The United States of Atlantis Read online

  “Now it is truly our own, to do with as we will!” Isaac Fenner, by contrast, exulted. Victor wondered how that balance between gloom and exultation would tip in years to come. Only the coming of those years would tell.

  Company by company, regiment by regiment, the Atlantean soldiers who’d taken service for the duration of the war against England went home. The United States of Atlantis would retain a small professional army—one modeled on that of the mother country—but most of the greencoats wanted nothing more than to go back to their farms and shops, and to their families.

  And French ships put in at Croydon to return de la Fayette and the survivors from his army to their native land. French sergeants cursed more musically than their English or Atlantean counterparts, but they were no less sincere. Ordinary French soldiers seemed as ready to go anywhere they were told and do anything they were told as a like number of redcoats would have.

  De la Fayette clasped Victor’s hand. “You may be sure, Monsieur le Général, it was a great honor to serve beside you and to help bring freedom to your land.” The French noble grinned impishly. “And I also very much enjoyed giving England one in the eye.”

  “The fight would have been much harder and much longer without you, your Grace,” Victor answered truthfully. “Your army’s courage and its skill taught us a great deal, and your fleet slammed the cork into Cornwallis’ bottle.” He paused a moment, then added, “And, had you not come here, I should not have made a friend I value.”

  “I feel the same way.” De la Fayette squeezed his hand again. He too hesitated before continuing in a low voice: “Now that Atlantis has shown the world what freedom means, perhaps my country will also discover it before long.”

  Victor remembered Custis Cawthorne’s comments on the current state of France. What Cawthorne could say among his fellow Atlanteans, Victor didn’t feel comfortable repeating to a French nobleman, even one of liberal ideas like de la Fayette. He contented himself with replying, “Come what may, in your land and in mine, I hope we meet again.”

  “As do I—and may it be so!” The marquis’ smile was sweet and sad and knowing beyond his years. “If this is to come to pass, I think I shall have to come back here. Atlantean affairs will likely leave you far too busy to cross the sea and visit me in France.”

  “Maybe so—but then again, maybe not,” Victor said. “I am going back to my farm. I never wanted to be anything more than a private citizen. Now that the war is over, I intend to seize the chance and go back to what I was.”

  “Well, mon ami, I wish you good fortune in your endeavor.” Yes, de la Fayette’s smile looked knowing indeed. “But fame, once it takes up a man, often is not so eager to let him go again.”

  That had also worried Victor. He gave the best answer he could: “If I am willing—no: eager, by God!—to let fame go, I hope the beast will prove willing to take its claws out of me.”

  “A man should always hope,” de la Fayette agreed. Victor Radcliff was old enough to be his father. The marquis had no business sounding like the more experienced of the two of them. But he brought it off with grace and without much effort, as he brought off so many things.

  “You don’t believe I can do it.” Victor turned that into an accusation.

  De la Fayette’s shrug was a small masterpiece of its kind. “What a man can do . . . What fate will do . . . Who but le bon Dieu can say how they fit together? As, for example, the matter of your paternity.”

  “What about it? How did you know about it?” That was the last thing Victor wanted anyone to know about. And it was the last thing he wanted to talk about, even if they were unlikely to be overheard.

  This time, de la Fayette’s shrug just looked . . . French. “Monsieur Freycinet communicated the news to me. Rest assured, he understands the need for discretion, and he relies on mine, as you may.”

  “Mmm,” Victor said. Freycinet could afford to rely on that. Victor couldn’t. Might the man from the south have told anyone else? Radcliff didn’t want to contemplate that.

  With a sigh, de la Fayette said, “It is a great pity when what should be a time of joy brings you no happiness.”

  Calling it a pity, to Victor’s way of thinking, made a formidable understatement. He forced a shrug of his own: a poor thing next to those of de la Fayette, but it would have to serve. “Nothing to be done about it,” he said.

  “I know,” the marquis agreed sympathetically. “Not even amending your laws would change the predicament, I fear. If you led a single life . . . But you do not, and no woman can look kindly upon her man after he sires a child on another.”

  “No,” Victor said, wishing the marquis would shut up. Nothing de la Fayette said hadn’t crossed his own mind. He and Meg had got on well for many years, but she wouldn’t be one to take something like this in stride. How many women would? Precious few. Victor didn’t need the Frenchman to point that out for him.

  Someone aboard the nearest French ship called de la Fayette. The marquis grabbed Victor’s hand one more time. “I must go,” he said, and kissed Radcliff on both cheeks. He hurried down the pier, over the gangplank, and onto the ship. He waved from the deck before heading back toward the poop.

  Victor also waved. Little by little, Atlantis was being left to her own devices. The prospect excited Isaac Fenner. Despite all the fighting Victor had done to produce exactly this result, he still wasn’t sure whether it excited him or frightened him more.

  Writing to Meg, which once was always a pleasure, had become a trial since Victor learned Louise would bear his child. He wasn’t used to concealing himself from his wife. He’d always been able to speak his mind to her. No more, or not fully.

  If she ever found out about his dark descendant, she would speak her mind to him. He had no doubts on that score.

  Worrying about what would happen when he got home kept him in Croydon longer than he would have lingered with a clear conscience. His aides could have handled the release of what was left of the army that had bested the redcoats. They knew it, too. He caught the quizzical looks they gave him when he rode out to the shrinking encampments outside of town.

  He hoped none of them knew about his predicament. He’d done his best to keep it secret, but Custis Cawthorne had plenty of pungent things to say about secrets and all the things that could go wrong with them.

  His lingering meant he was in Croydon when a courier rode into town at a full gallop, his horse kicking up great clouds of dust till he reined in. “What is it?” Victor asked anxiously—good news seldom needed to travel so fast. He hoped there hadn’t been a bad fire somewhere, or a smallpox outbreak.

  This time, the courier surprised him. The man threw back his head and howled like a wolf. Then he said, “We’ve caught Habakkuk Biddiscombe, General!”

  Everybody who heard that clapped and cheered. “Have we?” Victor breathed.

  “Sure have,” the courier said. “I haven’t seen him myself, but word is he’s a sorry starveling thing. And he’ll get sorrier pretty goddamn quick, won’t he?”

  More cheers declared that the people of Croydon liked the idea. Victor wondered how much he liked it himself. After Biddiscombe went over to England, Victor had wanted nothing more than to see him dead. He wondered why killing the traitor in cold blood seemed so much less appealing.

  Appealing or not, it would have to be done. If he’d wanted to avoid it, he would have let General Cornwallis take Biddiscombe and the men of the Horsed Legion away with him when he went back to England. At the time, he’d made a point of allowing no such thing.

  “Where is he?” Victor asked.

  “Up in Kirkwall, about fifty miles north of here,” the courier said. “Do you want them to string him up there? They’ll do it in a heartbeat—you can count on that.”

  “No,” Victor said, not without a certain amount of reluctance. “Even a traitor deserves a trial.”

  The courier shrugged. “Seems a waste of time, if you want to know what I think.” Like most Atlanteans, he
assumed people did want to know what he thought. After another shrug, he went on, “I’ll need me a fresh horse to head north. Almost ran the legs off of this here poor beast.”

  “You’ll have one,” Victor assured him. “Are all the cutthroats captured with Biddiscombe, or do some remain at large?”

  “Most of ’em’re caught or killed,” the man answered. “A few got away. Odds are they’ll chase ’em down pretty soon.”

  “I hope so,” Victor said. “The sooner they do, the sooner Atlantis will know perfect peace at last.”

  “Perfect peace,” the courier echoed. “That’d be something, wouldn’t it?”

  “So it would,” Victor said solemnly. Sure enough, with Habakkuk Biddiscombe gone from the stage, the United States of Atlantis might come to know perfect peace, at least for a little while. He wondered when—or if—his family ever would.

  But Biddiscombe’s capture did let him write to his wife. My dear Meg, I am sorry past words to have to tell you my departure from Croydon is once more delayed. I am not sorry, however, to tell you why—Habakkuk Biddiscombe is run to earth at last. Until such time as he should receive the justice he deserves, I find myself compelled to stay here. And, until such time as I can get away, I remain, fondly, your . . . Victor.

  His goose quill fairly raced across the page. The letter held a good deal of truth. He would have written one much like it had he never bedded Louise. He might even have set down the very same words. Unfortunately, he knew the difference between what might have been and what was. Had he never bedded Louise, he would have meant all the words he wrote. Now he was at least partly relieved to stay in Croydon. If Meg had heard the truth . . .

  Sooner or later, he would have to go home and find out. For now, later would do.

  Atlantean horsemen brought Habakkuk Biddiscombe and half a dozen men from the Horsed Legion into Croydon three days later. The leading traitor and his followers were all skinny and dirty and dressed in clothes that had seen hard wear. Their hands were bound to the reins; their feet had been tied together under their horses’ barrels. Some of them, Biddiscombe included, had already taken a beating or two.

  The people of Croydon crowded the streets to stare at the traitors, to jeer at them, and to pelt them with clods of dirt and rotten vegetables. Only when stones began to fly did the prisoners’ guards raise weapons in warning to leave off. Even that was more to protect themselves than to save Biddiscombe and his friends.

  Croydon’s jail was a solid brick building, with iron bars across the narrow windows. Victor Radcliff wondered if it was strong enough to hold out the crowd. He stood on the front steps and held up his hands. “Have no fear!” he shouted. “They will get what they have earned. Let them get it through lawful means!”

  “Tear them to pieces!” someone squalled.

  “Paint them with pitch and set them afire!” That was a woman. More than a few people of both sexes cheered the suggestion.

  Victor shook his head. “If they are to die, let them die quickly. Are we not better served to leave harsh, wicked punishments to England?”

  “No!” The cry came from a dismaying number of throats. One man added, “Cut the ballocks off ’em before you kill ’em!” He won himself another cheer.

  “You will have to kill me before you murder them,” Victor declared.

  For a bad moment, he thought the mob would try just that. He set his hand on the hilt of the Atlantean Assembly’s sword. If he went down, he’d go down fighting. To either side of him, Atlantean horsemen raised pistols, while Croydon constables pointed ancient blunderbusses at the angry crowd. The blunderbusses, with their flaring muzzles, had barrels packed end to end with musket balls and scrap metal. At close range, they could be murderous . . . if they didn’t blow up and kill the men who wielded them.

  The sight of weapons aimed their way killed the crowd’s ardor. People at the front edged back. People at the back slipped away. Victor had hoped that would happen, but he hadn’t been sure it would.

  “You see, General?” one of the horsemen said as he slowly lowered his pistol. “You should have let us settle the bastards up in Kirkwall. Then we wouldn’t have had all this foofaraw.”

  “No.” Not without some regret, Victor shook his head. “Laws have to rule. More: laws have to be seen to rule. Let Biddiscombe and the men who rode with him have their trial. You know what the likely result will be. Once the matter is settled with all the propriety we can give it, that will be time enough for their just deserts.”

  “Past time. Long past time,” the Atlantean cavalryman said stubbornly.

  “We can afford what we spend here.” Out of the corner of his eye, Victor glanced at the crowd, which continued to thin. “Can we go inside now without seeming cowards?”

  “Reckon so, but why would you want to?”

  “To speak to Biddiscombe,” Victor answered. “He was one of us not so long ago, remember.”

  “So much the worse for him,” the horseman said. “If he’d stayed on the side where he belonged, we wouldn’t’ve had near so much trouble throwing out the God-damned redcoats.”

  “That is true,” Victor said. “Biddiscombe, of course, purposed our having more trouble still.”

  “Devil take him. And Old Scratch will—soon.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder.” Victor did go inside then. The jail smelled of sour food, unwashed bodies, and chamber pots full to overflowing. Much of Croydon smelled that way, but the odors seemed concentrated in here.

  “Hello, General.” The jailer, a man with a face like a boot (and a man who hadn’t missed many meals), knuckled his forelock as if he were a servant instead of the master of this little domain. “Which of the scoundrels d’you care to see?”

  “Biddiscombe himself,” Victor answered.

  “Thought you might. Heh, heh.” That chuckle would have sent ice snaking up any prisoner’s spine. “Come along with me. We’ve got him in the snug cell by his lonesome, so he can’t go trying any mischief.”

  The snug cell had a redwood door as thick as the side timbers on a first-rate ship of the line. The pair of locks that held it closed were both bigger than Victor’s clenched fist. The jailer opened a tiny door set into the enormous one. An iron grating let people peer into the cell. The jailer gestured invitingly.

  Victor looked through. The window that gave the cell its only light was more than a man’s height above the ground. Even if it hadn’t been barred, it was much too small for even the most emaciated prisoner to squeeze through. Habakkuk Biddiscombe had got thin, but not that thin.

  He lay on a miserable straw pallet. Along with a water pitcher, a cup with the handle broken off, and a thundermug, that pallet comprised the furnishings in the dark, gloomy cell. Biddiscombe’s head swung toward the opening in the door. “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “Victor Radcliff.”

  “I might have known.” Biddiscombe stiffly got to his feet. Yes, he’d taken a thumping when the Atlantean cavalry caught him—and maybe afterwards as well. “Come to gloat, have you?”

  “I hope not,” Victor said. “You would have done better to stay with your own side.”

  “That’s how it worked out, all right. But who could have guessed ahead of time?” The traitor peered through the grating. “And you would have done better to listen to me more.”

  “It could be so,” Victor said. “You aren’t the only man I didn’t always heed, though. The others didn’t turn their coats to pay me back.”

  “Well, the more fools they.” Habakkuk Biddiscombe kept the courage of his convictions, even if he had nothing else.

  “How well did Cornwallis listen to you?” Victor inquired.

  “He would have done better if he’d listened more.” Biddiscombe hadn’t lost his self-regard, either. “In that case, maybe you’d be stuck in this stinking cell instead of me.”

  “He wasn’t going to hand you over. You might have done better staying where you were.”

  Habakkuk Biddiscombe laughed rauco
usly. “Likely tell! If he’d made up his mind to protect us come what might, he wouldn’t’ve needed to call a council of war. And the damned Englishmen wouldn’t’ve taken so long making up their miserable minds, either. No, they were going to hand us over to you, all right, sure as Jesus walked on water. They wouldn’t’ve lost any sleep over it. After all, we were nothing but Atlanteans—one step up from niggers, and a short step, too.”

  And what would Blaise have said about that? Something interesting and memorable, Victor was sure. “If the redcoats felt that way about the loyalists who fought beside them, why did you stay on?”

  “Because I wanted your guts for garters, General Victor High and Mighty Grand Panjandrum Radcliff, and that looked like my best chance to get ’em.” Biddiscombe didn’t bother hiding his venom. And why should he? Things could get no worse for him than they were already.

  “If it makes you any happier, I felt the same way about you after you raised Biddiscombe’s Horsed Legion,” Victor said.

  “It doesn’t, not so much as a fart’s worth,” Biddiscombe replied. “Only one of us was going to get what he wanted, and I wish to heaven it were me.” He scowled through the grating. “If you were any kind of gentleman, you’d pass me a pistol so I could end this on my own.”

  Victor shook his head. “The trial will go forward. The hounds baying outside wanted to end it on their own, too.”

  “Ah, but my way would finish it fast, and with luck it wouldn’t hurt so bloody much,” Biddiscombe said.

  “When properly done, hanging slays quickly and cleanly,” Victor said.

  “Why bother with a trial when you already know the verdict?” jeered the man on the other side of the grate.

  “So all the evidence comes forth. So the future can know you for the traitor you are,” Victor answered.

  Biddiscombe’s mouth twisted. “A traitor is a man unlucky enough to end on the losing side. Past that, the word has no meaning.”