Petersburg, if I have to!… until you come to your senses, and obey me. Too much is riding on our arrival, and I will not allow anything to prevent our success! Ya paneemayu?'
'Uncle, I…!' Count Levotchkin stammered, looking strangled.
'Swear to me you will swallow your pride over such a trivial matter, and obey me in all things,' Rybakov demanded, drawing attention from the quarterdeck officers and men of the after-guard, who did not understand their Russian, but thought the obvious argument odd. 'You pledged your wholehearted aid to me in London. What, a gentleman of the aristocracy will go back on his word?' he sneered.
'Uncle, for the love of God, please…!'
'Nyet!'
'I will seek him after,' Count Levotchkin stated. 'You cannot deny me that.'
'After?' Count Rybakov puzzled, head cocked to one side. 'What do you mean, after?'
'Once all is done, and there is peace, I will return to London and confront him,' Levotchkin vowed, in all seeming earnestness.
'After your marriage to the Countess Ludmilla Vissaroninova?' Count Rybakov enquired, a wry brow raised. 'And how will you explain that to her, her family… or yours? Pah, Anatoli. Once ashore on our own holy soil, your little whore in London will mean nothing to you, nor will your grudge against Kapitan Lewrie. Once in command of a regiment of Guards cavalry, well-married and welcome in every rich house in Saint Petersburg or Moscow… and with a guaranteed place in the New Court, this will seem to you nothing. A quibble!'
'But…,' Levotchkin tried to explain, his imagination flooded with images of the delectable, the biddable Tess.
'Swear to uphold me in all things, and obey me in this matter.'
And, after a long moment, Count Anatoli Levotchkin, mind still asquirm with fantasies of bloody revenge, acceded, and swore. Though he did cross the fingers of one hand behind his back.
BOOK 4
Quaeritor belli exitus, non causa.
'Of War men ask the outcome, not the cause.'
– LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
HERCULES FURENS 407-9
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Blessed, HMS Thermopylae seemed indeed to be, for no Danish vessel larger than a fishing smack stood guard in the Holland Deep as she sailed tranquilly on past Saltholm Island, far beyond the range of the forts protecting Copenhagen; the Trekroner, the Castellet, the Amager, the Lynetten, or the bastions that anchored the city's walls.
Even so, Thermopylae could espy, from the very mast-tops, that the navy yard, girded by those walls, did not yet contain all that many warships with masts set up and yards crossed; those yards that were in place looked bare of sails, as well. Oh, on the Danish side, in the Copenhagen Roads, and in the King's Deep, officers and lookouts aloft could count the number of warships and odd-looking floating batteries-bulwarked rafts with stumpy masts meant for signalling, and to fly their national ensign, only-arrayed from the Trekroner Fort down to the city proper, to guard the northern entrance to the Roads, but… oddly… none of them stirred as Thermopylae passed, on the other side of the Middle Ground shoals.
As if they were bewitched and blinded, some fearfully whispered.
South of Copenhagen, 'tween the Danish town of Dragor on Amager Island, and the Swedish coast and the town of Malmц, lay the Grounds, where Captain Hardcastle and Sailing Master Lyle both cautioned that a steady wind for several days could reduce the depth by as much as three feet over the shallow throat of the Baltic, and the largest vessels of the deepest draught might have to anchor and lighten themselves of cargo, water butts, or guns to get over.
With several days of Northerly winds, though, the leadsmen swinging their leads from the fore-chains found sufficient depth for Thermopylae; even drawing eighteen feet, she passed over the Grounds with at least two fathom to spare, and did not even feel the brush of sand, silt, or mud under her false keel.
By twilight, the frigate, on a steady course of South by East, with perhaps only half a point of Southing, rounded the lattermost tip of Swedish territory at the point of Falsterbo, and stood out into the frigid Baltic itself, at last. It was only at midnight, and the beginning of the Middle Watch, that Lewrie ordered course altered to Due East… sail taken in and speed reduced to a scant four knots, and extra lookouts posted to spot any drifting fields of ice.
With the dawn came a shift in wind, at last, starting to back round 3 A.M., an hour before All Hands was piped to wake the ship for another day of seafaring, of stowing hammocks topside, sweeping and mopping decks, and going to Quarters to guard against any foe revealed by the dawning sun. It changed to Nor'westerly, then quickly Westerly, and by Four Bells of the Morning Watch, had swung round to Sou'westerly. By the time Lewrie came to the quarterdeck for the third time of a sleepless night, so swathed in fur and undergarments that he resembled an Greenland Eskimo, it was from South by West, sweeping over the coastal plains of Prussia that lay to the South… and it felt just a tad warm, though none too strong.
'We'll not be able to pass between Sweden and the Danish island of Bornholm, sir,' Mr. Lyle reported as they pored over the chart upon the traverse board. 'By my reckoning, we've made twenty-five nautical miles since weathering Falsterbo last night, and-'
'No chance of sun-sights, of course,' Capt. Harcastle stuck in.
'No. Of course not, not in this eternal overcast,' Mr. Lyle agreed, though through clenched teeth to be interrupted. 'I'd suggest we alter course to the Sou'east, and leave Bornholm broad to larboard.'
'Sheltered waters, 'twixt Sweden and Bornholm, d'ye see, sir?' Hardcastle continued between sips of hot tea from his battered old pewter mug. 'Calmer waters, more chances for ice floes to form. No one chances that passage, past November. Ye've seen the drift ice that we encountered during the night, Captain Lewrie?'
'Not really,' Lewrie replied. 'It was reported to me, but…'
'Rotten,' Capt. Hardcastle declared. 'Thin, and looking as if rats had been gnawing at the few pieces I saw, close enough aboard for me to judge. Damned near soft as pie crust, I'd imagine. Do we espy more this morning, it might not be a bad idea to put down a boat, and row out to give it a closer look-see.'
'The thaw's set in for certain, then,' Lewrie said, wondering how soon it might be that Thermopylae encountered Swedish or Russian warships at sea… or Danish, had they despatched one or two in chase of them.
'Oh, 'tis still too early for Karlskrona or the other Swedish ports to have clear passage,' Hardcastle assured him with a smile and a wink. 'And the Russian ports up the Gulf of Finland, well… they're weeks behind the Swedes. But we're getting there, sir, believe you me. And with this warm wind outta the mainland…,' he said, turning his face to it for a second before shrugging his inability to give an exact estimate, 'mayhap the thaw will come even earlier this season. Were I back in England, I'd be loaded and stowed, just waiting for a favourable wind to start the first trading voyage of the Spring.'
'Oh joy,' Lewrie griped, looking up from the chart to peer over the bows, and the hobby-horsing jib-boom and bow sprit for the island of Bornholm, still lost in the overcast and winter haze. By Mr. Lyle's reckoning, it lay perhaps twenty sea-miles East. He was tempted to go as close as he dared to the passage between the isle and Sweden, but there were his passengers, and their diplomatic mission, to consider. Hardcastle's assurance that the passage would not be usable for a few more weeks would have to do, for now.
'Very well,' he reluctantly said, looking about for the officer of the watch, then trying to determine which of the swathed and muffled individuals that might be. 'Mister Fox, sir?'
'Aye, sir?' the wool-covered figure in a bright red muffler and knit wool cap replied, lowering the scarf to ba B
