Opening Atlantis a-1 Read online

  "They're bad enough on the other side of the Channel," Richard said. "Would you want them living a long spit down the coast from you?"

  "Well, if the other choice is spending the rest of my days jealous because they're here and I'm not, maybe I do." Edward Radcliffe weighed his words and nodded yet again. "Yes, son, maybe I do."

  The crews of the St. George and the Morzen spent ten days on Atlantis. The longer Edward Radcliffe stayed, the more he wanted to come back, to settle and never to leave. He kept glancing at Francois Kersauzon out of the corner of his eye. Was the same thought in Kersauzon's mind? How could it not be?

  Henry did knock a honker over the head. It was as easy as the Breton said it would be. The enormous bird stared at the man with a kind of dull curiosity as he walked up to it. It wasn't afraid of him; it had never learned to be afraid of things that looked like him. It died without ever knowing it should have learned to fear.

  More than anything else, that made Edward sure Atlantis had no natives. If even savages lived here, the local beasts would have learned to run away from them.

  And Edward found himself eyeing Francois Kersauzon in a new way. The other skipper was properly alert, but if he got knocked over the head… Half in regret and half in relief, Edward shelved the idea. He wasn't afraid of wearing the mark of Cain. He was afraid he would have to kill all the Bretons to make killing Kersauzon worthwhile. And he was afraid he would lose too many of his own fishermen in the fighting. Sometimes-not always, but sometimes-peace was smarter than war.

  Perhaps three miles south of where he'd first come ashore, he found a river flowing strongly out into the sea. Henry was with him when they came to the mouth of the stream. The younger man pointed inland. "It's bound to come down from the mountains," he said.

  "No doubt. It would have to, with so swift a current," Edward agreed. "It runs hard enough to power a great plenty of grinding mills."

  "Aye, belike, if the mills have a great plenty to grind," his son said. "No grain growing here, not yet."

  "No, not yet." Edward looked inland again. He was also looking into the future-through a glass, darkly, which is as much as it is given to a man to do. "But do you see any reason why grain shouldn't grow here?"

  "I seen none," Henry replied, "which is not the same as saying there is none. We don't know."

  "I want to find out!" Edward said. "I want to live here, where when I'm ashore I can do as I please. I can hunt deer without poaching on the lord's land-"

  "I haven't seen any deer here, either," his son broke in. "No one has, that I know of."

  "Fine. I can hunt these honkers, then," Edward said impatiently.

  "Oh, yes-they make fine sport." Sarcasm dripped from Henry's words. "The excitement of the stalk, the thrill of the chase…" He mimed bringing his club down on a big, stupid bird's head.

  "They make mighty good eating, though," Edward said, and his son couldn't very well argue with that-the one Henry had killed was smoking on the beach where they'd landed. Edward went on, "And if there are no deer here now, what's to keep us from bringing them across the sea like sheep or cattle or horses or-?"

  Henry interrupted again: "Everything else we'd need to live."

  "Well, what of it?" Edward said. "Are you telling me we can't do that? We can find this place again, or near enough-we know the latitude. And if we don't settle right here, any other stretch of the coast would do about as well. Will you tell me I'm wrong?"

  "No, Father," Henry said. "But it's a big step, to uproot ourselves from England and cross the sea to try to make our homes on an unknown shore."

  "It won't stay unknown long. By Our Lady, it's not unknown now-we're standing on it," Edward Radcliffe said. "And if we don't make homes here, the Bretons or the French or the Basques or the Galicians will. Then we won't even be able to fish here. They'll be in their own back fields, you might say, and we'll have to cross the Atlantic both ways. We'd never stay in business against them. Do you want that? We'd be second best forever. That's no fate for Englishmen. That's no fate for Radcliffes!"

  Henry sighed. "Father, it sounds good when it comes from your lips. But when we get home, what's Lucy going to say to me?" He put his hands on his hips and raised his voice to sound like his wife, who'd always struck Edward as a bit of a shrew: "'You want me to leave my kin and cross the sea? You want me to put our babies into a fishing boat? You want to sail away from my mother?'"

  "By God, yes to that!" Edward said-Lucy's mother was more than a bit of a shrew.

  His son went right on imitating his daughter-in-law: "'You want me to carve a farm holding out of nothing while you fish the way you always did? You expect me to live without neighbors, without friends?'"

  "We won't be the only ones going-tell her that. We'd better not be, or the venture fails," Edward said.

  "True enough. What can you promise the others, except a dangerous voyage over more sea than anyone in Hastings cares to think about?"

  "Besides the best place to fish they ever saw? Besides land that stretches to the horizon, there for the taking? Besides freedom from lords? How about freedom from peasant risings, too?" Edward said. Only a couple of years earlier, Jack Cade and his rebels had almost chased the King of England from his throne.

  Henry nodded thoughtfully. "There is that. What do you suppose Mother will think?"

  "She'll go along," Edward said, more confidently than he felt. Nell Radcliffe had a mind of her own and a tongue sharper than Lucy's. She would go along if she thought going along was a good idea. If she didn't, she wouldn't be shy about saying so.

  "Well, we'll see," Henry said, which only proved he too knew his mother well.

  Crossing the Atlantic from west to east was easier than sailing the other way, for they had the winds with them through most of the journey. They put in at Le Croisic, where Edward paid Francois Kersauzon the price to which they'd agreed. Seeing a Breton take so much salt cod from the hold of an Englishman's ship made the locals smirk.

  Edward looked suitably chagrined as he piled fish in front of the Morzen. He didn't believe many Bretons knew of Atlantis yet. What did they think? That Kersauzon had won some enormous bet from him? He wouldn't have been surprised. Let them think what they wanted, though. He knew, and Kersauzon knew.

  Two could hold a secret. Could Kersauzon keep the fishermen on the Morzen from blabbing? The odds were against it. The Bretons had brought back more smoked honker, and Radcliffe had a leg bone. They would have to explain where those came from. What would they say?

  Whatever they said, it would make the other fishermen-and even the local lubbers-curious. They would want to sail west. That meant Edward needed to move fast if he wanted his countrymen to take their fair share of Atlantis.

  He needed to move fast-and he couldn't. Contrary winds held him in Le Croisic day after day. He fumed and swore, but he couldn't do anything about it. His only consolation was that what held him in port held the Bretons, too. That wasn't quite true: they could go down the coast to the south. But he didn't think they would spill the secret to Frenchmen. They scorned the French even more than Englishmen did, which wasn't easy.

  At last, the wind shifted. He took the St. George out of the harbor and sailed around Cap Finistere and into the Channel. The waves there, squeezed between Europe and England, grew taller and more menacing than they had been out in the open ocean. Even fishermen with strong stomachs stayed close to the leeward rail. The waves helped push the cog along, though. She made good time on the last leg of the voyage home.

  Hastings was the westernmost of the Cinque Ports: in reality seven towns, though the name had room for only five. They pooled their resources against pirates. There Edward felt safe enough-corsairs were after silk and silver, not salt cod. What he brought home wasn't worth stealing, but a man could make a good living at it. What more could you want?

  The old, deserted Norman castle still stood on West Hill, looking down on the town. William the Conqueror had based himself in Hastings, of course-everybody k
new that. With Plantagenets still ruling England, no one said-out loud-that he wished the Saxons had won the fight not far away. What would the country be like today had Harold prevailed? Different, Edward thought, and he was bound to be right about that.

  He brought the St. George into the Stade, the fishing boats' harbor. "You're back late," a dockside lounger called. "We'd almost given up looking for you."

  "You're holy men, though," another man said. "With so many Masses going up for your souls, how can you be anything else? I wish I were so sure I had all my sins washed away."

  "Not much room to sin in a fishing boat," Henry said with a grin. "We'll have to make up for it now that we're here."

  A dealer hurried out onto the pier where the fishermen were tying up. "You'll want to sell your fish to me, won't you, Edward?" he said, his voice as greasy as cod-liver oil.

  "If you give me a proper price for them, Paul," Radcliffe answered. "If you act like a Jew the way you do most of the time, I'd sooner sell them to an honest man instead."

  "You wound me," Paul Finley said, but this was as much a dance with formal steps as the dicker with the Breton salt dealer had been. And when Finley saw the size of the cod and the slabs of cod that came from the St. George's hold, even his air of world-weary contempt for anything that had to do with salt fish cracked. "I don't know the last time I set eyes on the like," he admitted, which meant he'd never seen fish that came close to these. "Where did you catch 'em?"

  "I planted them in the dark of the moon, the way you do with crops that grow below the surface," Edward Radcliffe answered gravely. His men sniggered. Sooner or later, one of them would get drunk and spill the word. With a little luck, it would be later.

  Paul Finley gave him a very strange look. "I almost believe you."

  "Fair enough, for I almost told the truth," Edward said.

  The dealer's eye raked the fishing boat. "I don't see Hugh. Tell me nothing happened to him, please-he's a good man."

  Edward's mouth tightened. "We lost him, I'm afraid. You'll keep that to yourself, by God, for I've not yet spoken to his wife and his father." He remembered the master salter's scream and the eagle tearing at his kidneys and flying off with his blood dripping from its beak and claws.

  Finley crossed himself. "Lord have mercy on him. This was at sea?" Before anyone had to lie, he answered his own question: "Well, of course it was. Where else would it be?" He forced himself back to what lay before him. "You have the hold full of fish this size and quality?"

  "Two-thirds full," Edward said, his voice flat: if Paul Finley wanted to make something of that, he would have to do it himself.

  He raised an eyebrow. Before he spoke, though, he seemed to think better of it. "Mm, that's your business-or your misfortune, depending. If you'd come home earlier in the season, you would have got a better price for them."

  "You'll take any way you can find to knock down what we did out there, won't you?" Radcliffe spoke without heat. He knew Finley was still following the steps of the dance.

  "You do your job, I do mine," the dealer said easily. "You want to make money when you sell, and so do I." He named a price.

  Edward Radcliffe's bellow of rage was a permitted step, but not a common one. You needed to feel some of that fury to show it, and he did. "Even you know that's thievery, Paul. I've heard what worse cod than this is bringing." He named a price close to three times as high as Finley's.

  They went back and forth, back and forth. Edward knew his quality. He also knew his hold was one-third empty, which made him hold out for every farthing on the fish he did have. Finley came up ever so slowly, like a drowning man who didn't want to break the surface.

  Both of them were sweating when they finally clasped hands. "If you're going to be that tough with a full load of fish…" Finley shook his head. "Lord Jesu! Maybe I ought to let some other dealer see how he likes matching wits with you." He counted out silver and gave it to Edward. "That's what we said, yes?"

  Radcliffe counted the money. It wasn't that he thought Finley was trying to cheat him. But checking never hurt anything. He nodded. "Yes, that's what we said." Their hands joined again.

  "One of these days, you'll tell me where you really came by cod of that size," Finley said.

  "Yes, one of these days I will, and it may come sooner than you think," Edward agreed. "But not yet, Paul. Not yet."

  Childbearing and hard work had coarsened Nell Radcliffe's figure. The years had lined her face and streaked her red-blond hair with gray. When Edward looked at her, he still saw the beauty he'd married more than half a lifetime earlier. He made love like a sailor newly home from the sea-in the daytime, which would have scandalized the neighbors had they known, and had so many of them not been fisherfolk themselves.

  Then he told her why the St. George was so late coming home, and of the new land he'd trodden. "Atlantis?" she echoed, the fine lines at the corners of her eyes crinkling as they narrowed. "But Atlantis is a story, a fable, a make-believe, like the drowned city of Ys and the bells you hear under the water."

  "Funny you should talk of Ys, when a Breton guided me west to Atlantis," Edward said. "But it's no dream. We still have the bone from a smoked honker leg-we ate the meat on the way home, when the fishing flagged. And Hugh Fenner died on the coast of Atlantis."

  "How?" Nell asked.

  "Bad. Hard." Edward left it there. He didn't intend to say more to Meg Fenner, either, or even that much. "But all the same, it's a true place, a good place, a place of great promise-you should have seen Paul's eyes when he got a look at the cod. Not Paradise, or Hugh would live yet, but a good place. A fine place."

  "You sound like you want to go back," his wife said.

  He nodded, there beside her in the bed so much wider and softer than his bunk aboard the St. George-and he was lucky to have a bunk on the cog, when his sailors slung hammocks instead. "I do," he said. "It's a broader land than this one, and a man could live there free of a lord. A man could be a lord there, by heaven, for who would say he could not?"

  Nell stirred, so the leather lashings under the mattress creaked-not the way they had a little while before, but enough to make him smile. "You don't just want to visit," she said slowly. "You want to stay."

  "I do," Edward repeated.

  "What about me, then? What about your children? What about-everything?" Her wave took in not just the house, not just Hastings, but all of England.

  "I'd want you to come along, that's what. We'd make a new life there, a new town-we could call it New Hastings, if you like."

  "I like this Hastings well enough," Nell said.

  "Talk to Richard and Henry. They're as wild for Atlantis as I am," Edward said, though he wasn't quite sure that was so about Henry. "Talk to Mary and Kate and Philippa"-his daughters, all of them married to fishermen. "Do you think they'd be sorry to have gardens as wide as they could grow them, and no noble landlord and no rent to pay?"

  "I think they'd be sorry to sail to the edge of the world and maybe off it," Nell answered. "I think I would be, too. I thought I'd live my whole life in Hastings. I never wanted to do anything else."

  Edward Radcliffe had to remind himself not to get angry. Nell wouldn't be the only one who'd want to stay right here. Most people were like limpets, clinging to one spot. If you went farther than a day's walk from where you were born, it was the journey of a lifetime, and you'd bore your neighbors with it the rest of your days. Fishermen and traders were different; it was easy to forget how different. Edward had seen far more of the world than his wife had. He was eager to see more. She wasn't eager to see any.

  "If life is better there, why not go?" he asked, doing his best to keep his voice gentle.

  "Who says it would be better? We'd have to start from the beginning, with nothing at all," Nell said.

  "We'd have everything we could bring with us from England," Edward said. "Livestock and seeds and saplings and cuttings and tools…"

  "And someone would steal them from us as soon as we set f
oot in this place. If you men spend all your time fishing, who would drive off our enemies? We couldn't call on a lord or the king for soldiers, the way we can here if those nasty French dogs cross the Channel."

  Patiently, Edward answered, "There'd be no enemies. We would have the first settlement, the only settlement, on those shores."

  "Would we? What about that Breton pirate who sold you the secret-a third of the catch, Christ have mercy!" Nell said. "Is he lying with his wife right now, filling her head with wind and air about the marvelous land on the other side of the sea? Will there be a town full of those rogues around the cape from ours? They don't even talk a language a regular person can understand!"

  He almost reminded her he spoke Breton, but feared it would do more harm than good. And he didn't know Francois Kersauzon wasn't planning to settle down in Atlantis. He feared Kersauzon was. The Breton was nobody's fool; if Radcliffe could see the advantages, so could he.

  "And what about the wild men who'll live there?" Nell said. "They won't even know our Lord's name, and they'll murder us in our beds first chance they get."

  "No wild men." There Edward spoke with assurance.

  "How can you know that, on the tiny visit you had?" his wife demanded.

  "Because the beasts in Atlantis had no fear of us," he replied. "If they knew men at all, they would know to be afraid of them." Even wolves and bears feared men. They killed men sometimes, but they feared them, and fled when they could.

  "Well…maybe," Nell said grudgingly. "Or maybe there just weren't any savages close by."

  "If there are men anywhere in Atlantis, they'd be there. That land was too fine to stay empty." Edward squeezed his wife. "Don't say no right away. Think it through. You can't imagine what you're throwing away if you turn your back on this."

  "I know what I've got now," she said. "I can imagine worse a lot easier than I can imagine better."

  "It will be better there," Edward said. "For us, for our children, for their children, and for all who come after them, as long as there be Radcliffes." The fervor in his voice amazed him.