1636 Commander Cantrell in the West Indies: Chapter Fifteen

St. Kilda archipelago, North Atlantic

    Once they arrived at the rail, Anne Cathrine looked up at Eddie, face serious, but her eyes seemed to twinkle. “Hi,” she said, not bothering to suppress the dimple that this use of Amideutsch quirked into being.

    Commander Eddie Cantrell felt the protocol-induced queasiness in his stomach become a mid-air dance of happy butterflies. “Hi,” he said. Or maybe he gushed: he wasn’t really sure. He was never exactly sure of what came out of his mouth when he was around the singularly beautiful and stammer-worthy sex goddess that was his almost seventeen-year-old wife.

    But instead of indulging in any more of the small signs of endearment that they had evolved over the past year to communicate in a playful (or, better yet, racy!) secret banter when in somber and dignified social settings, Anne Cathrine bit her lower lip slightly. She looked out to sea, tugging fitfully at her head scarf. What the hell is it with the head coverings, anyhow? It’s nice weather, not really too windy, and —

    Anne Cathrine looked up at him again, smiling through a slight frown. “So, how did your find your first conversation with Henrik Bjelke?”

    Eddie almost started at her tone: measured, serious, possibly concerned. “Um…fine.”

    “I am glad, Eddie. Very glad.”

    “You sound as if you were worried.”

    “About Bjelke? No, not particularly. I very much doubt you have to worry about him. He is still an outsider at the Danish court, and too young to threaten you. Much.”

    “‘Much?’” Eddie echoed. He hoped it hadn’t come out as a surprised squeak.

    Anne Cathrine turned very serious now, her very blue eyes upon him. “Dear Eddie, although this is a USE mission, conceived by the leaders of Grantville and given royal imprimatur by Gustav of Sweden, the majority of your commanders are Danish.” She smiled. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”

    He grinned back. “Nope. Completely slipped past me. Past Admiral Simpson, too.”

    She lifted an eyebrow, curled a lip in a slow smile that Eddie associated with other places, other exchanges — down, Eddie! down, boy! Then she was looking out to sea, again. “Joking aside, Eddie, there are ambitious men in this flotilla, men whose personal interests may not be well-served if you are too successful.”

    “Me — successful? Wait a minute, it’s not like I’m in charge of the flotilla. Heck, I’m something like the third rung down on the command ladder. Maybe less. It’s hard to know how rank would play against nobility in this kind of situation. So it’s not as if the success or failure of this mission is mine.”

    “Now it is you who must ‘wait a minute,’ Eddie. You may not have the highest rank, but everyone in every ship — and back home — knows this mission to the New World was your idea. Yours. Admiral Simpson was intent on going to the New World, yes. Such plans were already afoot, yes. But it was you put forward the idea of making it a reconnaissance and a ruse all bound into one mission. If this stratagem works, you will receive credit as its architect. At the very least.”

    Eddie scratched the back of his head, remembered that gesture probably didn’t radiate a dignified command presence, snatched his hand back down to his side. “Yeah. Well. Okay. So who are all these Danish guys with hidden agendas?”

    “Firstly, my love, they might not have hidden agendas. That is the problem with hidden agendas: that they might or might not be there at all. Wouldn’t you agree?”

    “Well, sure.”

    “Excellent. So now, who first? Well, the commander of the task force, for one.”

    “Captain Mund? He seems, um, barely communicative.”

    “And so he is, but that does not mean he is without ambition. He is a minor noble, although he does not flaunt his title. Which is probably just as well.”

    “Why?”

    “Because he was granted a tract on Iceland.” Anne Cathrine shivered. “It is not a very nice place to be a landholding noble.”

    “You mean, sort of like the Faroes?”

    “Hush, Eddie! You must know that father did not give you that land for any reason other than to furnish you with the highest title he might within the nobility of Denmark. And, I suspect, as an entré to greater things.”

    “So I’ve suspected, also.” he crossed his fingers, offered silent thanks to John Chandler Simpson.

    She looked at him. “Then you are indeed learning the ways of these times, Eddie. Which is necessary, I am afraid. Now, the person you must be most careful of is Hannibal Sehested.”

    “You mean the guy who displaced the captain from his cabin on the Patentia? I met him at court, just this spring. Seems like a nice enough guy. Shrewd, though.”

    “He always has been a nice enough fellow in his behavior toward me, too, Eddie. But he is also, as you observe, shrewd, and history showed that he was shrewd enough to advance his fortunes in your up-time history’s Danish government. Even though he made himself an enemy of the man who was to become its most influential member, Corfitz Ulfeldt.”

    “The guy who was a traitor, up-time?”

    “Yes, the man who was to betray my father. And who would have married my sister Leonora in just over a year.” Again, she looked over her shoulder at the shorter of her two ‘ladies’, but this time the glance was both protective and melancholy. “Corfitz was already betrothed to her, you know. Had been since 1630.”

    “But…but she was only nine years old!”

    Anne Cathrine nodded gravely. “Eight, actually. And here you see the fate of the daughters of kings who are not also full princesses. We are objects of exchange, no less than we are objects of his genuine love. He arranges marriages that ensure the nation of secure bonds between the king and his nobles, since familial ties to the throne are craved above all things by men of that class. And if, thanks to those ties between crown and Riksradet, we all live in a time of domestic harmony, prosperity, and peace, then would we king’s daughters not be ungrateful if we failed to consider ourselves ‘happy’?”

    Eddie mulled that over. “That’s what I call taking one for the team. And doing so for the rest of your life.”

    “If by that you mean it is a sacrifice, well — I think so, too. Although many thought me ungrateful for feeling that way.”

    “Well, they can go straight to — okay, I know that look: I’ll calm down.” Hmmm: calming down — that reminds me. Eddie turned so his back was to Ove Gjedde. “So, while we’re dragging out the dirt on the Danish upper crust, tell me: what do you know about Captain Gjedde? He’s the one guy that the admiral and I couldn’t find anything useful about. Seems he led the expedition to set up your trade with India, but after that, not much.”

    Anne Cathrine frowned. “I am sad to say that I do not know much more of him than that. I do know that father respects him, but — well, Captain Gjedde is not an exciting man. As you have remarked to me several times on our journey thus far. And he is still recovering from wounds he suffered in the Baltic War. From fighting against your Admiral Simpson’s timberclads, if I recall correctly.”

    Oh. Well. He must really be a big fan of up-timers, then. Particularly the ones who had a direct hand in blasting his ship to matchsticks…

    Evidently, Anne Cathrine could read the expression on his face or was displaying an increasing talent for honest-to-God telepathy. “No, I do not think his reticence is caused by your being an American. He is more mature than that, and has seen his share of war. Like many older military men, he does not confuse the actions of following a king’s order with the will of the men who must carry it out.”

    “Yeah, he looks old enough to have achieved that kind of perspective. What is he? Sixty, sixty-five years old?”

    Anne Cathrine looked somber. “Forty-one.”

    “What?”

    “He was always a somber, old-looking man, but his wounds from the Baltic — they drained him. He has not been at court since he suffered them, last year. But then again, he was never much at court. He doesn’t enjoy it. And while father respects his abilities, Captain Gjedde is not the kind of man that he takes a personal interest in. The captain excels at navigation and can predict the weather like a wizard from the old sagas. But he does it all quietly, calmly. Not the type of man to capture father’s often mercurial imagination.”

    “Not like young Lord Bjelke.”

    “No, indeed. And of course, father’s interest in Bjelke is also self-protective.”

    “How do you mean?”

    “I mean that Henrik Bjelke was, historically, not always a supporter of my father or his policies. He could yet prove quite dangerous, I suppose.”

    “Really? Jeez, Rik seems like a pretty good guy, actually.”

    “Yes, father thinks that as well. He just wants to make sure that history does not repeat itself. And so he has involved Lord Bjelke in his plans for the New World.” She looked over her shapely, and surprisingly broad, shoulder to where Henrik was escorting the ladies on what promised to be a quick looping promenade to the taffrail and back to the companionway. “In fact, I think Father put him aboard for a very special purpose.”

    “You mean, to watch me.”

    Anne Cathrine’s eyes went back up to Eddie’s and he felt wonder, appreciation, and perhaps the tiniest bit of sadness in them. “Ah, you are becoming adept at our down-timer machinations, Eddie — or at least, at perceiving them. Which, as I said, is a positive thing. But still, even so, I hope you will always be — I mean, I hope it won’t make you –”

    “Jaded? Subtle? Snake-like in my new and sinister cunning?”

    Anne Cathrine tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t. She laughed softly, swayed against his arm for the briefest of contacts. “You — how do you say it? — you ‘keep it real,’ Eddie. For which I am grateful. And which is one of the many reasons I love you so. But let us be serious for one moment more. Young Lord Bjelke’s history and eventual friendship with Corfitz Ulfeldt, in your world, caught my father’s attention. So I believe he wants Henrik indebted to him, and yes, hopes to gain a loyal observer in the fleet, as well. But I think Papa has another purpose, as well.”

    “Which is?”

    “Marriage.”

    “Marriage? Of Bjelke? To whom?”

    Anne Cathrine looked over her shoulder again. “To Sophie Rantzau. Or maybe my sister.” She frowned as she watched the two ladies in question finish their circuit of the stern. “I cannot tell.”

    “Huh,” Eddie observed eloquently. “Huh. A military mission to the New World as a means of kindling a strategically shrewd shipboard romance? Your Dad sure sees some odd opportunities in some odd places. Why not just play matchmaker at court, where he can meddle with the young lovers personally? Which, let’s be honest, is one of his favorite pass-times.”

    Anne Cathrine smiled and swatted him lightly. “For which you should be very grateful, husband. Otherwise, where would we be today, had he not played the part of Cupid?”

    “Where would we be? Well, let’s see. I’d still be rotting in the dungeon with a crappy peg leg on my stump, and you’d be married to Lord Dinesen, or some other wealthy noble.”

    “Yes, who would no doubt be three times my weight and four times my age. So, I’m not sure which of our two fates would be more grim.”

    “Yeah, well, when you put it that way­ –”

    “Trust me, dear husband, that would literally have been my fate. The marriage you helped me avoid when you were my father’s prisoner wasn’t simply a staged engagement. My wedding to Dinesen was a very real possibility.”

    “No. You father would never have made you marry that –”

    “Eddie, you keep mistaking what loving parents of your time consider wise actions, and what loving parents of my time consider wise actions. I am a king’s daughter, and so almost a princess in stature within my own country. But much less so elsewhere, because in marrying me, a foreign throne will not have gained any formal influence — or potential of inheritance — in the lands of my family.

    “And so I was not to be married off to a crown prince of one of the other courts of Europe, but wedded to a Danish nobleman. And who among those men had enough wealth and influence to be a de facto dowry for my hand?” Her face hardened. “Old, ambitious men, most of whom spent their whole lives counting their money, counting their estates, counting the ways in which they might move one step higher in the nasty little games of social climbing that are their favorite sport.” Eddie thought she was going to spit over the side in disgust.

    But instead she rounded on him, her eyes bright and unwavering. “So you see, my darling Eddie, it is you who saved me, not the other way around.” Her eyes searched his and he could almost feel heat coming out of them, and off of her. Her face and body was rigid with the intensity of passion that he loved to see, to feel, in her. When she got this way, she was just one moment away from grabbing and holding him fiercely, and what usually happened next — oh, what usually happened next! —

    Didn’t happen this time. Anne Cathrine seemed to remember her surroundings, looked away, readjusted her kerchief — that damned kerchief! what the hell? — and stared out to sea. She pointed at the Courser, now nearly two miles ahead of the Intrepid and widening the gap rapidly. “That is the smaller of your steamships, yes?”

    Huh? She knows perfectly well that it is. But all he said was, “Yes, Anne Cathrine. That’s our destroyer.”

    “A fierce name,” she said with a tight, approving nod. “And that one gun in the middle of its deck, sitting in its own little castle, is the most dangerous of them all?”

    He smiled. “That little castle is what we call a ‘tub mount’. The round, rib-high wall protects the gun crew from enemy fire, shrapnel, fragments. As does the sloped gun shield. The rifle can bear through two hundred seventy degrees and fire several different kinds of shells to very great ranges.”

    “It is the same as these guns on your ship?” She pointed to the two naval rifles on the centerline of the Intrepid’s weather deck.

    “Yes, but, umm…this isn’t my ship, sweetheart. It’s — “

    “Yes, I know. It’s Gjeddes’. But he has let you run it, with the exception of the sail-handling, since we left the dock.”

    Eddie shrugged. There was no arguing with the truth.

    Anne Cathrine was pointing over the bow. “And that sail up ahead, that is the Dutch-built yacht?”

    “Yes, the Crown of Waves. A good ship. She’s out ahead of us as a picket.”

    “I thought you have provided us with balloons to look far ahead, so that pickets were no longer needed?”

    He smiled. “Pickets are always needed, Anne Cathrine. Besides, we don’t want to use the balloons if we don’t need them, and if the winds get any stronger, an observer could get pretty roughed up, to say nothing of damage to the balloon itself.”

    “I see. And the other ship like your Intrepid — the Resolve — that’s her, falling to the rear?”

    “Yes.”

    She was silent for a long time. “Your ships are so big compared to ours. Even compared to the Patentia, the Resolve is easily half again as long and half again as high, except at the very rear. And still –”

    “Yes?”

    “Eddie, should your warships have so few guns? I know up-time designed weapons are terribly powerful, but if they should fail to operate, or the enemy gets lucky shots into the gun-deck –” She stopped, seeing his small smile.

    “Trust me, Anne Cathrine, we have enough guns. More than enough. It’s more important that our magazine is big enough to carry plenty of excellent ammunition to keep our excellent guns well supplied. Which is the case.”

    She nodded, turned her eyes to the ship lumbering along beside the Patentia. “Not a very handsome ship, the Serendipity.”

    Eddie let a little laugh slip out. “No, she’s not much to look at.” The Serendipity was a pot-bellied bulk hauler, with the lines of a bloated pink or fluyt. “But she’s steady in a storm, and seven hundred fifty tons burthen. And we need that cargo capacity. So ugly or not, we’re lucky to have her.”

    “Not as lucky as to have the Tropic Surveyor,” countered Anne Cathrine with an appreciative smile and a chin raised in the direction of the last ship of the flotilla.

    And Eddie had to admit that Tropic Surveyor was a handsome ship, her square-rigged fore- and mainmasts running with their sheets full. The large, three-masted bark had a fore-and-aft rigged mizzen and twelve almost uniform guns in each broadside battery. Her lines were unusually clean, reflecting the first influence of frigate-built designs upon traditional barks. Her master, a Swede by the name of Stiernsköld, was known to be a highly capable captain who, if he had any failing, tended toward quiet but determined boldness.

    Anne Cathrine’s attention had drifted back to the Patentia, however. “What are all those men doing on deck, and who are they?”

    Eddie glanced over, saw a growing number of men at the portside gunwales of the Patentia, many pointing at the island peaks to the south, some nodding, some shaking their heads. Eddie smiled. “Those are the Irish soldiers who came up from the Infanta Isabella of the Lowlands.”

    Anne Cathrine frowned. “I still do not understand how mercenaries who have been in Spanish service for generations –”

    Eddie shook his head. “I don’t understand it either. Not entirely.” And what little I do understand I can’t share, honey. Sorry.

    “Do you at least know why they are on deck there — and look, more of them are gathering at the rail of the Serendipity! What are they looking at?”

    The voice that answered was gravel-filtered and deep. “They think they are seeing their homeland.”

    Eddie and Anne Cathrine turned. Ove Gjedde was behind them, his eyes invisible in the squinting-folds of his weathered face. Neither had heard him approach.

    “Their homeland?” Anne Cathrine repeated.

    “Yes, my Lady. Because the last week’s wind has been fair, there has been some loose talk that we might sight the north Irish coast late today.” He sucked at yellowed teeth. “That will not happen until tomorrow, sometime. But I am told that the Irish got word of these rumors. And as you may know, most of them have never seen Ireland, but were born in the Lowlands. Their eagerness is understandable.” Gjedde made to move off once again.

    Eddie offered a smart salute. “Thank you, Captain.”

    Gjedde returned a slight nod that was the down-time equivalent of a salute between officers of comparable rank, made a slightly deeper nod in Anne Cathrine’s direction, and began slowly pacing forward along the starboard railing, hands behind his back.

    Anne Cathrine stared after him. “He did not return the new naval salute, as per your Admiral’s regulations.”

    “But he does follow the rest of the regs. To the letter.”

    Anne Cathrine watched the spare man move away. “Captain Gjedde seems to grow more somber every time I meet him.”

    Eddie shifted his eyes sideways to his wife. “While we’re on the topic of ‘more somber’…”

    Anne Cathrine glanced at him quickly, fiddled with her kerchief, tucking a stray strand of gold-red hair back under it. “I do not know what you mean.”

    “Sure you don’t.” If they had been alone, he would have put an arm around her waist, pulled her closer. “C’mon, Anne Cathrine, what gives? You’re acting . . . oddly.”

    “I am not.” At that particular moment she did not sound like her usual sixteen going on thirty-six. She just sounded like she was six.

    Eddie smiled. “Uh, yes, you are. And what’s with the head covering?”

    Her hands flew up to her kerchief and she stepped away from him quickly. “Why? Has it come undone?” Satisfied that it was still firmly in place, she raised her chin, looked away. “There is nothing wrong. Nothing.”

    Huh. So there was a connection between his wife’s hinky behavior and the kerchief. “Anne Cathrine, honey, don’t worry. Tell me what’s going on. Let me help.”

    She looked at him, her eyes suddenly glassy and bright, then glanced away quickly.

    What? Has she lost most of her hair? Fallen victim to some strange depilatory disease particular to the high seas of the northern latitudes? “Anne Cathrine, whatever it is, it’s going to be all right. Just tell me and — “

    “Oh, Eddie — ” She turned back to him and, oblivious to on-lookers, cast herself into his arms. “I’m sorry — so sorry.”

    “Sorry? About what?” He tried to ignore the fact that even through his deck coat and her garments, he could still feel his wife’s very voluptuous and strong body along the length of his own. And in accordance with the orders given by the supreme authority of his ancient mammalian hindbrain, certain parts of him were taking notice and coming to general quarters. Well, more like standing at attention…

    “Oh, Eddie, my hair! I should have seen to my packing, my preparations, myself. But in the rush to get everything aboard, and with all the last minute changes — “

    “What? Have you lost your hair? That’s okay; we can — “

    She pulled away from him. “Lost my hair?” She pulled herself erect. She might not have the title of a full princess, but she could sure put on a convincing show of being one. “Certainly not. But I — I neglected to oversee my servant’s preparations. And now I, I . . . ” She looked down at the deck, then reached up, and tugged her kerchief sharply.

    Eddie was prepared for anything: baldness, scrofulous patches, running sores, dandruff the size of postage stamps, medusan snakes — anything. Except for what was revealed.

    Anne Cathrine’s red hair came uncoiling from the bulky kerchief in a long, silk-shining wave that came down to the middle of her back. Eddie couldn’t help himself: he gasped.

    Seeing his expression, Anne Cathrine pouted. Her lower lip even quivered slightly. “I knew it.”

    “Knew what?” Eddie heard himself say. He was still busy staring at his wife’s hair and trying to tell his lower jaw to raise and lock in place.

    “Knew that you would be aghast to see my hair like this, without the curls. Oh, I tried, Eddie, I did. My servant forgot to pack the heating combs, and neither I nor Leonora — nor Sophie — know how to do our hair any other way. Commoners can make curls with wet rags, I’m told, so we tried that, but none of us did our own hair often.” Or at all, Eddie added silently, now quite familiar with coiffuring dependencies of noble ladies. “I have been trying since we left to keep some curl in it, or at least a wave, but this morning, we all agreed there was nothing left to try.”

    “It’s beautiful,” Eddie croaked.

    Her smile looked broken. “You are a wonderful husband, to say that. But you can barely speak the words. I know the expectations of fashion, Eddie. And here you see the truth at last: I have straight, plain hair. No tumbling curls, not even a tiny ripple of a wave. Plain, straight hair.”

    He reached out and touched it. “Hair like fire and gold spun into silk,” he breathed. “And in my time, that kind of hair was very much in fashion. Hell, I didn’t think hair like this was ever out of fashion.”

    She blinked. “So — you like it? You like my hair this way?”

    Eddie gulped. “Oh, yes. I like it. Very much. Very, very much.” He roused himself out of his pre-carnal stupor. “But know this, Anne Cathrine, the hair is not important to me. What’s under it is.” He touched her cheek. “As important as the wide world.”

    Anne Cathrine’s smile — shockingly white teeth — was sudden and wide. She caught his hand on her cheek and held it there. “Truly,” she said, “I am the luckiest woman in the world.”

    “And a princess, to boot,” Eddie added with a grin.

    “A king’s daughter,” she corrected, and moved toward him again —

    “Sail, sail on the port bow! Rounding the rocks, sirs. She’s running before the wind!”