Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(59)

Rik smiled ruefully. “I grew up on farms. Even though many of them were close to the water, I confess I do not have a mariner’s vocabulary yet. I find these distinctions confusing. Because, if the reports I hear are true, you are not calling the other ship—the Courser, I believe?—a frigate, either.”

“No, we’re calling her class a ‘destroyer’ and the Intrepid’s class a ‘cruiser.’ As class names, they’re not great solutions. But at least they’re up-time terms that haven’t been used to describe ships, yet, so they’ll be distinctive and somewhat descriptive in terms of role. If you’re familiar with the up-time history of those classes of ships, that is. But anything else we tried to come up with ran afoul of the labeling confusion that already results from the current lack of international naming conventions.

“In fact, ‘frigate’ would have been the most confusing label we could have settled on. Ever since down-time naval architects started doing research in the Grantville library, most of the shipyards of Europe have started building new designs, the straight-sterned frigate chief among them. So if we called our new steam-ships frigates, they’d routinely get confused with the new sailed vessels currently under construction throughout Europe.”

Bjelke nodded attentively, but Eddie saw that his focus was now split between their conversation and something located aft of their current place at the rail. As soon as Eddie noticed Rik’s apparent distraction, the young Norwegian moved his eyes, ever so slightly, upward over his superior’s shoulder and toward the new item of interest.

Eddie turned and saw, back by the entrance to the companionway leading down to the officer’s quarters, that his wife—and her “ladies,” as Bjelke styled them—had emerged to stand on the deck in a tight cluster. They were not an uncommon sight topside, but they usually reserved their appearances for fine weather, not overcast skies. However, despite the mild wind freshening from out of the southeast, they were all dressed for cold weather, apparently. Or were they? Eddie squinted, saw no coats or shawls, which made him only more confused. So why the hell do they have kerchiefs covering their heads? And all three of them, no less. Damn, I’ve never seen a lady of the aristocracy allow herself to look that, well, dowdy. And now they’ve all adopted the same frumpy look? What the heck is that abou—?

“Commander, given the arrival of the ladies, perhaps it would be convenient for you if I were to take my leave?”

Eddie nodded. “Probably so. Tell my wife that she can”—and then a voice inside his head, the one that was partially schooled in the etiquette of this age, muttered, No, Eddie, that won’t do. Think how it will look, how it will seem.

Damn, ship protocol was tricky, and yet was still kind of free-form in this era when navies weren’t really navies just yet, and had protocols for some things, but not for others. For instance, take the simple desire to have his wife join him alone at the rail. He couldn’t very well wave her over. That would be an obvious blow to her stature, and mark him as an indecorous boor, which would work against his accrual of respect as well. But if he sent Bjelke over to summon her, that would be like making the young Norwegian nobleman his valet and also be entirely too formal, to say nothing of downright stupid-looking. Yet, if Eddie left the rail to go over to Anne Cathrine, then it could be difficult to extricate themselves from the presence of their respective attendants—Bjelke and the ladies—if they didn’t all know how to take a hint—

Eddie discovered that, for the first time since he had stepped on a deep water ship, he had a headache and an incipient sense of seasickness. Which he allowed, probably had nothing to do with the sea at all.

But Bjelke offered a slight bow to Eddie, and inquired, “Might I—with your compliments—inform the ladies and your wife that you are currently without any pressing duties? And that I would be happy to escort any and all of them wherever they might wish to go?”

And for the third time—wasn’t that some kind of spiritual sign, or something?—Eddie felt a quick outrush of gratitude toward the young Norwegian. Bjelke’s simple solution allowed the junior officer to decorously depart from his commander, greet the ladies, and inform them of the status of the ship’s captain. Then Anne Cathrine could approach or not—with Bjelke and her ladies in tow or not—and this idiotic etiquette dance would be over and Eddie would have thus achieved the hardest nautical task of his day thus far: finding a way to converse with his wife, on deck and in private, for a scant few minutes.