The Baltic War(294)

Jesse sighed. "Christ on a crutch. They still have the poor kid locked up?"



Frank shrugged. "Yeah, insofar as you can call being under house arrest in a room—suite, more like—in Rosenborg Castle 'locked up.' It ain't exactly a barren cell in Marion County jail. Even the plumbing's probably better."



"Still, it seems excessive as all hell. I mean, the kid's not charged with anything that up-time would have—"



Frank's grin was gone by now, and he interrupted Jesse forcefully. "We aren't up-time, Jesse, if you hadn't noticed—and the girl involved is royalty. You may not be aware of it, but Christian IV is actually considered a very tolerant monarch in the here and now. Even something of a wimp, when it comes to family stuff like this. The reason people think that is because he only had his second wife Kirsten Munk—she's the girl's mother, if you didn't know—imprisoned when she was suspected of adultery. Instead of having her head cut off on the grounds of treason. Which is what Henry VIII did—twice—not all that long ago."



Jesse made a face. "Seventeenth fucking century. I forget, sometimes."



"Yeah, we all do. But there it is. Mike thinks—thinks, mind you, he's not positive—that Christian's mainly insisting on the full royal treatment as part of all the bargaining maneuvers. To put it another way, he's not actually as outraged as he claims to be. But . . ."



"Yeah, but. Who knows?—and seventeenth-century 'bargaining' is every bit as much of a contact sport as everything political is in this day and age. It can get really rough."



Frank nodded. "Yep, sure can. As Christian IV proved when he agreed to let Eddie go in return for Prince Ulrik—and then dragged out the process until the emperor arrived, so he could demand that Gustav Adolf have him arrested. Drunk or sober, he ain't no dummy. He needed Gustav Adolf here to squelch the admiral, who was making loud noises by then about reducing the rest of Copenhagen to rubble if his lieutenant wasn't goddamit produced on his flagship right fucking now. Even then, Gustav had to do some truly imperial squelching before the admiral shut up."



There was silence for a time, as two men engaged in that ancient ritual whereby another man was finally allowed into their private comradeship.



"Simpson's okay," Jesse declared.



"Yeah, he is," Frank concurred.



After a moment, Jesse said, "I can get Eddie out of here. Now that all the fricking passengers have been shuttled to Copenhagen in time for the big shindig—have they come up with a name for it yet, by the way?—I've got a legitimate excuse to stick around for a while, instead of spending every waking hour in a cockpit."



He waved his hand toward the airfield beyond the closed door. "All of the Gustavs have to have those stupid passenger benches taken out and get re-fitted as fighting planes. Am I the only one who remembers that there's still a war going on? Supposed to be, anyway. Last I heard, the only ones who'd agreed to a cease-fire are the Spaniards—and then, only the ones under the cardinal-infante's command."



"Oquendo's agreed to it also," Frank said. "We just got the word yesterday. It seems the good admiral has decided his commission requires him to obey the commander of all Spanish forces in the Netherlands, and to hell with what Madrid says." Frank chuckled. "Of course, the count-duke of Olivares and the king of Spain himself aren't likely to agree, but nobody in this day and age can lawyer like Spanish hidalgos. Especially when the hidalgo in question has his fleet anchored in the Zuider Zee and the rest of the Spanish navy can't get to him without fighting their way through a big chunk of the USE's navy."



Jesse cocked an eyebrow. "The Achates is hardly what I'd call a 'big chunk.' "



Frank shook his head, looking smug. "You're way behind the curve, Jesse. Too much time spent staring through a windscreen, the last couple of weeks. Gustav Adolf ordered Commodore Henderson to take his flotilla into the Zuider Zee. There are now six of those paddle wheelers guarding Amsterdam—each and every one of which has a dozen sixty-eight pound carronades loaded with explosive shells, just in case anyone gets any screwy ideas."



He settled into his chair, very comfortably. "No, at least for the time being, Don Fernando and Don Antonio de Oquendo can thumb their noses at the Spanish crown around the clock, if they want to. As for the rest . . ."



He waved a hand, dismissively. "The Danes are out of it, obviously. The English are too, for all practical purposes. They never had much in the way of land forces involved in the war, and after the wreckage the Achates left in the Thames estuary it's not likely even that dimwit Charles I is going to order his navy into action. That leaves the French, who are asking for a cease-fire. But Gustav Adolf is ignoring their ambassador. He won't agree to it until his troops finish gobbling up as much territory as he figures he can digest. All those dinky little principalities in northwest Germany and what you and I would have called northeast France in the old days are falling like tenpins to Gustav's forces. Hesse-Kassel's done some nibbling of his own too. With the emperor's agreement, of course. Most of it, anyway—and a little after the fact, in some cases. But there's been hardly any fighting at all."