Opening Atlantis

by Harry Turtledove

  He looked out to the people of New Hastings. He wasn’t altogether sure what they would say to that. Some of the men on his side had wanted to see everyone who’d chosen the Earl of Warwick dead. They were shaking their heads with everybody else, though. Maybe it was harder to stay bloodthirsty in a house of God. He could hope so.

  “Let’s remember what we did here these past few weeks,” he went on. That got everyone’s notice. People must have thought he would say, Let’s forget. “Let’s not remember to keep old feuds alive. Let’s remember to make sure new feuds don’t start. The one we had cost us too much. We need no more like it.”

  Standing beside him, Bishop John smiled and nodded. “This is the voice of Christianity speaking,” he said. “This is the voice of God speaking. Let it be so.” He made the sign of the cross.

  Henry crossed himself, too. He didn’t know whether God was speaking through him. He only knew he never wanted to have to try to kill his neighbors again. He didn’t want them trying to kill him, either.

  He nodded to his brother. One by one, Richard carried up the mailshirts of Warwick’s last soldiers, the ones who’d yielded themselves after the Battle of the Strand. They stood in the church, too. Henry could see a couple of them, and could see their apprehensive faces. The ironmongery next to the pulpit made quite a pile. A couple of other men brought up helmets and swords and laid them by the stack.

  “We don’t need these things,” Henry said earnestly. “By God and all the saints, we don’t, not among ourselves. Oh, we ought to have them so we can make a better fight if more robbers from across the sea try to take away what isn’t theirs to take, but we should never use them to lord it over each other. Never!” He slammed his fist down on the pulpit.

  He thought Richard first began to clap. That didn’t surprise Henry Radcliffe; his brother had never wanted anyone lording it over him. What did surprise Henry was the way everyone else in the church joined Richard, till the applause came back in waves from the vaulted ceiling and till a bat, sleeping up there in the rafters, was frightened awake and fled squeaking out into the unaccustomed day.

  Slowly, like a storm at sea, the clapping ebbed. Hearing it let Henry feel more confident continuing, “The men who gave up their armor and weapons have taken oath that they will not trouble us again. As long as they hold to their promise, let them be treated like any other men of New Hastings. They loyally served their master, the Earl of Warwick. Now that he is gone, they will loyally serve the settlement.”

  He got more applause—not so much as he had before, but enough to show that the settlers agreed with him…and enough to show the surviving soldiers that they wouldn’t be killed out of hand. Relief wreathed their features when they realized that. Henry thought they were safe enough, as long as they didn’t stir up trouble. That would have to do.

  “Times will change,” he said. “We saw that when Warwick came. We’ll see it again—we will, and our children, and our children’s children, and down through the generations to the end of days. As long as we try, though, and as long as God helps, we can ride out all the storms the way we rode out this one.”

  This time, Bishop John led the clapping. As applause filled the church once more, the bishop spoke to Henry in a low voice: “A good thing you’re a secular man, or you’d steal my see from me.”

  “I don’t want it, your Grace,” Henry answered. “I just want to be able to get on with my life.” I sound like Richard, he thought.

  “For now, you have that. You could have Atlantis, I think, if you wanted it,” John said.

  “I don’t,” Henry said again. “Atlantis can go on however it pleases, and that will suit me fine. I wonder what sort of town New Hastings will be in a couple of hundred years.” He looked to the west. “I wonder what sort of town Avalon will be by then….”

  PART TWO

  Avalon

  XI

  There was a day when Avalon was the wildest, wickedest, wan-tonest city in all of Atlantis and all of Terranova, too. It wasn’t a long day, not even so long as the prime of a man’s life, but there was never another one like it, not before or since, not anywhere. And when it ended, it ended in a way worthy of what had gone before.

  Red Rodney Radcliffe brought the Black Hand into Avalon Bay after a profitable summer raiding the towns and shipping of the Terranovan coast. The Dutchmen and the Spaniards beyond the broad Hesperian Gulf cursed his name. The Spaniards called him a heretic. The Dutchmen, who were Protestants themselves, called him worse than that. Rodney Radcliffe only laughed. They could call him whatever they pleased, as long as they couldn’t catch him—and they couldn’t.

  Nothing could catch the Black Hand—so Red Rodney swore. He wasn’t far wrong, either. The brigantine, made of fine Atlantean redwood and pine, scudded over the waves. With the wind astern, she could make twelve knots. She’d come from Terranova to Atlantis in just over three and a half days, and left whatever might be chasing her far behind.

  “Land ho!” came the cry from the crow’s nest atop the mainmast, and then, a moment later, “Damned if that’s not the Gateway, dead ahead!”

  The mate, a one-eyed bruiser named Ben Jackson, lifted a three-cornered hat from his head: the closest to a salute Red Rodney was likely to get. “Nicely steered, skipper,” he said.

  “I thank you.” If Radcliffe sounded smug, who could blame him? He’d brought his ship across a thousand miles of open ocean and put her exactly where she needed to go.

  “Better than Moses, by God,” Jackson said with a gap-toothed grin.

  “I should hope so!” Red Rodney grinned back. He took blasphemy for granted—as who on the Black Hand did not? “Moses wandered forty years before he led his people to the Promised Land, and he died before he got in. We’re here again—not for the first time, nor even for the twenty-first. And I’m not ready to turn up my toes just yet.”

  “Better not be. Think how many pretty ladies’d be sorry if you did.” The mate tipped him a wink. “Or even the ones who aren’t so bloody pretty, if you’ve been at sea long enough.”

  “If you want to waste your time with ugly women, that’s your affair,” Radcliffe said. “Nothing but the best for me. The best ship, the best crew, the best loot—”

  “We’ve got plenty of that,” Jackson broke in.

  “We do,” Red Rodney agreed. Furs and prime pipeweed lay in the holds, along with a mayor’s silver plate and a governor’s gold. He’d seized two fat merchants to ransom, and upwards of a dozen copperskinned Terranovan natives. The men would be hewers of wood and drawers of water; one brothelkeeper or another in Avalon would be glad to buy the wenches.

  The copperskins’ moans floated up from below. The Dutch merchants kept their big mouths shut. They would be fine even if they had to say farewell to some of their fortunes. They would, that is, unless their kinsfolk preferred the loot to the merchants, in which case they would cook over a slow fire. But the natives knew a short life, and not a merry one, awaited them. Why not mourn?

  A pinnace and two light galleys patrolled the Gateway. The freebooters of Avalon might have to fight to hold what was theirs. Forts on the northern and southern spits that closed Avalon Bay so well mounted heavier guns than any ship of the line would carry.

  “Run up our flag,” Red Rodney called. The black hand on white flew from bowsprit and stern, and from atop the mainmast. The brigantine carried a fine set of flags in her locker. She could show England’s St. George’s cross, either alone or differenced with the red-crested eagle of the eastern Atlantean settlements. She could show the red and white stripes of a Portuguese merchantman, Sweden’s gold cross on blue, Spain’s red and white and gold, Holland’s red and white and blue, the crown and fleurs-de-lys of France, or even the Corsican Moor’s head.

  Or she could show her true colors, as she was doing now.

  One of the galleys rowed out to meet her. It stayed off her bow, where its gun could strike without fear of reply. Galleys were nimble, galleys were quick—but galleys were
n’t seaworthy enough for long cruises, and carried too many men and not enough supplies to go far. They did make first-rate guard dogs, though.

  Thin across the water, a challenge came: “Show yourself, Red Rodney!”

  “I’ll do it!” Radcliffe shouted back as he strode to the bow. “Is that you, Stephen? How are Meg and the brats?”

  “Good enough, good enough,” the captain of the galley answered. “And how was the hunting out west?”

  Rodney struck a pose. “Better than good enough, by Christ!”

  “Then pass in!” Stephen said. The galley slipped out of the brigantine’s way. Graceful as a dancer, the Black Hand glided into Avalon Bay.

  There were days when William Radcliff wished his name were Jones or Bostwick or even Kersauzon. By all the signs, this was going to be one of them. No matter that the trading firm he ran from the growing town of Stuart—a trading firm whose ships sent salt fish and timber and other goods from Terranova all the way to Arkhangelsk—was as honest and reliable as the phases of the moon. No, much too often no matter at all.

  The gentleman come to do business with Radcliff today was a stout Londoner named Elijah Walton. He wore a fancy powdered wig and badly wrinkled velvet that must have stayed folded in its trunk all the way across the Atlantic. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Radcliff,” he said, extending his right hand.

  “And you, Mr. Walton.” When William took the master merchant’s hand, he was surprised at the strength of his grip. More to Walton than met the eye, then.

  He surely had all the fashionable vices. He took from his pocket a small enamelware box, took out a pinch of the powdered Terranovan herb it contained, and then inhaled it. After an explosive sneeze, he held out the box. “Care for some snuff yourself, sir?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t use pipeweed in any form, I fear. I trade in it, but it’s not to my personal taste.” In wool and linen, the only hair on his head that which he was born with, Radcliff knew he seemed a crude settler to the sophisticate from the mother country. Well, so what? he told himself. He is what he is, and I am what I am.

  With a shrug, Elijah Walton made the enameled snuffbox disappear. “May I ask you a question, Mr. Radcliff, without fear of offending?”

  More to him than met the eye…and also less. William was as sure he knew what the question would be as he was of, well, the phases of the moon. “Go ahead,” he said, no doubt sounding as resigned as he felt.

  “Ah, you will have heard it before, then.” Nothing wrong with Walton’s ear. “I shall ask it nonetheless. The similarity of the surname, but for one character, the prominence of men of that surname, however spelled, in Atlantis these past two centuries…Have you a family connection with Red Rodney Radcliffe of Avalon?”

  “To my shame, Mr. Walton, I do. We both descend from Edward Radcliffe through Henry. Rodney’s grandfather and mine were brothers, so we are second cousins. Knowing this does not delight me—nor, I daresay, him. But I would not dissemble.”

  “That no doubt speaks well for your integrity, which I have already heard highly praised,” Elijah Walton said.

  William shrugged. “You are too kind, sir. I might also remark that my lying here would serve little purpose, since you can inquire of almost anyone in Stuart and learn the truth in short order, did I try to conceal it.”

  Something in the way the master merchant’s rather protuberant gray eyes glinted told Radcliff that he had already made those inquiries, and knew the answer before asking the question. A test, then. Well, I passed it, by Christ, William thought. Walton did not admit to any such thing aloud, however. Instead, he asked, “Why the curtailed spelling on your branch of the tree?”

  “That happened in my grandfather’s day, or so I am told,” William Radcliff replied. “He hated waste in any form, and so lopped off the final e.”

  “I marvel that he did not leave you but a single f,” Walton observed.

  “The story is that he thought hard on that, but decided not to for fear men might pronounce the name Radclif.” William lengthened the i in the last syllable. “I cannot say of my own knowledge whether this be true—he died when I was a boy.”

  “One more impertinent question?” the Londoner asked, a small smile playing across his full, red lips.

  “Ask, sir, ask,” William said. “If it be impertinent enough, I will put you out on the street once more, and be damned to your business.”

  To his surprise, Walton’s smile got wider. “And if it be impertinent enough, you will put me out on the street without bothering to open the door before you pitch me through it. Well, I hope to avoid that, at any rate. All I wish to know is, what is your opinion of your…notorious cousin?”

  “Again, this is something you could learn from others besides me,” William Radcliff said. “In a word, I despise him. Not only does he dip the family name in the chamber pot, not only does he revel in befouling it, but he also preys on my ships whenever he finds the chance. If I could kill him with my own hands, it would be a pleasure—and a privilege.”

  Walton took another pinch of snuff. This time, he had to slap the lid back onto the box lest his sneeze blow its expensive contents all over Radcliff’s office. “Potent stuff!” he said, dabbing at his streaming eyes with a blue silk handkerchief. “Well, sir…Very well indeed, in fact. How would you like to win that privilege and take that pleasure?”

  William Radcliff leaned toward Walton so intently that the older, paunchier man gave back a pace. “Tell me more,” Radcliff said.

  Avalon despised law, scoffed at law, reviled law…and lived by law. What the pirate town would never have accepted if imposed from outside, its freebooters took upon themselves without a qualm. A virgin carrying a sack of gold could go from one end of Avalon to the other without let or hindrance—so long as she was, and was known to be, under the protection of one pirate lord or another.

  Flags fluttered from the hilltop forts of Avalon: Red Rodney’s black hand on white, Christopher Moody’s swordarm and skull on red, Cutpurse Charlie Condent’s three skulls and crossbones on a long black pennant, Goldbeard Walter Kennedy’s naked headsman holding an hourglass, Stede Bonnet’s skull and heart and dagger, and more besides. Some of the chieftains hated others, and would attack them on sight anywhere else in the Hesperian Gulf, the Atlantic, or the Bay of Mexico. In Avalon, though, a truce and the rule behind it had held for most of a lifetime.

  You don’t shit where you eat.

  Red Rodney Radcliffe sometimes dreamt of uniting all the pirates of western Avalon under the black hand. He dreamt not of harrying the Terranovan towns but of seizing them and ruling them—of going from pirate to king. Only one thing kept him from trying it: the certain knowledge that all the other chieftains would combine against him the instant he tried to change them from equals to subjects.

  He knew he wasn’t, he knew he couldn’t be, the only captain with dreams like that. He also knew he would cut the ballocks off any man who tried to make him bend the knee. Knowing that kept him from trying to impose himself on the others.

  With his loot and his hostages and his slaves safe inside Black Hand Fort—one of the best, since it lay close to the harbor and had a reliable well even though it was on high ground—he could relax. Fields of indigo and sugar cane were beginning to stretch across southern Atlantis. With sugar naturally came rum.

  At sea, Rodney doled out a glass of grog to his men each day. He took no more for himself, lest they think he thought he was better than they were. Ashore? Ashore, he could drink to his heart’s content, and so could they. When he couldn’t steal rum, he traded for it like an honest man, and he wasn’t the only freebooter who did.

  “This is the life!” he told his daughter. The rum sang in him, but he hadn’t drunk himself sleepy yet. He hadn’t drunk himself mean yet, either.

  “Well, of course it is.” Ethel Radcliffe was eleven, and knew no other. None of the women Rodney had taken into his bed since her mother had dared mistreat her in any way—or not for long. One wen
ch who roused his ire in that regard left Black Hand Fort most suddenly, naked and with stripes on her back. Ethel drank rum, too, and swore and scratched as she pleased. She was a dead shot with a pistol.

  Red Rodney laughed and tousled her buttery-yellow hair. “One of these days soon, by God, I’ll bring you along with me when I set sail. Blast my mizzen if you wouldn’t make a better raider than most of the dogs I could scrape up here.”

  “Do it!” the pirate’s daughter said eagerly. “I want to shoot a Dutchman, or even a copperskin. Can I shoot one of the copperskins you brought back?”

  “Sorry, love. Not this lot,” Rodney answered.

  Ethel pouted. “Why not?” Her voice took on a sugared whine that could coax almost anything out of her father.

  Almost—but not quite. “Because they’re worth good silver to me, that’s why not,” Rodney Radcliffe said. “And they cost blood to take. That makes ’em too dear to kill for sport.” Whether killing them for sport was wrong didn’t worry him. Silver did. Silver was one more measure of a man’s rank among men.

  “But I want to,” Ethel persisted. She didn’t care to come up short at anything—which only proved she was her father’s daughter.

  “No,” Red Rodney said, and the flush that mounted to his cheeks came from choler as well as rum. “My men listen to me. You’d bloody well better, too. If they don’t listen, I make ’em sorry. You think I can’t make you sorry?”

  He didn’t put his foot down very often. When he did, he was likely to crush whatever lay beneath it. That could include Ethel, as she had painful reason to remember. The whine didn’t go away, but it did change course: “Well, what can I shoot, then?”