Far off in the distance, gunshots rang out. Regardless of this surrender, men from Victor's cavalry went on pursuing Biddiscombe's Horsed Legion. If Biddiscombe's men rode far enough and fast enough, some of them might get away. Odds were some of them would. Victor hoped his own followers would beat those odds and hunt down every last one.
"How soon do you think we shall be sent back to England?" Cornwallis asked.
"Word of your surrender will have to cross the Atlantic," Victor said. "After that, it depends on how soon his Majesty's government sends ships hither to transport you, and on wind and wave. On wind and wave, your guess is as good as mine. On his Majesty's government, your guess should be better than mine.''
"I suspect you credit me with more than I deserve," Cornwallis said. "That his Majesty's government works is not to be denied. How it works… is not always given to mortal men to know."
"When the ships come to repatriate you, they will be most welcome: that, I promise," Victor said. "And I hope they will also bring representatives of King George's mysterious government so we can come to terms with it once for all and take our recognized place amongst the nations of the earth."
"And also so that peace may be restored between the kingdoms of England and France," de la Fayette added in French. He'd followed the interchange in English between Victor and Cornwallis, but preferred to comment in his own language.
"Yes, that will also be necessary," Victor agreed, switching to French himself. "France's aid to our cause, both on land and at sea, was most significant."
"You would never have won without it," Cornwallis said.
"There again we stray into might-have-beens," Victor said. "Do you believe his Majesty's government would have been prepared to put up with twenty years of raids and ambushes? Would it not eventually have decided Atlantis was a running sore, more costly of men and sterling than it was worth, and gone off and left us to our own devices?"
"After twenty years of such annoyances, it might well have done so," Cornwallis answered. "But your own followers also might well have given up the war as a bad job long before that, had they seen no more immediate prospect of victory."
Since that had always been Victor's greatest fear about having to resort to guerrilla warfare, he couldn't very well call his beaten foe a liar. Instead, he gruffly repeated, "Might-have-beens," and let it go at that.
"One thing more," Cornwallis said, some anxiety in his voice: "Now that we pass into your hands, I trust you will be able to victual us until such time as we return to the mother country?"
"We'll manage." Victor knew he still sounded gruff. He half-explained why: "I fear it won't be boiled beef one day and roast capon the next. Our commissary cannot come close to that, even for our own men. But your troops will go no hungrier than we do ourselves-on that you have my solemn word."
Cornwallis glanced over toward the Atlantean ranks. "Your soldiers are leaner than mine, as a general rule, but I own that they are not famished. Very well, sir. If we must tighten our belts, so be it. I know that, when you give your promise, he to whom you give it may rely on it."
"They are good men, the Atlanteans: better even than I expected before I came here," de la Fayette said, again in French. "Meaning no disrespect to you, General Cornwallis, but your country was foolish in the extreme in not doing everything it could to retain their affection and Loyalty."
"It could be that you have reason," Cornwallis replied in the same tongue. "Or it could be that nothing we might have done would have retained them. If a folk is determined to rise up, rise up it will, regardless of whether it has good cause."
Victor hadn't wanted to lead Atlantis into rebellion against England. But plenty of prominent Atlanteans had, among them men as eminent as Isaac Fenner and Custis Cawthorne. And England hadn't done everything it could to conciliate them-not even close.
All of which was water over the dam now. "No matter what we might have been, we are the United States of Atlantis" he said.
"And we shall see-the world will see-what comes of that."
Chapter 24
Spring in Croydon. Some but not all of the robins had flown south for the winter. All the birds that had were back now, hopping and singing and digging worms from the thawed ground. General Cornwallis was amused when Victor Radcliff named them. "Not my notion of robins," the English general declared.
"Yes, I know," Victor answered equably; he'd heard the like from Englishmen before. "Soon enough, you'll have your own little redbreasts back again."
Even as he spoke, redcoats filed aboard the ships the Royal Navy had sent to bring them home from Atlantis. Many of them were thinner than they had been when they stacked their muskets. But none had starved. They might have been hungry, but he knew the difference between hunger and hunger.
So did Cornwallis. "You have met the obligation you set yourself," he said. "No one could have treated captured foes more fairly."
"For which I thank you," Victor said. "We have no wish to be your enemies, as I tell Englishmen whenever I find the chance. So long as your country no longer seeks to impose its will on ours, I hope and trust we can become friends."
"May it be so," Cornwallis answered. "But you must work that out with the learned commissioners dispatched from London, not with me. I have no authority to frame a peace; mine lies-or, I should say, lay-solely in the military sphere."
Victor wasn't sure how much authority in the political sphere he had himself. He'd begun talks with King George's peace commissioners, but he'd had to warn them that the Atlantean Assembly might supersede him at any moment. So far, the Assembly hadn't seen fit to do so. Back in Honker's Mill, everyone still seemed amazed the United States of Atlantis had emerged victorious. Victor cast no aspersions on the Conscript Fathers for that. He was more than a little amazed himself.
"Have I your leave to take ship?" Cornwallis asked formally.
"You know you do," Victor said. "This is not your first visit to Atlantis. I hope one day you may come back here in peacetime, the better to see how this new experiment in liberty progresses."
"I should like that, though I can make no promises," Cornwallis said. "As a soldier, I remain at his Majesty's beck and call-provided he cares to call on a soldier proved unlucky in war."
"Well, I am similarly at the service of the Atlantean Assembly," Victor said.
"True." Cornwallis' nod was glum. "But you are not similarly defeated."
He sketched a salute. Victor held out his hand. Cornwallis clasped it. Then, slinging a duffel bag over his shoulder, the English general strode toward the pier and marched down it with his men. Boarding the closest English ship, he made his way back to the poop. He would have a cabin there, probably next to the captain's. And, aboard ship, he would no longer get his nose rubbed in Atlantean egalitarianism. He was a good fellow, but Victor doubted he would miss it.
A horseman trotted up. "General Radcliff, sir?"
"Yes?" Victor nodded. "What is it?"
"Letter for you, sir." The courier handed it to him and rode away.
Victor eyed the letter as if it were a mortar shell with the fuse hissing and about to explode. He kept waiting for orders from the Atlantean Assembly, and kept dreading the kind of orders the Assembly might give.
He would go on waiting a while longer. The letter was not addressed in the preternaturally neat hand of the Assembly's secretary. Nor was it bedizened with the red-crested eagle the Assembly had taken to using on its seal.