"You said no soldados this time." Francisco didn't sound happy with him.
"I didn't think there would be," Victor answered.
"You say no soldats last time, too." Blaise used bad French instead of bad Spanish.
"I didn't think they'd be there, either, dammit," Radcliff said. "They never are. Except now. Something's happened."
"Si. We happen," Juan said.
"No, no, no." Victor shook his head. "We aren't important enough to cause all this. We shook the ones on our trail a while ago now. These buggers shouldn't have any idea we're around, but they're here anyway. I'm as surprised as my great-grandfather."
"Is that a saying in your language?" Blaise asked. "What does it mean?"
"Not a saying in my language. A saying in my family," Victor replied. "My great-grandfather was the man who took Avalon away from the pirates a long time ago."
"Ah. Avalon. I know of Avalon," Juan said. Blaise nodded. Francisco didn't, but it didn't matter for the sake of the story.
"One of the pirate chiefs was my great-grandfather's cousin," Victor went on. "My ancestor killed him, but brought his daughter back to New Hastings. She was only a child, so why not? She grew up. She married. She had children of her own. And one day, more than twenty years later, she went up to Hanover-it was still called Stuart back then-and she called on my great-grandfather. He was old and rich by then, and glad to see her…till she pulled out a pistol and shot him dead."
He spoke a mixture of Spanish and French, to give them all a chance to follow. And they did, well enough. They laughed-not too loud, because the soldiers weren't far away. "As surprised as your great-grandfather," Blaise agreed. "What did they do to the pirate's daughter?"
"To the pirate's daughter? They hanged her. Ethel's last words were, 'I told him I would pay him back, and I did.' We're pigheaded, we Radcliffs." Victor spoke not without pride.
Juan had a more practical question: "Are you stubborn enough to know another ford? Or do we build a raft to get across?"
Victor pointed toward the Green Ridge Mountains. "There is another one, about half a day's travel west. It means more doubling back to get you to settled country and properly set up as freemen, but…" He spread his hands.
"We go," Blaise said. The black plainly led the runaways. Neither copperskin argued with him.
Not many men knew about the more distant ford-fewer on the French side than on the English, Victor judged. What he and his companions would do if it was garrisoned, too…he would worry about then. He'd never been one to borrow trouble. He found enough as things were. Most people did.
The sun was sinking in the west when they found the ford. They scouted it with unusual care, but no French troops seemed anywhere close by. Victor crossed first, his firearms above his head to keep them dry. The runaways followed through the waist-deep water.
They'd all come out dripping onto the north bank when an English voice shouted, "Hold it right there, or we'll ventilate you!" Several men with bayoneted muskets emerged from the undergrowth.
"I've never seen soldiers here before!" Victor exclaimed, also in English.
"You bloody clot! Don't you know there's a war on?" a sergeant demanded. He sounded tough but not unfriendly: Victor's accent disarmed him.
A war! Victor blinked. "Now that you mention it," he said, "no."
XVII
A t Roland Kersauzon's order, French soldiers had seized a bridge over the Erdre, the river that formed the border between the French and English settlements (the English called it the Stour). They had to fight a brisk little skirmish to do it. Had they moved a couple of days later, enough enemy soldiers might have come south to forestall them.
"Do you see?" Roland said to anyone who would listen. "There is a lesson here. Speed counts. Even a small delay, and the English would hold a bridgehead on our soil, not the other way round."
Because he commanded the army, the other officers-and the sergeants, and the cooks, and the grooms, and anybody else who chanced to be within earshot-couldn't simply walk away from him. They had to listen to his words of wisdom. Some of them had to listen several times. He repeated himself without shame: most of the time, without noticing he was doing it.
Supply wagons rolled up from Cosquer and from Nouveau Redon. In days gone by, hunting could have kept a good part of the army fed. So old men insisted their fathers had told them, anyhow. But no one had seen a honker near the coast for many years. Oil thrushes hadn't vanished, but they were getting scarce, too. Even more ordinary ducks and geese had been heavily hunted.
And so Roland and his soldiers ate sausages and smoked pork and onions and hard cheese and biscuits baked almost hard enough to keep weevils out of them. They washed down the unappetizing food with vin tres ordinaire, and with beer that wasn't much better. Some of them drank from the Erdre instead. Roland discouraged that; it was more likely to lead to a flux of the bowels.
"There are towns upstream," he reminded the men-and reminded them, and reminded them. "Where do you think they empty their chamber pots? Into the river, naturellement. We ought to call it the Merdre, not the Erdre."
He was inordinately fond of the pun. Others who heard it smiled widely the first time, smiled politely the second time, and stopped smiling after that. Roland, who didn't keep track of who'd heard it and who hadn't, found his subordinates sadly lacking in a sense of humor.
Two drummer boys beat out a brisk tattoo as the main French force followed the skirmishers across the Erdre and into English territory. Roland Kersauzon rode across on a white horse. If a man was going to lead an army, he needed to be seen leading it. So thought Roland, along with every other European commander of the eighteenth century.
He paid a price. The gold braid and epaulets on his blue velvet jacket weighed almost as much as a back-and-breast of days gone by. More gold braid ornamented and weighed down his tricorn. The hat did shield his eyes from the sun, but it was heavy enough to make his neck sore. He sighed with relief every time he took it off.
He could have doffed it any time he chose. No one would have doubted who led the French settlers. He could have, but he didn't. He was as stern with himself as he was with the men in his charge.
They marched on, leaving a garrison at the bridge to make sure the English didn't nip in behind them and take it away. Roland felt very grand and martial. His soldiers seized livestock and supplies from the farms they passed. The army would eat better because of it.
Scouts rode in front of the main force. Kersauzon didn't want to get taken by surprise. He'd known for years that Englishmen weren't to be trusted. He didn't care to have them prove it against his army.
And so, when a sharp racket of musketry rang out up ahead, he called to the buglers: "Blow form line of battle. Then blow advance on the foe."
The horn calls rang out. The gap between the first and the second stretched longer than Roland would have liked. The French force was less thoroughly drilled than it might have been. Garrisons from several towns had been melded together to make an attacking force. They were brave enough-Kersauzon had no doubts about that-but they hadn't marched side by side for years. They'd be veterans by the time this campaign ended, but they weren't yet.
Roland rode forward with the advancing infantry to see what the trouble was. He didn't need long. The English had picked a spot where trees came close to the road on both sides and run up a barricade of logs and boulders there. They were shooting from behind it, which let a handful of men thwart a much larger number. Roland didn't think that was sporting, but the English settlers doubtless didn't care.
"We will give them a few volleys from the front," he said. "While we keep them busy, we will send men into the woods to either side. Once they flank the enemy out of his position, we will tear down the barricade and resume our advance."
He'd never commanded troops in battle before. Everything seemed bright and clear and obvious. He gave his orders with confidence. The soldiers eagerly obeyed. Confidence in a leader brought out confiden
ce in his men.
His men approached the barricade. A couple of English settlers popped up and fired at them. One bullet missed. The other grazed a soldier in the leg. He had to fall out, but called to his comrades as they marched past: "Go on! Go get them! Don't worry-I'll be with you again soon!"
They moved to within sixty yards or so: close enough for a decisive volley. Then two blunt, ugly little cannon muzzles poked through cunningly concealed openings among the logs. They were three-pounders: light field guns that could keep up with cavalry on any reasonable ground.
A man cried out in English. Both guns belched fire and smoke at the same time. They also belched canister. At that range, they couldn't have missed if they tried. Men from the first three or four rows of French settlers fell as if scythed. The ones still standing looked around in surprise, as if wondering where their friends had gone. Some of them shot at the enemy. Most were too startled or too appalled.
Roland Kersauzon was appalled, too. A man who stopped canister at close range wasn't picturesquely wounded, as the man pinked by a musket ball had been. He was blown to rags, to bloody fragments a butcher's shop would have been ashamed to sell. And, no matter how mutilated he was, he didn't always die right away. The shrieks from maimed soldiers chilled the blood.
"Where are our cannon, Monsieur?" a lieutenant asked.
"They're coming up," Roland said unhappily. The line of march had got longer than it should have. He hadn't tightened up, for he hadn't expected to do any serious fighting for a while. There was another lesson: if you didn't act as if a battle might break out any second, you were making a mistake.
And that one had a corollary. Mistakes in wartime could be fatal. This one had been, for too many of his men. Only luck none of those lead balls tore into his own belly or smashed his skull.
"What do we do now, Monsieur?" the lieutenant asked. "Shall we charge the barricade while they reload?"
Too late, Roland learned caution. He shook his head. "No. If they have another gun waiting, they'll murder us." He turned to the bugler. "Blow fall back."
Although that horn call wasn't particularly mournful in and of itself, it seemed so to Kersauzon because of what it ordered. Fall back the French settlers did, dragging their wounded with them. Dead men and pieces of men lay where they'd fallen. The hot iron stink of blood fouled the air.
Would the English come out to attack? Would their cannon start firing roundshot, which could kill from much farther than canister? Whatever they did, they wouldn't enjoy it for long. Once the outflankers got behind them, they would have a thin time of it.
The lieutenant pointed at the barricade. "Monsieur, I believe they're pulling out!"
Roland raised a spyglass to his eyes. Like a ship captain's glass, or an astronomer's, it inverted the image while magnifying it. Sure enough, the glimpses of enemy soldiers the barrier gave him showed they were withdrawing. Either they were cowards or (more likely, he decided with regret) they'd figured out his plan and wouldn't wait around to be trapped.
"So they are," Roland said heavily. "Well, we can let them go-this time. Then we'll tear down the barrier and advance again. We'll be more careful from now on." I'll be more careful from now on, he meant. The young lieutenant politely nodded.
Once in English Atlantis, Juan and Francisco went their own way. Francisco talked of traveling overland to Avalon and then crossing the Hesperian Gulf and going back to Terranova. How he would find his own clan again, Victor Radcliff had no idea. He was welcome to try, though.
Juan simply wandered off. Maybe he went looking for his own folk, too. Maybe he just went looking for work or a woman or whiskey or whatever else he might want. He was a free man here.
So was Blaise, but he seemed inclined to stick with Victor. "You do interesting things, Monsieur," he said in his oddly accented French. "I think I do more interesting things myself with you than without you."
Victor had never had-and never wanted-a body servant. He couldn't very well tell the Negro that staying with him was pointless, because he'd be spending so much time in the woods. Blaise could take care of himself there, at least as well as Victor and maybe better. And so…Victor found himself stuck.
His fiancee thought it was funny. Margaret Dandridge was a level-headed girl from a New Hastings trading family. "He's very sweet," she told Victor. "And he's sharp-he's already starting to pick up English."
"I know," Victor answered. "He's learning to shoot, too. They wouldn't let him do that while he was a slave. He's good at it. I think he'd be good at anything he turned his hand to."
"You're lucky to have him, then," Meg said.
"I suppose so." Victor didn't sound so sure. After a moment's hesitation, he explained why: "Do I have him, or does he have me?"
He had plenty of other things to worry about. No one in the English settlements had looked for the French settlers to move so aggressively after war broke out. An English army was supposed to be on the way across the sea. Everyone had thought the French would do the same, so forces from the two mother countries fought it out.
But Roland Kersauzon had other ideas. English Atlantis had to dance to his tune, one way or another. Either the settlers had to recruit forces of their own, or they had to yield to Kersauzon without fighting and hope the professionals from the home island could rescue them.
They recruited, of course. Every farmer with a shotgun for bagging ducks and driving off wild dogs, every backwoodsman with a rifle, made a likely soldier. The men who joined on their own or were dragooned into the service of crown and settlements got green coats of several different shades, some of cotton, more of linen-cotton came from the French and Spanish south.
Because he was an experienced backwoodsman-and because he was a Radcliff-Victor acquired a major's commission, with gilt epaulets on the shoulders of his green coat. He didn't particularly like the emblems of his rank; they made him a better target. No one wanted to listen to him, so he wore the epaulets in camp. When he got to the field, he could take them off.
Somehow, Blaise acquired a sergeant's stripes. He wore them proudly. Victor hadn't asked for any rank for him. Maybe he got it by magic. Maybe he knew which palms to grease, though he had precious little money for greasing.
Victor thought the Negro's new status would cause trouble, and it did. A hulking young man named Aeneas Hand told him, "I'll be damned if I let a lousy nigger order me around."
Blaise was there to hear that. He tapped Hand on the shoulder. "You no like?" he asked in English flavored by both French and his African birthspeech-he was a quick study.
"No, I don't." The white man-who had perhaps four inches and forty pounds on Blaise-set himself. His hard hands balled into fists. "What are you going to do about it, you turd-colored monkey?"
Flat-footed, without changing expression or even seeming very interested, Blaise kicked him in the crotch. Aeneas Hand let out a startled grunt and folded up like a clasp knife. Blaise kicked him again, this time in the pit of the stomach. Hand couldn't have fought back after the first disaster. The second left him on the ground, desperately struggling to breathe. Blaise kicked him one more time, in the side of the head. Hand went limp.
"Did you kill him?" Victor asked.
"Nah." The Negro shook his head. He hadn't even broken a sweat. He continued in French: "Throw water on him. He wake up. Head hurt two, three days, same with balls and belly." He looked down at Aeneas Hand. "What he call me? I don't understand it."
"Never mind," Victor said in the same language. "If you knew, you would have killed him."
A couple of other recruits came over to stare at their fallen comrade. "Godalmighty!" one of them said. "What happened to him?"
"He offended the sergeant here." Victor pointed to Blaise. "And he found out that wasn't such a good idea, didn't he?"
"Sure did." The man looked from Aeneas Hand to Blaise and back again. "Offended him, did he? If he really went and got him mad, I reckon he'd be in pieces."
"Wouldn't be surprised," Vict
or Radcliff agreed. "Fetch a pail of water and souse Aeneas with it. He's learned a lesson. I hope nobody else in this company has to."
Hand had begun to stir by the time the water cascaded over him. Sure enough, it revived him. Blearily, he looked up at Blaise. "You don't fight fair," he said.
"Fight fair? Fight fair?" That startled the black man out of English and into profane French: "Sacre merde!" Blaise thought for a moment before going on, in English again, "You right. I no fight fair. I fight, I win. Only way to fight. I sergeant." He tapped his stripes. "You mess me again, I kill you. Understand?"
Aeneas Hand nodded, then winced and looked as if he wished he hadn't. Water dripped off his chin and from the end of his pointed nose. "Reckon I do."
"Reckon I do, what?" Blaise touched the chevrons again.
"Reckon I do, Sergeant," the big recruit allowed.
"Good." Blaise allowed himself a smile. He reached down and hauled Hand upright. "We get on now."
And they did. Having been so thoroughly beaten, Aeneas Hand spread the word that Blaise was sudden death on two legs. A couple of smaller incidents with other recruits did nothing to show he was wrong. Victor Radcliff began to wonder whether he or his man would have worn the epaulets had Blaise been born with a white skin.
Gravediggers' spades tore into the soft brown earth. Dirt thudding on dirt had an ominously final sound. Roland Kersauzon watched as a priest gabbled quick Latin over the shrouded corpse, then jumped away. A sickly-sweet stench rose from the body. It wasn't because the young soldier had stayed unburied too long; he'd died that night, only a few hours before this dawn. But smallpox had its own fetor.
Roland muttered to himself. Too many soldiers were dying of smallpox and measles. Men who grew up on farms out in the countryside and spent their lives alone in the woods missed the diseases in childhood, when they were most often milder. Catch them then and you were immune forever after. Catch them as an adult…
Opening Atlantis a-1 Page 29
