“Not quite,” Victor said.
“No? How not?” his onetime cavalry officer returned.
“A traitor is a man unlucky enough to choose the losing side in the middle of the war,” Victor said. “You might have chosen otherwise. You would have done better if you had. And you will pay for what you chose.”
Habakkuk Biddiscombe’s sweeping gesture took in the whole of his sorry cell. “Am I not already paying?”
“You are,” Victor said, and walked away.
Victor declined to serve on the three-officer panel that decided Biddiscombe’s fate. “I doubt my ability to be just,” he said. He doubted any Atlantean’s ability to be just to Biddiscombe, but that was the turncoat’s hard luck. At least Biddiscombe’s blood would not directly soil his hands.
He was summoned to testify against Biddiscombe. The accused did have counsel, a Croydon barrister named Josias Rich. Outside the small meeting room in the town hall that served as a courtroom, Rich told Victor, “I do this not in the belief in the man’s innocence, nor for the sake of my own advancement, God knows—people I thought my friends commence to cut me in the streets. I do it for the sake of Atlantis’ honor. Even a dog should have someone to speak for it before it is put down.”
“Your views do you credit, and I agree,” Victor said. Josias Rich—whose worn linen and down-at-the-heels shoes belied his name—looked surprised and pleased.
In due course, a sergeant serving as bailiff called Victor into the room. He took his oath on a stout Bible. The judges elicited from him that Habakkuk Biddiscombe had commanded cavalry in the Atlantean army, had gone over to the English and formed Biddiscombe’s Horsed Legion, and had led the Horsed Legion in combat against the forces of the United States of Atlantis.
Biddiscombe (who was burdened by manacles and by a ball and chain attached to his ankle) had muttered to Josias Rich all through Victor’s testimony. The barrister rose. “Did Biddiscombe fight well and bravely while serving under your overall command, General?” he asked.
“He did,” Victor said.
“Might he have continued to serve Atlantis well and bravely had you been more inclined to recognize and applaud his military merits?” Rich asked.
“I have no way to know that,” Victor replied.
“What is your opinion?”
“My opinion is that, had I judged him worthy of more recognition and applause, I would have given them to him.”
Rich tried again: “Do you now regret not having given them to him?”
“I regret that any man who once fought for us should have decided to cast his fate with King George, whatever his reasons may have been,” Victor said carefully.
“In retrospect, do you wish now that you had been more inclined to heed his suggestions as to the Atlantean army’s conduct of its campaign against the redcoats?”
“Do I think he might have been right, do you mean, sir?”
“Well—yes,” Josias Rich said.
“Here and there, he might have been,” Victor said. “But that is hard to say with any certainty now, looking back on it. And it would have been all the harder to say trying to look forward into an unsure future.”
“Thank you, General.” Rich sat down.
One of the captains who would decide Biddiscombe’s fate asked, “Did other officers who sometimes disagreed with your orders remain loyal to the cause of the United States of Atlantis?”
“They did,” Victor said. And there, in two words, was the essence of Biddiscombe’s treason.
The panel excused Victor after that. He left the little room with nothing but relief. Baron von Steuben waited outside. “Bad?” the German asked sympathetically.
“Well . . .” Victor didn’t need to think long before nodding. “Yes. Plenty bad.”
“Treason is a filthy business,” von Steuben said. “Common where I come from—so many little kingdoms and duchies and principalities, so many divided loyalties—but filthy all the same. Here you have but one country. If God loves Atlantis, no reason for treason again.”
“May He grant it be so,” Victor agreed.
The sergeant stepped out into the hallway. “Your turn, sir,” he said to von Steuben, who sighed and shrugged and followed him in.
The trial was more than a drumhead, but less than something a civilian would have wanted to face. The panel of judges called several more witnesses. Even so, they’d heard enough to satisfy themselves by the middle of the afternoon. And they delivered their verdict only an hour or so later: Habakkuk Biddiscombe was guilty of treason against the United States of Atlantis, and should suffer the penalty of death by hanging.
Naturally, the news didn’t need long to reach Victor, who sat in a tavern across the Croydon Meadow (on which a few sheep grazed) from the town hall drinking porter and eating a sausage and pickled cabbage stuffed into a long roll. He sighed and nodded to the man who’d brought word to him. “Well, no one expected anything else,” he said.
“No, indeed,” the man said. “You ask me, hanging’s too good for him. He should take a while to go so he has time to think about what he did to deserve it.”
Victor shook his head. “He’ll have plenty of time to think on that before the trap falls. If we once start putting men to death cruelly, how do we stop?”
“You must be a better Christian than I am, General,” the man said. Victor was far from sure he meant it as praise.
Blaise had his own mug of beer and cabbage-shrouded sausage. “What will you do if Biddiscombe begs you for mercy?” he asked after the news-bringer had gone on his way.
As commanding general, Victor had the authority to set aside any court-martial’s verdict. He had it, but he didn’t think he wanted to use it. “Not much room for doubt about what he did, or about what treason deserves,” he said, and let it go at that.
Trials for the men captured with Biddiscombe went even faster than the leader’s. All of them were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging except one. No witnesses came forward to show he had actually fought against the Atlantean army. The officers who made up his court convicted him of aiding fugitives from justice, but nothing more. They sentenced him to thirty lashes well laid on, the punishment to be carried out immediately.
A whipping post stood in the middle of the Croydon Meadow. Excited townsfolk chased away the sheep, the better to enjoy the spectacle. The guilty man got a strip of leather to bite down on, as if he’d gone to the surgeons after a battle wound. The man with the whip had a French accent. Maybe he’d had practice whipping slaves south of the Stour. Victor wished he hadn’t thought of that; it made him imagine his own son under the lash.
Crack! Crack! The strokes sounded like gunshots. Despite the thick strap, the guilty man soon screamed after each one. The crowd cheered almost loud enough to drown him out. After the last stroke, they loosed his shackles. He slumped to the ground at the base of the post like a dead man. Then a doctor came forward to smear ointment on his raw, bloodied back, and he started screaming all over again.
Croydon didn’t have a permanent gallows. Carpenters who would have been building furniture or houses or ships gleefully took time off to knock one together not far from the whipping post. The sheep were probably offended, but no one cared. Long enough to hang all the convicted traitors at once, the gallows dominated Croydon Meadow.
Ravens tumbled in the air overhead as guards with bayoneted muskets brought Biddiscombe and his confederates from the jail to the execution site. Victor Radcliff wondered how the birds knew. Biddiscombe had not appealed his sentence; he must have known it was hopeless. Two of the men from the Horsed Legion had. Victor turned them down. Men who took up arms against the United States of Atlantis had to understand what they could look forward to.
Habakkuk Biddiscombe climbed the thirteen steps to the platform as if his beloved awaited him at the top. He took his place on the trap and looked out at the crowd howling for his death. “Devil take you all!” he shouted. The Croydonites howled louder. The hangman pu
t a hood over Biddiscombe’s head.
There was a brief delay while a parson and a Catholic priest consoled some of the condemned men. The parson approached Biddiscombe. He shook his head. Even though he was hooded, the motion was unmistakable to Victor—and to the parson. Clicking his tongue between his teeth, the man withdrew.
The hangmen positioned the victims, then looked at one another. Some signal must have passed between them, for all the traps dropped at the same time. Most of the hanged men, Biddiscombe among them, died quickly. One jerked for a few minutes before stilling forever. The crowd applauded. The hangmen bowed. People left the meadow in a happy mood. Some stayed to bid for pieces of the rope. A raven perched on the gallows, waiting.
Nothing held Victor in Croydon any longer. He could go home. He could, and he would. He’d never dreaded going into battle more.
XXVI
Meg hugged and kissed Victor. Stella hugged and kissed Blaise. So did their children. It was the happiest homecoming anyone—any two—coming back from the wars could have wanted. Victor and Meg, Blaise and Stella, drank rum. The Negroes’ children drank sugared and spiced beer. Joy reigned unconstrained.
Blaise told stories in which Victor was a hero. Not to be outdone, Victor told stories in which Blaise saved the day. They both stretched the stories a little. Victor knew he didn’t stretch his too much. He didn’t think Blaise stretched his too much, but nobody could properly judge stories about himself.
They ate ham and fried chicken and potatoes and pickled cabbage and cinnamon-spicy baked apples till they could hardly walk. After supper, Blaise and Stella and their children went off to their smaller cottage next to the Radcliffs’ farmhouse.
And Meg Radcliff looked Victor in the eye and said, “You son of a bitch.”
He opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. After that opening, how was he supposed to answer? Helplessly, he spread his hands. “You know.” He’d thought those were the two worst words that could possibly come out of his mouth. And he’d been right, too.
“Don’t I just!” his wife answered bitterly. “You were supposed to ride a horse while you were on campaign, Victor, not some damned colored wench. And how many other trollops were there that I don’t know anything about?”
“None. Not a one.” Victor lied without hesitation or compunction.
Meg laughed at him—not the sort of laugh she’d given him before they were alone. “Do you suppose I hatched out of a honker’s egg? You just happened to lie down with this one bitch, and she just happened to get up with child.”
“That is what happened.” Having begun to lie, Victor had to go on. Except for what had happened with Louise, Meg couldn’t prove anything, anyhow. What she suspected . . . she had a right to suspect. But she couldn’t prove it.
“Ha!” It wasn’t a laugh—it was a sound she threw in his face.
“Meg . . .”
She wasn’t going to listen to him yet. Maybe eventually—maybe not, too. Certainly not yet. “So tell me,” she said, “have you got yourself a nigger son now, or a daughter?” She wouldn’t have used that word if Blaise or Stella might have heard it. But she seized any weapon she could get her hands on to hurl at her husband.
“A son,” Victor answered dully. “How is it you don’t know that?”
“Because I had only one letter from dear Monsieur Freycinet,” she snapped. “It was addressed to you, of course, but I opened it because I thought it might be important. And so it was, but not the way I looked for. He had to inform you that sweet Louise was having your baby.”
Damn Monsieur Freycinet, Victor thought. The planter had been much too thorough. He’d sent one letter to where he guessed Victor was, and another to the place where Victor was bound to get it sooner or later. And Victor was indeed getting it, though not in the way Marcel Freycinet would have had in mind.
“A son.” Meg breathed out hard through her nose.
“Yes, a son. A son who is dear Monsieur Freycinet’s property. A son who is a slave, and likely will be all his days,” Victor said. “If you think I haven’t flayed myself about this, you are much mistaken.”
“You fool, you’re flaying yourself because you made her belly swell,” Meg snarled. “I want to flay you because you bedded her in the first place. The hero of the Atlantean War for Liberty! Huzzah!”
Victor hung his head. “I deserve all your reproaches.”
“And more besides,” Meg agreed. “Why, Victor? Why?” But before he could answer she held up a hand. “Spare me any more falsehoods. I know why. I know too well—because you are a man, and she was there, and I was not. Heaven help me, though, I did not think you were that kind of man. Which only goes to show how little I knew, eh?”
“What can I say?” Victor asked miserably.
“I know not. What can you say? What would you have done if you could? Not just leave Louise in her present situation, I gather?”
“No,” Victor said. “I offered to buy her and set her free here north of the Stour, where slavery is as near dead as makes no difference. I offered a price for . . . for the boy, as well. Freycinet declined to sell her or the boy.”
“God is merciful!” his wife exclaimed. “That would have blown a hole in our accounts, not so? Did you think I would not notice?”
“No. I thought you would,” Victor said.
“And . . . ?” The word hung in the air.
“What difference does it make now? I might have been able to explain it. Or if not, that would have been no worse than this.”
“There!” his wife said in something like triumph. “That’s the first truth you’ve told since you came home, unless I’m much mistaken.”
She wasn’t, and Victor didn’t have the nerve to claim she was. “I’m sorry,” he muttered under his breath.
“You’re sorry you got caught. You’re sorry your hussy caught. Are you sorry you went in unto her, as the Good Book says? Not likely!”
“What would you have me do?” Victor asked.
He thought she would say something like Cut it off and throw it in the fire. By the look in her eye, she wasn’t far from that. But what she did answer was, “I never dreamt in all my born days that I would say such a thing as this, but right now I wish with all my heart you were more like Blaise. He would never mistreat Stella so—never!”
Victor didn’t remember Blaise declining to swive Roxane, the slave girl who was so nearly white. The only difference between general and factotum—between one man and another—was that the factotum’s companion hadn’t conceived.
The general had no intention of betraying the factotum. One man, one friend, did not do that to another. But Meg’s words caught him by surprise. Some of what went through his mind must have shown on his face.
Blood drained from Meg’s cheeks. “No,” she whispered. “He didn’t! He couldn’t! He wouldn’t have!” Victor didn’t claim that Blaise did or could or would have. He also didn’t leap to his factotum’s defense—not that Meg would have believed him if he had. He just stood there. That was bad enough, or worse than bad enough, all by itself. If Cornwallis had been able to blast holes in his defenses so easily, the Atlantean cause would have foundered in short order. Meg shook her head in what had to be horror. “God save me! You truly are all alike!”
“Don’t tell Stella,” Victor said.
“I have not the heart to do any such cruel thing,” Meg said. “The truth will come out, though. Sooner or later, it will.” She paused. “Did he get a byblow on his harlot?”
“Not so far as I know,” Victor answered. “And, so far as I know, he has no notion that I did.”
“I wish I had no notion that you did!” Meg exclaimed. Then she hesitated. “Or do I? Is it not better that the truth has come forth?”
“I know not,” Victor said, “but I do know how much I wish Monsieur Freycinet had never told me I have a colored son.”
“And, surely, you wish even more that he had never told me you were to have a colored child,” Meg said. “T
he one thing you have not said is that you wish you had never used this Louise for your bedstraw. Am I to gather that the reason you have not said it is because it is not true?”
Victor had no idea how to answer that. What man ever regretted doing that which made him a man? He might—he would!—regret discovery. He might—he would!—regret unexpected offspring. But regret lying down with a pretty woman and getting up afterwards with a smile? No, not likely. And yet . . .
“I wish I had not hurt you by doing what I did,” he said—and he meant it all the way down to his toes.
Not that it helped. “You would do better to wish me made of stone, then,” his wife said. “I trusted you, Victor. Fool that I was, I did. Now I see I must have been a fool indeed. If you took this Louise on that journey, then you must have taken a Nell or a Joanna or a Sue or an Anne or a Bess or a Kate on all your others. And then you would come home and say how much you missed me!”
He’d feared he was wasting his breath when he insisted he’d fallen from virtue, fallen from fidelity, with Louise alone. How hideously right he’d been! “I always did miss you,” he said, and he meant that, too.
“Not enough!” Meg retorted. “Besides, why would you. What did you have from me you could not get for a few shillings from any tavern wench with a hot cleft?”
That shot, like so many of hers, came too close to the center of the target. Unlike some of the others, it wasn’t quite a bull’s-eye. “What did I have from you? Yourself. With Louise”—Victor still wouldn’t admit to any others, no matter how right about them Meg was—“it was a matter of a moment, forgotten as soon as it was over. With you, I always knew we were in harness together so long as we both should live, and I never wanted it any other way. I love you, Meg.”
“Forgotten as soon as it was over? She left you something to remember her by, though, didn’t she? And nothing but luck she didn’t give you the pox to remember her by, too, and for you to bring home to me,” Meg said. “You love me, you say? You love me till you ride off far enough so you can see me no more, and then you go your merry way!”
The United States of Atlantis Page 45
