Down: Pinhole (31 page)

Henry tried to remember the last time he had tangled with Christian II, monarch of the Norse. One war tended to meld into another and the fog of time had fogged his memory. Then it came to him, an encounter perhaps two hundred years earlier, perhaps closer to three, when the Norselands allied with Germania to repel an English attack near Hamburg. On the far reaches of the field of battle, Henry had spied a withered old man through his glass and thought he must have been the octogenarian tyrant. Indeed, long after his death, the Dane was remembered in Sweden as Christian the tyrant, for his brutal subjugation of Stockholm in his quest to unify the Nordic lands into a single, potent empire. But what was minimally achieved during life he overwhelmingly accomplished in Hell. Arriving there, after his death in 1559, Christian rapidly took power from a thirteenth century Danish has-been and conquered all of the Norselands, reigning all these long centuries from a centrally-located seat of power in Gothenburg.

Henry left Cromwell to his miseries and sought out William the forger who was seated with his back against a mast, as far from the sea as was possible.

“Don’t fret, man,” Henry said, “we won’t let you drown. You are far too important for this enterprise.”

“When will I be put to land, sire?”

“For your safety, not until my army has taken down Christian’s defenses. Then we will put up near to the city and disembark.”

“How will we learn the location of the iron mines?”

“That is simple, Master William. We will torture one man after another until we find a wretch who knows and is sensible enough to talk.”

After a few hours of fitful rest John awoke to the incessant chugging of the steam boiler. It was still dark and the car’s headlights were faintly illuminating their way on a rutted road that, according to Simon, was one of two main trading routes between Francia and Italia. It ran southeast to the coast then northeast to Genoa and Milano, a route that skirted the Alps.

“Can you see where you’re going?” John asked.

“Just barely. We’ll need water for the boiler before long.”

Luca and Antonio were in the rear seat, their snores all but drowned out by the noise.

“Any sign we’ve been followed?” John asked Simon, leaning into his ear.

“Nothing. I saw some small fires an hour ago, probably from a village.”

“We’re not exactly in stealth mode with this thing,” John said.

“Ordinary folks will be too scared to go seeking a look. The only ones with steam autos are the king’s men and no one wants anything to do with them. But we’ll be a magnet for rovers I expect.”

“Who are they?”

“The worst of the worst. Too violent and filthy to live amongst townsfolk or villagers. They roam the countryside, maiming anyone they can and they’ll eat a man just the same as you or I would eat a pig.”

“Nice little world you’ve got here, Simon.”

“Isn’t it just?”

John reckoned the distance they’d have to travel was about eight hundred miles. If they averaged twenty miles per hour, they’d arrive in Milano within a couple of days. The thought of rovers kept him awake and he clutched a cocked and charged pistol. And he still had Forneau’s knife. In the heat of his escape he had forgotten to return it but perhaps it was meant as a gift.

The dawn came slowly. The road that they had been traveling on revealed itself to be no more than a cart path. With visibility came speed and Simon accelerated, jolting and rattling the passengers in the rear awake.

“Did you ever drive before this?” John asked Simon.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re hitting every bump and rut in the road. Pull over and let me take the wheel.”

“Gladly.”

Simon slowed then stopped and all four of them got out to water the bushes. They were on a flat plain with forest to one side and overgrown fields, alive with finches and butterflies on the other. The sky was flat and white, the air tinged with humidity. John drank from a skin of water that Luca passed around.

“I’ve got to tell you, I don’t like this,” John said. “We’re heading in the opposite direction to where Emily’s being held. Your mysterious leader damn well better help me, that’s all I can say.”

“I think he will want to help,” Luca said.

John asked, “Is that what you think too, Antonio?”

The young man shrugged. “I do not know.”

John pulled out his pocket watch and began to wind it. “Sounds like an honest answer.”

Simon rummaged through their meager supplies and declared they needed more food and plenty of water. There was no sign of a nearby pond or stream. He tapped on the boiler and said he thought they might have another two to three hours of range at the present speed. He checked a metal can in the boot and concluded that at least they had enough kerosene for the burner and headlamps.

When John climbed into the driver’s seat Luca asked in surprise, “You can operate this machine?”

“I can drive anything,” John said. “Trust me.”

Simon got into the passenger seat and turned to the rear. “Keep your muskets handy, lads.”

John hadn’t seen the guns. “Where’d you get those?” John asked.

“Handily enough, they were in the automobile when we made off with it,” Simon said.

John quickly acclimatized himself to the accelerator and brake. There was no clutch. The steam engine produced enough torque at low speeds to make a transmission superfluous. The car rode high and hard on primitive shocks but he was far more skillful than Simon in keeping to the smoothest possible line.

After a while Luca shouted from the back, “Simon, he is better than you.”

“Yes, but I can fix this machine. I reckon he can’t.”

Luca reached over and tousled Simon’s hair. “It is okay. We still love you.”

Several miles down the road they came upon a horse and cart. John slowed to give himself time to work out the passage but the horse reared at the clamorous boiler then bolted to one side, tipping the cart and scattering its driver and contents. John’s instinct was to stop and help but his companions warned him against it and they left the cart behind in a cloud of dust. The road began a sweeping curve around a hillock and when it straightened again, John saw a village in the distance. They decided they would try to get food and water there.

The road went straight through the village. John slowed to a crawl and rolled past the tiny thatched cottages as quietly as possible but it was still more of a racket than these people had ever heard. Shutters were pulled down in alarm.

“Might as well stop here,” Simon said, pointing at a pair of frightened horses pulling against their tethers at a trough of water.

John stopped and let Simon vent the boiler. As the steam was escaping three men cautiously emerged from one cottage wielding clubs, followed by others up and down the road, emboldened by each other.

Everyone slowly got out of the car, holding their weapons defensively in a non-threatening way. Luca waved and said in French that they were not there to bring any harm but to find provisions for their journey.

The oldest of the men with clubs replied that they were poor and had few goods.

“You have water,” Luca said. “We need water. And if you have bread, we would like that too.”

“You must be very rich to have a machine such as this,” the man said. “A duke perhaps. Are you a duke?”

“No, just a traveler with a loud machine.”

The man rubbed at his gray stubble. “What will you pay?”

“He wants to know what we will pay,” Luca said in English.

“Tell him he’ll pay with his head if he does not give us what we need,” Antonio said.

John shook his head and asked if they had any money but they had not a single coin among them. He went back to the car and retrieved Forneau’s knife from his bag.

“So you want to fight after all?” Antonio asked.

“No. Tell them we’ll trade them this for what we need.”

“It is worth much more than all their water and bread,” Antonio said.

He smiled. “Well then, get them to throw in a couple of chickens.”

Luca made the proposal and the men of the village crowded around to inspect the bone-handled blade. A deal was struck but Luca said, “They want to know what is wrong with John. They say there’s something strange about him.”

“They got that right,” John said. “Tell them I’m from America and we all smell good there.”

Half an hour later, the boiler was filled and the car was stocked with bread, meat, and a skin of wine. As they chugged away Simon said, “I’m glad we didn’t have to shoot them.”

“Yeah,” John said, picking up speed. “Always better to make love than war.”

“Look,” Luca said, pointing behind them. The villagers were violently fighting over the knife.

Antonio said, “Okay, John, do you want to go back and explain this fantastic philosophy to them?”

The
Brittania
stayed far ashore while the other vessels of the English fleet discharged soldiers into longboats for passage to the beach. It was perhaps a testament to the prolonged period since their last invasion that no Norseland defender raised an alarm at the arrival of a force of six thousand foreign archers, pike, and halbert men, and a hundred horses and cavalry men. The transfer of troops took several hours. From the deck of his flagship, King Henry watched them begin their march toward Gothenburg. With the land force on the move, Suffolk alerted the fleet by signal flags to follow the
Brittania
into position for a river assault.

The wind died down and the tide was at ebb so the fleet was able to maintain its position a mile from the mouth of the river, sheets down without dropping anchor. A fog bank descended on them. They were blind but not dumb. The king tensed his neck at the sound of musket fire followed by cannon blasts and the faint, distant shouts of men at battle. He and Suffolk stood side-by-side, straining at their spyglasses and seeing nothing but fog.

“It will be dangerous going upriver in this weather,” the duke said.

“It will pass,” Henry said. “It will surely pass.” And after he spoke they felt the wind picking up. The fog began to drift.

“Look there!” Henry cried. “My banner on the north shore. They have taken the fortifications.”

“Aye, on that bank only, Your Majesty,” Suffolk said. “They will have to fight their way well into the city to find a bridge to cross to the south bank.”

“Then we shall assist them to the south.” He called for William who timidly made his way to the railing. “Go below and ready the singing cannon. Let us see how well you can aim your fancy gun.”

Suffolk hoisted just enough sail to close within a half mile of the shore then ported the helm. Henry wanted to make sure the first mate had sight of the cannon battery he wished to target but one of the Norse pieces helpfully opened fire on them, belching fire and launching a ball pathetically short of the galleon.

“Ha!” the king shouted. “Yes, just there. Go below and see to it that they know their mark.”

On the cannon deck, William had the gunnery mate elevate the rifled cannon to the proper inclinations to hit the Nordic battery. Then he sighted along the barrel to satisfy himself of the aim and selected the appropriate powder charges to send the shot half a mile. The nauseating rocking of the ship reminded him that he’d never fired ordnance at sea but he knew the geometry of the exercise would be no different from a landed piece. With the command from the maindeck, fire was put to the touchhole. The big cannon recoiled violently and strained against its stays. The shot whistled into the sky and in the bat of an eye, it impacted the shore, a hundred yards or more past the battery.

“Less powder!” William shouted to himself, and he began readying the cannon for another firing.

On deck, Henry was at once angry and delighted, cursing the inaccuracy and whooping at the sight of the tiny Nordic figures in his scope jumping up and down in alarm at the throw of the
Britannia
guns.

The cannon bellowed from amidships and this time the result drove the king wild with joy because the coastal gun and all of its powder charges went up in a fireball.

“Sail on, Suffolk, sail on!” Henry shouted. “Sail my ship right down their bastard throats and destroy every enemy gun that may threaten us. We will win the day, of that I am certain.”

John drove until he could not stay awake any longer then swapped positions with Simon. Neither Luca or Antonio could drive and this uneven, treacherous road was no place to learn. A broken axle or a shredded tire would leave them badly in the lurch. He and Simon traded the wheel throughout the day and into the evening. On the last changeover before dusk, John climbed into the passenger seat, ate some bread and meat washed down with wine and fell fast asleep but not for long. Simon came around a bend and had to slam the brake pedal to the floor to avoid a tree across the road. All of them got out and surveyed the scene. The tree had probably been there for a while since there were deep cart tracks around it in the boggy ground of the meadow. The ground was soft enough that the car would surely become stuck if they tried the same maneuver. Try as they might, the four of them were unable to shift the tree. Without a saw or an axe they were stymied. With nightfall upon them John had an idea and asked how much powder they had. Plenty, was the reply. He proceeded to remove his shirt and rip off one of the sleeves, mumbling that he hated the puffy things anyway. He tied off one end, filled it with black powder, tied off the other end and wrapped it around the fallen trunk at a narrow point. Then he had them all step back and fired his pistol into the powder bag. With a boom, the tree splintered, and though it was not a through and through break, a series of stomps finished the job. First they lifted half the tree away, then the other half.

“Bloody ingenious, I’d say,” Simon said, patting John on the back. “I’ll pump the boiler, we can get on the move again, and you can go back to sleep.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” John said, pointing his smoking gun at the thicket where the tree had fallen.

More than a dozen dark figures were moving onto the road, slowly, cautiously, but methodically.