"You took that German cochon's word over mine," de la Fayette said hotly as the council broke up.
"I will take good advice wherever I can find it," Victor replied. "He was right: failure would cost more than we can afford, whilst success is apt to come down without the attack, if rather more slowly."
"Are you a general or a bookkeeper?"
"I've been both," Victor said. "One is not the opposite of the other."
De la Fayette's response was funny, sad, and pungently obscene all at once: very French, in other words. Then he added, "I wish I could change your mind."
"A lot of people have said that down through the years," Victor answered, with a shrug far more resigned than the ones he'd got from Saul Andrews. "Not many of them have done it, though. Radcliff's are good at going straight ahead or stopping short, not so good at turning."
"Good at stopping short when you should go straight ahead," de la Fayette observed, and walked off with the last word if not with what he wanted.
Bright sunshine greeted Victor when he got up the next morning. Squinting against its glare off snow, he knew his men would have got slaughtered had they tried to storm the English works. Even had he agreed to the attack the night before, he would have had to call it off now. Sometimes what a man wanted or didn't want had nothing to do with anything: he simply had to make the best of the hand he got dealt.
Victor set his men to shoveling snow out of the entrenchments that worked toward the redcoats' lines. Once they'd thrown out enough so they could move around fairly freely, they started hacking away at the frozen ground. The parallel advanced again.
Cornwallis' soldiers shoveled snow out of their trenches, too. They made it as plain as they possibly could that they wouldn't give up without a fight. They went right on shooting at the diggers in the parallel. Every so often, they hit somebody. Being able to go back to Croydon when they weren't on duty, they had better quarters than the Atlanteans and Frenchmen investing their lines. English ships kept coming into port, too, which meant the redcoats were bound to be better supplied than their foes.
But the English soldiers remained shut up in one tiny corner of Atlantis. Cornwallis didn't seem to think they had the strength to break out against Victor's army. If they could be beaten here, they would have to try some massive new invasion to make the war go on. If…
In due course, the French engineers pronounced themselves satisfied with the second parallel. A new sap angled toward the English line. With muskets and mortars, the redcoats showed how little they appreciated the compliment.
Then a fresh snowstorm shrieked down from the north. The digging had to stop for several days. Victor Radcliff swore and fumed, but he could do no more about the weather than Blaise or Sergeant Saul Andrews or any other mortal. All he could do was hope the storm blew itself out before long-and hope his troops stayed healthy long enough to let them attack the Englishmen. He could do no more about that than he could about the weather.
"At least the weather is cold," Victor said to Blaise. "There seem to be fewer sicknesses at this season than in warmer times."
"What about chest fever?" the Negro retorted. "What about catarrh? What about tire-what do you call it?-the grippe?"
"Well, those are troublesome," Victor admitted. "But I was thinking of fluxes of the bowels, and of the plague, and even of smallpox and measles. They are seen more often in spring and summer-especially the first two."
"They probably stay frozen in this snow and ice, the way meat does." Blaise rolled his eyes. "Who would have thought you could keep meat fresh as long as you froze it? In the country I come from, we have to smoke it or salt it or dry it or eat it right away. I never saw ice-I never imagined ice!-till you white men dragged me here."
"Kind of you to admit ice is good for something," Victor said. "You are not always so generous."
"If you could keep it in a box and use it for what it is good for, that would be fine," Blaise said. "When it lies all over the countryside and tries to freeze off your fingers and your toes and your prong, then that is too much." His shiver was melodramatic and sincere at the same time.
"We will be warmer once we break into Croydon," Victor said. "I have said the same to the men advancing the sap. I can think of nothing better calculated to inspire them to dig."
"It would inspire me, by the Lord Jehovah!" Blaise exclaimed. "But some of you white men like this weather. I have heard some of you say so. If you tell me now that these men are not mad, I will not believe you."
"I also think they are." Victor could take it no further than that, as he knew too well. Some Atlanteans-and some Frenchmen, too-did relish winter for its own sake. He liked cold weather himself, he liked coming in out of it, warming himself in front of a roaring fire, and sipping from a flagon of mulled wine or flip, the tasty concoction of rum and beer. Spending much time in it was a different story, as far as he was concerned.
Time dragged on. The sap moved closer to the redcoats' line, which meant they sent all the more musket balls and mortar shells and roundshot at the men digging it. The third parallel would be very close indeed. The sap that led out from it would break into the English works. After that, and after a clash and a show of resistance, General Cornwallis could yield with honor.
He could, yes. But would he? In a fight to the finish, his men had at least some hope of beating the Atlanteans and Frenchmen opposing them. Since he led the last English force in Atlantis, mightn't he feel obligated to fight as hard as he could? If he did win, he kept the war alive.
Every time Victor tried to decide what Cornwallis would do, he came up with a different answer. The English general certainly was conscious of his honor; Victor had seen that in the fight against the French settlers. Was he also conscious of the political demands his position imposed on him? How could he fail to be? And yet people weren't always sensible or clever-far from it. There was no sure way to judge till attackers swarmed into the breach.
Then the Atlantean commander found something new to worry about, for a courier from Hanover brought him a letter in a hand he found far too familiar. He'd never dreamt he would recognize Marcel Freycinet's script so readily. No matter what he'd dreamt, he did.
The letter was cheerful enough. Freycinet assured him that Louise was doing well, and that the slave and her owner both anticipated her safe passage through birthing time. Take heart, Monsieur le General, and be of good cheer, Freycinet wrote. Such things have happened since the days of Adam and Eve. You have nothing to be ashamed of; rather, pride yourself on your virility.
Victor would have been happier to do that had any of the children Meg gave him lived to grow up. He could not wish for Louise's baby to die untimely… but neither could he wish his sole descendant to be sold on the auction block like a cow or a sheep. Nor could he buy the child himself, not when doing so would show his wife he'd been unfaithful.
That left… Victor burned Monsieur Freycinet's letter on the brazier in his tent. It left nothing he could see. Nothing at all. He'd been scrabbling for a way out since he first learned his bedwarmer was with child. He had yet to find one, scrabble as he would.
Since he couldn't do anything about what was going on far to the south, he threw his energy into the siege of Croydon. Even in the snow, he kept digging parties hacking away at the hard ground. A thaw came just after New Year's Day. As the last one had, it turned saps and parallels into morasses and made parapets slump.
No doubt the redcoats were similarly discommoded. But their works were already in place. They weren't trying to extend them and trying not to drown at the same time.
"Confound it, there has to be something between ground that's rock and ground that's soup!" Victor complained.