She lowered her arm. “I can make music only with my own arm, because it’s my arm that learned it. And to play with my arm means throwing away my sister’s sacrifice. Denying it. Repudiating it.” No, Ereza thought at her again. Don’t do this. I will understand; I will change. Please. But she knew it was too late, as it had been too late to change things when she woke after surgery and found her own arm gone. “If my sister wants music, she must learn to make it. If you want music, you must learn to make it. We will teach you; we will play with you—but we will not play for you. Good evening.”
Again the conductor signaled; the musicians picked up their instruments from the floor, stood, and walked out. For a moment, the shuffling of their feet onstage was the only sound as shock held the audience motionless. Ereza felt the same confusion, the same hurt, the same realization that they would get no music. Then the catcalls began, the hissing, the programs balled up angrily and thrown; some hit the stage and a few hit the musicians. But none of them hurried, none of them looked back. Arla and the conductor waited, side by side, as the orchestra cleared the stage. Ereza sat frozen, unable to move even as people pushed past her, clambered over her legs. She wanted to go and talk to Arla; she knew it would do no good. She did not speak Arla’s language. She never had. Now she knew what Arla meant: she had never respected her sister before. Now she did. Too late, too late, cried her mind, struggling to remember something, anything, of the music.
Tradition
July 31, 1914. Durazzo, Albania
Rear Admiral Sir Christopher George Francis Maurice Cradock strode briskly along the deck of his flagship, H.M.S. Defence, walking off the effects of last night’s dinner with the officers of the S.M.S. Breslau. Despite the political tension of the past few weeks, it had been a pleasant evening of good food and good talk, punctuated by the clink of silver on china and the gurgle of wine into glasses as the mess stewards kept them filled.
Only once had Commander Kettner revealed any hint of that German confidence which so nearly approached arrogance. “You English—” he had said, his voice rising. Then he had chuckled affably. “You have so much invested in tradition,” he had continued, more relaxed. “We Germans have a tradition to make. It is always so for vigorous youth, is it not?” The clear implication that the Royal Navy was superannuated had rankled, but Cradock had passed it off graciously. Time enough to compare traditions when the young eagle actually flew and dared its talons against Britannia’s experience. He had no doubt that rashness would be well reproved.
Cradock took a deep breath and eyed the steep tile roofs, bright in morning sunlight, that stepped down to the harbor, its still water perfectly reflecting both ships and buildings. Behind them rose the mountains in which—in happier years—he had hunted boar. No foxhunting here, but a sportsman could find some game anywhere.
He glanced over at Breslau, admitting to himself that the Germans had certainly reached a high standard of seamanship. Every detail he had seen the day before had been correct. Several of the officers had read his books; they had asked him to expand on some of the points he’d made. Only courtesy, of course, but he could not help being pleased.
A thicker ooze of smoke from Breslau’s funnels stained the morning air. Cradock slowed. On her decks a subdued flurry of movement he recognized at once. Astern, the smooth reflection of the mountains shattered like a dropped mirror as her screws churned. He turned to his flag lieutenant.
“What do we know of Admiral Souchon and the Goeben?” Cradock asked.
“At last report, sir, the Goeben had made port in Trieste, then gone to sea for gunnery practice.”
A cold chill ran down Cradock’s back. Gunnery practice? If the Germans were intending to declare war first, only they would know when. The Japanese had given no warning to the Russians at Port Arthur in 1904.
“When Breslau weighs anchor, send word to Admiral Milne,” Cradock said. “And inform Captain Wray that we will be returning to Corfu immediately.”
“Sir.”
In short order, the German light cruiser was moving out of the anchorage, a demure curl of white at her bow that would, Cradock was sure, lengthen to a streak when she was out of sight.
August 6, 1914. Early morning off Corfu
Admiral Cradock considered, as he took several rashers of bacon onto his plate, at what point his duty to His Majesty might require disobedience to his superior, Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne. It was not a dilemma in which he had ever expected to find himself.
When he raised his flag in H.M.S. Defence, a British admiral in command of a cruiser squadron in the Mediterranean could expect a constant round of visits to attractive ports, dinners with dignitaries who all wanted some concession, meetings with other naval officials, all conducted with the utmost ceremony. Here were the smartest ships in the Royal Navy, and the most favored officers.
Now he commanded a squadron at war, a situation calling for very different talents than the ability to dance with a prime minister’s daughter or make polite conversation with French magistrates and Turkish pashas. And—more to the point—a situation in which mistakes would imperil not merely an officer’s reputation and future career, but the very survival of the Empire.
Cradock knew himself to be an old-fashioned sailor. Seamanship was his passion, correct and accurate handling of ships in all weathers, placing them where they could best effect strategy. Seamanship required comprehensive knowledge of exact details: how to organize coaling, how to coil ropes, how to turn a ship in formation precisely where she should turn. Most important, it required naval discipline, on which both naval tradition and the whole towering edifice of empire depended. Lack of discipline led to slovenly seamanship, and that, in the end, to disaster.
His responsibility, therefore, was to do what his commander told him. Therein lay the rub.
Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne, Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, had in the past few days revealed himself no Nelson. For three days, Milne had thrashed around the Mediterranean in vain pursuit of the German ships, shifting Cradock’s own squadron about in useless dashes, a waste of coal and energy. Now, on the second full day of war, when the German ships were in Messina and could have been bottled up by placing adequate force at either end of the Strait of Messina, Milne had instead taken his battle cruisers off to coal in Bizerte—all the way to North Africa. He had ordered Cradock to stay at the mouth of the Adriatic, and placed only little Gloucester to watch the exit to the eastern Mediterranean, because he was sure the Germans would try to go west.
Cradock was not so sure of that. What he knew, with absolute certainty, was that the Goeben would cause the Royal Navy immense trouble if she were not sunk, and that the Admiralty wanted her sunk. And he could not sink her from here, sitting idly off Corfu waiting for Milne to give sensible orders. That fox Souchon had plans of his own.
As a technical problem of naval tactics, it came down to speed and guns. The German ships were faster, especially the turbine-powered Goeben, and Goeben had bigger guns that outranged his by several nautical miles. Thus the Goeben could, in theory, stand off at a distance where her great shells could pound the cruisers, and their shots would all fall short.