Guards stood in front of the house Neville had appropriated: the biggest one in town. They carried spears taller than they were. The sharp edges of the spearpoints glittered blood-red in the fading light. "So he came, did he?" one of the guards said. "How about that?"
"He came, all right," the crossbowman answered. "See? He's not so dumb as he looks."
"Couldn't prove it by me," the guard said. "Take him on in, then. His Lordship'll let him know what's what."
"Right." The crossbowman gave Edward a little shove. "You heard Peter. Go on in."
"Thank you so much," Edward said. The fellow with the crossbow smirked. Plainly, he didn't recognize irony when he heard it. Too late, Edward realized that might be good luck; had the archer recognized it, he might have made him sorry.
Inside, the Earl of Warwick sat in a chair with a back. That emphasized his noble blood; like most people, Radcliffe had only stools in his house. "Lucy!" Warwick called. "Fetch my guest something to drink!"
"Yes, your Lordship." Lucy Fenner hurried in from the kitchen. The silk gown she wore must have come from England with the exiled earl. It bared too much of her, and clung too tightly to what it didn't display. She lowered her eyes to the ground, and scurried away as soon as she'd set a mug in Edward's hand.
He raised an eyebrow even before he tasted it. The rich bouquet told him what it was. "Did the wine come from England, Lord?" he asked.
Warwick shook his head. "I took it in trade from the Bretons," he replied. "It's horsepiss alongside what a proper vintner could do, mind, but any wine is better than none."
Edward hadn't known the settlers Francois Kersauzon had brought to Atlantis were finally turning out enough wine to turn some loose. "I thank you for your kindness," he said, and surprised himself by more or less meaning it. "Been a good many years since I've drunk anything but beer and ale and barrel-tree sap."
"I deserve better," Warwick said simply. "The one trouble is, getting what I want isn't always cheap."
"Sorry to hear that, your Lordship." As long as the earl was giving him wine, Edward would sound sympathetic.
He thought so, anyhow, till Warwick continued, "Since it isn't, I am going to have to take…certain measures, I suppose you would say."
Maybe the exiled noble hoped the wine would fuzz Edward's wits so he'd blithely accept anything he heard. If that was what Warwick had in mind, he was doomed to disappointment. "What kind of measures, sir?" Radcliffe asked. He still sounded polite, but he was sure he also sounded wary. And with reason, for he was.
Warwick sent him a sour stare. Yes, the noble had wanted him fuddled, all right. Well, no matter what Warwick wanted, he had what he had. He needed only a handful of heartbeats to see as much. "I shall have to start levying a tax on the settlers here," he said regretfully, as if it were Edward's fault that he'd been reduced to such measures.
"A tax?" Edward blurted. He could have sounded no more appalled if Richard Neville had denied that the Son and Holy Ghost were proper Persons of the Trinity. "You can't do that!"
One of the bully boys who'd fetched him hither growled like a dog on a chain. The Earl of Warwick raised a languid-seeming hand, and the soldier fell silent. He still glared in Edward's direction, though, and his knuckles whitened as his hand clutched the hilt of his sword.
"You are a bold man, Radcliffe-a bold man or a fool," Warwick said. "How dare you tell me what I may and may not do? I suggest you think carefully before you answer. Think very carefully, in fact."
"Lord, I could think from now till doomsday and not think you had the right to tax me," Edward said. "I am sorry if my being so plain offends you, but that's the truth. Why, in England the king himself has to ask leave of Parliament before he taxes his people."
Richard Neville's mouth tightened. "I will thank you not to speak of the king in my presence. If you value your neck, Radcliffe, you will honor my-request."
"I don't know if I can, sir, not while we're talking about taxes," Edward said. "How do you claim a power here that he doesn't claim in England?"
"How? Simple." The Earl of Warwick drew from his belt a dagger whose hilt was ornamented with gold wire and began cleaning his nails with the point. "This miserable, godforsaken place isn't England. It's bloody Atlantis, and you people here never tire of telling me so."
"But we are Englishmen, Lord. We have the rights of Englishmen." Till that moment, Edward's main concern had been making sure that England paid no attention to Atlantis. Parliament might have decided to levy taxes here, too, and to whom could he have appealed if it did? To no one at all, as he knew too well.
Warwick eyed him like a cat watching a mouse it was playing with but hadn't yet decided to kill. "You claim those rights when you feel like it. Otherwise, you're glad England lies across the sundering sea."
That arrow quivered in the center of the target. Edward couldn't, and wouldn't, admit as much. He took a deep breath. "You are not our king, Lord. You have not got the right to do this."
Warwick went on cleaning his fingernails. The dagger was slim, pointed, and sharp-quite a bit like him. "I have the might to do it, sirrah, as you will learn to your sorrow if you prove lunatic enough to challenge me."
"We are Englishmen, Lord," Edward Radcliffe repeated stubbornly. "You have no right to steal from us this way-and that is what it is, stealing. If you try to take what is ours, we will appeal to his Majesty."
Even as he said the words, he wondered whether that was a good idea. The Earl of Warwick, with a small force of soldiers behind him, was an annoyance, and no small one. But the King of England could call on the whole strength of the island if he chose-and if he wasn't caught up in the coils of civil war. He might prove a more dangerous master than any local lord.
Or he might not, if the local lord made as much trouble as this one was doing.
The threat didn't seem to worry Warwick. He neither flinched nor paled. Nor did he raise his voice as he said, "I will kill every one of you if you try." He was just stating a fact; he might as well have said, Red-crested eagles will kill honkers if they can.
If I am a honker, by God, I can honk all the way across the ocean, Edward thought. "Meaning no disrespect, Lord, but that is a silly thing to say," he replied.
"Silly, is it?" That roused the noble's ire. "Explain yourself, and quickly-you are talking for your life."
"We're fishermen, for heaven's sake," Edward answered. "Cod are what brought us to Atlantis in the first place. We have lots of boats, and they can sail across the Atlantic. How do you propose to stop them all?"
Richard Neville's jaw dropped. Edward almost laughed in his face. The only thing that stopped him was the fear that he would never leave this room alive if he did. The Earl of Warwick plainly was a calculating man; you didn't get the name Kingmaker if you couldn't see past the end of your nose. But Warwick hadn't seen something here-his astonishment and dismay showed as much.
"You!" he said thickly. "I'll hold you to blame if boats go out and don't come back."
"Then bring Bishop John here now so he can shrive me," Edward said. "Boats go out all the damned time. They stay away a long time, too. They have to-otherwise, we'd go hungry. How will you know if one's gone to England and not just to the fishing banks? You won't, not till it's too late for you."
By the way Warwick's jaw worked, he might have been gnawing on a piece of meat that proved tougher than he'd expected. "Get out," he told Edward. "Just-get out. But if you think you can stop me from levying taxes when I have a mind to, you'd best think again."
"You will do what you think best, your Lordship," Radcliffe said. And so will we. He didn't say that out loud. Maybe Warwick would figure it out for himself. Or maybe it too would come as a surprise to him. If it did-too bad.
"Taxes?" Richard Radcliffe said when his brother came out to Bredestown to give him the news. To his embarrassment, surprise made his voice break like a youth's.
"That's right," Henry said grimly. "He thinks he's strong enough to squeeze them out of u
s."
"I almost hope he's right," Richard said.
Henry dug a finger into one ear. "Did I hear that?"
"Damned if you didn't. If Warwick thinks he can have soldiers prowling all over the settlement, and if he thinks he can take away what he didn't earn, well, plenty of people will want to go somewhere else, and I'll be glad to take 'em there."
"Wouldn't you rather fight him, so we make sure something like this can never happen again?" Henry asked.
"I'll do that if I have to," Richard answered. "But packing up and leaving is even easier. Atlantis is a big place. If we settle somewhere else, nobody'll come after us for years."
"No doubt," Henry said. "And if Warwick wins here in the meantime, the tax collector will be the one who does."
Richard winced. That, unfortunately, was all too likely to be so. "Well, what do you want me to do?" he asked.
"Stand with the rest of us. Stand, I say. Don't run," Henry told him. "I know you'd sooner go off into the wilderness all alone and look at the birds and the frogs and the snakes. We've got our own snake here, and we need to slay him."
"A bowman who knows his business could do that for us," Richard said. "I will if you want me to. Warwick can't hide in his house the whole day through."
But Henry shook his head. "He doesn't come out without bodyguards. Too likely they'd run down whoever shot him. And even if they didn't, no one knows what the soldiers would do if he got killed. They might try slaughtering everyone in sight to avenge him."
"They'd seal their own fate if they did," Richard pointed out.
"Which is true. And which might not have anything to do with anything-chances are it doesn't. Father says Warwick is a man who thinks past the moment. Not many folk bother. From what I know of soldiers, they mostly don't. Or will you tell me different?"
"Well, no," Richard said, much as he would have liked to say yes. "Are we going to fight Warwick, then?"
"Unless he pulls in his horns, we are," his brother said.
"Slim odds of that."
"Mighty slim."
A longbow hung on the wall next to the fireplace. Richard had brought the bow from England. Nothing the bowyers had found here measured up to yew. They made good enough bows. He'd brought a fine one. A longbow had almost the range of a crossbow, and could shoot many times faster. The only problem was, a longbow needed constant practice and a crossbow didn't.
"I wish we had hand cannon, not just the swivels on the Rose," Richard said. "Warwick's bully boys would think twice before they bothered us if we did."
"They'd better think twice anyway," Henry said.
"I'm sure we can beat them if we gather our strength together," Richard said. "But will we really do that?"
"If Warwick is fool enough to keep trying to tax us, we will," Henry answered.
"Do you know something? I think you may be right," Richard said.
Henry beamed at him. "We never agree about anything," he said. "If we both feel the same way about this-"
Richard cut him off. "It isn't a sign that we're bound to be right. It only means Warwick is bound to be wrong."
"That will do well enough," Henry said. "Better than well enough, in fact."
Edward Radcliffe didn't suppose he should have been surprised when the Earl of Warwick's men pounded on his door again early one chilly morning. Whether he should have been or not, he was. He said something that made Nell cluck reproachfully. Then he said something stronger than that.
The pounding didn't stop. "Open up, you old fool!" one of Warwick's bully boys bawled. "We know you're in there-where the devil else would you be?"
"Time to pay what you owe," another soldier added.
What Edward said then made Nell frown, not for the blasphemy but from fear of the soldiers outside. "Don't make them angry," she told him. "Say what you will, this isn't worth getting killed over."
He looked at her. "I'm afraid you're wrong," he said. "If Warwick thinks he can rob New Hastings, he'd best think again. The folk here will stand up to him. Maybe it should start with me. I've lived a full life. What have I got to look forward to? Slowness and sickness-not much more."
Nell grabbed his arm. "Don't talk like a fool. Slaying yourself is a mortal sin, and what else would you be doing if you tried to fight those-those…" She stopped. Whatever she wanted to say, it had to be hotter than the endearments that had burst from Edward's lips a moment before.
Bang! Bang! Bang! "You'd bloody well better open up in there, or somebody'll close your cursed coffin for you!" Warwick's bravo yelled. "This is your last chance, and you ought to thank us for it."
With a sigh, Edward walked to the door and unbarred it. One of the soldiers out there held a torch. He hadn't been kidding. But he dropped it in the mud of the walkway. It hissed and sizzled and went out. "You want something of me?" Edward inquired, his voice deceptively mild.
"Too bloody right we do," a soldier said. Radcliffe recognized him as one of the earl's sergeants. He had a list of what his overlord required. "You are assessed at two pounds, seven shillings, ninepence ha'penny. Give us the coin and we'll be on our way."
This was robbery even more naked and raw than Edward had looked for. "You must know I have not got it," he said. Oh, he'd buried some money in a safe place, but not that much. He didn't think anyone in New Hastings had that much ready cash. Trade on this side of the Atlantic was mostly barter. Nobody here needed much in the way of actual silver.
He wondered whether Warwick's men would kill him on the spot for refusing. But the sergeant seemed unfazed. Referring to his list again, he said, "His Lordship declares the following valuations for taxes collected in kind. One horse is to be reckoned at one pound. One cow is to be reckoned at fifteen shillings. One sheep or goat is to be reckoned at ten. One pig is to be reckoned at eight. One salted honker carcass is to be reckoned at four. One goose is to be reckoned at two. One duck is to be reckoned at one and sixpence. One hen is to be reckoned at one shilling. Salt cod is to be reckoned at a shilling for five pounds' weight."
"His Lordship has it all ciphered out, doesn't he?" Edward said. The values Warwick set on beasts weren't even unfair-or they wouldn't have been back in England, where there were so many more animals to take. That was clever of the nobleman-people couldn't say he was cheating them by cheapening their goods.
He was cheating them by taxing them at all, but that was a different story.
The sergeant nodded seriously. "Too right he does, friend. We'll take what we need to take to pay your tax bill, and not a bit more. You can watch whilst we do it."
"Honest thieves, you are," Edward said, only a little irony in his voice.
"That's us." The sergeant nodded once more. "Anybody who doesn't fancy his tax bill or the way we collect it, he's welcome to complain to the earl."
"Oh, that will do a lot of good," Edward said.
"Aye, belike." Warwick's sergeant chuckled-he knew how much good it was likely to do. He turned to the common soldiers. "Paul! Matt! John! Go to the barn and take what's due his Lordship."
"Right, Sergeant!" they chorused. It was nowhere close to right, but they neither knew nor cared about that. Off to the barn they went. They emerged with enough livestock to square Edward's scot…by their reckoning, anyhow.
"You're nothing but thieves!" Edward called to them from the path that led to the street. Nell called them something much less complimentary than that. They just laughed.
They laughed, that is, till someone hiding behind a squat barrel tree fifty yards away also shouted, "Thieves!" and let fly with a longbow. The arrow thrummed through the air and buried itself with a meaty chunk! in the middle of the sergeant's chest. He stood there staring at it for what seemed a very long time. When he opened his mouth to say something, only blood burst from between his lips. His knees buckled. He fell to the ground, where he kicked a few times and lay still.
The three common soldiers gaped, as astonished as the sergeant had been. Another arrow hissed toward them. It missed by th
e breadth of a hair, and slammed into a sheep's rump. The animal bawled in pain and bolted, more blood dripping in the dirt.
That seemed to snap the soldiers from their stunned spell. Two of them rushed toward the barrel tree. That was brave. If the archer kept his head, he could slaughter them before they got close enough to hurt him. They'd just seen that their byrnies weren't proof against his shafts, not at close range.
But he must have been as caught up in the madness of the moment as everyone else, for his next shot flew between the two of them. He had no time for another one-all he could do was run away. Run he did, with the armored men pounding after him but losing ground at every stride.
"Is that Richard?" Nell hissed to Edward. "If God is kind, you'll tell me that isn't Richard."
Edward could tell her nothing of the sort, for he also feared it was their younger son. If Warwick's troopers recognized him, too, that would bring trouble down on all the Radcliffes' heads.
But trouble was coming faster than recognizing Richard would bring it. The third soldier, the one who hadn't gone after the archer, stalked back towards Edward and Nell. He swung his sword up to slash with it. Rage twisting his face, he shouted, "You knew that murdering bugger lay in wait for us!"
"No," Edward said.
"Liar!" the man cried, and broke into a heavy trot.
"Run!" Edward told Nell. When she didn't, he shoved her toward the farmhouse. He looked around for a weapon then, or for anything that would let him defend himself. He snatched up an axe handle-no axehead attached, worse luck. "You've got me wrong," he told the soldier, who was now very close.
"Save your lies for the devils in hell-that's where you're going, all right," the soldier said, and aimed a cut at Edward that should have taken his head off.
Somehow, he turned it with the axe handle. Nell screamed like a scalded cat. Warwick's man swore. Absurdly, Edward wasted a moment wondering what good telling lies to devils would do. Wouldn't they know them when they heard them?
The soldier slashed again. Edward got the axe handle between himself and the blade once more, but it flew from his fingers. He stared at his hands as if they'd betrayed him-and so they had. That never would have happened twenty years earlier, or even ten.
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