"By Our Lady!" Edward said, and laughed at his own choice of oath. "By Our Lady, indeed! I wonder how men ever get anything done, with women keeping an eye on their every move before they make it." He paused, looking thoughtful. "I wonder whether men ever get anything done-anything their women don't want, I mean."
"I have no idea what you're talking about-none." Nell's voice was so demure and innocent, Edward started to nod. Then he caught himself and gave her a sharp look. Her face was demure and innocent, too-so very demure and innocent that he started laughing again. She poked him in the ribs. "You believed me. For a heartbeat or two, you believed me."
"You'll never prove it," he said.
"I don't need to prove it. I know you too well to doubt it." Now Nell sounded supremely confident. And with reason: "I'd better after all these years, don't you think? Who else would have put up with you for so long?"
"No one in her right mind-that's sure enough," Edward said. Nell made a face at him. He made one back. They both laughed this time. Edward wondered if he was slipping into his second childhood. If he was, he was having a good time doing it-or he would have been, if not for the Earl of Warwick.
Henry Radcliffe paced the Rose's deck. She lay not far offshore: far enough to keep a bad winter storm from flinging her up onto the beach and breaking her all to flinders. No storm now. The day was cold, but almost bitterly clear-a good match for the state of his mind at the moment.
Not quite by chance, one of his mittened hands came to rest on the wrought-iron barrel of a swivel gun. "I wonder if we could hit New Hastings from here," he said in musing tones. "I wonder if we could hit a particular house in New Hastings from here."
"Hit the town? I think the piece'd reach that far," Bartholomew Smith said. Henry nodded; he gauged the range, and the gun's power, about the same. The mate went on, "Hit one house in particular? That'd take the Devil's own luck, don't you think?"
Regretfully, Henry nodded again. "Afraid I do."
Smith eyed him. "Which house have you got in mind?"
"Oh, let's just say I was thinking of putting a ball through my father's door, to wake him up if he was sleeping."
"You can say that if you want to." Smith looked around to make sure no one besides Henry was in earshot. "Me, I'd sooner put one through Warwick's door-or through Warwick, though from here that'd take more than the Devil's luck."
"It would, wouldn't it?" Henry said sadly. He sent the mate a hooded glance. "So you're not fond of his Lordship?"
"Lucy Fenner's mother is my first cousin," Smith said.
"I should have remembered that." Henry thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Well, no, then you have good reason not to be."
The mate scowled. "Lucy's a good girl, a sweet girl, damn him. Not her fault she was born pretty, and she shouldn't have to pay for it like that."
"Women have been paying for their looks that way since the days of Adam and Eve," Henry said. Seeing the mutinous expression on the mate's face, he quickly added, "Not that that makes it right."
"I should say not," Bartholomew Smith spat. "The day is coming when Warwick'll push all of us too far, like he's already pushed me. I think it's coming soon, and when it does…" His strong, scarred hands folded into fists.
"My father feels the same way. I do believe he's felt that way since he first set eyes on Warwick, before the earl even set foot on our soil." Henry looked around again. No one was paying him or Smith any special heed. In a low voice, he continued, "When the day does come, he aims to fight."
"Skipper, I always knew your father was a good man," Smith said. "I always knew he was a smart man, too. Only question is, can we kick those bastards when we have to?"
"That's what's held him back this long. And, he says, even winning you can pay too high a price. If the battle tears New Hastings and Bredestown to pieces, if half the people die and half the houses and shops burn down, we'll all be years getting over it," Henry said. "When he was a lad, he says, his old grandfather would tell him stories about what England was like just after the Black Death passed over the countryside."
The mate shuddered and made the sign of the cross. "God keep the plague on the other side of the sea. That bloody Warwick's plague enough for these lands."
"Plague enough and to spare," Henry agreed. "But that's just Father's point. A war here could be as bad as the plague. It could set us back the way the Black Death set England back. That's why he doesn't want to fight unless we can beat the soldiers in a hurry without ruining ourselves in the doing."
"That's sensible, no doubt about it," Bartholomew Smith said. "How long do you think poor Lucy will want us to go on being sensible?" Henry grunted; that shot hit the target in the bull's-eye. Smith asked another question: "Isn't it better to die on our feet than to live on our knees?"
Henry grunted again-he hadn't dreamt the other man had so much fire in his belly. Slowly, he answered, "It is, yes. My father would not say otherwise. But he would say it's better still to live on our feet. He's looking for a way to do that, which is why he waits."
"God grant he find one," Smith said. "How long can he-how long can we-keep waiting, though? If we get used to saying, 'Yes, Lord,' to whatever Warwick demands of us-well, we'll be living on our knees then, and I fear me we'll forget how to climb up on our feet again."
"I don't think it will go that far," Henry said. "Back in England, even the king has trouble telling his people what to do. That's why the wars go on and on. If the king can't make Englishmen obey, Lord have mercy on a poor earl who tries, eh?"
Smith's smile touched his lips, but not his eyes. "Don't they call Warwick the Kingmaker, though?"
"That was his nickname, all right. But the king he made unmade him. And if a mere king can cast him down"-Henry winked-"don't you suppose a settlement full of Englishmen can do the same when the time comes?"
"Belike you're right." Despite his words, Smith still didn't smile with his whole face. "It had better come soon, I tell you, for Lucy's sake. A woman's not like a man, you know-she keeps her honor between her legs."
"Warwick has dishonored her, but he hasn't taken her honor away. It's not the same thing," Henry said. "Everyone knows what he would have done to her kin if she didn't yield herself to him. That would have touched off the fight, I expect, but it wouldn't have done the Fenners any good."
"No, it wouldn't… Touched off…" Smith set his own gloved hand on the wrought-iron barrel of the swivel gun. He swung it toward the house the Earl of Warwick had taken for his own, as he'd taken Lucy Fenner for his own.
As he aims to take New Hastings for his own, Henry thought. When you got down to it, wasn't it that simple? Warwick didn't want to be a kingmaker here: he wanted to be a king himself. It would be a small kingdom. Maybe that would suffice him, or maybe he dreamt of taking England in King Edward's despite, using Atlantis as his base. If he did, Henry judged him a madman, but wasn't a madman all the more dangerous for being mad?
"We'll settle him," he declared. "What does Atlantis need with kings?"
"King Warwick?" Smith followed his thoughts without trouble. "King Neville? King Richard? Whatever he'd style himself, let him carve it on his tombstone instead."
"My brother would make a better King Richard than Warwick would," Henry said. "He's better suited to the job, too, by God."
"How's that?"
"He doesn't want it."
IX
E dward Radcliffe was coming to dread a knock on the door. He never had before, not in all the years since coming to Atlantis. In that stretch of time, a knock on the door meant a friend had come to call. Now a knock was much too likely to be trouble calling.
This particular knock on the door came just before supper.
Chicken and turnips and parsnips and cabbage bubbled in a pot, filling the house with savory fragrance and making Edward's stomach rumble. He said something unchristian when a fist thudded against the planks of the door.