1637: No Peace Beyond the Line

by Eric Flint

  Tromp glanced to port, over the lively dark blue waters, in-running crests stippled bright white in the late-morning sun. He could just pick out Wappen van Rotterdam, the northern- and easternmost hull of the squadron that Maarten had dubbed his fleet’s “Anvil.” A fine, smooth sailer, she looked eager to run against the Spanish, like a sprinter leaning forward eagerly, anticipating the thrill of the trials to come.

  Tromp not only heard someone approach his other side, but could sense it in the way the wind, channeled between two adjacent bodies, began to buffet his sleeve on that side.

  “Inspecting the Wappen, Admiral?” It was Kees’ voice.

  Tromp squinted against a gust and the brightness of the sun. “I was. To the extent that unaided eyes may. And you? Eyes or thoughts upon your ship, just now?”

  Evertsen took a half step forward. “Yes, but she’s not my ship, today.” He smiled sideways at his commanding officer. “I saw your attention was upon Amelia, a few moments ago. Thinking similar thoughts, perhaps?”

  Tromp smiled back. “Perhaps.”

  A brusque, darker voice put an abrupt end to whatever reveries might have followed. “And how does it feel, letting the Spanish have the weather gauge, Admiral?”

  Tromp smiled, turned slightly more to his left. Dirck Simonszoon, captain of Resolve, came up on the admiral’s other side. By general acclaim, Simonszoon was the best mariner—and most laconically taciturn—among the Dutch captains. He nodded out beyond the bowsprit; it edged a bit toward the sky before drifting back down to point at the approaching galleons. “I’m sure they’re not complaining about having the advantage, today.”

  Tromp nodded. “I’m sure they’re not. And I share your unease, Dirck. This is an unnerving position, when our whole lives have been spent making sure we have the wind coming over our quarter and the enemy on our bow.”

  “And here we are, doing the opposite.”

  Tromp heard Simonszoon’s unvoiced addition: “And on your orders, no less.”

  From a few feet further aft, a younger voice offered a counterpoint, not just higher in pitch, but spirits: “Ah, but you must concede, Captain Simonszoon, that this is an excellent opportunity to put our new technical training to the only test that matters: against an enemy on the open sea.”

  Dirck turned a baleful glare upon his young Norwegian XO, Henrik Bjelke, whose effortless and thorough understanding of the steamships seemed akin to an up-timer’s. “Remind me, Rik: I used a word to describe you last week. But it’s slipped my mind. It was a word I had been looking for since you became my ‘executive officer’ half a year ago. But I’ve forgotten the term. I’ve even forgotten how I stumbled upon it.”

  Rik’s cheeks reddened a bit; Tromp was quite sure it was not from the occasionally gusting wind. “I suspect it may have slipped your mind because you were in a state of . . . of singular inspiration, sir.”

  Dirck’s answering frown was histrionic. “Eh? ‘Singular inspiration’?”

  Tromp smiled. Kees was trying very hard not to.

  Lieutenant Bjelke stood straight. “At the tavern, sir. A month ago, actually, not a week. Just before we weighed anchor for this mission.”

  Dirck rolled his eyes. “You are altogether too well mannered, Rik. If I was bleary-eyed in my cups, just say so. But take care to start that assassination of my character with the honorific ‘sir,’ or I’ll have you flogged and keelhauled. At the same time.”

  A suffocated laugh burst beyond Kees’ tightly clenched lips: Simonszoon’s surreal suggestion of inflicting these punishments simultaneously was a droll capstone to his other absurdities.

  Dirck pretended not to notice Kees’ chortle. “Blast you, Bjelke, you near-polar Norwegian pup; don’t make me ask again. What was the word I used to describe you?”

  “I believe it was ‘indefatigable.’ Sir.”

  Dirck nodded vigorously. “Yes, that’s it! And you are! Indefatigably cheery! A walking, talking, smiling cross to be borne by realists such as me. And the Admiral.” Simonszoon squinted at Tromp. “Except when he gets that pleased little smile on his face—like that one—his eyes get that insufferable ‘Father Christmas’ twinkle.” At which point, the tall, dark Dutchman’s sour expression buckled into a grin at his own therapeutic nonsense.

  Tromp chuckled. “You never change, Dirck. Always bizarre fancies before a battle.”

  “Well, less cost to one’s pocket and wits than gin, hey?” He grew slightly more serious. “Although I do miss the gin. There’s another ritual consigned to the bottomless depths of the past.” He turned toward Bjelke. “I’m all for learning these new ships—and these new ways and titles—by feel as well as thought. But it’s likely easier for those who haven’t grown up before the mast.” He nodded meaningfully at the Norwegian, whose first assignment had been to Task Force X-Ray a year ago.

  Bjelke nodded back. “I suppose it must be akin to breaking an ingrained habit.”

  Simonszoon scoffed lightly, stared at the Spanish ships coming toward them. “Harder. Because these habits kept us alive. Since we were boys. It’s more like trying to resist an instinct. Or better still, like trying to prevent your eye from shutting—quicker than thought—when something comes flashing toward it.”

  Cornelis Evertsen nodded at Bjelke, then toward the oncoming Spanish van. “And stationkeeping like this, as the war galleons bear down?” He shook his head. “It goes against what every lesson and every battle teaches: having weather gauge at sea is even more crucial than having the high ground on land.”

  Tromp realized he was no longer smiling, but staring, like the others, at the oncoming fleet. He pointed. “Look out there, Lieutenant Bjelke. That is what an admiral sees in his nightmares. One’s sworn enemies closing from windward while you are caught motionless before them. No way to win the battle. No way to save your ships and your men.” He sighed, rubbed his face; the fine, infrequent spray kept it moist, despite the sun. “Yet here we wait, like lightly armored skirmishers standing before a charge of black-hulled knights which outnumber us almost two to one. And outweigh us, both in tonnage and broadside shot, by three to one. Easily.”

  “Which proves,” Simonszoon grunted, “that I’m the greater fool than Bjelke.” He turned on his heel.

  Rik sputtered, “H-how’s that then, sir?”

  Dirck turned back. “Because, as the realist, I should be steaming—or if need be, swimming—away from those Iberian leviathans. Yet here I remain.” He paused at the stairs that mounted the side of the pilothouse to the flying bridge, squinted to starboard. “Bjelke, that Bermudan sloop has finally caught up to us. Have a detail see that her master’s brought aboard. And smartly; we don’t have much time left for chatting.”

  Tromp turned to Evertsen. “I’ll want that master’s report directly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Kees, get Sehested.”

  Evertsen paused, glanced to the east. “Sir, granted that we have at least three quarters of an hour yet, but is it prudent that we—?”

  “Kees. This is why Sehested came along. If we can risk our lives for our sovereigns, he can do the same.”

  “I’ll have him called above, Admiral.”

  Tromp simply nodded and gestured Evertsen on his way. He considered the slowly growing vanguard of the Spanish fleet: eleven galleons. The three out in front were specially built for combat, decks reinforced to enable them to carry upwards of forty guns, each. Most of those pieces were likely to be thirty-two-pounders—demi-cannons, as many still called them. But almost as many were likely to be the monstrous forty-two-pound full cannons which were restricted to the lower decks, lest the ship become so top-heavy that it sailed crank or even rolled. They were all comparatively inaccurate guns, short-ranged, and often took several minutes to reload.

  Having faced them before, Maarten Tromp knew their limitations. He also knew the strength of Resolve’s hull, its speed, and had seen her shrug off hits from just such guns. But she had never sailed against so many, and ne
ver from what amounted to a standing start. If anything went wrong with Resolve’s engines now . . . He put that thought out of his head, and formulated yet another set of contingencies should his men’s new apex of trust in up-time technology prove to be a precipitous height from which their fortunes would fall.

  The black ships seemed to have grown slightly larger in the last several seconds.

  Chapter 4

  East of Dominica

  Hannibal Sehested scrambled up Resolve’s almost vertical “stairs” from his berth beneath the quarterdeck. As his head cleared the top of the companionway, a gust from the bow sped past his nose, pulling his forelock after it.

  Cornelis Evertsen was smiling at him from the rail. “Not a morning for wigs, eh, Lord Sehested?”

  “Evidently not,” the Norwegian replied as he came on deck, unsure whether Evertsen’s jocular tone was simply an extension of his general good spirits or a veiled snicker at the noble’s incongruous presence aboard the warship. “You summoned me to meet a representative of the English? Here?”

  “Nothing quite so grand as that, sir,” Evertsen said with the same smile. “Merely the master of a Bermudan sloop. But Admiral Tromp thought it prudent to summon you.”

  Sehested nodded, resisting the urge to bat away the locks now flying about his face like angry, diaphanous birds. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Please lead on.”

  Evertsen made a small bow and led aft.

  Sehested trailed behind, reflecting that, possibly for the first time since arriving in the New World, he might look every bit as ridiculous as he felt. Particularly when people addressed him as “Lord” Sehested.

  Oh, he had always aspired to that. Certainly that had been the point of all his expensive schooling and travel in Denmark, France, Germany, and Holland: to enable him to make the leap from aristocrat to bona fide nobility. But then the up-timers had arrived in their mysterious Ring of Fire and, within a year, he was being summoned to the court of King Christian IV in Copenhagen. Why? Because of the attainments and abilities of his older self in that other history.

  He soon noted a similar predilection growing among the rulers of his era. A surprising number of even the most enlightened monarchs had rushed to consult the histories of that world which would now never be as a means of identifying promising young assistants and protégés based on the exploits of their other selves. The logical and philosophical bases of such a course of action seemed dubious at best, to young Hannibal, but as their beneficiary, he was not disposed to make those opinions public.

  So Christian IV had made him a noble a full five years before he had been so elevated in the “other” world, an act that was, to Sehested’s mind, a rather stunning display of his sovereign’s tendency toward both blind egoism and uncritical teleology. Ever since then, Hannibal had operated under a self-imposed pressure that few other humans had ever known: the need to meet the expectations spawned by the deeds of an alter ego who had never existed.

  He watched Evertsen reach the stern of Resolve, extend a hand over the side to assist someone coming up the Jacob’s ladder that was hanging down over the transom. The Dutchman was probably just a good-natured fellow, the kind who greeted others with a smile as a matter of habit, but Hannibal could no longer see such things clearly. His unwonted ascendance had spawned enough veiled dismay and amusement in Christian’s court, and in other places of prestige and power, that he no longer trusted those instincts.

  Evertsen was surprisingly strong for his long, lean build; he practically hauled a diminutive individual over the stern of Resolve with a single hand. The masthead of a Bermuda-rigged sloop bobbed into and out of sight beyond the taffrail.

  The small man—his skin weathered and tanned to the texture and color of a walnut—stared from Kees to Hannibal. “Ye’re neither of ye Tromp hisself, I wager?”

  Kees smiled broadly. “You would win that bet, Captain—?”

  “Stirke. Master Timothy Stirke. I’ve got news for yer admiral.” He grimaced apologetically. “Only fer him, I’m afraid.”

  “I understand,” Evertsen said calmly. “But before we join the admiral, my I present Lord Hannibal Sehested from the court of His Majesty King Christian IV of Denmark?”

  Stirke considered Hannibal. “Denmark, it is? That’s news to these ears. What’s yer interest in these waters, then?”

  Sehested was oddly relieved by the small man’s absolute lack of social courtesies. “As part of the Union of Kalmar, Denmark is pleased to assist King Gustav of Sweden and the nations of the United States of Europe over which he presides, in clearing these waters of Spanish influence and righting the many wrongs they have wrought.”

  Stirke squinted at Sehested. “You’ve rehearsed that? Fer me?” He shook his head. “A turr’ble waste of time, that. I’m naught but a ship’s master who freights from the Indies what I can sell in Somers Isles and the Bahames.”

  Sehested smiled. “You are right; I practiced it. And had it memorized long before I came to the Lesser Antilles, now almost a year ago.”

  Stirke’s smile was easier, amused. “’Ad much use fer it, have ye?”

  “Only a little. But that is still too much.”

  Stirke’s laughter was like a barking cough. “Ah, ’an ye ain’t so much of a dandy as I took ’e for. Ye’re all right, Hannibal Sehested. Now, since I’ve no cannon nor belly for a fight this day, I’d as soon deliver me messages and be off.”

  As they made their way to the pilothouse, the little Bermudan stared around at the unfamiliar cannons and gear that was being worked and tended on Resolve’s weather deck. “’An sure that it’s a New Age in the New World. I’ve no idea what half this ironmongery might be, but I ken it set those Spanish dogs back on their haunches last year, hey?”

  “There’s probably some truth to that,” Evertsen admitted as a German soldier indicated that they had to wait a moment before proceeding up the stairs to the flying bridge.

  Timothy took no note of the delay. “Hsst,” he sneered at Cornelis’ understatement. “This winter past, there was little talk of aught else. At least on the islands I sail ’tween. For near on two years, there wasn’t a ship from Europe that didn’t fly the yellow and red. But now, others be showin’ up again. And the food we freight from Kitts and your home port on Statia? Might’ve saved us all, I wager. As I hear it, your lot weren’t much better off.”

  In the space of two seconds, Cornelis Evertsen went from being the marginally laconic executive officer of the Resolve to an animated storyteller. Sehested chided himself for having missed the subtle signs that such a transformation might be possible—very probably because he himself had been too preoccupied attempting to discern if the young officer’s demeanor had been genuine or carefully veiled mockery. But as his story of the Dutch travails of the past two years unfolded, the source of his sudden garrulousness was clear: an enthusiastic and outgoing person by nature, Evertsen had learned to keep that in check. Certainly, part of that was due to the reserve expected of leaders in combat. But it was also a likely adaptation to being the right hand of an admiral who was not only an introvert but who would otherwise have been routinely outshined by his staff officer’s brighter and more engaging personality.

  But now, warming to his topic and freed of all those constraints, Evertsen commenced to unfold his tale with energy and conviction. And detail. Lots and lots of detail. Indeed, Hannibal had the distinct impression that his retelling of the events was as every bit as therapeutic for him as it was informative for Stirke.

  A rising tide of anxiety had surged into Dutch-held Recife along with Tromp’s badly damaged ships in 1633. That Christmas had been a dismal one: not only did the colonists learn that the majority of their nation’s fleet was now resting in pieces on the seabed off Dunkirk, but word arrived on a jacht from newly settled St. Eustatia that the Dutch colony on St. Martin had fallen to the Spanish in June.

  After considerable initial debate, most of Recife’s councilors conceded that their position was untenable.
What Dutch ships remained were either trapped in Amsterdam, or out of touch in the East Indies. It was only a matter of time before Spanish and Portuguese forces pressed their advantage, knowing that no further succor was coming to the New Holland colony in Brazil.

  So, after first setting the Portuguese back on their heels with a sharp offensive that had them suing for a truce, Tromp immediately set in motion subtle plans that put the colony in a position to evacuate swiftly. Which they had done in May of 1634, to the utter amazement of the Portuguese.

  But safe distance from their Iberian antagonists had been purchased at the expense of a year of extreme privation. Over ten times the number of colonists already on St. Eustatia, the refugees from Recife hadn’t the tools, skills, or time to raise an adequate crop before their supplies ran out. Rationing was adopted. Fresh water was scarce. Life in tents invited illnesses that thrice threatened to become epidemics. And with men outnumbering women almost ten to one, tensions remained perpetually poised to explode into violence.

  A year later, the first rays of hope arrived along with the first crop from leased lands on St. Kitts. But it was not quite three months later that full, bright deliverance arrived in the form of the USE and Danish flotilla known as Task Force X-Ray.

  As Cornelis related that happy ending, he gestured toward Hannibal—who was glad that neither the storyteller nor his listener could see what was in his own mind: the squalid tent city that had been Oranjestad; the stick-thin colonists with sunken and desperate eyes; the stink of more wastes than could be readily removed from those dusty streets; and the perpetual moaning of the old who were sick and the children who were hungry. And he, Hannibal Sehested, was ashamed to remember and relive his reaction: horror, revulsion, and a genuine desire to turn immediately about and return to Europe.