"Then let them rise, too," Fenner said. "Freedom is no less contagious than smallpox, and no inoculation wards against it."
"Would you say the same, Mr. Fenner, to a Negro slave picking indigo or growing rice in the south of Atlantis?" Blaise asked.
Custis Cawthorne chuckled softly to himself. Fenner sent him an irritated look. "Speaking for myself, I have no great use for slavery," he replied. "I hope one day to see it vanish from the United States of Atlantis, as it has already vanished or grown weak in so much of the north here. For the time being, however, it-"
"Makes the slaveholders piles of filthy lucre," Cawthorne broke in.
"Not how I should have phrased it," Fenner said.
Why not? Victor wondered. His son could be sold at any time, for no better reason than to line Marcel Freycinet's pockets. That made him look at holding Negroes and copperskins in perpetual servitude in a whole new light.
But Fenner hadn't finished: "One day before too many years have passed, I expect property in slaves to grow hopelessly uneconomic when measured against property in, say, machinery. And when that day comes, slave holding in Atlantis will be at an end."
"How many years?" Blaise pressed, as if wondering how patient he should-or could-be.
"I should be surprised if it came to pass in fewer than twenty years," Isaac Fenner answered. "I should also be surprised if slavery still persisted a lifetime from now."
Blaise made a noise down deep in his throat. That did not please him. No-it did not satisfy him. Isaac minks my son Nicholas will grow to manhood a slave, Victor thought. He minks my son may live out his whole life as a chattel. Put in those terms, Fenner's reasoned and reasonable estimate didn't satisfy him, either. But what could he do about it? Freeing slaves was far more explosive than compensating loyalists.
"Can I bring you anything else, gents?" the serving girl asked.
Custis Cawthorne shoved his mug across the table toward her. "If you fill this up again, I shall thank you sweetly for it"
"And you'll pay for it, too," she said, and walked off swinging her hips.
"One way or another, we always end up paying for it," Cawthorne said with a sigh.
Fenner wasn't watching the girl; he was still methodically going through the treaty. When at last he looked up, Victor asked, "Does it suit you?"
"We might have squeezed better terms from them here and there." Fenner tapped the document with the nail on his right index finger. "But, if you have already made the bargain…"
"I have," Victor said. "They may possibly reconsider: I daresay there are certain small advantages they still hope to wring from us. If you reckon the game worth the candle, I do not object-too much-to your proposing further negotiation to them."
Isaac Fenner tapped the treaty again. By his expression, up till Victor's reply he'd thought only of what the United States of Atlantis might get from England, not of what England might still want from the new nation. "If the agreement as it stands suits you and suits them, we might be wiser to leave it unchanged," he said.
"So we might," Cawthorne said, "not that that necessarily stops anyone."
Chapter 25
Victor hadn't thought it would stop Fenner. If it did, he wasn't about to complain. If he did complain, after all, wouldn't he fall into the common error himself?
Victor had wondered whether the English commissioners would want anything to do with Isaac Fenner and Custis Cawthorne. After all, he'd already reached agreement with King George's officials. And, had he brought Fenner alone, the Englishmen might well not have cared to treat with him.
But Cawthorne made all the difference. Richard Oswald and David Hartley were as delighted to meet him as if he were a young, beautiful, loose-living actress. Oswald used a pair of spectacles of Cawthorne's design, so that he could read with the lower halves of the lenses while still seeing clearly at a distance through the uppers.
"Ingenious! Most extraordinarily ingenious!" the Scot exclaimed. "How ever did you come to think of it?"
"What gave me the idea, actually, was a badly ground set of reading glasses, in which part of the lenses were of improper curvature," Cawthorne answered. "I thought, if what had chanced by accident were to be done better, and on purpose- Once the notion was in place, bringing it to fruition proved easy enough."
"Remarkable," Oswald said. "It takes an uncommon mind to recognize the importance of the commonplace and obvious."
Curtis Cawthorne preened. The only thing he enjoyed more than hearing himself praised was hearing himself praised by someone with the discernment to understand and to state exactly why he deserved all those accolades.
Because the commissioners so admired Cawthorne, they even put up with Fenner's urge to fiddle with the treaty. As far as Victor could see, none of the changes from either side made a halfpenny's worth of difference. A few commas went in; a few others disappeared. Several adjectives and a sprinkling of adverbs were exchanged for others of almost identical import. Fenner seemed happier. The Englishmen didn't seem dismayed or, more important, irate.
The one phrase David Hartley declined to change was "earnestly recommend" in the fifth article. Fenner proposed several alternatives. Hartley rejected each in turn. "I do not believe that has quite the meaning his Majesty's government wishes to convey," he would say, and the Atlantean would try again.
Finally, Victor took Fenner aside. "He likes the wording of that article as it is," Radcliff said. "He is particularly pleased with it because he created the formula himself."
"Ah!" Fenner said, as if a great light had dawned. "I had not fully grasped that he was suffering from pride of authorship."
Although Victor might not have phrased it just so, he found himself nodding. "That is the condition"-he didn't want to say disease-"controlling him."
"Very well, then." By Fenner's tone and expression, it wasn't. Victor followed him into the meeting room with some apprehension. But Fenner was smiling by the time he sat down across the table from the English commissioners. "Mr. Hartley, General Radcliff has persuaded me that your language will serve. I shall earnestly recommend"-his smile got wider-"to the Atlantean Assembly that it should abide by this article as it does by all the rest."
"That is handsomely said, Mr. Fenner," Hartley replied. "I am pleased to accept it in the spirit in which it is offered. And I also thank you for your good offices. General Radcliff."
"My pleasure, sir," Victor replied. He still wasn't sure he liked the way Isaac Fenner was smiling. The Atlantean Assembly could earnestly recommend as much as it pleased. That didn't necessarily mean the Atlantean states would pay any attention to it. Fenner had to know as much, too. But he said nothing of it to David Hartley. Maybe he had the makings of a diplomat after all.
"With that matter settled, have we any more outstanding?" Richard Oswald asked, as he had with the draft he and Hartley arranged with Victor. Nobody said anything. Oswald nodded decisively, like an auctioneer bringing down the hammer on… On a slave, Victor thought, and wished he hadn't. Before he could dive deeper into his own worries, Oswald went on, "Then let us affix our signatures and seals to the document. Mr. Hartley and I will deliver our copy to London, whilst you take yours to Honker's Mill."
His manner was altogether matter-of-fact, which only made the comparison more odious. London was the greatest city in the world, perhaps the greatest in the history of the world. Honker's Mill… wasn't. A touch of asperity in his voice, Isaac Fenner said, "Now that peace has been restored, New Hastings will become the capital of the United States of Atlantis."
"How nice," Oswald murmured. New Hastings wasn't the greatest city in the history of the world, either. Maybe one day it would be, or Hanover if it wasn't so lucky, but neither came anywhere close yet. Not even the most ardent-the most rabid- Atlantean patriot could claim otherwise.
"Signatures. Seals," Custis Cawthorne said-and not one word about New Hastings' honor.
Men from both sides solemnly initialed the changed adjectives and adverbs on the treat
y. They let the altered commas go. Maybe, one day, some historians would note the ones that had been deleted and learnedly guess which ones had been added after the first draft was done. For the time being, nobody thought they were worth getting excited about.
Richard Oswald and David Hartley signed for England. They splashed hot wax down on both copies and pressed their signet rings into it. Then the Atlanteans followed suit: first Victor, then Isaac Fenner, and finally Custis Cawthorne. One by one, the Atlanteans also used their seals.
"It is accomplished," Hartley said as the wax hardened. "Your land is separated from ours." Jeremiah could have sounded no gloomier. Even Job would have been hard-pressed.
"Now it is truly our own, to do with as we will!" Isaac Fenner, by contrast, exulted. Victor wondered how that balance between gloom and exultation would tip in years to come. Only the coming of those years would tell.
Company by company, regiment by regiment, the Atlantean soldiers who'd taken service for the duration of the war against England went home. The United States of Atlantis would retain a small professional army-one modeled on that of the mother country-but most of the greencoats wanted nothing more than to go back to their farms and shops, and to their families.
And French ships put in at Croydon to return de la Fayette and the survivors from his army to their native land. French sergeants cursed more musically than their English or Atlantean counterparts, but they were no less sincere. Ordinary French soldiers seemed as ready to go anywhere they were told and do anything they were told as a like number of redcoats would have.
De la Fayette clasped Victor's hand. "You may be sure, Monsieur]e General, it was a great honor to serve beside you and to help bring freedom to your land." The French noble grinned impishly. "And I also very much enjoyed giving England one in the eye."
"The fight would have been much harder and much longer without you, your Grace," Victor answered truthfully. "Your army's courage and its skill taught us a great deal, and your fleet slammed the cork into Cornwallis' bottle." He paused a moment, then added, "And, had you not come here, I should not have made a friend I value."
"I feel the same way." De la Fayette squeezed his hand again. He too hesitated before continuing in a low voice: "Now that Atlantis has shown the world what freedom means, perhaps my country will also discover it before long."
Victor remembered Custis Cawthorne's comments on the current state of France. What Cawthorne could say among his fellow Atlanteans, Victor didn't feel comfortable repeating to a French nobleman, even one of liberal ideas like de la Fayette. He contented himself with replying, "Come what may, in your land and in mine, I hope we meet again."
"As do I-and may it be so!" The marquis' smile was sweet and sad and knowing beyond his years. "If this is to come to pass, I think I shall have to come back here. Atlantean affairs will likely leave you far too busy to cross the sea and visit me in France."
"Maybe so-but then again, maybe not," Victor said. "I am going back to my farm. I never wanted to be anything more than a private citizen. Now that the war is over, I intend to seize the chance and go back to what I was."
"Well, man ami, I wish you good fortune in your endeavor." Yes, de la Fayette's smile looked knowing indeed. "But fame, once it takes up a man, often is not so eager to let him go again."
That had also worried Victor. He gave the best answer he could: "If I am willing-no: eager, by God!-to let tame go, I hope the beast will prove willing to take its claws out of me."
"A man should always hope," de la Fayette agreed. Victor Radcliff was old enough to be his father. The marquis had no business sounding like the more experienced of the two of them. But he brought it off with grace and without much effort, as he brought off so many things.
"You don't believe I can do it." Victor turned that into an accusation.
De la Fayette's shrug was a small masterpiece of its kind. "What a man can do… What fate will do… Who but k ban Dim can say how they fit together? As, for example, the matter of your paternity."
"What about it? How did you know about it?" That was the last thing Victor wanted anyone to know about. And it was the last thing he wanted to talk about, even if they were unlikely to be overheard.
This time, de la Fayette's shrug just looked… French. "Monsieur Freycinet communicated the news to me. Rest assured, he understands the need for discretion, and he relies on mine, as you may."
"Mmm," Victor said. Freycinet could afford to rely on that. Victor couldn't. Might the man from the south have told anyone else? Radcliff didn't want to contemplate that.
With a sigh, de la Fayette said, "It is a great pity when what should be a time of joy brings you no happiness."
Calling it a pity, to Victor's way of thinking, made a formidable understatement. He forced a shrug of his own: a poor thing next to those of de la Fayette, but it would have to serve. "Nothing to be done about it," he said.
"I know," the marquis agreed sympathetically. "Not even amending your laws would change the predicament, I fear. If you led a single life… But you do not, and no woman can look kindly upon her man after he sires a child on another."
"No," Victor said, wishing the marquis would shut up. Nothing de la Fayette said hadn't crossed his own mind. He and Meg had got on well for many years, but she wouldn't be one to take something like this in stride. How many women would? Precious few. Victor didn't need the Frenchman to point that out for him.
Someone aboard the nearest French ship called de la Fayette. The marquis grabbed Victor's hand one more time. "I must go," he said, and kissed Radcliff on both cheeks. He hurried down the pier, over the gangplank, and onto the ship. He waved from the deck before heading back toward the poop.
Victor also waved. Little by little, Atlantis was being left to her own devices. The prospect excited Isaac Fenner. Despite all the fighting Victor had done to produce exactly this result, he still wasn't sure whether it excited him or frightened him more.
Writing to Meg, which once was always a pleasure, had become a trial since Victor learned Louise would bear his child. He wasn't used to concealing himself from his wife. He'd always been able to speak his mind to her. No more, or not fully.
If she ever found out about his dark descendant, she would speak her mind to him. He had no doubts on that score.
Worrying about what would happen when he got home kept him in Croydon longer than he would have lingered with a clear
conscience. His aides could have handled the release of what was left of the army that had bested the redcoats. They knew it, too. He caught the quizzical looks they gave him when he rode out to
the shrinking encampments outside of town.
He hoped none of them knew about his predicament. He'd done his best to keep it secret, but Custis Cawthorne had plenty of pungent things to say about secrets and all the things that could go wrong with them.
His lingering meant he was in Croydon when a courier rode into town at a full gallop, his horse kicking up great clouds of dust till he reined in. "What is it?" Victor asked anxiously-good news seldom needed to travel so fast. He hoped there hadn't been a bad fire somewhere, or a smallpox outbreak.
This time, the courier surprised him. The man threw back his head and howled like a wolf. Then he said, "We've caught Habakkuk Biddiscombe, General!"
Everybody who heard that clapped and cheered. "Have we?" Victor breathed.
"Sure have," the courier said. "I haven't seen him myself, but word is he's a sorry starveling thing. And he'll get sorrier pretty goddamn quick, won't he?"
More cheers declared that the people of Croydon liked the idea. Victor wondered how much he liked it himself. After Biddiscombe went over to England, Victor had wanted nothing more than to see him dead. He wondered why killing the traitor in cold blood seemed so much less appealing.
Appealing or not, it would have to be done If he'd wanted to avoid it, he would have let General Cornwallis take Biddiscombe and the men of the Horsed Legion away with him when he went back to
England. At the time, he'd made a point of allowing no such thing.
"Where is he?" Victor asked.
"Up in Kirkwall, about fifty miles north of here," the courier said. "Do you want them to string him up there? They'll do it in a heartbeat-you can count on that."
"No," Victor said, not without a certain amount of reluctance. "Even a traitor deserves a trial."
The courier shrugged. "Seems a waste of time, if you want to know what I think." Like most Atlanteans, he assumed people did want to know what he thought. After another shrug, he went on, "I'll need me a fresh horse to head north. Almost ran the legs off of this here poor beast."
"You'll have one," Victor assured him. "Are all the cutthroats captured with Biddiscombe, or do some remain at large?"
"Most of 'em're caught or killed," the man answered. "A few got away. Odds are they'll chase 'em down pretty soon."
"I hope so," Victor said. "The sooner they do, the sooner Atlantis will know perfect peace at last."
"Perfect peace," the courier echoed. "That'd be something, wouldn't it?"
"So it would," Victor said solemnly. Sure enough, with Habakkuk Biddiscombe gone from the stage, the United States of Atlantis might come to know perfect peace, at least for a little while He wondered when-or if-his family ever would.
But Biddiscombe's capture did let him write to his wife. My dear Meg, I am sorry past words to have to tell you my departure from Croydon is once more delayed. I am not sorry, however, to tell you why- Habakkuk Biddiscombe is run to earth at last. Until such time as he should receive the justice he deserves, I find myself compelled to stay here. And, until such time as I can get away, I remain, fondly, your… Victor.
His goose quill fairly raced across the page. The letter held a good deal of truth. He would have written one much like it had he never bedded Louise. He might even have set down the very same words. Unfortunately, he knew the difference between what might have been and what was. Had he never bedded Louise, he would have meant all the words he wrote Now he was at least partly relieved to stay in Croydon. If Meg had heard the truth…
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