"No," Victor said honestly. "But it's what we've got."
When he came to his farm, he found a delegation from the Atlantean Assembly waiting for him. The settlements had tried protesting to England one by one, only to learn that the mother country didn't want to listen to them. Then they'd all joined together, thinking Atlantis might be heard if only it spoke with a single voice. Thus far, the evidence was against them.
Isaac Fenner had red hair and ears that stuck out from the sides of his head like open doors. He was a solicitor from Bredestown, a few miles up the Brede from New Hastings, and spoke for the older city as well.
Matthew Radcliffe, from Avalon on the west coast, was bound to be some sort of cousin of Victor's, but neither had set eyes on the other before this meeting. The westerner was short and stocky; he looked travel worn. One of the farm cats had taken a liking to him and fallen asleep on his lap. He absently stroked its back while sipping rum punch.
Everyone called Robert Smith, from Croydon in the north, I Uncle Bobby. He'd carried the name since he was young. Victor didn't know why; he wondered if Smith did himself. Uncle Bobby
was also drinking rum punch, with the single-minded diligence of a man who needed it.
From the south came two men: Abednego Higgins and Michel du Guesclin. Maybe Higgins stood for the English-speakers down there and du Guesclin for the Frenchmen, or maybe things had just worked out that way. They were both very tall, the one broad-shouldered, the other slim as a rapier. Du Guesclin, Victor knew, was somehow connected to the Kersauzon family, as prominent down there as Radcliffs and Radcliffes were in English Atlantis.
As soon as Victor came inside and saw them, Margaret said, "They want to talk to you."
"Well, I expected they could find rum and something to mix it with somewhere closer than here," he answered.
His wife sent him an exasperated look. "No. They want to talk to you about something important"
"I was afraid they did." Victor Radcliff was also afraid he knew what the gentlemen of the Atlantean Assembly wanted.
"You aren't going to throw them out?" Despite the way Meg said it, it wasn't really a question.
Victor sighed. "No, I suppose not." As if in ironic counterpoint to that, Matthew Radcliffe raised his mug in salute. Abednego Higgins tossed a well-gnawed chicken bone onto the platter from which he'd taken it when it was meatier. The gentlemen from the Assembly did not expect to be sent on their way. With another sigh, Victor stepped past his wife and nodded to them. "Hello, my friends," he said, wondering how big a lie he was telling.
Radcliffe from Avalon raised his mug again. Du Guesclin, full of French politesse, bowed in his seat. Uncle Bobby grabbed the bull by the horns, saying, "Do you recall what the Discoverer did when the Black Earl tried to tax him without his leave?"
"Yes, I recall," Victor answered. Every schoolchild in English Atlantis knew what Edward Radcliffe had done when the exiled Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, tried to set himself up as king in Atlantis. What had happened then helped shape Atlantean history for the three hundred years between that day and this.
But Robert Smith went on as if Victor hadn't spoken: "He died, that's what he did. He died fighting tyranny, and his sons put it down for good." That was the story schoolboys learned. Some people said what had actually happened was more complicated.
Victor Radcliff didn't know; he hadn't been in New Hastings back in 1470.
Isaac Fenner was descended from the first man to die in Atlantis (and, if some tales were true, from the girl the Black Earl had taken as his bedwarmer, maybe even from Neville himself). He said, "The damned Englishmen still haven't learned their lesson. They think they can tax us as they please. Do we let them get away with that? Do we let them make us into slaves?"
Both du Guesclin and Higgins shook their heads at that rhetorical question. They owned slaves: copperskins from Terranova to the west and Negroes like Blaise brought in to do hard work in a climate not well suited to white men. Maybe that gave them extra cause not to want to be enslaved themselves. Maybe it meant they feared their own bondsmen would rise against them given even half a chance. Maybe they had reason for such fears.
"We are in arms around Hanover-you've seen that for yourself, Radcliff," Uncle Bobby said. "And we are in arms in Croydon, too. We rose before Hanover did." He spoke with a northerner's pride: doing anything ahead of Hanover and New Hastings mattered a lot up there.
"What has this got to do with me?" Victor asked, much in the way, almost eighteen centuries before, Jesus had said, If it be possible, let tins cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. Jesus must have known it wouldn't be possible. And, in the same way, Victor knew what it had to do with him. If Jesus could hesitate, he thought he was entitled to do the same.
Now Smith spoke as to a child: "We are at war with England, Victor. The settlements have armies. We need to join them into one army, into an Atlantean army. We need a man under whom they will be glad to combine, a man who can command them. Who else but you?"
During the war against French Atlantis, France, and Spain, Victor had been the highest-ranking Atlantean soldier fighting alongside the redcoats he was now expected to oppose. Wasn't one war enough for one man? "I should sooner stay here on my farm and live as an ordinary private person," he said.
As if activated by some clockwork mechanism, the delegates from the Atlantean Assembly shook their heads in unison. "If you sit on your hands here, we'll lose," Abednego Higgins said bluntly.
"II a raison," Michel du Guesclin agreed. He continued in accented English: "I can think of no other English man the French of the south will follow."
"Do you want to let the Discoverer down?" Matthew Radcliffe added. "If we lose this fight, England will do to Atlantis what the Black Earl, damn him, tried to do to New Hastings. Come on, coz! Isn't fighting those bastards from across the sea in your blood?"
In the last war, the men from across the sea had been allies, and vital allies at that. They hadn't sought to ram taxes down the Atlanteans' throats, not then. Afterwards, though… Afterwards was another story, as afterwards so often was.
Up until a little more than a century before, Avalon had been a pirates' roost. Did Matthew Radcliffe carry some of the freebooters' blood in his veins? Victor wouldn't have been surprised. His distant kinsman certainly seemed ready, even eager, to brawl.
"This won't be the Battle of the Strand, one fight and it's over," Victor warned. "This will be a war like the last one-worse than the last one, unless I miss my guess. England won't want to let us go our own way."
"No. She wants us to go her way, and she aims to drag us along if we don't care to follow on our own," Isaac Fenner said. "Is that what you have in mind for Atlantis till the end of time, Radcliff? Is that why your forefathers first took folk away from the greedy kings and nobles on the other side of the sea?"
There were days when Victor Radcliff wished he sprang from a less illustrious family. This was one of those days. People expected things from him because of who his forefathers were. He could have done without the compliment, if it was one.
"England is the greatest kingdom in Europe. England is the richest empire in the world," he said. "Even if she runs short of her own soldiers, she can buy poor men from the German princes to do her fighting for her. We are… what we are. Can we fight her and hope to win?"
"Can we bend the knee to her and look at ourselves in the glass afterwards?" Matthew Radcliffe returned. "You are our best hope, coz, but you are not our only hope. We aim to fight with you or without you."