"I don't think so." Victor heard the slammed door in his own voice.
Blaise must have, too. "Well, I bet you'll change your mind one of these days," he said. "Won't be this one, though." And he stopped probing at Victor. Even Meg might have kept at it
So might the Marquis de la Fayette, but another brisk skirmish with the redcoats the next morning gave him something else to think about. He sent some of the French regulars on a looping march to the north to try to drive in the enemy's right wing. Cornwallis' soldiers, or the loyalists serving beside them, must have sniffed out the maneuver: the enemy fell back half a mile or so rather than waiting to withstand an attack in a disadvantageous position.
Half a mile closer to Croydon, then. If the Atlanteans and the French kept moving forward at that rate, they'd get to the northeastern city… some time toward the end of next winter. Victor repented of making such calculations. Then he repented of repenting, for he knew he couldn't help making them.
"I wish the English would stay to be netted," de la Fayette said. "It would make the whole undertaking so much easier."
"Well, yes," Victor agreed, deadpan. "And if a beefsteak cut itself up and hopped into your mouth bite by bite after you cooked it, that would make eating easier, too."
The French noble raised an eyebrow. "It could be that you take me less seriously than you might."
From a man of a certain temper, such a statement could be the first step on the path that led to a duel. Did de la Fayette have that kind of temper? Victor Radcliff didn't care to find out. He'd never fought a duel, nor did he want to fight his first one now. "Iwas trying to make a joke," he said. "If I offended you, I did not mean to, and I am sorry for it."
"Then I shall say no more about it," de la Fayette replied. And, to his credit, he didn't.
North of Hanover, more fields were planted in rye and oats and barley than in wheat. That was partly because the folk of Croydon brewed a lot of beer. Oh, some Germans brewed beer from wheat, but most folk preferred barley. Victor knew he did. But the main reason the other grains gradually supplanted wheat was that the growing season got short up here. When the weather stayed good, or even reasonable, wheat ripened well enough. But, if you were going to lose your crop about one year in four, you had to own a certain boldness of character to put it in the ground in the first place. Farmers of the more stolid sort chose grains that grew faster.
"Barley and rye, in France, are for peasants," the Marquis de la Fayette said. "And oats… Oats are for horses."
"Englishmen say the same thing about Scots and their oatmeal," Victor answered. "But more than one Scot has seen that English farmers eat oats, too."
"Do you?" the nobleman asked.
"If I eat katydids, I'm not likely to stick at oats, Monsieur. And I don't-I like oatmeal myself. Nor should you. I've already seen that your French soldiers don't turn up their noses at horsemeat. If you eat the beasts that eat the oats, you may as well eat the oats, too."
"It could be. But then again, it could also be otherwise," de la Fayette replied. "The delicate woodcock feasts on earthworms, while I should be less eager to do the same."
"A point." As Victor Radcliff thought about it, a slow smile spread across his face. "As a matter of fact, the same thing occurred to me not so very long ago, although in aid of our native oil thrushes rather than woodcocks."
"There you are, then." The marquis looked around. "And here we are. If we keep pressing forward, very soon we shall force General Cornwallis and his Englishmen back into Croydon."
"Let's hope we do," Victor said. If de la Fayette had made the same calculation he had himself, the Frenchman would have realized they wouldn't make the redcoats hole up in Croydon all that soon. Plainly, de la Fayette hadn't. Which meant… what? Most likely that de la Fayette was of a more optimistic, less calculating temperament. Victor laughed at himself. As if I didn't already know that.
Most of the people who lived north of Hanover sprang from one
or another of the sterner Protestant sects that had sprung up in England and Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their descendants still looked as if they disapproved of everything under the sun. If soldiers in the Atlantean army argued about God's nature or will, chances were at least one of them came from the state of Croydon.
Fortunately, the locals' grim disapproval extended to Cornwallis and his followers. "That man is assuredly hellhound," one farmer told Victor, sounding as certain as if he'd checked St. Peter's registry and discovered the English general's name wasn't there. (A joke Victor refrained from making: the Croydonite would have discovered Papist pretensions in him if he had, regardless of whether they were really there.)
Instead of joking, Victor asked, "How do you know that… ah…?"
"My name is Eubanks, General-Barnabas Eubanks," the local said. "As for how I know, did I not see him with my own eyes take a drink of spirituous liquor? 'Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging,' the Good Book says, which makes it true. And did I not hear him most profanely take the name of the Lord in vain, that also being prohibited by Holy Scripture?"
He could as easily have seen Victor drink rum or heard him blaspheme. The profession of arms lent itself to such pastimes, perhaps more than any other. If this Barnabas Eubanks didn't understand that… But a glance at Eubanks' stern, pinched features told Victor he did understand. He simply wasn't prepared to make any allowances. Yes, he was a Croydon man, all right.
"While I should be glad to see General Cornwallis in the infernal regions, I find myself more immediately concerned with his earthly whereabouts," Victor said. "What did you hear from him besides his blasphemy?"
"He and one of his lackeys were speaking of how they purposed making a stand in Pomphret Landing." Eubanks' mouth tightened further; Victor hadn't believed it could. "The place suits them, being a den of iniquity," Eubanks added.
All Victor knew about Pomphret Landing was that it lay between Hanover and Croydon. Until this moment, he'd never heard that it was as one with Sodom and Gomorrah. "How is it so wicked?" he inquired.
"I am surprised you do not know. I am surprised its vileness is not a stench in the nostrils of all Atlantis," Barnabas Eubanks replied. "Learn, then, that Pomphret Landing supports no fewer than three horrid taverns, that it has a theater presenting so-called dramas, and"-he lowered his voice in pious horror-"there is within its bounds a house of assignation in which women sell their bodies for silver!"
You silly twit! What do you expect sailors coming off the sea to do but drink and screw? No, Victor didn't shout it, which only proved he was learning restraint as he grew older. He also wondered where the wanton women's partners came by silver in these hard times. He didn't ask that, either. All he said was, "The theater doesn't sound so bad."
"Oh, but it is," Eubanks said earnestly. "The plays presented encourage adultery, freethinking, and all manner of other such sinful pastimes."
"I see," Victor murmured. If we can drive the redcoats out of Pomphret Landing without smashing the theater or burning it down, I may watch a play there myself One more thing he didn't tell his narrow-minded, if patriotic, informant.
Forcing Cornwallis to pull back from Pomphret Landing wouldn't be so simple. The town sat on the east bank of the Pomphret. Cornwallis' engineers had burnt or blown up the bridges over the river. Locals told Victor there was no ford for some mile inland. English artillerists fired their field guns across the Pomphret at his mounted scouts. Most of those shots missed, as such harassing fire commonly did. But de la Fayette's Frenchmen butchered two horses that met cannon balls. And the Atlanteans buried a man who also made one's sudden and intimate acquaintance.