"A… prostitute?" Rybakov asked, looking appalled as he sat down in his own chair at the other end of the table. "A common whore?"
"Well, I wouldn't call her 'common,' no, my lord," Lewrie said, and laid out for Count Rybakov the entire scenario, from meeting Tess to the last morning in the Strand… perversions, included.
"He was not set upon by thieves?" Rybakov mused aloud, eyebrows up in wonder. "No wonder he explained his wounds differently. But… he really treated the poor girl so badly?"
"Afraid so, my lord," Lewrie told him, dabbing his lips with a napkin after he'd eaten his last morsel, and asked Pettus for another cup of coffee. "She was afraid for her life. Had she known… had I known, that his man, Sasha, was lurking to discover who else might be sporting with her, or meeting her outside the establishment, I doubt she'd have ever dared step out the door, 'til she was sure that Count Levotchkin had left England."
"But he's so devout!" Rybakov insisted. "Anatoli never misses a service, even in London, at the few Orthodox churches, no matter how mean the neighbourboods. He's a pure son of Mother Russia… or so I thought. Lord, what will his mother say, or the young lady to whom he is affianced in Saint Petersburg? A young lady of one of the finest families in our aristocracy. He has such a promising future… a colonelcy in one of the most distinguished cavalry regiments, assured of a place at the Tsar's court as soon as we return…"
Knew it! Lewrie told himself; Devout, and a cavalryman. They're sure t'be secret bastards, every time.
"Happens in the best of families," Lewrie commented. "Just look at our own aristocracy. The Earl of Sandwich, for instance… simply brilliant First Lord of the Admiralty, but a founding member of the Hell-Fire Club. Orgies in the old undercroft of his restored abbey at Medmenham, then preached in dominee clothes of a Sunday… to hundreds of cats his farm workers'd round up and herd into the chapel. Mostly against fornication," he added with a droll expression.
Lewrie knew all there was to know about the Hell-Fire Club; his father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, had been a member, too.
"I will speak to him," Rybakov offered, as if that might mollify the young hot-head. "Now I know the circumstances, I will point out to him the ludicrous cause for his grudge. Even so… for a few days, arrangements can be made to limit your contact with him?"
"If he wishes to take the air on the quarterdeck, he'll have to wait 'til I'm below," Lewrie said, calmly stirring sugar into his cup. "If he doesn't wish to dine with me, he can take his meals aft, in his little sleeping-space. I'll not give up my cabins, my table, my chart-space, or my desk or day-cabin settee. Does he loathe me that much, he will just have to take pains to avoid me, my lord."
"You will not duel him," Rybakov said; not a request.
"That… will be up to him, my lord," Lewrie evenly replied as he laid aside his spoon and lifted his cup. "Does he not heed you and accost me, issue a formal challenge, then… my own honour is put in question, and there can be but one answer."
"Sadly, I understand, Kapitan Lewrie," Count Rybakov mournfully said, his face twisted up as grievous as a hanged spaniel.
Outta the fryin' pan, into the fire, Lewrie queasily thought as he took another sip of coffee, all outward calm to an impartial observer. Mine arse on a band-box, he'll challenge me before we reach Russia, sure as Fate. Too damned proud an' arrogant t'do else. Christ, am I t'die over a whore?
He allowed a wee grin to lift his mouth for a second.
Ev'rybody said I'd come to a bad end, he reminded himself.
"Midshipman o' th' watch, SAH!" the Marine sentry by the door barked.
"Come," Lewrie bade.
"The Second Officer's duty, sir," Midshipman Furlow announced, hat under his arm, "and I'm to tell you that the wind's come more Westerly, fine on our larboard quarter, and he requests permission to alter course a point Northerly."
"My compliments to Mister Farley, and inform him to do so. I will come to the quarterdeck… just for the air, Mister Furlow," he formally replied, grinning as he uttered his last thought.
As he dressed for the cold, Lewrie could not help thinking that, could Thermopylae fly with the wings of Hermes the Messenger, and get to Russia by the next dawn, this voyage, this mission of his, would still feel like an eternity!
*Da, ya oovyerin = Yes, I'm sure. Shto = What? Viy oovyereni? Tojeh sama-yeh dyevooshka? = You are sure? The same young woman?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Four days in blustery, grey weather, with the winds whipping cold and occasionally spitting rain, sleet, or fat flakes of snow, and HMS Thermopylae bowling along like a Cambridge coach, and they were shaving a low-lying coast to starboard, which emerged as ephemeral as mist, just round dawn.
"Quite good, for dead reckoning," Lewrie told Mr. Lyle, the Sailing Master, as the shore of the Danish island of Jutland appeared solid, at last. They had not been able to take sun-sights to determine their position, or their progress. "But… just how far along, Mister Lyle?"
"I do believe we are beyond the cape East of Thisted, sir," Lyle cautiously allowed, a mittened finger pointing along the chart pinned to the traverse board by the binnacle cabinet. "Do you concur, Captain Hardcastle?"
"Indeed I do, Mister Lyle… Captain Lewrie," the experienced merchant master said, bustling closer to the chart to employ his own finger. "That long coast, yonder, is called the Jammerbugt, and the port of Hirstals lies beyond our starboard bows, no more than fifty or sixty miles. Next day will see us off the Skaw, does the wind cooperate," he added, moving his finger on to the mouth of the Kattegat, and the entrance to the Baltic.
"Where we turn South," Lewrie said. "Beyond that, sirs? What is your estimate of the time it'll take to reach the narrows 'twixt Denmark and Sweden?"
"Well, that'll take much longer than the crossing, sir," Capt. Hardcastle was quick to say, perhaps to take temporary precedence over a Navy Sailing Master. "The Baltic has no tides, but the currents-"
"And when an outflowing current coincides with a Sutherly wind, sir"-Mr. Lyle was just as quick to trample his way back to dominance-"you face a 'dead muzzler,' and might as well anchor 'til one on the other changes."
"Not so bad in the Kattegat, sir," Hardcastle rejoined, "as we would be in open waters, but more noticeable as we close with the Narrows 'tween Helsingшr… the Bard's Elsinore… and the Swedish side, and the forts at Helsingborg. That's where the outflowing current will be strongest."
"And the very worst place to be reduced to a crawl," Lewrie said with a grumble, rubbing a mittened hand on his unshaven chin, which rasped against the wool, "or come to anchor."
Damme, but that's really narrow! Lewrie thought. He borrowed a divider from the binnacle cabinet and set its needle-sharp points upon the chart's distance scale, then walked the divider from the Swedish side of the narrows to the Danish-he came up with a width of only two miles, plus eight hundred yards.
"This bloody shoal right in the middle, sirs," Lewrie asked his Sailing Master and civilian adviser, jabbing a finger at the long and skinny north-to-south shallows indicated smack-dab down the centre of the passage. "The, ah… Disken Shoal?" he made out from the smallish letters on the chart. "Might it force us to choose which side of the Narrows to take?"
"Oh no, sir," Capt. Hardcastle chuckled. "For though it can be a bother to the biggest, deepest-laden ships in the Baltic trade when the wind's been blowing for a week or longer, stiff, mind, outta the South, most times even a First Rate could sail right down the middle of the Narrows, right atop it. Ye only draw about seventeen or eighteen foot, so you should have no problem with it."