“We do what we can. We are not perfect. I did not say we were, nor would I ever,” Victor said. “But we are, or we try to be, on the side of the angels.”
“We have a ways to go.”
“We are men. I don’t shit ambrosia, as I have reason to know.” Victor wrinkled his nose. “Let us first get free of England—”
“And we can start to see how to get free of one another,” Blaise finished for him.
“That is not what I was going to say.”
“Well, it had better be true anyhow. If we do not get free of one another, what point to it that we got free of England? King George should not be my master, maybe. But I do not see that any other man should be, either.”
Victor Radcliff laughed. Blaise glared at him till he explained: “Tan my hide for shoe leather if you do not sound like every other free Atlantean ever born, be he white or black or coppery—or green, come to that.”
“Mm . . . It could be.” But, after a moment, Blaise shook his head. “No—say I sound like every other man ever born. Do you think ever a man came into the world looking for a master?”
“I do not know the answer to that, nor do you,” Victor said. “Had you no slaves in your African jungles across the sea?”
“We had them,” Blaise admitted. “But what we call slavery and what you call slavery are not the same thing, even if they carry the same name. In our land, all the slaves are like what you call house slaves here. No field hands—no work out there under the lash if you slack off. And the other difference is, here you can mostly tell a slave by looking at him. Not so in my land.”
Victor thought about that. He found himself nodding. South of the Stour, a black man or a copperskin was far more likely than not to belong to a white man. In a country where all the faces were black . . . “That must make runaways harder to catch,” he remarked.
“Not so many of them there,” Blaise said. “Maybe it is harder for a man who is a master to be rough on a slave who looks like him. Even your Jesus looks like you. He does not look like me.”
When you got right down to it, Jesus probably looked like some modern Mahometan. He came from Palestine, after all, and He was a Jew. But European painters portrayed Him as looking like themselves. They passed that image on to the Negro slaves they converted to Christianity. Victor hadn’t thought about what a potent spiritual weapon a white Christ might be.
But that wasn’t the point. “So you have masters there, too?” he asked. That was.
Reluctantly, Blaise nodded. “We have them.”
“You never thought it was wrong and unnatural?”
“I never was a slave before. You see—if someone buys and sells you, won’t you think it wrong and unnatural?”
“I daresay I should. But suppose you never got caught and sold. Suppose you grew to be a rich man in your own country. Would you not have slaves of your own now? Would you not be as contented a slaveowner as any white man in the old French settlements or down in Spanish Atlantis?”
This time, Blaise did not answer for some little while. At last, his face troubled, he nodded again. “Maybe I would. You ask nasty questions—do you know that?”
No doubt people had said the same thing about Socrates in Athens long ago. He’d ended up drinking hemlock because of it, too—something modern gadflies sometimes tried to forget. “I will tell you something, Blaise,” Victor said. “So do you.”
The French regulars showed no more love for the interior of Atlantis than the redcoats ever had. “It is unfairly difficult to subsist an army here in such an empty land,” the Marquis de la Fayette complained.
“Not always easy, true,” Victor Radcliff answered: a honker-sized understatement if ever there was one.
As he had a while before, he thanked heaven the French soldiers ate anything that didn’t eat them first. That helped keep them fed. But you could gather up only so many frogs and turtles and snails and wingless katydids (the French regulars found them better than tolerable, especially with a dash of garlic). And there wasn’t any bread to gather up away from farms, nor even fruits and nuts. Some Atlantean ferns had parts you could eat—fiddleheads, country folk called them. Even so . . .
“We need to get into more settled country,” Victor added.
“I should say we do.” The marquis’ crooked grin seemed all the more surprising on the face of a man so young. “Otherwise, we shall be no more than wraiths by the time we have to fight the English. In one way, that might aid us, eh? It could be that bullets pass through wraiths without doing harm. But I do not believe our soldiers would appreciate the diminution of their corporeal frames even so.”
“Er—yes.” Victor didn’t know how to take that. He realized it was a joke, and chuckled to show he did: he didn’t want de la Fayette to think him nothing but an ignorant backwoodsman. But it was perhaps the most elaborately phrased joke he’d ever heard. It might have seemed much funnier in a Paris drawing room than it did in this sparsely settled stretch of Atlantis.
That very afternoon, one of the handful of French mounted scouts rode back to the main body of de la Fayette’s troops in high excitement. “Beeves!” he cried. “Wonderful beeves!”
They weren’t wonderful beeves, or they wouldn’t have been to men not staring hunger in the face. They were ordinary cattle: distinctly on the scrawny side, in fact, and of no particular breeding. The same description applied to the two men who kept an eye on them as they grazed in the meadow.
No wolves in Atlantis. No bears. No lions. But French regulars could be even more ravenous. The herdsmen stared at them in bleak dismay. “Is it that they hope to be paid?” de la Fayette asked Victor.
“I don’t know how happy even that will make them,” Radcliff replied. “Atlantean paper’s gone up some since France came in on our side, but we’d have to give them a bushel basket full of it before they got their money’s worth.”
“Paper?” The marquis sniffed. Then he shouted for the army paymaster. That worthy repaired to one of his wagons. De la Fayette waved to the herdsmen, summoning them into his presence. They came, apprehensively. The paymaster, a sour look on his face, gave them three small gold coins each. The herdsmen stared as if they could hardly believe their eyes. Victor knew he could hardly believe his. “It is good?” de la Fayette asked in accented but understandable English.
“It’s mighty goddamn good, your Honor!” one of the herdsmen blurted. The other man, startled past speech, nodded dumbly.
“Haven’t seen so much specie in a devil of a long time,” Blaise said in a low voice.
“Nor have I,” Victor whispered back. He had to gather himself before he could speak to de la Fayette: “Your king provided for you lavishly.”
“I will have need to pay the soldiers. I will have need to purchase victuals, as now,” the French commander said, shrugging. “And so his Majesty has made it possible for me to do these things.”
“So he has,” Victor Radcliff agreed tonelessly. The Atlantean Assembly had made it possible for him to do those things, too. The only trouble was, the Assembly hadn’t made it possible for him to do those things very well. France was rich, populous, and efficiently—many would say, tyrannically—taxed. The United States of Atlantis were none of those things. Here in this meadow, Victor got his nose rubbed in the difference.
French army cooks proved to roast beef in much the same fashion as their Atlantean counterparts. It was charred black on the outside, as near raw as made no difference on the inside. Along with garlic—which Victor didn’t much fancy—the French cooks had salt to add to the meat’s savor, which Atlanteans might well not have.
“Is this from the salt pans of Brittany?” Victor asked.
De la Fayette looked at him as if he’d started using Blaise’s language. “I have no idea.” He asked some of the cooks. When they told him it was, he sent Victor a curious look. “Now how would you have guessed that?”
“Well, my ancestor, Edward Radcliffe, was in Brittany buying salt when François Kers
auzon sold him the secret of the way to Atlantis for a third of his catch,” Victor said. “Kersauzon found it first, but Radcliffe settled first.”
“Atlantis, sold for salt fish.” The Marquis de la Fayette sighed gustily. “France has had many long years to repent of that bargain.”
“If you’d asked Kersauzon, he would have told you he was a Breton, not a Frenchman,” Victor said. “Still a few—not many any more, but a few—in French Atlantis who remember the difference even now.”
“I saw as much in Cosquer. They are fools. But England has those, too, n’est-ce pas? Welshmen who cling to Wales and the like,” de la Fayette said. “Have they no settlements of their own in Atlantis?”
“A few small ones. No big ones I know of,” Victor said. The marquis raised an eyebrow at the qualification. Victor explained: “West of the mountains, plenty goes on that people on our side, on the long-settled side, don’t find out about till later, if we ever find out at all.”
“How charming!” de la Fayette exclaimed, which was hardly the word Victor would have used. Something in his expression must have given him away, for the young Frenchman quickly went on, “In my country, there is no room for villages full of mystery, villages of which the king and his servants know nothing.”
“I see,” Victor said, and he supposed he did. “In Atlantis, there is still room for people who want to be left alone, yes.” He wasn’t so sure that was charming. Some of the people who wanted to be left alone weren’t far removed from maniacs. Others were just robbers and runaways who had excellent reasons to want to remain undiscovered.
But de la Fayette said, “This is the liberty I am proud to assist: the liberty to be oneself.”
That night, Blaise softly asked, “Well, who else can you be but yourself?”
“I don’t know,” Victor replied. “You have to admit, though, it sounds a lot better in French.”
As they came up from the southwest, Victor realized they weren’t more than a couple of days’ travel from Hooville. He shook his head in bemused wonder. He’d stopped in the little town on his way to Hanover when the fight against England was just on the point of breaking loose. And, if they were only a couple of days away from Hooville, they were only three days from his own farm.
He said not a word about that. He didn’t ride away to visit Meg. Blaise didn’t go off to see Stella, either. The French might have followed them. A visit from the allies’ officers would have been tolerable. A visit from the whole French army? No. Victor knew too well what happened to countryside with soldiers on it. He’d ordered his men to subsist themselves on the countryside often enough. He didn’t want to watch his own land stripped bare by locusts in blue jackets.
Instead, the French troops foraged south of Hooville. That was unfortunate. Victor had spent a lot of years building up his own land. Having it plundered, even by friends, would have felt catastrophic.
“Somewhere east of Hooville,” Victor told the Marquis de la Fayette, “the English will wait for us in force.”
“So I should think, yes,” the nobleman said. “That is also the direction in which Hanover lies, is it not so? Hanover and the main Atlantean army?”
“It is,” Victor said. “We ought to join forces with them if we can. And even if we can’t, I ought to go back and take charge of them again. I’ve been away longer than I thought I would.”
De la Fayette thought for a moment. “And you would perhaps wish my force to make a demonstration to allow you to slip past the English lines?”
“That would be excellent. Merci beaucoup,” Victor said. The Frenchman might or might not be able to lead men in the field. On that, Victor as yet held no strong opinion either way. But de la Fayette was not without strategic insight. Maybe he really would make an officer.
English cavalrymen—actually, riders from a loyalist troop, perhaps even Habakkuk Biddiscombe’s Horsed Legion—collided with the French scouts about halfway between Hooville and Hanover (“Between Noplace and Someplace,” as Blaise elegantly put it). They pushed the outnumbered French horsemen back on de la Fayette’s main body. French field guns boomed. A roundshot felled an enemy rider’s mount as if it were a redwood. From several hundred yards away, Victor couldn’t make out what happened to the man whose nag so abruptly departed this world.
French foot soldiers in loose order—skirmishers—advanced on the enemy cavalry. The loyalists with carbines banged away at the Frenchmen. They had their own field gun. It unlimbered and fired a couple of shots. Then, sedately, as if to say they had a luncheon appointment somewhere else and weren’t withdrawing in the face of superior forces, the loyalists wheeled their horses and rode away.
“They performed tolerably well. No great discipline, perhaps, but they are well mounted and brave.” De la Fayette spoke in the clinical tones of a doctor assessing a case of smallpox.
“Oh, no denying they’re brave,” Victor said. “I only wish they weren’t, or that they were brave in a better cause.”
“No doubt they feel the same about your men,” de la Fayette observed.
“No doubt,” Victor said. “Or they had better, at any rate. If the English weren’t worried about us, they wouldn’t have to recruit these salauds.” That wasn’t fair, and he knew it. The loyalists weren’t—or most of them weren’t—men who deserved to be sworn at. They were only men who had different notions of how Atlantis should be ruled. Not men who deserved to be sworn at, no: just men who needed to be killed.
Well, one or two of them had died here, along with one or two Frenchmen. The foot soldiers came up to the horse the cannon ball had killed. They butchered it with as much enthusiasm as if it had been a cow. Victor had eaten all sorts of strange meats, but he didn’t remember ever eating horse before.
It wasn’t bad. A little chewy—a little gluey, as a matter of fact—and a little gamy, but not bad. The Frenchmen seemed to find it delicious. Victor wouldn’t have gone that far. Neither would Blaise, but he said, “A bellyful of horse is a lot better than a bellyful of nothing.”
“Isn’t it just!” Victor replied.
The French went on skirmishing with loyalists. After the cavalrymen reported their position, loyalist foot soldiers harried them from behind trees and rocks, as Victor’s men had harried the redcoats. But the French were less rigid than the English, and quick to fight back the same way. The loyalists melted away before them.
Victor waited for General Cornwallis to commit his own troops against the French. When the English commander did, Victor took his leave of de la Fayette, saying, “I hope we shall meet again. I expect we shall, and with luck the meeting will not be long delayed.”
“May it be so,” de la Fayette said. “We will keep them busy here. They will never think to look for you as you fare east. Good fortune go with you.”
To help good fortune along, Victor and Blaise split up, as they’d done more than once before. They were known to travel together, so each of them headed toward Hanover alone.
XIX
“Halt!” the sentry shouted. “Who comes?”
Victor Radcliff reined in. Answering that question was always interesting—and sometimes much too interesting. He thought the man had an Atlantean accent. Even if he turned out to be right, it might not do him any good. Loyalist positions weren’t likely so close to Hanover, but they weren’t impossible, either.
“I am a friend,” he answered carefully.
“No doubt, but whose?” the sentry said, advancing with purposeful strides. “Are you the Atlantean Assembly’s friend, or King George’s? In times like these, you cannot be friend to both.”
How right he was! And, damn him, he gave no clue as to whose friend he was. An answer he misliked, and he would shoot. And he was too close to be likely to miss, even with a smoothbore musket.
“I am the Atlantean Assembly’s friend.” Victor’s hand moved stealthily toward his pistol. If he had to fight for his life, he would.
But the sentry—whose clothes, rough homespun of linen and wo
ol, also refused to declare his allegiance—didn’t fire right away. “And which friend of the Atlantean Assembly are you?” he demanded.
Had the English or the loyalists captured Blaise? Had fire and sharp metal torn from him word that Victor was also bound for Hanover? If they had, the sentry was just waiting to be sure before he killed. Sometimes a man had to roll the dice. “I am Victor Radcliff,” Victor said. He could—he hoped he could—make sure the enemy didn’t take him alive.
“You are?” the sentry said. “Well, how do I know you’re him, and not some braggart with more mouth than brains?”
“Take me into Hanover,” Victor replied. “If they decide I am an impostor there, they will assuredly hang me for my presumption, and you may have the pleasure of watching me dance on air.”
After thinking that through, the sentry nodded. “I’d have to be dumb as a honker to tell you no,” he said.
“That would not stop, nor even slow, a great many men I have met,” Victor said.
“I do believe it.” The sentry raised his voice: “Abraham! Calvin! One of you come down! I got to go into town, I do.”
A man did appear from an ambush position. Victor decided he was lucky they were on his side. He would not have had much luck assailing the one fellow who showed himself, not when the sentry had friends.
The soldier—he called himself Jeremiah—did not have a horse. He walked toward Hanover beside Victor, and didn’t complain about it. “Got to make these boots fit my feet a little better anyways,” he said.
“Very fine boots,” Victor said—and so they were. But they weren’t perfectly new, so he added, “How did you come by them?”
“Bushwhacked a redcoat,” Jeremiah said matter-of-factly. “He was a bigger fellow than I am. I reckoned I could stuff the boots with rags if I had to. But it turned out our feet were just about the same size.”
“Good for you,” Victor said.
A couple of miles farther east, another sentry challenged Victor and Jeremiah. This one stood by an earthwork not far from the Union-Jack-and-red-crested-eagle flag the United States of Atlantis were using. Victor proclaimed himself with more confidence this time. The new sentry said, “Well, hatch me from a honker’s egg if you ain’t. Welcome back, General!”
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