Opening Atlantis (25 page)

“And you will want to see the guns,” Walton said.

“Indeed. They and the sails are the point of the whole affair, eh?” Radcliff said.

He ended up admiring them more than he'd thought he would. His merchantmen went armed, too, to beat back pirates if they could. He was intimately familiar with twelve-pounders and smaller pieces. That made him think the forty-two-pounders on the lower gun deck would have nothing new to show him. But he turned out to be wrong. The sheer brutal mass of those big iron monsters took his breath away.

When he remarked on it, Walton smiled. “A man who knows tabby cats may think he knows lions, too—he may, that is, until he hears a lion roar.”

“That have I never done,” William said.

“I have. It is the most astounding thing,” Walton said. “When you hear that sound, you are afraid. You may be the boldest warrior since Hercules, but
you are afraid,
at some level below conscious thought. It is as though the knowledge that this beast eats men were somehow stamped upon your soul.”

“Interesting. I should like the experience one day. Did you hear a lion in the wilds of Africa or at a London zoological garden?”

“The latter, I fear,” Elijah Walton replied. “I have been off the African coast—a place full of sickness, of no value to anyone but for the trade in slaves it affords—but I did not hear the creatures there. In London, yes. Strange, is it not?”

“It truly is.” Radcliff looked back toward the houses and shops of Stuart: a few built of stone, but more from the abundant Atlantean redwoods and pines. “This is a growing town. One day soon, we ought to have a zoological garden of our own, that our folk might see the marvels of other lands.”

“And of your own,” Walton said. “So much of what dwells in Atlantis is unique to it.”

William Radcliff shrugged. “Our folk are used to honkers and red-crested eagles and cucumber slugs and the like. Well, the explorers and settlers are. In regions inhabited for some little while, you understand, these creatures grow scarce and die out, to be replaced by productions more familiar to your common Englishman. Believe it or not, sir, much of Atlantis is a civilized land.”

“Let it be as you say.” That was also the language of courtesy, and meant Walton didn't believe it for a minute.

One deck higher, the long twenty-four-pounders threw lighter balls than the carronades below, but threw them farther. “Let a couple of these tear through a lightly built pirate's scantlings and watch the water pour in,” William Radcliff said with a certain gloating anticipation.

“How can they propose to stand against us?” Walton asked. “Our ships so greatly outweigh theirs, the fight scarcely seems fair.”

“I cannot imagine their opposing us on the sea,” William answered. “More likely, they will seek to keep us from entering Avalon Bay and from sacking their hellhole of a town. What other sensible thing could they do?”

“None I can see,” the Englishman said.

He was a sensible man. So was William Radcliff. They were too sensible to see that, when fighting sensible opponents, acting sensible himself might be the least sensible thing Red Rodney Radcliffe could do.

Aldo Cucari wasn't even a pirate. He was a fisherman who put to sea from Avalon. He didn't have enough to make stealing his small substance worth the corsairs' while. They laughed at him for working so hard, but they bought his fish.

He spoke French with a funny accent, and English with a funnier one. But when he came to Black Hand Fort and asked to talk to Red Rodney, the ruffians at the gate let him through. He didn't quite interrupt a tender moment between the pirate chief and Jenny, but he came close enough to leave her miffed. “Will we never be free of gabbling little nuisances?” she grumbled as Rodney dressed.

He only laughed. “Just goes to show you never raised a child, sweetheart.” And away he went, a pistol on his belt. He knew Aldo, but you never could tell.

Someone had given the fisherman a cup of wine. He had no pistol, nor even an eating knife. When Rodney strode into the room where he waited, he jumped up, set down the wine, and bowed almost double. “Ah,
buon giorno, Signore
Rodney
Rosso, Signore
Radcliffe!” he cried. “I is just in from out of the north.”

Red Rodney nodded. “That's what they told me, by God.” Finding out what was going on up in the north was worth getting out of bed, even if Jenny didn't think so. “What did you see up there?”

“Dutchmens,” Aldo Cucari said solemnly. “Three big Dutchmens, ships of the line. Six smaller Dutchmens, like to the ships that sail out of Avalon. They go east.”

“Bloody hell. Of course they do.” Three men-of-war, half a dozen brigantines or the equivalent. Six more men-of-war from London, with a like number of smaller supporters. However many merchantmen William clipped-
e
Radcliff could scrape together at Stuart, plus their auxiliaries. The merchantmen wouldn't have the speed or the firepower of a first-rate ship of the line, but they'd be bad enough. Red Rodney glowered down at the small, swarthy Italian. “You swear this is the truth?”

“By the cross,
signore.
” Aldo Cucari crossed himself. You could be a Papist in Avalon, or a Protestant, or a Mahometan, or even a Jew. No one cared enough to kill you for it, which wasn't true all over Atlantis. Aldo went on, “By my mother's honor,
signore.
”

People laughed at Aldo for working hard, but no one had ever called him a coward. And if you challenged his mother's honor—if you challenged the honor of any man's mother—he was bound to kill you if he could. “All right, then,” Radcliffe said. “You've told me what I need to know, and I'm grateful.”

The fisherman bowed again. “It is my honor, too,
Signore
Rodney.”

“Honor's all very well, but you can't eat it. See what you can buy with these.” Red Rodney pressed two gleaming gold sovereigns into Aldo's callused hand.

One more bow. “You is a man of great heart,
signore,
and a man of open hands as well. I hoped for one sovereign—I thought my news is worth one. But two? Two! Only a man of great heart would give two.” He stepped forward, embraced the pirate captain, and bussed him first on the right cheek, then on the left.

Frenchmen and Spaniards would do the same thing sometimes. Red Rodney clapped Aldo on the back and made a joke of it: “You aren't pretty enough for that.”

“Ah, well.” The fisherman grinned and fired back: “If I is doing it for looks, you isn't pretty enough, neither.”

He came very close to dying then, even with Rodney's gold coins in his hand. Only blood washed away insults in Avalon—if you decided they were insults. If you laughed them off, though…Rodney did. “I may be ugly, but I have fun. How about you?”

“Every so often I find a girl who—how you say?—she no see so good. Or maybe is too dark to see good. Who knows? Who cares? I has fun, too.”

Rodney shouted for more wine. The servant who brought it was a copperskinned Terranovan native. Everybody called him Old Abe; he'd been in Avalon almost as long as Rodney had been alive. Smallpox scars slagged his face, but he'd lived through the disease and never needed to worry about it again. A lot of copperskins turned up their toes in a hurry after they met Europeans or Atlanteans. That was one reason white settlement was spreading on the western mainland, though not so fast as it was in previously uninhabited Atlantis.

“Here's to fun!” Rodney said, and Aldo Cucari drank with him. But even as the rough red wine slid down his throat, he was weighing the odds. Nine ships of the line? People farther east had hated Avalon for a long time. They'd always said they had, anyhow. Never till now, though, had they seemed serious. It was hard to get much more serious than nine ships of the line and assorted auxiliaries.

Well, they might be—they were bound to be—gathering at Stuart. But from Stuart to Avalon was a long way: long in terms of sailing, even longer in terms of the spirit that animated each town. Aldo, anyone might think, would have fit better in Stuart. But he'd lived there for a little while, and didn't care for the dull, stolid burghers who ran the place. Whatever else Avalon was, dull and stolid it wasn't.

The pirate captain poured wine with the same lavish hand he'd used to pass out money. Raising his cup, he shouted, “Here's to frying my God-cursed cousin!” Aldo drank with him—why not? And Rodney Radcliffe laughed and laughed. “Yes, here's to frying him, in his own damned pan!”

W
illiam Radcliff's secretary was a plump, nearsighted man named Shadrach Spencer. William was making a complicated calculation about just how much to charge for Terranovan pipeweed in London when Spencer stuck his head into the office and said, “I beg your pardon, sir, but there is a…gentleman here whom I think you should see.”

He didn't casually say such things: one reason he'd worked for William for more than fifteen years. “Well, send him in, then,” William said, setting down his quill. “Let's find out what he has to say.”

As Radcliff expected from his secretary's tone, the individual in question was no gentleman, but a backwoods ruffian who put him in mind of his distant cousin, Marcus. The man carried a parcel wrapped in cloth. He wore a wool shirt and suede breeches with fringes; no razor had sullied his cheek for several days. All the more reason to receive him as if he were the heir to a duchy. “Good day, sir. I am William Radcliff,” William said, bowing. “I fear you have the advantage of me.”

“My name is Dill, Hiram Dill.” The backwoodsman shook hands politely enough, then remarked, “Thirsty work, riding in from past the edge of town.”

“Shadrach, tend to that, would you?” Radcliff said.

“Certainly, sir.” His secretary bustled off, returning a moment later with a flagon of fine—or at least strong—gin from Nieuw Haarlem and two glasses. He poured for William and his guest.

“Your health, sir,” William said to Hiram Dill, raising his glass.

Dill drank. His eyes got wide. “I'm bound to be healthy if I pour this stuff down,” he said. “It'd poison anything that tried to sicken me, and that's the Lord's truth.”

Courteously, Radcliff poured him a refill. As Dill drank it down with as much alacrity as he'd shown for the first sample, William asked, “And what was it impelled you to ride in to Stuart from, as you say, past the edge of town?”

“Well, I was hunting for the pot last night, and I let fly with my shotgun at a pigeon flying by, and I bagged me…this here.” Hiram Dill had a sense of the dramatic, whatever his other shortcomings might have been. He undid the cloth around his loosely wrapped parcel.

It was a pigeon, as ordinary a pigeon as ever hatched. Atlantis boasted several varieties of
extra
ordinary pigeons. One was cream-colored, with bright red eyes. One, too big and heavy to fly, had a feathery crest that looked like curly hair. One was a dark green bird that disappeared completely against the needle-filled branches of redwoods and pines.

But this was a plain English pigeon, like the ones that cooed and strutted in the streets of Stuart hoping for handouts. Its head was green, its body shades of gray and white. The only unusual thing about it was a bit of parchment tied around its right leg.

“A message?” William asked. Hiram Dill nodded. William asked another question: “You've read it?”

“Well, sure,” Dill answered. “Couldn't very well know you needed to see it if I hadn't, now could I?”

“No, indeed,” Radcliff said gravely. “And what does it say?”

“See for yourself,” the backwoodsman replied. His scarred and callused fingers surprisingly deft, he undid the message from the bird's leg and handed it to William.

The fine, tiny, spidery hand defeated William's sight, which was beginning to lengthen. He called in Shadrach Spencer. “Read this out for me, if you would be so kind.”

“Of course, sir.” His secretary held the parchment so close to his eyes, it all but bumped his nose. “It says, ‘In Stuart harbor nine ships of the line, twelve armed merchantmen, fifteen lesser ships. Sailing soon against Avalon.'”

“I am not surprised to learn we have a spy amongst us, but neither am I heartened to learn it. The iniquity some men will embrace…” William shook his head. Then he brightened. “As for you, Mr. Dill, I freely own myself to be in your debt.”

Hiram Dill didn't say anything. His face, however, bore an expression remarkable for its cupidity. He had brought the pigeon to William for no other reason than to hear those words from his lips. William spoke to his secretary in a low voice. Spencer nodded and hurried off, as he had when Radcliff asked him to fetch the gin.

This time, he needed longer to return. When he did, he pressed a small velvet sack into William Radcliff's hand. Radcliff, in turn, presented the sack to Hiram Dill. “With my compliments, sir.”

Judas could no more have kept from counting the wealth he'd got from the Romans than Dill could have stopped himself from opening the sack and seeing what lay inside. “Five pounds!” he exclaimed. “God bless you, Mr. Radcliff! I didn't look for so much, and that's the Lord's truth, too.”

“You have earned it. I would say, earned it and more, did I not fear that would make you importunate,” William said with a smile. “I have known for long and long that the pirates of Avalon spied upon Stuart. How they spied upon us, no one here knew—till now.”

Hiram Dill grinned back. “I expect there'll be a deal of pigeon hunting in town the next little while.”

“I expect you are right, Mr. Dill,” Radcliff replied. “I expect you are just exactly right. And I expect someone will be very unhappy when we uncover him for a polecat, for a lying, tricking snake in the grass.”

“What will you do to him? Something worth watching, I hope,” Dill said.

“Oh, yes.” Radcliff nodded. “I don't know yet what it will be, sir, but I promise you that anyone who sees it will remember it to the end of his days.”

Red Rodney Radcliffe was not a happy man. When he was unhappy, he thought himself duty-bound to make everyone around him unhappy, too. “Damn it to hell, why haven't we heard from Stuart?” he growled. “Somebody over there has his thumb up his bum. How are we supposed to know when the God-cursed fleet is sailing if they don't send pigeons?”

“Maybe something's gone wrong with the birds,” Ethel suggested.

“No doubt. They've come down poxed, on account of wasting their silver at the bird brothels. They need a better class of pigeon pimps.” Red Rodney laughed. He thought he was funny, and that was all that mattered to him.

His daughter was harder to amuse. “Maybe the fat fools back there have finally twigged to your using pigeons, and they're shooting all the birds they see going out.”

“Good luck to 'em!” Rodney said. “They'd do better to shoot the bugger who sets the birds free.”

He meant that as a sardonic retort to put Ethel in her place. But the words seemed to hang in the air. The more he mulled them over, the likelier they felt. Ethel must have felt the same way, for she asked, “What can you do about it if they have shot him?”

“Damn all, I fear,” Red Rodney said morosely. “I'd have to get somebody else with pigeons to Stuart. That might not be easy, not if the bastards there are waiting for me to try it.”

“You could put pigeons on a scout ship up near North Cape,” Ethel said. “They wouldn't give as much warning as birds from Stuart would, but they fly faster than any ship can sail.”

Radcliffe started to trot out all the reasons why that was a foolish notion, but stopped with his mouth hanging open. Try as he would, he couldn't find any. Instead, he gave Ethel a big, smacking kiss. “The Devil fry me black if you won't command the
Black Hand
after I'm gone. You've got the natural wit for it.”

“And the charm, too.” Ethel simpered. She wasn't old enough yet to have the kind of charms she wanted. But she also wanted to take a pirate crew into battle. Even now, she would likely do a good job of it.

He tousled her hair. “Your day will come, sweetling, but not quite yet.” Ethel pouted. He took no notice of her, which was her good luck; had his temper flared, he would have made her sorry.

Instead, he called for Mick. The master of the dovecote nodded and knuckled his forehead when Red Rodney told him what he had in mind. “Aye, skipper, we can do that—damned if we can't,” he said. “You were in a sneaky mood when you thought of it, eh?”

“I'm not to blame,” Radcliffe said, not without pride. “It's my daughter's notion.”

“Well, good on Ethel, then,” said Mick, who knew which side his bread was buttered on.

That very afternoon, a pinnace slipped out of Avalon harbor. Armed with only a handful of four-pounders, the little ship couldn't hope to outfight even the lighter vessels that would be sailing from Stuart. But she boasted a broad spread of sail, so she had a chance of getting away. And she carried several pigeons in wicker cages, so even if the enemy did run her down she could warn Avalon that danger neared.

Ethel was wild with rage when she found out the pinnace had sailed without her. “Why didn't you let me go?” she shouted at her father. “You said I could've done it!”

“I said your day was coming. I didn't say it was here,” Rodney replied.

“
I
say it is!” Ethel screeched.

“You can say all sorts of things,” he said. “That doesn't mean you can back them up.”

“Who says I can't?” She drew her pistol with startling speed and aimed it at his chest.

The bore of any firearm pointed straight at you seemed six or eight times as wide as it really was. Red Rodney made no sudden moves. Furious as she was, Ethel might have squeezed the trigger first and thought about it only afterwards—which would have been rather too late for him. “Put that thing away,” he said. “She's already sailed, and she's miles from here by now. I can't call her back.”

“Not fair!” Ethel wailed. The pistol swung away from Red Rodney. He darted forward and grabbed her wrist. The gun went off. Something smashed. He didn't see what, and he didn't much care. As long as that heavy lead ball didn't thump into
him
…

Ethel was tough and brave and strong—and not nearly big enough for any of that to do her the least bit of good. Rodney got her over his knee and smacked her behind. Her wails—or maybe the pistol shot—brought people on the run. “Only a mistake,” Red Rodney told them. “She's finding out better now.”

“Oh, no, I'm not!” Ethel yelled.

“Oh, yes, you are, by God!” Her father continued to apply himself to her seat of learning. “You don't aim a damned gun at somebody unless you aim to kill him. And you'd damned well better not aim to kill the bastard who spawned you. Have you got that, you little hellcat?” He did his best to make sure she'd got it.

By her tears, by her red, blotchy face, and by his own hot, red palm, his best was plenty good. He didn't stop, though, until she sobbed, “Enough, Father! Enough!”

That took longer than he'd thought it would. He admired her strength to hold out—but he would have gone to the rack before he said so. “Mind from now on. Do you hear me?” he growled.

“Yes, Father.” She stared down at the floor. She didn't try to sit down after he let her go; he suspected she would sleep on her stomach when night came.

“This isn't a game, dammit,” Rodney Radcliffe said roughly. “This is a war. If the buggers in Stuart win it, they'll knock Avalon flat and they'll hang everybody they can catch. You had a notion that gives us a better chance. I'm going to use that notion the best way I know how, with you or without you. I don't have room to do anything else. Have you got
that
?”

“Yes, Father.” Ethel kept her eyes downcast.

“All right, then. Remember it.”

“Oh, I'll remember, Father.” She looked him in the face then. “You don't need to worry about that.” She turned and walked away. Red Rodney felt as if a goose—or, by the weight of the strides, a honker—had just walked over his grave. No, Ethel wouldn't forget till she was dead or he was. And her expression told only too clearly which one of those she wanted.

Royal Navy ships carried Royal Marines: bullocks, sailors called them with affectionate scorn. They were tough, stolid men in red uniforms who fired from the fighting tops and led boarding parties and raiding parties. The ships of the line from Nieuw Haarlem had similar contingents aboard. The Dutch marines might have been stamped from the same molds as their English counterparts, save only that they wore different clothes.

William Radcliff's merchantmen normally took no marines with them. Traders fought only in emergencies, not as a matter of course, and couldn't afford so many mostly idle hands aboard. Everything that happened between Stuart and Avalon, though, would be in the nature of an emergency. William recruited hunters from all over English-speaking Atlantis. They would not be so well disciplined as their counterparts in the men-of-war, but he thought they would serve.

His distant cousin Marcus Radcliffe came to Stuart at the head of a company of sixty backwoodsmen. They had no uniforms. Each wore what suited him and carried the kind of musket he liked best. If they came from a mold, it was not from the one that had produced the English and Dutch marines.

Marcus gave William a salute that would have provoked an apoplexy in a sergeant of Royal Marines. “Well, coz, here we are,” he said. “Hope we can give those pirates a bad time one way or another.”