1634: The Baltic War

Chapter 53

London

Rita Simpson had been half-petrified that she wouldn't be able to pull it off. She'd always been a lousy actress, and she knew it. Leaving aside her one brief stab at amateur thespianism her sophomore year in college-what a disaster that had been!-there was the accumulated evidence of all those years as a kid and a teenager when her parents invariably saw through her fibs and lies while her brother Mike got away with everything.

But, by the time she got out from under the heavy staircase leading up to the White Tower's only entrance, she was in fact so thoroughly disgusted and angry that she had no trouble at all.

"You'll be lucky if you don't get an epidemic!" she snarled at Sir Francis Windebank. She half-turned and pointed a rigid finger at the staircase. More precisely, at the dark interior below the construction. "It's a cesspool in there! I don't care if the so-called toilets in the keep are completely inadequate for the number of soldiers you're billeting in it. They have got to start using the latrines! It's insane to have them shitting right underneath the main entrance-no, I take that back! the only entrance-to their own lodgings. Are you all crazy? Do you have any idea how much bacteria that's generating?"

She lowered the Finger of Accusation and the hand that it belonged to-but only partway. As she was doing with her other hand, she kept it well away from her skirt. She still had hopes-faint hopes-that she might be able to salvage the garment. Her shoes, of course, were hopeless, and would have to be pitched into the moat. They were a cheap pair she'd bought yesterday from the Tower's saddler, though, not one of her good pairs.

"Look at me! I'm filthy! Just from going in there to set the bacteria monitors." Thankfully, she hadn't actually had to crawl at any point, which had been her other great fear. There was enough room under the staircase for her to move about in a half-crouch. Still, with an area that filthy-not to mention vile; gross; disgusting; nauseating-there was no way she could have managed the chore without bringing traces back out with her. An incredible stench, if nothing else.

The stench was bad enough that Windebank was trying to sidle away. But Rita would have none of it.

"No, you don't! Come here, Sir Francis!" She made an imperious and impatient gesture, waving at him to accompany her toward the stairs. "I want to show you the monitors, so you can make sure-I'm holding you responsible, sir!-that none of these idiots fiddle with them."

"Please, Lady Simpson," he murmured, raising his own hands. That was more in the way of a protective gesture than a protest. Just in case Rita might try to grab him and get his own fancy clothing filthy. "I assure you-"

"No, you don't, buster! Look at them." She'd reached the staircase and stooped over-careful to stay a couple of steps from where the real filth began-and once again pointed the Finger of Accusation. "You can see one of them from here. Not too easily, because it's dark, but you can see it. The other one, you'd have to go inside."

Reluctantly, Windebank followed, staying several steps behind. Now, he lowered his head in a very brief manner and began nodding vigorously. "Yes, yes, I see it."

That was pure nonsense, of course. Windebank couldn't possibly have spotted the package that Rita had affixed to one of the staircase's two main weight-bearing columns, not with that brief a glance. All the more so because Harry Lefferts' demolitions expert Gerd Whazzisname-and wait till she finally met the bastard personally and could give him a piece of her mind; him and Wild-Man Harry both!-had deliberately painted the things to make them hard to see in a dark place.

But it was good enough. She was so aggravated that she had to remind herself that the "bacteria monitors" were nothing of the sort, and she didn't actually want Windebank or anyone else looking at them closely.

"Fine, then," she muttered, coming away from the stairs again. "As I told you, they need to stay in place-undisturbed-for a full week. At that point, I'll have an accurate reading of how bad the situation is. But, in the meantime-station guards if you have to-nobody keeps using the place for an outhouse."

"Yes, Lady Simpson. Certainly. Not a problem."

He just wanted to get rid of her, obviously enough. But Rita was pretty sure she'd accomplished her goal, so she gave him a curt nod and began stalking off toward her quarters in St. Thomas' Tower.

Amazingly, it was done. What she'd labeled "Mission Impossible" when that maniac Lefferts had first proposed it, but would now label otherwise.

Mission Disgusting.

Mission Puke-no, best not dwell on that.

Mission Harry I Will Piss On Your Grave. That had a nice ring to it. She might even crap on the bastard's grave, she was so ticked off.

"See to it," Francis Windebank ordered the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Henry Langscarr, after the obnoxious American woman left. Langscarr served as Windebank's deputy, whenever the constable was not present in the Tower-which was most of the time, these days.

"Yes, Sir Francis. I will have to post guards, though."

Windebank frowned but said nothing. The mercenary companies that now made up most of the Tower's military force were as poorly disciplined as mercenaries usually were. He found it hard to imagine, himself, why any sane man would crawl into that horrid space to defecate when there were perfectly functional latrines not more than a minute's walk from the White Tower. But, surely, they did-giving proof yet again that Pope Gregory the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas had been correct in listing Sloth as one of the seven deadly sins.

"What is 'bakeria'?" Langscarr asked, as the two men walked away.

"I have no idea, Sir Henry. The woman's accent is wretched enough when she speaks English. I hate to think how she's mangling Latin. Something to do with disease."

"Ah." Langscarr's puzzled expression disappeared. Actually, he thought Sir Francis was being excessively harsh. Langscarr himself had found Lady Simpson quite pleasant to deal with, as a rule. Her behavior today had been untypical-not that he could blame her, given the circumstances.

More importantly, like many people who spent most of their time in the Tower, he'd come to respect the young American woman's medical knowledge. Even some of the mercenaries had started taking their injuries and ailments to her for healing. Whatever that mysterious bakeria was that her devices were monitoring, he was quite sure she knew what she was doing, even if she couldn't pronounce the Latin properly.

Or perhaps it was Greek. Hard to say. Her accent really was atrocious.

"You did good, hon," said her husband soothingly.

But he, too, held his hands up in that fending-off gesture. No loving embrace there, ha!

"I stink," Rita hissed at him.

"Well, yeah, you do," Tom allowed. "Reek to high heaven, in fact. But it's nothing a good long bath won't fix."

The dark expression on his wife's face didn't lighten a bit. "Yeah, right. A good long seventeenth-century plumbing so-called 'bath.' "

"Oh, come on, it isn't that bad."

She gave him a sweet-looking smile that would have looked appropriate on the face of a tarantula, if spiders could smile. "Really? In that case, I'm sure you won't mind scrubbing my back."

"Well…"

"She did it!" Harry exclaimed gleefully, slapping his hands together after he set the walkie-talkie down on the kitchen table. "I will be good goddamed."

"Probably," said Andrew Short. "Though not damned by the Almighty. But I'd recommend you keep your distance from Lady Simpson, once we're all piled into the boat. Or you'll likely find yourself swimming back to the Continent."

Harry grinned. "Yeah, I'll just bet she's spitting mad by now. But that's okay. Rita's like her brother Mike. They both got a temper-every Stearns I ever met does-but they don't actually hold grudges."

The two men who'd worked together to design and build the explosive devices Rita had placed under the White Tower's staircase were also smiling, in the way skilled craftsmen will when a difficult job is finished.

One skilled craftsman, rather-Gerd Fuhrmann, the wrecking crew's acknowledged demolitions expert. Jack Hayes, still only nineteen years old, had a natural aptitude for the work, not to mention an avid interest. But you couldn't really consider him more than a promising apprentice in the Art of Boom.

Despite his youth, he was the one member of the Hamilton-Short clan whom Gerd had deemed worth training. As tough as they undoubtedly were-the women, in their own way, as much as the men-the talents of the rest of the male members of the clan ran toward more personal forms of mayhem. You needed to have a finicky streak, working with explosives and incendiary materials. Jack was the only male member of the extended family who possessed that quality.

"That's it, then." Harry pulled out his chair and sat back down. "Two windfalls in a row, by damn. I didn't really think Gerd and Jack would be able to manage their job, either."

Fuhrmann shrugged. "You can thank Jack for that, really. The charges were straightforward enough, just like the ones that are sitting under the stairs of the White Tower. The real problem was the same. How do you plant the bloody things without being spotted?"

Gerd jabbed his thumb at the smallish young man sitting next to him, who was grinning with a combination of pride and embarrassment. "But he managed it, as neatly as you could ask for."

"It's because I look younger than my age," Hayes said modestly. "People don't think much of a youngster scampering where he shouldn't be."

Julie Mackay shook her head. "Naw, Jack, it's the freckles. I don't know what it is about freckles, but the minute people see 'em they figure the owner's an innocent fellow." She jabbed her own thumb at her husband, sitting next to her. "I can't tell you how many times I've seen that trick work for Alex. It's why I fell for him, prob'bly, until I learned what a devious mind lurked beneath. But by then, it was too late."

Alex Mackay arched his eyebrows but made no other comment. Not to Julie, at any rate. To Harry, he said, "Do keep in mind that if you set off those charges at the wrong time, a lot of innocent people are likely to be hurt. Killed, some of them. Deaths at the Tower, especially those of mercenary soldiers, won't matter. But killing a dozen civilians just going about their business is a different proposition altogether."

Harry looked smug. Gerd looked even smugger.

"Way ahead of you, Alex," said Lefferts. "Gerd and Jack planted a smoke bomb with the big charges."

"Stink bomb, too!" said Hayes. "It'll go off first, when we send the signal. Half a minute later, when the real bombs go off, you won't find anyone in the vicinity."

Mackay shook his head. "Instead of concocting spurious theories about freckles, people ought to be examining a true mystery. How is it that the same people obsessed with the crude business of blowing things up also have such twisted minds?"

"I had a warped childhood," said Fuhrmann.

"Stephen Hamilton is my uncle," was Jack's explanation. He gave his mentor a sly glance. "What's that American term, Gerd? You piker, I think."

Stephen Hamilton shook his head. "No, lads, I'm firm on the matter. I'll accompany Darryl and Victoria into the Fens. Then, Scotland beyond. But I'll go alone. You and the rest of the family will go with Lady Mailey and Lady Simpson and their party, over to the Continent."

Given the nature of this subject, as opposed to some others, the senior female members of the family were present also, along with all the adult males. That was Isabel Short and Patricia Hayes. Isabel was the mother of Andrew and Victoria and their two surviving older brothers, William and John. Patricia was Isabel's half-sister, being the offspring of the same father, the now-deceased Henry Short, and his second wife Elizabeth. Her last name of Hayes came from her husband, Thomas Hayes, who'd been killed in an accident three years before.

Patricia had had four children by Thomas, all of whom had thankfully survived childhood. Their chances were good, now. Neddie, the oldest, was almost twenty-one years of age, and the youngest, Mary, had just turned twelve. In truth, Patricia was more worried about the health of her second-oldest child, Jack. Not from the danger of illness but from his new-found enthusiasm for explosives.

"You're certain about this, then?" asked John Short. He was the oldest of the three Short brothers, being almost forty. That gave him, along with Stephen Hamilton, the informal status of one of the two patriarchs of the little clan. In practice, it was normally the youngest of the three brothers who really exercised that function. That was due to Andrew's personality, which was more assertive and self-confident than those of his two older brothers. But for such a solemn matter as dividing the family, John's opinion and agreement was necessary.

Stephen Hamilton nodded. "Yes. It simply makes sense, John. We've all agreed, after discussing it at some length, that we'll accept his offer and enlist in Captain Lefferts' company once we make our escape. Formally speaking, that is, since for all that matters we've already done so. But the reality that remains is that the captain's military unit is really not well suited for families. Certainly not children."

Patricia made a face. "Tell that to my son!"

Andrew smiled. "The captain doesn't consider a nineteen-year-old lad to be a 'child,' Patricia. Neither do I, come down to it."

Isabel sniffed. "Sophistry, and you know it. Harry Lefferts wouldn't think twice about enlisting a twelve-year-old in his schemes if he saw a place for him."

"Or her," added John, chuckling, "and at the age of nine. Just last week I found out he'd put my little Mollie-Marian, as well-to the task of counting all the soldiers using the staircase below the White Tower in the early morning hours. Great fun, she thought it was. Marian, too. Those two girls! Whom their mother usually has to threaten with bodily harm to do any chores at all."

His brother William frowned. "I thought the only ones of us who'd ever met Captain Lefferts in person were Stephen and Andrew, when they crossed over to Southwark."

John shrugged. "Oh, he didn't do it himself. Darryl was the go-between. But don't you doubt for a moment that the magic words were 'Captain Lefferts wants.' Mollie and Marian wouldn't normally do Darryl McCarthy's bidding any more than they do their mother's."

He turned his attention back to Hamilton. "But we interrupted you. Go on, Stephen."

Hamilton spread his hands. "For an occasional task, certainly, Captain Lefferts will employ a child. In fairness to the man, it won't be anything dangerous, as ruthless as he can be otherwise." The term "ruthless" was not spoken disparagingly. Rather the opposite, in fact.

"But as a rule, given the tasks his company gets assigned, families would be a handicap. There's only one married couple in the entire unit, and they have no children. All of which comes down to this. The official duties of the captain's company include guarding the prime minister of the USE. And that's what most of our family will wind up doing. Staying in Magdeburg, not gadding all about Europe with the captain."

"But not you," said Patricia, eyeing her brother-in-law.

"No, not me," said Stephen Hamilton. "Jane and I had no children of our own. So there's really no reason I can't do a bit of the gadding about. And the captain asked me to. He's a bit concerned that the party which will be heading into the Fens and Scotland lacks a sufficient number of… ah, people."

That was the diplomatic way of putting it. What Harry Lefferts had actually said was: "Stephen, there ain't no better rifle shot in the world than Julie, and her husband and my man Darryl are both solid guys. So's Gayle Mason, for that matter, even if she ain't a guy. And I got no reason to think otherwise of Cromwell. But the fact remains that they could really use a shooter. If you know what I mean. Not long-range, not stout-hearted, not any of that bullshit. Put a pistol in a man's face and blow his head off right now and not blink. That kind of shooter. I think they're going into a world of hurt and they'll need it."

He smiled a little, at the memory. Stephen Hamilton was coming to like Harry Lefferts, and he was a man who liked very few people. Perhaps that was because Harry reminded him of a younger version of himself.

He coughed, disguising the smile with his fist. "Well… I should have said those are their official duties so long as Michael Stearns is the prime minister. It's quite unclear, actually, what will happen if Stearns loses that position. Knowing Captain Lefferts as I do now, I suspect the real allegiance is to the man, not the post."

"Oh, yes," murmured Andrew Short. He was smiling faintly also. Both men had come to the conclusion early on that they'd willingly exchange the formal security of their posts as Yeoman Warders for the considerably less stable positions of being-as the Americans might put it-"one of Harry's guys."

They were quite medieval themselves, in many ways, Stephen Hamilton and Andrew Short. Harry Lefferts commanded loyalty and trust from his people as naturally as he breathed, and one could only conclude that the same was true of the man he considered his own liege lord, Michael Stearns.

Stephen and Andrew had had their fill of overlords like King Charles and the earl of Cork and Sir Francis Windebank. They'd gladly trade them in for a very different sort, and leave the rest to Providence.

"So there it is," Hamilton concluded. "I'll go with them, the rest of you go across to the Continent. We'll see each other, soon enough."

The only clear memory Mike Stearns thought he'd ever retain of the Achates' voyage across the North Sea was that he was seasick the whole time. Whatever its other qualities, the shallow-draft, paddle-wheeled timberclad was a tub on the open sea.

No, he'd have two clear memories. The other was of Captain C.H. Baumgartner's lugubrious commentary.

"Blind luck the weather's holding up," he pointed out. "Sheer happenstance. This time of the year, a good channel gale would capsize us in a minute."

He made that statement on at least ten occasions, that Mike could recall. The first time, before they'd even finished casting off from the pier at Ritsenbuttel.

And that was among his cheerier comments. Some others were:

This thing was never designed for the open sea, you know. He's a fine man, the admiral, and a splendid commander. But an incorrigible optimist, all the same.

Very rough weather it has, the North Sea. Even seaworthy craft negotiate its waters at their peril.

Don't believe anyone who tells you drowning's a good way to die. Sheer nonsense. Your mind ruptures even before your lungs do. By the time life flees your body, your sanity's already gone.

Not too many sharks in these waters. But it hardly matters, with all the scavengers. Nothing but your bones will settle on the seafloor, you can be certain of that.

In between bouts of puking over the side and trying not to get pitched overboard in the process, Mike wondered where and when and how-most of all, why?-John Chandler Simpson had selected Baumgartner to be one of his ship captains. The miserable bastard could cast a pall of gloom over a wedding. Invite him to a christening, and all he'd talk about would be the baby's inevitable death. Of old age, if he was lucky-that would be accompanied by a long recitation of the ailments visited upon the elderly, in grisly detail-but more likely of some horrid childhood disease. Or an accident, as a teenager. Or syphilis, if he made it to his thirties.

If he'd had the strength, Mike would have strangled the captain and taken his chances in a court of law. Could you convict a nation's chief executive officer of mutiny for killing one of his own subordinates? He didn't think so. And a straightforward charge of homicide would fall flat on its face. Be laughed out of court, in fact, if he finagled himself a jury trial. Had history ever witnessed a clearer case of justifiable homicide? The jurors would carry him out of the courtroom on their shoulders.

His novel theories of jurisprudence would never be put to the test, however. Mike doubted if he could have strangled a mouse. Any good-sized rat would take him down, three falls out of three.

Baumgartner was a fountain of wisdom on that subject, too.

Oh, yes, the filthy creatures positively thrive here. God help a man who gets pitched on his head-which is easy to do, on this lubberly craft. If he lies unnoticed for more than five minutes, the rats will strip his flesh clean.

Mike would have been a lot better off if he'd accepted Captain Juan Hamers' offer to travel on his ship, one of the two merchant sailing vessels that were accompanying the paddle wheeler. Those vessels that would carry off the people rescued from England. The timberclad's sole function was to serve as their bodyguard. Or bank robber, if might be better to say, with the merchant ships being the getaway vehicles.

But Mike had decided that would be unwise. Everyone knew that the real risk in crossing the North Sea, given the decent weather they were having, would be borne by the shallow-draft paddle wheeler alone. Since he was the commander of the whole expedition, it would be bad for morale if he didn't go on the warship.

No, three clear memories. He'd also remember spending a fair amount of time, while puking over the side and trying not to get pitched overboard in the process, pondering a heretofore-unexamined philosophical problem.

Why was it that the expression "maintaining morale" was never applied to the commander of a military force?

Maybe he'd ask Gustav Adolf and John Chandler Simpson. If he survived the seasickness. He wasn't in the least bit worried about the other dangers of the expedition.

Then again, maybe he wouldn't. He had a dark suspicion-very dark; seasick heave your guts out dark-that they'd both just laugh at him.

Thomas Wentworth read the note one more time. Which was pointless, really, since by now he had it memorized. Perhaps some still-childlike part of his soul thought there might be some magic in the paper and ink itself, that would provide the answer for him.

From Samuel I, chapter 29, verse 10, this one:

Wherefore now rise up early in the morning with thy master's servants that are come with thee: and as soon as ye be up early in the morning, and have light, depart.

He couldn't possibly be misreading it. So, finally, it was time to decide. Until this moment, he'd not had to do so. Not really. Thomas had been entirely a passive observer in the process, whose acquiescence had been simply a matter of silence rather than outright consent.

He still had no idea what the Americans were planning specifically. But he didn't have much doubt that, whatever their scheme, it had a good chance of succeeding. For all its formidable reputation, the Tower of London was by no means impossible to escape from. Several people had done so, over the centuries.

All of those escapes had had one feature in common-they'd had help both from inside and outside the fortress. They'd never been feats carried out by a prisoner on his own.

The help on the inside was now established. Somehow, the Americans had managed to suborn at least part of the Yeoman Warders. By what means, Thomas didn't know. It could be anything, from an offer of riches to simple personal allegiance, or any combination thereof.

That still left the help needed from the outside, but Thomas didn't have any doubt that would be there on the morrow. The people whom the crown of England had kept prisoner in St. Thomas' Tower were not friendless outlaws or despised heretics, after all. They were the embassy of a foreign power, and one which had great resources to draw upon. Whatever was going to happen tomorrow morning, he was quite sure it had been months in the planning.

So, finally, there was nothing left but the heart and soul of Thomas Wentworth, now the earl of Strafford. Was he prepared to go into exile? He'd be labeled a traitor, for a certainty-and this time, the charge would be very hard to deny. Given that his escape would involve colluding with a foreign and hostile nation.

He didn't know. He simply didn't know. He'd studied the message for hours, rather than tossing it into the fire as he'd done with all the others.

And he still didn't know. His mind seemed paralyzed.

He knew now that he'd go to bed not knowing. Toss through the night, and still not know come the morning. Thomas Wentworth had never felt so lost and helpless in his entire life. A man sure to a fault, who was now unsure of everything.