Opening Atlantis a-1

by Harry Turtledove

  After a last couple of growls, Warwick's men let him go on. A sigh of relief gusted from him as soon as they got far enough away not to hear it. Cows and sheep and a few horses grazed on the meadows and gleaned what they could from the fallow fields, manuring them with their dung. Dogs barked and growled. A brindled cat sneaked around the corner of a barn. It might almost have been England.

  It might, that is, till Richard looked past the plowed and settled ground. Those somber woods had no counterpart in the lands across the sea. Here and there in the settlement, a pine or a barrel tree still stood. The redwoods were gone. Not only was their timber useful, but living under their shadow would have made the English feel like mice living under a church steeple.

  Prince, the family dog, snarled at Richard as he came up. Then the beast took his scent and stared like a player doing a comedy turn in a mummers' show. Is that really you? his line would have been.

  "Yes, you miserable hound, it is me," Richard said.

  Whining, the dog came up and licked his hand. He wondered what would happen if he stayed away long enough for Prince to forget him. He would get bitten, that was what.

  Bertha was down on her knees in the garden plot by the farmhouse. You could keep things alive through these winters if you looked after them. Up to a certain point, carrots and parsnips got sweeter if you left them in the ground. And far fewer pests plagued them here than would have been so back in England.

  Richard's wife glanced up from her work. Her mouth dropped open. The way he looked didn't faze her-she'd seen him come home from the woods before. She scrambled to her feet and ran to his arms.

  "Hello, dear," he said. She felt good pressed against him; her solid warmth reminded him how long he'd been away.

  "So good to see you." Bertha tilted her face up for a kiss. "I was beginning to worry-not a lot, but some."

  "Just a long trip, not a hard one," Richard said. "But who are those damned brigands in chainmail? Where did they come from?"

  He didn't hold his voice down. His wife looked alarmed. "You've met them, have you? Be careful how you talk about them. If anyone makes them angry, he pays."

  "Somebody ought to make them pay, by God," Richard said. "Those byrnies won't hold out arrows."

  Bertha crossed herself. "Sweet suffering Jesus, you sound like your father. He's wild to do them in, but they don't give many chances."

  "What's this Warwick doing here, anyway?" Richard asked.

  "He was sent here for our sins-and for his own," his wife answered. "He made the king angry, so Henry sent him off to Freetown, to do his worst there. But his captain landed here instead, and now we're stuck with him."

  They went inside. She poured water from a bucket into a kettle and set it on the fire to heat. Richard smiled. He'd be able to bathe soon. But the smile didn't last. "We're going to have to do something about him," he said.

  "You do sound like your father," Bertha said. "He goes on and on about how he didn't come to Atlantis to bend the knee to any nobleman. One day he'll say it too loud, or to the wrong man, and it will get back to Warwick. And then the trouble will start."

  "To the wrong man?" Richard frowned. He'd been away from human company too long; he needed a moment to realize what that had to mean. "Some of the settlers would betray him to this robber chief?"

  "Watch what you say!" Bertha repeated. But she nodded, unhappily. "Some would. They want to get along any way they can. They don't want trouble. If I've heard that once, I've heard it a hundred times. 'I don't want trouble,' they say, and pull their heads into their shells like turtles."

  "They'll have more trouble if they bend the knee to this dog of a Warwick than they will if they give him a good kick in the teeth," Richard said. His wife started to speak again, then closed her mouth instead. He suspected he'd just sounded like his father one more time. Well, his father knew a hawk from a heron when the wind was southerly, all right.

  Bertha took the kettle off the fire. She mixed the hot water with a little cold-not too much, because it would cool fast enough on its own. Richard stripped off his filthy clothes and scrubbed at himself with a rag and some of the harsh, homemade soap she gave him. By the time he was done, his skin had gone from assorted shades of brown to pink. She trimmed his hair and beard with a pair of shears she'd brought from England.

  "You look like the man I married again," she said when she finished, "and not the Old Man of the Woods any more."

  "I feel like the man you married, too." He reached for her. They kissed. Laughing, he picked her up and carried her over to the bed.

  Edward, these days, stayed close to home. He knew he had trouble keeping his mouth shut. If he hadn't known, Nell would have made a point of reminding him. He hadn't had to worry about saying what was on his mind, not for years. No one in Atlantis had. People needed to worry now. If you didn't watch your words, Richard Neville's bully boys would make you sorry.

  The Earl of Warwick acted like a king, or at least like a prince. His bravos held New Hastings hostage. They lived off the fat of the land, taking what they wanted. One of the things Warwick took was Lucy Fenner, the late master salter's daughter. She was nineteen now, or maybe twenty. People said she was the fairest on this side of the Atlantic: a red-haired beauty with a figure to make a priest forget his vows. She could heat up a cold night-Edward had no doubt of that. He was getting old (no, Devil take it, he'd got old), but he wasn't dead.

  He also wasn't a bandit chief, to take a woman whether she was willing or not. Warwick…was. Lucy, these days, went around with red-rimmed eyes and an expression beyond sorrowful. She'd never imagined beauty could be dangerous to her. Whether she'd imagined it or not, she was finding out the hard way.

  "Mary, pity women," Nell said when Edward remarked on that.

  "It's not Mary's doing that Lucy got snatched from her family," Edward said. "It's that dog of a Warwick."

  "He's a dog with teeth," Nell warned.

  "I know," Edward said grimly. Fear of what Warwick's troopers would do was the only thing that had kept New Hastings from rising against its new and unwelcome overlord. "Someone needs to give him a boot in the ribs, to remind him he's not supposed to do that kind of thing here."

  His wife wagged a finger in his face. "Not you. You're not going to throw your life away over a chit of a girl."

  "I wouldn't do that," Edward said with dignity. Nell only snorted. Still with dignity, he went on, "If I rise against Warwick, I won't throw my life away. I'll make him throw away his."

  "Can you?" Nell asked-the right question, sure enough.

  "If I don't think I can, I won't move," Edward said. "He has his bully boys, and he has the men he's scared into thinking he's a sure winner, and he has the handful of curs-I won't call them men, because they don't deserve the name-who lick the boots of anybody they think is strong. We have the rest of New Hastings."

  "Is that enough?" Nell asked anxiously. "Against trained men with armor…I don't think there was a mailshirt in Atlantis before Warwick came, let alone that suit of plate he wears."

  "You only need armor if you intend to kill your fellow man and you don't intend to let him kill you," Edward said. "Why would we have wanted it till now? But we have shields, and we have our bows, and"-his voice dropped to a whisper-"in Bredestown, where Warwick's hounds don't go so much, the smith is making swords."

  "Warwick's hounds almost took Richard when he came out of the woods by the Brede," his wife reminded him.

  "I didn't say they never went to Bredestown. I said they didn't go there so often, and they don't," Edward Radcliffe answered. "And Adam Higgins is no fool-there's always something else on the anvil, so no stinking bravo's likely to see him forging a blade."

  "I'm not worried about soldiers seeing him so much as I am about some Judas selling him to Warwick," Nell said.

  Edward put an arm around her. "Speaking of being no fool, my dear…"

  "Oh, pooh!" Nell shook him off. "I'm an old gossip, is what I am. And one gossip knows how muc
h trouble another one can cause. Is there anyone in Bredestown who doesn't like the smith? If there is, that's someone we have to watch."

  "By Our Lady!" Edward said, and laughed at his own choice of oath. "By Our Lady, indeed! I wonder how men ever get anything done, with women keeping an eye on their every move before they make it." He paused, looking thoughtful. "I wonder whether men ever get anything done-anything their women don't want, I mean."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about-none." Nell's voice was so demure and innocent, Edward started to nod. Then he caught himself and gave her a sharp look. Her face was demure and innocent, too-so very demure and innocent that he started laughing again. She poked him in the ribs. "You believed me. For a heartbeat or two, you believed me."

  "You'll never prove it," he said.

  "I don't need to prove it. I know you too well to doubt it." Now Nell sounded supremely confident. And with reason: "I'd better after all these years, don't you think? Who else would have put up with you for so long?"

  "No one in her right mind-that's sure enough," Edward said. Nell made a face at him. He made one back. They both laughed this time. Edward wondered if he was slipping into his second childhood. If he was, he was having a good time doing it-or he would have been, if not for the Earl of Warwick.

  Henry Radcliffe paced the Rose's deck. She lay not far offshore: far enough to keep a bad winter storm from flinging her up onto the beach and breaking her all to flinders. No storm now. The day was cold, but almost bitterly clear-a good match for the state of his mind at the moment.

  Not quite by chance, one of his mittened hands came to rest on the wrought-iron barrel of a swivel gun. "I wonder if we could hit New Hastings from here," he said in musing tones. "I wonder if we could hit a particular house in New Hastings from here."

  "Hit the town? I think the piece'd reach that far," Bartholomew Smith said. Henry nodded; he gauged the range, and the gun's power, about the same. The mate went on, "Hit one house in particular? That'd take the Devil's own luck, don't you think?"

  Regretfully, Henry nodded again. "Afraid I do."

  Smith eyed him. "Which house have you got in mind?"

  "Oh, let's just say I was thinking of putting a ball through my father's door, to wake him up if he was sleeping."

  "You can say that if you want to." Smith looked around to make sure no one besides Henry was in earshot. "Me, I'd sooner put one through Warwick's door-or through Warwick, though from here that'd take more than the Devil's luck."

  "It would, wouldn't it?" Henry said sadly. He sent the mate a hooded glance. "So you're not fond of his Lordship?"

  "Lucy Fenner's mother is my first cousin," Smith said.

  "I should have remembered that." Henry thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Well, no, then you have good reason not to be."

  The mate scowled. "Lucy's a good girl, a sweet girl, damn him. Not her fault she was born pretty, and she shouldn't have to pay for it like that."

  "Women have been paying for their looks that way since the days of Adam and Eve," Henry said. Seeing the mutinous expression on the mate's face, he quickly added, "Not that that makes it right."

  "I should say not," Bartholomew Smith spat. "The day is coming when Warwick'll push all of us too far, like he's already pushed me. I think it's coming soon, and when it does…" His strong, scarred hands folded into fists.

  "My father feels the same way. I do believe he's felt that way since he first set eyes on Warwick, before the earl even set foot on our soil." Henry looked around again. No one was paying him or Smith any special heed. In a low voice, he continued, "When the day does come, he aims to fight."

  "Skipper, I always knew your father was a good man," Smith said. "I always knew he was a smart man, too. Only question is, can we kick those bastards when we have to?"

  "That's what's held him back this long. And, he says, even winning you can pay too high a price. If the battle tears New Hastings and Bredestown to pieces, if half the people die and half the houses and shops burn down, we'll all be years getting over it," Henry said. "When he was a lad, he says, his old grandfather would tell him stories about what England was like just after the Black Death passed over the countryside."

  The mate shuddered and made the sign of the cross. "God keep the plague on the other side of the sea. That bloody Warwick's plague enough for these lands."

  "Plague enough and to spare," Henry agreed. "But that's just Father's point. A war here could be as bad as the plague. It could set us back the way the Black Death set England back. That's why he doesn't want to fight unless we can beat the soldiers in a hurry without ruining ourselves in the doing."

  "That's sensible, no doubt about it," Bartholomew Smith said. "How long do you think poor Lucy will want us to go on being sensible?" Henry grunted; that shot hit the target in the bull's-eye. Smith asked another question: "Isn't it better to die on our feet than to live on our knees?"

  Henry grunted again-he hadn't dreamt the other man had so much fire in his belly. Slowly, he answered, "It is, yes. My father would not say otherwise. But he would say it's better still to live on our feet. He's looking for a way to do that, which is why he waits."

  "God grant he find one," Smith said. "How long can he-how long can we-keep waiting, though? If we get used to saying, 'Yes, Lord,' to whatever Warwick demands of us-well, we'll be living on our knees then, and I fear me we'll forget how to climb up on our feet again."

  "I don't think it will go that far," Henry said. "Back in England, even the king has trouble telling his people what to do. That's why the wars go on and on. If the king can't make Englishmen obey, Lord have mercy on a poor earl who tries, eh?"

  Smith's smile touched his lips, but not his eyes. "Don't they call Warwick the Kingmaker, though?"

  "That was his nickname, all right. But the king he made unmade him. And if a mere king can cast him down"-Henry winked-"don't you suppose a settlement full of Englishmen can do the same when the time comes?"

  "Belike you're right." Despite his words, Smith still didn't smile with his whole face. "It had better come soon, I tell you, for Lucy's sake. A woman's not like a man, you know-she keeps her honor between her legs."

  "Warwick has dishonored her, but he hasn't taken her honor away. It's not the same thing," Henry said. "Everyone knows what he would have done to her kin if she didn't yield herself to him. That would have touched off the fight, I expect, but it wouldn't have done the Fenners any good."

  "No, it wouldn't… Touched off…" Smith set his own gloved hand on the wrought-iron barrel of the swivel gun. He swung it toward the house the Earl of Warwick had taken for his own, as he'd taken Lucy Fenner for his own.

  As he aims to take New Hastings for his own, Henry thought. When you got down to it, wasn't it that simple? Warwick didn't want to be a kingmaker here: he wanted to be a king himself. It would be a small kingdom. Maybe that would suffice him, or maybe he dreamt of taking England in King Edward's despite, using Atlantis as his base. If he did, Henry judged him a madman, but wasn't a madman all the more dangerous for being mad?

  "We'll settle him," he declared. "What does Atlantis need with kings?"

  "King Warwick?" Smith followed his thoughts without trouble. "King Neville? King Richard? Whatever he'd style himself, let him carve it on his tombstone instead."

  "My brother would make a better King Richard than Warwick would," Henry said. "He's better suited to the job, too, by God."

  "How's that?"

  "He doesn't want it."

  IX

  E dward Radcliffe was coming to dread a knock on the door. He never had before, not in all the years since coming to Atlantis. In that stretch of time, a knock on the door meant a friend had come to call. Now a knock was much too likely to be trouble calling.

  This particular knock on the door came just before supper.

  Chicken and turnips and parsnips and cabbage bubbled in a pot, filling the house with savory fragrance and making Edward's stomach rumble. He said something
unchristian when a fist thudded against the planks of the door.

  "Tell whoever it is to go away," Nell said.

  "Nothing I'd like better." But when Edward went to the door, he found that his visitors were not likely to take no for an answer.

  They were five of Richard Neville's biggest, roughest bravos, all of them armored, all of them with drawn swords except for one who carried a crossbow instead. "Well, well!" Edward said. "What's all this about?"

  The soldiers with the swords hefted them. The fellow with the crossbow aimed it at Radcliffe's chest. The biggest ruffian growled, "His Lordship wants to see you. And I mean right away."

  "Does he?" Edward said mildly. All the soldiers nodded. Edward asked, "Suppose I don't care to see him right away?"

  "That would be too bad-for you," the trooper answered. "And he would still see what was left of you."

  There was a line between bravery and stupidity. Edward Radcliffe knew which side of the line defying five young, tough, armored men lay on. "Well, supper will just have to wait in that case, won't it?" he said.

  "Smartest notion you've had in a long time, Granddad," the big soldier agreed. "Now get moving, before he gets sick of waiting."

  "I'm coming." Edward raised his voice to call out to Nell: "His Lordship has something to talk about with me." She squawked in dismay. He was dismayed, too, but he didn't think squawking would do any good. He nodded to Warwick's men. "Lead on. I'm honored to have such a fine escort."

  They snorted, almost in unison. "We aren't doing it for your honor, old man," the big soldier said. "We're doing it for his."

  "Really?" Edward said, as if that hadn't occurred to him. He didn't think pushing them any further was a good idea. He stepped over the threshold and into the street.

  He remembered when New Hastings literally hadn't been there. Now it could have been any other English seaside town-if you didn't notice the redwood timber, and if you didn't raise your eyes past the fields to the dark woods that didn't lie far away.