Clemens could no more have read Akkadian cuneiform than he could have flown to the moon, but he examined the chicken-track patterns of wedge-shaped marks gravely. One of the few advantages of clay tablets was that they couldn't be altered after they dried; they made perfect legal documents.
"The contract is good," he said, echoed by Tab-sa-Dayyan. "I swear so, by the lives of the Gods Shamash and Marduk and Ishtar…
"-and Jesus," Clemens added on impulse. -and by the life of the King."
Then the Nantucketer took the tablet of Azzu-ena's dowry and tucked it into the haversack attached to his webbing belt, wrapped in cloth beside his copy of the marriage contract. He turned to Azzu-ena, lifted the shawl from her shoulders, draped it over her hair, then took her hand between his.
"I will fill your lap with silver and gold. You are my wife. I am your husband."
She blinked back tears; even then he was astonished, a little. He'd seen her calm while they were doing triage sorting, with an occasional stray rocket-bomb landing near the hospital tent. Her voice was steady as she replied:
"I will do you good and not evil all your days. I am your wife. You are my husband."
The witnesses cheered. The scribe nodded and quoted, this time from memory:
"If a man hold a feast and make a contract with her father and mother-or other kin, in this case-and take her, she is a wife." He smiled benignly. "So is the law laid down, from the days before the Flood. He is her husband. She is his wife."
The skipper of the Merrimac had guessed what was intended for his ship from the cargo delivered to her in Westhaven, the armor and steam engine and cannon. He was part-owner- about a one-sixteenth share-but from his expression it would take more than compensation money from the government to make up for what was going to happen to her. The coal smoke from the side-wheeler tug towing them out into the Severn estuary was no blacker than his mood, and the mournful steam whistle no gloomier than his tone.
"I hope you didn't pick her because of her name," he said to Marian Alston, after he'd introduced his first and second mates-son-in-law and nephew respectively. Formally, they were Reserve Lieutenants Stendin and Clammp, now that the ship and crew had been called up for military service.
"No, it wasn't the name," she said, feeling a sympathy that it would be patronizing to show. "If anything, the reverse." At his look she went on: "Macy consulted with us on the design for this class."
Historic marine architecture had been a hobby of hers before the Event; afterward it was useful in the extreme. Nantucket had also held plenty of documentation, plus experienced boat-builders whose skills could be scaled up with a little experimentation-and a few embarrassing, expensive failures. The craft that followed the fuming steam tug away from the squared-log piers of Westhaven's harbor, under the guns of Fort Pentagon, was the latest fruit of that ongoing collaboration. Alston's eye swept her long sleek lines with a pleasure that held more than a tinge of sadness, knowing her fate.
Only a single voyage across the Atlantic for you, poor bitch, she thought; the slight working of the hull against the tug's pull seemed to bespeak an eagerness to be away.
The design wasn't quite as sleek as the Guard's frigates; it was still long and lean, a smooth curve two hundred and forty feet from rounded stern to hollow-cheeked knife bows and long bowsprit, forty foot in the beam amidships, with three towering masts square-rigged save for the jibs, staysails, and a gaff mizzen. The long sweep of the ninety-foot poop was unbroken except for a low deckhouse before the wheels. In the waist were four cannon on a side, eighteen-pounders sold as surplus by the Guard when Leaton started delivering his cast-steel Dahlgrens, just the sort of thing for convincing a Bronze Age chief not to try ripping off the foreign merchants. The hold was twenty feet deep.
You can go anywhere with a ship like this, she thought. Anywhere, with over a thousand tons of cargo-the Merrimac displaced fourteen hundred tons-and fast, as well. Four hundred miles a day with a strong following wind, and careful design had made her an economical ship. Twenty-five hands could sail her 'round the world, or fight her if some local Big Man in an outrigger canoe decided to get unpleasant, or repair any but the most extreme damage anywhere there was wood and a quiet cove.
And I feel like a murderer, knowing what they're going to do to her. Her mouth quirked in an expression that was half bitterness; sending beautiful youngsters into harm's way wasn't anything new, at least.
"Carry on, then, Mr. Clammp," she said, feeling the swell of the river mouth giving way to the harder chop of the Bristol Channel.
"Aye aye, Commodore," he said. "We'll be joining the Fleet in Portsmouth Water before the end of the week.
He turned to the rail. "Prepare to cast off," he said quietly. Then, louder: "Lay aloft and loose all sail!"
"John Iraunanasson," the rahax of the Irauna said in English, extending his hand. "An honor, Commodore Alston-Kurlelo. Lieutenant Commander Kurlelo-Alston."
"The Republic thanks you for your people's cooperation," Alston said politely, taking the hand. It was strong but soft against the sword-callus on hers, the nails neatly trimmed and clean.
Inwardly, she blinked a little. The mannerly smooth-shaven young man with his spectacles, brown crew-cut hair, pants and jacket, laced shoes and tiny silver crucifix on a chain around his neck, faint smell of soap … is Daurthunnicar's great-nephew, she remembered. A boy of eight or so when Eagle had arrived in Alba, right after the Event, and "guest"-hostage- in Nantucket Town for three years after that.
Invaders from the mainland only a year before the Event, the Irauna had lost most of their land except for a patch around the Base in the post-war settlement. They'd put the advice of their mentors to enthusiastic use, though.
Now the land outside the five-sided fort that guarded Portsmouth Base was a checkerboard of neat fields colored straw-yellow, furrow-brown, pasture-green. They were divided by good graveled roads and surrounded by hedges, well-tended woodlots, houses of white-painted frame and plank or dark brick, and red hip-roofed barns. They centered on a thriving hamlet built in New England style, steepled church and foursquare Meetinghouse and school around a green, houses set among gardens beside a grid of streets, workshops and warehouses under the gates of the Base and down by the docks.
In fact, the shrunken teuatha of the Noble Ones had become the most eager of all the Sun People tribes to learn the new ways. They'd converted en masse to the Ecumenical Christianity-not being pleased with how their own Gods had treated them-and in recent years had produced a number of homegrown priests and missionaries for the Church, often of a terrifying earnestness. The Irauna had contributed more than their share of recruits for the Guard and crewfolk for Nantucketer vessels, too, and many did stints as temporary workers back on the Island. According to the Intelligence reports they'd even taken to holding Town Meetings, conducted in English with clerks of their own writing down the minutes and women allowed to vote. Perhaps the thoroughness of their defeat had helped. The Irauna had lost most of their fighting-men during the Alban War; they'd been Walker's first followers here when he arrived in the autumn of the Year 1, and suffered cruelly for it. A fair number of the survivors had fled with Walker and his Tartessian ally after the Battle of the Downs, and some of the remainder had ended up in Nantucket, children particularly. A leaven of those had returned to settle here after years in the Republic, like yeast in bread.