"Maybe I'd better not." The 'prentice set his feet. Several other Atlanteans ranged themselves behind him.
More English soldiers came out of the cookshop. The sun glittered off the sharp edges of their bayonets. "Last chance, boy," the corporal said, not unkindly. "Otherwise, we'll stick you and we'll gut you and you'll end up dead never knowing why."
"What do we do?" Blaise asked in a low voice. "Try to keep the town from blowing up," Victor answered. "The time's not ripe."
No matter what he thought, his opinion turned out not to be the one that counted. One of the men behind the bushy-haired 'prentice stooped to grub a cobblestone out of the ground. He flung it at the redcoats. It caught a soldier in the ribs. He said "Oof!" and then "Ow!" and then "Fuck your bleedin' mother!"
A split second after the curse passed the redcoat's lips, muskets leveled at the crowd of Atlanteans. "Fire!" the corporal shouted. Triggers clicked. Descending hammers scraped flints on steel. Sparks fell into flash pans. The guns bellowed, sending up clouds of acrid gunpowder smoke.
Most of them bellowed, anyhow: flintlocks were imperfectly reliable. The English soldiery's muskets were also imperfectly accurate. Some of the shots went wide; one of them shattered a window well off to the side of the crowd. But men screamed.
Men fell.
And men who didn't scream or fall hurled more stones at the redcoats. One of them had a pistol, which he discharged. The ball hit the weasely corporal in the arm. What he said made the other soldier's obscenity sound like an endearment.
The sound of gunfire brought more redcoats at the run. More Atlanteans boiled out of houses and shops. The two sides hurried towards each other like lodestone and iron. The Englishmen had discipline and firearms and bayonets. The Atlanteans had fury and whatever makeshift weapons they could snatch up and numbers. The fury kept them from fleeing when the redcoats shot and stuck some of them. What the Atlanteans did to a couple of redcoats they managed to grab…
A paving stone sailed past Victor Radcliff's head. He ducked, as automatically and uselessly as a man did when a musket ball came too close for comfort. If it was going to hit you, it would before you could do a damned thing about it.
There were fights to join and fights to stay away from. This struck Victor as a fight to stay away from. He'd faced more dangerous enemies with qualms no worse than those of any reasonably brave man. When he had, though, he'd done it with some purpose in mind. If this melee had any point at all, he couldn't see it.
He pulled Blaise into a narrow, stinking alley. He didn't know where it went, but it led away from the madness that had kindled here. "They are liable to tear this whole big place down," Blaise said mournfully.
"That they are," Victor agreed. "They're liable to tear Atlantis apart while they're doing it, too."
"What can we do?" the Negro asked.
"Get away. Live through this. See what happens next. Try to shape what happens next. Have you got any better ideas? If you have, spit 'em out, by God. I'd love to hear 'em."
But Blaise shook his head. "If we gonna get away, we better do it right now," he said. That struck Victor as one of the best idea she'd heard in a long time. The two of them wasted not a moment using it.
Hanover writhed under martial law. The redcoats strode through the streets by squads. When they went by ones or twos, or even by fours or fives, they were much too apt to be mobbed. Rocks and crockery and the contents of chamber pots came flying out of upper-story windows.
Blaise had already escaped the city. He and Victor had gone their separate ways precisely because they were known to stick together. Blaise had got away clean. Victor'd expected nothing less. Englishmen-Atlanteans, too-had trouble taking black men seriously.
And now it was time for Victor to get away himself, if he could. Coming into Hanover, he'd worn the clothes of a prosperous farmer, which he was. Leaving the city, he was by all appearances a down-at-the-heels shoemaker. He even rode a swaybacked nag, the kind of horse such a man would have if he had any horse at all.
The English had checkpoints west of Hanover. They also had men scattered between the checkpoints. If you got caught trying to sneak out, you landed in real trouble. Things at the checkpoints were supposed to come closer to routine.
They'd better, Victor thought. Up ahead of him, the redcoats were searching a fat man's carriage. The fat man didn't like it, and let them know he didn't. "I'm a loyal subject of good King George! It's not right for you to treat me like a common criminal," he said.
"Everybody's a loyal subject… when he talks to us," said the underofficer in charge. "Find anything, Charles?"
"No, Sergeant. He's not a smuggler, anyhow," said a soldier, presumably Charles. "Do we strip him to his drawers?"
"No. I expect he's clean." The sergeant nodded to the fat man. "Pass on, you."
"Strip me to my drawers?" the fat man spluttered. "You'll win few friends playing such games."
"And do you think we care?" the sergeant said. "If you settlers weren't in revolt, we wouldn't have to worry about keeping you from sneaking guns out of Hanover. If you haven't got guns, who cares if you're friendly or not? Now get going, or we will find out if your linen's clean."
Still spluttering, the fat man rolled on. The soldier called Charles gestured Victor Radcliff forward. "And who are you, friend?" he asked.
No friend of yours, Victor thought. "My name is Richard Saunders," he replied. Some Radcliffs and Radcliffes favored the English; the clan was too large to have uniform opinions. But if the redcoats knew they had hold of Victor Radcliff, they'd never let him go.
"Well, Saunders, what are you doing coming out of Hanover?" the sergeant asked. "Where are you bound?"
"I'm heading for Hooville," Victor answered, which was true, although he wouldn't stop there. Then he blossomed into invention: "I was seeing my solicitor. My uncle just died childless, and looks like I'll have to go to law with my cousins over his property and estate." He tried to seem suitably disgusted.
The sergeant and Charles and the rest of the redcoats put their heads together. "Are you loyal to his Majesty, King George III?" the underofficer demanded fiercely.
"Of course I am." Victor lied without compunction. As the redcoat had said to the fat man, who would tell George's soldiers no?
And the English soldiers' crooked grins said they understood the likely reason for his answer. "Then you won't mind if we search you?" the sergeant asked.
"Yes, I'll mind," Victor said. "Not much I can do about it past minding, though, is there?"
"Too right there's not, friend." Charles used the last word to suggest anything but its literal meaning. "Why don't you get down from that sorry piece of crowbait you're riding?"
"Sam's a good horse," Victor protested. The redcoats laughed. In their boots, he would have laughed, too.
They patted him down and looked inside his saddle bags. They found nothing to make them suspicious-Victor wanted to look as harmless as he could. The sergeant still seemed unhappy. "You've fought in war," he said, and it wasn't quite a question.
Victor nodded. "I fought the French here, back about the time your beard sprouted."
The English underofficer scratched at a side whisker. "We were on the same side then, England and Atlantis."
"I am on England's side still," Victor Radcliff said once more. "Yes, of course you are." The sergeant didn't believe it, not for a second. But he had no real reason to disbelieve it, no proof Radcliff was anything but what he claimed. He looked unhappy, but he jerked a thumb toward the swaybacked horse. "Climb on your old screw and get out of here."
"Obliged." Victor pretended not to notice his reservations. When he mounted Sam, the deep curve in the horse's spine left the stirrups only a few inches above the ground. He pressed his knees against the animal's sides and flicked the reins. Away Sam went. He'd get where he was going, but he wouldn't do it in a hurry.
Don't look over your shoulder, Victor told himself. He didn't want to give the redcoats any more chance
s to see his face. Sam ambled along. The soldiers could still call him back. They could, but they didn't. The road swung around behind a stand of native pines. Only then did Victor breathe easier.
He was riding a better horse by the time he came to Hooville. Someone took Sam back to the farm where he'd labored for a lot of years. Maybe his role in helping Victor escape Hanover would be celebrated in songs and paintings in years to come. He couldn't have cared less. All he got out of it were a couple of carrots. Blaise waited in Hooville. "Good to see you," he said when
Victor rode in. "I wasn't sure I was going to."
"Well, neither was I," Victor said. "But here I am. They didn't know they had me in their hands, and now they don't, and so they won't."
"Custis Cawthorne is loose, too. He's on his way to New Hastings," Blaise said.
"Good for him-and that's the right place for him to go, too," Radcliff said. New Hastings held fewer loyalists than any other town in English Atlantis. Other places might be noisier in their disapproval of the mother country, but it ran deeper and wider there than anywhere else.
"Not everybody's going to get away, though. The redcoats do hold Hanover," Blaise said. "What can we do?"
"Right now? I don't quite know. If this is truly war…" Victor Radcliff no doubt looked as unhappy as he sounded. If this was truly war, Atlantis stood alone against the mightiest empire in the world. "If this is war, I see only one advantage on our side."
Blaise raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's one more than I see."
"Oh, we've got one." Victor waved to the barmaid for another mug of flip. He'd drunk enough that he should have felt it, but he didn't, or not very much. As she set the mug in front of him, he went on, "We're a long way from England. She can't move quickly against us, and she won't find it easy or cheap to ship soldiers across the sea."
After a moment's consideration, Blaise said, "Huzzah."
Victor wondered whether the Negro had been so sardonic in the African jungles where he grew up, or whether Blaise had learned it from him. If the latter was true, as he feared, then he had a lot to answer for. Sardonic or not, the Negro had a point with his sour acclamation. Atlantis had merchantmen and fishing boats to oppose the Royal Navy, farmers to face professional soldiers. She was short of gunpowder, and even shorter of firearms. And she was short of people-and how many of the ones she had would take England's side?
"What will the French down south do?" Blaise asked.
"Good question," Radcliff said. French Atlantis had passed under English rule only a dozen years before. Since then, the more numerous English-speakers had flooded into lands formerly barred to them. Would the older settlers rise against King George, or against the interlopers disrupting their way of life?
"Have you got an answer?" Blaise seemed surprised to discover his mug of flip was also empty. He waved for a refill, too. "Only We'll have to see," Victor replied. The barmaid didn't come back for Blaise as fast as she had for Victor. Was that because he was servant, not master? Because he was black, not white? Or only because she had other orders to fill first? Sometimes you could read too much into things that in fact carried no great meaning. Sometimes you could miss meanings in things that seemed ordinary at first.
Blaise brushed two fingers of his right hand against the dark skin of his left forearm. Victor had seen Negroes use that gesture before. It meant. You did that because of my color. His factotum knew what he thought, then. And he knew what he thought of Victor's comment as well: "Is that good enough?"
"No," Victor said honestly. "But it's what we've got."
When he came to his farm, he found a delegation from the Atlantean Assembly waiting for him. The settlements had tried protesting to England one by one, only to learn that the mother country didn't want to listen to them. Then they'd all joined together, thinking Atlantis might be heard if only it spoke with a single voice. Thus far, the evidence was against them.
Isaac Fenner had red hair and ears that stuck out from the sides of his head like open doors. He was a solicitor from Bredestown, a few miles up the Brede from New Hastings, and spoke for the older city as well.
Matthew Radcliffe, from Avalon on the west coast, was bound to be some sort of cousin of Victor's, but neither had set eyes on the other before this meeting. The westerner was short and stocky; he looked travel worn. One of the farm cats had taken a liking to him and fallen asleep on his lap. He absently stroked its back while sipping rum punch.
Everyone called Robert Smith, from Croydon in the north, I Uncle Bobby. He'd carried the name since he was young. Victor didn't know why; he wondered if Smith did himself. Uncle Bobby
was also drinking rum punch, with the single-minded diligence of a man who needed it.
From the south came two men: Abednego Higgins and Michel du Guesclin. Maybe Higgins stood for the English-speakers down there and du Guesclin for the Frenchmen, or maybe things had just worked out that way. They were both very tall, the one broad-shouldered, the other slim as a rapier. Du Guesclin, Victor knew, was somehow connected to the Kersauzon family, as prominent down there as Radcliffs and Radcliffes were in English Atlantis.
As soon as Victor came inside and saw them, Margaret said, "They want to talk to you."
"Well, I expected they could find rum and something to mix it with somewhere closer than here," he answered.
His wife sent him an exasperated look. "No. They want to talk to you about something important"
"I was afraid they did." Victor Radcliff was also afraid he knew what the gentlemen of the Atlantean Assembly wanted.
"You aren't going to throw them out?" Despite the way Meg said it, it wasn't really a question.
Victor sighed. "No, I suppose not." As if in ironic counterpoint to that, Matthew Radcliffe raised his mug in salute. Abednego Higgins tossed a well-gnawed chicken bone onto the platter from which he'd taken it when it was meatier. The gentlemen from the Assembly did not expect to be sent on their way. With another sigh, Victor stepped past his wife and nodded to them. "Hello, my friends," he said, wondering how big a lie he was telling.
Radcliffe from Avalon raised his mug again. Du Guesclin, full of French politesse, bowed in his seat. Uncle Bobby grabbed the bull by the horns, saying, "Do you recall what the Discoverer did when the Black Earl tried to tax him without his leave?"
"Yes, I recall," Victor answered. Every schoolchild in English Atlantis knew what Edward Radcliffe had done when the exiled Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, tried to set himself up as king in Atlantis. What had happened then helped shape Atlantean history for the three hundred years between that day and this.
But Robert Smith went on as if Victor hadn't spoken: "He died, that's what he did. He died fighting tyranny, and his sons put it down for good." That was the story schoolboys learned. Some people said what had actually happened was more complicated.
Victor Radcliff didn't know; he hadn't been in New Hastings back in 1470.
Isaac Fenner was descended from the first man to die in Atlantis (and, if some tales were true, from the girl the Black Earl had taken as his bedwarmer, maybe even from Neville himself). He said, "The damned Englishmen still haven't learned their lesson. They think they can tax us as they please. Do we let them get away with that? Do we let them make us into slaves?"
Both du Guesclin and Higgins shook their heads at that rhetorical question. They owned slaves: copperskins from Terranova to the west and Negroes like Blaise brought in to do hard work in a climate not well suited to white men. Maybe that gave them extra cause not to want to be enslaved themselves. Maybe it meant they feared their own bondsmen would rise against them given even half a chance. Maybe they had reason for such fears.
"We are in arms around Hanover-you've seen that for yourself, Radcliff," Uncle Bobby said. "And we are in arms in Croydon, too. We rose before Hanover did." He spoke with a northerner's pride: doing anything ahead of Hanover and New Hastings mattered a lot up there.
"What has this got to do with me?" Victor asked, much in the way
, almost eighteen centuries before, Jesus had said, If it be possible, let tins cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. Jesus must have known it wouldn't be possible. And, in the same way, Victor knew what it had to do with him. If Jesus could hesitate, he thought he was entitled to do the same.
Now Smith spoke as to a child: "We are at war with England, Victor. The settlements have armies. We need to join them into one army, into an Atlantean army. We need a man under whom they will be glad to combine, a man who can command them. Who else but you?"
During the war against French Atlantis, France, and Spain, Victor had been the highest-ranking Atlantean soldier fighting alongside the redcoats he was now expected to oppose. Wasn't one war enough for one man? "I should sooner stay here on my farm and live as an ordinary private person," he said.
As if activated by some clockwork mechanism, the delegates from the Atlantean Assembly shook their heads in unison. "If you sit on your hands here, we'll lose," Abednego Higgins said bluntly.
"II a raison," Michel du Guesclin agreed. He continued in accented English: "I can think of no other English man the French of the south will follow."
"Do you want to let the Discoverer down?" Matthew Radcliffe added. "If we lose this fight, England will do to Atlantis what the Black Earl, damn him, tried to do to New Hastings. Come on, coz! Isn't fighting those bastards from across the sea in your blood?"
In the last war, the men from across the sea had been allies, and vital allies at that. They hadn't sought to ram taxes down the Atlanteans' throats, not then. Afterwards, though… Afterwards was another story, as afterwards so often was.
Up until a little more than a century before, Avalon had been a pirates' roost. Did Matthew Radcliffe carry some of the freebooters' blood in his veins? Victor wouldn't have been surprised. His distant kinsman certainly seemed ready, even eager, to brawl.
"This won't be the Battle of the Strand, one fight and it's over," Victor warned. "This will be a war like the last one-worse than the last one, unless I miss my guess. England won't want to let us go our own way."
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