Eddie suddenly remembered what he'd forgotten.
No wonder he'd forgotten it!
"Eddie, you should go inside," Anne Cathrine said forcefully. "You're looking more pale than ever."
He ignored her, turning to Ulrik. "Do you have a-a-? Ah! I can't remember what they're called. A safety valve. On the hose, near the pump."
He made vague, groping gestures with his hands, trying to delineate something he could only vaguely describe. "It's like a check-valve. What it does, if the pump suddenly fails, is automatically lock-so the higher air pressure in the suit can't escape."
Ulrik frowned. "I don't know. I don't believe so. But I'd have to ask Baldur."
As always, they'd been speaking the German which served the royal Danes and Eddie alike as a common tongue. The prince raised his voice and started jabbering some Danish at the Norwegian standing next to the king below. Eddie could now understand some of the language, but these quickly shouted words he could only guess at.
Baldur looked up. After a moment, he shook his head and jabbered something back. It was clear enough to Eddie from the expression on Baldur's face that the answer wasn't even no, we don't. It was more along the lines of what are you talking about?
"Get him out of there, Ulrik," Eddie hissed. "The diver, I mean. Pull him out. Now."
Ulrik frowned. That would require overriding-trying to, anyway-his father. Which was no small chore, to put it mildly, whenever Christian IV had his heart set on something.
He shrugged. "I'll try."
But before he could even speak a word, there was a sudden hubbub among the men working the pump.
One of them jabbered something at the king. Eddie had gotten familiar enough with Danish to grasp that the gist of what he was saying was that something seemed to be wrong.
Eddie looked at the hose. Sure enough. There were so many ways to get killed doing this. The hose was now thrashing about, in a sluggish sort of way. Eddie was sure it had ruptured somewhere along the line.
"Pull him out! Now!" Ulrik shouted. Those simple Danish terms, at least, Eddie understood.
The king didn't seem inclined to argue the matter. The diver had two ropes attached to him as well as the hose. The workmen standing by started hauling on them. Meanwhile, the men at the pump continued their useless labor.
Baldur took off his boots and his coat and jumped into the water, disappearing below the surface.
"What's wrong, Eddie?" asked Anne Cathrine. "And you look really sick, now. You should go inside."
He grasped at that straw. He knew what was coming up out of the water-he remembered it all, now, too late for it to do any good-and he had no desire to let the king's daughter see it. She was only fifteen years old.
For that matter, Eddie didn't want to see it himself. He could remember being sick to his stomach, just reading about it.
"You're right, I'm not feeling well. Perhaps I should return."
"Into my brother's carriage, at least. We'll have to wait for Ulrik before we can go back to Rosenborg Castle. But it'll be warmer in the carriage than it is out here, with the wind. Here, let me help you."
She took him around the waist with her right arm and began propelling him toward the carriage some twenty yards away. Then, not satisfied with the arrangement, pulled his left arm over her shoulder so she could carry more of his weight, while he used his cane with his other arm. By now, Eddie was getting around well enough on his wooden leg that he'd been able to dispense with the crutches.
The contact was intimate enough to distract Eddie quite nicely from more unpleasant matters. Of course, it also made him very nervous. Even after the months he'd spent in Danish captivity, he still hadn't been able to figure out the social parameters involved. Christian IV seemed oddly oblivious to the relationship that was developing-so to speak, since Eddie didn't really know what it was himself-between his American captive and his oldest surviving daughter.
Fine, she wasn't technically a "princess" because her mother, Kirsten Munk, hadn't been highly enough ranked in the nobility for anything but a morganatic marriage. Big deal. The oldest daughter was still the oldest daughter-and the father was a no-fooling seventeenth-century goddamit king. One hell of a lot closer in time and spirit to Henry VIII than he was to the harmless royals that Eddie had grown up with. Queen Elizabeth II waving at crowds from an open car, looking sweet and just a bit insipid; Princess Diana, who couldn't harm anything except the reputation of the British royal family and who cared anyway; and a whole passel of silly idiots losing money in the casinos in Monte Carlo.
Eddie never quite knew what might or might not get him hauled to the chopping block. What made it all the more odd was that Anne Cathrine seemed just as oblivious to the matter as her father. From one day to the next, Eddie couldn't tell if she was in any way attracted to him as a man. One day, he'd swear she was. The next…
Who ordered this?
Granted, Eddie had never been what anyone in their right mind would call a ladies' man, bowling over the girls right and left. But at least in his comfortable and familiar world back up time, he'd known when he was pining away hopelessly.
Okay, pretty much all of the time, that had been. But he'd known.
"Will that man be all right?" Anne Cathrine asked, as they came up to the carriage. A coachman held the door open for them.
There was no point in lying. "No, he won't," Eddie said harshly. "He's already dead. He was dead before Baldur went down after him."
Frowning, the king's daughter more or less hoisted him up into the carriage without waiting for the coachman's assistance. The combination of that pretty teenage frown and the Valkyrie strength almost made Eddie laugh, despite the circumstances. His new world seemed full of contradictions.
"That can't be right," she said firmly, climbing in after him. "Drowning isn't that quick."
Eddie eased himself into the bench, and the king's daughter sat next to him. He was about to say, "He didn't drown, Anne Cathrine," but caught himself in time. The girl was nothing if not inquisitive. She'd want an explanation, and that was the last thing Eddie wanted to provide her. He didn't even want to think about it himself.
Especially not after, thirty seconds later, she gave him a mischievous smile. "You are too much the gentleman," she proclaimed. "I've given up."
Then, kissed him. Then, did it again, for a lot longer.
So, at least one question was answered. There remained only the petty details of which form of execution the king would select, once he got wind of the situation. But Eddie, in the middle of the hottest necking session he'd ever had in his life, gave that piddly problem no thought at all.
Some time later, they heard people approaching the carriage and resumed more decorous positions. Anne Cathrine looked a bit flushed, immensely pleased, and fifteen going on thirty. Eddie had no idea what he looked like. Twenty going on thirteen, he suspected. Not that he cared. Bring on the headsman; he'd greet him with a sneer. The world has no greater armor than a flood of hormones.
Ulrik came in first, with his sidekick right behind. As he clambered in, Norddahl called out something to the coachmen. As soon as he closed the door, the coach set off for Copenhagen.
"Ghastly," the prince proclaimed. "Never seen anything like it."
He was sitting on the bench opposite Eddie and Anne Cathrine. Norddahl slid onto the same bench. "You, Baldur?" the prince asked. "Have you?"
The Norwegian shook his head. "No, Your Highness. And I'd have thought by now I'd seen just about any way a man could get killed."
Alas, Anne Cathrine was now intrigued. "What happened? I thought he drowned."
"Oh, no. Lucky for him, I suppose," said her half-brother. "Drowning's slow. People say it's a good way to go, though I have my doubts. But this one died instantly."