Down: Pinhole (18 page)

John took to him straight away and they bantered like a couple of comrades in arms who’d known each other for years. Solomon Wisdom had vetted Teddy on his arrival twenty-five years earlier and had shopped him to Cromwell who was always on the lookout for men with soldiering skills.

By his own admission, Teddy brought nothing extraordinary to the table, being as he put it, “a bloke who killed one sorry bastard when he was a civilian and zero as a soldier,” but King Henry valued modern soldiers for the sake of their modernity and employed him in his army.

“I’m supposed to make an assessment of your skills, mate,” Teddy said.

“Prepare to be dazzled.”

They disembarked at the modest river town of Richmond whose residents fled from the road when they saw a contingent of the king’s soldiers marching toward them. Cromwell told John they had but a short walk and as they tramped up a hilly meadow, John saw they were following a small tributary of the river, headed toward the source of a column of black smoke billowing into the dull sky.

In time, the source of the smoke became apparent, a tall chimney rising over a squat brick building the size of a large barn. To one side of the building was a mountain of cut and stacked wood.

“The king’s forge,” Cromwell said proudly. “The finest in the land.”

“Let’s have a look,” John said.

Teddy entered the forge and emerged with a giant of a man, bare to the waist, his wet skin blackened with soot. His first reaction at the sight of Cromwell was obvious consternation, as if searching his mind for what he might have done to warrant a visit from the king’s henchman.

Cromwell put him at ease by saying, “Master forger William, I have brought a special visitor to examine your forge. He possesses knowledge that might be of use to the king.”

William nodded and managed a smile. John extended his hand and William sniffed at him while shaking it.

“Yeah, I’m not from here,” John said. “It’s a long story. My name’s John.”

“Indeed it must be a long story,” William said. “Very well, John who is not from here, come along and I will show you how we make things.”

It was hot inside, very hot.

The massive furnace had a raging, orange core fed by an enormous leather bellows. It was as if John had found the hellfire at the center of this dark land. He had to shield his eyes to look at the flames and in an instant his clothes became damp from sweat. The handle of the bellows was a beam, half the length of the forge, which a team of near naked, blackened and drenched men pulled down on ropes against a tension bar that raised the beam up again.

The forge was crawling with sweaty workers with hard, immobile faces, ferrying ingots around with tongs and beating out metal on huge anvils, their hammering producing a deafening and unnerving racket. In their automaton-like movements they more resembled a conga line of ants than men. Despite the heat, John shuddered at the sight of the place. The clanging was so loud that William had to order the smithies to stop so he could speak to John. The men immediately dropped to their haunches, panting like over-worked farm animals.

“Well, John, who is not from here, do you know anything of iron forging?”

“A little,” John said, wiping his brow.

“And why is that?”

“I studied the history of weaponry at school. Before that I had an interest because my father was a gunsmith and my brother’s one too.”

William patted Teddy on the shoulder and said, “I have heard tales from recent arrivals, like Master Beecham, that your weapons have become quite fancy and unimaginably powerful. I, myself, departed from life in 1701, so my methods are more primitive than yours, I expect.”

“You were a forger?”

“Aye, a good one too, in the service of King William the Third, a master smith in the royal ordnance works. I lived by the fire and died by the fire.”

“How do you mean?”

“I did some deeds which were not best appreciated and got my comeuppance by getting shoved alive into my own furnace. Fortunately it was good and hot so I did not suffer long.”

“Tough way to go.”

“It was indeed. The good thing for me was that King Henry recognized my talents and though one’s existence is, to be sure, hellish, I am better off than most as my skills are valued. But you have not suffered the passage of death, have you, John, who is not from here?”

“As far as I know, I’m still alive.”

“Remarkable but I’m sure it is beyond my ken. Now, what do you wish to see?”

John looked around the forge and settled on a short-stack of cannon barrels, the largest of which were twelve feet long. He sauntered over and ran his hand over the rough surface of one.

“Iron, not bronze,” he said.

“We have abundant iron ore in the king’s mines to the west and no shortage of forestland for our charcoal.”

“Thirty-eight pounders?”

“Forty-two,” William said.

John whistled his appreciation. “They’re all muzzleloaders. There are a lot of advantages to breechloaders including better range and accuracy. Can you make them?”

“I know of them but they were after my time. I stick to what I do best.”

John peered down a barrel and asked for light. Teddy brought over a torch.

“These are smooth-bored, aren’t they?” John asked.

“Aye,” William replied.

“Do you know anything about rifling?”

“Again, the practice came after my day but I have learned of it and have tried my hand.”

“With any success?”

“Good success on rifle and pistol barrels but far more modest results on cannon barrels. I have been able to lathe shallow grooves for cone-shaped shot on my four-pounders but the king presses me for ever larger cannon with greater range for his land mounts and seagoing vessels.”

“What’s your best range?”

“I would say point blank, some three hundred yards with my forty-two pounders. At an elevation, perhaps a thousand yards.”

“What would you say if I could teach you how to send a shot over three thousand yards with improved accuracy?”

William waved his arms dismissively. “I do not have the time or the skill to make breech loaders. I have considered the proposition in the past and have rejected it.”

Teddy interjected, “It would be like teaching a monkey how to fly an airplane.”

William clearly didn’t understand or appreciate the comparison and shot Teddy a dirty look.

“I agree it would be difficult,” John said. “Casting the breech pieces would be tricky, building up the bore tubes, getting the shells constructed to the tight tolerances you’d need—these are all tough challenges. I don’t think I could help you figure all that stuff out. What I’m talking about is making use of your existing muzzleloaders.”

Cromwell had been standing at a distance, letting the three men talk, but when he heard this he shuffled forward on his small feet and said, “How? How is this possible?”

“Do you have pen and paper?” John asked.

“Paper is too dear for the likes of me,” William said. “I’ll fetch parchment and quill.”

Armed with writing implements, John left the forge for the cooler outdoors and sat on the grass, dunking a quill into ink. He heard the clanging resume inside. While Cromwell, William, and Teddy watched he drew schematics depicting the cross section of a cannon barrel and a conical-shaped projectile. When he was done he stood and explained that in the mid-nineteenth century, a French general named La Hitte invented a muzzleloading cannon with the first effective system of rifling for improved distance and accuracy. The conical projectile had a series of lugs welded to the surface, set at an angle, and the lugs fit snugly into grooves of the same diameter, rifled in a spiral into the cannon barrel.

Cromwell was left scratching his head but William took to the design immediately and began spouting ideas how he might re-fire and lathe the grooves into barrels he’d already forged, and how he could cast the projectiles and heat-weld lugs onto them.

“You can make the shot solid or hollowed out, loaded with grapeshot,” John said.

Cromwell piped up, “We have need of holing and sinking Iberian ships.”

“Then you’ll want them solid,” John said.

“How long will it take to fashion a weapon and shot?” Cromwell asked William.

“Perhaps three days if I devote the forge to the task.”

“You have one day,” Cromwell said.

“A tall order, your grace.”

“The Iberians will arrive on our shores sooner than any of us would desire. If you wish to keep your head then you have one day. John Camp will stay here to assist you. I will return tomorrow with the king and will expect to see a shot being hurled a prodigious distance.”

When Cromwell withdrew, William shook his head and said, “I have managed to survive here for a very long time and because of you, my alive friend, I will probably spend eternity in a rotting room.”

“I’d say you’re buggered,” Teddy said.

“Is that going to be your expert opinion?” John asked him.

“I’ll tell Cromwell that the proof will be in the pudding. I fancy keeping my head too.”

“Let me ask you something,” John said. “I can’t be the first person in Hell who knew how to make a La Hitte cannon. Your weaponry looks like it’s stuck in the eighteenth century.”

“Believe me, mate, you’re not the first bloke to make that observation,” Teddy said. “Look at it this way. Modern soldiers like you or me know all about using modern weapons—automatic rifles, heat-seeking missiles, even fucking nuclear bombs, but knowing about them and building them are different kettles of fish, aren’t they? To build something new or improve on an older design, you’ve got to get the right geezer coming to Hell with the right skills at the right time, keeping in mind that the best and the brightest who know the most useful things, well then, they aren’t the scumbags who get sent to this fair land of ours. But assuming there’s a geezer who’s got the right skills, he’s got to survive his first few days or weeks here without getting carved up by some filthy bastard and he’s got to get hooked up with someone like William who can turn his knowledge into something practical. You can’t teach William how to make an Exocet missile because there’s too much technology that hasn’t been invented yet.”

“But I can teach him how to make a La Hitte cannon.”

“Yeah, well, that’s fucking amazing to me that a modern bloke knows fuck all about a nineteenth-century cannon. More power to you. But what I’m saying is that maybe there was a window of time, maybe ten years, twenty, thirty tops, that a geezer would have come to Hell with the knowledge about your La Hitte gizmos before technology on Earth moved on and the knowledge was lost. Get my drift?”

“I see your point.”

With a wave Teddy was off. “I’ll leave you lads to it, then. I’ve got a nice bed back at the palace and if I’m lucky I’ll find someone who’s female and not excessively hideous to give me a shag. See you tomorrow.”

“We can do this, William,” John said when they were alone. “You’ve got to divide your men into four teams, one to make a bore lathe, one to fire and cut the barrel, one to cast the shells, and one to cast the lugs. I’ll cut the templates out of parchment and try to figure out how many twists of rifling you’re going to need inside the barrel.”

“Even if we can accomplish these tasks, there is a chance the barrels will explode once they have been weakened by grooving. Even my best barrels are prone to this fate.”

“Why?”

“My wrought iron is more apt to fracture than I would like.”

“You say your source of iron ore is mines from the west of the country?”

William nodded.

“Well, that’s your problem. Assuming it’s the same here as on Earth, English iron ore has too much phosphorous which makes the iron brittle. Two men, Bessemer and Gilchrist, figured out ways to make good quality steel for cannon in the nineteenth century but it involves super-hot furnaces and large steam engines. The easiest way for you to solve that problem is to use Swedish iron ore, assuming again that it’s the same as on Earth. It’s got the lowest phosphorous content in Europe but that’s not going to help us today. I’d recommend we rifle the biggest barrel you’ve got and hope it holds. If we’ve got time, maybe we could add some external banding around the barrel. Might as well have a fifth team work on bands.”

“I will remember what you have said about ore from the Norselands,” William said, rubbing at his neck then clamping a huge arm around John’s shoulder. “Come, let us begin our labor. I would dearly hate for this to be my last day with a head attached to the rest of me.”

It was after midnight. If there was a moon, John couldn’t see it because the thick shroud of clouds never seemed to shift. He suspected it was there because the night sky was only medium-gray. He was slumped outside the forge, bone-tired and hot, taking a short break. The air was fouled by smoke belching from the chimney. William had given him some bread and he sipped cool water from a skin. The work was proceeding in fits and starts. The molds for the shells had come out well and the first castings were being done. The barrel cutting was not as satisfactory. They’d already ruined two cannon and William was just about to start on a third.

The banging and clanging from inside the forge assaulted his ears but there was another sound which made him tense up, the neighing of a horse. He stood, looked around and picked up a scrap of iron lying in the grass as a weapon. A man emerged from behind the building leading a horse by the bridle. The furnace was casting orange light through the door of the forge and when the man stepped into the shaft of light John saw him put a finger to his lips. It was Guacci, the Italian ambassador.

“We must talk,” Guacci said.

“How’d you know I was here?”

“It is my job to know these things. Please, let us walk to the river. You can trust me.”

His voice was reassuring and John decided to follow his instincts. With the horse in tow, they tramped down toward the tributary until the sound of flowing water was louder than the beating of iron.

“What do you want?” John asked.

Guacci had long hair that was tied back with a ribbon. He wore a Renaissance-style robe over leggings and boots.