The Baltic Gambit

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Well, don’t know as I can rightly . . . ,” Lewrie began to object, wondering how many jots and tittles in the Articles of War he would be violating did he accept; charging passage aboard a King’s ship? Taking a bribe for services rendered? Breaking bulk cargo for his own use? Extortion? What could an attorney make o’ that? he wondered.

  “Do we take it with us, Kapitan, it would take hours longer to unload and row ashore,” Count Rybakov reminded him, “putting you and your ship in greater danger. Really, we insist, don’t we, Anatoli?”

  “It is as Count Rybakov says, Kapitan,” Count Levotchkin seconded, sporting a smile upon his phyz which put Lewrie in mind of the expression “shit-eating.” “It is a small expression of gratitude.”

  “Well, if ye won’t land it, and won’t take it with you . . . ,” Lewrie said at last, “then I accept, though it’s hardly necessary.”

  “Then it is settled,” Count Rybakov cheered, beaming.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time HMS Thermopylae came to anchor off the small coastal town of Sestroretsk. The small harbour inlet was iced up solidly, of course, its larger fishing boats locked immobile, its smaller rowboats drawn up on the shingle, upside down, for the winter, and the floating stages of its pier resting on the ice. Off the beach and solid ground, there was at least two hundred yards of dingy white ice; the depth in which Thermopylae could swim restricted her to lay off another quarter-mile.

  All three ship’s boats were hoisted off the tiers and overside—the cutter, launch, and captain’s gig—then manned with a Midshipman and six or eight oarsmen apiece, as the main course yard dipped, swung, and deposited stout rope nets of dunnage into the two larger boats. The gig was sent ashore immediately, right to the edge of the ice floe, with Count Rybakov’s servant, Fyodor, and Capt. Hardcastle, who was the only other man aboard somewhat fluent in Russian, to arrange for transport, carriage and dray waggons, or sledges. The gig could not reach the pier, of course, and spent many minutes at the outermost edge of the ice, with two men in the bows using a boarding axe and a gaff pole to smash through the thinnest, rottenest parts ’til the boat could go no further, and there was enough thickness for a man to trust his life upon it. Lewrie watched Fyodor and Capt. Hardcastle gingerly step out of the gig and tap their way shoreward, pace by wary pace, pausing to see if the ice would hold their weight, and listening to the ominous creaks, groans, and crackles, most-likely.

  Lewrie lifted his telescope to scan the town. Sestroretsk looked sleepy, filthy, and smoke-shrouded from its many chimneys. It was a place mostly of wood construction, half the residences made of logs, with shake-shingled steep rooves. Its one church looked more like a barn, with the grain silo replaced by a bell tower on one end, and an onion-domed second tower at the other, the dome, and its odd-shaped cross, the only spot of real colour in town. Evidently, Lewrie imagined, paint was at a premium in Russia. Tall drifts of snow lay hard against every building, driven by the prevailing winds, or their last blizzard. And the people . . . ! There were only a few civilians about who sported European-style suits or dresses; the bulk of them wore an assortment of shapkas or ushankas with huge ear-flaps, tall felt boots, (men and women, both) and extremely baggy pantaloons or pyjammy trousers . . . all smothered, of course, in rough hide coats lined with wool piling, mangy furs, or blankets and quilts for extra warmth. And, to Lewrie’s continuing edginess, most of them stood gazing dull-eyed at the strange, foreign frigate, as if they were so many cattle or sheep with about as much curiosity!

  “It is a great pity that what little you see of my country is a poor village,” Count Rybakov said from Lewrie’s side, come up to the quarterdeck unbidden amid all the shifting of cargo. “Our great Tsar Peter changed us in one generation from an Asian country to a European nation, and blessed Ekaterina . . . Catherine . . . contributed more to awakening us from barbarism to civilisation, but . . . so much remains to be done before we truly become as neat and pastoral as your rural shires, Kapitan Lewrie. As well ordered as villages in France, or our cities as impressive as London, Paris . . . or even Dover or Yarmouth!

  “But we are patient,” Rybakov mused, “and those things will come, in time. As long as we do not spend our blood and treasure on useless wars, yes? Ha! Look at it. So close to Saint Petersburg, yet no one tries to make it even a ‘Potemkin village’! What a hovel!”

  “Potemkin . . . ?” Lewrie asked.

  “One of Catherine the Great’s court . . . one of her lovers, in fact,” Rybakov admitted with a worldly-wise shrug. “Whenever she wished to travel to see her people, by river or by coach, Potemkin made sure that good roads were laid out, if only a single day of travel before the Tsarina’s entourage. Villages on the routes were re-made and painted just for her passing. . . . She always stayed overnight with great landowners at their country mansions, or palaces, you see. If Great Catherine went by river, Potemkin erected false villages, just the façades, back from the banks as her ship went by. We Russians . . . we are very capable of deluding ourselves, ha! To seem, but not quite to be.”

  Expect yer vodka helps ye, there, Lewrie smugly thought.

  “Ah! Fyodor has reached the pier, at last!” Count Rybakov exclaimed, clapping gloved hands in glee. “And I believe I see horses and carriages at the inn . . . carriages and sledges, in their stables. Atleetchna! Excellent!”

  “If the ice will bear the weight of horses and waggons, and if they can get up and down off the ice, ashore, aye,” Lewrie said, wary of risking his ship’s people at the thinnest, rottenest edge of that ice sheet to unload the boats and bear the cargo to the sledges.

  “We shorten the trip, Kapitan,” Count Rybakov assured him with an easy, wry grin. “After all, there are many peasants there, and for twenty kopeks each . . . perhaps five pence in your money . . . they will chop and saw a way for your boats to ice which will bear the weight. It is winter! They have nothing better to do. Fyodor has more than enough coin to arrange this, I saw to it.”

  Indeed, after a long palaver, perhaps a harangue from Fyodor, villagers came flooding off the shore, down the stairs to the landing stages, with axes and saws, and came out to the edge of the ice where the gig waited to begin their labours. Ashore, three sledges emerged from the stables on their runners, and horses were put into harness to pull them.

  “Let’s get the launch and cutter under way, Mister Ballard,” Lewrie ordered. “Pass word for the gig to return, and stand ready to bear our passengers ashore, once the sleds are loaded. And warn the lookouts aloft to keep their eyes peeled for any sight of infantry or cavalry on the road.”

  Sestroretsk might look isolated and without a garrison of its own, but it was damned close to St. Petersburg, and God only knew how many regiments. It was surrounded by scrubby, winter-fallow fields, and a massive swath of pine forest, in which a brigade could lurk.

  The serf labourers made quick work of cutting an inlet through the ice sheet, wide enough for a royal barge, and about thirty yards or so deep. Their breath steamed in the frigid air, but they grinned and stamped their booted feet and pounded or jabbed their tools on the ice to show that it was safe. Sure enough, by the time the first boat poled its way into the tiny man-made inlet, the first sledge was there, about fifteen yards back from the new edge, and the serf labourers, in a flurry of arms and legs and strong backs, toted the cargo from boat to troika as quickly as Thermopylae’s people could manhandle it out.

  “Russia has so many strong backs and hands, Kapitan Lewrie,” Count Rybakov told him as the last of his light luggage was fetched to the gangway and entry-port by two sailors. “Millions of them. That is why no one will ever begin a war with us. It may not be modern, nor is brute strength and numbers elegant, but . . . it will suffice.”

  “I s’pose, my lord,” Lewrie pretended to agree, though thinking of what a modern army with muskets and artillery could do to medieval peasant levies, poorly trained and led. Or, what the British Navy could do to what he’d seen so far of Russia’s best, at sea.

&nb
sp; “Almost . . . almost,” Count Levotchkin muttered to himself with rising anticipation as he joined them by the entry-port. “Pachtee vryemya, Sasha. Pachtee vryemya, da?”*

  “Da,” his hulking manservant grunted back.

  “Side-party to assemble for departing honours, Mister Ballard,” Lewrie ordered. Thermopylae was at Quarters, with at least half the guns of the larboard battery, which faced the shore, and half of the starboard battery facing the sea, manned and ready. Marines were in full kit, and under arms, and all officers but Lewrie wore swords on their left hips. “And, there’s the last of the second boat’s cargo on the sledges, at last!” he exulted.

  “I say dosveedanya, Kapitan Lewrie,” Count Rybakov said offering his bared hand for a departing shake, “That is ‘good-bye.’ Adieu, and may God keep His eyes upon you, and grant you and your ship a safe and swift passage back to England. It is a grand thing you do for our countries, might I even say a holy thing, to keep peace between Russia and England!”

  Before Lewrie could do a thing about it, Count Rybakov clasped his arms round him, bussed him on both cheeks, and danced Lewrie about the deck, jostling him like a child, with his boots in the air!

  “Well, now, my lord . . . uhm!” Lewrie spluttered, to the amusement of his watching crew. Rybakov at last set him back down.

  “A safe journey . . . short though it may be to Saint Petersburg, yourself, my lord,” Lewrie offered, after he’d gotten most of his dignity back, and his hat re-settled on his head.

  “Well, then . . . it is time,” Count Rybakov said in conclusion as he stepped to the lip of the entry-port and looked down at the gig waiting at the bottom of the boarding-battens, and the main channels.

  “Ship’s comp’ny, off hats, and . . . salute!” Lt. Ballard barked in his surprisingly deep, carrying voice, doffing his own cocked hat by example, as the Marines stamped their boots and presented muskets, and the Bosun, Mr. Dimmock, and his Mate, Mr. Pulley, piped a departing call. The count turned inwards, back to the sea, and seized hold of the man-ropes to begin his cautious descent. Once Rybakov’s hat was below the lip of the entry-port, Count Levotchkin went to the edge and turned to face inboard as the call continued, and the crew stood to attention, doffing their flat, tarred hats.

  “Dosveedanya, Kapitan,” Levotchkin said, giving Lewrie a final, mocking sneer, as pleased with himself, it seemed, as a cat who lapped the cream. “Enjoy your journey,” Count Levotchkin added, his blue eyes alight.

  What’s he mean by that? Lewrie asked himself as he stood there, doffing his own hat. (though abhoring the required honour) and caught a faint shift in Levotchkin’s gaze; over his shoulder at something.

  “Seechas, Sasha!” Levotchkin snapped, his face going feral just as he began a spry descent down the frigate’s side.

  Seechas . . . “now”? Now, what? Lewrie wondered as he recognised the word, feeling an odd prickle up his spine that forced him to begin to turn to look behind him.

  “Bloody Hell!” Marine Lt. Eades cried, the first, loudest voice of alarm, as the Bosuns’ calls squealed to a sudden stop.

  Midshipman Tillyard grasped Lewrie’s left arm and pulled hard, sending him stumbling towards the nearest Marine private by the entry-port, who didn’t try to catch his captain, but was busy bringing his musket down from Present Arms to Poise, lowering the muzzle in rough aim behind Lewrie. It was a second Marine who caught him before he stumbled through the open entry-port, to fall overside and drown, for, like most British tars, Lewrie could not swim.

  “Ya bastard!” Lt. Eades snarled, swinging with his already drawn sword, from ceremony to combat, making somebody howl.

  Sasha, the shave-pated burly manservant, was grasping his hand and roaring with both sudden pain and frustration. The dagger he had whipped out of his left overcoat sleeve was falling from his grip, its hilt bloodied from his thumb, half-severed by Lt. Eades’s blade.

  “Murder!” someone shouted in the din.

  Not done yet, Sasha let out another bull-roar and shouldered his way forward, towards Lewrie, half-knocking Midshipman Tillyard off his feet, and taking hold of the young man’s half-drawn dirk with his good hand!

  “Weapon!” Lewrie demanded of the Marine who’d kept him from going overboard, ripping the Brown Bess musket from the fellow’s shocked and nerveless grasp. It wasn’t loaded, but the bayonet was fitted.

  Marine Sgt. Crick and the first private met Sasha first, with readied bayonets, Sgt. Crick getting his blade in, though Sasha’s pile-lined hide coat blunted Crick’s thrust. Lt. Eades slashed at his back, but the coat acted like armour. It was the Marine private who jabbed at Sasha’s eyes, then reversed his musket and delivered a forehead smash that finally brought the brute down to his knees, swinging wildly with Tillyard’s dirk, and still trying to rise and finish his master’s orders! Lt. Eades’s next slash connected alongside the Russian’s bald head, clipping off the top of his right ear, followed by a brass-bound musket butt right in the teeth from Sgt. Crick that sprawled Sasha on his back, spitting teeth and blood, half senseless, so he could be dis-armed.

  “Get up, you son of a bitch!” Lewrie snarled, edging round inboard of the entry-port. He lowered the musket to level the bayonet at Sasha’s chest as he groggily got back to his knees, half-crawling to face Lewrie, as if only death would dissuade him. “Sasha failed, Levotchkin!” Lewrie shouted to the boat alongside. “He let you down! Are you man enough t’come back up here and do your own dirty-work? Or are ye the same drunken butt-fucker ye were in London?”

  Hmmm . . . bet that needs some explainin’, Lewrie thought, hearing the buzz of confusion among his ship’s people.

  “Ye just couldn’t use a fetchin’ whore like Tess the right way, could ye, Levotchkin?” Lewrie taunted. “Your sort likes t’terrify ’em, and make it hurt. Make it vile! What, ye get your first practice on sheep, or pigs, Levotchkin? Ye prefer the ‘windward passage’?”

  In the gig below, Count Levotchkin howled in rage, cursing back in Russian, French, and English so rapidly and heatedly that only a few choicer words could be made out.

  “Get on your feet, ye murderin’ scum,” Lewrie urged Sasha with the glittering point of the bayonet.

  “Put ’im in irons, sir?” Marine Sgt. Crick asked, bristling.

  “No, not yet,” Lewrie said. “I’ve something else in mind. Hoy! Levotchkin!” he shouted overside again. “Tess told me she damned near puked her guts out, ev’ry time ye showed up at the brothel. She hated ev’rything about you! Ye frightened her. Said for all she got out of it, ye might as well’ve stuck your puny prick down the neck of a wine bottle, all the way cross the room from her! So disgusted by ye, she couldn’t even feign it with you. Come up here and face me, ye little poltroon!”

  “Oh Lord, sir, you’ll not . . . ,” Lt. Ballard exclaimed, sounding primly appalled. “Not again. It isn’t . . .”

  “I said, get on your feet, you . . . ya idysodar charochko,”* he spat at Sasha, jerking the bayonet tip upwards.

  There was another strangled cry from the gig, and a hissing argument ’twixt Rybakov and Levotchkin, along with threats from Lewrie’s Cox’n, Liam Desmond, and Stroke Oar, his mate Patrick Furfy. Whether to sit where he was, or be a man and scale the ship’s side to face the consequences, it was hard to tell in all the shouting.

  Sasha shook his head to clear it, spitting a couple more teeth and blood, swiping his rough hide coat sleeve to clear his eyes from his freely bleeding head wound, and managed to stagger and sway to his feet, still defiant, with an arrogant, pugnacious sneer on his face, breathing heavily through his nose like a bull in a Spanish fighting arena, still game to charge the cape.

  “Sir, you cannot intend to simply kill him!” Lt. Ballard protested. “It’s not within our jurisdiction, not—”

  “Just rid the ship of trash, Mister Ballard,” Lewrie flippantly said with a shrug of his shoulders, though his eyes, usually a merry blue, had gone as grey and cold as ice. He took a step forward, with the bayonet levelled
at Sasha’s chest. “Not coming, Levotchkin?” he shouted. He stamped forward another pace driving Sasha backwards.

  “Mister Rybakov won’t let ’im, sor!” Cox’n Desmond shouted back. “We’re t’hold ’im, ’fore ye kill ’im, sure, says he!”

  “And so I would, were he man enough,” Lewrie loudly responded. “After all, he’s the one who’s been talkin’ so long about challengin’ me to a duel . . . for his own putrid honour. But too much a coward to face me, direct, Had t’sic his pet dog on me, instead. Hoy, Anatoli! Tess liked bein’ with me! Wanted t’be under my protection, in a wee place of her own, and never see or hear of you again!”

  Lewrie stamped forward once more, jabbing with the bayonet, and making Sasha back up towards the entry-port.

  “Well, if ye won’t come up and pay the piper, ye spineless, backgammoning little souse, I s’pose ye won’t,” Lewrie shouted a final time, looking disappointed. “I’ll send your brute back to ya.”

  Sasha understood some English, and a smattering of proper laws. The Angliski Kapitan would rid the ship of trash? That irked, but he was surrounded by levelled, bayonet-tipped muskets, and officers with drawn swords, and could only swallow his rage at being bested. Someday he would have a second chance. He sends him back to Count Anatoli, as well? Because what the other Angliski officer said, that they did not have the legal right? His shattered mouth would heal, the cut on his head would heal, to match the other scars on his body. It was good!