“King George the Third is dead, have you heard?”
The cathedral of Stockholm was vast, but not a whisper escaped to bother the other guests.
”What are you talking about? Don’t risk my immortal soul by distracting me.”
The man in the black suit smiled at his uniformed friend to take the sting out of his words.
His dress sword clanged against the metal-shod pews as the officer leant to whisper again.
”The leader of the English rebels. He died on the island of Mannahatta. He had himself eaten by eagles, with a painted face! I read it, it’s true!”
They both dropped to their knees as the arch-bishop’s sermon rose to its climax. A cold breeze wrapped around them and the gas lamps overheard flickered. It was a solemn moment.
”Will the Queen be sending you to invade now, then, Jockey?”
Head bent in prayer, Joackim briefly wagged his long head in refusal.
The glass and steel arch over the cathedral reflected rainbows from the bright blue sky onto the ancient stone flags. Shifting slightly on his frozen knees the man in the black suit looked around to find the Nobel family pews and make sure the patriarch was there today.
Joackim opened his eyes and looked up as the final strains of the hymn were fading into the walls. The arch-bishop and her assistants were leaving the building already.
He took out his pocket-watch and sat it in the telephonetic holder in the aisle. He pushed a brass button to pop out the screen and read his daily orders. Clicking it out of the little dock and stuffing it back into his coat he strode off to the exit, nodding politely to the members of the royal navy who were on guard along the aisle this Sunday.
He found his friend deep in conversation with a large man with piercing eyes and an obstinate bearded jaw.
”There’s bound to be an expedition. And they will want powder for their guns.” The sleeves of the black suit were pushed up as though the man was about to spit on his hands and roll a keg of lager into a pub basement. He waved some notepaper in the bearded man’s face.
”Fifteen million thalers, that’s the difference, if we move fast!”
The older man’s eyes dimmed and he looked at the floor. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his giant overcoat.
”Sometimes, my lord of Görtz. Sometimes I think there is more to life than thalers… I will have my sons ready to take your order, of course. Please send us your details on the telephonic.” He saluted with his single functioning hand and turned away.
Joackim clapped his hand on the young lord’s shoulder.
”I checked, you know. There’s no mobilisation ordered. Don’t waste your money.”
Von Görtz spun on his heel, the pink in his cheeks fading as he dropped his hands.
”Not our mobilisation, you oaf. The British. They will want to show the Americans who is boss. They’ll go and fire some bombs at the rebel colonies on the East Coast. It means their inventory will be depleted several weeks ahead of schedule, and that means the entire order calendar moves forward. Anyway.”
They fell in step and wandered through the streets of the city between the bridges. Taking a steam elevator they rose to the 24th floor of the Caroline Tower. The arch of glass and steel glittered beneath them, amid the palaces of the Swedish nobility, as they sat on the heated balcony, pushed a tiny coin into the serving contraption and took a glass of coffee each from the chiller.
”I can see you calculating the cost of each sip, and I can tell you right away that no, I have no idea how the war against the Persians is going. Last I heard the Russian ships were doing well, so I don’t understand why the price of this stuff is still going up.”
”Actually it’s more about the Greek revolution. The merchants of Egypt are nervous, so they are keeping their ships south of Crete, which means less trade with...the places coffee comes from.”
Joackim stretched out his long legs. He glanced around the long balcony and surreptitiously pushed one boot off with the other. He stretched his toes out in the woollen sock, before bending to tug on the other boot.
His friend wrinkled his nose and reached for the table’s newspaper dispenser. Near the back were the harness racing results. The V55 races had not turned out in his favour.
”Blast it to hell... my finger.” Joackim pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped it around his hand. He kicked his boots to one side and the spurs rang against the railings.
”Immortal. Soul”, murmured his friend as he folded the newspaper and threw it in the disposal chute.
Joackim’s watch chirped and he slapped a hand over his coat to muffle the sound.
”Not today, your highness.”
”Tell me more about the painted king, Jockey.” He leant to take another coffee from the cold box.
”Well, he’s dead…”
The Hanoverian Pretender, Wunita Takachsin, had died in his long-house on Mannahatta Island as the leader of the Confederation of States in the year of our Lord 1857. He spoke Lenape better than he spoke English, but only spoke German in his family home and with his beloved Hessians. It was a difficult time to be a Protestant European if you didn’t accept the leadership of the Swedish Commonwealth. The Confederation of States had originally broken away from the English crown in 1714, when the Stuart kings were restored to their throne. Of course, James III and Charles III had converted to the Anglican faith, but it was an open secret that they had only acceded to the throne because of the backing of the French Empire. When the Glorious Restoration swept through the three kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland the lords who knew which way the wind was blowing smartly changed sides again. The aged John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, handed the sceptre of office to his old enemy James, and withdrew discreetly to his palace in Oxfordshire.
The Protestant dissenters of England and the Presbyterians of Scotland and Ulster were not so easily convinced as the leaders of the Lords and Commons, however. There was still simmering conflicts in the streets of Edinburgh, belfast and Glasgow and tartan-bearing youths paraded through the Protestant quarters of the towns singing chants for King Charlie who had crushed the rebellions of the 1720s. The Puritans who had fled to the Americas were even less happy and promptly declared their independence in defence of the Bill of Rights of 1688. The Hanoverian pretenders soon arrived in the colonies of New York to lead the rebellion, and defeated the local loyalist forces with an alliance of native Americans, patriotic militia and German protestant mercenaries. Not all came from Germany for money, though. Many were refugees who refused to serve the Swedish Commonwealth.
The heaven-scraper that officer Joackim and his merchant friend von Görtz sat in had been founded to celebrate the centenary of the Commonwealth, in 1810. Its raised finger in the centre of imperial Stockholm showed the power of Swedish science and engineering. From its many floors cables hummed their way across the city in a web of glittering heavy-stone, supported by thin pillars of steel, hardened Indian-fashion by submersion in zinc. Accepting and using a range of methods was indeed the foundation of Swedish power, even if it had been born of a bloody fanatical conquest over a hundred years ago.
Sitting in his great palace of Blenheim surrounded by other grandees who had fallen out of favour John Churchill used to talk about that fateful meeting in the town of Altranstädt, when he had met the young Swedish King and failed to convince him.
”Fate conspired against us – and by fate I mean the French”, he remarked to general laughter.
The French diplomat François-Marie Arouet was later to write several (anonymous) volumes of analysis about how the Catholic kingdom of France, working with the Muslim Caliphate of the Ottomans had been able to take advantage of the effects of the Swedish onslaught in the name of the Protestant faith. In 1707 Karl the Twelfth and his highly-mobile veteran army had decided to overturn the authority of the Pope in the German territories, refusing to conclude a treaty with the Holy Emperor Joseph. Driving south to threaten Vienna the Swedes had defeated several imperial armies and linked up with Hungarian rebels, taking the old Ottoman fortress of Buda in 1708. The German military genius Prince Eugene of Savoy was recalled from campaigns against the French to meet the Swedish deluge, and laid siege to Buda soon afterwards. François-Marie Arouet was to later write that the religious hatred between Catholics and Protestants was clearly the issue that decided the war in the imperial lands. Muslim tolerance of the protestant faith in Hungary meant the Swedish king had no quarrel with the Ottomans. In a lighting raid he used the hospitality of the Turkish forts to swing behind the imperial forces and attack the armies of Prince Eugene in a night-time assault.
François-Marie Arouet, writing in the 1730s, under the pen-name Voltaire, was to remark that in death the king of Sweden assumed a presence many times larger than in life. The Swedish cavalry carried their assault on the Holy Roman Imperial lines, but were decimated by the artillery fire of the well-placed batteries. Prince Eugene retired in good order towards Vienna with most of his men. Lying dead on the field King Karl seemed to have failed in his belief that he was protected by heaven. Amidst the religious rebellion of Hungary, however, his death assumed the status of martyrdom. Swelled by forces from all the Protestant lands the Swedish-led army pursued the Imperial forces carrying the funeral bier of King Karl like the relics of a martyred saint. An usually Catholic practice for a Lutheran force, remarked François-Marie Arouet wryly. And although Karl the Twelfth was indeed named a saint by several different churches years later, it was the popular rebellion of the Hungarians and his weeping soldiers that had really raised the fallen king to that status immediately.
Joackim had read all about this campaign at the Karlberg academy, of course. A brilliant example of offensive warfare, barely stopping to sleep. The campaign had shocked all of Europe, and beyond. For von Görtz it was the political implications that mattered most to him. Not least because one of his ancestors had played a key role. In the service of the duchy of Holstein-Gottorp the elder von Görtz had been there in Saxony in 1707 when the fateful decision to turn west, not east, had been taken by the Swedish government. In fact there was a persistent conspiracy theory that it was Baron Georg Heinrich Görtz himself who was responsible for the young king’s reckless decision to oppose the might of the Empire, rather than going for an easy win against the backward and weak kingdom of Russia. In any case, the tiny principality south of Denmark proved key to how the Swedish campaign re-drew the map of Europe. Georg Heinrich Görtz cared not one whit for the fate of Russia or the eastern Swedish holdings. He was swift to advise giving up any thoughts of expanding to the east. Instead he needed a Swedish power centred on the middle of Germany, to make sure that his master of Holstein-Gottorp would not be swallowed up by bigger neighbours to the north or south. Following the hallowed corpse of King Karl von Görtz the elder made sure to steer the enraged armies through the German lands - and to make alliances as they went. When the rampage was spent and the emperor had been forced to give up Prince Eugene for execution, the mixed force of Swedes, Finns, Hungarians and German protestants stood amid the rubble of the Holy Roman Empire and started to build a new Europe.
Voltaire had himself sat there, incognito, in the parlour of Blenheim Palace and heard the accusation of how France was the clear beneficiary of this. The Duke used to mutter this every other minute, as he called for more port-wine and a full pipe of tobacco. And of course, the French had done very well, although the navy would not be happy to see all of its subsequent victories as simply due to Swedish action. Freed from any threats on the continent Louis le Grand, le Roi Soleil, had been able to concentrate his powers on finally reducing the Dutch provinces. That the protestants of Amsterdam should be a victim of the defeat of the main Catholic forces was an irony sweeter than Marlborough’s port-wine, wrote Voltaire. With the English isolated by the fleets of France and Spain plus also the Netherlands many years of hunger and rebellion followed in England and Wales. All contact with the colonies was cut off. A union with Scotland was abandoned. After Queen Anne died in 1714 the return of her half-brother to the throne as James III was not just a dynastic necessity but also a clear way to signal submission to the French power.
It was in this context that the English colonies of eastern America had left. Or rather, they claimed the English crown had left the old agreement of 1688 as enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Clinging to the eastern seaboard of the continent the Confederated States had been forced to make peace with the Iroqois; some even said their political arrangement was inspired by them. ’King’ George of the States was certainly not above learning from the indigenous traditions of the lands around Manahatta. People were amazed at his open-mindedness. He himself claimed to have undertaken several vision quests and to be a reincarnation of leaders of the Lenape. Huddled against the unfriendly seas where the French navies dominated, and the roving bands of soldiers from Louis-iana the American patriots were not minded to contradict him. He brought with him German gold and German soldiers.
The French Marine royale was unopposed across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. By the time the Stockholm heaven-scraper was founded in 1810, however, the burden of constant warfare was falling heavily on the French people. Fighting in the Americas, in the west and east Indies, and supporting the allies of Spain and Netherlands in Mexico and Java caused the system of Louis to crumble under its own weight. Two of the scientists who had worked on the Heaven-scraper, Humphry Davy and Lavoisier, were refugees from the downfalls of England and France, respectively. Working in partnership with the Swede Carl Wilhelm Scheele they had taken chemical science to a new level, and in doing so unlocked methods to use what was called electricus to power and communicate using metals derived from Scheelite.
The rule of Sweden across the centre of Europe was based on blood, steel but also on rationality. After the chaos of the war Sweden’s lords had been forced to survive in the maelstrom they had created by proclaiming a new constitution based on freedom of expression, freedom of trade and open public records. This was enough to cause a general outcry among Germans and Hungarians to unify all the conquered lands into a Commonwealth under the leadership of Sweden. Similar movements in Denmark-Norway and the Hanseatic lands saw the scientific and merchant classes take over the real reigns of power.
Lord von Görtz checked the prices of cinnamon again. The cost of shipping was inflating by the day, and Yule was not far off. Could it be time to invest in cardamom futures instead? The Mediterranean trade was controlled by the Arabian Republics and their Greek partners. After the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate the seas to the south of Europe had become a battleground for decades. Over-stretched by colonial needs the Spanish and French navies were unable to maintain order. This was a common pattern. It was their success against Russia that had caused the Ottoman lands to implode. Freed from any threat from the Habsburgs the grand viziers of the Sublime Porte had concentrated on regaining all their lands around The Crimea. Emperor Peter had been trapped and killed in a vicious siege on the Pruth River and his successors abandoned his attempts at modernising the country. The newspaper that contained such upsetting news about cinnamon prices also featured a long report on the elections being held among the Cossacks for a new Ukrainian federal leader.
Ottoman victories carried the seeds of their own downfall. Carefully avoiding enraging the fanatics of the young and unstable Swedish Commonwealth the Caliph had concentrated his forces to the east, where they were destroyed in a series of campaigns by the new Shah of Iran, Nader. This ’second Alexander’ might have a lot of talk about regarding reincarnation with George Wunita Takachsin; or about holy missions with the departed Karl Dozen. The Persian empire now stretched from Eastern Anatolia into Central Asia, and all the way to the Indus where the first Alexander had stopped, but was unable to exercise control over the Mediterranean as the Turkish fleets had.
Down in the harbour of Stockholm the iron galleys were hooting their farewell as they forged their way through the loose ice to patrol the Baltic. The air was clear and crisp without a trace of cloud or smoke. Only the very poor or those who lived deep in the forests still burned wood or coal for fuel. The two young friends felt rather than heard the magnetic turbines of the ships humming as the electric motors drove the galleys, from this height nothing more then small slivers of steel, through the bay around the commonwealth capital.