"What can you do about it?" the man asked.
Victor Radcliff considered again. He could go himself to investigate… if he didn't mind entrusting command in the vital eastern regions to someone else. He could send someone he trusted to see what was going on around Avalon… if he didn't mind depriving himself of that man's services for some weeks. Or he could simply wait to see which rumors proved true.
Had any of the rumors Matthew Radcliffe cited been that the Royal Navy was about to try to seize Avalon, he would have dispatched someone on the instant to investigate. As things were… With a sigh and a shrug, he answered, "I believe I shall await developments, both in the west and here. I do not think I'll need to wait long in either case."
Salty pork sausage, hard bread, and coffee enlivened with barrel-tree brandy-not the worst breakfast Victor Radcliff had ever had. As far as he remembered, his worst breakfast was some raw pine nuts and a roasted ground katydid. The flightless bugs grew as big as mice. You could eat them if you got hungry enough, and Victor had.
Atlantis hadn't had any rats or mice till they crossed the Atlantic with the first settlers. Now they were as common in towns and in farms as they were back in England. Away from human settlement, the pale green katydids still prevailed.
As he had more than once before, Victor wondered why Atlantis had no native viviparous quadrupeds but bats. England and Europe did; so did Terranova. Yet Atlantis, which lay between them in the middle of the ocean, didn't. It was as if God had arranged a special creation here.
Many of His former productions were far scarcer than they had been when Edward Radcliffe came ashore in 1452. Englishmen who felt unfriendly called Atlanteans honkers. Yet the great flightless birds were extinct in settled country east of the Green Ridge Mountains. They were rare anywhere east of the mountains, and growing scarce in the wilder west, too.
The same held true for the great red-crested eagles that had preyed on them-and that also didn't mind preying on people and sheep. Atlantis used the red-crested eagle to difference its flag from England's, but the bird itself was seldom seen these days.
Oil thrushes, though less drastically reduced than honkers or eagles, were less common than they had been. Few eastern farmers found enough of them to render them down for lamp oil. The first settlers' tales said that had been a common practice.
Along with people, the oil thrushes had to worry about foxes and cats and wild dogs these days. Even in the woods, there were more and more mice. Oak and ash and elm and nut trees grew in the woods, too, while deer roamed where honkers had.
Taken all in all, Atlantis became more like Europe year by year. Victor resolved that it wouldn't come to resemble Europe in one way: it wouldn't supinely submit to rule from a tyrannical king. If General Howe didn't understand that…
"General! Oh, General!"
When somebody called for him like that, Victor knew the news wouldn't be good. He wished he'd poured more brandy into the coffee. He still could… but no. He gulped a last mouthful of sausage. For a second, it didn't want to go down; he felt like a small snake engulfing a large frog.
Then it headed south and he stepped out of his tent. "I'm here," he called. "What is it?"
"Well, General, now we know how come the redcoats ain't come after us even with the weather getting good and everything," the courier replied. He'd dismounted and was rubbing his blowing horse.
"Perhaps you do. If so, you have the advantage of me," Victor said. "If you would be so good as to share your enlightenment…"
"Sure will." The man went on rubbing down the horse. "There you go, boy… The redcoats… Well, the truth of it is, most of the bastards in New Hastings climbed into ships and sailed away."
"Sailed away where?" Victor demanded. "To Hanover? To Croydon? Back to England?" If it was back to England, they'd won the war… hadn't they?
"Nope. None of them places," the courier said. "Word is, the ships they were on sailed south."
"South? To Freetown? To the settlements we took away from France?"
"General, I'm mighty sorry, but I don't know the answer to that," the man replied. "I don't believe anybody does, except the damned Englishmen-and they didn't tell anybody."
"Too bad!" Victor Radcliff said. More often than not, somebody blabbed to a whore or a saloonkeeper or a friend. Maybe someone had, but the courier hadn't got wind of it. Then something else occurred to Victor: "How big a garrison did they leave behind?"
"Not too big," the courier said. "And if we try and take New Hastings away from them, what happens wherever they are heading farther south?"
That question had claws as sharp as those of any red-crested eagle. "Are they taking the war into the old French settlements? If they seize tight hold of those, can they move up against us the way Kersauzon did?" Do I want to find out? He knew he didn't.
"General, how in blazes am I supposed to know that?" The man who'd brought the news sounded reproachful.
Victor couldn't blame him. He didn't know the answer himself. He only knew England had widened the war, and he'd have to find some way to respond. He muttered under his breath. One more thing he didn't know was how the still largely French population of the southern settlements would react when English and English Atlantean armies started marching and countermarching down there.
Many French Atlanteans resented England for taking their settlements away from King Louis and bestowing them on King George. But they also resented English Atlanteans for swarming down into their lands and grabbing with both hands after the conquest. And, of course, settlers from England and France had been rivals here since the long-vanished days of Edward Radcliffe and Francois Kersauzon.
Other related questions bubbled up in Victor's mind. How much would the whites-French and English alike-in the southern settlements resent the redcoats if General Howe tried to weaken slavery down there? How much help would he get from the enslaved Negroes and copperskins in the south if he did?
And what would France do when a large English army started traipsing through lands that had been French less than a generation before? Maybe nothing, but maybe not, too. Even though France had lost settlements in Atlantis, in Terranova, and in India, she'd recovered from the late war remarkably well. If she wanted to resent English incursions, she could.
Or am I letting hope run away from reality? Victor wondered. He couldn't judge what France was likely to do. He could think of three men from the Atlantean Assembly who knew more about that than he did: Isaac Fenner, Custis Cawthorne, and Michel du Guesclin.
The courier said, "You look like you just had a good idea, General."
"Do I?" Victor Radcliff shrugged. "Well, I can hope so, anyway."
Deliberating in a three-hundred-year-old church in a town of respectable size, the Atlantean Assembly made people who saw it in action think of the English Parliament that had treated Atlantis so shabbily.
Deliberating in a chamber that was half a tavern's common room and half a tent run up alongside to give more space, in a hamlet with the illustrious appellation of Honker's Mill, the Assembly seemed oddly diminished. The men were no less eloquent, the issues they debated no less urgent. But their setting made them seem no more than farmers gathered together to grumble about the way life was treating them.
New Hastings was a city. Honker's Mill would never be anything but a village. The honkers that had helped name it were long gone. The stream that powered the gristmill was too small to float anything more than a rowboat. The road that crossed the stream went from nowhere to nowhere. As far as Victor was concerned, it went through nowhere traversing Honker's Mill.
Isaac Fenner had got word of General Howe's movement south before Victor brought it. That encouraged Victor; the Assembly needed to know what was going on if it was to make sensible decisions. To have a chance to make sensible decisions, anyhow, Victor thought cynically. Even knowing what was going on, some Atlantean Assemblymen hadn't the vaguest idea what to do about it.