Courteously, Radcliff poured him a refill. As Dill drank it down with as much alacrity as he'd shown for the first sample, William asked, "And what was it impelled you to ride in to Stuart from, as you say, past the edge of town?"
"Well, I was hunting for the pot last night, and I let fly with my shotgun at a pigeon flying by, and I bagged me…this here." Hiram Dill had a sense of the dramatic, whatever his other shortcomings might have been. He undid the cloth around his loosely wrapped parcel.
It was a pigeon, as ordinary a pigeon as ever hatched. Atlantis boasted several varieties of extraordinary pigeons. One was cream-colored, with bright red eyes. One, too big and heavy to fly, had a feathery crest that looked like curly hair. One was a dark green bird that disappeared completely against the needle-filled branches of redwoods and pines.
But this was a plain English pigeon, like the ones that cooed and strutted in the streets of Stuart hoping for handouts. Its head was green, its body shades of gray and white. The only unusual thing about it was a bit of parchment tied around its right leg.
"A message?" William asked. Hiram Dill nodded. William asked another question: "You've read it?"
"Well, sure," Dill answered. "Couldn't very well know you needed to see it if I hadn't, now could I?"
"No, indeed," Radcliff said gravely. "And what does it say?"
"See for yourself," the backwoodsman replied. His scarred and callused fingers surprisingly deft, he undid the message from the bird's leg and handed it to William.
The fine, tiny, spidery hand defeated William's sight, which was beginning to lengthen. He called in Shadrach Spencer. "Read this out for me, if you would be so kind."
"Of course, sir." His secretary held the parchment so close to his eyes, it all but bumped his nose. "It says, 'In Stuart harbor nine ships of the line, twelve armed merchantmen, fifteen lesser ships. Sailing soon against Avalon.'"
"I am not surprised to learn we have a spy amongst us, but neither am I heartened to learn it. The iniquity some men will embrace…" William shook his head. Then he brightened. "As for you, Mr. Dill, I freely own myself to be in your debt."
Hiram Dill didn't say anything. His face, however, bore an expression remarkable for its cupidity. He had brought the pigeon to William for no other reason than to hear those words from his lips. William spoke to his secretary in a low voice. Spencer nodded and hurried off, as he had when Radcliff asked him to fetch the gin.
This time, he needed longer to return. When he did, he pressed a small velvet sack into William Radcliff's hand. Radcliff, in turn, presented the sack to Hiram Dill. "With my compliments, sir."
Judas could no more have kept from counting the wealth he'd got from the Romans than Dill could have stopped himself from opening the sack and seeing what lay inside. "Five pounds!" he exclaimed. "God bless you, Mr. Radcliff! I didn't look for so much, and that's the Lord's truth, too."
"You have earned it. I would say, earned it and more, did I not fear that would make you importunate," William said with a smile. "I have known for long and long that the pirates of Avalon spied upon Stuart. How they spied upon us, no one here knew-till now."
Hiram Dill grinned back. "I expect there'll be a deal of pigeon hunting in town the next little while."
"I expect you are right, Mr. Dill," Radcliff replied. "I expect you are just exactly right. And I expect someone will be very unhappy when we uncover him for a polecat, for a lying, tricking snake in the grass."
"What will you do to him? Something worth watching, I hope," Dill said.
"Oh, yes." Radcliff nodded. "I don't know yet what it will be, sir, but I promise you that anyone who sees it will remember it to the end of his days."
Red Rodney Radcliffe was not a happy man. When he was unhappy, he thought himself duty-bound to make everyone around him unhappy, too. "Damn it to hell, why haven't we heard from Stuart?" he growled. "Somebody over there has his thumb up his bum. How are we supposed to know when the God-cursed fleet is sailing if they don't send pigeons?"
"Maybe something's gone wrong with the birds," Ethel suggested.
"No doubt. They've come down poxed, on account of wasting their silver at the bird brothels. They need a better class of pigeon pimps." Red Rodney laughed. He thought he was funny, and that was all that mattered to him.
His daughter was harder to amuse. "Maybe the fat fools back there have finally twigged to your using pigeons, and they're shooting all the birds they see going out."
"Good luck to 'em!" Rodney said. "They'd do better to shoot the bugger who sets the birds free."
He meant that as a sardonic retort to put Ethel in her place. But the words seemed to hang in the air. The more he mulled them over, the likelier they felt. Ethel must have felt the same way, for she asked, "What can you do about it if they have shot him?"
"Damn all, I fear," Red Rodney said morosely. "I'd have to get somebody else with pigeons to Stuart. That might not be easy, not if the bastards there are waiting for me to try it."
"You could put pigeons on a scout ship up near North Cape," Ethel said. "They wouldn't give as much warning as birds from Stuart would, but they fly faster than any ship can sail."
Radcliffe started to trot out all the reasons why that was a foolish notion, but stopped with his mouth hanging open. Try as he would, he couldn't find any. Instead, he gave Ethel a big, smacking kiss. "The Devil fry me black if you won't command the Black Hand after I'm gone. You've got the natural wit for it."
"And the charm, too." Ethel simpered. She wasn't old enough yet to have the kind of charms she wanted. But she also wanted to take a pirate crew into battle. Even now, she would likely do a good job of it.
He tousled her hair. "Your day will come, sweetling, but not quite yet." Ethel pouted. He took no notice of her, which was her good luck; had his temper flared, he would have made her sorry.
Instead, he called for Mick. The master of the dovecote nodded and knuckled his forehead when Red Rodney told him what he had in mind. "Aye, skipper, we can do that-damned if we can't," he said. "You were in a sneaky mood when you thought of it, eh?"
"I'm not to blame," Radcliffe said, not without pride. "It's my daughter's notion."
"Well, good on Ethel, then," said Mick, who knew which side his bread was buttered on.
That very afternoon, a pinnace slipped out of Avalon harbor. Armed with only a handful of four-pounders, the little ship couldn't hope to outfight even the lighter vessels that would be sailing from Stuart. But she boasted a broad spread of sail, so she had a chance of getting away. And she carried several pigeons in wicker cages, so even if the enemy did run her down she could warn Avalon that danger neared.
Ethel was wild with rage when she found out the pinnace had sailed without her. "Why didn't you let me go?" she shouted at her father. "You said I could've done it!"
"I said your day was coming. I didn't say it was here," Rodney replied.
"I say it is!" Ethel screeched.
"You can say all sorts of things," he said. "That doesn't mean you can back them up."
"Who says I can't?" She drew her pistol with startling speed and aimed it at his chest.
The bore of any firearm pointed straight at you seemed six or eight times as wide as it really was. Red Rodney made no sudden moves. Furious as she was, Ethel might have squeezed the trigger first and thought about it only afterwards-which would have been rather too late for him. "Put that thing away," he said. "She's already sailed, and she's miles from here by now. I can't call her back."