"Well, Micah, I am glad you came back imperforate," Victor replied. "Easier to get a new hat than a new messenger any day of the week, and that is a fact."
"Prices what they are nowadays, though, I reckon you can get yourself a messenger cheaper," Micah said. "Unless you've got specie in your pocket, anyway. A man with specie"-he sighed wistfully-"he can do anything, near enough. Sure ain't got my hands on any for a long time."
Victor maintained what he hoped was a prudent silence. The merchants and shopkeepers and taverners of Hanover discounted the Atlantean Assembly's paper no less steeply than anyone else. If anything, the Assembly's paper was worth less here than elsewhere in Atlantis. Having lain under English occupation for so long, Hanover was used to the sweet clink of silver and gold. Men with nothing but paper to spend had to spend a lot of it.
"Maybe you could do something about it," Micah said hopefully. "Shoot people who won't take paper at face-something like that, anyhow. You're the general, after all."
"Maybe." Victor knew the messenger sadly overestimated his power. The first merchant he shot for not overvaluing the Atlantean Assembly's paper would hurl all the others headlong into the loyalist camp. If that didn't lose the Assembly the war, nothing would. You simply could not ask a man to cheat himself, not even in the cause of liberty.
"What does the Frenchie say?" Micah asked, seeing he wouldn't get Victor to start executing tradesmen.
With a practiced thumb, Victor popped the wax seal off the letter. With his other thumb, just as practiced, he ordered Micah from the room. The messenger muttered as he left, but leave he did. He must have had a pretty good notion that Victor wouldn't tell him what de la Fayette had written. Still, even if the general commanding hadn't, he might have. How were you worse off for trying?
The marquis spoke in a straightforward fashion. He wrote a much more flowery French, one that showed off his learning. Victor could make sense of it, which was all that mattered. And, hav-
ing read through the letter, he found that de la Fayette made good sense, even if the nobleman used twice as many words to make it as he might have.
De la Fayette proposed a joint attack against Cornwallis' men two weeks hence, the aim being to push the redcoats away from Hanover and up toward Croydon. If the foe can be trapped in Croydon and defeated there, the whole of the coastal region from Hanover norm-wards shall be cleansed, he wrote. Should this be accomplished, how shall England continue to maintain that she governs Atlantis? Surely it would be the veriest impossibility.
"Surely," Victor said aloud. Did that mean England wouldn't keep trying to maintain it? Could the enemy be pinned in Croydon and… cleansed, to use the young Frenchman's word? Another good question. Victor read the letter again. Slowly, he nodded to himself. "Worth a try."
He spent a pile of paper and even some precious specie readying the army to move. As he'd thought, the sight of silver spurred Hanover's merchants and artisans to far greater exertions than did the Atlantean Assembly's notes. "Pretty soon you'll need to bring me a wheelbarrowful of paper to get yourself a wheelbarrowful of hardtack," a prominent baker told Victor.
"Things aren't so bad as that," protested Victor, who knew exactly how bad things were-he watched the exchange rate like a red-crested eagle.
"Didn't saw 'now.' Said 'pretty soon,'" the baker replied. "Nowadays, your barrow of paper'll buy you three barrows of hiscuit, easy." He still stretched things, but by less than Victor wished he would have.
Atlantean cavalry patrols ranged north and south of Hanover. They brought back several men-and one woman-who'd tried to abscond with word for General Cornwallis. One of the men had a better written summary of the Atlantean army's plans than Victor had prepared for himself. "Where did you come by this?" Victor demanded, wondering if his officers included another budding Biddiscombe.
"Made it up myself," the captured spy said, not without pride. "Asked around a little here, a little there, put the pieces together, and that there was what I got."
"You do know what you'll get now?" Victor asked.
"Reckon I do." The man shrugged. He was giving a good game show of not showing fear. "Chance you take, isn't it?"
"It is," Victor agreed. "You took it, and you lost."
He watched the spy hanged the next day. The fellow went up the stairs to the top of the gallows under his own power. More than a few men about to die needed help on their last journey. Jeering patriots cursed him as he climbed. His face was pale, but he had the spirit to nod back to them. The hangman tied his legs together, hooded him, and put the rope around his neck. The trap dropped. A snap said the noose broke the spy's neck. He got a quick death, then, and an easy one, as such things went.
Victor wondered how much that meant, and whether it meant anything. Had the riders caught all the loyalists slipping out of Hanover? Was some other man even now giving an English officer word as detailed as this dead spy would have brought? Or were several others passing on smaller pieces of the puzzle, pieces an intelligent enemy could fit together into a pattern that showed the truth?
It struck the commanding general as only too likely. He'd done what he could do, though. He had to hope it would prove enough.
One way to make it enough would have been to move out sooner than he'd planned and catch the English by surprise. Had he been operating alone, he would have done just that. But he had to take his allies into account. Moving out before the date agreed to with de la Fayette would also have caught the French by surprise. Since the whole point of this scheme was to catch the redcoats between the two armies, he couldn't afford to strike precipitately.
A fishing smack coming up the coast from Cosquer brought him a letter. As far as he knew, he'd never heard of Monsieur Marcel Freycinet, who inscribed his name on the outside of the letter. Puzzled, Victor broke the seal and unfolded the sheet of paper.
Monsieur Freycinet, it turned out, was grateful to him. As Victor read on, he decided he would much rather not have had the other man's gratitude. If he did have to have it, he would much rather not have known he had it. Freycinet turned out to be the planter who owned Louise, whose embraces Victor had so enjoyed when he was first making the Marquis de la Fayette's acquaintance.
And not only had he enjoyed them, it seemed. Louise was with child, and confidently asserted that Victor was the father. Victor could hardly call her a liar. If he hadn't fathered a child on her, it wasn't for lack of effort. Here was Blaise's query, come back to haunt him.
The situation was impossible. It was impossible, in fact, in several different ways. One reason Freycinet was grateful was that the baby, which would of course be a slave like its mother, would provide pure profit for him. Imagining a son of his on the auction block made Victor feel he was bathing in hellfire.
He couldn't very well claim the baby for his own, though. The mere thought of the scandal made him flinch. And the scandal wasn't the worst-far from it. How would Meg feel if he did such a thing? He thought of the three young children they'd buried together. If he produced an heir of his flesh, but produced that heir from a comely Negress… The humiliation wouldn't kill his wife, but it would kill everything the two of them had together.
When Louise opened her legs for him, he'd never dreamt there might be issue from their joining. He wondered why not. He didn't wonder long: he'd cared about his own pleasure, his own satiation, and very little else. But a woman who lay down with a man could get up with child. It happened all the time. If it didn't, there would be no more men and women.