He wondered how long he'd been walking downhill before he realized he was. Excitement flowered in him. Was he past the watershed at last, or was this nothing but a trick of the ground? He didn't see it rising up ahead of him, but he couldn't see very far ahead.
"A stream. I have to find a stream," he said. Finding one didn't take long, not in that moist country.
Did the water taste different, or was he imagining things? He couldn't say, not for sure. He scrabbled around in the dirt till he found a few pine needles, and he dropped them in. He felt like shouting when they slid off toward the west.
He went another half-mile or so, then repeated the test in a different rivulet. When a leaf also floated westward there, he let out a whoop that came back from the redwood trunks: "I'm on the other side!" He pressed on.
When a ship came out of the east in the middle of November, Edward Radcliffe was surprised. The Atlantic turned blustery by then; he wouldn't have wanted to put to sea at this season. Sometimes you had to, but he wouldn't have wanted to. This was a fancy trading cog, too: not a beat-up fishing boat like most of the ones that crossed the sea to Atlantis.
He walked out along the pier to meet her and see what her crew wanted. Cold, nasty drizzle blew into his face. Yes, it was November, all right, even if few of the trees here in the new land lost their leaves.
Edward stared at the fellow looking down at him from the forecastle. Under a sleeveless leather jerkin, the stranger wore a tunic of crimson silk. Edward couldn't remember the last time he'd seen silk. He didn't think any of the settlers had brought any hither. Oh, maybe a hair ribbon; maybe even a scarf. Surely no more than that.
He hadn't seen a look like the one on the stranger's face for a long time, either. He needed a moment to recognize it for what it was. The newcomer was looking down at him, all right. That was a man of high birth surveying a social inferior. It wasn't a look Edward was glad to see: he thought he'd left such fripperies behind for good.
When he didn't speak, the stranger glowered more. As far as Edward was concerned, he could glower all he pleased. And he could freeze, too, for all Edward cared, and he was probably doing just that; silk might be pretty, but it wasn't warm. Edward's dun-colored woolen cloak was homely, yes, but it shed cold and rain.
At last, grudgingly, the newcomer said, "God give you good day, old man."
"And you," Edward Radcliffe replied, more grudgingly still. True, he was old, but he didn't care to be reminded of it.
"Tell me, old man"-the stranger didn't just remind him of it, but rubbed it in on top of that-"do you know, do you have any idea, whom you will have the honor of meeting when he steps off this God-cursed scow?"
If he thought that ship was a scow, he knew nothing about the sea. Well, likely he didn't. As for the alleged honor…"No," Edward said. "Don't much care, either." He turned and started to walk away.
"Hold, varlet, or you die before your feet touch solid ground!" barked the man in silk. As if by magic, three archers had appeared behind him. Each aimed a clothyard shaft at Edward's short ribs. The rain would play merry hell with their bowstrings soon, but not soon enough.
The archers had the look of hired muscle. If the stranger told them to shoot, shoot they would. They would worry about it later, if they worried at all. Radcliffe stopped and came back. "Well, you talked me into it," he said.
"I thought I might." Yes, the bastard up there was used to giving orders, used to having them obeyed, and used to enjoying having them obeyed. His self-satisfied smirk said so even more clearly than his snotty tone of voice. "I ask you once again, old man-and better than you deserve, too-do you know whom you'll have the honor of meeting when he disembarks? Think carefully on your answer this time, if you want to meet him on your feet and not lying at his."
"No, I don't know. Please tell me," Edward said-carefully.
Anyone who knew him would know he was seething. Anyone who knew him would know, too, that only a fool angered him and thought to come off unscathed. This fellow didn't know him, or care to, and didn't worry about angering him: all of which only proved the man a fool. But he was a fool with important news, for he answered, "Why, none other than his grand and glorious Lordship, the Earl of Warwick."
"We have no Lordships here," Edward blurted.
"You do now, by Christ, and you'd bloody well better get used to it, for he's here to stay," said the man in the red silk tunic.
"Warwick? Here? To stay? What happened?" Like everyone else in Atlantis, Edward got news of the civil war in England in bits and fragments, as new shiploads of settlers came in to New Hastings. The Earl of Warwick was King Edward IV's cousin. His help had let Richard of York briefly claim the throne a few years earlier. Without him, Edward wouldn't have sat on it. There had been talk he'd fallen out with the King over Edward's French policy, but this… This is exile, Edward realized. He must have risen, risen and lost.
"He had…a disagreement with his Majesty." Now the man in silk chose his words with care. "This being so, he was…encouraged to travel across the sea, to seek his fortune in these new lands the fisherfolk stumbled upon."
Did he have the faintest idea he was talking to the leader of those fisherfolk, to the first Englishman who'd done the stumbling? Obviously not. Would he have cared had he known? That seemed just as unlikely.
"And so," the fellow up on the forecastle went on, "he has sailed here to Freetown, that he may-"
Edward Radcliffe threw back his head and laughed like a loon. Loons swam in the ponds and rivers here, as they did in England. Their wild cries were almost as characteristic of this wilderness as those of the honkers.
The man in the silk tunic went almost as red as it was. "Silence, wretch!" he roared. "Give me one good reason I should not order these my men to shoot you down on the instant like the dog you are."
"Why, you sorry blockhead, you don't even know where the devil you are," Edward said, laughing still. He pointed south. "Freetown lies down the coast. Go there and be welcome." If you and Warwick are welcome anywhere in Atlantis, which I doubt. "This is New Hastings."
"New…Hastings?" The stranger spat the words out as if they were bad fish. "You lie! Surely you lie! That cur of a captain swore…"
"By the Cross, by Our Lady, by God, sir, this is New Hastings and no other place in all the world." Edward knew a certain fleeting sympathy for the man who'd captained this cog. On a choppy sea, of the kind you were almost bound to have this time of year, gauging even your latitude was no easy feat. If he'd had clouds for several days, as he easily might have done, he wouldn't have been able to take a sun sight. He would be going by God and by guess, and they would have let him down.
"New…Hastings." The stranger turned away and started screaming at the top of his lungs. Phenomenal lungs they were, too; he could have made himself heard from stern to bow on a bigger ship than this in the middle of a savage blow.
One of the men who came running was plainly the skipper. The other, just as plainly, was Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick. He couldn't have been far past forty, but his hair and beard had gone very gray. He had a strong prow of a nose and clever dark eyes set too close together. His man bellowed abuse at the captain. The poor man did his best to defend himself. His best was none too good. How could it be, when he found himself in the wrong?
Warwick listened for a while, then walked over to the rail and peered down at Edward. With his man still berating the skipper in the background, he said, "So this is New Hastings, is it?" The noble's voice was surprisingly soft and gentle. Unlike the fellow in the red silk, he didn't need to bluster to get what he wanted.
"I'm afraid it is…your Lordship." Edward hoped the nobleman didn't notice the pause he needed before he brought out the title of respect.