The United States of Atlantis Read online

  “What if the whole English army goes after ’em?” the soldier said.

  “Look at Croydon.” Victor waved toward the town, which was quiet, and even darker now than it had been before he went to bed. “Not the slightest sign of that. No, it’s Biddiscombe, trying to get away while the getting is good.”

  And Cornwallis, glad to rid himself of an embarrassment, he added, but only to himself. He couldn’t prove that now. Odds were he would never be able to. Which didn’t mean he didn’t believe it, and didn’t mean he didn’t respect and even admire the English commander for so neatly disposing of his problem.

  Captain Horace Grimsley gave Victor another of his precise salutes. “General Cornwallis’ compliments as before, sir, and he bids me tell you no outstanding reason remains that he should not accept the terms of surrender you proposed yesterday.”

  “My compliments to your commander in return,” Victor said. “You may also tell him we have slain or captured a good many members of Biddiscombe’s Horsed Legion, and that we hope to be rid of every one of the villains before too long. It was . . . convenient for your principal that they chose to decamp under cover of darkness.”

  The English officer looked back at him with no expression whatever. “General Cornwallis wishes me to assure you that he had no prior knowledge of Colonel Biddiscombe’s intentions, and that neither he nor anyone else in our force assisted or abetted the Horsed Legion in any way.”

  “I bet he wants you to assure me of that!” Victor said.

  “Do you presume to doubt his word, sir?” Grimsley asked coldly.

  “Damned right I doubt it,” Victor answered. “Whether I doubt it enough to throw away the truce and tell those French ships to start firing again . . . That is another story. Once we’ve disarmed your lot, we’ll be able to send more of our men after Biddiscombe. With the war as good as won, not so many people will care to help or hide him.”

  “It could be so,” Captain Grimsley admitted. Then he said, “If you have truly cast off his Majesty King George’s rule, shall we now commence to style you King Victor the First?”

  “No,” Victor said, and then again, louder, “No! We shall endeavor to make do without kings from here on out.”

  “Foolishness,” Grimsley said.

  “Perhaps it is. But it is our own foolishness, which is the point of the matter,” Victor said. “And we reckon it a worse one to owe attachment to a sovereign across the broad sea, a sovereign who knows little of us and cares less, a sovereign in whose Parliament we are suffered to have no members. Better no sovereign at all, we think, than such a sovereign as that.”

  He wondered if he would get through to the redcoat. But Captain Grimsley only shrugged. “Sometimes it’s better to have a king who pays you no heed than one who pays too much. Look at Frederick of Prussia—you can’t walk into a backhouse there without paying a turd tax to some collector.”

  Victor smiled. All the same, he said, “Better not to have to worry that the next King of England will take after Frederick, then. And from this day forth, Captain, no King of England, good, bad, or indifferent, shall tell us what to do.”

  “I cannot speak to that, sir,” Grimsley said. “Have you the terms of surrender properly written out for me to convey them to General Cornwallis?”

  “I do,” Victor said. “You will note I have lined through the provision pertaining to Biddiscombe’s Horsed Legion and initialed the deletion. I should be grateful if General Cornwallis did likewise, along with signing the document as I have done.”

  “Your courtesy is appreciated,” Grimsley said. “If all proves satisfactory to the general, shall we set the formal ceremony of surrender for noon tomorrow? Should any questions arise before then, you may be certain I shall come out to confer with you concerning them.”

  “Noon tomorrow. That is agreeable to me.” Victor held out his hand. After momentary hesitation, Captain Grimsley shook it.

  The Englishman also saluted after the handclasp. “When I came here, I never dreamt it would end this way,” he remarked.

  “That is always true for one side in a war,” Victor answered. “The United States of Atlantis no more wish to be England’s enemies than we wished to be her subjects. As equals in the comity of nations, one day we may become friends.”

  “I suppose we may,” Captain Grimsley said. “I doubt, however, whether it will be any day soon.” Having won the last word if not the last battle, he took the surrender terms back into Croydon. Victor Radcliff wore the best of his three general’s coats and the better of his two tricorns. Under the tricorn, he’d even donned a powdered, pigtailed periwig for the occasion. His general’s sash stretched from one shoulder to the other hip. On his belt swung the Atlantean Assembly’s gold-hilted sword.

  His men were drawn up in neat ranks outside of Croydon. They looked as spruce and uniform as they could. After long service in the field, not all of them could boast clean breeches. Their green jackets were of many different shades. Most of them wore tricorns. A few, even in wintertime, had only farmers’ straw hats. More than a few went bareheaded.

  But they all had muskets, and most of them had bayonets. The long steel blades glittered in the cold sunlight. They might not be so elegant as their English counterparts, but they’d proved they could fight.

  Across the way, the Marquis de la Fayette had assembled the soldiers he’d brought from France. They looked more nearly uniform than the Atlanteans did. They’d proved themselves in battle, too. Victor waved to de la Fayette. The Frenchman returned the gesture.

  Inside Croydon, church bells began to ring the hour. Victor had a pocket watch, which ran fairly well when he remembered to wind it. At the moment, it was five minutes slow—or, possibly, Croydon’s clocks were five minutes fast. One way or the other, it hardly mattered. General Cornwallis would have no doubt that noon had come.

  And he didn’t. The redcoats formed on the frozen meadow in front of the town hall. Then, flags flying and band playing—at first faint in the distance but soon louder and louder—they marched toward the assembled Atlanteans and Frenchmen.

  “What tune are they playing?” Blaise asked in a low voice.

  After cocking his head to one side and listening for a moment, Victor answered, “I think it’s called ‘The World Turned Upside Down.’ ”

  “Is it?” The Negro grinned. “Well, good.”

  “Yes.” Victor sometimes thought Blaise found white men’s music as curious as anything else in Atlantis. The songs Blaise had brought from Africa had different rhythms—not less complex (in fact, perhaps more so), but undoubtedly different.

  Then again, that also mattered little. Here came the English army. As the redcoats left their works and came out into the open between the ranks of the Atlanteans and the French, the band finished “The World Turned Upside Down” and started a new tune. Not the most musical of men, Victor needed a moment to recognize “God Save the King.”

  Some Atlantean patriots had tried writing new words to the old music. Victor had heard several different versions, none of which he liked. Maybe one day someone would come up with new words that really described what the United States of Atlantis stood for, what they meant. (And maybe that wouldn’t happen for a while, because who could really say right now what this untested country stood for?) Or maybe a musician would find or make another tune better suited to this new free land in the middle of the sea.

  One more thing Victor could worry about later, if he worried about it at all. He caught the Marquis de la Fayette’s eye again. At his nod, both commanders rode forward to meet General Cornwallis, who was also on horseback.

  A bugle at the head of the English army blared out a call. A leather-lunged sergeant echoed it in words: “All—halt!” The redcoats did. Then the sergeant bawled another command, one that had no equivalent in horn calls: “Stack—arms!”

  Half a dozen muskets went into each neat stack. As the surrender terms had ordained, a bayonet topped each Brown Bess. A fair number of Atlante
an soldiers still carried hunting guns that couldn’t even take a bayonet. The longarms would definitely strengthen the new nation’s arsenal.

  As Victor and de la Fayette drew near, General Cornwallis saluted each of them in turn. The English commander was not far from Victor’s age. He looked older, though, or perhaps only wearier.

  “Good to see you again,” Victor said.

  “And you,” Cornwallis replied. “You will, I trust, forgive me for saying I wish we were meeting once more under different circumstances.”

  “Of course.” Victor nodded. “I do not believe you’ve made the acquaintance of the French commander.” He turned to de la Fayette and switched languages: “Monsieur le Marquis, I have the honor of presenting to you the English general, Charles Cornwallis.” Back to English: “General Cornwallis, here is the Marquis de la Fayette, who leads our ally’s soldiers.”

  “A privilege to meet you, your Grace,” Cornwallis said in accented but fluent French. “Your army played no small part in leading to . . . to the result we see here today.” He didn’t care to come right out and say something like in leading to our defeat. Well, he could be forgiven that. What man living didn’t try to put the best face he could on misfortune?

  “I thank you for your kind words, General,” de la Fayette said in English. Sitting his horse along with the middle-aged Atlantean and English commanders, he seemed even more outrageously young than he really was. Returning to French, he went on, “I have never seen English soldiers fight less than bravely.”

  “Kind of you to say so, sir—very kind indeed,” Cornwallis murmured. He turned back to Victor. “When you winkled us out of Hanover: that’s when things commenced to unravel, dammit.”

  “Yes, I think so, too,” Victor said. “Hanover is our windpipe, so to speak. After we got your hands off it, we could breathe freely once more.”

  “Just so.” Cornwallis stared out to sea at the line of ships flying King Louis’ fleurs-de-lys. “And who could have dreamt the Royal Navy would let us down? That I might lose on land is one thing. But the navy has turned back all comers since the damned devil Dutchmen back in the last century.”

  The pirates of Avalon had also given the Royal Navy all it wanted and a little more besides. Victor remembered Red Rodney Radcliffe far more fondly than his own clipped-e Radcliff great-grandfather had ever thought of the pirate chieftain—he was sure of that. In days to come, Red Rodney might yet be reckoned a symbol, a harbinger, of Atlantean liberty. At the time, William Radcliff had considered his own unloved and unloving cousin nothing but a God-damned bandit. He’d been right, too. Symbols and harbingers were best viewed at a distance of a good many years.

  Cornwallis’ cough brought Victor back to the here-and-now. The English general reached for his sword. “If you want this—”

  “No, no.” Victor held up a hand. “As I said in the terms of surrender, you and your officers are welcome to your weapons. You certainly did nothing to disgrace them.” But he couldn’t help adding, “Except, perhaps, by seeking to harbor Habakkuk Biddiscombe and his band of cutthroat traitors.”

  “One side’s villain is the other’s hero,” Cornwallis answered. “We were comrades in arms once, you and I, against the marquis’ kingdom. Had things gone differently, you would be the man blamed for turning his coat, not Biddiscombe.”

  “Had things gone differently, Atlantis might be joined to the Terranovan mainland, or even to the European,” Victor said. “In either of those cases, we would not be here discussing how things might have gone differently.”

  Cornwallis’ smile was sad. “I find myself in a poor position to disagree with you.” As he spoke, his men went on stacking their muskets. After surrendering them, the redcoats stepped back into line. Beneath their professional impassivity, Victor saw fear. Without weapons, they were at their enemies’ mercy. He would have cared for that no more than they did. But that cup, at least, had passed from him.

  Far off in the distance, gunshots rang out. Regardless of this surrender, men from Victor’s cavalry went on pursuing Biddiscombe’s Horsed Legion. If Biddiscombe’s men rode far enough and fast enough, some of them might get away. Odds were some of them would. Victor hoped his own followers would beat those odds and hunt down every last one.

  “How soon do you think we shall be sent back to England?” Cornwallis asked.

  “Word of your surrender will have to cross the Atlantic,” Victor said. “After that, it depends on how soon his Majesty’s government sends ships hither to transport you, and on wind and wave. On wind and wave, your guess is as good as mine. On his Majesty’s government, your guess should be better than mine.”

  “I suspect you credit me with more than I deserve,” Cornwallis said. “That his Majesty’s government works is not to be denied. How it works . . . is not always given to mortal men to know.”

  “When the ships come to repatriate you, they will be most welcome: that, I promise,” Victor said. “And I hope they will also bring representatives of King George’s mysterious government so we can come to terms with it once for all and take our recognized place amongst the nations of the earth.”

  “And also so that peace may be restored between the kingdoms of England and France,” de la Fayette added in French. He’d followed the interchange in English between Victor and Cornwallis, but preferred to comment in his own language.

  “Yes, that will also be necessary,” Victor agreed, switching to French himself. “France’s aid to our cause, both on land and at sea, was most significant.”

  “You would never have won without it,” Cornwallis said.

  “There again we stray into might-have-beens,” Victor said. “Do you believe his Majesty’s government would have been prepared to put up with twenty years of raids and ambushes? Would it not eventually have decided Atlantis was a running sore, more costly of men and sterling than it was worth, and gone off and left us to our own devices?”

  “After twenty years of such annoyances, it might well have done so,” Cornwallis answered. “But your own followers also might well have given up the war as a bad job long before that, had they seen no more immediate prospect of victory.”

  Since that had always been Victor’s greatest fear about having to resort to guerrilla warfare, he couldn’t very well call his beaten foe a liar. Instead, he gruffly repeated, “Might-have-beens,” and let it go at that.

  “One thing more,” Cornwallis said, some anxiety in his voice: “Now that we pass into your hands, I trust you will be able to victual us until such time as we return to the mother country?”

  “We’ll manage.” Victor knew he still sounded gruff. He half-explained why: “I fear it won’t be boiled beef one day and roast capon the next. Our commissary cannot come close to that, even for our own men. But your troops will go no hungrier than we do ourselves—on that you have my solemn word.”

  Cornwallis glanced over toward the Atlantean ranks. “Your soldiers are leaner than mine, as a general rule, but I own that they are not famished. Very well, sir. If we must tighten our belts, so be it. I know that, when you give your promise, he to whom you give it may rely on it.”

  “They are good men, the Atlanteans: better even than I expected before I came here,” de la Fayette said, again in French. “Meaning no disrespect to you, General Cornwallis, but your country was foolish in the extreme in not doing everything it could to retain their affection and loyalty.”

  “It could be that you have reason,” Cornwallis replied in the same tongue. “Or it could be that nothing we might have done would have retained them. If a folk is determined to rise up, rise up it will, regardless of whether it has good cause.”

  Victor hadn’t wanted to lead Atlantis into rebellion against England. But plenty of prominent Atlanteans had, among them men as eminent as Isaac Fenner and Custis Cawthorne. And England hadn’t done everything it could to conciliate them—not even close.

  All of which was water over the dam now. “No matter what we might have been, we are the
United States of Atlantis,” he said. “And we shall see—the world will see—what comes of that.”

  XXIV

  Spring in Croydon. Some but not all of the robins had flown south for the winter. All the birds that had were back now, hopping and singing and digging worms from the thawed ground. General Cornwallis was amused when Victor Radcliff named them. “Not my notion of robins,” the English general declared.

  “Yes, I know,” Victor answered equably; he’d heard the like from Englishmen before. “Soon enough, you’ll have your own little redbreasts back again.”

  Even as he spoke, redcoats filed aboard the ships the Royal Navy had sent to bring them home from Atlantis. Many of them were thinner than they had been when they stacked their muskets. But none had starved. They might have been hungry, but he knew the difference between hunger and hunger.

  So did Cornwallis. “You have met the obligation you set yourself,” he said. “No one could have treated captured foes more fairly.”

  “For which I thank you,” Victor said. “We have no wish to be your enemies, as I tell Englishmen whenever I find the chance. So long as your country no longer seeks to impose its will on ours, I hope and trust we can become friends.”

  “May it be so,” Cornwallis answered. “But you must work that out with the the learned commissioners despatched from London, not with me. I have no authority to frame a peace; mine lies—or, I should say, lay—solely in the military sphere.”

  Victor wasn’t sure how much authority in the political sphere he had himself. He’d begun talks with King George’s peace commissioners, but he’d had to warn them that the Atlantean Assembly might supersede him at any moment. So far, the Assembly hadn’t seen fit to do so. Back in Honker’s Mill, everyone still seemed amazed the United States of Atlantis had emerged victorious. Victor cast no aspersions on the Conscript Fathers for that. He was more than a little amazed himself.