Beachhead
Debris flew through the air. Ducking had become reflex: when you heard the
crump! of explosives, you took cover with your head down, even back on the ship ten meters off shore. Kevin MacNeil, Knight-Major of Her Majesty’s Dragoons, Earl Dennishire, Bride’s Spokesman for a Queen in pursuit of a Consort, was better at it than was Sir Percival Sidmuth; a decade of responding to explosions from ceremonial revolver loads to royal field cannon had given him superior reflexes.
“I withdraw my former charge, my lord”, Percival declared as they huddled together against a large and battered tree, waiting for flying debris to come to rest.
“Which would that be?” MacNeil asked, never on for formality, especially in the field.
“When I told Her Majesty she was foolish sending you. I dare say I would never have learned to duck and cover half so well without you. Willingly would I shed blood for the kingdom, yet rather it not be in drips and driblets.” Kevin recalled that day; none of the lords involved had considered it a good idea to send the Queen-Bride’s Spokesman on an expedition to build a fortress, His Queen’s response would have made her father proud:
“If the Aliens come calling, who else have I who has stood and fought them? If the nomads return, who else have I who has spoken with them? Yet more, where better to put my Spokesman that beyond the prying eyes of the capital? For I remind you, gentlemen, that the unsettling of the matter of my marriage would be the unsettling of the realm”, she’d said, pure unflinching monarch through and through. And that had ended the matter; images of blood and sack had rolled through Kevin’s mind, from the stories every lord’s child and every Navy officer learned, from Xenephon’s
Anabasis to
The Fall of Troy to
The Rape of the Sabine Women, parallel or identical images rolling through the other minds as well – and for all that they shared little else, the nobility of Lost Britain shared one thing, engrained deeply (as deeply as the need to shit, Kevin’s uncle had once asserted): the genetic heritage of the Kingdom was to be preserved, and that meant there could be no civil war. Lesser men would have risked it, indeed had in days not so long past, but no such men were involved by Elizabeth in her endeavors. In that, her maneuver had already paid off: a near dozen ne’er-do-wells and vain vacant-skulled peacocks had been left to strut outside the real business of the kingdom, cut off and their feet cut from beneath them, as their queen parlayed the small advantages she’d gained into larger ones.
“I have on occasion shed some bits that way”, Kevin conceded, standing and brushing himself off. “It is to be preferred to the other”, he added as he strode off toward the source of the sound and debris. Percival stood staring after him the several seconds he took to work through the meaning. Then he sprinted to catch up.
“My lord, I meant no offense!” he cried, remembering in good time to not grab MacNeil’s shoulder. “I know you lost men here–“
The Earl shook his head and grabbed at Sidmuth’s sleeve. “I lost men north of here. Hold no fear; I heard no offense.” With the back of three fingers of his left hand he reached and felt the other lord’s neck. “Did you skip your fruit this morn?”
Lord Sidmuth brushed the hand away. “You pry too much. This is–“
Kevin didn’t let him continue. He caught the hand that had brushed his away. “This is my duty! The Queen sent me as her personal representative to see that the progress goes well. The progress
cannot go well if the lord given charge is not thinking well. When you skip your fruit at breakfast, it muddles your thoughts. Now I ask as Her Royal Majesty’s personally chosen representative: did you skip your fruit this morn?”
The chastised lord tried to compose himself; that he was coming to like MacNeil would make no difference if a personal representative of the Crown decided he was not best for the venture. “In truth, I do not recall. Things were somewhat frantic, as I am sure you remember.” Kevin did, and frantic was an understatement for what had struck the camp when a rare winter storm of blown dust and snow was mistaken for a very large band of possible hostile intruders headed for the camp. He chuckled.
“I can’t disagree there. I fact I’m sure I remember I didn’t finish my mug of spiced char. I’ll send a boy for some of each and we can replenish ourselves while we decide if the workers are blasting well enough or ought to be blasted.” At that last, and the twinkle in Kevin’s eye, Sidmuth relaxed and nodded. Together they finished making their way up the gradual slope to the massive trench being cut across the rocky narrow isthmus they and the expedition’s senior Navy captain had chosen. It was hardly perfect, especially in Lord Sidmuth’s estimation, but it had the great virtue that Senior Chief Engineer (Fortifications) Granger of Her Majesty’s Own (Second Battalion, attached) had declared he could have a basic defensive outer bulwark across it in a month – in the cold as it was.
For the first few days Major MacNeil had begun to doubt that confidence, but Jeffrays Granger – with a line-rank equivalent of under-major – hadn’t shown the slightest bit of dismay. They’d scrambled over the terrain the first day in a rapid manner that reminded the Major of Dragoons of an infantry advance, line staggered covering. That had ended at a seam across the small peninsula, a sort of ravine filled with crumbled and jumbled shattered rock of different types, dominated with something rough and gritty MacNeil could hold in a hand and crush, but which the S.C.E., as they’d abbreviated in short order, referred to as “tough” – rather, “tuff”, he’d corrected, spelling it when MacNeil and Sidmuth both got it wrong in conversation with a junior officer.
“Tee - yoo - eff - eff”, he’d set it out. “Baked rather together, frequently easily weathered. This comes from volcanoes. For us it’s a wonderful thing – crumbles, you see.” So they’d spent another three days scrambling along that seam, what S.C.E. Granger said was a rift, though he later retreated from that, changing his mind to refer to it as a fault. “The two sides match, you see, but the rock in the middle is different. So those slipped apart someways, and this other filled in.”
“And now”, he was saying as the two members of the nobility marched up together, as though continuing from his statement of two days before, “we blast it all out.” The crew he addressed nodded, and scurried off to undertake engineer tasks neither of the lords cared about nor was likely to be able to be interested in.
“We’ve been blasting it out”, Sidmuth complained, rubbing his left shoulder blade where a small sheet of rock had struck, knocking him flat, the day before. MacNeil waved a messenger boy and sent him off as promised.
Granger waggled a finger. “Just the preparations, just the preparations. As in drilling holes in a board afore driving pegs, is what we’ve been making.” Kevin MacNeil kept from laughing only because he knew that when the chief engineer’s speech became eccentric, the mind behind was busy with something important.
“And now you put pegs in these holes?” Sir Percival asked, doubt coloring his tone. “Quite large pegs, they’d be.”
The engineer shook his head once and blinked. “Ah – humorous, I see. Well, I say we shall put pegs in these holes, but better to call them pipes, and fuse to attach to them. When it’s ready, we’ll have a bit of a show, we will, that we will.” The mind that had attended to them briefly went off again.
Kevin considered what he’d heard, made a decent guess what it meant. When the messenger boy came a minute and a half later with bread, fruit, and char – a dark drink truly loved by those whose hearts belonged above the deck of a ship – the Knight-Major had orders. “My compliments to Captain O’Rourke, and would he please sound ‘Return to Ship’ an hour before lunch.”
“Sir, it’s closer than that now.”
Kevin looked up. Through the haze he couldn’t tell where the sun was, just that a large portion of the ever-threatening, rarely-delivering clouds glowed brighter than the rest. For a moment he considered being a touch mean, but negated the notion. “Well, then”, he said, to no one in particular though both boy and fellow lord had learned the statement frequently meant Lord MacNeil’s thoughts had run aground and he was backing to set course again. “Half an hour after lunch”, he corrected, with a glance at Granger, who nodded agreement. “Return to Ship, easy pace.”
Only forty minutes after lunch, by the Engineer’s piece, and six seconds short of that by the ship’s clock, with everyone well away from the rift, the last workers climbed out of the holes, all in dusty reddish-brown turning the color of dried blood as tiny snowflakes drifted to land and melt on skin and clothing. “All out, sir.” The leftenant, unusual in being not merely of the same rank in both Royal Engineers and Royal Marines, was female. Bucking for Amazon, MacNeil had thought when first introduced, but he’d found himself quite seriously wrong; young Ekaterina Headhyr Agnes Korwyndd enjoyed the company of other women, a more mythic than real aspect of the Amazons, but she had no desire to tie herself to the narrow task to which those women were devoted; her dreams were of a wider world. In the previous two days, it seemed she’d found her place: she could talk weapons with the Marines, tracking with the scouts, navigation with the officers, and engineering with the Royal Engineers, of course. She’d scored three to MacNeil’s seven in ‘take it or lose it’ shooting the morning after they’d landed, but the day before, in the evening, it had been a draw – and sharpshooting wasn’t the only skill she’d been improving; soon she’d not only fit in, but would be quite worthy of commanding the post.
“Sound ‘Clear All’, corp”, Engineer Granger commanded softly. The trumpet corporal rode a chair; his body below the waist mangled by an excavation accident six years earlier. The Engineers, as was true of all Her Majesty’s Services, took care of their own, so he’d gotten the best care available outside the Palace, received training in side disciplines – such as accounting, stress of materials, and site management – and got assigned to this expedition working in all three. He lifted the brass horn to his lips and blew a mildly complex series of notes, waited thirty seconds, and repeated the call. After another minute, he blew again, and the same time later once more. It was nearly a formality, but one which the engineering corps took quite seriously; it only took one mistake, their saying went, to go from walking tall to filling a hole.
One by one, runners came jogging up from the different work sections. “All clear, all accounted”, each stated. When the last had reported thus, Leftenant Korwyndd had another Declaration for Granger. “All out and accounted for”, she reported. MacNeil glanced toward the shore, where all traces of the Marines’ camp had vanished and H.M.S. Reginald was warping out to deeper water. Save for a few with himself and Lord Sidmuth, plus Granger’s absolute minimum blasting crew, the entire expedition was now not merely at a distance, but off the peninsula entirely.
The experienced engineer spoke quietly, just a trace of excitement in his voice; he’d told the two lords it wasn’t often a man oversaw a charge as great as this would be. “Sound the count.” The British used a countdown, but since for the military, nearly any moment could bring a call to action, and voices weren’t always heard, the countdown was done musically: the trumpeter started on a high note and descended, snapping out each new note clearly and brilliantly. When the final note sounded, actually an octave leap up, Granger dropped the hand he’d been holding high, sweeping a bright orange flag down. Before the flag hit the ground, everyone in sight was down flat, a precaution always taken even without so many explosives at once.
CRUMP. The ground under MacNeil shuddered as a spout of dust rolled along the line of holes. “Wait for it, lads!” he heard Granger yell, as the trumpeter sounded again, dropping not by single steps in the scale but jumping down the scale half an octave at a time. That was a warning: any moment now!
So keep your ass low and your head lower, the Major of Dragoons whispered wryly, hugging himself to the earth. A chuckle from his left where Sidmuth had dropped informed him he wasn’t the only one whose Serjent of Marines had screamed that at his trainees in live-fire exercises. Revelation struck MacNeil; all at once he believed he knew why Percival Sidmuth was hesitant about many things yet totally driven in life: that little matter of morning fruit for an outstanding knight of a noted family had meant he could never be an officer.
Later he didn’t even remember the words he’d started to say to Lord Percival. The noisy shudder had merely been the warm-up for this; the main event made the earth lurch. An amount of blasting powder equivalent to what a ship of the line would have spent in a trio of broadsides had served only to loosen the contents of the fault gap, and had rolled from end to end. Now came an explosion ripping along that rift so rapidly no one who hadn’t known to watch for it would have been likely to tell it wasn’t a single event. A wave ripped out from the shore where solid rock met water. And as Kevin waited for the trumpeter to signal safety so they could all get up, while he winced at every pebble that hit his back.
You wanted to be close, MacNeil, he chided himself. Curiosity screamed at him to look; the instinct of preservation cried for worm genes, to burrow into the soil; intelligence balanced urges and bade him wait for word from those who knew what they were doing.
Kevin Aidan Cathal MacNeil, he could hear his nurse’s voice in memory as the experienced Dragoon who could never pass up at least looking into the face of a risk raised his head for a peek,
are you seeking to grant your mother an early grave? So he was the only one who saw Granger rise to one knee, not at all the unflappable, cheery, composed officer who’d directed almost their every move for the better part of a week. The look of shock and uncertainty on the face of the pick of royal senior chief engineers (Fortifications) of Her Majesty’s forces frightened Her Majesty’s chosen representative nearly as much as composing his forces to receive that last rush of Aliens. “What’s gone wrong?” he called, though the sounded of settling and even still-falling debris drown out his words.
Granger slapped the ground. If he’d dropped flat, Kevin would have taken it as a warning to get low. But the engineer had his head tipped, listening, and that was a different clue.
“It rumbles!” Sidmuth was looking as well, though just with head turned, not raised. Kevin nodded, his attention on the man who, if any did, understood what was happening. Granger was getting to his feet, grabbing and leaning on a staff he certainly didn’t need. If he thought walking was permissible....
“Let’s to him!” MacNeil rolled to his feet and nearly lifted Sidmuth bodily. “Grab one of those measuring poles”, he added, his brain realizing where Granger had found a staff so ready at hand. He pointed at the engineer. “If he think he wants something to lean on, I certainly think I should!”
“Holy Savior Jesus Christ and His Ever-Lovin’ Mother!” Granger didn’t whisper in awe; he yelled in utter disbelief. “Damnation to demons, but I’m a fool – I kicked a ball from the lower edge!” The image fit what MacNeil’s eyes were trying to put in perspective and his mind didn’t want to believe: cannon balls were often stacked in pyramids, where the weak point was the bottom edge; dislodge a ball from there, and the whole heap could come down, shifting and rolling unstoppably until mass had found new rest. It was used as a curse in various forms – “What’re ye doin’, kickin’ the balls on the low edge?” was a rebuke Kevin had heard over and again growing up, from a fiercely loyal and burningly proper old family retainer.
“Corner ball, at that”, Sidmuth breathed. The ground under them rumbled again; MacNeil didn’t object to the hand that grabbed his left biceps. “God our Preserver! Under-major, is that our doing?” A half kilometer west, perhaps nearer six hundred meters, a line of earth, jumbled hummocks and twisted ridges, was lurching south, and into the sea. Kevin thought it would be majestic if it would stop catching and then lurching. His jaw literally dropped at the sight of the southernmost end, covered in a thick stand of woods, fell away from the rest and vanish into the waves.
Waves! his mind yelled, a warning, while his ears were hearing Lord Sidmuth cry, “The ships!”
MacNeil wasn’t worried about Angus; he doubted the man would lose his head, but would guide his command safely if the earth opened up and the sea carried them down to Hell.
And calmly ready the men to open fire on the Devil himself, too, he had no doubt. His concerns about the three warships with them disappeared even while he was turning; they were turning, too, warned by alert watchers in the crow’s nest, aided by probably half each ship’s crew already in the rigging, to watch. The captains already had their vessels turning, getting ready to face the inevitable waves: the Navy was not unfamiliar with large masses dropping suddenly into the sea, nor the side effects.
But the engineers hadn’t come in warships, or even proper service vessels like the
Reginald. Though their transport was closer in design to merchant haulers than to barges, their ability to maneuver, to do anything quickly, was minimal. Worse, to a newly minted Knight-Major of Dragoons, was that their crews weren’t accustomed to responding to events without warning.
He had to tear his eyes from the incredible sight of a huge chunk of land marching drunkenly into the sea. What he grasped as he watched the ships react wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Signals were flying from vessel to vessel, senior captain Elwood “The Hammer” Hamner, Lord Howe, demanding action. The flagship turned to face what was coming, but the
Eagle And, the expedition’s fast and nimble “errand boat”, was advancing toward the cataclysm, putting on sail, heeling over....
“What’s that foo – no, Lord Howe wouldn’t ‘bide a fool”, Jeffrays Ganger thought out loud. “Saints above, that’s bold!” he yelled as he figured it out, a moment before MacNeil. Sidmuth looked at them both blankly.
“His line is almost going to rip
Reginald’s bowsprit off”, Kevin explained, amazed at how calm he was. “He’ll come close enough for men to jump across. Come over just a touch, and he does the same with the
Tudor. They’ll lose some, but he’s going to drop maybe enough men onto the
Savery and the
Connaughton to make the difference.”
“But then what’s he do?” Sidmuth yelped the last word as the ground beneath them lurched yet again.
“He’ll ride the beastie risin’ outa the sea”, Granger answered, voice full of admiration. Both lords winced at the indirect reference to the visions of The Apocalypse penned by Saint John on another world. “And if God grants no greater bumps than that last, I’m believing he’ll stay in the saddle.”
It went as Kevin and Jeffrays had predicted, men jumping, some missing. With more time to prepare, the Tudor had a freight net of men ready to swing over; screams told of some who wouldn’t be working, after the landing, but the uninjured organized themselves quickly. When Commander Shaunessey dropped sail and let the
Eagle And coast alongside the
Savery, the transfer was orderly, with no screaming to tell of injuries; when he turned, half-sail on, to pass the
Connaughton, there was no sign at all of the desperate urgency of the moment.
“That’s more men that he can afford”, Kevin McNeil muttered. But sails were stretching and billowing out, the Eagle And was turning back to face the first truly massive wave.
“And you’re a ship’s captain and I a major of dragoons”, commented Percival Sidmuth, the biggest bit of humor either of those standing with him had ever heard from him. “Shaunessey loves that ship more than his own dear mother – he’ll not be making risks.” He considered as the ground lurched again. “Not great ones, anyway.”
Granger looked worried at that lurch, but things got quiet then. What looked like a column of hills gliding along kept slipping smoothly into the water. The
Eagle And came under full sail, and more – “Studdings and gaffs”, MacNeil marveled. “By the Maker, he’s throwing on
deck sails!”
“Charging down its throat”, Granger declared in awe and admiration as white cloth continued to spring out in every place the Royal Navy had ever imagined – even some ridiculous ones.
“The man’s trying to fly, I think.” Ekaternia Korwyndd had arrived and been standing with them since the final transfer of men between ships. “Ram-sails are something midshipmen joke about.” But Captain Shaugnessey wasn’t joking; ramrods emerged from every other gun port, sailcoth strung. Kevin laughed in spite of himself; the Marine leftenant was right.
“Like a patch of fog that won’t go away”, he quipped, earning a look from the female warrior that sent fire through him.
“He’ll – down!” Engineer Granger yelled, throwing himself flat. Half a kilometer away the last bit of ground slipping to the sea had popped free and shot out whatever slot it was riding. Even Korwyndd cried out as the ground jerked away from them, then came back up to slap them flat.
“Last one, God willing”, the engineer breathed, getting back to his knees. But his voice was full of sorrow, and they all understood why: that was going to make a wave no ship could ride. Their eyes went back to the
Eagle And. Nothing looked different, but they all knew the captain’s eyes were ahead, estimating the wave that last lurch would bring. The ship turned, cresting a second huge wave, then turned even tighter as it rode down the wave’s back.
“Gaining more wind”, Korwyndd observed. “He’ll sail up the face.”
“Aye, and right into the cliffs”, Sidmuth said bitterly, angry at a fate that made a man’s best hope a route to certain doom.
“He’ll never make the cliff”, Granger judged softly. “Not without wings.”
Those sails that had made the leftenant joke the ship was trying to fly were changing. Cursing himself, MacNeil grabbed finally for his eyeglass. When he got the ship into focus, he yelped. “He’s dumping cannon! By God, he means to ride it out!” While he watched, the
Eagle And lurched.
“He’s climbing. Those ram sails....” Sidmutch chewed on his lower lip. The comment explained the lurch.
“Dear Savior, he just ran the cannon on out, and dumped them sail and all”, Kevin concluded in awe. “No time to pull in sail, he dumps the whole thing.”
Granger chuckled. “He’s ahead of you, my lord. He knew he’d want to shed those wings suddenly, so he had the guns blocked, then unchained. What’s he done on this side?”
“Cannon right up the line, all the ports without ram sails. His purser....” The Earl whistled, imagining the expensive equipment being dumped over the side.
“His purser may yet live to count again, Kevin”, whispered Percival Sidmuth. “There go the rest!” It didn’t take a telescope to see the ram sails disappear into a set of simultaneous splashes along the starboard length of the ship. Then for a time there was nothing else to say; the wave grew, the ship climbed. Closer, and closer, splashes as it went marking the effort to get ever lighter.
The crest was still twice as high above the crow’s nest as the mainmast was tall when it broke. Froth measured in tons broke, falling toward the ship and burying it. Not wanting to ruin the hope by speaking it, MacNeil said nothing about the fact that barely a handful remained on deck, that all hatches and ports were shut tight. He said nothing as Sidmuth cried out, “It’s ripped his masts off!”, because what he saw was not masts ripped off, but masts already cut loose, jettisoned in a moment almost too late. Nor did he say anything when Leftenant Korwyndd whispered ancient words, ‘
Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave...”; he just touched her arm and said softly, “Wait.”
Less than a minute later her indignation turned to wonder, turned to joy, and she launched herself into the air high than MacNeil had thought a human being could go. “There is a God in Heaven, and He has come to earth!” Granger swore, slamming a mighty fist into open palm, as Sidmuth burst into sobs of relief. As the wave rolled on, a large object that could only be the Eagle And lurched to the surface, rolled, tipped, crashed back down, righted itself, rotated, and began a slide down the back of the wave. Any of them could have predicted disaster then, but they waited; Shaugnessey had ridden the edge this far, and none were willing to bet against him now.
And sure enough, MacNeil saw through his telescope, there was a man, and another, and another, climbing up to the wheel, taking the ship in hand. There was no wind to drive her, but if they could sail up a cliff of water, they could sail down its back.
“There!” Kevin MacNeil was too tired to remember the name of the scout who called out the first sighting. A firm hand – a female hand – shook him to alertness. “My lord”, the leftenant called Ekaterina called softly, “we’ve found them.” So he looked, and blinked, but there ahead of them, on a shingle beach where the day before had been a creekbed, sat the shell of a ship of Her Majesty’s Navy, dry and a bit too high to be easily floated again, but whole. On the beach around three fires sat her men, and women, many wounded. Kevin raised his eyes back to the ship, those eyes again irritated at all that looked so wrong about the Eagle And’s lines now. At the broken foremost end of the bow stood a solitary figure, a captain unwilling to leave his ship.
The climb wasn’t easy, the ship's hull shorn of rigging and gear, but MacNeil made it. Captain Shaugnessey stood by a still form wrapped in a blanket; Kevin guessed there hadn’t been any sailcoth left to wrap the dead. Fumbling, he came up with, “Her Majesty will honor you for this.” Shaugnessey merely nodded, watching over his men, his eyes returning to the still form by his feet.
“Can Her Majesty....” The Royal Navy captain’s reserved cracked. “Major, please leave. The wave was breaking, the hatch above not tight. He went to secure it, and likely saved us all. But the impact... he fell, and his neck broke.” Knowing MacNeil’s reputation, he knew he wouldn’t get his solitude back until he answered the unspoken question.
“My lord, this was my son. I mean to burn the ship around him. Please go.”
Kevin pinned him with his best command look. “Captain, as Her Majesty’s personal representative, I forbid you to burn Her Majesty’s ship. If you wish a funeral barge, Engineer Granger has noted there are far more trees along the line of the new wall location than he can possibly use. We can build a fair replica of the
Eagle And, or of the
Victory, or the
Indomitable, if you wish, but you will
not burn Her Majesty’s ship without permission –
her permission.
“For the moment, stay. There’s a certain young woman, not quite an Amazon, who I’m sure will stand in honor if you’ll permit. And Lord Howe has on board the dozen Amazons I’m due as a personal representative; I’ll send them and your son will have an unbroken watch of honor.” He waited.
“Send her”, the words came finally. “My crew need me, do they not?” Kevin nodded. A great sigh preceded the next words. “Then I shall come.” There was a moment of anguish betrayed by shifting feet. “My lord Earl, I have no other sons.”
Kevin ached; he had none at all, but to have, and to lose? Then he remembered that this was the Shaugnessey who’d married “under the blade”, a forced marriage which was nevertheless for love, just before achieving knighthood, which was therefore never bestowed – and a marriage which produced two sons, both killed in a riot at just over a dozen years of age.
“What was his name?” The question felt foolish before he finished it.
A half smile cracked the captain’s face. “She idolized your father, did you know that? I mean my second wife. So she named her son what your father named his.” He looked down at his feet. “Here lies Kevin Aidan Cathal Shaugnessey.” The gaze of a broken man returned to Kevin’s face. “Did you not share his name, I would have shot you for not going as I bid.” From beneath the officer’s sea cloak, a revolver emerged, tossed to the deck.
Kevin wished for something he could do. He thought of Elizabeth, of Prime Minister Logan... and smiled, on the inside, from two memories connected to the Prime Minister, and a small distant hope. “Your first sons, their deaths weren’t just accidents, were they? I cannot bring back Kevin Aidan, but I may be able to bring your sons’ killers to meet their Maker. I make no promise, but whatever Her Majesty does to honor you and this son, I will bend what resources I can to track down a set of murderers.”
Shaugnessey misunderstood. “You would use the office of Bride’s Spokesman....?”
Kevin smiled grimly. “I didn’t mean that, but as I speak for the Queen – I will ask her if I might, ah, ask some ‘extraordinary questions’. I also have certain resources of my own.”
The captain searched the knight-major’s face. Satisfied, he sighed. “Don’t dishonor them by your methods. But I welcome your generosity. And now, if I may....?”
“I’ll leave you alone. Leftenant Korwyndd shall attend you.”
“Tell me again why we’re throwing away the plan?” asked Lord Sidmuth the next morning.
Granger sighed. “This new finger cove, Shaugnessey’s Harbor, cuts the peninsula nicely. Here, now, from water to water, it’s only a bit longer than at the first site. But when we wall this, we’ll be having over thrice the land behind! So we move here.”
Lord MacNeil, Earl Dennishire sat up, taking the cold cloth off his forehead. “Percival, we’ll do it his way. We’ve got two ships in bad enough shape we have a couple of hundred men who could use some work. Jeffrays says it’ll only take fifteen days longer to do it here, and the advantage is great.”
Their subdued, quiet guest spoke up. “My lords, my son paid for this soil. So put it here, Her Majesty’s beachhead.”
<< image coming later >>
