A few weeks had passed since Captain Jack Ashcroft had crossed the German frontier, and in that short span his life had become almost unrecognisable.
He had entered Germany expecting little more than an argument over money. Instead he had been shown a world that, to a man who had never before set foot inside the Empire, sometimes seemed less like another country than another age. He understood scarcely half of what was said around him, yet language was hardly necessary to appreciate the electric cities, the automobiles and machines, the enormous factories, or the palaces in which old Prussian grandeur stood comfortably beside technologies that seemed almost impossible.
Yet none of those wonders had unsettled him quite so deeply as the family of the Iron Prince.
To Jack, encountering Oskar's household had felt almost like stumbling upon the birth of some new pantheon—a family of princes, goddesses and pale-haired children who seemed only loosely bound by the ordinary limits of mankind.
And among them stood Imperiel.
Oskar and Tanya's firstborn son was only nine years old, yet Jack found it strangely difficult to see a child when he looked at him. There was something unsettling in the platinum hair, the brilliant violet eyes and the unnatural strength held so calmly within that young body; something still more disturbing in the quiet certainty with which grown men yielded to him.
Jack could never afterward explain exactly what he had felt in that household. Fear was part of it, certainly, but not fear alone. It was closer to awe—the sensation of standing before something too vast to understand and feeling, somewhere beneath reason, that one had wandered into the presence of forces not entirely ordinary. Whether it was danger, destiny or Providence itself, he could not have said.
He remembered only Imperiel looking at him.
And then Jack was on one knee.
No one had ordered him there. The movement seemed to come from somewhere older than thought, as natural as lowering one's head upon entering a church. Before he fully understood what he was doing, he had sworn himself to Germany, to the House of Hohenzollern and, above all, to the pale-haired boy standing before him.
When Jack rose again, the compensation he had crossed half of Europe seeking no longer seemed quite so important.
Something considerably larger had taken its place.
Now, beneath a moonless Irish sky, he stood upon a cold western shore and wondered whether he had finally lost his mind.
Behind him the Atlantic rolled black against the beach. Somewhere beyond that darkness, the German U-boat that had brought him there was already slipping back beneath the sea.
Jack had not come alone.
Nearly a hundred men much like him had been put ashore along the Irish coast that night, divided into smaller parties and landed at separate points beneath cover of darkness. Some were Irish. Others were adventurers, sailors, smugglers, soldiers without armies and men who, like Jack, had somehow allowed Germany to place an entirely new future before them.
All had been given essentially the same impossible task.
Ireland was to be torn from Britain and remade into a kingdom bound firmly to the German Empire—protected by it, supplied by it and expected in return to remain loyal to Germany even unto death, if necessary.
Who would rule that kingdom, should it ever come into being, had deliberately been left undecided.
That uncertainty was part of the design.
The men Germany had chosen were not merely comrades working toward the same end. They were rivals. Each would be judged by what he accomplished, by the risks he took, by the followers he gathered and by the value of the work he performed.
Success would be rewarded with the means to achieve still more, and the more a man proved himself, the more Germany would place within his reach.
Somewhere at the top of that strange ladder waited the possibility of a crown.
Jack, however, could not help feeling that fortune had already tilted slightly in his favour.
Unlike most of the men being scattered across Ireland that night, he had been permitted inside that extraordinary House of Iron. Eleanor remained there now, living and working among Oskar's household. Jack had seen those pale-haired, almost angelic children with his own eyes and had stood in the presence of women whose beauty seemed too perfect to belong entirely to the ordinary world. He had spoken with them, heard them laugh at his jokes and, before his departure, had even knelt before Tanya and received a soft kiss upon the forehead for luck.
The memory alone drew a crooked smirk from him.
He could still remember the faint colour that had touched her cheeks afterward.
No, Jack thought. He would become king.
Not merely because he desired it, and not merely because Eleanor deserved something better than the ruined sailor he had been only weeks before. He would do it because, somewhere along the strange road that had carried him from shipwreck to Germany and from Germany to this dark Irish shore, he had begun to believe that none of it had happened by accident.
Providence had placed a path before him.
All that remained was to walk it.
Jack adjusted the weight across his shoulders and looked inland, the smirk still lingering upon his face.
His pack was heavy with the tools of the future Germany had placed before him: rifles, ammunition, explosives, money and everything else required to begin turning resentment into resistance. Around his neck hung a small golden Cross of the New Dawn, while tucked safely among his belongings rested a copy of the Holy Book of Mankind, the sacred text of the faith into which he had somehow found himself drawn.
Jack did not entirely feel as though he had chosen either of them.
Rather, they had been placed into his hands at precisely the moment he had become ready to receive them.
His fingers rose almost unconsciously and closed around the cross beneath his shirt. As he felt its weight against his palm, purpose seemed to fill him, and the life he had lived before suddenly appeared little more than wandering without any true calling or meaning. Now, at last, a path stretched before him—a destiny he believed was his to follow, and one he intended to walk unto death.
Yet while Jack Ashcroft and nearly a hundred other would-be revolutionaries disappeared quietly into the Irish night, elsewhere across the British Isles other signs of trouble were beginning to emerge.
The second month of war had arrived without delivering the Entente the great victories so confidently expected at its beginning. Even so, the public mood throughout Britain remained fierce, patriotic and outwardly certain of eventual triumph. Recruiting offices were crowded from morning until night. Lines of volunteers stretched along streets in town after town, while newspapers thundered with outrage at every new German advance and demanded still greater effort from the nation.
In their pages, the enemy increasingly became something less than human.
The Germans were Huns: brutal creatures said to burn homes, murder civilians, violate women, bayonet infants and grind European civilisation beneath their iron boots. Every fresh report from Belgium supplied another atrocity; every British loss, another reason for vengeance. The public wanted victory, expected victory and, in many cases, regarded it as almost inevitable. Britain possessed an empire spanning the world. She commanded the greatest navy upon the seas. However violent the opening weeks might prove, surely the struggle could end only one way.
Yet confidence in the streets was not the same thing as success in the field.
And success, at present, was proving rather difficult to find.
Behind the doors of ministries and military offices, certainty had already begun to fray. British merchantmen were disappearing beneath the waves. German raiders had humiliated the Royal Navy often enough that even old assumptions about command of the sea were becoming less comfortable. In France, British troops had found themselves retreating beside their allies beneath the pressure of an enemy whose artillery, aircraft and organisation seemed disturbingly well prepared for a kind of war everyone else had only just begun learning how to fight.
The most troubling realization was not simply that Germany was winning battles.
It was that Germany seemed to have prepared for this war in ways London had never fully understood.
That concern had now reached Buckingham Palace.
King George V received the Prime Minister privately, and the conversation was not a pleasant one. George was not naturally given to theatrical displays of anger, nor did he enjoy appearing unsettled before ministers, but the reports placed before him offered increasingly little comfort. Ships were being lost. The army was falling back with the French. German forces were pushing deeper into the Continent, while an enemy so often caricatured before the war as rigid, humourless and unimaginative had instead revealed itself to be frighteningly adept at modern warfare.
By the time Herbert Henry Asquith returned to Downing Street, whatever reassurance he had attempted to offer his sovereign had done little to improve his own mood.
He summoned the Cabinet that evening.
One by one the ministers arrived until the room had filled with grave faces beneath a gathering haze of tobacco smoke. Papers lay spread across the long polished table. Chairs shifted. Low conversations faded as Asquith rose near its head and rested one hand upon the wood before him.
For several moments he simply looked around the room.
"Gentlemen," he said at last, his voice calm but carrying very little warmth, "His Majesty is greatly concerned by the present course of the war."
That was putting it mildly, and every man around the table knew it.
"He is not alone in that concern," Asquith continued. "Nor, I think, am I."
No one interrupted.
"The public remains spirited, which is fortunate. Recruitment continues. The newspapers are doing their part. But public spirit alone will not halt a German advance in France, nor will it keep our merchantmen afloat in the Atlantic. We are now at the beginning of the second month of this war, and the truth of the matter is that things have not developed in our favor."
He let that settle for a moment.
"On the Continent, the Germans have pushed with alarming speed and force. The French are under severe pressure. Our own Expeditionary Force has fought well, but it is too small to shape events by itself. In the east, the Russians have suffered very serious reverses. At sea, merchant shipping remains exposed to German attack to a degree which I find unacceptable. Even in the Colonies, especially German Cameroon, there has hardly been any progress in our efforts to root out the Germans there."
His gaze moved slowly from face to face.
"So I will ask plainly. What is to be done?"
There was a brief silence before Churchill spoke, his tone more measured than theatrical for once, though still carrying the restless energy that seemed forever coiled inside him.
"The Germans have the advantage of preparation," he said. "That, above all, must be understood. They did not stumble into this war. They entered it ready. Their technology, their infrastructure, their planning, their matériel—everything suggests a degree of foresight far beyond what many had credited them with."
He paused, then added, "We, by contrast, have entered under conditions less than ideal. Our strength has long lain at sea, not in the rapid deployment of a continental army. The French have been caught mid-transition in matters of reform, and the Russians, for all their immense manpower, remain burdened by weaknesses in command, supply, and coordination. The Germans are profiting from that disparity."
One of the ministers shifted in his chair. "Indeed, the Russians have lost a monstrous number of men to a far smaller force. It is not an encouraging spectacle."
"No," said Haldane, folding his hands before him, "but neither is it a decisive one. Russia has suffered grievous blows before and remained in the field. It is the peculiar strength of that empire that it may lose on a scale which would cripple another power and yet continue to draw men from the earth as though from a bottomless pit."
A faint, humorless murmur passed around the table.
"Their losses are severe," Haldane went on, "but they are not yet fatal. The Russian army is vast, and still growing. The further the Germans push eastward, the longer and thinner their front becomes. Territory is not free. Every mile gained must be held, supplied, defended. The Germans cannot stretch forever. In time, their advance must slow."
"Perhaps," another man said, "but slowing them is not the same thing as defeating them."
That drew a heavier silence, because it was true.
At length, Grey spoke, his voice mild, careful, diplomatic even now. "Our problem is not simply that Germany has advanced. It is that the pace and character of that advance have unsettled every expectation with which this war began. We had thought in terms of pressure, maneuver, perhaps a hard opening campaign. Instead we have been presented with something faster, harsher, and more modern than was generally anticipated."
"Quite," Churchill muttered.
Grey continued. "The French are raising and reorganizing forces around Paris. Men are being gathered from the Paris district and beyond. The city is not undefended, nor is the government resigned to losing it. We should not speak as though the fall of Paris were already written."
"No," Asquith said, "but neither may we speak as though it were impossible."
That, too, hung in the air.
If Paris fell, the military consequences would be grave enough. The political consequences might be worse.
Haldane inclined his head. "The French Sixth Army is forming to defend the capital. Additional troops are being assembled from the Parisian region. Morale there remains strong. Paris is not some abandoned prize to be gathered up by the first man bold enough to ride through its gates."
"One hopes not," Asquith said quietly.
Churchill, who had thus far kept himself in check with admirable effort, leaned forward at last and said, in a tone that caused several heads to lift before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, "There is another matter."
Everyone at the table already knew what it was.
"The sea."
That single word altered the mood of the room more thoroughly than any speech about Paris or Russia had managed.
Asquith gave a slow nod. "Yes. Let us speak of it plainly."
Churchill folded one hand over the other upon the table, though there was nothing relaxed in him. "German attacks upon Entente shipping are no longer an irritation to be endured while we concern ourselves with the armies. They are becoming a matter of first importance. Britain is not Russia. We cannot simply lose distance and comfort ourselves with depth. We are an island empire. Our life moves across water. Food, coal, materials, credit, trade, confidence itself—all of it arrives by sea, or depends upon the belief that it can."
He let that settle.
"If that belief begins to falter, then far more than merchant tonnage is at stake."
One of the older ministers frowned. "Surely we are not yet at the point of saying that British command of the sea is in question."
"No," Churchill said, "but British invulnerability at sea most certainly is."
That answer did nothing to ease the room.
Open reports lay scattered before them: sinkings, raiding actions, delayed cargoes, growing insurance premiums, complaints from merchants, murmurs from financiers, and the increasingly grim arithmetic of war expenditure.
The Chancellor, spectacles low on his nose, tapped one of the papers with a finger. "Speaking of which, the expense of this war is becoming intolerable. We are consuming ammunition at a rate that no sane peacetime estimate would have accepted. From what I hear, our Expeditionary Force has consumed more ammunition in the past few weeks than our present industrial arrangements can comfortably replace in a month."
"In plainer terms," another muttered, "we are burning money and ammunition faster than we can produce either."
"Just so," said the Chancellor. "Which means production must be expanded. Arms, shells, rifles, machinery, transport, all of it. And expansion of that sort requires capital—vast capital."
"As does the army," Asquith said quietly. "More men may always be sent. More formations raised. More guns ordered. More factories built or expanded. In theory there is no end to what may be attempted."
"In theory," Grey said.
Asquith's expression hardened slightly. "The point remains. The army situation, grave though it is, is not beyond remedy. Just like the situation at sea. The Germans cannot face us openly on the sea. Men can be raised for the army. Industry can be enlarged. If the Germans have produced technical marvels under that infernal Prince Oskar, I see no reason in heaven or on earth why British industry should not equal them in time—or surpass them."
Several murmured assent at that. That, at least, was the sort of sentence British statesmen liked hearing said aloud.
Churchill inclined his head a fraction. "Yes. In time. Given money, organization, engineers, time, and clarity. If we can build better machines, we shall. If we cannot do so at once, then we must study what the Germans have done and imitate what is useful until we produce something superior. Pride is an admirable quality in a nation; it is less useful in procurement."
A faint, grim flicker of amusement passed around the table.
Grey said, "And until then?"
"Until then," Churchill replied, "we must endure the inferiority where it exists, close the gap where we can, and prevent the enemy from turning temporary advantage into strategic decision."
"As on the seas," Asquith said.
"Precisely."
Churchill sat back only slightly. "For if we are to pay for the war, we must first preserve the flow of trade. Loans are well and good. Credit is well and good. But a nation cannot finance its struggle forever on speeches and signatures alone. Our own economic life must continue. Goods must move. Merchants must trade. Cargo must arrive. The Empire must appear what it has always appeared to be—secure, immense, and master of its own arteries."
Now the room was listening in full.
"Prestige," said Grey softly.
"Yes," Churchill said, turning toward him. "Prestige. Men speak of it as though it were decoration. It is not decoration. It is power in visible form. The Empire stands not merely because of soldiers and ships, but because millions believe it stands. The moment that belief weakens, every restless element within it begins to calculate."
That drew silence.
Because every man in the room understood the truth of it at once.
Churchill continued, more quietly now. "If Britain cannot keep her own sea lanes open, then Britain begins to look less like the natural ruler of a world system and more like a very rich island under strain. That impression alone is dangerous."
"Dangerous where?" one of the ministers asked, though he already knew.
"Everywhere," Churchill replied. "But in some places more immediately than others."
No one spoke for a moment.
Then Grey said, with diplomatic restraint, "The Irish question has not ceased to exist merely because Europe is at war."
No one contradicted him.
Home Rule had been postponed, not resolved. Suspended, not settled.
Asquith's mouth thinned. "Quite."
Another minister, choosing his words carefully, said, "There are many Irishmen now serving loyally, or preparing to do so, under the belief that such service will strengthen the case for self-government later."
"Yes," Churchill said. "And while those men leave, who remains behind?"
That question landed heavily.
He answered it himself.
"Not, by and large, the most loyal portion."
No one objected, though one or two shifted uncomfortably.
"There are in Ireland," Churchill went on, "many who do not seek self-government within the Empire, but separation from it. Complete separation. They are not eager to join our colours. They are eager for something else entirely. For now, they are quiet. But quietness is not loyalty. It may merely be waiting."
Grey folded his hands. "And if our prestige suffers further—if Britain appears weakened, distracted, vulnerable—such people may persuade themselves that history has opened a door for them."
"Exactly," said Churchill. "They need not be numerous at first. Such movements never begin by being numerous. They require discontent, symbols, money, and the impression that authority is slipping. Give them a trigger—a martyr, an arms shipment, a foreign whisper, a government embarrassment—and quiet can become noise very quickly indeed."
The cabinet room had grown still enough that the scrape of a chair leg seemed indecently loud.
"So," Asquith said at last, "we return to the same point. The sea lanes are not merely an economic matter. They are an imperial matter."
"They are the matter," Churchill replied.
"And if we fail to secure them?"
Churchill did not soften his answer. "Then we invite every opportunist, separatist, smuggler, financier, and enemy government in the world to test the strength of Britain at once."
That sentence lingered.
At length Asquith straightened and said, with that deliberate calm men use when they refuse panic by force of habit, "Then there must be a remedy. There must be one."
"There is no alternative," Grey said quietly.
Asquith turned fully toward Churchill now. "A month has passed. We have lost merchantmen, destroyers, battlecruisers, and with every successful German raid the impression deepens that we have been caught unready in the one sphere where unpreparedness was supposed to be impossible."
His voice remained controlled, but there was steel in it now.
"We may repair the army in time. We may enlarge the factories. We may raise more men. We may learn to match or copy every machine those damned Germans put into the field. All of that is difficult, but possible."
He paused.
"But none of it will matter nearly so much if Britain ceases to command belief in her own waters."
Then he fixed Churchill with a direct look.
"So tell us, First Lord—what, precisely, do you intend to do about it?"
Churchill did not answer at once. Instead he turned slightly toward the naval men present.
"Admiral Jellicoe. Admiral Beatty. The Prime Minister is quite right to press the matter. The Cabinet is running short on patience, and the country sooner or later will do the same. What is the Admiralty's present method, and what more do you propose?"
Jellicoe, grave as ever, answered first. "At present, our most practical measure has been concentration. Merchant traffic is being gathered into larger convoys where possible and escorted by strong covering forces. In the mid-Atlantic, where ships may be assembled before the final run home, this has yielded promising results. Convoys under the protection of capital ships have, thus far, proven unattractive targets."
"A costly form of unattractiveness," Churchill said.
"Yes," Jellicoe admitted. "It requires heavy commitment. Two or three capital ships to secure a convoy in proper fashion, depending on its size and perceived risk."
"And in providing such escort," Asquith said, "do we not weaken ourselves elsewhere?"
"We do," Jellicoe said plainly. "That is the difficulty."
Churchill nodded. "Precisely. If our battle squadrons are forever tied to convoy work, what then are we to do if the German High Seas Fleet chooses that very moment to stir?"
Jellicoe answered carefully. "Under present circumstances, we must watch for signs of concentration or movement and regroup accordingly. It is not ideal."
"No," Churchill said, "it is not."
Beatty, who had thus far worn the expression of a man waiting for slower minds to finish arranging the furniture before he kicked the door in, finally spoke.
"There is another way."
The room turned to him.
Beatty leaned forward, confidence radiating from him with almost indecent ease. "If the Germans insist upon commerce raiding, then let us give them commerce worth raiding."
Churchill's eyes narrowed. "Go on."
"We send a large transport convoy from Canada," Beatty said. "A rich one. Obvious enough to tempt, respectable enough not to seem theatrical. We provide it with escort, naturally, but not with so much as to warn the enemy away. And nearby—kept at supporting distance, not obvious distance—we position a striking force of our best available ships."
Grey watched him closely. "In short, a baited convoy."
"If you like," Beatty said. "Though I should prefer to call it an opportunity."
"And the Germans," Asquith said, "are expected to oblige us by attacking exactly where we wish them to?"
Beatty's mouth twitched faintly. "The Germans are not fools, Prime Minister. But neither are they saints. Present them with sufficient prey and sooner or later they will go for it. If they strike, we fall upon them. If they do not strike, then the convoy reaches Britain intact with its cargo, which is no failure from our point of view."
Churchill looked at him for a few seconds, turning the thing over.
"A crude plan," he said at last.
Beatty did not flinch. "Sometimes crude plans are the kind the enemy least expects one to attempt boldly."
Jellicoe added, more cautiously, "The principle is sound enough, provided the disposition is carefully handled. If executed well, it may allow us to damage or even destroy a substantial part of their raiding force."
"Or expose a very substantial part of ours," murmured one minister.
"Yes," Beatty said. "War does occasionally contain risk."
That earned him a chilly glance, though not an unfair one.
Churchill tapped the table once with his fingers. "What strength?"
Beatty answered at once, plainly having turned the scheme over in his mind many times already.
"The convoy itself would sail under the protection of four King George V-class dreadnoughts. At supporting distance we would hold the striking force: three Invincible-class battlecruisers, three Indefatigable-class battlecruisers, the two surviving Lion-class ships, HMS Tiger, and four Iron Duke-class dreadnoughts."
That produced a murmur.
"Assembled in one operation?" Asquith asked.
"If we mean to make the trap convincing, yes," Beatty replied.
Churchill looked at him sharply. "You propose, then, to gather a considerable share of the finest capital ships in the Royal Navy and trust that the Germans will present themselves obligingly beneath the hammer."
"I propose," Beatty said, "to use superior force decisively against an enemy who has grown bold because we have thus far permitted him to choose the terms of harassment."
Jellicoe, more restrained, said, "If the Germans take the bait and if our timing holds, the result could be very serious for them indeed."
Churchill gave a low hum of thought. It was a gambler's plan, a hunter's plan, and a very British one in its own way—dangerous, elegant, faintly arrogant, and not entirely unsound.
At length he said, "Very well. It is imperfect."
Beatty almost smiled.
"All plans are."
"Yes," Churchill said, "but some are imperfect in useful directions."
That brought the faintest shifting of mood in the room.
Churchill looked to Jellicoe. "Preparations?"
"Already under way," Jellicoe said. "What remains is authorization."
Churchill turned back toward Asquith. "You have asked for action. There it is. We protect the convoys we must protect. We continue concentration where necessary. And with this, we attempt not merely to endure the German raids, but to punish them."
Asquith studied him for a moment. "And you are confident?"
Churchill's answer came without hesitation.
"No."
That surprised several of them.
Then he went on.
"But I am resolved. And in war, resolve is often the more useful quality."
He rose slightly from his chair.
"I will authorize the operation."
Jellicoe inclined his head. Beatty looked almost pleased.
Churchill's expression hardened.
"But understand me clearly, gentlemen. We are past the hour for clever excuses. If we are to gamble with the prestige of the Royal Navy, then we shall do so only in order to restore it with interest."
He looked from one admiral to the other.
"I expect results."