Ulrik nodded, and then looked back toward the area where the spar torpedo project was underway.
"And how many of those could you have ready by May? Assuming-for the moment-that I could give you enough breathing space to devote… oh, half the time that's left, after the mines. I'm afraid there's no way around the fact that you'll have to keep at least a quarter of your effort devoted to these other ridiculous schemes. I can keep my father at a distance, to a point. But I'd have as much chance of fending off a great bear with my hands as I would keeping my illustrious sire from meddling at all."
He was a bit startled to realize how far he'd allowed himself to discard circumlocutions in the presence of a man who was, technically, nothing but a servant. His instincts had led him there, though, and Ulrik trusted his instincts about people. He'd come to have a great deal of confidence in Baldur Norddahl, and needed to make sure the reverse was true as well. This was going to be a desperate enough business, under the best of circumstances. If anything was to work at all, it would require a close bond between a prince of Denmark and a Norwegian adventurer, rascally as he might be.
Baldur had been pondering the question. "It's not quite as simple as that, Your Highness. I could have six or seven boats built and ready with spar torpedoes, by May. But I have a bad feeling they won't do much good."
Ulrik frowned. "You just told me yourself that's how the up-timers sank a Spanish ship in Amsterdam."
"Not the same thing at all, Your Highness. In Amsterdam, the Americans had the advantage of complete surprise. In the Oresund, we won't. You can be as sure as anything in the world that the American admiral knows all about the danger of mines and… they'd call them 'torpedo boats,' I think. They'll be alert at all times, even in a storm, and they have more than enough weaponry on board those ships, even leaving aside the main guns, to destroy any rowboat before it got close enough to pose a danger."
He grimaced. "I'll be willing to lead the thing, when the time comes. But only because it's not completely suicidal, and I have a taste for adventure."
"More than a taste!" exclaimed Ulrik, half-laughing. "But I see your point. All right, then. There's no point in throwing away the lives of our sailors to no purpose. Spend enough time to make sure you have six or seven spar torpedo boats ready, in case we can figure out a way to make them effective. The rest, devote as much as you possibly can to the mines."
"And you'll keep your father as far off as you can."
"Yes. And when the time comes, you and I will both see what a torpedo boat can do."
Norddahl's eyes widened. "Ah… you're a prince, Your Highness. I'm not sure your father-"
"Damn my father. As many children as he sires, what difference does it make? I have two older brothers anyway, not even counting the morganatic line."
He gave the Norwegian the best royal stare he had. He knew it was quite good, too. He'd learned it from watching Gustav Adolf, the king of Sweden, in the time he'd spent with him as a youngster. A man he liked and generally admired-and was now his enemy. But such was the life of a prince.
Finally, Ulrik got what he needed. There was nothing but respect in Baldur Norddahl's gaze, any longer. No trace of the rogue or the rascal. Just that of the grim old ancient that the prince of Denmark would need at his side come a desperate moment in the spring, when they both went a-viking.
Chapter 16
When he emerged from the workshop, Prince Ulrik discovered that the overcast skies of the morning had turned into an afternoon's snowfall. He was just as glad, though. First, because the really bitter cold days in January were the days with clear skies; second, because he liked snow anyway. When he was a boy, he and his brothers had greeted a heavy snowfall with great enthusiasm. It meant days of marvelous play in the castle gardens, digging tunnels through the snow and erecting what they were pleased to call fortresses.
The big workshop the king had had built for Baldur Norddahl was on the southernmost of the three islands in the lake that Frederiksborg Castle was built upon. It was located almost adjacent to the two round towers erected by the castle's original founder, Ulrik's grandfather Frederik II. Giving those familiar sights a mere glance, the prince headed for the S-bridge that would take him to the middle island.
He took a shortcut through the royal stables. That was quicker, warmer-and he liked horses even more than he did snow. As he passed through, he exchanged greetings with the stablehands he encountered, but did not, as he usually would, take the time to chat with them. He was preoccupied today, lost in thoughts that were dark and foreboding.
Once across the S-bridge and onto the middle island, Ulrik stopped in the square to gaze at the Neptune Fountain.
There'd been snowball fights also, of course, many of them in this very square. Lots of those. Ulrik liked to fancy that he first learned military tactics in those melees.
Melees they'd been, too. One of the advantages of being a boy prince-perhaps simply one of the realities, advantageous or not-was that you always had a coterie of other boys around you. Sons of courtiers or sons of stablehands, either way or both. At that age, people did not make the fine distinctions they would grow into as time passed. That was one of the things about his childhood that Ulrik found himself missing a great deal, especially after he visited Grantville and came to realize how very differently the up-timers calculated rank and station in life.
Sadly, the main lesson Ulrik had learned from those mass snowball fights was that the surest of all military tactics was simply to outnumber the foe. "Sadly," because his illustrious father, for all his erratic but undoubted brilliance, seemed to be unable or unwilling to accept that reality and everything that flowed from it.
Slowly, ignoring the snowfall that was covering his hat and the shoulders of his heavy coat, Ulrik walked most of the way around the Neptune Fountain in the middle of the square, examining, as he passed, the edifices around him.
His father had ordered this castle built, transforming Frederik II's rather modest hunting manor into one of the great royal palaces of Europe. No idle boast, that, either. Ulrik had traveled enough to have seen many of them. Christian IV had had Frederiksborg designed in the Dutch Renaissance style, with its copper-covered roofs and spires, sweeping gables, sandstone decorations. The end result, completed in 1615, was quite magnificent.
Having completed his round of the fountain, the prince continued to the north, to the island that held the royal palace and his own quarters.
Easy to forget, when you lived in such a palace, that the kingdom which had been wealthy enough to afford it was still a small kingdom. Easy to forget, when you woke up every morning in a bedroom as magnificent as that of any monarch in Europe, that great bedrooms and halls and gardens and fountains did not translate into great armies and navies.
Easy to forget, staring up at ceilings as splendid as any in the world, that they were still ceilings and not endless open skies. Easy to forget the most important lesson that Ulrik thought any king or prince had to learn down to the marrow of his bones.
For all beings except the Almighty, there were limits. No matter who you were, there were limits. And you had to develop as keen an eye for them-as acute a taste, if you would-as you did for good architecture and fine paintings and music. Or you would soon enough find that you had lost everything within those limits. A great deal, at least.
Ulrik himself had always been good at seeing limits. Perhaps that was because he was an average-sized man, in all respects, where his father was not at all. Christian IV was tall, immense in girth, and possessed a capacity for procreation that was only exceeded by his imagination and his capacity for drink. Had he not possessed a reasonably kind disposition-certainly by royal standards-he would have been a veritable ogre.