Ring of fire II (assiti shards) Read online

  "There!" Mazalet pointed. "Up on that bow sprit. It looks like he's going to jump."

  "Crossed love!" The old woman cackled. "It happens, it happens. Ah, there he goes."

  "Turn that way!" Mazalet shouted as the body plunged headfirst into the water. "We must pick him up."

  "I don't want a madman in my boat," the woman said stolidly. She had turned toward the scene anyway.

  "We need to help him, by God." Mazalet grasped his rapier. "Don't worry, madam. I can handle a half-drowned fool."

  She snorted and bent to her oars.

  "Is he coming up?" she asked a little later.

  "No." Mazalet scanned the surface. "Yes. There he is. A little bit to port, if you please. No! Pardonnez-moi. Make that starboard and hurry now!"

  The old crone muttered darkly, but steered the boat as if by magic, without a backwards glance. Within seconds, however, Mazalet could see that the man in the water had no trouble staying afloat. His arms moved in lazy circles and he smiled and shouted something in accented Swedish. Several young men on the quay shouted encouragement while a bunch of sailors on the ship looked sulkily on.

  "Can I be of assistance?" Mazalet asked with a faint smile, as they drew close. This fellow might be exactly what he was looking for. A madman. And one who could swim.

  "No," the man turned in the water revealing a young face under a mop of wet brown hair. "Begging my lord's pardon," he said with a strange slow accent, "but we're so close to land that I could walk on the bottom and still get there." The swimmer leaned backwards and began to paddle with his feet as he used his arms to keep the face above water. To Mazalet it looked as the lad was merely resting in the water.

  "Crazy boy." The rowing madam spat in the water. "You gave us quite a fright."

  "I'm sorry, Grandmother," the boy said. "But winning that bet means I won't starve tonight."

  "Do you know this fellow?" Mazalet asked her politely.

  "Never seen him before." The old woman spat again. "I know his type. Crazy northerner, nothing but trouble. They trounce our boys and make free with the maidens."

  Mazalet ignored her. "You swim well, boy."

  "Not as well as my brothers, my lord." The lad rose from the water, standing on the submerged stairs. "It was nice talking to you," he said as casually as if they had met walking along a street, "But I have to go collect my wagers."

  "Wait," Mazalet shouted. The Frenchman pulled out a large coin and flipped it towards the crone. "Thanks for the service, madam. I'll be sure to recommend you to my friends." Then he jumped onto the sea-stairs looking wildly for the departing northerner.

  "Hey you! You there!" called the Frenchman from behind him.

  Lars Lennartson grinned like a fox. It seemed as if their target had swallowed the bait. He ignored the call and stalked towards the group of scowling sailors. "All right, friends," he said. "I braved your bow sprit and I made it ashore. You better cough up the money."

  "Why?" A rough-looking sailor said, bunching his shoulders.

  "Because I have you outnumbered." Lars pointed with his chin, signalling to Karl, Per and Olof to move in, crowding the sailors from all directions. "There four of us to your six. We're a peaceful bunch," Lars continued, "but you put your money on the line just as we did." His grin would have sent a wolf scurrying for shelter. "Now, will you hand over our winnings or should we pry it from your mangled fingers?"

  Slowly, sullenly, with studied nonchalance the sailor handed over a small purse. Lars stuck it inside his belt without bothering to count.

  "We trust you." He grinned. "And we know where to find you. Now scoot." Then he turned and bowed clumsily before the speechless Mazalet.

  "Did you want to speak to me, milord?"

  "Yes." Mazalet smiled winningly. "If you can spare the time."

  "Yes, milord," Lars answered. "We have nothing to do anyway. I've some dry clothes to put on, but then we'd be free."

  "Let me treat you to a mug of ale then," Mazalet said. "Wine if you prefer. Invite your friends, too. They look like good people to me."

  "The best." Lars nodded happily. "Delsbo boys all of them, just like me. My brothers, in fact." He paused. "Can I really have wine? I don't think I ever had that outside of communion."

  "Wine it is, then," Mazalet said with another smile. "Please collect your brothers while I go inside and order for all of us." Without waiting for an answer, the Frenchman walked across the quay and disappeared inside a tavern. Lars looked at the retreating back and grinned again.

  "She was right. There are more ways than one to skin a bear," he mumbled as he motioned his brothers to join him.

  "I must confess to be curious," Mazalet said. "My travels have taken me all around Europe and I thought swimming was a dead art. Where did you learn it?"

  "Back home of course," Lars answered. "In Delsbo the smallest child knows how to swim. Of course, the water is not as warm as this place."

  His brothers nodded assent.

  "So all of you," Mazalet asked shrewdly, "know how to swim?"

  "Yes," Per answered. "Olof is the best, but since he's a tad afraid of heights, Lars volunteered to jump from the bow sprit."

  "Am not," Olof grunted. "I'm not afraid of anything."

  Mazalet smiled. "I quite believe you, young master. But I'm still curious. How come the people of Delsbo are such proficient swimmers?"

  "Well," Olof said in an awkward manner. "Lars will tell you it's because Delsbo people are the best, but really it's on account of Good King Gustav and the church bells." He paused, looking around helplessly.

  "Go on," Per said. "It will do you good to use your voice for anything but muttered curses."

  "I don't curse," Olof muttered. Then he took a deep breath.

  "As Grandpa told the story," he said, "Good King Gustav wasn't so good after all. No, he was greedy and wanted our church bells. As Lars would tell you, our church bells were the largest and their tolls carried on even to Norway."

  "They had to be," Lars interjected hotly, "since our church steeple reaches the sky."

  "As I said," Olof continued. "The old men of Delsbo decided to hide the bells in the lake. Lars will tell you, Lake Dellen is the deepest lake in the world, and they thought the bells would be secure there."

  "I see," Mazalet said. "What happened?"

  "Well, the old men tied the bells together and put them in the largest church boat. Even that boat was hard pressed to hold the bells, but they were all good sailors so they reached the middle of Lake Dellen. There they cut a notch in the side of the boat and heaved the bells over the side."

  "A notch?" Mazalet asked. "Why?"

  "To mark the place of course," Olof said. "That's what Grandpa told me anyway," he ended truculently.

  "But then you couldn't find the bells again?" Mazalet said.

  "That's right," Olof nodded. "'Cause the boat with the notch in the side got burned in a cattle raid. Anyway, since then all the boys in our village go into the lake during summer. To look for the bells, I mean."

  "Amazing," Mazalet took a gulp of wine. "Can you actually look under water?"

  "Sure," Karl said. "It stings the eyes a little at first and you can't see that far, but fish have eyes too, don't they?"

  "Most certainly," Mazalet averred. "And a man should have better eyes than a fish. Anything else would be against God's design."

  "Wouldn't know about that," Olof said. "The priest threw me out for snoring. Bloody Lutheran."

  "Olof!" Per did not raise his voice, "Why don't the three of you go outside for a while?"

  Olof nodded, drained his ale and stood up in one fluid movement. Quickly, his brothers followed suit. Mazalet looked at their retreating backs and smiled.

  "Monsieur Treville would have loved your brothers," he said.

  "Who?" Per asked.

  "An old acquaintance of mine, a leader of soldiers."

  "I doubt Karl or Lars would make good soldiers," Per said with a rueful shrug. "I've tried it and I don't want
any of us to join the army. Soldiers die."

  "It happens." Mazalet's answering shrug was pure Gallic. "It happens. However, I might have a proposition for you later, but I can't contain my curiosity. Was your brother pulling my leg about those bells?"

  Per smiled. "Not really. But he was just six years old when Grandpa died. As I understand it, they put the bells on a barge and tied them to a rope with a sealed keg at the other end."

  "And that notch? It sounds like a nobleman's joke about stupid peasants."

  "Nothing stupid about it," Per said. "The village elders held the barge just so and cut several grooves aimed at different landmarks. You could only see those landmarks through the grooves when the barge was in the right spot. Fishermen do it all the time when they find a good spot. This was a little more precise, and with a little rowing and shouting they would have found the bells after the tax collectors went home."

  "But the barge burned?" Mazalet asked.

  "I don't rightly know." Per shrugged again. "It is nowhere to be found, and by now the rope and keg must have rotted or sunk and so the bells are lost. Looking for them is a tradition in Delsbo."

  "I see," Mazalet said, waving for the serving wench. "In fact, I believe that together, we could bring back those bells." He smiled as he watched the young woman pour. "After all, the highest church steeple in the world deserves the best bells."

  ***

  "He swallowed the bait," Per said.

  Ginny grinned. "Hook, line and sinker," she said. "If you understand the expression?"

  "Of course." Per smiled faintly. "I see what you mean about him being a good liar and cheat though. He agreed to us each getting an equal share without batting an eyelid. With two shares for himself, and, of course, expenses. He even agreed to write it down and signed it with a fine pen. I made a show of being barely able to read, and struggling with figures, just as you told me."

  "He believed that?" asked Ginny.

  Per nodded. "Just as he believed we were great swimmers. He didn't guess you had half killed us these last few days teaching us more than just to stay afloat."

  "Still, to agree to your starting position…"

  Per shrugged. "He intends to cheat us, but he needs divers to persuade people that he really will raise the ship. He would sign anything. He doesn't know that I got the innkeeper and the consul to sign as witnesses. In those old peasant clothes he wore, I wouldn't have recognized Herr Consul myself." Per shook his head admiringly. "He was the perfect fat peasant burgher. Anyway, Mazalet said he didn't care, as it was really the honor of salvaging the ship that he was after."

  "He's lying," Ginny said flatly. "Did I tell you what the ship is worth?"

  "You did," Per said, "but I didn't understand all of it. That GNP business was a bit beyond me."

  "You and most people," Ginny said. "It's been estimated that the Vasa was worth one twentieth of everything that was produced in Sweden that year."

  "I still don't understand that," Per complained. "The wharf is big, but even among the locals, not even one man in twenty works there. And most people are farmers in the countryside, anyway.

  "All those farmers are taxed," Ginny said, "Are they not?"

  "Of course," Per said. "Nobody likes it, but just about everyone outside Delsbo pays."

  "Right." Ginny spread her hands. "And much of that money goes into building ships and guns. Believe me, if we succeed, Mazalet will be richer than all but the dukes. My only doubt is whether Mazalet intends us to succeed or just to look like we may. But if it looks like it is working, he will stay."

  "And he isn't the sharing kind?" Per asked.

  "No," Ginny said. "Definitely not. He'd go back on that deal in an instant."

  "Not anymore," said Lothar Boelcke, emerging dressed in his own clothes once more. "That contract is binding."

  Per nodded. "We will need you to make over the shares to Fraulein Cochran, Herr Boelcke."

  "I see we're going to argue again," said Ginny.

  Per shook his head. "No. Without you, lady, we would be worrying about being conscripted, let alone working for a bright future for four penniless farm boys. As it is we can claim to be working on a project sanctioned by the admiral himself. You will pay us fairly," he said with finality.

  Lothar Boelcke shook his head. "To save having the argument again. I asked Anna. She said four shares-two for you brothers, two for Ginny here, ja. She has all the knowledge and all the planning, but she needs you for diving, for courage and strength, and one third is fair for Mazalet having to swindle up the money for the barge and equipment." His eyes twinkled. "And Anna is always right. Ask Ginny. Ask me. I have thirty years' experience of it."

  Per looked at his brothers. Nodded. "Very well. Now we just need to explain this to Mazalet."

  "Let's wait a little," said Ginny.

  Lars nodded. "Always make sure that the crayfish is in the trap first, before you haul it out of the water. Now, lady, explain again how this 'diving bell' works?"

  "Ja. I want to understand what I drown in," said Olof, in broken German.

  A little later, they were sitting in a salle at the consulate, as Ginny demonstrated with Anna's largest preserving bowl and a glass and small piece of thin bent copper pipe. She pushed the glass-mouth down-into the water. "It still holds air. Now watch how the water pressure pushes at it. The air cannot escape, but water now fills the bottom half of the glass." She handed the J-shaped tube to Olof. "Now, put your finger over this end, and the other end into the bottom of the glass."

  "I have it!" he said, delightedly. "We sit inside the glass and breathe through the tube!"

  Ginny shook her head. "It won't work. Trust me, please. I will show what would happen."

  He did as he was told. "Now take your finger off. The air will come out. And if you tried your way, it would even suck the air out of your lungs. Even if you pumped air down… you need a good non-return valve to stop that happening."

  "What is a non-return valve?"

  Ginny explained. And then explained again. The Lennartson brothers were sharp, but she did have a few centuries to bridge. "But there one simple solution. Air always rises in water. If you can pass me that other tube over there, Per." The tube had a wire framework soldered to its end-a framework that held the end of the pipe below the glass. "Now, Olof. You blow down that pipe. We will have a pump on the surface that does that. Air bubbles up into the glass. Air comes out under the bottom lip. But unless the glass turns over, there is always air trapped inside for the diver to breathe. The diver inside the bell uses oxygen-but new air is constantly pumped down from the surface."

  It took some more explaining and repetition, but they had it eventually. They were, in their way, shrewd farm boys, used to contriving when there was no money to buy. "Now all we need is strong enough and big enough glass-with very heavy bottom edges. We do not wish it to turn upside down," said Lars.

  "It doesn't have to be glass. Metal or even a barrel with many iron hoops will do. Do better, actually."

  Ginny nodded. "Now we will have to persuade Mazalet to do it this way. He had some very strange ideas. Another thing. It will be cold and dark down there. You're going to get wet. You need wetsuits or something that will keep water in to get warm."

  "Wool. Wool to the skin," said Olof, whose German was improving as fast as Ginny's Swedish. "Mama always said that."

  "Wool, and tight-weave linen over it. With tight cuffs, collars and ankles. Maybe even belts to keep them tight. It will still be cold and miserable."

  "It is the job, ja," said Lars. "We Delsbo boys are not afraid of a little cold. Besides they can haul us up quickly to get warm."

  "NO. Um. Look, believe me on this… Decompression will kill you. You will have to come up slowly. I've got decompression tables."

  "She knows what she's talking about, boys," said Per, calmly. "But we can take some dry clothes. The divers can get dry and have a drink when they come out of the water, even if they are in a big barrel. Look at the glass.
There is still some room to sit above the water level."

  Ginny nodded again. "You will have to take some kind of lantern down there. As long as air keeps coming from the surface, you'll be fine. Look, Mazalet was full of wild ideas about making up-time devices to dive with. I spent a lot of time explaining that the diving bell was simple, relatively easy to make and did not require some kind of non-return valve, because air is lighter than water."

  Per held up the glass. "Will this work?" he asked. "The secret is that the air-pipe from the surface must bubble into the water right? Otherwise this, how do say, pressure, will push the air out of the bell. So we attach the pipe to the bottom of the bell, but we drill little holes, here-about one third of the way up from the lip. The water will always go as high as the holes, because the air is only trapped in the upper two thirds of the bell. The bubbling-in air comes in at the bottom. The trapped air can never meet."

  Ginny smiled. He was the quickest of the four brothers. "Yes. And you can pump air to a diver with a helmet down a pipe-so long as the air is pumped from the air that is trapped inside the bell, and the diver is working at nearly the same depth. But to be safe if the bell is at ten fathoms, the diver probably should not go more than say another two fathoms to twelve fathoms. So we could pump air to a diver from the surface, but only if he is not more than two fathoms down."

  "And what is the use of that?" asked Lars. "We can swim from the surface to two fathoms."

  "But if we are at twenty fathoms, we can go to twenty-two-provided the pumping is done from inside the bell," said Olof thoughtfully. "The air is thick in the bell from the heaviness of the water. So the water cannot push it so easily."

  It wasn't perhaps a text-book explanation, but he did have some of the idea of pressure, which considering his background was amazing. "Normally, the deeper the diver goes the more risk that the pressure, that heaviness, pushing back air-even the air in his lungs-up the hose to the surface. With the system we are using if the pump fails, only the air inside the hose will flow back because the canvas hose will collapse. And there is no air connection to air in his lungs or the bell. If it sucks anything it will suck water. We'll test the pumps for their ability to push air to various depths, but I have some plans for a simple double cylinder rotary one that ought to work."