"I doubt that not at all," the Englishman said. "Still and all, though, that's a long march, and one with uncertain supply lines, into a country notoriously unhealthy. I should hesitate to undertake it without orders from London."
"My greencoats did it," Victor said. "We lived off the land, and we had no trouble doing it."
"What is easy for irregulars is often difficult for regulars," the lieutenant-colonel answered. "Irregulars often have a certain amount of trouble remembering that the converse also applies. Or do you think your men could have stopped the flow from the spring here?"
Radcliff knew his men could have done no such thing. Even trying would never have occurred to him. That long underground burrow…He shuddered. No, he wouldn't have wanted to try that. "Your point is well taken, sir," he admitted.
"Generous of you to say so," the Englishman told him. "I also fear I can't promise the timely appearance of the Royal Navy, which you were able to enjoy. You might have known a certain amount of embarrassment had the French and Spanish Atlanteans succeeded in combining against you."
The ships plucked you off the beach in the nick of time. The lieutenant-colonel had a cat's politeness; he wouldn't come right out and say such a thing. But Victor understood what he meant. "You may be right, sir," he answered insincerely. "Still and all, not much danger of a Franco-Spanish combination against us now, is there?" We've whipped the French settlers once and for all was what he meant, and the Englishman couldn't very well mistake him.
To his credit, the redcoat didn't try. "No, not much," he said, "but I still believe we would do better to ensure our conquest of French Atlantis than to go haring off after something grander yet. Do you on this side of the ocean know the proverb about the bird in the hand and those in the bush?"
"I've…heard it," Victor said. The English lieutenant-colonel chuckled at his reluctant-indeed, his reproachful (to say nothing of nearly mutinous)-subordination. After a victory like the one they'd gained here, chuckles came easy. Had Roland Kersauzon's men beaten the redcoats and greencoats and escaped en masse to continue the war, the English officer wouldn't have taken that hesitation so lightly. Victor went on, "A lot of the birds here, though, don't fit in the hand."
Redcoats led glum French settlers into captivity. Some of those settlers were in their stocking feet. If they hadn't been whipped out of their boots, they'd lost them as spoils of war. Pretty soon, the English settlers and regulars would plunder Nouveau Redon, too. Victor would have been surprised if some of the more enterprising fellows weren't already starting.
"French Atlantis will fit quite nicely, I do believe," the redcoat said.
"It is a good handful," Victor allowed. Why argue now? Sure enough, triumph was a great sweetener. He took off his hat and saluted the English officer. "We won it together, Colonel Cornwallis."
Cornwallis returned the salute. "We did indeed, Major Radcliff."
XXVI
V ictor Radcliff didn't like Hanover. He never had. He didn't think he ever would. The place crowded too many people into too small a space. Army encampments did the same thing, but encampments were different. Everyone in them-well, almost everyone-accepted military discipline and knew his place.
Not in Hanover. People hopped after their own pursuits, as single-minded-or as mindless-as the big katydids that bounced across Atlantis' fields and forest floors. They all wanted more than they had, and they weren't shy about grabbing what they wanted with both hands.
So if Victor had had any kind of excuse, he would have stayed far away from the brawling metropolis of English Atlantis. But he had none. He was the hero of the war against the French. A hero had to be seen, had to be praised, to make a proper spectacle for the people. Victor dully and dutifully paraded at the head of a regiment of greencoats.
"Ah, well," he said over his shoulder to Blaise, who strode along behind him. "One good thing about this nonsense-if the boys can't get laid tonight, they aren't half trying."
"What about you, sir?" the Negro said, his voice sly.
"Not tonight, anyhow," Victor answered. He was no saint when he was away from Margaret, though he had no bastards he knew about. "Not tonight," he repeated. "I'm going to the feast for all the fancy Radcliffs and Radcliffes. Should be gruesome, but it can't be helped. Your friends you choose, but you're stuck with your relatives."
Not all the Radcliffs and Radcliffes at the banquet proved excessively fancy. Some of the young, pretty women wore the name only because of a marriage connection. They were no blood kin to Victor at all-but they were interested in getting to know him more intimately. He got to know one of them much more intimately in a servant's tiny room under the stairs-and he was smiling benignly at her husband, some distant cousin of his, five minutes later. That was amusing, even if he didn't tell Blaise about it afterwards.
But neither the parade nor the fete nor the naughty sport under the stairs would have drawn him to Hanover by itself. All three of them together wouldn't have. What brought him to London in Small-the town's proud boast-and kept him there was the certainty that details of the peace treaty would come to Hanover before they came anywhere else in Atlantis.
He rode down to the harbor every morning, sometimes with Blaise, sometimes alone. Ships of all sizes and ages came in, from England and her settlements around the world and her allies. Some of the people knew that talks to end the war were going on. No one seemed to know how they were going.
And then, one afternoon, a swift, rakish Royal Navy frigate, the Glasgow, sailed into Hanover. When Victor asked the officer of the deck if he had news of the peace, that young lieutenant looked down his nose at him and demanded, "Why do you presume that you deserve to know?"
"I am Major Victor Radcliff. Without me, the ministers wouldn't be talking about French and Spanish Atlantis," Victor answered. "Now, sir, who are you-and who is your next of kin?" His hand dropped to the butt of the pistol he wore on his belt.
The naval officer lost much of his toploftiness. "I…beg your pardon, Major. We do bring that word, as a matter of fact."
"If you tell me what it is-at once-I won't ask any more personal questions of you," Victor said. I won't kill you, he meant, and the lieutenant knew it.
"Well…" The younger man needed to gather himself. At last, he went on, "French Atlantis comes under English sovereignty. It is opened to English settlement without restriction. The dons keep Spanish Atlantis, but England gets trading concessions there. We take most of French Terranova, too, and almost all of French India."
Radcliff cared nothing about India, and only a little about Terranova. The lands on this side of the Hesperian Gulf were wide enough for him. He nodded to the lieutenant. "Thank you. That's good news."
It wasn't so good as it might have been. He would have loved to see the Union Jack flying over Spanish Atlantis, too. But the Spaniards weren't rivals, as the French had been. History had left Spain in a backwater. France, on the other hand, could have stayed ahead of England had she won this war.
She could have. But she hadn't.
"Who the devil are you talking to, Jenkins?" a senior naval officer demanded, scowling down at Victor.
"This is Major Victor Radcliff, sir," the lieutenant answered. "The man who helped our regulars take French Atlantis."
"Huzzah," said the captain, or whatever he was. "More troublemakers for the Crown to worry about."
"Would you rather they were here, sir?" Victor said. "Would you rather all Atlantis flew the fleurs-de-lys?"
"What a ridiculous notion," the senior officer said.
"It is now, sir-because we won," Victor replied.
The officer sputtered and fumed. Victor caught only a few words: "…damned settlers…lot of nerve…arrogant scut…" Then the fellow spoke more coherently: "As if this miserable, half-baked place mattered a farthing's worth in the grand scheme of things."