He kissed her, sensing that was some of what she wanted. It only made her cling tighter, though, and start to cry. "We have to learn what sort of land we have here," he said. "We have to know how big it is, how wide-"
"Do we have to find out right this minute?" Bess flared. "Do you have to do all the finding yourself?"
"It's not like that," Henry said. "Richard goes off into the woods for weeks at a time, and-"
"And it drives his wife wild." Bess seemed bound and determined not to let him finish a sentence. "Do you think Bertha and I don't talk about it? We have to talk to each other. Lord knows we don't get much chance to talk to the two of you."
"We need to explore," Henry said. "If we didn't-"
"If you didn't"-his wife poke him in the chest with a blunt-nailed forefinger, to make sure he understood that you was a singular-"you could settle down and farm and spend more time with me and your children. Would that be so dreadful?"
"You didn't fuss this much when I left Hastings on fishing runs," Henry said. "Sometimes I'd be gone longer then than I am on the trips I take these days."
His wife eyed him with a curious mix of exasperation and affection. "In those days, you had no choice. If you didn't help your father bring in the cod, we wouldn't eat. But now you don't have to go wandering. Neither does Richard. You do it anyway. Both of you do it anyway. It's not right. It's not fair." Her voice broke. More tears swam in her sea-green eyes.
Henry had never talked things over with his brother. He didn't know how they stood with Richard. He only knew for himself. "If I stayed on a farm all the time…It wouldn't be you, love." He wanted to make sure he said that, because it was the truth. "But if I stayed in the same place all the time, if I saw the same things around me all the time…" He shook his head. "Something inside of me would die. I'd be living in a cage."
"And the Rose isn't?" Bess crossed herself. "Mary, pity women!"
Richard thought a ship was a cage. But Richard also had to think a farm was a cage. He'd proved that, again and again. So instead of putting to sea, he'd thrust deeper into the Atlantean wilderness than any man alive. Didn't it add up to, if not the same thing, then something not so very different?
Deeper into the wilderness than any man alive? Henry suddenly realized he couldn't be sure of that. Bound to be restless Bretons, restless Basques, even restless Dovermen…Deeper into the wilderness than anyone who'd started from New Hastings, anyhow. That would do.
Bess shook her head. She said, "The Rose," under her breath in a tone not far from hatred. But then she went on, "What's the use? If I burnt that cursed scow to the waterline, you'd only go and build another one. And you'd enjoy doing it, too." By the way she said it, that was the worst crime of all.
And she wasn't even wrong. Henry had enjoyed building the Rose. If he had to craft another cog, he thought he could do a better job the next time. He kissed Bess again, not sure whether that would make things better or worse. He wasn't sure after he'd done it, either. He was sure of one thing, though: "I've got to go. I'll be back before too long."
"It will only seem like forever," Bess said bitterly.
He kissed her one more time. Some men who went to sea for weeks and months at a stretch worried about their wives being unfaithful while they were away. Some men who went to sea for weeks and months at a stretch had children that looked like their neighbors who stayed home. People mostly didn't talk about such things, which didn't mean they didn't happen.
Henry didn't worry about Bess. He knew he could count on her. And he didn't reward her for her fidelity by going into strange women when he came into a strange port…not very often, anyhow. If he'd brought home the gleets and passed them on to her, she would have been even less happy with him than she was now.
"Come back to me, do you hear?" Bess said.
"I always have," Henry answered. "I always will." I pray I always will.
He walked out onto the beach, right up to the edge of the Atlantic, and waved out to the Rose. The mate waved back; the cog's boat went into the water. A couple of fishermen rowed it toward shore.
One of these days, the settlers would have to build jetties out into the ocean so cogs could tie up more conveniently. Either that or they would have to find a proper sheltered harbor instead of this bare stretch of coast open to wind and sky. If they did, New Hastings might wither away. Henry shrugged. Bess wouldn't like that, but to him one place on land wasn't much different from another. Like his father, he only felt at home with a rolling, pitching deck under his feet.
The boat's keel scraped sand and mud. "Hop in, skipper," one of the fishermen said.
"Bide a moment." Henry turned back to wave to Bess and blow her a kiss. She waved back. Both rowers snickered. They were bachelors. They didn't understand how a woman could get under a man's skin and into his heart. He hoped they would find wives for themselves one of these days. More men than women came to Atlantis, so it wasn't a sure bet.
He wondered whether that was so for the Bretons and the Basques. If they had more girls than men…well, wouldn't that make a strange sort of commerce among the new settlements? But, from what he'd seen farther south, it seemed more likely to be the same with them as it was here.
"Ready to fare north this time?" the other fisherman asked as they started back to the Rose.
"Damned if I'm not, Sam," Henry answered. "We won't stew in our own juices sailing that way, anyhow. Only a couple of little settlements that anyone knows about north of New Hastings, too. Most of what we find will be new."
"That anyone knows about, yes," Sam said. "But who can guess whether there's a pirates' nest up there?"
"Not likely," Henry said. "We'd know if there were pirates, because they'd prey on us. We've lost a couple of boats since we came here, but nobody thinks it was on account of anything but bad weather and uncharted rocks. Plenty of both to go around, Lord knows."
"You're not wrong there," Sam admitted. "Still and all, though, what do we know about those other settlers? Maybe they fish part of the time and farm part of the time-aye, and steal part of the time, too, whenever they see the chance."
"Maybe they do," Henry said. Sam had a notion of what he was talking about. Henry couldn't swear he'd never turn pirate himself. If the chance for a big haul appeared out of nowhere, if he was sure he could get away with it and not start a feud that would hurt him and his for generations yet to come…Well, who could say what he'd do if something like that came along? The Rose carried swivel guns to ward off raiders, which didn't mean she couldn't turn raider herself.
He clambered up the nets stretched along her port side. Sam and Geoff-the other rower-came right behind him. The fishermen in the cog grabbed hold of their hands as they scrambled up over the gunwale and pulled them aboard. Then they brought in the boat, stowing it abaft the mast.
The mate was a broad-shouldered fellow named Bartholomew Smith. "Are we ready?" Henry asked him.
"Ready as we'll ever be," he answered. "Weighing anchor is all that wants doing-and then we find out what happens when we get colder instead of hotter."
"You're not old enough to remember fishing runs in the North Sea," Henry said. "Count your blessings that you're not. This could be something like that."
"Then why are we doing it?" Smith asked.
"If we don't, someone else will." For Henry, that was reason enough and more.
VI
O cean. When you looked west from the Rose's bow, there was nothing but ocean. How far? Henry Radcliffe wondered. All the way to Cathay? All the way to the edge of the world, where it spilled off in God's waterfall? All the way to some land as unimaginable as Atlantis had been when Henry was a young man?
He didn't know. How could he? He wanted to, hungered to, find out. But that was a voyage for another time, with another ship. The Rose was a fine coasting vessel, and the best job a gang of amateur shipwrights could have done when they hacked her out of timber. For striking out across the broad, stormy Atlantic to shores unknown? Well, no.