Cornwallis, of course, wasn't the only one gnashing his teeth as the Army of the Atlantean Assembly got ready to winter in Hanover. Quite a few Atlanteans who lived in Hanover felt the same way. Some of them were loyalists down to their toes. Others had made a lot of money providing the redcoats with food and drink and complaisant women.
One of the locals, a fat taverner named Absalom Hogarth, looked apprehensively at Victor Radcliff. Victor sat in the study that had once belonged to his great-grandfather and was now owned by his merchant cousin, Erasmus. A dusty honker's skull stared at him with empty eye sockets. Along with the antique brass sextant and leather-bound folios, it had sat in that study for a long, long time.
Absalom Hogarth didn't seem to see any of them, or the inquiring mind that had accumulated them. Hogarth's gimlet-eyed gaze was focused on Victor as sharply as the sun's rays brought together in a point by a burning glass.
Victor had already talked to a lot of people like the tavern-keeper. They depressed him, but he had to do the job. Steepling his fingers, he spoke in tones as neutral as he could make them: "You look to have done pretty well for yourself while the English ruled the roost here."
"Well, General, as a matter of fact I did," Hogarth said.
That was a response out of the ordinary. "Tell me more," Victor urged, still neutral.
The taverner shrugged broad shoulders. Chins bobbed up and down. "Not much to tell. The redcoats were here. I saw to their wants. I would've done the same for you and yours. By God, General, I will do the same for you and yours."
He looked as if he expected Victor to pin a medal on him for his selfless patriotism. Maybe he did. More likely, years of dealing with-and, no doubt, bilking when he saw the chance-other people had made him a better than tolerable actor. "Let me make sure I understand you," Victor said slowly.
"Please." Absalom Hogarth all but radiated candor.
"You say you will treat us the same way as you treated the English."
"So I do. So I shall." The taverner sounded proud of himself.
"You say you would have treated us as well as you treated them had we held Hanover in their place."
"I not only say it, General, I mean it."
"Then you must be saying that who rules Atlantis, whether she be free in the hands of her own folk or groaning under the yoke of English tyranny, is a matter of complete and utter indifference to you."
"I do say that… Wait!" Too late, Hogarth realized the trap had just dropped out from under him. He sent Victor an accusing stare. "You're trying to confuse me. Of course I'm an Atlantean patriot."
"Why 'of course,' Mr. Hogarth? Plenty of Atlanteans aren't. Plenty of Atlanteans in this very city aren't," Victor said. "I know for a fact that the so-called loyalists had little trouble recruiting their rabble here." Too many of the Atlanteans who fought for King George were anything but a rabble, and Victor knew it, however much he wished they were.
"None of them could recruit me," Hogarth said virtuously.
Victor eyed his bulk. "There, sir, I believe you. You are not made for marching, and every horse in Atlantis must also know relief that you did not choose the cavalryman's life."
"Heh," Hogarth said. Were his position stronger, he might have added a good deal more. He tried a jolly fat man's chuckle instead. It came off well, but perhaps not quite well enough. He must have sensed as much, for he sounded nervous when he asked, "Ah, what do you aim to do with me?"
"I've been wondering the same thing, Mr. Hogarth," Victor replied. "If I treated you as you deserve, you-or your heirs-would have scant cause to love me thereafter." He waited for that to sink in. By the way Hogarth gulped, it did. "On the other hand, you cannot expect me to love you for playing the weather vane."
"You have a way with words, you do." The taverner kept trying.
"Here is what I will do," Victor Radcliff said after more thought, "I will fine you a hundred pounds, payable in sterling, for giving aid and comfort-chiefly comfort, or it would go harder for you- to the enemy."
"A hundred pounds!" This time, Hogarth's yelp of anguish seemed altogether unrehearsed.
"A hundred pounds," Victor repeated. "Be thankful it's not more, for I doubt not you have it. After that, you shall do as you offered, and serve us in the fashion to which the redcoats became accustomed. And if I hear any complaints of cheating or gouging… But I won't… will I?"
"No, indeed, General. I am an honest man-not a, a political man, but an honest man," Hogarth said.
Victor Radcliff didn't laugh in his face, judging him humiliated enough. A world that held such oddities as cucumber slugs and flapjack turtles might also hold an honest taverner or two. It might, but Victor didn't think he'd ever set eyes on one before. He didn't think he was looking at one now, either.
"Just pay your assessment," he said wearily. "Pay your assessment, and try to remember you're an Atlantean, not a damned Englishman."
"I'll do it," Absalom Hogarth declared. And maybe he would, and maybe he wouldn't. Chances were he didn't know yet himself, or care.
There were plenty more in Hanover like Hogarth: men who were loyal, or at least obedient, to whoever'd paid them last And there were others who'd unquestionably leaned toward King George and who didn't care to lean away. Some were silent; others spat defiance at him. They called themselves patriots. He hated the word in their mouths, but had trouble denying the justice of their using it.
Justice… The worst offenders (no, the worst enemies, for they thought they were doing the Lord's work, and in no way offending) had fled with Cornwallis' men, knowing what was likely to await them if they found themselves in Atlantean hands. Victor didn't hang anyone who remained behind. He did send a handful of men out of his lines with no more than the clothes on their backs. Whatever they held in Hanover he confiscated in the name of the Atlantean Assembly.
"I reckoned your horde a pack of thieves before you broke in," one of the men who was to be expelled told him. "You do nothing to make me believe myself mistaken."
"You love us not," Victor said. "If you war against us, do you doubt we shall love you not in return?"
"A Christian man loves his enemies," the loyalist returned.
"Well, then, we show our love as you showed yours," Victor said. He pointed north, in the direction of Croydon and, much closer, the nearest English lines. "Now get you gone."
"Maybe you should have been rougher," Blaise said after the last of the expulsions and confiscations. "Our men would like to see some of those scoundrels go to the gallows."
"Scoundrels, is it?" Victor managed a twisted smile. "Sometimes the words you know surprise me. Sometimes it's the ones you don't know."
"Did I go wrong? Is scoundrels not what they are?" Blaise asked seriously.
"Scoundrels is what they are," Victor assured him. "It's a fancy word for what they are, but not a wrong one."
"Scoundrels." Blaise said it again, with relish. "I like the sound It makes them seem like dogs."
"Like dogs?" Victor was briefly puzzled. Then he realized what the Negro had to mean. "Oh, I see. Like spaniels."
"Those dogs, yes. With the floppy ears," Blaise said. Maybe he told the joke to a printer, or maybe someone else had the same idea, for a few days later a newspaper had a front-page woodcut of several prominent men leaving the city with sorrowful expressions and big spaniel ears, let the dogs go! it said beneath the cartoon. Custis Cawthorne showed more wit-and hired more talented engravers-but Custis was in Paris these days. Artistic or not, the woodcut struck Victor as effective. That would do.