Up until a little more than a century before, Avalon had been a pirates' roost. Did Matthew Radcliffe carry some of the freebooters' blood in his veins? Victor wouldn't have been surprised. His distant kinsman certainly seemed ready, even eager, to brawl.
"This won't be the Battle of the Strand, one fight and it's over," Victor warned. "This will be a war like the last one-worse than the last one, unless I miss my guess. England won't want to let us go our own way."
"No. She wants us to go her way, and she aims to drag us along if we don't care to follow on our own," Isaac Fenner said. "Is that what you have in mind for Atlantis till the end of time, Radcliff? Is that why your forefathers first took folk away from the greedy kings and nobles on the other side of the sea?"
There were days when Victor Radcliff wished he sprang from a less illustrious family. This was one of those days. People expected things from him because of who his forefathers were. He could have done without the compliment, if it was one.
"England is the greatest kingdom in Europe. England is the richest empire in the world," he said. "Even if she runs short of her own soldiers, she can buy poor men from the German princes to do her fighting for her. We are… what we are. Can we fight her and hope to win?"
"Can we bend the knee to her and look at ourselves in the glass afterwards?" Matthew Radcliffe returned. "You are our best hope, coz, but you are not our only hope. We aim to fight with you or without you."
"Chances with you are better than without you, though," du Guesclin said.
"They are," Abednego Higgins agreed. "We need a general we can all respect. If anybody in Atlantis fills the bill, you're the man."
I've never been a general. The protest died before Victor let it out. What Atlantean had? He'd led a good-sized force of soldiers in the field, which put him one up on almost everyone else who opposed England.
"You gentlemen are mad," he said: one last protest. Uncle Bobby stood up from his chair to bow. "We are, sir. We are," he agreed. "But it's a grand madness. Will you join us in it?"
Victor looked around. He'd been comfortable here ever since coming home from the war against France and Spain. He'd wanted to live out the rest of his days as a gentleman farmer, not as a man of war. But, if Atlantis called on him, what could he do but answer the call?
He sighed. "Join you I will. I note that it was our idea, not mine. May none of us ever have cause to regret it."
"Oh, I expect we will, sooner or later-probably sooner." Abednego Higgins was a man of melancholy temperament. Victor wasn't, or not especially, but he suspected the same thing.
But then all five men from the Atlantean Assembly crowded around him, pumping his hand and slapping his back and telling him what a lion, what a hero, he was. If he'd believed a quarter of what they told him, he would have been sure he could run every redcoat out of Atlantis by day after tomorrow at the latest. Fortunately-or, odds were, unfortunately-he knew better.
News from the east came slowly. That was one of the reasons Victor Radcliff had settled where he did. More often than not, he was happier not knowing. His livelihood didn't depend on hearing things before other people could.
If he was going to take up the sword again, though… "Must you do this?" Margaret asked. She hadn't wanted him going off to fight the French Atlanteans and their overseas reinforcements, either, and they weren't even married then.
"If I don't, someone else will-and worse," he said. "The set-dements are going to rise up against England. No, they've already risen up, and they won't quiet down till they win or till they're too beaten to fight any more. The redcoats have pulled out of New Hastings."
The redcoats had pulled out of New Hastings more than two weeks before. He'd only just got the news. That was one of the reasons he needed to travel east. Farming might not depend on the latest news. War did.
"What difference does it make to you whether King George orders Atlantis about or we make our own mistakes?" his wife demanded.
"I don't want anyone across the sea telling me how many pounds I owe on this farm," Victor said. "If some Englishman can do that, he can take it away from me, too."
"So can a honker from New Hastings," Meg retorted. Properly speaking, only people from New Hastings (and perhaps Bredestown) were honkers. Englishmen were in the habit of using the name for-or against-anybody from Atlantis.
"At least I have some say in what those people decide," Victor said. "London won't pay attention to me. London never pays attention to Atlantis, not unless someone else is trying to take it away… or unless Parliament decides it needs to squeeze money from us."
"Whether London takes it or we do, the money's gone," Margaret said.
Victor grunted. "I should like some choice in where it goes. London will use it to pay fat, sweating soldiers to tyrannize over us. Whereas if we spend it ourselves, we'll-"
"Use it to pay fat, sweating soldiers to keep England from tyrannizing us," his wife broke in.
He stared at her. Such sarcastic gibes were usually his province. He couldn't even tell her she was wrong, because she was much too likely to be right If Atlantis was to cast off the mother country's yoke, it would need to assume the trappings of other nations. He said the most he felt he could say: "They'll be our soldiers, not redcoats or those German barbarians from Brunswick and Hesse and God knows where."
"Oh, hurrah," Meg said. "Do you think they'll come cheaper on account of that?" He didn't answer, mostly because he thought no such thing. Understanding as much, Meg gave him a knowing nod. "I see."
"What would you have me do?" Victor asked. "Tell the gentlemen of the Atlantean Assembly that I've changed my mind and will not fight for them? They will carry on regardless, the only difference being the greater likelihood of their defeat and our subjection."
"I would have you-" Margaret Radcliff broke off, tears filling her eyes. "What I would have you do doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what Atlantis would have you do. Atlantis would have you carry on till you catch a musket ball in your teeth, and then proclaim you a fallen hero to rally more fools to the cause."
Again, she was much too likely to know what she was talking "j about. As patiently and calmly as he could, Victor said, "I don't intend to get shot, Meg."
"Who does?" she retorted. "But the graveyards fill up even so. Died for his country, much too young, the tombstones say. I want you to live for your country."
"If you think I want anything else, you are very much mistaken," Victor said. "But Atlantis is my country. Shall I pretend I have not got one, or that I care not who rules here?"
"No-o-o," Meg said slowly, in a way that could mean nothing but yes. Then she sighed a wintry sigh. "It may be necessary, Victor, but that makes it no easier for me."
"I'm sorry. By God, I am sorry. I wish England weren't doing any of this. I'd like nothing better than to live here in peace and bring in my crops every fall," Victor said. "But life gives what it gives, not what you like."
He wished he could talk about passing the land down to their children. To say anything along those lines, though, would only dredge up pain older and deeper than any about his marching off to war. Losing children young was hard on men, but harder on the women who bore them.
They both knew how the argument would end. He would leave the farm and lead whatever armies the Atlantean Assembly scraped together against the ferocious professionals from the mother country. He'd served with those professionals in the war against the French Atlanteans and France and Spain. He knew their virtue, their unflinching courage, their skill. Fighting alongside such men was a pleasure. Fighting against them would be anything but.