"For someone like me, Caroline, a good and well-made barn is nothing to sneer at. Many people live their whole lives in much worse. I meant no offense."
She turned her head and looked at him for a long moment, without a trace of her usual smile. "I believe you," she said eventually. "I think you're one of the nicest men I've ever met. And none of it's phony."
He didn't know what to say to that. But the smile returned, and she took him by the hand again and led him elsewhere. The "soup kitchen," she called it, even though they were serving no form of soup at all, so far as Thorsten could determine.
"So how was the food?" Eric asked him that evening, over beers in the tavern. He'd left the settlement house much sooner than Engler, of course.
"Who cares?" was Thorsten's reply.
"That silly smile has no business on your plain German farmer's face," declared Krenz. He turned to Gunther Achterhof, who was sitting at the table with them. "Don't you agree?"
"No." Gunther studied Thorsten for a bit. He really did seem quite distracted.
"Still having dreams?"
"Oh, yes."
Gunther drained his beer. "I changed my mind. You're right, Krenz. That is the silliest smile I've ever seen, on anybody's face. Better he should have kept suffering, like a farmer should."
Chapter 15
Frederiksborg Castle
Hillerød, Kingdom of Denmark
The more he saw in the workshop that his father had built in a new wing of Frederiksborg Castle, the more appalled Prince Ulrik became. By the time he got to the worktable at the end, with its dully gleaming centerpiece, Ulrik felt as if his stomach was residing somewhere below . . .
Best not to think about that.
He turned his head to examine his guide. More precisely, to gauge how much he could confide in him.
Oddly, there was something about Baldur Norddahl's piratical appearance that was reassuring. Perhaps it was because Ulrik had concluded the appearance was by no means skin deep. He'd spent enough time with Norddahl, since he'd returned to Denmark from Schwerin a few days earlier at the king's command, to get a sense of the man. Even that portion of the Norwegian's history that he'd been willing to divulge—and that usually took several mugs of good strong beer to wheedle out of him—made Baldur Norddahl an adventurer with few equals. Ulrik wouldn't be surprised at all to discover that some of those adventures had included piracy. Where else would the Norwegian have learned Arabic but from the Algerine corsairs? He was rather fluent in the outlandish tongue, although he claimed he couldn't read it except bits and pieces of the aljamiado script.
Spain, Norddahl claimed, was where he first learned Arabic, along with several dialects of Spanish itself. His proficiency in the Muslim tongue he'd gained in parts beyond, when he spent some time with Morisco traders—plunderers and slavers, too, one got the sense—in caravans crossing the great desert to the fabled city of Timbuktu.
If there were a camel in Denmark, Ulrik would be interested to put the matter to a test, and see if Norddahl could ride one of the grotesque animals. On the other hand, he probably could, even if the rest of his stories were false. To use one of the many American expressions that were spreading all over Europe, Baldur Norddahl was a man of many parts.
True, most of those parts wouldn't bear close examination, taken one at a time. Even his name was suspect. To begin with, Ulrik had never heard of a Norwegian with the first name of "Baldur." An Icelander, maybe, since some of the old pagan names still survived on the island—but Norddahl spoke with a Norwegian accent. "Norddahl" was almost as suspect, to the prince. The word simply meant "of the north valley"—which could be just about anywhere. Norway had a thousand little valleys in its northern parts. Most Norwegians didn't use farm or location surnames, in the first place, they used patronymics. But a father could be traced a lot easier than a valley somewhere "to the north," should someone go looking.
Nonetheless, that there were a lot of parts to the rogue, the prince didn't doubt at all.
"This strikes me as madness, Baldur, now that I've finally been able to see it myself. Tell me the truth."
The Norwegian took a few seconds to look around the immense workroom. It was deserted now, except for the two of them. Norddahl had ordered all of the workmen to take a break from their labors while he guided the prince about.
"It depends how you define 'madness,' prince. All of these devices—their descendants, at least—will work. Even the submarine."
"Even this?" Ulrik picked up the huge bronze helmet with its bizarre glass visor. With considerable strain, since the thing was very heavy. He tried to imagine himself fitting the ghastly device onto his head, and then lowering himself into water with it.