"It could be that we'll end up neighbors here one day, then," Kersauzon replied. "I always thought Englishmen were better at a distance, but what can you do?" His comic shrug was very French. He would have got furious had Edward told him so.
Instead, Radcliffe made sure he really was south of the English settlement. Kersauzon didn't mock him for asking. Where dead reckoning left off at sea and prayer began was a question every sailor had to face now and then. The two cogs parted with fishermen on each calling, "Good luck!" to the other.
Henry came back to Edward as he steered the St. George toward New Hastings. Quietly, the young man said, "I wondered if you'd fight him."
Edward Radcliffe sighed. "I wondered the same thing. But how could I? We wouldn't be here if not for him."
His son sighed, too. "Well, Father, it's not that you're wrong. I only pray you won't spend the rest of your life sorry for being right."
"God forbid it!" Edward said, and crossed himself again.
New Hastings thrived. How could it do anything else, set on fertile soil with the closest enemies an ocean away? Swarms of fish came out of the sea. Crops and livestock burgeoned. Hogs and rabbits got loose in the wild, but no one had imagined that they wouldn't.
Not many years went by before honkers grew scarce around the settlement. People complained that they had to walk a day or two to find the big flightless birds and kill them. The birds couldn't seem to figure out that these strange two-legged creatures were a menace to them.
Red-crested eagles grew scarcer, too, though not fast enough to suit Edward Radcliffe. The eagles killed a child and a woman, and seemed especially fond of the fat above the kidneys of sheep. Shooting them while they attacked was hopeless.
Shooting them while they perched, on the other hand…The great fierce birds often sat in trees on the edges of the woods so they could spot honkers grazing in the fields and meadows beyond. The eagles did see humans as prey, but didn't seem to see them as threats. Archers could get close to the trees and let fly.
After a while, the eagles around the settlement thinned out. Mothers still watched their small children more carefully than they would have back in England, for the danger from the sky was diminished, not gone.
When Edward Radcliffe sailed the St. George back to England again, six years after he first set eyes on Atlantis, he found the country fallen into the civil war everyone had dreaded so long. The port officials at Hastings roughly demanded whether he favored the White Rose or the Red. Finding they were loyal to the House of York, he declared for the White Rose himself, though in truth he couldn't have cared less whether the king was Yorkist or Lancastrian.
He didn't need long to find that most of the people in Hastings felt the same way he did. Who ruled hardly mattered to them. All they cared about was that someone should rule and bring the land peace. As usual, the lords who fought were profoundly indifferent to what the people wanted.
Edward wasn't. The trouble in England made people in Hastings who'd laughed at him on his last visit suddenly eager to find quiet across the ocean. "Marry, it'd be wonderful to go about my business without worrying about soldiers stealing my stock or burning down my shop," a leatherworker said.
"They wouldn't do that in New Hastings," Radcliffe said. "There are no soldiers in New Hastings."
"No soldiers!" The other man might have had a vision of a miracle. "Isn't that a fine thing!" He paused, scratching his poorly shaved chin. "D'you need a man who makes leather?"
"Well, we might," Edward replied.
"I'd pay," the artisan said. "By God, I'd pay plenty to get away from these swaggering thieves in chainmail. I have a daughter who's fifteen, and I'd pay even more to get her away from them."
"I understand that," Radcliffe said. If his womenfolk were here now, he would have wanted to get them away, too. He rubbed his chin. Getting money for taking new settlers across the ocean hadn't occurred to him till now. He wondered why not. "We'll see what we can do for you, friend."
"I am your friend-your friend for life-if you take me away from this," the leather maker said.
Radcliffe knew not to count on that too much. Gratitude went bad almost as fast as fish did. But it might last to the other side of the sea. "Let's talk," he said, and so they did.
The leather maker wasn't the only one who spent silver for his passage. That proved just as well, because Edward had to pay a fat bribe to take the St. George out of the harbor. Even then, he left under cover of darkness. But he did leave, and once he was at sea he didn't worry about anybody catching him.
Once they'd put Land's End behind them, Henry came over to him and said, "I wonder how long it will be before ships full of people we never heard of start dropping anchor right offshore."
"How would they know where to go?" Edward asked, automatically setting himself against the rolling and pitching of the cog in the Atlantic's long, tall swells.
His son laughed at him-one of the less endearing things a son can do to his father. "Word has to be all over the Cinque Ports by now-likely all up and down the coast," Henry answered. "Load what you hope is enough food into a cog, sail west and a bit south till you think you're going to fall off the edge of the world, and what do you know? You end up in Atlantis!"
"What do you know?" Edward Radcliffe echoed in distinctly hollow tones. It wasn't that Henry was wrong. No, it was that he was much too likely to be right. If you had the nerve to sail the open sea, you could come to Atlantis. And if you were sure Atlantis was there, if you were sure you wouldn't fall off the edge of the world, wouldn't that help you find the nerve to set sail? Edward clapped a hand to his forehead. "All the riffraff of the kingdom, landing in our laps!"
That wasn't fair. Riffraff wouldn't be able to sail a cog so far, or to afford passage in one. But just then, anyone he hadn't handpicked to come to New Hastings seemed like riffraff to him.
And Henry, damn him, was grinning. "Not just our riffraff, either," the younger Radcliffe said. "Somewhere between Atlantis and Le Croisic, Francois Kersauzon and his son are talking the same way-what do you want to bet? The land is there. More and more people know it's there. A land with no kings, a land with no soldiers…Why wouldn't half the folk in the world want to pack up and move to a place like that?"
When Edward looked at it that way, he could see no reason why lots of people wouldn't want to travel to Atlantis, either. But he said, "I'll tell you one thing, son. If Atlantis does start filling up, it will need soldiers soon enough, to keep some folk from taking what others have."
"No doubt," Henry said. "Then the soldiers will start taking on their own, because that's what soldiers do."
"I know," Edward said unhappily. He sighed. "And I suppose that's why we need kings-to keep soldiers from taking too much."
"Well, sometimes kings can do that," Henry said. "And sometimes…"
He didn't go on, or need to. The war in England they'd barely escaped did most of his talking for him. "God grant that civil war stay far from Atlantis' shores," Edward said.
"I'm sure He will-for a while," his son replied. "How many of the folk in New Hastings stand with the White Rose, how many with the Red?"
"I have no idea. I never tried to find out," Edward Radcliffe said.
"As long as you can say that, and say it truly, we're safe from civil strife," Henry said. "As soon as you know, as soon as you need to know…"
"Yes." Edward could gauge the political winds along with those of the world. "May that day stay far away, too." His son-both sons-had bumped heads with him a great many times growing up. But Henry, having at last attained manhood himself, only nodded now.
The War of the Roses did stay away from the western shores. Neither Yorkists nor Lancastrians cared who followed their emblem in the lands across the sea. Not enough people dwelt there to matter to either side.