Forcing the Spring (Book 9 of the Colplatschki Chronicles)

by Boykin, Alma

  The Harbormaster closed the ship’s book with a thump and laughed, throwing his head back and staring up as he did. “Ney chit? From what I hear, she’d do better as a tapster’s doxy.” Pjtor glared, wondering how stories could travel so far and so fast. The harbormaster settled down and returned the book. “Ah well, the priests all say that anyone, even Laurence the Letch, may have a change of spirit and return to Godown’s grace, so I believe you. And they used to say that Princess Zarmas of Findoboona alzo slept to power. Any passengers?”

  Sage nodded and pointed to Pjtor and the men of NovRodi standing behind him. “Aye, Harbormaster. Those men there, vouched for by Geert Fielder and Basil Van Deiman. Come to learn ship-craft.”

  “That the truth?” the Harbormaster demanded of Pjtor.

  “Yes, Harbormaster, it is true,” he spoke carefully, remembering to keep his voice down. He also reminded himself that he was not the Godown’s Chosen Emperor, not at this moment and place, and could not have the man beaten for disrespect.

  “Good.” The Harbormaster and Sage talked a little more, the man pointed out where the Golden Sun was to dock, and then returned to his rowing boat so he could visit the next vessel in line.

  Once they docked, and before anything else happened, Geert and Basil took Pjtor aside. “First, we find a place to stay. Michael thinks he knows of one that doesn’t have too many other guests, and we see about Peter McAdams and getting work papers for you. Then Michael has two shipwrights for us to meet.”

  Pjtor’s first steps ashore were shaky. The dock moved! No, he realized, the dock did not move, unlike the ship. He felt odd, standing on something that wasn’t rolling and pitching even a little. Then Michael whistled and the four men followed, the other men of NovRodi coming behind. Pjtor tried not to gawp too much, although he noticed people staring at him. He still towered over many of the men. Several of the women watched him with interested or calculating expressions, and an older woman pushing a hand-cart loaded with fish said something to Basil and winked at Pjtor. Basil laughed and shook his head. She seemed disappointed, then went her way. “She wanted to know if you would be interested in meeting her, ahem, daughter.” Basil explained.

  Pjtor didn’t get the joke, but did not worry about it. Instead he stared at the buildings made of brick on the bottom and something smooth, plastered-over wood he guessed, on top. Each had a different kind of roof, and different shapes and pictures painted on the white front. Red tiles covered all the roofs and he nodded, pleased to see someone doing something smart about fire. The dock seemed to be having a market day, judging by all the little carts and people coming and going, talking and exchanging money. “What sort of market day is this?” he asked Geert.

  “It’s not market day. This is a normal morning. It was busier at sunrise when the fishing boats came in with their catches. The main market is by St. Donn-at-the-Rocks and at St. Basil-by-the-Pens.” Geert tipped his hat at a very well built young woman who nodded back, her hands full of baskets with breads in them. Pjtor wondered what Mrs. Fielder would say about that. Nothing, since she would not know from him, Pjtor decided. Then he realized with a start that no one in NovRodi would know what he did here, including no priests. Hmm.

  Michael had hurried ahead and the men found him in front of a building four streets inland of the docks. The building had a mast-less ship painted on the front, with two men chasing a large number of animals up the gangplank into the round ship. “The House of St. Basil’s Boat,” Geert explained. “From an old, heretical version of the Holy Writ. The first house here had that on it, before the Fires, and no one wants to change it now. We’d all get lost.”

  Pjtor had trouble understanding, but decided to wait and ask later, for now he was too busy ducking his head and lifting his feet. The threshold stood several centimeters high, requiring everyone to step over it. “Keeps the water out in winter storms,” a woman’s rough voice said. “Landsmen?”

  “Yes, Goodwife Baker. Peter McAdams, from Hämäln, come on his wander-year. He wants to see how real ships are made.”

  Pjtor bowed toward the woman’s voice. A sturdy woman in a clean white apron that covered the entire front of her dress nodded back. She had a cloth over her hair, although not covering as much of her head the ones worn by the women of NovRodi. She’d rolled up her sleeves and her arm muscles bulged as much as some men’s did. Pjtor decided he did not want to make her angry. If little Strella could kill someone with a turnspit, this woman could probably break a man with her bare hands.

  “House rules are that you are in by the fire-damp bell, no sharp spirits, no hemp smoking, and no stranger women. Night-soil boxes go out the back and no tossin’ onto the street. Money is due the first holy-day eve of the month, and I want a month in advance. You get the morning meal and two baths a week with the rent, and I change the bedding once a month between now and St. Michael’s feast, every other month between St. Michael’s and St. Basil’s. You come in drunk, you go right back out or I’ll dump you in a canal. You bring in a woman and she’d better be a relative. All understood?”

  Rapid fire talk between Michael, Geert, and Goodwife Baker followed, and she took their coin, bit the edge of the NovRodi ten cretit piece and declared them welcome. Michael and Pjtor took their things upstairs. Geert would stay in his own house, and Michael had a place closer to the shipyard for the other men.

  Pjtor’s meeting with Master Issa Van Daam went almost as fast. The skinny man reminded Pjtor of an old stick, a little knobby in places. The master studied Pjtor from head to boot-tops. “You know tools?”

  “A little, sir.”

  Van Daam grunted and made what Pjtor assumed was a beckoning gesture with one finger. Pjtor followed into a room full of wood and more tools than he’d seen in one place. “Cut this to the mark, make a mortise, and plane it.” The scrap of wood tossed at Pjtor’s head had a bit of grey on it, and Pjtor took that to be the desired mark. He looked around, found something to hold the wood steady, and then looked at the zawz. One looked like a good rough-cut zaw, and Pjtor lifted it from the pegs on the wall. Someone had marked the tool’s shape behind the pegs, and Pjtor decided he wanted that in his own work room.

  Pjtor did as told, and presented his work to Master Van Daam. “It’ll do. You must be from Hämäl. They can’t tell smooth wood from bad to save their lives. Come back at the first morning bell after the fire-start bell tomorrow. Bring your tools.”

  He turned away before Pjtor could answer. When he told Michael about the meeting, the older man heaved a happy sigh. “Thanks be to Godown. He likes you.”

  “Does he talk much?”

  “No. He probably used all the day’s words when he told you to go.”

  That suited Pjtor fine, since the less he talked, the less people would wonder about his speech.

  And so it was.

  The next holy day, Pjtor decided to attend worship at St. Donn’s-at-the-Rocks. “It is rather different from the liturgy you are familiar with, Pjtor Adamson,” Geert and Michael Looven had cautioned him. It was also close, small, and favored by many of the journeyman shipbuilders. The sailors and master builders tended to go to St. Issa-by-the-Jetty. Pjtor decided to walk, and Looven came with him. As they approached the grey and cream stone church with its lantern-spire, Pjtor blinked and stopped. Soldiers in the tan and brown of the Sea Republics army watched from the edges of the market square in front of the church, not doing anything but obviously keeping an eye on people. A number of horses and a single mule swished their tails as they stood at one of the hitch-racks by the church. Looven nudged Pjtor, who leaned down to hear him. “The rumor may have been true, Pjtor Adamson. See if you can see an ugly woman with light-brown hair inside.”

  What rumor? Pjtor’d heard plenty, but none about ugly women. He removed his hat and bowed as he entered the church. Michael Looven bent the knee, then nudged Pjtor into one of the benches-with-backs, half-way to the altar. As his eyes adapted, Pjtor stared, then caught himself. Oh, why not, I’m not t
he emperor of NovRodi right now and I can stare without people getting nervous that I’m about to order them flogged. A statue of a muscular man carrying a shoulder yoke and buckets stood near the altar. That had to be St. Donn, patron of watermen and those charged with bringing fresh water to cities and towns. But where was the grace screen? Where were the other saints? Pjtor peered around and spotted two strange figures beside smaller altars, one a man and the other a woman. At least Godown’s symbol was the same. He smelled incense and stood with the others as a bell rang overhead.

  The procession of Writ and elements was not too different, although the elements should only process on great feasts or in times of dire need, and he didn’t know of either of those going on right now. Everything else though! Except for the reading from the Writ, he could barely believe that he worshipped in a place of the same faith. Women sang in the choir, someone not a priest assisted with the elements, and the incense came at the wrong time. The music was strange to Pjtor’s ears, although the sung responses were not too different. Women sat with men, another strange thing. Sitting during the liturgy? Not bowing at every shift in the service? How could the church have changed so much so quickly? Did they not know the real liturgy and songs?

  With some reservations, Pjtor went up for the elements. Those too remained the same, and they eased his mind a little. Perhaps the sea people were not quite as heretical as they seemed. Maybe. Pjtor looked for an ugly woman and spotted two, one in brown and the other a very old fishwife he’d heard two days before lambasting someone who tried to bargain her down on some prime sea-pfiggy.

  It was when he went outside that he saw what Looven had meant. The woman in brown stood beside the mule, one hand on the mule’s hindquarters. Her accent made her almost impossible to understand, but her frown and tapping boot he recognized: the universal sign of an angry rider. “Fuht a mess. Off kourse you fuhd loose a shoo file I fas furshippink. Yew are sooch a mule!”

  The man inspecting the animal’s hoof straightened up and laughed. “Yew ekspekt diverent, your highness?”

  “No.”

  As Pjtor stared, one of the soldiers walked up with a smith. The smith soon had the offending shoe replaced, and one of the other men, in dark blue with long grey hair tied back with a dark-blue ribbon, crouched and helped the woman mount the lopsided saddle. She did so with an easy grace. The man smiled at her and said something quiet. She replied and he laughed, shaking his head as he too mounted. They rode like cavalry, and Pjtor wondered who they might be. Then he saw the sword strapped to the woman’s odd saddle, and the butt of a hand-gonne by the sword. He watched her more carefully as she rode close and he straightened up, giving her a small salute.

  She returned it, tapping her hat brim with an ornate black and silver stick, then rode on. “That is her imperial highness Princess Elizabeth von Sarmas, commander of the armies of the Eastern Empire, famous for her prowess as a commander and for the mules and horses she raises, and for the pickled shahma meat sold from her flocks.” Michael Looven nodded at the soldiers following the woman and her party. “I’ve seen her husband before, Imperial Colonel Lazlo Destefani, but never her.”

  “She’s old and ugly.”

  “That she is. And she’s Godown’s gift to the Eastern Empire, probably the only reason we’re not fighting the Frankonians and Turkovi both right now.” Looven led the way back to Pjtor’s inn. “If the stories are true, she’s over fifty years old. Rumor has it that her mother died recently in a convent near here, and her highness came in person to thank the sisters for their care. She’s probably meeting with the marischal and other officers while she’d here. Her husband is her chief aid, commanded the Sea Republic armies at the Battle of Boehm, and a master of logistics and maneuver in his own right, or so it is said.”

  “And her sons?” If they were anything like their parents, Pjtor wanted to hire them for his own army.

  “None. No daughters, either, only Godown knows why. I once heard someone from farther east swear that she survived an assassination attempt just after the Battle of Vindobona, thirty-five years ago, but it made her barren.” He shrugged. “Could also be that she rides and fights so much, she can’t carry a child. Or that Godown chose not to bless them, for His own reasons.”

  Pjtor wondered. “Does she always ride a mule?”

  “Mule or stallion, or so they say. She was called the mule-duchess before her elevation in rank, more for the mules and horses she sells than for her face.”

  “I want to meet her.”

  Looven looked at him, paused, then said, “As the shipwright’s apprentice, or as the emperor of NovRodi? Because if it is as emperor, well, the apprentice won’t get any peace once word spreads.”

  Pjtor started to get mad, then jerked backwards as something flew out of the open top-half of a doorway just in front of him, followed by two cats and much commotion, with a few curses as punctuation. One cat grabbed the oblong thing in its jaws and raced off, the second cat chasing it. The top of the door slammed shut and a bolt thumped into place. The men looked at each other and grinned, then shrugged. Bad cats knew no national borders.

  Pjtor mulled over what Looven had said. “Ah, that is something to consider.” Once he was officially in New Dalfa, Pjtor could not go back to being an apprentice. The Emperor of NovRodi would never do such a thing: he was the living form of the dignity and power of NovRodi. Disappointment replaced anger and Pjtor reminded himself that he needed ships more than mules. And no man of NovRodi would obey a woman soldier, no matter how well known elsewhere. She probably knew nothing about fighting the Harriers either, he decided, since from what he’d heard the Turklavi now fought like civilized men, with gonnes and infantry.

  The next day Pjtor had more than enough going on to push Elizabeth von Sarmas out of his mind. “You and you, bring your tools and measuring lines with me,” Master Van Daam ordered. Pjtor and Artur, the other senior journeyman, exchanged puzzled looks, but go their tools and followed the shipwright. He walked with a rolling limp and used a walking stick. He also prodded the slow and thumped the lazy with the same stick, prompting Pjtor to add a walking stick to his list of things to bring back to NovRodi. The trio passed down the long, gentle slope of the ship-builder’s section to the building and launching docks. “Here.” Master Van Daam ducked, wove, and picked his way through the stacks of specially shaped timbers and the soaking vats to the part-finished hull. “Right, you. What’s wrong?” He glared at Pjtor.

  Something, Pjtor thought, but he was not certain exactly what yet. He climbed down so he could see better and felt odd. Why did he feel odd? He was leaning to the left, to port, except he wasn’t. “She’s lopsided, sir,” he called back.

  “Why?”

  It was not because the sides had not been built to the same height, that he could tell. He picked his way across the rows of heavy bent timbers that formed the ribs and keel. As he walked, Pjtor noticed two of the ribs looked off, not quite as they should be, although what was wrong he had trouble saying. He reached the bow and turned, looking back up the hull, crouching down to better sight along the keel. “She twists, sir. It starts,” he got up and clambered back to the odd-looking ribs, “here sir.” Pjtor felt around the heavy butts of the solid living-oake timbers, feeling the joint where they touched the timbers of the keel. One, the starboard side, did not quite fit. He lay down and peered at the keel beams. Two fitted together to make a joint, and the joint seemed out of true. He dug his string out of the kit, rubbed a little rock-powder on it, and beckoned one of the watching workmen to come and hold the other end of the string against the wood. Then Pjtor picked up the middle of the string and snapped it, letting the powdered string hit the wood. The string left a faint white line on the keel, and he could see the curve of the wood under the straight line of powder. When he used his second string, this with a weight on one end, he could see the slight vertical warp to port.

  “Aye, that’s it.” Master Van Daam grunted. “Careless work leads to slow ships. She�
�ll sail true if her stern boards are adjusted, but she’ll lose speed, always going sideways.” He pointed around him with the stick. “You two finish this out. You know the plan, second copy’s up on the dock-board. Don’t fook up.” With that the shipwright clambered out of the hull, leaving Pjtor and white-blond Artur blinking.

  “Where do we start?” Pjtor asked quietly, noticing the workmen watching them.

  “By keeping the hull from getting any more lopsided. I’ll go check out the day’s task list and materials, so you can start building the dividers for the ballast and bilges. Then we measure and mark for the lowest deck.” Artur came from a sailing family and had built two other boats, both smaller fishing vessels. He used a few more words than Master Van Daam, but not many more.

  “Agreed.” Pjtor set to work as Artur began his tasks. First, he looked at the plans, confirming what went where. Then he began marking off the designated sections. Being in the shipyard gave him the chance to check on the other men of NovRodi, who were studying under other builders, or learning basic tool use. The easterners had so many more tools at their disposal that Pjtor wondered what horrible sin his ancestors and the Landers had committed to be impoverished for so long. With effort Pjtor dragged his mind back to the present day and to his task. Emperor of NovRodi or not, he suspected that Master Van Daam would beat him with that heavy walking stick if he made the ship’s problems worse.

  Happily, the two-deck trading vessel’s materials seemed sound. The ship-smiths of New Dalfa had the luxury of gathering wood long in advance, allowing the material to season properly to make sturdy, long-lived ships. Although, Pjtor thought as he watched some of the men laboring to saw through one of the heavy, thick pieces of iron-heart, there was something to be said for green wood, even though most of it was said under one’s breath using language not suitable for the homefold.