Half a dozen muskets went into each neat stack As the surrender terms had ordained, a bayonet topped each Brown Bess. A fair number of Atlantean soldiers still carried hunting guns that couldn't even take a bayonet. The longarms would definitely strengthen the new nation's arsenal.
As Victor and de la Fayette drew near, General Cornwallis saluted each of them in turn. The English commander was not far from Victor's age. He looked older, though, or perhaps only wearier.
"Good to see you again," Victor said.
"And you," Cornwallis replied. "You will, I trust, forgive me for saying I wish we were meeting once more under different circumstances."
"Of course." Victor nodded. "I do not believe you've made the acquaintance of the French commander." He turned to de la Fayette and switched languages: "Monsieur le Marquis, I have the honor of presenting to you the English general, Charles Cornwallis." Back to English: "General Cornwallis, here is the Marquis de la Fayette, who leads our ally's soldiers."
"A privilege to meet you, your Grace," Cornwallis said in accented but fluent French. "Your army played no small part in leading to… to the result we see here today." He didn't care to come right out and say something like in leading to our defeat. Well, he could be forgiven that. What man living didn't try to put the best face he could on misfortune?
"I thank you for your kind words, General," de la Fayette said in English. Sitting his horse along with the middle-aged Atlantean and English commanders, he seemed even more outrageously young than he really was. Returning to French, he went on, "I have never seen English soldiers fight less than bravely."
"Kind of you to say so, sir-very kind indeed," Cornwallis murmured. He turned back to Victor. "When you winkled us out of Hanover: that's when things commenced to unravel, dammit."
"Yes, I think so, too," Victor said. "Hanover is our windpipe, so to speak. After we got your hands off it, we could breathe freely once more."
"Just so." Cornwallis stared out to sea at the line of ships flying King Louis' fleurs-de-lys. "And who could have dreamt the Royal Navy would let us down? That I might lose on land is one thing. But the navy has turned back all corners since the damned devil Dutchmen back in the last century."
The pirates of Avalon had also given the Royal Navy all it wanted and a little more besides. Victor remembered Red Rodney Radcliffe far more fondly than his own clipped-e Radcliff greatgrandfather had ever thought of the pirate chieftain-he was sure of that. In days to come. Red Rodney might yet be reckoned a symbol, a harbinger, of Atlantean liberty. At the time, William Radcliff had considered his own unloved and unloving cousin nothing but a God-damned bandit. He'd been right, too. Symbols and harbingers were best viewed at a distance of a good many years.
Cornwallis' cough brought Victor back to the here-and-now. The English general reached for his sword. "If you want this-"
"No, no." Victor held up a hand. "As I said in the terms of surrender, you and your officers are welcome to your weapons. You certainly did nothing to disgrace them." But he couldn't help adding, "Except, perhaps, by seeking to harbor Habakkuk Biddiscombe and his band of cutthroat traitors."
"One side's villain is the other's hero," Cornwallis answered. "We were comrades in arms once, you and I, against the marquis' kingdom. Had things gone differently, you would be the man blamed for turning his coat, not Biddiscombe."
"Had things gone differently, Atlantis might be joined to the Terranovan mainland, or even to the European," Victor said. "In either of those cases, we would not be here discussing how things might have gone differently."
Cornwallis' smile was sad. "I find myself in a poor position to disagree with you." As he spoke, his men went on stacking their muskets. After surrendering them, the redcoats stepped back into line. Beneath their professional impassivity, Victor saw fear. Without weapons, they were at their enemies' mercy. He would have cared for that no more than they did. But that cup, at least, had passed from him.
Far off in the distance, gunshots rang out. Regardless of this surrender, men from Victor's cavalry went on pursuing Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion. If Biddiscombe's men rode far enough and fast enough, some of them might get away. Odds were some of them would. Victor hoped his own followers would beat those odds and hunt down every last one.
"How soon do you think we shall be sent back to England?" Cornwallis asked.
"Word of your surrender will have to cross the Atlantic," Victor said. "After that, it depends on how soon his Majesty's government sends ships hither to transport you, and on wind and wave. On wind and wave, your guess is as good as mine. On his Majesty's government, your guess should be better than mine.''
"I suspect you credit me with more than I deserve," Cornwallis said. "That his Majesty's government works is not to be denied. How it works… is not always given to mortal men to know."
"When the ships come to repatriate you, they will be most welcome: that, I promise," Victor said. "And I hope they will also bring representatives of King George's mysterious government so we can come to terms with it once for all and take our recognized place amongst the nations of the earth."
"And also so that peace may be restored between the kingdoms of England and France," de la Fayette added in French. He'd followed the interchange in English between Victor and Cornwallis, but preferred to comment in his own language.
"Yes, that will also be necessary," Victor agreed, switching to French himself. "France's aid to our cause, both on land and at sea, was most significant."
"You would never have won without it," Cornwallis said.
"There again we stray into might-have-beens," Victor said. "Do you believe his Majesty's government would have been prepared to put up with twenty years of raids and ambushes? Would it not eventually have decided Atlantis was a running sore, more costly of men and sterling than it was worth, and gone off and left us to our own devices?"
"After twenty years of such annoyances, it might well have done so," Cornwallis answered. "But your own followers also might well have given up the war as a bad job long before that, had they seen no more immediate prospect of victory."
Since that had always been Victor's greatest fear about having to resort to guerrilla warfare, he couldn't very well call his beaten foe a liar. Instead, he gruffly repeated, "Might-have-beens," and let it go at that.
"One thing more," Cornwallis said, some anxiety in his voice: "Now that we pass into your hands, I trust you will be able to victual us until such time as we return to the mother country?"
"We'll manage." Victor knew he still sounded gruff. He half-explained why: "I fear it won't be boiled beef one day and roast capon the next. Our commissary cannot come close to that, even for our own men. But your troops will go no hungrier than we do ourselves-on that you have my solemn word."
Cornwallis glanced over toward the Atlantean ranks. "Your soldiers are leaner than mine, as a general rule, but I own that they are not famished. Very well, sir. If we must tighten our belts, so be it. I know that, when you give your promise, he to whom you give it may rely on it."
"They are good men, the Atlanteans: better even than I expected before I came here," de la Fayette said, again in French. "Meaning no disrespect to you, General Cornwallis, but your country was foolish in the extreme in not doing everything it could to retain their affection and Loyalty."
"It could be that you have reason," Cornwallis replied in the same tongue. "Or it could be that nothing we might have done would have retained them. If a folk is determined to rise up, rise up it will, regardless of whether it has good cause."
Victor hadn't wanted to lead Atlantis into rebellion against England. But plenty of prominent Atlanteans had, among them men as eminent as Isaac Fenner and Custis Cawthorne. And England hadn't done everything it could to conciliate them-not even close.
All of which was water over the dam now. "No matter what we might have been, we are the United States of Atlantis" he said.
"And we shall see-the world will see-what comes of that."
Chapter 24
Spring in Croydon. Some but not all of the robins had flown south for the winter. All the birds that had were back now, hopping and singing and digging worms from the thawed ground. General Cornwallis was amused when Victor Radcliff named them. "Not my notion of robins," the English general declared.
"Yes, I know," Victor answered equably; he'd heard the like from Englishmen before. "Soon enough, you'll have your own little redbreasts back again."
Even as he spoke, redcoats filed aboard the ships the Royal Navy had sent to bring them home from Atlantis. Many of them were thinner than they had been when they stacked their muskets. But none had starved. They might have been hungry, but he knew the difference between hunger and hunger.
So did Cornwallis. "You have met the obligation you set yourself," he said. "No one could have treated captured foes more fairly."
"For which I thank you," Victor said. "We have no wish to be your enemies, as I tell Englishmen whenever I find the chance. So long as your country no longer seeks to impose its will on ours, I hope and trust we can become friends."
"May it be so," Cornwallis answered. "But you must work that out with the learned commissioners dispatched from London, not with me. I have no authority to frame a peace; mine lies-or, I should say, lay-solely in the military sphere."
Victor wasn't sure how much authority in the political sphere he had himself. He'd begun talks with King George's peace commissioners, but he'd had to warn them that the Atlantean Assembly might supersede him at any moment. So far, the Assembly hadn't seen fit to do so. Back in Honker's Mill, everyone still seemed amazed the United States of Atlantis had emerged victorious. Victor cast no aspersions on the Conscript Fathers for that. He was more than a little amazed himself.
"Have I your leave to take ship?" Cornwallis asked formally.
"You know you do," Victor said. "This is not your first visit to Atlantis. I hope one day you may come back here in peacetime, the better to see how this new experiment in liberty progresses."
"I should like that, though I can make no promises," Cornwallis said. "As a soldier, I remain at his Majesty's beck and call-provided he cares to call on a soldier proved unlucky in war."
"Well, I am similarly at the service of the Atlantean Assembly," Victor said.
"True." Cornwallis' nod was glum. "But you are not similarly defeated."
He sketched a salute. Victor held out his hand. Cornwallis clasped it. Then, slinging a duffel bag over his shoulder, the English general strode toward the pier and marched down it with his men. Boarding the closest English ship, he made his way back to the poop. He would have a cabin there, probably next to the captain's. And, aboard ship, he would no longer get his nose rubbed in Atlantean egalitarianism. He was a good fellow, but Victor doubted he would miss it.
A horseman trotted up. "General Radcliff, sir?"
"Yes?" Victor nodded. "What is it?"
"Letter for you, sir." The courier handed it to him and rode away.
Victor eyed the letter as if it were a mortar shell with the fuse hissing and about to explode. He kept waiting for orders from the Atlantean Assembly, and kept dreading the kind of orders the Assembly might give.
He would go on waiting a while longer. The letter was not addressed in the preternaturally neat hand of the Assembly's secretary. Nor was it bedizened with the red-crested eagle the Assembly had taken to using on its seal.
That did not mean the missive bore good news. It also did not mean he failed to recognize the script in which it was addressed. He had his doubts about whether he wanted to hear from the Atlantean Assembly. If only he could forget he'd ever heard from Marcel Freycinet, he would have been the happiest man in the newly freed, ecstatically independent United States of Atlantis. So he told himself, anyhow.
Which didn't mean he hadn't heard from Freycinet. He flipped the seal off the letter with his thumb. It lay not far from his feet. As he unfolded the paper, a little brown sparrow hopped over and pecked at the wax. Finding it indigestible, the bird fluttered off.
Victor feared he would find the letter's contents just as indigestible. Freycinet wasted no time beating around the bush. I congratulate you, he wrote. You are the father of a large, squalling baby boy. Louise is also doing well. She has asked that he be named Nicholas, to which I am pleased to assent. I pray God will allow him to remain healthy, and mat he will continue to be an adornment for my household. I remain, sir, your most obedient servant in all regards… His scribbled signature followed.
"A son," Victor muttered, refolding the sheet of paper. A son somewhere between mulatto and quadroon, born into slavery! Not the offspring he'd had in mind, which was putting it mildly. And if Marcel Freycinet chose, or needed, to sell the boy (to sell Nicholas Radcliff, only surviving son of Victor Radcliff-hailed as Liberator of Atlantis but unable to liberate his own offspring)… well, he would be within his rights.
Suddenly and agonizingly, Victor understood the Seventh Commandment in a way he never had before. God knew what He was doing when He thundered against adultery, all right. And why? Not least, surely, because adultery complicated men's lives, and women's, in ways nothing else could.
A bird called. It was only one of the robins whose Atlantean name General Cornwallis and other Englishmen so disdained. All the same, to Victor's ear it might have been a cuckoo. He'd hatched an egg in a nest not his own, and now he had to hope other birds would feed and care for the fledgling as it deserved.
Someone's soles scuffed on the dirt beside him. He looked up. There stood Blaise. The Negro pointed at the letter. "Is it from the Assembly?"
"No." Victor quickly tucked the folded sheet of paper into a breeches pocket. "Merely an admirer."
Blaise raised an eyebrow. "An admirer, you say? Have you met her? Is she pretty?"
"Not that sort of admirer." At the moment-especially at this moment-that was the last sort Victor wanted.
"What other kind is worth having?" Blaise asked. When away from Stella, he could still think like that, since he hadn't got Roxanne with child-and since he didn't know Victor had impregnated Louise.
"I said nothing of whether this one was worth having," Victor answered, warming to his theme: "This is a fellow who, having read the reports of our final campaign in the papers in Hanover, is now convinced he could have taken charge of our army and the French and won more easily and quickly and with fewer casualties than we did. If only he wore gilded epaulets, he says, we should have gained our liberty year before last."
"Oh. One of those" Blaise said. The lie convinced him all the more readily because Victor had had several real letters in that vein. A startling number of men who'd never commanded soldiers-and who probably didn't know how to load a musket, much less clean one-were convinced the art of generalship suffered greatly because circumstance forced them to remain netmakers or potters or solicitors. Victor and Blaise were both convinced such men understood matters military in the same degree as a honker comprehended the calculus.
I'm afraid so," Victor said.
"Well, if you waste the time and ink on an answer, by all means tell him I think he's a damn fool, too," Blaise said, and took himself off.
"If I do, I shall," Victor answered-a promise that meant nothing. He reached into his pocket and touched the letter from Freycinet. However much grief he felt, it remained a private grief. And the last thing he wanted-the very last thing-was that it should ever become public.
Dickering with the English commissioners helped keep Victor from brooding too much over things in his own life he could not help. Richard Oswald was a plain-spoken Scotsman who served as chief negotiator for the English Secretary of State, the Earl of Shelburne. His colleague, David Hartley, was a member of Parliament. He had a high forehead, a dyspeptic expression, and a shoulder-length periwig of the sort that had gone out of fashion when Louis XTV died, more than half a century before.
Most of the negotiations were straightforward enough. The English duo conceded that King George recognized the
United States of Atlantis, separately and collectively, as free, sovereign, and independent states. He abandoned all claims to govern them and to own property in them.
Settling the borders of the new land was similarly simple. The only land frontier it had was the old one with Spanish Atlantis in the far south, and that remained unchanged. One of these days, Victor suspected, his country would take Spanish Atlantis for its own, either by conquest or by purchase. But that time was not yet here, and did not enter into the present discussions.
"There'd be more of a to-do over who owned what and who claimed what were you part of the Terranovan mainland," Oswald remarked in a burr just thick enough to make Victor pay close attention to every word he said. The comment reminded Victor of his byplay with Cornwallis at the surrender ceremony. Oswald went on, "As things are, though, ocean all around keeps us from fashin' ourselves unduly."
"So it does," Victor said, hoping he grasped what fashin' meant.
They disposed without much trouble of fishing rights and of the due rights of creditors on both sides to get the full amount they had been owed. Then they came to the sticky part: the rights remaining to Atlanteans who had stayed loyal to King George. That particularly grated on Victor because Habakkuk Biddiscombe and a handful of his men remained at large.
At last, David Hartley said, "Let them be outlaws, then. But what of the plight of the thousands of Atlanteans who never bore arms against your government but still groan under expulsions and confiscations? I fear I see no parallel between the two cases."
That gave Victor pause. How could he say the Englishman's complaint held no justice? Slowly, he answered, "If these onetime loyalists are willing to live peacefully in the United States of Atlantis, and to accept the new nation's independence, something may perhaps be done for them."
"Why do you allow no more than that?" Hartley pressed. "Let your Atlantean Assembly pass the proper law, and proclaim it throughout the land, and all will be as it should."
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