"Let it be as you say." That was also the language of courtesy, and meant Walton didn't believe it for a minute.
One deck higher, the long twenty-four-pounders threw lighter balls than the carronades below, but threw them farther. "Let a couple of these tear through a lightly built pirate's scantlings and watch the water pour in," William Radcliff said with a certain gloating anticipation.
"How can they propose to stand against us?" Walton asked. "Our ships so greatly outweigh theirs, the fight scarcely seems fair."
"I cannot imagine their opposing us on the sea," William answered. "More likely, they will seek to keep us from entering Avalon Bay and from sacking their hellhole of a town. What other sensible thing could they do?"
"None I can see," the Englishman said.
He was a sensible man. So was William Radcliff. They were too sensible to see that, when fighting sensible opponents, acting sensible himself might be the least sensible thing Red Rodney Radcliffe could do.
Aldo Cucari wasn't even a pirate. He was a fisherman who put to sea from Avalon. He didn't have enough to make stealing his small substance worth the corsairs' while. They laughed at him for working so hard, but they bought his fish.
He spoke French with a funny accent, and English with a funnier one. But when he came to Black Hand Fort and asked to talk to Red Rodney, the ruffians at the gate let him through. He didn't quite interrupt a tender moment between the pirate chief and Jenny, but he came close enough to leave her miffed. "Will we never be free of gabbling little nuisances?" she grumbled as Rodney dressed.
He only laughed. "Just goes to show you never raised a child, sweetheart." And away he went, a pistol on his belt. He knew Aldo, but you never could tell.
Someone had given the fisherman a cup of wine. He had no pistol, nor even an eating knife. When Rodney strode into the room where he waited, he jumped up, set down the wine, and bowed almost double. "Ah, buon giorno, Signore Rodney Rosso, Signore Radcliffe!" he cried. "I is just in from out of the north."
Red Rodney nodded. "That's what they told me, by God." Finding out what was going on up in the north was worth getting out of bed, even if Jenny didn't think so. "What did you see up there?"
"Dutchmens," Aldo Cucari said solemnly. "Three big Dutchmens, ships of the line. Six smaller Dutchmens, like to the ships that sail out of Avalon. They go east."
"Bloody hell. Of course they do." Three men-of-war, half a dozen brigantines or the equivalent. Six more men-of-war from London, with a like number of smaller supporters. However many merchantmen William clipped-e Radcliff could scrape together at Stuart, plus their auxiliaries. The merchantmen wouldn't have the speed or the firepower of a first-rate ship of the line, but they'd be bad enough. Red Rodney glowered down at the small, swarthy Italian. "You swear this is the truth?"
"By the cross, signore." Aldo Cucari crossed himself. You could be a Papist in Avalon, or a Protestant, or a Mahometan, or even a Jew. No one cared enough to kill you for it, which wasn't true all over Atlantis. Aldo went on, "By my mother's honor, signore."
People laughed at Aldo for working hard, but no one had ever called him a coward. And if you challenged his mother's honor-if you challenged the honor of any man's mother-he was bound to kill you if he could. "All right, then," Radcliffe said. "You've told me what I need to know, and I'm grateful."
The fisherman bowed again. "It is my honor, too, Signore Rodney."
"Honor's all very well, but you can't eat it. See what you can buy with these." Red Rodney pressed two gleaming gold sovereigns into Aldo's callused hand.
One more bow. "You is a man of great heart, signore, and a man of open hands as well. I hoped for one sovereign-I thought my news is worth one. But two? Two! Only a man of great heart would give two." He stepped forward, embraced the pirate captain, and bussed him first on the right cheek, then on the left.
Frenchmen and Spaniards would do the same thing sometimes. Red Rodney clapped Aldo on the back and made a joke of it: "You aren't pretty enough for that."
"Ah, well." The fisherman grinned and fired back: "If I is doing it for looks, you isn't pretty enough, neither."
He came very close to dying then, even with Rodney's gold coins in his hand. Only blood washed away insults in Avalon-if you decided they were insults. If you laughed them off, though…Rodney did. "I may be ugly, but I have fun. How about you?"
"Every so often I find a girl who-how you say?-she no see so good. Or maybe is too dark to see good. Who knows? Who cares? I has fun, too."
Rodney shouted for more wine. The servant who brought it was a copperskinned Terranovan native. Everybody called him Old Abe; he'd been in Avalon almost as long as Rodney had been alive. Smallpox scars slagged his face, but he'd lived through the disease and never needed to worry about it again. A lot of copperskins turned up their toes in a hurry after they met Europeans or Atlanteans. That was one reason white settlement was spreading on the western mainland, though not so fast as it was in previously uninhabited Atlantis.
"Here's to fun!" Rodney said, and Aldo Cucari drank with him. But even as the rough red wine slid down his throat, he was weighing the odds. Nine ships of the line? People farther east had hated Avalon for a long time. They'd always said they had, anyhow. Never till now, though, had they seemed serious. It was hard to get much more serious than nine ships of the line and assorted auxiliaries.
Well, they might be-they were bound to be-gathering at Stuart. But from Stuart to Avalon was a long way: long in terms of sailing, even longer in terms of the spirit that animated each town. Aldo, anyone might think, would have fit better in Stuart. But he'd lived there for a little while, and didn't care for the dull, stolid burghers who ran the place. Whatever else Avalon was, dull and stolid it wasn't.
The pirate captain poured wine with the same lavish hand he'd used to pass out money. Raising his cup, he shouted, "Here's to frying my God-cursed cousin!" Aldo drank with him-why not? And Rodney Radcliffe laughed and laughed. "Yes, here's to frying him, in his own damned pan!"
XIII
W illiam Radcliff's secretary was a plump, nearsighted man named Shadrach Spencer. William was making a complicated calculation about just how much to charge for Terranovan pipeweed in London when Spencer stuck his head into the office and said, "I beg your pardon, sir, but there is a…gentleman here whom I think you should see."
He didn't casually say such things: one reason he'd worked for William for more than fifteen years. "Well, send him in, then," William said, setting down his quill. "Let's find out what he has to say."
As Radcliff expected from his secretary's tone, the individual in question was no gentleman, but a backwoods ruffian who put him in mind of his distant cousin, Marcus. The man carried a parcel wrapped in cloth. He wore a wool shirt and suede breeches with fringes; no razor had sullied his cheek for several days. All the more reason to receive him as if he were the heir to a duchy. "Good day, sir. I am William Radcliff," William said, bowing. "I fear you have the advantage of me."
"My name is Dill, Hiram Dill." The backwoodsman shook hands politely enough, then remarked, "Thirsty work, riding in from past the edge of town."
"Shadrach, tend to that, would you?" Radcliff said.
"Certainly, sir." His secretary bustled off, returning a moment later with a flagon of fine-or at least strong-gin from Nieuw Haarlem and two glasses. He poured for William and his guest.
"Your health, sir," William said to Hiram Dill, raising his glass.
Dill drank. His eyes got wide. "I'm bound to be healthy if I pour this stuff down," he said. "It'd poison anything that tried to sicken me, and that's the Lord's truth."