queries about exchanging Eddie for the gunsmith Elvis Presley, that unfortunately Mr. Presley had since passed away. And
then
—what in God's name had possessed him?—had casually referred to Eddie's fiancée Marilyn Monroe.

That had caused some tense days with Anne Cathrine, for sure. Until Eddie—had there been no end to his own folly?—had reassured her that his engagement to Marilyn Monroe was off because he'd discovered that the faithless Marilyn had switched her affections to Eddie's longtime rival John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

He could have at least had the sense to
invent
some names!

Alas. Six days ago, Christian IV had finally let his son Ulrik take the precious encyclopedias out of the locked cabinet in the Winter Room of Rosenborg Castle and start examining them. Ulrik, whose suspicious mind had no business residing in a twenty-two-year-old brain, had started by double-checking every single one of the statements and claims Eddie had made in his months of captivity. More precisely, having his three assistants check the name references while Ulrik and his tame pirate-cum-tech-whiz Baldur had studied Eddie's more substantive claims.

At which point, the proverbial crap had hit the proverbial fan. The next day, Eddie had been bundled into a carriage—none too gently—and hauled before the king in one of the chambers of Rosenborg. Now that spring was here and the war was heating up, Christian IV had shifted his residence to the capital.

The Dark Room, that chamber was called, appropriately enough. Eddie had found out since that the name actually came from the fact that once the great new tower was erected the room had lost its previous direct sunlight. But, at the time, he hadn't wondered about the name's provenance at all. It had seemed blindingly obvious.

"So!" the king had bellowed. "The liar is here!"

He pointed to a large and elaborate looking armchair in front of the fireplace. "Place him in the chair!"

The soldiers who'd brought Eddie immediately complied. While they did so, Eddie had time to contemplate the rest of the arrangements.

There was a fire going in the fireplace.
Check.

The remains of a fire, rather, since open flames might have imperiled the chair. But there were still plenty of glowing coals.
Check.

There were tongs heating in the coals.
Check.

Middle Ages, coming up. Eddie considered raising the fine points of the Geneva Convention, but figured that would be pretty pointless. Given the mood Christian IV was in.

No sooner had he been manhandled into the chair than he discovered the elaborate looks of the thing were no accident. It turned out there were restraints concealed in the armrests that did a very nice job of strapping him down.

Check.
Middle Ages, if he were lucky. It was looking more like the Dark Ages every moment.

Ulrik and Anne Cathrine had been present in the room when Eddie was hauled in. The king's daughter was looking distressed. Ulrik simply looked thoughtful.

"You can't do this, Papà!" she wailed.

"Ha! Watch me!" He waved imperiously at another soldier standing in the corner. "Give him the treatment!"

Eddie braced himself. But, to his astonishment—he yelped here; he couldn't help it—what happened was that a flood of ice-cold water came pouring out of the backrest and soaked him.

"Ha! It works!" Christian was beaming, now. He gave his son a gloating look. "I told you it would. Even—well, we shall see."

He made another imperious gesture, this one to the two soldiers standing on either side of the chair. Quickly, they removed the arm restraints.

"Get up, you miserable liar!" commanded Christian.

Eddie rose, a bit shakily. Then, jumped, when a loud toot sounded below him. He jumped high enough, in fact, that he almost stumbled on his peg leg when he landed.

"Ha! Ha!" the king bellowed. "The trumpet works too!"

"Papà!" Anne Cathrine hurried over and took Eddie by the arm. "You shouldn't humiliate him so! And you know Eddie's delicate. He'll likely get sick from that cold water!"

The king bestowed a sneer on Eddie. "Delicate, is he? Another false pretense, daughter, be sure of it! If my own doctors hadn't put it on, I'd have that wooden leg removed. Just to be sure! I might do it anyway."

He strode forward and wagged a very large royal forefinger under Eddie's nose. "Liar! I say it, again! Liar!"

Between the fear and the sudden freezing from the water—and, most of all, the presence of Anne Cathrine and his grumpiness about her continual insistence he was "delicate"—Eddie lost his temper.

"Don't wag that finger at me, dammit! It was
you
who broke the Geneva Convention! All I'm supposed to tell you is my name, rank and serial number!"

"And there was another lie!" If Eddie's shouts had caused even the slightest waver in that shaking royal digit, he could see no sign of it. "007! Ha! Your prime minister lied, too!"

"Well . . ."

Eddie didn't really have a good answer to that. God damn Mike Stearns, anyway. It was all
his
fault!

Ulrik cleared his throat. "Father, let's not forget that he didn't lie about the rest. Not when someone's life was at stake. It was not Eddie who urged the diving suit on us. In fact, he tried to warn us it was dangerous."

That caused a moment's pause in the finger-wagging.

Only a moment's, alas. Proving, once again, that the female is deadlier than the male, Anne Cathrine immediately shifted from distress and concern to indignation.

"But he lied about his betrothed!"

"I did not! That was Mike Stearns!"

Anne Cathrine glared at him. Still holding him by the arm, though.

"So? It was
you
who lied about Johannes Fitz-stupid whatever his last name was!"

"Well . . ."

The royal finger-wagging went back into high gear. "So he did! So he did! Toying with my daughter's affections, too, the rogue! I see it all, now! The snake in our midst! I ought to have him strapped into that diving suit, I should! Try it out for its new purpose!"

Anne Cathrine's indignation vanished.
"Papà!"
That wail was downright piercing.

Christian finally lowered the finger. "Well, I
should,
" he insisted, followed by a truly majestic harrumph, complete with quivering royal mustachios.

"But—magnanimously—I won't. Take him to his new cell! Ulrik, make sure it's done properly. I want no daredevil last-moment escapes from—"

His sneer was just as majestic.

"Mr. Secret Agent, James Bond, 007. Ha!"

And, bundled off Eddie was, by the two soldiers, with Ulrik following behind.

Anne Cathrine came with them, and stayed in the new cell for half an hour, making sure Eddie was properly dried and tucked into his new bed. So he wouldn't catch a chill, or something. She must have repeated the term
delicate
at least a dozen times, to Eddie's disgruntlement.

It didn't occur to him until several days later, to wonder why the king of Denmark had let his daughter do any such thing.

Not until Ulrik and Baldur came barreling into the room. With Anne Cathrine in tow.

Wide-eyed, from his perch in front of the window, Eddie watched Baldur spread some sort of large diagram—sketch, rather—across the small table in the center of the room.

"We must be quick, Eddie," said the prince, in a low voice. He glanced over his shoulder. "One of the guards is likely to mention something to his captain, and the captain might . . . Well, never mind."

Ulrik turned back to the sketch and pointed down at it. "This is another lie, isn't it?"

Hesitantly, Eddie came over. Once he was close enough, he recognized the sketch. It was a depiction—very good one, too—of the huge radio tower that the USE had erected in Magdeburg.

"Uh . . . Well, no, it's actually pretty accurate."

"Eddie!" Ulrik, normally as even-tempered a man as Eddie had ever met, was obviously on edge and seemed to be controlling his temper. "Stop it. I know it's accurate. It was drawn by one of our best spies. But that's not what I meant, and you know it. You don't
need
this, do you?"

Eddie glanced at Norddahl. The Norwegian's gaze seemed very icy. Of course, with his color eyes, that came fairly naturally. It was impossible to tell if he was really angry or not.

For a moment, Eddie wondered which of the two had figured it out—the prince himself, or his hireling?

Probably Baldur, if for no other reason than the natural injustice of the universe, which the past half a year had made so blindingly clear to Eddie. In a world run according to sane and rational principles, it would be a shy and bespectacled seventeenth-century geek equivalent who'd manage to deduce, just from matching various entries in an encyclopedia against each other, that radio didn't actually
require
huge towers hundreds of feet tall. Not for every purpose, at least, especially military ones.

In this universe, of course—mad universe; insane; irrational; unreasoning; worst of all, deadly dangerous to hapless peg-legged West Virginia country boys—it was entirely fitting that the deduction would be made by a man who only needed maybe an earring to be the spitting image of Captain Morgan, Pirate Extraordinaire.

So Eddie imagined, at least. Of course, for all he knew, Captain Morgan had actually been spectacled and geeky-looking.

"I need to know
now,
Eddie." The prince's voice was low, but very steely and very insistent.

Eddie took a deep breath, and glanced out the window. He couldn't really see the Øresund, from here, but he hardly needed to.

"Did you mine it?" he asked.

"Yes. But I doubt it'll do any good."

Eddie looked away. "No, probably not. Whatever else he is, John Chandler Simpson is nobody's dummy. He's probably forgotten more about mines than you or I will ever learn."

He gazed at the sketch for a moment. "I won't tell you anything that might bear on my admiral's operations. Or that of my nation's armed forces, for that matter. If you can't accept that, then you might as well haul out the tongs and the pincers."

To Eddie's surprise, Ulrik laughed softly. "I can just imagine
that.
" He gave Anne Cathrine a quick, sly glance. "Do I do it over her dead body? Not likely, I think. You're so frail, you know—and she's like a she-bear on the subject."