The two of them had an extra mug of flip apiece with supper before they went upstairs on a hot, muggy summer evening. Meg lit the candle on her nightstand. "I hope you sleep well," Victor said as he put on his thinnest, coolest nightshirt.
He waited for her to scorch him. These past five weeks, she'd done it more often when they were alone than he could count. She started to say something. Whatever it was, she swallowed it before it got out. After a moment, she brought out something that had to be different: "Victor?"
Only his name; nothing more. No, something more-a tone of voice he hadn't heard from her in private since he'd come back from Croydon. "What is it?" he asked cautiously.
She looked at the candle flame, not at him. "Would you care to try?" she asked in return, her voice very low.
"Would I care to try what?" For a moment, Victor honestly didn't know what she was talking about. Then realization smote, and he felt like a fool. "Try that?" He was very glad his own voice didn't-quite-break in surprise. "Are you sure?"
"As sure as I need to be," Meg answered, which was less sure than Victor wanted her to be. She went on, "If we are going to braze this back together, we should begin again, not so?"
She made it sound about as romantic as using a prescription
from an apothecary. Victor didn't care how it sounded. "Yes!" he
said eagerly, and then, "Pray blow out the candle."
Meg surprised him by shaking her head. "If you see me, if you cannot help but see me, you will have a harder time imagining I am… someone else… than you would in the dark" Her chin came up defiantly.
Victor started to tell her he wouldn't do anything like that This time, he was the one who reconsidered. She wouldn't believe him- and why should she? So all he said was, "However you please."
They lay down together. Meg didn't flinch when he began to caress her, but she didn't move toward him or embrace him, either, the way she would have before she learned about Louise. She'd enjoyed his lovemaking… up until then. He'd always enjoyed hers, too. He hadn't strayed when she was close by. How astonishing was it that that turned out not to be good enough?
He went slowly and carefully, literally feeling his way along After a while, she did begin to kiss and caress him in return. He didn't pride himself on warming her up, and not just because they both would have been sweating even if they'd lain apart. She did it with the attitude of someone remembering she was supposed to, not with a kindled woman's wanton enthusiasm.
Afterwards, Victor asked, "Was it all right?"
"It was." Meg seemed surprised to admit even so much. "You… took considerable pains, and I noticed, and I thank you for it."
"It seemed the least I could do," Victor said. "Yes, it did," Meg agreed, which made him gnaw at the inside of his lower lip as she continued, "But how was I to know ahead
of time whether you would do even so little?"
"I love you," Victor said.
"I believe it-as long as I'm in sight When I'm not, you think that what I don't know won't hurt me, and so you please yourself," his wife said. "We've been over that ground before."
"We have indeed," said Victor, who didn't want to go over it again.
Meg overrode him: "But what you forget is, sometimes I find out what I didn't know, and then it does hurt. It hurts all the worse, in fact." She'd been having her say much more often than usual since learning of Louise-and Nicholas. She talked of going over the same ground. As things were, she held the moral high ground, and used it as adroitly as a professional soldier would have used the literal kind.
"I am sorry for the pain I caused you," Victor said. "I know not what more I can do to show you that-"
She didn't answer for a little while. Then, thoughtfully, she said, "After what just passed between us, I also know not what more you might do. You loved me as if you love me, if you take my meaning."
"I think so," Victor said, nodding. "Dare I ask if I be forgiven, then?"
"In part, surely-else you should not have touched me so," Meg said. "Altogether? Not yet. Not for some time, I fear. I shall find myself wondering about you, worrying about you, whenever you go more than an hour's ride from here. More than an hour's ride from me, I should say."
"Then I had better not go any farther than that, eh?" Victor said.
"An excellent notion." His wife blew out the candle at last.
The messenger wore the green coat of an Atlantean cavalryman. With a flourish suggesting he'd played in an amateur theatrical or two in his time, he handed Victor Radcliff a letter sealed with the Atlantean Assembly's red-crested eagle. "Congratulations, General!" he said in a loud, ringing voice that also made Victor guess he'd been on the stage.
"Er-thank you," Victor answered. "But for what?"
Still in those ringing tones, the man said, "Why, for being chosen one of the first two Consuls who will lead the United States of Atlantis now that no one can doubt our freedom from King George's wicked rule."
Ever since departing from Honker's Mill and returning to the much larger (and more euphonious) New Hastings, the Atlantean Assembly had argued about how the new nation should be run. Victor had followed the often-acrimonious wrangling from what he'd thought was a safe distance.
Taking as their model the Roman Republic, the Assemblymen had decided to let executive authority rest in the hands of two Consuls, each with the power to veto the other's actions. Roman Consuls served only one year at a time, though; their Atlantean counterparts would have two-year terms. The Assembly had also rechristened itself the Senate, even if hardly anyone used the new name yet. It would select the Consuls. Under the rules it had agreed upon, one man could serve up to three consecutive terms, and a total of five in his lifetime.
"Who shall my colleague be?" Victor asked. The letter was bound to tell him, but the messenger seemed well informed. And, if he didn't care for the answer he got, he had every intention of declining the Assembly's invitation (no, the Senate's, he reminded himself).
"Why, Isaac Fenner, of course," the messenger said, as if no one else was even imaginable. But Victor had imagined plenty of other possible candidates: anyone from Custis Cawthorne to Michel du Guesclin. Still, he could easily see how Fenner would have got the nod.
And he found himself nodding, too. "Isaac should be a good man to work with," he said, hoping he would still feel that way two years hence.
He broke the seal. The letter was addressed in the fantastically neat script belonging to the Atlantean Assembly's secretary-the Senate's secretary now. That same worthy had indited the contents. In much more formal Language, the letter told Victor what he'd already heard from the messenger.
He was still reading through it when Blaise walked over and Meg came out of the house to see what was going on. Victor told them. Blaise shook his hand. Meg hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. She went back inside, returning a moment later with a mug of rum punch, which she handed to the messenger.
The horseman doffed his tricorn. "Much obliged, ma'am." He gulped the punch and smacked his lips. "Ahhh! Much obliged indeed-that's tasty stuff."
"You shall be one of the first Consuls," Meg said to Victor. "Schoolboys yet unborn will have to learn your name and deeds or get a whipping, as if you were William the Conqueror or Queen Elizabeth."
"You make me think I should say no!" he exclaimed. Blaise and the messenger laughed. Meg… didn't.
Blaise went back to his cottage to tell Stella and the children. They came out to congratulate Victor. In public, all seemed well between Stella and Blaise. But Blaise hadn't said anything about her letting him make love to her again. Even though Blaise hadn't got Roxane with child, Stella seemed less forgiving than Meg.
Victor's wife ducked into the house once more. When she came out again, she gave the messenger another mug of rum punch and a sandwich of roast duck between two thick slices of brown bread. The duck was from night before last, and wouldn't stay good much longer. Even so, the messenger wasn't inclined to complain. Just the opposite-he d
ipped his head and said, "By all that's holy, ma'am, I wish I'd had call to come here sooner!"
"You rode a long way, and you brought good news," Meg said. Her gaze swung toward Victor. "I suppose it is good news, anyhow."
The messenger only grinned-he didn't follow that. Victor smiled uncomfortably-he did. Blaise and Stella and perhaps even their children understood… some of it, at any rate. But none of them let on.
"Well, General Radcliff-uh. Consul Radcliff, I guess I should say-will you write me an answer I can take back toward New Hastings?" the messenger asked.
"I shall do that very thing," Victor said. "Come inside with me, why don't you? Everyone come inside-we'll get out of the sun."
After finding a sheet of paper and inking a quill, Victor wrote quickly: To the Conscript Fathers of the Senate of the United Stales of Atlantis, greetings. Gentlemen, I am honored beyond my deserts to be selected
Consul, and gratefully accept the office, which I shall fulfill to the best of my abilities, poor though they may be. I am also proud to share the Consulship with the most distinguished Isaac Fenner, and look forward to working with him closely and cordially. I remain your most obedient servant and the servant of our common country… He signed his name and added his seal.
He sanded the letter dry, shook away the sand, folded the paper, and used a ribbon and his seal again to make sure it stayed secure. On the outside, he wrote To the Senate of the United States of
Atlantis, convened at New Hastings. His hand was no match for that of the Senate's secretary, but was tolerably legible
"You did tell 'em yes, I take it?" the messenger said as Victor gave him the reply. "I need to know that much, in case something happens to the paper."
"Yes, I told them yes," Victor answered.
After two mugs of rum punch, the messenger thought that made a fine joke. "Yes, yes," he said. "Yes, yes… Yes, yes… Yes, yes!" He kept trying to find the funniest way to stress it, and laughed harder after each new try.
He rode off down the dirt track that would take him east and south, back toward New Hastings. Victor wouldn't have been amazed had he trotted west instead, and ended up in the foothills of the Green Ridge Mountains. But no.
"Well, I won't have to chase after him and put him on the right road," Blaise said, so Victor wasn't the only one who'd had his doubts.
After congratulating Victor again, the Negro and his family went back to their own cottage. That left the new consul alone with his wife. When Meg said, "New Hastings," she might have been talking about the tallest dunghill for miles around.
"New Hastings," Victor agreed in a very different tone of voice.
"I had not planned on leaving the farm for so long, but I had better come along with you," she said in a voice that warned she would tolerate no dissent. "You go there to keep an eye on the country, and I shall go there to keep an eye on you."
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? For once, Victor had an answer to Juvenal's ancient and cynical question. He knew exactly who would watch at least one of Atlantis' watchmen. He let out a soft chuckle.
'And what do you find funny now?" Meg asked ominously. Victor explained. To his relief, Meg at least smiled. She was an educated woman, even if she hadn't used her Latin much since her school days (for that matter, neither had Victor). After a moment, though, she said, "But Juvenal wasn't talking about the Roman Senate and Consuls when he wrote that, was he?"
"No, I don't believe he was," Victor said, and not another word. Juvenal had been talking about brothel guards. If Meg didn't recall that, Victor wasn't about to remind her.
"Between you and Isaac, the country will be in good hands," she said, mercifully letting the quotation drop. "Between my right and my left, so will you."
"Fair enough," Victor agreed. And, at least for the time being, it was.
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United States of Atlantis a-2 Page 45