Custis Cawthorne burst out laughing, too. "All this rushing might have been avoided with a faster start," he observed. "But then, that proves true more often than any of us commonly cares to contemplate."
Fenner, implacable as one of the Three Fates, held out his hand to Victor. "Kindly let me see this so-called agreement."
"No," Victor said.
Shadows swooped across Fenner's face as it sagged in surprise. "What?" he sputtered. "You dare refuse?"
"Too right, I do," Victor answered. "God may know what miserable hour of the night it is, but, not being inclined to fumble out my pocket watch, I haven't the faintest notion. I am certain the treaty will keep till daylight. For now, Isaac, shut up and go to bed."
"But-!" Fenner seemed about to explode.
"Isaac…" Custis Cawthorne spoke his friend's name in a voice full of gentle, amused melancholy.
"What is it?" Fenner, by contrast, snapped like the jaws of a steel trap.
"Shut up and go to bed. I intend to." As if to prove as much, Cawthorne shrugged out of his coat and began undoing the toggles on his tunic.
His colleague's face was a study in commingled amazement and fury. Fenner's red hair warned of his temper, as a light on a lee shore warned of dangerous rocks. But then the Bredestown Assemblyman also started to laugh. "All right, all right-just as you please. I see there are two beds in the room. Who shall have which?"
"This one is mine." Victor pointed to the unmade one, in which he'd been sleeping. "The two of you may share the other, this being the price you pay for disturbing me in so untimely a fashion."
Isaac Fenner looked ready to argue about that, too. Cawthorne, by contrast, took off his shoes. Grunting, he bent to reach under the bed Victor had designated. He picked up the chamber pot that sat there. "I trust you gentlemen will excuse me…" he said, politely turning his back. When he'd finished, he presented the pot to Fenner. "Isaac?"
"Oh, very well." Fenner used the pot while Cawthorne lay down and made himself comfortable. Victor stretched out on his own bed. Blaise was in the servants' quarters downstairs. Chances were the Negro was asleep right this minute, too. Victor wished he could say the same.
"You'd better hurry up," he told Isaac Fenner. "This candle won't last much longer." Sure enough, it guttered and almost went out.
Fenner got into bed. The ropes supporting the mattress creaked under his weight. "Good night, sweetheart," Custis Cawthorne told him, as if men didn't sleep two or three or four to a bed all the time in taverns or inns.
"Good night-darling," Fenner retorted.
Victor blew out the candle. Blackness plunged down from the ceiling and swallowed the room whole. Victor didn't know about how his eminent Atlantean comrades fared after that: he went back to sleep himself too soon to have the chance to find out.
Down in the common room the next morning, Blaise looked grouchy. He usually drank tea, but a steaming mug of coffee sat in front of him now. He sipped from it as he attacked a ham steak and a plate of potatoes fried in lard. When Victor asked what the trouble was, his factotum sent him a wounded look.
"Some damnfool commotion in the nighttime," Blaise answered, swallowing more coffee. "Didn't you hear it? I thought it was plenty to wake the dead. I know it woke me, and I had a devil of a time getting back to sleep again afterwards."
"Oh," Victor said. "That."
"Yes, that. You know what it was?"
After a glance at the stairway, Victor nodded. "Here it comes now, as a matter of fact."
Blaise blinked as Isaac Fenner came down. He frankly gaped when Custis Cawthorne followed. "But he's in France," Blaise blurted.
"I thought so, too," Victor said. "In point of fact, though, he was in my room last night, wanting to see the treaty I hammered out with Oswald and Hartley yesterday. Well, actually, no: Isaac was the one who wanted to see it just then. Custis came with him, though."
The Atlantean dignitaries bore down on the table where Victor and Blaise sat. Without so much as a good-morning, Fenner said, "You have the terms with you?"
"I crave your pardon," Victor said. "I must have left them up in the room. After I break my fast, you may rest assured I shall let you examine them at your leisure."
That produced the desired effect: it incensed Fenner. "Devil fry you black as a griddle cake forgotten over the fire!" he shouted, loud enough to make everyone in the common room stare at him. "Why did you not have the consideration, the common courtesy, the-the plain wit, to bring them down with you? Think on how much time you might have saved, man! Just think!"
"Easy, Isaac, easy. You might do some thinking yourself, instead of bellowing like a branded calf." Custis Cawthorne set a hand on Fenner's arm. "Unless I find myself much mistaken, General Radcliff would end up holding your leg in his hand if he pulled it any harder."
"What?" Fenner gaped, goggle-eyed.
"I do have the treaty here, Isaac," Victor said. The serving girl chose that moment to come up and ask him what he wanted. He got to prolong Fenner's agony by hashing over the virtues and vices of ham, sausages, and bacon. Having finally picked sausages and sent the girl back to the kitchen, Victor produced the draft. "Here is what the Englishmen and I have arrived at. Why don't you and Custis sit down and look it over and order something to put ballast in your bellies?"
"A capital notion," Cawthorne said. "Capital." He proceeded to follow Victor's suggestion. Isaac Fenner stood there till the older man tugged at his sleeve. "You wanted to see this. Now that you can, aren't you going to?"
"Errr-" Fenner had to take a deep breath to stop making the noise. He sat down most abruptly. Almost as if against his will, he started reading over Cawthorne's shoulder. Then he tugged the paper away from the other man, so that it lay on the table between them.
The serving girl came back with Victor's breakfast. She smiled at Fenner and Cawthorne. "What would you gents care for?"
"I don't care for this fifth article-not even slightly," Fenner said.
"She means for breakfast, Isaac," Custis Cawthorne said. "As for me, I'll take the ham and potatoes, and a mug of ale to wash'em down."
"Breakfast." By the way Fenner said it, the possibility had slipped his mind." Hmm… What Custis chose will suit me well enough, too."
Victor wouldn't have given better than three to two that Fenner had even heard what Custis Cawthorne chose for breakfast. The answer was enough to make the serving girl go away, though, which was what the Bredestown Assemblyman had in mind. Fenner's forefinger descended on the treaty. "This fifth article-" he began again.
"England wanted us to compel the states to undo their measures against the loyalists," Victor said.
"Good luck!" Cawthorne exclaimed. "We'd be fighting half a dozen wars at once if we tried."
"Just what I told 'em," Victor said. "They do have something of a point, after all-loyalists who did not bear arms against the Atlantean Assembly may become good citizens in the circumstances now prevailing. No certainty of it, but they may. And so- what's the phrase Hartley used?-'earnestly recommending' that the states go easy struck me as a reasonable compromise."
"Why should we compromise?" Fenner said. "We won!"
Patiently, Victor answered, "The firmer the peace we make with England now, the smaller the chance we'll have to fight another war in ten years' time, or twenty. God has not sent me word from On High that we are bound to win then. Has He been more generous with you?"