United States of Atlantis a-2

by Harry Turtledove

  Sooner or later, he would have to go home and find out. For now, later would do.

  Atlantean horsemen brought Habakkuk Biddiscombe and half a dozen men from the Horsed Legion into Croydon three days later. The leading traitor and his followers were all skinny and dirty and dressed in clothes that had seen hard wear. Their hands were bound to the reins; their feet had been tied together under their horses' barrels. Some of them, Biddiscombe included, had already taken a beating or two.

  The people of Croydon crowded the streets to stare at the traitors, to jeer at them, and to pelt them with clods of dirt and rotten vegetables. Only when stones began to fly did the prisoners' guards raise weapons in warning to leave off. Even that was more to protect themselves than to save Biddiscombe and his friends.

  Croydon's jail was a solid brick building, with iron bars across the narrow windows. Victor Radcliff wondered if it was strong enough to hold out the crowd. He stood on the front steps and held up his hands. "Have no fear!" he shouted. "They will get what they have earned. Let them get it through lawful means!"

  "Tear them to pieces!" someone squalled.

  "Paint them with pitch and set them afire!" That was a woman. More than a few people of both sexes cheered the suggestion.

  Victor shook his head. "If they are to die, let them die quickly. Are we not better served to leave harsh, wicked punishments to England?"

  "No!" The cry came from a dismaying number of throats. One man added, "Cut the ballocks off 'em before you kill 'em!" He won himself another cheer.

  "You will have to kill me before you murder them," Victor declared.

  For a bad moment, he thought the mob would try just that He set his hand on the hilt of the Atlantean Assembly's sword. If he went down, he'd go down fighting. To either side of him, Atlantean horsemen raised pistols, while Croydon constables pointed ancient blunderbusses at the angry crowd. The blunderbusses, with their flaring muzzles, had barrels packed end to end with musket balls and scrap metal. At close range, they could be murderous… if they didn't blow up and kill the men who wielded them.

  The sight of weapons aimed their way killed the crowd's ardor. People at the front edged back. People at the back slipped away. Victor had hoped that would happen, but he hadn't been sure it would.

  "You see, General?" one of the horsemen said as he slowly lowered his pistol. "You should have let us settle the bastards up in Kirkwall. Then we wouldn't have had all this foofaraw."

  "No." Not without some regret, Victor shook his head. "Laws have to rule. More: laws have to be seen to rule. Let Biddiscombe and the men who rode with him have their trial. You know what the likely result will be. Once the matter is settled with all the propriety we can give it, that will be time enough for their just deserts."

  "Past time. Long past time," the Atlantean cavalryman said stubbornly.

  "We can afford what we spend here." Out of the corner of his eye, Victor glanced at the crowd, which continued to thin. "Can we go inside now without seeming cowards?"

  "Reckon so, but why would you want to?"

  "To speak to Biddiscombe," Victor answered. "He was one of us not so long ago, remember."

  "So much the worse for him," the horseman said. "If he'd stayed on the side where he belonged, we wouldn't've had near so much trouble throwing out the God-damned redcoats."

  "That is true," Victor said. "Biddiscombe, of course, purposed our having more trouble still."

  "Devil take him. And Old Scratch will-soon."

  "I shouldn't wonder." Victor did go inside then. The jail smelled of sour food, unwashed bodies, and chamber pots full to overflowing. Much of Croydon smelled that way, but the odors seemed concentrated in here.

  "Hello, General." The jailer, a man with a face like a boot (and a man who hadn't missed many meals), knuckled his forelock as if he were a servant instead of the master of this little domain.

  "Which of the scoundrels d'you care to see?"

  "Biddiscombe himself," Victor answered.

  "Thought you might. Heh, heh." That chuckle would have sent ice snaking up any prisoner's spine. "Come along with me. We've got him in the snug cell by his lonesome, so he can't go trying any mischief."

  The snug cell had a redwood door as thick as the side timbers on a first-rate ship of the line. The pair of locks that held it closed were both bigger than Victor's clenched fist. The jailer opened a tiny door set into the enormous one. An iron grating let people peer into the cell. The jailer gestured invitingly.

  Victor looked through. The window that gave the cell its only light was more than a man's height above the ground. Even if it hadn't been barred, it was much too small for even the most emaciated prisoner to squeeze through. Habakkuk Biddiscombe had got thin, but not that thin.

  He lay on a miserable straw pallet. Along with a water pitcher, a cup with the handle broken off, and a thundermug, that pallet comprised the furnishings in the dark, gloomy cell. Biddiscombe's head swung toward the opening in the door. "Who's there?" he asked.

  "Victor Radcliff."

  "I might have known." Biddiscombe stiffly got to his feet. Yes, he'd taken a thumping when the Atlantean cavalry caught him- and maybe afterwards as well. "Come to gloat, have you?"

  "I hope not," Victor said. "You would have done better to stay with your own side."

  "That's how it worked out, all right. But who could have guessed ahead of time?" The traitor peered through the grating "And you would have done better to listen to me more."

  "It could be so," Victor said. "You aren't the only man I didn't always heed, though. The others didn't turn their coats to pay me back."

  "Well, the more fools they." Habakkuk Biddiscombe kept the courage of his convictions, even if he had nothing else.

  "How well did Cornwallis listen to you?" Victor inquired.

  "He would have done better if he'd listened more." Biddiscombe hadn't lost his self-regard, either. "In that case, maybe you'd be stuck in this stinking cell instead of me."

  "He wasn't going to hand you over. You might have done better staying where you were."

  Habakkuk Biddiscombe laughed raucously. "Likely tell! If he'd made up his mind to protect us come what might, he wouldn't've needed to call a council of war. And the damned Englishmen wouldn't've taken so long making up their miserable minds, either. No, they were going to hand us over to you, all right, sure as Jesus walked on water. They wouldn't've lost any sleep over it, After all, we were nothing but Atlanteans-one step up from niggers, and a short step, too."

  And what would Blaise have said about that? Something interesting and memorable, Victor was sure. "If the redcoats felt that way about the loyalists who fought beside them, why did you stay on?"

  "Because I wanted your guts for garters, General Victor High and Mighty Grand Panjandrum Radcliff, and that looked like my best chance to get 'em." Biddiscombe didn't bother hiding his venom. And why should he? Things could get no worse for him than they were already.

  "If it makes you any happier, I felt the same way about you after you raised Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion," Victor said.

  "It doesn't, not so much as a fart's worth," Biddiscombe replied. "Only one of us was going to get what he wanted, and I wish to heaven it were me." He scowled through the grating. "If you were any kind of gentleman, you'd pass me a pistol so I could end this on my own."

  Victor shook his head. "The trial will go forward. The hounds baying outside wanted to end it on their own, too."

  "Ah, but my way would finish it fast, and with luck it wouldn't hurt so bloody much," Biddiscombe said.

  "When properly done, hanging slays quickly and cleanly," Victor said.

  "Why bother with a trial when you already know the verdict?" jeered the man on the other side of the grate.

  "So all the evidence comes forth. So the future can know you for the traitor you are," Victor answered.

  Biddiscombe's mouth twisted. "A traitor is a man unlucky enough to end on the losing side. Past that, the word has no meaning."
<
br />   "Not quite," Victor said.

  "No? How not?" his onetime cavalry officer returned.

  "A traitor is a man unlucky enough to choose the losing side in the middle of the war," Victor said. "You might have chosen otherwise. You would have done better if you had. And you will pay for what you chose."

  Habakkuk Biddiscombe's sweeping gesture took in the whole of his sorry cell. "Am I not already paying?"

  "You are," Victor said, and walked away.

  Victor declined to serve on the three-officer panel that decided Biddiscombe's fate. "I doubt my ability to be just," he said. He doubted any Atlantean's ability to be just to Biddiscombe, but that was the turncoat's hard luck. At least Biddiscombe's blood would not directly soil his hands.

  He was summoned to testify against Biddiscombe. The accused did have counsel, a Croydon barrister named Josias Rich. Outside the small meeting room in the town hall that served as a courtroom, Rich told Victor, "I do this not in the belief in the man's innocence, nor for the sake of my own advancement, God knows-people I thought my friends commence to cut me in the streets. I do it for the sake of Atlantis' honor. Even a dog should have someone to speak for it before it is put down."

  "Your views do you credit, and I agree," Victor said. Josias Rich-whose worn linen and down-at-the-heels shoes belied his name-looked surprised and pleased.

  In due course, a sergeant serving as bailiff called Victor into the room. He took his oath on a stout Bible. The judges elicited from him that Habakkuk Biddiscombe had commanded cavalry in the Atlantean army, had gone over to the English and formed Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion, and had led the Horsed Legion in combat against the forces of the United States of Atlantis.

  Biddiscombe (who was burdened by manacles and by a ball and chain attached to his ankle) had muttered to Josias Rich all through Victor's testimony. The barrister rose. "Did Biddiscombe fight well and bravely while serving under your overall command, General?" he asked.

  "He did," Victor said.

  "Might he have continued to serve Atlantis well and bravely had you been more inclined to recognize and applaud his military merits?" Rich asked.

  "I have no way to know that," Victor replied.

  "What is your opinion?"

  "My opinion is that, had I judged him worthy of more recognition and applause, I would have given them to him."

  Rich tried again: "Do you now regret not having given them to him?"

  "I regret that any man who once fought for us should have decided to cast his fate with King George, whatever his reasons may have been," Victor said carefully.

  "In retrospect, do you wish now that you had been more inclined to heed his suggestions as to the Atlantean army's conduct of its campaign against the redcoats?"

  "Do I think he might have been right, do you mean, sir?"

  "Well-yes," Josias Rich said.

  "Here and there, he might have been," Victor said. "But that is hard to say with any certainty now, looking back on it. And it would have been all the harder to say trying to look forward into an unsure future."

  "Thank you, General." Rich sat down.

  One of the captains who would decide Biddiscombe's fate asked, "Did other officers who sometimes disagreed with your orders remain loyal to the cause of the United States of Atlantis?"

  "They did," Victor said. And there, in two words, was the essence of Biddiscombe's treason.

  The panel excused Victor after that. He left the little room with nothing but relief. Baron von Steuben waited outside "Bad?" the German asked sympathetically.

  "Well…" Victor didn't need to think long before nodding. "Yes. Plenty bad."

  "Treason is a filthy business," von Steuben said. "Common where I come from-so many little kingdoms and duchies and principalities, so many divided loyalties-but filthy all the same Here you have but one country. If God loves Atlantis, no reason for treason again."

  "May He grant it be so," Victor agreed.

  The sergeant stepped out into the hallway. "Your turn, sir," he said to von Steuben, who sighed and shrugged and followed him in.

  The trial was more than a drumhead, but less than something a civilian would have wanted to face The panel of judges called several more witnesses. Even so, they'd heard enough to satisfy themselves by the middle of the afternoon. And they delivered their verdict only an hour or so later Habakkuk Biddiscombe was guilty of treason against the United States of Atlantis, and should suffer the penalty of death by hanging.

  Naturally, the news didn't need long to reach Victor, who sat in a tavern across the Croydon Meadow (on which a few sheep grazed) from the town hall drinking porter and eating a sausage and pickled cabbage stuffed into a long roll. He sighed and nodded to the man who'd brought word to him. "Well, no one expected anything else," he said.

  "No, indeed," the man said. "You ask me hanging's too good for him. He should take a while to go so he has time to think about what he did to deserve it."

  Victor shook his head. "He'll have plenty of time to think on that before the trap falls. If we once start putting men to death cruelly, how do we stop?"

  "You must be a better Christian than I am, General," the man said. Victor was far from sure he meant it as praise Blaise had his own mug of beer and cabbage-shrouded sausage. "What will you do if Biddiscombe begs you for mercy?" he asked after the news-bringer had gone on his way.

  As commanding general, Victor had the authority to set aside any court-martial's verdict. He had it, but he didn't think he wanted to use it. "Not much room for doubt about what he did, or about what treason deserves," he said, and let it go at that.

  Trials for the men captured with Biddiscombe went even faster than the leader's. All of them were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging except one. No witnesses came forward to show he had actually fought against the Atlantean army. The officers who made up his court convicted him of aiding fugitives from justice, but nothing more. They sentenced him to thirty lashes well laid on, the punishment to be carried out immediately.

  A whipping post stood in the middle of the Croydon Meadow. Excited townsfolk chased away the sheep, the better to enjoy the spectacle. The guilty man got a strip of leather to bite down on, as if he'd gone to the surgeons after a battle wound. The man with the whip had a French accent. Maybe he'd had practice whipping slaves south of the Stour. Victor wished he hadn't thought of that; it made him imagine his own son under the lash.

  Crack! Crack! The strokes sounded like gunshots. Despite the thick strap, the guilty man soon screamed after each one. The crowd cheered almost loud enough to drown him out. After the last stroke, they loosed his shackles. He slumped to the ground at the base of the post like a dead man. Then a doctor came forward to smear ointment on his raw, bloodied back, and he started screaming all over again.

  Croydon didn't have a permanent gallows. Carpenters who would have been building furniture or houses or ships gleefully took time off to knock one together not far from the whipping post. The sheep were probably offended, but no one cared. Long enough to hang all the convicted traitors at once, the gallows dominated Croydon Meadow.

  Ravens tumbled in the air overhead as guards with bayoneted muskets brought Biddiscombe and his confederates from the jail to the execution site. Victor Radcliff wondered how the birds knew. Biddiscombe had not appealed his sentence; he must have known it was hopeless. Two of the men from the Horsed Legion

  had. Victor turned them down. Men who took up arms against the United States of Atlantis had to understand what they could look forward to.

  Habakkuk Biddiscombe climbed the thirteen steps to the platform as if his beloved awaited him at the top. He took his place on the trap and looked out at the crowd howling for his death. "Deviltake you all!" he shouted. The Croydonites howled louder. The hangman put a hood over Biddiscombe's head.

  There was a brief delay while a parson and a Catholic priest consoled some of the condemned men. The parson approached Biddiscombe. He shook his head. Even though he was hooded, the moti
on was unmistakable to Victor-and to the parson. Clicking his tongue between his teeth, the man withdrew.

  The hangmen positioned the victims, then looked at one another. Some signal must have passed between them, for all the traps dropped at the same time. Most of the hanged men, Biddiscombe among them, died quickly. One jerked for a few minutes before stilling forever. The crowd applauded. The hangmen bowed. People left the meadow in a happy mood. Some stayed to bid for pieces of the rope. A raven perched on the gallows, waiting.

  Nothing held Victor in Croydon any longer. He could go home. He could, and he would. He'd never dreaded going into battle more.

  Chapter 26

  Meg hugged and kissed Victor. Stella hugged and kissed Blaise. So did their children. It was the happiest homecoming anyone-any two-coming back from the wars could have wanted. Victor and Meg, Blaise and Stella, drank rum. The Negroes' children drank sugared and spiced beer. Joy reigned unconstrained.

  Blaise told stories in which Victor was a hero. Not to be outdone, Victor told stories in which Blaise saved the day. They both stretched the stories a little. Victor knew he didn't stretch his too much. He didn't think Blaise stretched his too much, but nobody could properly judge stories about himself.

  They ate ham and fried chicken and potatoes and pickled cabbage and cinnamon-spicy baked apples till they could hardly walk. After supper, Blaise and Stella and their children went off to their smaller cottage next to the Radcliff's' farmhouse.

  And Meg Radcliff looked Victor in the eye and said, "You son of a bitch."

  He opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. After that opening, how was he supposed to answer? Helplessly, he spread his hands. "You know." He'd thought those were the two worst words that could possibly come out of his mouth. And he'd been right, too.

  "Don't I just!" his wife answered bitterly. "You were supposed to ride a horse while you were on campaign, Victor, not some damned colored wench. And how many other trollops were there