Ring of Fire II

by Eric Flint

  "Perhaps next time," Per said shaking his head firmly. "You are good at money matters, Herr Mazalet. But you do not swim as well as we men of Delsbo. And this is early days yet. Today we bring up a deck cannon from the main deck." And with that he and Lars climbed into the bell.

  Ginny watched as the clumsy thing was swung into the water. She wondered just how hard you trailed a lure for Per to notice it . . . and her. Well, it was improving her Swedish. And Consul Boelcke was right. There really wasn't enough for a full day's work at the consulate. She would just watch the bell sink and then Toke-Karin would row her to the foundry to see how well they were coming along with the dive helmets.

  Ginny watched as the bell sank down, with the comforting stream of life-giving bubbles rushing upward. And then she yelled, "STOP! Lift the bell. Now!"

  "Raise it," said Karl firmly to his team. And then he ran over to her on the edge of the barge. "What is it?"

  She pointed. "Air is coming out of the hose. Not the escape holes on the edge of the bell."

  "My God! The canvas must have broken. Thank heaven, you spotted it!"

  But the sturdy canvas tube was not broken.

  It had been slashed.

  "But who would try to kill us?" said Lars, for about the fifth time.

  "I have enemies," said Mazalet.

  "So does Sweden," said Captain Stolpeskott, sneering at him. "Enemies who would be glad to see this fail. And you'd take money from anyone."

  Mazalet stood up slowly. "Captain. At least Lieutenant Sparre has manners. Yours more closely resemble those of a pig. And you are nearly as clever as one, too. I was planning to go down with the bell. Now, would you like to name your seconds, sir?"

  "There will be none of this," said Per firmly. "Lars. Cut the damaged section out, and you and Olof reattach the hose. Captain Stolpeskott, Mazalet. You two are coming down with us. You may wish to change your clothes."

  Stolpeskott looked at Per incredulously. "Are you mad?"

  "Probably," said Per. "But you Navy people were here before us this morning, and you've shown your contempt for Herr Mazalet. If Mazalet is with us, he can hardly be engaged in sabotage. If someone wished us to fail—the best thing we can do is to succeed. Today. And if you fight down there, Lars and I will deal with you. You will have no swords and no pistols. Of course if you are too scared . . ."

  Stolpeskott stood up straight. "Scared, you peasant? I am an officer of the Swedish Navy."

  "Good," said Mazalet, taking off his shoes. "As we're about to go onto the deck of a royal ship, you should be with us."

  "You are going down?" asked Stolpeskott, shaking his head.

  Mazalet nodded. "I am not afraid."

  Stolpeskott plainly was, but was left with no way out. "Pull my boots off," he said stiffly to Per.

  "Get one of your men to do it," said Per shortly. "I am going to check the equipment very carefully. You want me to do that, don't you?"

  Ginny got the helmet maker to come to her. She decided she wasn't leaving the barge until Per . . . and the others came up. After an eternity . . . something did. It was a messenger buoy. Whatever else was happening in the cramped lamplight down there, they had also managed to get a rope onto a cannon. The brass barrel was hauled to the surface a few minutes later. Ginny had to comfort herself that they were at least alive. Then Karl began the slow haul, following the tables that Ginny had written out for him. They eventually swung the bell out as well. Stolpeskott was the first out, looking both pale and relieved. And deflated from his normal bombastic self. He staggered across to a bench.

  Then came Karl and Per, grinning. "Did you get the cannon up?"

  Ginny found herself unable to speak. She pointed to it, as Mazalet climbed out of the bell. He walked over to her, as the others went to admire the first booty, with the lion embossing still crisp on it. Mazalet mopped his brow. "I will never admit this to them, but they earn too small a share in this venture. I braved the swim a little. The water is barely above freezing and it is not very much warmer in that bell. And you can wring the air out. But it took the bravado out of our captain. He plans to complain to the admiral." Mazalet looked at the cannon. "Let him. When Fleming sees those come up, he's more likely to order the idiot to accompany us. The boys want to try for another now. They're stronger men than I."

  "What would you have done," Ginny asked, "if Stolpeskott had wanted a duel?"

  "It would have been unfortunate." A Gallic shrug. "I gave lessons in swordfighting."

  Mazalet's prediction proved accurate. Admiral Fleming was indeed more than happy to have some of his officers take part in the exercise, and willing to have the bell guarded night and day. It was just a little more difficult to find officers keen to do this. Only Lieutenant Sparre was regularly willing. It was equally difficult to get Mazalet back into the bell until the deck cannons were up. But, a few weeks later, with the new helmet system working—with air pumped from those in the bell—the Frenchman decided to do so. Admiral Fleming had requested that the divers try to retrieve the log—if it was still in one piece, and the astrolabe from the captain's chamber. "The captain's widow has asked for it for her son," said Fleming quietly. "The request has the blessing of His Majesty himself."

  Naturally, as the admiral was going to be aboard, Mazalet wanted to go down. Well, as Lars remarked, at least he could be relied on to keep the helmet pump working.

  But on his way back the air stopped bubbling. "Lord and saints!" Per swore inside his helmet. "What are they doing back there?" Trying to remain calm he began heading back to the bell. The water around it was still murky and stirred up. With relief Per pulled himself into the port and up the ladder, breaking the surface . . . face to muzzle with a huge cavalry pistol.

  "Please stay where you are," Lieutenant Sparre said. "I haven't hurt your brother, but that will change if you do something rash." Slowly, Per lowered himself into the water.

  "What are you doing?" Per asked.

  Sparre wiped water from his brow. The lieutenant was soaking wet, evidently he, too, had been outside the bell. "I've cut away the messengers and the air hose," he said. "That way you won't be able to inform the surface."

  "They'll still know something is wrong," Per said. "But what are you up to, Lieutenant? You're the last one I'd have pegged for a traitor."

  Sparre smiled sadly. "It's not about treason, Master Per. I'm loyal to the king, but this is a personal matter." His smile twisted into a rictus of hate. He pointed a shaking finger at Mazalet. "This man ruined my uncle," he snarled. "He spun tales of alchemy and industry, and my uncle lost most of the family money chasing moonbeams. He ruined my life, my family and my chances of marriage."

  "I tricked Fleming's nephew, too," Mazalet murmured groggily, blood oozing from his scalp. "Is the admiral in on this?"

  "Of course not," Sparre spat. "This is about the honor of my family."

  "I'm an idiot," Per mumbled. "From the first accident I thought it was Stolpeskott."

  "Hans has nothing to do with it either," Sparre said. "I doubt he'll shed any tears, but he's quite innocent."

  "It was you who slit the hose then?" Per asked.

  Sparre nodded. "This bastard of a Frenchman was supposed to go down that day."

  "So what will you do?" Per asked. "You can kill us all, I suppose, but you'll look very strange coming up all alone."

  "I won't be coming up," Sparre said, that sad smile back on his face. "You're such an honorable man, Master Per, that I sometimes forget you're a peasant at heart. To a nobleman the answer would be obvious. I've detached the shackle. Replaced it with a broken one. I have cut the air hose. We will all die down here. The salvage project will die too . . ."

  "For which," said Mazalet, "The French will pay handsomely." Sparre stared at him.

  Mazalet shrugged. "The offer was made to me. But I don't even rob honest men, let alone kill them."

  "Heavens above," Ginny breathed looking into the water. "It's the hose. It's the air hose!" she shouted, but Ka
rl was there already, his face pale under the tan.

  "Keep pumping!" he roared waving to the crew. "Are they dead?" he asked.

  "No way to know," Ginny said, trying hard to stay calm. "Start to raise the bell. At least we won't have to get the hose down very far. Even for Per and Olof—they haven't been much deeper than fifty-five feet on this dive. They've been down about ninety-three minutes. We'll need fourteen minutes at the ten foot mark."

  The windlass began to turn. "There is no weight on it, Karl," yelled a horrified sailor.

  "Stop!" shouted Lars. "Lower slowly. To the same depth and three feet."

  "Why?" demanded Karl.

  "They can reattach it. They can't if we have it here."

  "Not if they don't have air. Or something is wrong . . ."

  "So we get the air hose down. If they have air, they can solve any problems. Right now they don't have very long."

  "How do we do that?" Karl asked looking at the hose.

  "We sink it," Lars said. "The hose looks good, it moves like a snake with every spurt of air. We don't need to replace it, and that should save us time."

  "Good." Karl said. "We tie the hose to a weight and send it down along the main hawser."

  Ginny nodded. "That would work as far as it goes, but how will they get the hose inside? How will they know it is down?"

  "We could rig something," Lars voice trailed off.

  Ginny took a deep breath. "I'll go down," she said. "I swim far better than all of you. They're on the aftercastle. That stood sixty-five feet high. It shouldn't be more than forty feet down. None of you could swim that, but I can. I'll go down and then inside. As soon as I'm in, one of the others can go out with a helmet and reattach the hose and the hawser. We don't even need the shackle, a big knot will do."

  "You can't do that!" Karl flared. "Per wouldn't allow that. Come to think of it, neither would Monsieur Mazalet."

  "There isn't much they can do about it." Ginny said. "And I doubt they'll kick me out on principle."

  "Too dangerous," Lars said. "I'll do it."

  "No. You work well under water, but I am a far, far better swimmer." Ginny smiled and pulled a thin book from her pocket. "Here are the dive tables. They are in Swedish, and Boelcke has the original info in his safe."

  Lars looked at her slowly and thoughtfully "Besides," he said, "you didn't come back three centuries in time just to lose your love to the water."

  "Mazalet?" Karl asked, gaping.

  "No, dummy," Lars said, "Per."

  Ginny nodded ruefully. "Pull the hose towards the ship, but don't wind it up. Keep the loops separated."

  "You want the hose or a rope?" Lars asked, while Karl still goggled.

  "A rope, I think." Ginny said. "The hose might snag and break. Pulling the hose down will be heavy with all the air but there are five of us. We'll manage. I'll want a dive weight."

  Karl shook his head in disbelief. Then he walked across the deck, bent down and grabbed a small cannon. "Think this one will work?" he asked.

  "No," Ginny said. "Or rather, it might hole the bell. A cannon ball—smallish. In a sack."

  "Right." Lars said. "I'll loop a short piece of rope around the hawser so that you stay close to the bell. You hold that in one hand, the bag in the other, and the rope around your waist. One tug to attach the air hose, two for a bit more rope." He took his belt and knife off. "In case of snags, ja. Anything else?"

  Admiral Fleming had walked over with two of his men. Ginny nodded. Blushed. "I can't do this in a skirt. Admiral, will you have your men turn their backs while I jump over?"

  It was Fleming's turn to gape. "What? What is happening?"

  "The hose has come adrift. We need to get it back to the bell," said Ginny calmly. "Now please tell your men to turn around. Now. We don't have much time to get the air down." She knew that the rush was not quite so dire, but she couldn't bear not knowing. She didn't even wait for a reply, just unbuttoned her skirt. Hyperventilated. And jumped.

  The water was not too bad at the surface . . . but it grew colder as she passed through the thermocline and down, pulled by the cannon ball. She'd dived to thirty feet before . . . once. She equalized. Visibility was not great but she could see—to her relief—the shape of the bell, slightly off to one side. She equalized again, and reached the deck . . . Now she had to somehow not let go of her weight, or she would have simply begun to ascend. And, burning to breathe, she had to cross the few yards to the bell . . . and her limbs were quite weak with the bitter cold.

  Somehow she did it, letting her breath out as she grasped the lowest rung. If there was no air within she was dead, long before she could reach the surface again.

  Per had been weighing options. Both Olof and Mazalet were tied up. Should he duck underwater and try and swim for the surface? He knew what the consequences would be. He still tensed to do it. But Lieutenant Sparre must have read his intentions. "If you do, I will shoot your brother. Come out of the water.

  Per moved slowly. First, he was very cold. Second, he needed to think. And third . . . well, there was no third. Sparre was going to at very least hit them on the head. All he needed was a distraction.

  He was at the top of the ladder when he got it.

  Bubbles.

  It nearly stopped him in his tracks.

  It didn't stop his younger brother kicking Sparre. The gun boomed—incredibly loud in the confined space. Per launched himself, feeling the bullet burn his ribs. Mazalet had used his head and butted the lantern, which went out. Per grappled in the darkness.

  Ginny's head burst into the bell to a deafening explosion and sudden darkness. But there was air. Thick, moist and stale. Air . . . And the sound of fighting.

  "Per?" she called, feeling for Lars' knife. Had Mazalet gone mad?

  The little lieutenant was insanely strong. Well, he probably was insane. And he had a knife. He'd managed to cut Per's face. And then, suddenly there was a voice Per had only expected to hear in heaven again. Perhaps he was dead. Well, if Ginny was here . . . He'd better deal with this madman. He grabbed hair and hit the fellow's head against the oak so hard that the bell rang. Then he did it again. "Ginny?" he said shakily.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I think so. Or am I dead? How did you get here?"

  "I swam down."

  Per's heart sank. He couldn't say anything.

  "With a rope to haul the air hose down."

  "Dear God!" said Mazalet.

  "Brother," said Olof. "Stop fooling around and go see to our lady. Then you can cut us free."

  So Per felt his way to the ladder, still unable to speak. But he could feel her arms around him.

  Olof coughed. "Now, can you cut us free and we can haul the airhose down, light the lantern and see what Sparre hit with that pistol shot."

  It took a little time to achieve all that. The ball was lodged in the four-inch-thick planks. Per had pushed Sparre's head nearly as deep into the wood. And the bubbling air was the sweetest thing Per had ever felt, except for Ginny's fingers twined in his.

  On the surface, Karl timed. He did not look away. He'd seen enough women nearer naked than that. When the count reached one eighty he stopped just sweating and went cold. The rope stopped moving.

  Karl prayed. He knew he did not pray alone.

  And then . . . two tugs. "Get that airhose attached," he yelled, tears starting in his eyes. "Now, Lars!" In the city they must be wondering what the cheering was for this time. Karl sat down, weak-kneed with relief, as Lars tied on the hose, and it slipped away into the water.

  By the time the bell was raised—and, with allowing for decompression that was a good while—the barge was in danger of sinking with the people crowded onto her. Toke-Karin and the other rowers had never had such a day. The water around the barge was full of boats packed with onlookers. The story had crossed the city like wildfire. It wasn't just the admiral and Consul Boelcke and his wife waiting, anxious and hoping.

  Then the bell broke the surface and the r
eal cheering started. Olof was first out. Dragging a near-naked lieutenant.

  Then came Mazalet, then, as Karl and Lars held their breath, their oldest brother, bandaged and bloody but smiling—giving a hand to Ginny.

  And the cheering reached a new crescendo.

  Admiral Fleming stepped forward . . . and bowed respectfully. "Stockholm never raised a greater treasure, nor a braver lady, from the deep, " he said, kissing her hand.