1634: The Baltic War: Chapter Fifteen

Frederiksborg Castle
Hillerød, Kingdom of Denmark

    The more he saw in the workshop that his father had built in a new wing of Frederiksborg Castle, the more appalled Prince Ulrik became. By the time he got to the worktable at the end, with its dully gleaming centerpiece, Ulrik felt as if his stomach was residing somewhere below…

    Best not to think about that.

    He turned his head to examine his guide. More precisely, to gauge how much he could confide in him.

    Oddly, there was something about Baldur Norddahl’s rather piratical appearance that was re-assuring. Perhaps it was because Ulrik had concluded the appearance was by no means skin deep. He’d spent enough time with Norddahl, since he’d returned to Denmark from Schwerin a few days earlier at the king’s command, to get a sense of the man. Even that portion of the Norwegian’s history that he’d been willing to divulge—and that usually took several mugs of good strong beer to wheedle out of him—made Baldur Norddahl an adventurer with few equals. Ulrik wouldn’t be surprised at all to discover that some of those adventures had included piracy. Where else would the Norwegian have learned Arabic but from the Algerine corsairs? He was rather fluent in the outlandish tongue, although he claimed he couldn’t read it except bits and pieces of the aljamiado script.

    Spain, Norddahl claimed, was where he first learned Arabic, along with several dialects of Spanish itself. His proficiency in the Muslim tongue he’d gained in parts beyond, when he spent some time with Morisco traders—plunderers and slavers, too, one got the sense—in caravans crossing the great desert to the fabled city of Timbuktu.

    If there were a camel in Denmark, Ulrik would be interested to put the matter to a test, and see if Norddahl could ride one of the grotesque animals. On the other hand, he probably could, even if the rest of his stories were false. To use one of the many American expressions that were spreading all over Europe, Baldur Norddahl was a man of many parts.

    True, most of those parts wouldn’t bear close examination, taken one at a time. Even his name was suspect. Baldur was most likely accurate. But Norddahl simply meant “of the north valley”—which could be just about anywhere. Norway had a thousand little valleys in its northern parts. Most Norwegians didn’t use farm or location surnames, in the first place, they used patronymics. But a father could be traced a lot easier than a valley somewhere “to the north,” should someone go looking.

    Nonetheless, that there were a lot of parts to the rogue, the prince didn’t doubt at all.

    “This strikes me as madness, Baldur, now that I’ve finally been able to see it myself. Tell me the truth.”

    The Norwegian took a few seconds to look around the immense workroom. It was deserted now, except for the two of them. Norddahl had ordered all of the workmen to take a break from their labors while he guided the prince about.

    “It depends how you define ‘madness,’ prince. All of these devices—their descendants, at least—will work. Even the submarine.”

    “Even this?” Ulrik picked up the huge bronze helmet with its bizarre glass visor. With considerable strain, since the thing was very heavy. He tried to imagine himself fitting the ghastly device onto his head, and then lowering himself into water with it.

    “Oh, yes. Actually, the problem with this particular enthusiasm of your father’s isn’t the diving helmet. I’d be quite willing to trust my life to that. It’s the hose”—he swept his hand down the long table, indicating the canvas and wire contraption that lay sprawled across it in great coils—“and the pump and the rest of it that makes the project so close to suicide that I told His Majesty I refused to test it myself.”

    Ulrik winced. Given the risks Norddahl was usually prepared to take—for enough money—the fact that he considered this one almost suicidal made it suicidal indeed.

    “Did you ask the American lieutenant?”

    Baldur smiled. “Does a bear shit in the woods? As God is my witness, I would forgive the up-timers just for their delightful sayings alone, even if they hadn’t brought such wonderful gadgets with them. Yes, prince, of course I asked him. Pried him rather, over the many beers I bought the lad.” The smile expanded a bit. “Which I  charged to your father’s account, you understand. Being, as it was, clearly a research expense.”

    The prince smiled back. He couldn’t help it, even if one of the things about his father that aggravated him was the king of Denmark’s ability to shed money like rainwater. But he was unable to get angry over Baldur’s amoral cheeriness. Ulrik had come to realize that the Norwegian adventurer lied about very little, except his past. That was something of a relief, for a prince who’d been acquainted with courtiers all his life.

    “And what did Eddie say?”

    The smiled left Norddahl’s face. “He said it was very dangerous—all of this—although he claimed that he couldn’t provide me with many details beyond depicting what he called ‘the bends.’”

    Ulrik grunted skeptically. “I’m surprised you got anything out of him—or that he didn’t regale you with the outlandish claims he tells my father. [NOTE: Insert here a sentence or two bringing in the stuff Kathy Wentworth covers in her story, “Eddie and the King of Denmark.”]”

    “Oh, it’s not hard. You simply have to know the trick of it.”

    The prince cocked an eyebrow. “Which is?”

    “The lad’s squeamish. You wouldn’t think it, of a man who drove what the up-timers call a ‘speedboat’—and isn’t that an appropriate name!—into a Danish warship. But he is. Eddie Cantrell will lie through his teeth without hesitation, if he thinks he’s deceiving his enemies.” Norddahl shook his head. “Meaning no disrespect, prince, but your father is far too gullible when his enthusiasms get the best of him.”

    Ulrik chuckled. “To say the least. Yes, I know. But you still haven’t explained ‘the trick.’”

    The Norwegian shrugged. “Eddie’s not a cold-blooded killer. If you make it clear that someone’s life depends on what he tells you—depends directly; immediately; soon, not as vague later possibility—he simply can’t bring himself to keep lying. He’ll get vague, evasive. If you press him—beer helps—you can eventually pry some honest warnings from him. Even details, if he knows them.”

    “But he doesn’t, I take it?”

    Baldur shook his head. “No, not really. Not about this business, at least.” The last, he said with another sweep of the hand at the contents of the workshop. “He came from a mountainous province, far inland. I think the only time he started learning anything about ships and the sea was after he came here through the Ring of Fire. So most of what he knows is what he calls ‘book-learning,’ and spotty at that.”

    “What are these ‘bends’ he warns about?”

    “I’m not entirely sure, prince. Eddie couldn’t really explain it—and much of what he said didn’t make a great deal of sense to me to begin with. But if he’s right—I’m sure he’s not lying here, he simply may be wrong himself—it seems that if a man goes deep enough into the water various parts of the air enter his actual blood. One of them is supposed to be particular dangerous. Niter… something.”

    Ulrik had been feeling slightly dizzy ever since he arrived in Denmark and his ebullient giant of a father had immediately placed him in charge of what the king was pleased to call “our secret navy projects.” The dizziness increased slightly, as he tried to wrack his brain to pull up what he’d managed to learn in hasty perusals of up-time texts.

    “Yes, I remember. Nitrogen, they call it. The up-timers claim that air”—the hand-wave the prince now made took in everything about them—“is not really ‘air’ at all, but a mixture of several airs. What they call gases. Oxygen is the one we actually use to breathe. Most of it is nitrogen. Four parts in five, if I remember correctly.”

    He frowned. “But they also claim that nitrogen is harmless. ‘Inert,’ is the word they use.”

    “Most of the time, maybe. But Eddie insists it’s dangerous underwater. At least, if you go far enough down. He says what happens is that the—‘gas,’ you call it?—saturates the blood. Then, when a man rises back to the surface—if he rises too quickly, that is—the gas boils back out of his blood. That’s what they call ‘the bends.’ Does terrible things, apparently, especially to the joints. It can even kill you.”

    Ulrik grimaced at the image. As if there weren’t already enough sickening ways to main or kill a man!

    “And what else is dangerous?”

    Norddahl shrugged again. “That was the only thing he could tell me specifically. But all of the dangers, including the bends, seem to come from the same general peril. What he calls the pressure of the water itself. That’s another way of saying—”

    “Yes, I understand.” That much of the up-time texts, at least, had been easy enough to comprehend. The idea that even the air had weight, pressing down on a body, had seemed peculiar at first. But once Ulrik remembered his experience trying to breathe, the one time he’d ventured into the high Alps, the concept had come into focus. And he’d swum and dove often enough—and deep enough, now and then—to understand full well that water got… thicker, the farther down you went. “Pressure” was not a bad term at all to describe it, since his ears had felt as if a soft-handed giant had been squeezing them.

    On the other hand…

    “There’s something I still don’t understand.” He set down the helmet. “Not even my ebullient sire proposes to send a man or a machine very far beneath the surface.” He turned slightly and pointed to the submarine being built. “Even that preposterous device is not intended to go much deeper than thirty feet.”

    “Nor”—he rapped the helmet with a knuckle—“is this. Forty feet perhaps. Fifty, at most. Am I right?”

    “Yes, Your Highness.”

    Ha! Apparently Ulrik was making an impression on the rascal. Norddahl was finally using the proper appellation, instead of the “prince” business that bordered on disrespect.

    “And I understand what you’re questioning,” the Norwegian continued. “Many men dive that deep, or even deeper. I’ve been thirty feet down myself, more than once, and there are sponge fishermen who go much deeper than that. Do it for a living, day after day, and suffer none of the consequences Eddie warns about.”

    “And what do you conclude? Since you don’t believe he’s lying.”

    Baldur paused, scratching his chin while he examined the helmet himself. Then, with a very dubious look in his yes, studied the coils of the hose. “I posed that very problem to him, as it happens. He was obviously puzzled for a moment. I really don’t think he knows very much about all this. But he finally said I was overlooking what he called ‘the differential.’ What he meant by that is that—this is what he says—when a diver without all this complicated gadgetry goes deep, somehow the pressure of his body is enough to resist the pressure of the water.”

    Ulrik’s eyes almost crossed. “That’s… hard to make sense of.”

    “Isn’t it?” The cheery smile returned. “But I think I understand what he’s talking about, Your Highness. When a diver goes deep, what he does is breathe very heavily—but then he expels all the air before he dives. If you didn’t—I learned this myself—you simply can’t get very deep to begin with.”

    Comprehension began to come again. Even at the age of twenty-two, Ulrik had quite of bit of military experience. He’d seen a human body—more than one—torn to pieces.

    “Yes, I see. If you picture the lungs as empty sacks, not full of air…”

    He turned his head and squinted at the bizarre-looking boat being constructed at the far end. “But that shouldn’t affect men in a submarine.”

    “No, I don’t believe it does—unless the hull shatters. But what about a man in this contraption?” Again, Norddahl wrapped the diving helmet with a knuckle. “So long as the pump above is keeping him supplied with air, he should be fine. But what if the pump fails—or the hose ruptures?”

    The prince tried to imagine the consequences. “Well, he’d drown very quickly, if you didn’t pull him up in time.”

    Baldur shook his head. “No, Your Highness, I don’t think he would. I think something much worse would happen to him.”

    “What?”

    “I don’t know. Neither does Eddie. He says he read about it once, but can’t remember any of the details. What he did remember was that, whatever it was, it was quite horrible.”

    “And you believe him?”

    “Oh, yes. That’s why I told His Majesty I wouldn’t go down in it myself, once we got it finished. The submarine, I’d be willing to try—but not this devilish device. Of course, no one will be able to test it for a few months anyway, even if we had the pump ready. The water would be much too cold during the winter, assuming you could find a spot without ice cover. But, come spring, by which time everything should be done, I still won’t do it.”

    Ulrik didn’t blame him. Courage was one thing. This was just lunacy, and it got worse the more he learned. Devoting any effort to this particular project was completely pointless. It had no possible military application at all, that Ulrik could see. How was a man laboring under the weight of a huge bronze helmet and a heavy diving suit—even assuming you could make a long enough hose to provide him with air, which was impossible—supposed to pose a threat to a warship?

    He suspected that not even his father thought it could. The king had simply… gotten interested. Christian IV was also a man of many parts. He read relatively little, unfortunately, but he was very intelligent and was fascinated by a wide range of things. In particular, he adored mechanical contrivances and would have made quite a good artisan himself.

    “So let us return to the beginning, Baldur. I said this seemed all madness, and you disagreed. Why?”

    “I disagreed only in general, Your Highness. Eventually, I think all of these contraptions can be made to work. I’m quite partial to the submarine, in fact. But I think it’s… well, not wise—not for me to label your august royal father a madman!—to believe they can be made to work in time to fend off the American ironclads. They’ll be here by May, I’m thinking, at the latest.”

    Ulrik looked back to the submarine, then at the helmet. “You don’t share the opinion of my father’s courtiers, I take it? Most of them insist that the up-timers are not magicians, simply artisans—and that there is no way to get such ungainly boats down the Elbe and through the North Sea and the Kattegat and Skagerrak. Even leaving aside the political problem of passing Hamburg and the likelihood—the near-certainty, to hear those very martial fellows talk—that heroic units of our army—perhaps even the miserable French—will destroy them before they ever smell a whiff of saltwater.”

    Baldur chuckled. There was a bit of a sneer in the sound. “Oh, the Americans are certainly not magicians. On that much, I quite agree. But I’m wondering how many of those courtiers were there, at the battle of Wismar?”

    “Not one,” said Ulrik flatly. “I asked.”

    “What I thought. Well, I was there, Your Highness. I was aboard the Lossen. Fortunately for me, after the airplane crashed into us, I was one of the officers detailed to command the lifeboats we lowered. So I wasn’t aboard when the magazine finally exploded, a few minutes later.”

    There wasn’t a trace of the usual humor in Norddahl’s face, now. In that moment, Ulrik thought he was finally seeing the man beneath the rogue. A burly Norwegian, somewhere around the age of forty, with ash-blonde hair and very light blue eyes—and an impressive collections of scars even on that small part of his body that was visible. The prince didn’t doubt for a minute that there were plenty more beneath the heavy clothes Baldur wore in the workshop. This was a man who had seen more of danger than most any ten other men. Without the sheen of humor on the surface, he was like a grim ancient who’d gone a-viking every summer of his life since he was a boy.

    The prince sighed. “What I feared.”

    His eyes moved around the workshop again. Slowly, because there was so much to be seen. His father Christian IV was nothing if not an enthusiast, once something took his fancy. Where another monarch might have ordered one or two such dubious naval projects set underway, the king of Denmark had ordered a dozen.

    “Is there anything in here that isn’t hare-brained?”

    The smile came back. “Oh, yes! Two of the projects, in fact. Alas, I’ve not been able to generate much interest in them on the part of His Majesty. Too simple for his taste, you understand. But I think they have quite splendid possibilities. Here, let me show you.”

    Five minutes later, after he finished his study of the first project Baldur had led him to, Ulrik straightened up. His spirits, even more than his back.

    “A ‘spar-torpedo,’ you call it? Nothing more than a big simple bomb, really, stuck out on the end of a pole. Taken into battle by a sturdy boat, such as we’ve known how to make for centuries.”

    “Your Highness has penetrated to the heart of the matter splendidly,” agreed Baldur, his customary cheer back in place. “Better still, a device that’s been tested recently and shown to work quite well, even using down-time equipment almost throughout. This was how the up-timers in Amsterdam sank a Spanish ship, you know. The difference is—”

    Here he pointed to the one and only exotic part of the whole project. “The up-timers in Amsterdam had to row the whole way. Whereas we lowly Danes will have one of their engines to take us the final distance. What they call an ‘outboard motor.’ I obtained it through… well, let’s just say informal methods, and leave it at that. Luckily for us, that Americans are definitely people and not devils is proven by the fact that they share all of the usual human vices. Greed and carelessness being prominent among them.’”

    A bit skeptically, Ulrik eyed the gadget. “Are you sure…”

    “Oh, yes, Your Highness. I’ve tested this myself, many times, on boats I’ve taken out onto the Castle Lake. So long as you have the fuel for it—and that’s not really so hard to buy on the black market in the Germanies, certainly not the little we’d need—this thing is just about as reliable as oars. That’s because it’s what the Americans—have I told you how much I enjoy their little saws and turns of phrase?—call ‘store-bought.’ This isn’t something they cobbled together here themselves, from whatever bits and pieces of their old world they brought with them. This is something that was made—in great huge lots of thousands, they say, like a shop making nails—in one of those giant factories they had up-time.”

    The dizzy feeling returned, for a moment. Ulrik tried to imagine a world whose cities housed millions and whose landscape—he’d seen many of the pictures himself, when he’d visited Grantville—were dotted by giant manufactories as if they were dairy farms.

    He shook it off. Thankfully, the kingdom of Denmark in the coming year would not have to fend off such an incredibly powerful world. Simply a fragment of it. Insofar as the term “simply” could be applied to a task that even such a fellow as the Norwegian with him viewed grimly.

    Ulrik was quite fond of up-time expressions, himself, as it happened. He’d picked up quite a few while he’d visited the Germanies where the Americans had spread their influence. 

    “Hard-boiled,” the Americans would have labeled Baldur Norddahl. Very hard-boiled, indeed.

    “And the other project?”

    “That’s even better—or would be,” he said, half-sighing, “had I been able to interest His Majesty in it. That’s over there.”

    Five minutes later, Prince Ulrik was struggling not to curse his own father.

    “This would have been sensible!”

    Norddahl shook his head, his expression unnaturally lugubrious. “It certainly would have. Almost no risk involved at all. And the up-time texts say that it’s the most effective anti-ship device ever designed by the hand of man. Beautiful in its simplicity, isn’t it? It’s not even very different from things we down-timers have done before, although never on such a scale.”

    Ulrik looked first at the device itself—Baldur called it the “prototype,” using yet another American term—and then spent some seconds admiring the clever way the Norwegian had shown how it would work in practice. He called that the “scale model.”

    As simple as you could ask for. Just litter the narrow confines of the Danish straits with mines. Straight-forward bombs, whose design posed no insurmountable problem, each big enough to sink even an ironclad. Devices that could be set in place by boats such as the Danes already had in profusion, rather than one or two intricate and exotic ships to be designed and built in a hurry—with who could say what result in practice?

    With enough of them, they could possibly do more than close the Straits. If they closed the Kattegat, they could keep the ironclads from even getting near to Copenhagen. Granted, that would take an enormous number of mines and was probably impractical.

    “We could still…”

    But Norddahl was shaking his head, his expression more lugubrious still. “I’m afraid not, Your Highness. There simply isn’t enough time left. I did my best to persuade the king—right from the beginning—that we should abandon everything else in favor of this alone. But…”

    He spread his hands. “Your father, you understand.”

    Ulrik had to suppress a sudden spike of near-hysterical laughter.

    “Yes, I understand. My father.”

    The up-time texts and records didn’t really have very much concerning the history of Denmark, taken as a whole. It had been a small and unimportant country in their time, and not close to their own. But there was a fair amount in the libraries in Grantville—the woman with the huge and eccentric personal library had had even more, which she’d been kind enough to let Ulrik examine—concerning King Christian IV himself. A very flamboyant and long-lived monarch he’d been, it seemed, who’d been quite popular with his people despite his seemingly-endless excesses. Ulrik’s father had made such an impression on his land that he would be one of the few monarchs of the era still vividly remembered centuries in the future.

    Remembered for many things. One of them being the fact that he’d produced over two dozen children, a goodly number of them illegitimate.

    Such was Ulrik’s father, for good or ill. You could hardly expect such a man to satisfy himself with one or two special projects for his navy—when he could conceive a dozen.

    “You’re certain?”

    “Yes, Your Highness. I did the calculations. If we’d started earlier, things would be different. Starting now…”

    Norddahl’s eyes went to the prototype. “Even now, if you could persuade your father to drop everything else, I think I could get enough made and put in place to close the Oresund. That would protect Copenhagen, at least. But there’s no chance any longer that we could make and place enough to close off even the Little Belt, much less the Great Belt.”

    “Either of which would allow Admiral Simpson access to the Baltic—and our fleet blockading Luebeck.”

    “Yes, Your Highness.”

    “Let’s assume—for the moment—that I could keep the king pried off your back enough to allow you to devote… oh, let’s say one-half of your efforts to the mines.”

    Norddahl’s eyes narrowed and grew a bit unfocussed, while he did his calculations.

    “I couldn’t close off the Oresund. But I could certainly make and put in place enough mines to make it dangerous for the enemy’s ships.”

    “And you’re certain that one of these mines would be enough to sink an American ironclad? I’ve seen them, Baldur. At something of a distance, of course. They were friendly enough, when I passed through Magdeburg, very respectful of my diplomatic status, but they obviously weren’t going to let me into the shipyards. But even under construction, seen from afar, they are formidable looking things.”

    Norddahl chuckled again. “Oh, yes, Your Highness. I’ve never been able to get my hands on a copy of the actual plans, but there’s really no great mystery about the ironclads. Give me the wherewithal and enough time—”

    He waved at one of the projects looming darkly in a corner. “—and I could build one myself. Though even the king agrees that would take far too long, so I’ve never done much but fiddle with it. But one thing is known for sure. However much armor the ironclads may carry above the water, the hulls themselves are just wooden hulls. These mines are powerful enough they’d probably even hole an iron hull. They’ll certainly shatter a wooden one.”

    Ulrik nodded, and then looked back toward the area where the spar torpedo project was underway.

    “And how many of those could you have ready by May? Assuming—for the moment—that I could give you enough breathing space to devote… oh, half the time that’s left, after the mines. I’m afraid there’s no way around the fact that you’ll have to keep at least a quarter of your effort devoted to these other ridiculous schemes. I can keep my father at a distance, to a point. But I’d have as much chance of fending off a great bear with my hands as I would keeping my illustrious sire from meddling at all.”

    He was a bit startled to realize how far he’d allowed himself to discard circumlocutions in the presence of a man who was, technically, nothing but a servant. His instincts had led him there, though, and Ulrik trusted his instincts about people. He’d come to have a great deal of confidence in Baldur Norddahl, and needed to make sure the reverse was true as well. This was going to be a desperate enough business, under the best of circumstances. If anything was to work at all, it would require a close bond between a prince of Denmark and a Norwegian adventurer, rascally as he might be.

    Baldur had been pondering the question. “It’s not quite as simple as that, Your Highness. I could have six or seven boats built and ready with spar torpedoes, by May. But all except one of them would probably be useless. Well, except as decoys—which isn’t much different from saying ‘sacrifices,’ under the circumstances.”

    “Explain.”

    “It’s the motor that sets the limit, Your Highness, unless we can steal or buy another one. That’s possible but not likely, from what—… never mind who—has told me. The Americans in Grantville have tightened their security a great deal since the war began. And trying anything in Magdeburg is as likely to succeed as a rabbit stealing bones from wolves.”

    Ulrik frowned. “That still leaves oars. You just told me yourself that’s how the up-timers did it in Amsterdam.”

    “Not the same thing at all, Your Highness. In Amsterdam, the Americans had the advantage of complete surprise. In the Oresund, we won’t. You can be as sure as anything in the world that the American admiral knows all about the danger of mines and… they’d call them ‘torpedo boats,’ I think. They’ll be alert at all times, even in a storm, and they have more than enough weaponry on board those ships, even leaving aside the main guns, to destroy any rowboat before it got close enough to pose a danger. The only chance we’ll have at all is because that outboard motor will enable us to close the last distance fairly quickly. Even then…”

    He grimaced. “I’ll be willing to lead the thing, when the time comes. But only because it’s not completely suicidal—there’s not a chance I’d agree without the motor—and I have a taste for adventure.”

    “More than a taste!” exclaimed Ulrik, half-laughing. “But I see your point. All right, then. There’s no point in throwing away the lives of our sailors to no purpose, Spend enough time to make sure you have that one spar torpedo boat ready. The rest, devote as much as you possibly can to the mines.”

    “And you’ll keep your father as far off as you can.”

    “Yes. And when the time comes, you and I will both see what that torpedo boat can do.”

    Norddahl’s eyes widened. “Ah… you’re a prince, Your Highness. I’m not sure your father…”

    “Damn my father. As many children as he sires, what difference does it make? I have two older brothers anyway, not even counting the morganatic line.”

    He gave the Norwegian the best royal stare he had. He knew it was quite good, too. He’d learned it from watching Gustav Adolf, the King of Sweden, in the time he’d spent with him as a youngster. A man he liked and generally admired—and was now his enemy. But such was the life of a prince.

    Finally, Ulrik got what he needed. There was nothing but respect in Baldur Norddahl’s gaze, any longer. No trace of the rogue or the rascal. Just that of the grim old ancient that the prince of Denmark would need at his side come a desperate moment in the spring, when they both went a-viking.