"Uhm, Mister Ballard," Lewrie called for his First Officer.
"Sir?" Ballard replied, looking a bit piqued by such a crude display. Exuberant enthusiastic displays of emotion had never been to his taste; there was no fear that Lt. Arthur Ballard would ever become a "Leaping Methodist." He was a staid High Church man.
"Let's let 'em have about a minute more o' that, then rein 'em back to discipline," Lewrie ordered. "I will be below."
"Aye-aye, sir."
"Good cess, indeed," Count Rybakov whispered to himself, shaking his head in genial wonder. Such an odd thing, he thought, that a single eerie incident could be the making of this mercurial Angliski Kapitan. So new to this ship, and its crew, which could have resented his arrival, and his new ways of doing things, yet… could it be that the Laeso seals had blessed him in command? For it appeared that the seals' fey actions, combined with the peaceful passing of Kronborg Castle and its gigantic cannon-so easily explainable to civilised, rational people who understood the diplomatic niceties and the mores of behaviour between nation-states-had won Lewrie the trust and affection of his men. "A good cess, indeed, ah ha!"
"What is… cess?" Count Anatoli Levotchkin asked, snapping in impatience with the foolish antics of peasants, and quietly approving of Lt. Ballard and the officers and Midshipmen as they called the men back to duty, and to stop all that noise.
"Something British, Anatoli," Rybakov told him. "Said of a man with more luck than usual… luck awarded by God, well… an ancient god… upon one of his champions, his blessed. Kapitan Lewrie here, his men believe, has received a good cess from the seals we encountered… who came at the bidding of an ancient Irish sea god, to welcome him. To bless his new ship, and his voyage. Our voyage."
"Superstitious nonsense!" Anatoli gravelled. "These Angliski sailors are as stupid as our serfs. Seeing signs and portents in the yolks of eggs, or imagining that their grandfathers live on in the body of a light-furred wolf! Before we leave this ship, that bastard will have no luck left. I must see to it," Levotchkin insisted with his chin lifted in long-simmering anger.
"Then, I think, Anatoli, that you will be the one to die, all for your lust for a whore," Rybakov warned him with sadness. "A whore whom anyone can have. As your elder kinsman, I stand for your father and mother, and warn you to let it go! Once our mission is finished, you will have a golden future ahead of you. Do not throw it away for so little. The world is full of pretty whores, if they are what you desire. Though I wish you aspired to better things.
"Think long and hard, Anatoli," Rybakov pressed, his pleasant and merry face grim, and inches from the younger's, "for I do believe that Kapitan Lewrie's cess will prevail."
"Now who is the superstitious one?" Count Levotchkin rejoined with a sneer of cold amusement, taking one step backwards and striking a noble stance. "He has wronged me, and insulted me, and I will not abide it. He must die. I have sworn it. If anything counts as a blessing, uncle, the Holy Mother of Kazan will uphold me against any pagan god. I am a loyal son of the true Church, while this Lewrie is of the degraded Protestant Church of England, which we both know is a joke even to the British, observed only once or twice a year, by rote. I doubt Lewrie even adheres to that! He is as faithless as the Tsar!"
"Anatoli…!" Rybakov barked, a hand raised in warning. "This must not be done. Before you try, I will ask the Kapitan to put you in irons and chain you below. I will keep the keys until we set foot ashore… all the way to Saint 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.