Arturo Serrano - To Climates Unknown - An Alternate History of a World Without America

“I haven’t allowed it so far. But Frederik is growing impatient. And that leads us to the actual reason we’ve come to see Your Majesty. We wish to ask for the help of Sweden in our quest for independence.”

The word fell like a hammer in the room. None of them dared say anything more until they felt they could almost pretend it hadn’t happened.

“Is it at all possible?” Leonora asked finally, deliberately ambiguous as to whether she referred to the feasibility of Novadanian independence or of Swedish assistance.

The king breathed loudly, organizing her thoughts, before saying, “You have made it clear that Canutic military capabilities surpass mine, and probably everyone’s. Frederik already has his eyes on me, ready for any suspicious gesture on my part. I have all my soldiers deployed in the war against the Holy Emperor; and just today, you say a Danish warship was able to fire its cannons near my castle without being spotted by my navy. Do you realize what I’d be risking if I as much as tried to make a move against Denmark?”

Leonora couldn’t resist replying with another question. “Why is Sweden still fighting for a faith Your Majesty has abandoned?”

The king didn’t mind her bluntness. “Because my people remain Lutherans, and in these senseless times, that suffices to make them targets. I know better than anyone how ruinous war is, and I’d be happy to end it as soon as the Holy Emperor stops sending his armies my way.”

Leonora refrained from making the comment, which would have been rather unhelpful, that during her tour of German lands in search of allies to protect her husband she had heard the view that the Holy Emperor considered Sweden to be the aggressor, and thus the war only proceeded by the kneejerk mistrust between two sides neither of which wanted to keep fighting.

Kathrine hastened to redirect the conversation back to their request. “We’re not asking for any overt intervention. The idea of independence has been discussed for years in the Spanish colonies. With Denmark sabotaging as many Spanish ships as it can, the viceroyalties are dismally mismanaged. It wouldn’t appear as that big of a stretch if a similar movement arose farther north.”

The king stepped away from her visitors, walking backwards until both of them were contained within her visual field. She regarded them with admiration and fear, and prayed for the arrival of a time when the fate of nations wouldn’t hinge on secret conversations between so few people. Her conscience longed to be released from the weight of the crown, and she knew, because she cared enough to listen, that no one but the nobles, and not even every noble, was happy under monarchy; and the example of the Dutch Republic in leaving the Spanish Empire was being hailed in hushed tones by the brightest minds of Europe, who resented having to bow before kings to earn their sustenance. Doing away with monarchy: there was a worthy cause. As soon as the king of Sweden admitted it to herself, she felt at peace with what she had to do. “You make a good point that Frederik owns too much territory. I’ll help you get rid of him. What do you need?”

The globe rolled again and Kathrine stopped it by placing a finger on the east coast of North America. “We want to use the port of New Stockholm as a smuggling hub.”

The king approached to look more closely at the map, and frowned. The colony of New Sweden was but one of the numerous opportunistic endeavors that had spawned to fill the vacuum left by the extinction of the Kingdom of Great Britain and its colonization projects. It lay far enough from Nova Dania, but next door to New Netherland. “A smuggling hub for what?”

Kathrine started counting on her fingers. “Pamphlets, printing presses, wanted fugitives—” she opened her hands. “Everything, actually. New Amsterdam would be a closer, more practical location, but it’s too risky. The alliance between Denmark and the Dutch Republic is the strongest among Protestant nations. New Stockholm would allow for more secrecy.” She knew explanations would be easier if she could tell Kristina about the submarines, but she wanted to be able to claim some measure of patriotic loyalty. Even without mentioning the Danish Secret Navy, the reasons for the way she and Leonora had devised their plan were straightforward: king Frederik’s soldiers kept the strictest vigilance on anyone who disembarked at the port of Munkhaven, but the southern borders of Nova Dania extended into unmapped regions that only the Natives crossed with confidence. Frederik had abandoned his aspiration to expand the colony to the south after the spread of a new custom, started by the Ojibwe and imitated in the other trading tribes: the Natives had stopped hunting beavers and switched to breeding them on purpose. The result was such a proliferation of dams that the Great Lakes river basin and its outlet to the sea were impossible to invade with submarines. So the Danish were forced to stay in the north, the Natives lived unmolested around the lakes, and anyone coming by land could move at will.

“Is that all? Free passage?” asked the king. “I was expecting you’d request military assistance.”

“We’ll take care of that part,” said Kathrine. “In every war, the move you don’t see coming is the one that kills you.” She wouldn’t say more, but she’d discussed the matter extensively with Leonora. In all the years that Denmark had been using submarines to sneak upon enemy ships, the one scenario that had never been considered was to have its own submarines used against them. Danish soldiers had devised no tactics and received no training to handle an attack from another submarine. It had always been assumed that other countries would lack such a weapon. That was the hidden disadvantage on which Nova Dania would rely in its rebellion against the Canutic Empire.

“I see you’ve thought about this thoroughly,” said Kristina with satisfaction. “I like people who take their time to think.”

Leonora asked excitedly, “Then Your Majesty is on our side?”

The king nodded. “New Stockholm is open to you. As sure as I live, Nova Dania will be independent.”

Midnight sun, December 22 (Julian), 1658

Terra incognita

Whenever a land is invaded, different families adopt different strategies to keep their children from harm. When the Danish took England, this common pattern reoccurred. Some left the country. Others schemed with the hope of one day expelling the Danes. Others saw a way to survive and even benefit if they played along with the invaders.

Admiral Edward Montagu belonged to a select generation of Britons born just before the foundation of the Canutic Empire. Men like him and his peers had reached adulthood with no memories of an independent England. For the families that didn’t flee to the Virginia colony, life under Danish rule had simply become the world they knew.

But in 1658, Nova Dania achieved its independence by using the same technology that had given Denmark command of the oceans. Kathrine’s assessment had been right: the rise of two opposed powers armed with submarines was the one geopolitical occurrence that the Canutic Empire had never considered. The wars of religion, which had briefly seemed about to end with a crushing Protestant victory, tapered out instead, with neither side winning or acknowledging defeat, and with Denmark’s ability to influence European affairs gravely diminished. During the process, the independentist cause also permeated through the people of New Sweden, who declared their own independence in 1654. Again, Kathrine had calculated accurately. To the outrage of her court, king Kristina didn’t mind that a remote colony would choose to govern itself. Shortly afterward she abdicated and spent her old age traveling across Catholic lands. She counted it as one more independence from the Swedish crown.