Opening Atlantis (23 page)

“You'll need a grand parley, won't you?” Mick said.

“I was thinking that very thing,” Rodney answered. “A grand parley. Been a while since we had one.” The pirate chieftains of Avalon were independent princes. They parleyed to keep from fighting among themselves: rarely for any other reason. Would they hearken when Rodney summoned them?

They'd better hearken, by God,
he thought.
Otherwise, the first we'll know of the enemy is when he starts cannonading us.

Even figuring out where to hold a grand parley took more in the way of diplomacy than most corsairs had in them. He couldn't invite his fellow captains to Black Hand Fort. Oh, he
could,
if he aimed to start the squabble he wanted to head off. They would think he was trying to lure them all to one place at the same time so he could get rid of them at once. If he got an invitation like that, he would think the same thing himself. He had to find neutral ground.

Some unkind or possibly jealous soul had called Avalon the Sodom of Atlantis. A visitor from the other coast, the somber coast, had marveled that so many pirates were sick. Then he saw how the freebooters drank, and marveled even more that they weren't all dead.

Mary's Paradise would do if no other place sufficed. It was the biggest, bawdiest, grandest brothel and tavern in Avalon. Red Rodney knew he would have to pay Mary Carleton a goodly sum to take her establishment out of circulation long enough for the chieftains to meet there. No one in Avalon did things from the goodness of his—or her—heart. Maybe he could get some money back from his fellow captains. Or maybe not.

Jenny squawked when she heard that Red Rodney purposed talking with Mary Carleton. “You want some poxy trollop!” she shrilled. “You'll swive her, and then you'll fetch the foulness back to me!”

“I'd be poxed if I tried buggering Goldbeard or Cutpurse Charlie, that's certain sure,” Red Rodney replied with a laugh, “but I want 'em there to do them a favor, not to try to take their favors.”

“Oh, yes.” Jenny didn't want to believe him. “And you won't even look at the doxies falling out of their dresses. They're as common as a barber's chair, they are—one's out and the next one's in. And who was the man who paid five hundred pieces of eight just to see some strumpet naked?”

“I've heard the story, but I don't know the sorry bastard's name,” Radcliffe answered. “It wasn't me—I'll tell you that. If I'd laid down so much silver, I'd've got more than a look for it.”

“Sure enough—likely you would have got the gleets,” his lady love said.

However snide Jenny was, Rodney sent a man he trusted to dicker a price from Mary Carleton. She proved more reasonable than he'd expected. “I know which side my bread's buttered on,” she told Radcliffe's emissary. “We'll get enough of the ordinary business now that the
Black Hand
's back in port.”

That being settled, Red Rodney sent messages to the other chieftains of Avalon, to the men who would have to lead the fight against the Dutch and the English and the eastern settlers if there was going to be one. Some of them were, or had been, his foes. He sent to them anyhow, under flag of truce. He hoped curiosity would bring them to Mary's Paradise if nothing else did, for he was not in the habit of doing that. A captain of an earlier generation, when a priest asked him on his deathbed to forgive his enemies, answered, “I have none—I killed them all.” Red Rodney wasn't quite so deadly, but not from lack of effort.

Some of the other pirate lords promised to come. Others said no at first. Patiently, Rodney sent to them again.
You hurt only yourselves if you stay away,
he wrote.
If you want to go on doing what you're doing, you need to hear me.

When he went down to Mary's Paradise, he wore a ruffled shirt—not quite clean—and a jacket of velvet shot through with gold threads that was splendid even if it didn't fit him quite so well as the Spaniard for whom it was made. He carried a cutlass, a dagger, two pistols in his belt, and a tiny one in his boot. His guards dressed more plainly but carried just as many weapons.

“You can futter the wenches if you find any you fancy,” he told them. “But God help your scurvied souls if you get drunk. You're here to fight if you have to, and not to fight if you don't need to. No brawling for the fun of it, not today.”

And maybe that would do some good, and maybe it wouldn't. His crew was better ordered than most, but men who'd put up with Royal Navy discipline didn't turn pirate to begin with. And even Royal Navy sailors roistered ashore. Besides, if one of the other chieftains' men started trouble, or if his own followers could claim they did…

Well, he would worry about that if he had to, the same way he would worry about Jenny slipping hemlock into his beer. He tried not to think about how black her scowl was as he left Black Hand Fort.

He had a standard-bearer carrying his banner, and another carrying a white flag to show he didn't intend to fight unless he had to. Similar processions wound down from the other fortresses. No one pulled out a pistol or fired a matchlock. It wasn't quite a miracle, but Red Rodney took it for a good sign.

Mary Carleton greeted him under a red lantern. “Welcome,” she said. “The room is waiting.”

“Thank you, Mistress Mary,” he said, more respectfully than he'd thought he would. She had to be at least thirty-five, but she was still a fine-looking woman.

Rum and roast meats sat on the table. A couple of captains had got there before him. They were already eating and drinking. One of them nodded to him, saying, “This is a good spread. What kind of nonsense are you going to spout?”

“I wouldn't throw away this kind of money to spout nonsense,” Red Rodney answered. He poured himself some rum and waited to see who would come and who wouldn't.

To his surprise, all the captains he'd invited showed up. Some of them scowled at him. Some scowled at one another. But nobody grabbed for a sword or a gun. “Let's hear your lies, Radcliffe,” said Bertrand Caradeuc in buzzing Breton accents. A gold hoop glittered in his right ear.

“You want lies, go home to your mistress,” Red Rodney answered. Most of the chieftains laughed. A few glowered: the ones, he guessed, who feared their mistresses
were
filling their ears with lies. He swigged from his mug of rum and went on, “The sheep are starting to think they're wolves. The honkers are trying to grow eagles' wings. The bastards in Stuart aim to kill us all.”

“And you know this because…?” Goldbeard Walter Kennedy inquired. He was an enormous man, several inches taller than Rodney, who was no stripling himself, and wider through the shoulders. The beard that gave him his sobriquet spilled halfway down his chest.

Radcliffe told exactly how he knew it, though he didn't name his spy in Stuart. “We can let them pick us off a ship at a time, the way they're bound to want to,” he said. “Or we can stand together and show 'em we're not to be trifled with. Which would you rather?”

“How do we know you're not lying so you get to tell us what to do?” Caradeuc inquired.

“Because I won't lead us even if you bloody well ask me to,” Red Rodney replied. The renunciation hurt, but he knew he had to make it. “Pick somebody else. In this fight, I'll follow him, whoever he is. If I have a quarrel with him, it can wait till later. Everything else can wait till later.”

He impressed them with that. He'd thought he would. They weren't used to backing away from power. They were used to grabbing with both hands. They wrangled and shouted and swore, and finally chose Michel de Grammont to command. Fewer of them hated him than anyone else. That seemed a good enough reason to them. What kind of high captain he would make…They'd find out.

W
illiam Radcliff was furious, in a cold-blooded Stuartish way. When he got command of a fleet to wipe the pirates of Avalon off the map, he rashly assumed the fleet would assemble some time before Judgment Day. Now he was wondering if he hadn't been unduly optimistic.

It wasn't as if Stuart lacked a fine harbor in which to assemble. Avalon boasted one as good, but assuredly no other anchorage in Atlantis came close. Two rivers and several islands met there, and Stuart lay at the heart of them all. No matter how the wind blew, ships could get in and out and find secure places to put up. William was hard pressed to think of a harbor in Europe or Terranova that could say the same.

He wondered why his several-times-great-grandfather hadn't settled here rather than down at New Hastings. The only thing he could think of was that Edward Radcliffe must have been content to put down roots wherever the wind happened to blow him ashore. That only proved the Founder wasn't so sly as people made him out to be.

And am I?
William Radcliff wondered. He had authority to bind and to loose a whole fleet. The only difficulty was that, despite promises from both Elijah Walton and Piet Kieft, the fleet at the moment consisted of his own merchantmen and not one vessel more.

Merchantmen, by the nature of things, weren't warships. They weren't particularly fast: they were built to haul, not to sprint. And, most of the time, they weren't heavily armed. He'd done what he could to correct that, but guns heavier than twelve-pounders were impossible to lay hold of in a peaceful settlement. Walton had promised heavier cannon to turn merchantmen into reasonable facsimiles of ships of the line, but so far the promised guns were as chimerical as the promised ships.

“You will drive trade away and make your friends repent of their friendship if you curse everyone who comes near you,” his wife remarked one afternoon, when his sarcasm curdled into blasphemy.

“I beg your humble pardon, Tamsin,” William answered. “Still and all, I would take oath—”

“You have sworn too many profane oaths already,” Tamsin Radcliff broke in.

“I would take oath,” William repeated stubbornly, “that the Devil has in hell a special firepit he stokes extra hot, for the purpose of properly tormenting souls who make promises they do not purpose keeping.”

“I am certain all will be as you wish in due course.” Tamsin had a sunny nature. She needed it, or the master merchant's frequent glooms would have oppressed her more.

“If the promise be fulfilled in due course, that will not be as I wish,” Radcliff said. “Do you suppose they are sitting idly by in Avalon?”

“By no means,” his wife replied. “More likely than not, they are drinking and wenching and dicing and brawling. Why would they turn pirate, if not to do such things?”

She wasn't wrong. All the same, William said, “Also, without the tiniest bit of doubt, they are readying themselves for our onslaught against them. They will surely have learned of it by now. Had we moved against them sooner, we might have taken them unawares.”

“You cannot move alone,” Tamsin said.

William nodded heavily. “If I could have, I would have long since. No, for a sea war on such a scale, I needs must have confederates. And a man who must rely on others to see that certain things are done is a man who must resign himself to knowing they may never be done.”

“And are the freebooters of Avalon better off in this regard?” Tamsin asked. “Can one man among 'em snap his fingers and have the others follow his whim like so many trained mastiffs? Or do they wait upon developments and quarrel over them the same way you and your friends do?”

He stared at her. Then he kissed her. She let out a startled squawk; that wasn't something he commonly did in the middle of the day. “You are a wonder,” he said. “A wonder—do you hear me?”

“I hear you. I am glad to hear you,” Tamsin Radcliff said primly. “But why do you say it?”

“Because you remind me of something I almost forgot,” William answered. “I see all my own troubles, but none of my foes'. Yet they must have 'em, for are they not flesh and blood, even as am I?” He scowled. “Red Rodney, the mangy hound, is flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, as that fat toad of a Walton tires not of reminding me.”

“You are not to be blamed for it.” Tamsin was loyal to his branch of the family.

“Not by you, perhaps. In London and in Nieuw Haarlem, too many can't tell the difference between a Radcliffe and a Radcliff.” He pronounced Red Rodney's version of the family name with three syllables, as no Radcliffe ever born had done. His wife nodded, so she saw his point. He went on, “If half of them blame me for what he does—”

“All the more reason to be rid of him for good,” she said.

“All the more reason, yes—and all the less chance.” William drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I want to be at sea, not tied here waiting.”

“If the Dutchman and the Londoner fail you, you should put to sea by yourself,” Tamsin said. “All our ships put together can beat Red Rodney Radcliffe.” She pronounced the name with three syllables, too.

“We can beat Red Rodney, yes,” William said. “We cannot beat all of Avalon banded together. And the freebooters will fight like cornered rats, for they know what awaits them if they lose. Without marines to stiffen them, I doubt my men would fight so well. Why should they? They put to sea to trade, not to war. They will fight if forced to it, yes, but not for the sport of it.”

“They will fight for money—or some of them will,” Tamsin said shrewdly. “A big enough price on the heads of the pirate captains—”

“They've had prices on their heads for years.” William sounded as gloomy as he felt. “They're out there yet, robbing and stealing and murdering. They make us all look like jackasses.” His hands balled into fists. “By God, Tammy, they trifle with us. I am no man to be trifled with, and anyone who thinks otherwise will to his sorrow discover himself mistaken.”

“Have you any way to hurry Kieft or Walton?” his wife asked.

He shook his head. “They trifle with me, too, and they think I shall forget it because we are on the same side. You know me. Do I ever forget anyone who does me a bad turn?”

“No. But, contrariwise, you never forget anyone who does you a good turn, either. Had you not the one quality to go with the other, I could not love you—and I do.”

“A good thing, too. I'd go on the rocks without you. But unless we lance this abscess on our western coast”—William's mind kept coming back to what lay uppermost within it—“all of Atlantis will go on the rocks. And, regardless of what Piet Kieft and the sainted Elijah Walton may say, I do not intend to let that happen.”

Black Hand Fort had a crow's nest. That was a funny name for it, but served well enough. It was a big wooden bucket mounted high atop a redwood trunk thicker than a mainmast. Red Rodney Radcliffe and his lookouts could go there, clambering up the lines nimble as monkeys, and see for miles in every direction.

Ethel could, too, and she loved to do it. Red Rodney wished she wouldn't. He told her she mustn't. He paddled her behind when she did—and he still found her in the crow's nest when he went up one morning to look around.

She flinched when he scrambled over the edge and into the bucket. “I'm sorry, Father,” she said, and then, her spirit reviving, “I'm sorry you caught me.”

“Not as sorry as you will be soon,” he said, but his heart wasn't in the threat. He had too many other things on his mind.

When he looked down at Avalon's harbor, he didn't like what he saw. Too many brigs and brigantines. Too many sloops. Too many shallops. A few race-built galleons, but only a few. Most of the pirates' ships were small and swift, able to put up a great spread of sail and run after their prey or run away from danger. They could fight when they had to, but only when they had to.

How would the fleet of pirate ships stand up against a new English or Dutch ship of the line? Pirate ships rarely mounted anything bigger than twelve-pounders. They were made to take merchantmen and to flee from naval vessels. What if they couldn't flee? What if they had to defend their home port?

He muttered under his breath. Even in the twenty-odd years he'd roamed the seas, ships of the line had grown larger and more deadly. A first-rate man-of-war could mount thirty forty-two-pounders, thirty twenty-four-pounders, twenty twelve-pounders, and twenty more smaller guns. A broadside from a ship like that would turn a brigantine to kindling and splinters in the blink of an eye.

In a fight out on the open sea, it wouldn't matter, because brigantines and sloops and shallops could run away from any ship of the line ever built. But if the men-of-war were bearing down on Avalon…If they were doing that, the corsairs couldn't very well run, not unless they wanted to run away from their town and their harbor and start fresh somewhere else.

Red Rodney didn't want to do that. Neither did the other chieftains, or they wouldn't have agreed to fight. But agreeing to fight wasn't the same as knowing how to go about it. Another long look at the ships that lay at anchor inside Avalon Bay said as much.

“Pa?” That was Ethel. By the way she called to him, she'd been trying to get his attention for some little while. “Why aren't you thumping me, Pa? You always do when you catch me up here.” Getting a thumping seemed better to her than seeing the regular order of things overturned. Some people were like that.

He gave her a straight answer, thinking her due one: “I'm trying to figure out how our little ships can beat the big ones our enemies are going to throw at us.”

“Well, that's not so hard,” Ethel said with a child's boundless confidence. “If they're bigger, we've got to be faster and smarter, so we hit them and they can't hit back.”

“Easier to say than to do,” Rodney warned.

“You say that?
You?
” Ethel sent him a reproachful look. “Don't they call you the Horror of the Hesperian Gulf?” Pride at being a Horror's daughter rang in her voice.

“They do,” Rodney agreed. “And I am what they call me.” He had pride of his own, plenty of it. He also had worries of his own, plenty of them. “If it were just the sea fight, I'd not worry. But those buggers back in Stuart want to close our shop down. They want Avalon, is what they want. The town can't put on topgallants and spankers and sail away from their bloody fleet.” He could be more open about his fears with his daughter than with his henchmen or his fellow corsair captains. Come what might, Ethel wouldn't call him coward.

She did point north, to the fort warding Avalon's northern tip, to the galleys guarding the Gateway, and to the other fort on the northern spit that helped form the bay. “We can keep them out,” she said, confident still. “Red-hot rounds and chainshot will make the bally blighters sorry they ever tried to poke their noses in.”

Radcliffe grinned. His daughter not only thought like a pirate, she talked like one, too. He tousled her hair. “Well, chick, maybe you're right,” he said.
I hope to Christ you are,
he thought, but that didn't pass his lips.

Marcus Radcliffe was a lean, dark, weather-beaten man who wore a honkerskin rain cloak, feathered side out, above his shirt and breeches. He seemed out of place in settled Stuart, and especially out of place in William Radcliff's elegant study.

Radcliff poured Radcliffe a glass of sherry. “Your health, cousin,” he said, smiling.

“And yours, coz,” Radcliffe said to Radcliff. They both drank. Marcus Radcliffe thoughtfully smacked his lips. “Not bad, not bad. I'm more used to ale and beer myself.”

“Well, you're not the only one. I drink them a lot of the time myself,” William allowed. “But I try to serve my guests something finer.”

“Kind of you.” Marcus Radcliffe sipped again, and then again. By the way the level of the wine in his glass sank, he thought it fine enough.

William poured the glass full again. “Though the name is the same, or near enough, we are not close cousins, are we?”

“Not hardly.” Marcus had a harsher accent than William. “You come down through Henry, and I through Richard. My father would always say your line wanted money, and got it. My line wanted freedom, and we're still looking for it. The more Atlantis fills up, the harder it is to come by.”

“Money buys freedom,” William Radcliff said. “Freedom from want, freedom from trouble…”

“You haven't got troubles?” Marcus Radcliffe laughed. “Why'd you ask me here, then?”

“Because I have a question, and you seem the man best suited to answer it,” William replied.

“Long way from New Grinstead to Stuart, just for the sake of a question,” Marcus said.

To William's way of thinking, it was a long way from New Grinstead to anywhere. The little town sat far back in the woods west of New Hastings, more than halfway to the Green Ridge Mountains. As far as William knew, no towns lay farther from the coast. From New Grinstead, Marcus Radcliffe and others like him could plunge into the Atlantean wilderness, with no one to tell them where to wander or when to come home.