Opening Atlantis (18 page)

“Unless he pulls in his horns, we are,” his brother said.

“Slim odds of that.”

“Mighty slim.”

A longbow hung on the wall next to the fireplace. Richard had brought the bow from England. Nothing the bowyers had found here measured up to yew. They made good enough bows. He'd brought a fine one. A longbow had almost the range of a crossbow, and could shoot many times faster. The only problem was, a longbow needed constant practice and a crossbow didn't.

“I wish we had hand cannon, not just the swivels on the
Rose,
” Richard said. “Warwick's bully boys would think twice before they bothered us if we did.”

“They'd better think twice anyway,” Henry said.

“I'm sure we can beat them if we gather our strength together,” Richard said. “But will we really do that?”

“If Warwick is fool enough to keep trying to tax us, we will,” Henry answered.

“Do you know something? I think you may be right,” Richard said.

Henry beamed at him. “We never agree about anything,” he said. “If we both feel the same way about this—”

Richard cut him off. “It isn't a sign that we're bound to be right. It only means Warwick is bound to be wrong.”

“That will do well enough,” Henry said. “Better than well enough, in fact.”

Edward Radcliffe didn't suppose he should have been surprised when the Earl of Warwick's men pounded on his door again early one chilly morning. Whether he should have been or not, he was. He said something that made Nell cluck reproachfully. Then he said something stronger than that.

The pounding didn't stop. “Open up, you old fool!” one of Warwick's bully boys bawled. “We know you're in there—where the devil else would you be?”

“Time to pay what you owe,” another soldier added.

What Edward said then made Nell frown, not for the blasphemy but from fear of the soldiers outside. “Don't make them angry,” she told him. “Say what you will, this isn't worth getting killed over.”

He looked at her. “I'm afraid you're wrong,” he said. “If Warwick thinks he can rob New Hastings, he'd best think again. The folk here
will
stand up to him. Maybe it should start with me. I've lived a full life. What have I got to look forward to? Slowness and sickness—not much more.”

Nell grabbed his arm. “Don't talk like a fool. Slaying yourself is a mortal sin, and what else would you be doing if you tried to fight those—those….” She stopped. Whatever she wanted to say, it had to be hotter than the endearments that had burst from Edward's lips a moment before.

Bang! Bang! Bang!
“You'd bloody well better open up in there, or somebody'll close your cursed coffin for you!” Warwick's bravo yelled. “This is your last chance, and you ought to thank us for it.”

With a sigh, Edward walked to the door and unbarred it. One of the soldiers out there held a torch. He hadn't been kidding. But he dropped it in the mud of the walkway. It hissed and sizzled and went out. “You want something of me?” Edward inquired, his voice deceptively mild.

“Too bloody right we do,” a soldier said. Radcliffe recognized him as one of the earl's sergeants. He had a list of what his overlord required. “You are assessed at two pounds, seven shillings, ninepence ha'penny. Give us the coin and we'll be on our way.”

This was robbery even more naked and raw than Edward had looked for. “You must know I have not got it,” he said. Oh, he'd buried some money in a safe place, but not that much. He didn't think anyone in New Hastings had that much ready cash. Trade on this side of the Atlantic was mostly barter. Nobody here needed much in the way of actual silver.

He wondered whether Warwick's men
would
kill him on the spot for refusing. But the sergeant seemed unfazed. Referring to his list again, he said, “His Lordship declares the following valuations for taxes collected in kind. One horse is to be reckoned at one pound. One cow is to be reckoned at fifteen shillings. One sheep or goat is to be reckoned at ten. One pig is to be reckoned at eight. One salted honker carcass is to be reckoned at four. One goose is to be reckoned at two. One duck is to be reckoned at one and sixpence. One hen is to be reckoned at one shilling. Salt cod is to be reckoned at a shilling for five pounds' weight.”

“His Lordship has it all ciphered out, doesn't he?” Edward said. The values Warwick set on beasts weren't even unfair—or they wouldn't have been back in England, where there were so many more animals to take. That was clever of the nobleman—people couldn't say he was cheating them by cheapening their goods.

He was cheating them by taxing them at all, but that was a different story.

The sergeant nodded seriously. “Too right he does, friend. We'll take what we need to take to pay your tax bill, and not a bit more. You can watch whilst we do it.”

“Honest thieves, you are,” Edward said, only a little irony in his voice.

“That's us.” The sergeant nodded once more. “Anybody who doesn't fancy his tax bill or the way we collect it, he's welcome to complain to the earl.”

“Oh, that will do a lot of good,” Edward said.

“Aye, belike.” Warwick's sergeant chuckled—he knew how much good it was likely to do. He turned to the common soldiers. “Paul! Matt! John! Go to the barn and take what's due his Lordship.”

“Right, Sergeant!” they chorused. It was nowhere close to right, but they neither knew nor cared about that. Off to the barn they went. They emerged with enough livestock to square Edward's scot…by their reckoning, anyhow.

“You're nothing but thieves!” Edward called to them from the path that led to the street. Nell called them something much less complimentary than that. They just laughed.

They laughed, that is, till someone hiding behind a squat barrel tree fifty yards away also shouted, “Thieves!” and let fly with a longbow. The arrow thrummed through the air and buried itself with a meaty
chunk!
in the middle of the sergeant's chest. He stood there staring at it for what seemed a very long time. When he opened his mouth to say something, only blood burst from between his lips. His knees buckled. He fell to the ground, where he kicked a few times and lay still.

The three common soldiers gaped, as astonished as the sergeant had been. Another arrow hissed toward them. It missed by the breadth of a hair, and slammed into a sheep's rump. The animal bawled in pain and bolted, more blood dripping in the dirt.

That seemed to snap the soldiers from their stunned spell. Two of them rushed toward the barrel tree. That was brave. If the archer kept his head, he could slaughter them before they got close enough to hurt him. They'd just seen that their byrnies weren't proof against his shafts, not at close range.

But he must have been as caught up in the madness of the moment as everyone else, for his next shot flew between the two of them. He had no time for another one—all he could do was run away. Run he did, with the armored men pounding after him but losing ground at every stride.

“Is that Richard?” Nell hissed to Edward. “If God is kind, you'll tell me that isn't Richard.”

Edward could tell her nothing of the sort, for he also feared it was their younger son. If Warwick's troopers recognized him, too, that would bring trouble down on all the Radcliffes' heads.

But trouble was coming faster than recognizing Richard would bring it. The third soldier, the one who hadn't gone after the archer, stalked back towards Edward and Nell. He swung his sword up to slash with it. Rage twisting his face, he shouted, “You knew that murdering bugger lay in wait for us!”

“No,” Edward said.

“Liar!” the man cried, and broke into a heavy trot.

“Run!” Edward told Nell. When she didn't, he shoved her toward the farmhouse. He looked around for a weapon then, or for anything that would let him defend himself. He snatched up an axe handle—no axehead attached, worse luck. “You've got me wrong,” he told the soldier, who was now very close.

“Save your lies for the devils in hell—that's where you're going, all right,” the soldier said, and aimed a cut at Edward that should have taken his head off.

Somehow, he turned it with the axe handle. Nell screamed like a scalded cat. Warwick's man swore. Absurdly, Edward wasted a moment wondering what good telling lies to devils would do. Wouldn't they know them when they heard them?

The soldier slashed again. Edward got the axe handle between himself and the blade once more, but it flew from his fingers. He stared at his hands as if they'd betrayed him—and so they had. That never would have happened twenty years earlier, or even ten.

But it had happened now, and he would have to live with it—though not for very long. “So long, old man!” the trooper shouted. He slashed once more. This time, the sword bit. Edward howled.

Next thing he knew, he was on the ground, with Warwick's soldier hacking at him as if he were a badly butchered sow. Nell grabbed the man's arm, but he knocked her aside. He swung up the sword again. It fell—right on Edward's neck.

So died the first Englishman to set foot on Atlantis, the founder of the first English settlement in the new land, not far from where the settlement began. It was in the year 1470, the sixty-ninth year of Edward Radcliffe's age, the tenth year of the reign of King Edward IV in England, and around New Hastings still the first year of the reign of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick. And the manner of his passing helped determine the Englishmen in those parts that Warwick's reign should reach no further.

“Like a dog!” Henry Radcliffe raged. “They cut him down like a dog on his own farm! I'll garter myself with Warwick's guts, the Devil damn me black if I don't.”

“I never thought they would go after him,” his brother said. “My idea was, I'd either kill them all or lead them a merry chase.” His mouth twisted. “I didn't do either, not well enough.”

“No, you didn't,” Henry agreed. “And now we're all paying the price for it.”

He and Richard crouched in the woods, somewhere west of Bredestown. They'd got their families away before Warwick's men could swoop down on them. Richard seemed utterly at home under the redwoods. He made little shelters of branches and twigs and bark, and by all appearances was as content in one of them as he would have been in front of his own hearth. He was as happy to eat honkers and fiddlehead ferns as he would have been with white bread and butter and fat mutton.

“We shouldn't pay the price. Warwick and his men should,” Richard said.

“Well, yes. They should,” Henry said. “The trouble is, they aren't. We're out here with the honkers and the oil thrushes and the cucumber slugs.”

“Nothing wrong with them,” Richard said.

“Nothing wrong with them, no,” Henry replied. “But the bloody Earl of bloody Warwick, the man who bloody murdered our father, he's sleeping in a bloody soft bed back in New Hastings, and swiving Lucy Fenner in it whenever that strikes his fancy. And there's something bloody wrong with that.”

“Oh, yes. There is,” Richard said quietly. “And I aim to do something about it.”

“You? By yourself?” Henry had trouble hiding his disbelief. “If not for you—” He broke off.

“If not for me, Father would still be alive. That's what you were going to say, isn't it?” Richard demanded. Henry might not have wanted to say it, but he nodded. Richard scowled at him. “Maybe you're right and maybe you're wrong, and maybe I'll have somewhat to say to you about that when this mess with Warwick is over. But that can wait—that has to wait. For now, I'll just ask you this: do you think Father would have wanted to live in a place where a noble could steal his beasts because the bastard called it taking taxes?”

“Well, no, but—”

“But me no buts,” Richard broke in. “As soon as bloody Warwick tries to lift anyone else's chattels, he'll have a bigger rising on his hands—this is tinder in dry grass, whether he knows it or not. And if you think I can't do anything about him by myself—well, watch me, big brother. Just bloody watch me.”

He slipped east, toward the seashore, toward the settlements, as the sun set that night. Henry couldn't watch him after that, because he moved with a swift, silent assurance the sailor had no hope of matching. Richard knew Henry scorned his trips through the woods. Henry was a seaman to his marrow, as their father had been. For him, dry land was a necessary nuisance.

Richard was different. Richard could slip through the woods so quietly, even the mouse-sized katydids went on chirping. Killing honkers was easy, but killing them before they knew you were there was anything but. Richard could do that. He thought he could also kill men before they knew he was there. He looked forward to it, in fact.

A nearly full moon gave him all the light he needed. Before long, he came to the camp Warwick's troopers had made just inside the forest. Several loudly unhappy men sat around a fire. “How are we supposed to catch those buggers?” one of them grumbled. “They could be anywhere by now.”