Along with the spires, masts in the harbor reached for the sky. Some of them were as tall as any church steeple. Not only merchantmen lined the quays, but also English frigates and ships of the line. Redcoats garrisoned Hanover. The locals had, and did not enjoy, the privilege of paying for quartering them.
When the travelers rode into town, more English soldiers were on the streets than Victor Radcliff remembered seeing since the war. Then, the redcoats and English Atlanteans fought side by side against France and Spain. They were comrades-in-arms. They were friends.
The redcoats in Hanover neither looked nor acted like friends. Their faces were hard and closed. They carried bayoneted muskets, and stayed in groups. When they went by, locals called insults and curses after them-but only from behind, so the soldiers had a hard time figuring out who'd done it.
Instead of going straight to his printer, Victor called at the house of Erasmus Radcliff, his second cousin once removed. The Discoverer's family had flourished mightily in English Atlantis,
and no doubt Radcliffs and Radcliffes and other kinsfolk with different surnames were busy helping to turn what had been French Atlantis upside down and inside out. Erasmus, these days, headed the trading firm William Radcliff had brought to prominence a hundred years before.
He looked like a prosperous merchant: he wore a powdered wig, a velvet jacket the color of claret, and satin breeches. He had manicured hands, an exquisitely shaved face, and a gentleman's paunch. His eyes were a color somewhere between blue, gray, and green, and as warm as the Atlantic off the northern reaches of Iceland.
"Yes, it's very bad," he said as a servant with the map of Ireland on his face brought in ale and smoked pork for him and Victor- Blaise was taking his refreshments with the house staff. 'T always think it can get no worse, and I always find myself mistaken."
"Hanover has not the feel of a garrisoned city, as it did when I was here year before last. It has the feel of an occupied city." Victor raised his mug. "Your health, coz."
"And yours." Erasmus Radcliff returned the compliment. They both drank. Victor praised the ale, which deserved it. Erasmus waved the praise aside. "You would know what occupation feels like, wouldn't you, from your campaigns in the south? Well, by God, here we find ourselves on the wrong end of it. How dare the Crown treat us like so many Frenchmen?" His voice was soft and mild, which only made the indignation crackling in it more alarming.
"We cost England money," Victor answered. "In their way, King George's ministers are merchants, too. They want to see a return on their investment."
"If they so badly want money of us, let them ask our parliaments for it," his cousin said. "London has no more right to wring taxes from Hanover than Hanover has of taxing London: the difference being that we presume not, whereas London does."
"The other difference being that London can put soldiers into Hanover, whereas we cannot garrison London," Victor said dryly. Erasmus Radcliff's response to that was so comprehensive, so heartfelt, and so ingenious that Victor stored it away for future reference. But he asked a blunt question of his own: "Dislike it as you will, coz, but what do you propose to do about it?"
Erasmus sent him a look filled with dislike-and with reluctant respect "Damn all I can do about it, as we both know too well."
"Oh, indeed." Victor Radcliff nodded. "And since we know it, what's the point to so much fussing and fuming?"
"Do you know of the newfangled steam-driven engines they're using in England to pump water out of coal mines?" Erasmus asked. When Victor nodded, his cousin went on, "They have a valve that opens when the pressure from the steam inside grows too great. Absent this valve, the boiler itself would burst. All Atlantis curses England. By cursing, we harmlessly vent our steam. Did we not, this island might explode. Or will you tell me I'm mistaken?"
"I'll tell you, you may be," Victor replied. "For 'all Atlantis' does not curse England. Much of Hanover may, but Hanover, however loath you are to hear it, is not Atlantis. It never has been. Please God, may it never be. As things stand, most of Atlantis is content with England, or at least resigned to her. Were it otherwise, the explosion you speak of would have come long since."
His cousin seemed even less happy than he had a moment earlier. Erasmus, Victor judged, didn't care to hear that Hanover and Atlantis weren't synonymous. Few Hanoverians did. Pity, Victor thought, because it's true whether they care to hear it or not.
"That it has not come does not mean it will not come," Erasmus said at last. "These valves can fail. These steam-driven engines can blow up. I have heard of several such misfortunes. And when they do… When they do, Victor, things are never the same afterwards for anyone who chances to stand in the way."
Victor eyed him. Was Erasmus hiding a message there? Victor laughed at himself for even wondering. If Erasmus was hiding a message, he was hiding it in plain sight.
"Way! Make way there!" bawled the teamster atop the brewery wagon. He cracked his whip above the four big, strong horses hauling the cask-filled wain. Then he cracked it again, this time in front of the nose of a man who didn't step aside fast enough to suit him.
The man swore, but flattened himself against the side of a building nonetheless. He wore a knife on his belt-who didn't?- but a man with a belt knife was even more disadvantaged against a bullwhip than against the rapiers some gentlemen still carried to mark their status. You had to be able to judge when picking a fight made sense and when it was only foolishness.
Victor Radcliff had stepped to one side as soon as the teamster started shouting. The heavy wagon clattered past, iron tires banging and sparking on cobblestones. Puddles from the last rain lingered between the stones and in the holes where a few of them had come up. The wagon wheels splashed passersby, but not too badly.
A sign hanging above a small shop creaked in the morning breeze, Custis Cawthorne, printing and persuasions, the neatly painted letters proclaimed. The breeze carried the smells of sea and smoke and sewage: like any other town, Hanover dumped its waste into the closest river, for ultimate disposal in the ocean.
Manuscript under his arm, Victor ducked inside. A bell over the door jangled. The shop was gloomy inside. It smelled of wood and paper and sweat and ink. A harassed-looking 'prentice fed sheets into a press, one after another. A printer worked the lever again and again. Another 'prentice stacked the newly printed broadsheets.
Custis Cawthorne watched the work from behind the counter. "There'll be a mistake somewhere," the printer said mournfully. "There always is. Perfection, they say, is for the Lord alone. They don't usually know what they're talking about, but when it comes to printing I'm persuaded they have a point… And how are you, your Radcliffishness?"
"I thought I was pretty well, till I set eyes on you," Victor replied.
Cawthorne gave back a sepulchral smile. He was tall and thin and stooped, with a fringe of white hair clinging to the sides and back of a formidably domed skull. "You do me too much honor,
sir," he said. "Of course, when it comes to honor I hold with Falstaff, so any honor would be too much. Is that the latest effusion from your goose there under your arm?"
"Maybe I should pluck you for quills next time-you seem prickly enough and to spare," Victor said.
"And here I was going to do you an honor." Cawthorne stared reprovingly over the tops of his gold-rimmed spectacles. They were of a curious design he had devised himself. A horizontal line across each lens separated weaker and stronger magnifications, so he could read and see at a distance without changing pairs.
"A likely story," Victor said. "More likely, you were about to set some libel against me in type."