Opening Atlantis

XV

R ed Rodney Radcliffe woke with a warm, bare thigh draped over his and with the sound of thunder in his ears. He was used to the one or the other; both together were something new. He needed a moment to remember he wasn't at sea and another to remember he wasn't in a brothel in some distant port. This was Avalon. This was Jenny.

And this was a fine, clear morning, with sunbeams sliding between the slats of the shutters on his bedchamber window. Which meant that wasn't thunder. Which meant…

Full memory returned. Red Rodney spilled Jenny off him and sprang out of bed, swearing horribly. His lady love let out a most unladylike squawk. He was pulling up his breeches when somebody pounded on the door. Jenny squawked again. "They're bombarding us!" Ben Jackson shouted through the planks.

"I know. I hear. I'm coming, dammit." Radcliffe needed only two strides to get to the door. That gave Jenny just time enough-or maybe almost time enough; Red Rodney didn't look back-to cover herself before he threw it open.

He rushed to Black Hand Fort's palisade. No, that wasn't thunder. That was his cousin's fleet hammering at the sea wall and the closer forts with all the guns the ships carried. Black Hand Fort was safe enough; lying near the bayside, it was beyond the reach of even bow chasers. But the closer forts were taking a pounding, and so were all the shops and dives and houses between them.

And so was the wall. It had been built to hold invaders out, but no one had imagined an onslaught like this when it went up. Even the hard-bitten Jackson sounded uncertain when he asked, "Can we keep 'em from breaking in?"

"We'd better," Red Rodney answered, which was nothing less than the truth. He looked around. Someone he would have expected to watch the fireworks with him wasn't here. Not Jenny-she'd still be cowering under the coverlets. But…"Where's Ethel?"

His first mate hesitated again, which was most unlike him. "Well…" he began.

"Well, what? Out with it, damn you." Rodney's voice took on a rumble more ominous than the cannonading-or so he intended, anyhow.

"Well, skipper, when the shooting started, she ran down toward the sea wall, to lend a hand where she could." Ben Jackson got it out in an unhappy rush.

"She-?" Radcliffe clapped a hand to his forehead. "Why the devil didn't you stop her?"

"On account of she was gone before I could," Jackson answered. "Christ, don't you think I would have?"

"Well, yes," Radcliffe admitted. A roundshot hit something made of stone, flew high in the air, and then crashed down again. A plume of smoke rose inside Avalon. The bombardment had started at least one fire, anyhow. "God damn William Radcliff to hell and gone!" Red Rodney shouted.

"Yes, skipper." Jackson hesitated again, then asked, "What do we do?"

Rodney Radcliffe didn't hesitate. That was one of the reasons he was the captain and Ben Jackson the mate. "I'll take most of the men down by the sea wall. If they send boats against us, we'll make 'em sorry-see if we don't. You hold here with the rest, just in case some of our so-called friends think to get gay while everything's topsy-turvy."

The mate nodded. "I'll do it." As long as he had his orders, or as long as the task in front of him was too obvious to require them, Jackson was as good as any man unhanged. Red Rodney laughed harshly. What happened over the next few hours would tell if they stayed that way.

Armed with muskets and cutlasses and pistols and pikes and hatchets and anything else they could lay their hands on, the corsairs from Black Hand Fort rushed west through Avalon's crowded, chaos-filled streets. They had to fight their way through every now and again. Most of the people under bombardment were sensibly fleeing east, out of range. Some of them were armed, too. If they lacked the mother wit to step aside, they paid the price for stupidity.

What had to be a forty-two-pound ball smashed into a grogshop not fifty feet from Red Rodney. The dive was there-and then it wasn't. It turned to rubble before his eyes. A spinning roof tile caught one of his men in the belly. The pirate went down, and he didn't get up again.

They had to brave more roundshot of all sizes as they neared the sea wall. One ball plowed a bloody track through the freebooters, killing three men and maiming two more before mere flesh could halt its progress. Radcliffe left the shrieking, wounded men where they lay and hurried on.

Another fire had started by the time he got close to the wall-started and showed every sign of spreading. It might wreck Avalon even if the attackers didn't get into the town. Rodney swore some more. At the moment, that was all he could do. He hoped he would be able to go on doing it. A cannon ball tore the head off a man only a couple of paces behind him. The spouting corpse ran on for several strides before crumpling in a muddy puddle.

Up to the wall at last. Where was Ethel? Anywhere close by? Radcliffe looked this way and that. He didn't see her anywhere. A big roundshot-it had to be another forty-two-pounder-flew only a few feet over his head and crashed down somewhere behind him in Avalon. Were it lower…He shuddered. It wouldn't have had to hit him to kill. Sometimes the wind of a cannon ball's passage was enough.

"Give it back to 'em!" That high, shrill voice could only belong to Ethel.

Rodney hurried south along the sea wall. There she was, and damned if she wasn't commanding a six-pounder's crew as if she'd been doing it for years. The cutthroats obeyed her, too. Maybe they knew whose daughter she was. Maybe they just knew they needed someone to keep them firing fast.

Smack! That was the sound of Red Rodney's open palm landing on Ethel's backside. She squalled like a cat with its tail caught in a door and leapt into the air. Murder blazed in her eyes. "Who-?" she shouted. Then she saw her father, and the fury faded. "Oh. You. I might have known."

"Yes. You might have, by Jesus. You might have known to stay in the castle, where you'd be safe."

"If they get over the walls, no one is safe," Ethel answered, and shouted for her crew-and it was her crew-to run out the gun and fire it. Red Rodney muttered under his breath. The worst of it was, he couldn't even tell her she was wrong.

Marcus Radcliffe came back to William Radcliff and asked, "Are you all right, coz?"

"Yes, dammit. This is the third time you've asked me," William said in some irritation. "I am neither woman nor child. I can keep up."

"You're neither backwoodsman nor marine, either," Marcus pointed out. "You know how to tell other people what to do. I don't know how you are at doing things on your own hook."

"I cope," William said. His foot skidded in a patch of mud. He flailed his arms for balance, but he didn't fall. Several marines were already muddy. So were a couple of Marcus Radcliffe's rustics. William hadn't fallen…yet.

Swearing, sweating marines dragged a four-pounder through the woods south of Avalon. The gun's carriage, made for the deck of a ship, was less than ideal for rough, muddy ground. Somehow, though, the bullocks hauling it had managed to keep up with the rest of the landing party. They would take out their anger on the palisade-and on the men atop it.

William hoped not many men would be atop it. With luck, the cannonading from the fleet would draw all the corsairs to the sea wall. Then the marines could just walk into Avalon. That would be wonderful-if it worked.

Marcus Radcliffe plainly thought William odd if not daft for joining the landing party. But the decision would come here. One way or the other, it would. William wanted to be in place to see it. The fleet could go on without him for a while. He was sure Elijah Walton and Piet Kieft would be just as happy to go on without him.

Had he been in charge of Avalon, he would have cleared the woods farther from the palisade. The landing party could approach almost to within musket shot of the works without being noticed. Were they all backwoodsmen like Marcus' recruits, they might have got closer yet, but even the red-coated marines could hide behind tree trunks and in the midst of fern thickets.

And hide most of them did, while the gun crew aimed the four-pounder at the long wall ahead. The gun was of brightly polished brass; William could only marvel that no one in the town noticed it till it was almost ready to fire. The diversion from the sea must have done all he wanted and more.

A startled shout rose from the palisade just as the marine lieutenant in charge of the piece said, "You may fire now, Sergeant."

Boom! The ball wasn't even as big as William's fist. But it was plenty big enough to smash one of the upright trunks ahead when it thudded home. The marines in the gun crew got to work reloading. "Give them a volley!" Marcus Radcliffe bellowed. Muskets and rifles thundered. A couple of men on the palisade went down.

"Charge!" yelled a captain in a red coat. Marines and backwoodsmen-and William Radcliff-rushed the palisade. They all screamed like wild Terranovans. Maybe that would scare the freebooters. Maybe it would lift their own spirits. William could hope so.

He knew how to shoot and load a musket. He had a rapier on his hip, not a cutlass. He also carried a loaded pistol in his boot. He hadn't done a lot of fighting, but he thought-he hoped-he knew how.

Some of the marines hauled scaling ladders forward. They'd blasphemously lugged those through the woods along with the cannon. Boom!…Crash! The cannon smote the palisade again. One way or another, the landing party was determined to break into Avalon.

Only a couple of shots came from the enemy. Not many corsairs stood on the palisade, and some of the ones who did promptly fled when they saw marines bearing down on them. Radcliff might have done the same thing. They had a chance to save themselves. If they stayed on the palisade, they were bound to be butchered-they didn't have enough men to keep the bullocks and backwoodsmen from getting up there with them.

"Ladders high!" an officer shouted. There wasn't even a ditch outside the palisade to make things harder for the attackers. No one in Avalon really seemed to have believed attack could come from this quarter.

Believe or not, here it was. A pirate shot down at a climbing marine. The ball hit the red-coated Englishman in the face. As he fell, he brought down two other men below him. But others took their places. Marines were as stolid as men could be in the face of death or maiming.

William didn't mind letting a good many of them precede him up onto the palisade. They were younger and stronger and better trained than he was. But he swarmed up a ladder himself. He hadn't come this far only to watch. He aimed to fight, too.

He almost didn't get the chance. A bullet cracked past his head as he hurried toward the closest stairway down into Avalon. Marcus Radcliffe was a few feet behind him. The backwoodsman chuckled. "Nothing like it when they shoot at you and miss, is there?"

"Better that than their shooting and hitting," William agreed.

Marines formed lines and advanced through the streets. Some people fled before them, screaming in fear. Others charged at them with whatever weapons came to hand. Marcus' backwoodsmen shot down several of those before they got close. The leathery, nondescript Atlanteans carried rifles accurate to a much greater distance than the usual smoothbore musket. The marines took little damage from the pirates who closed. The pirates fought as individuals, the marines as a team. They killed methodically, without much malice and without much waste motion.

Following their lethal line, William Radcliff didn't think he'd have to do much himself. But a man with a cutlass lurched out of a grogshop, stared blearily, and rushed him. William fired his pistol at point-blank range-and missed. He threw the pistol at the corsair's head. It struck the man a glancing blow, and gave Radcliff the chance to draw his own rapier.

The first stroke from the cutlass almost broke his blade and almost knocked the long, thin, straight sword from his hand. His own first thrust almost spitted the pirate, who sprang back just in time. But the freebooter's foot went out from under him in the mud. As the fellow staggered, William skewered him.

The pirate howled like a hound. He didn't crumple, though, the way William hoped he would. He kept right on fighting.

"Stick him again!" Marcus shouted. "People aren't as easy to kill as you'd think."

How do you know? William wondered. But that was a question for another time. His next thrust caught the corsair in the throat. Blood rivered out. The man gobbled something and finally fell.

"That's the way, coz!" Marcus said. "Let's go on and finish the job."

William brandished the blood-dripping rapier. "Yes, by God! Let's!"

"You see?" Red Rodney shouted. "They haven't the stomach for landing!" With all the freebooters on the sea wall, he wouldn't have wanted to land there, either.

Whether the enemy wanted to land or not, though, they went right on cannonading Avalon. Every so often, a roundshot would tear a bloody slice out of the corsairs or knock over some of the palisade, which caused more casualties.

Casualties or not, the English and the Dutch and the men from Stuart could pound away from now till forever, and they wouldn't break in. Radcliffe cursed them and shook his fist and cheered whenever the gun Ethel went on commanding shot at the ships offshore. So much powder smoke drifted in from their guns and the ones fired at them that he coughed between cheers. His eyes streamed. His face was probably black as an indigo-growing slave's down in southeastern Atlantis.

A man tugged at his arm. "Red Rodney!" the fellow cried.

Even through the roar of the guns, Rodney heard the fear in his voice. "What is it?" he asked, an ominous rumble in his own.

"They're in the city! They're over the palisade and in the city!"

"What? Are you daft? We're holding 'em out!"

"No. I wish I was." The pirate pointed south. "They're over the palisade down there. Swarms of 'em-great bloody bullocks in red coats, killing anything that moves."

"Oh, Christ Jesus! Bugger me with a worm!" Rodney Radcliffe said. And the enemy had buggered him-buggered him and Avalon. They'd drawn all the defenders here to the sea wall, and then come right up the town's arse.

"What do we do?" wailed the man with the bad news.

"What can we do? We've got to fight 'em," Radcliffe said grimly.

He started pulling men out of the struggle on the sea wall and pointing them back into Avalon. He shouted. He punched. He cajoled. He swore. Little by little, he started getting the corsairs to pay attention to him.

They didn't escape the hell of battle even after descending from the wall. Roundshot from the enemy fleet crashed down at random. Sometimes they would come down on a man, or on a clump of men. When that happened, it wasn't pretty.

All the same, Red Rodney shouted, "Keep on, damn you! Keep on! The bloody marines will murder us if you don't!"

Other pirates with loud voices also urged freebooters into the fight. Maybe they were captains, too. Maybe they were just men with eyes to see where trouble lay. It didn't matter. As long as they could see that much, nothing else mattered.

Avalon was not a big city. The pirate from the sea wall didn't need long to bump up against the bullocks. When they saw the men in the red coats, they roared in rage and charged with whatever weapons they happened to hold. Stinging volleys of musketry drove them back, and bayonets outreached swords. The marines were ferociously well disciplined. Red Rodney had always thought sheer fury could overpower anything that stood in its way. Discovering he was wrong was bitter as gall.

It was also almost fatal. A musket ball tugged at his left sleeve. When he looked down, he discovered his arm was bleeding. It was only a scratch, which didn't mean he wanted it. Had the ball flown a few inches to the right…He didn't even want to think about that.

"Musketeers! Pistoleros!" he bawled. "Into the houses! Shoot from cover! Don't make it easy for those poxy whoresons!" He'd always been proud of the pirates' independence. When every man was as good as every other man, no man could tell any man what to do. If the freebooters wanted to listen to him, they would. If they didn't…

If they didn't, they would die. The marines surged forward. The ones with bayonets plugged into the muzzles of their muskets used the weapons as spears, impaling corsairs who couldn't get at them to reply. Other marines kept a deadly hail of bullets in the air. So did some enemy fighters in plain clothes. They could hit a man at two hundred yards, sometimes farther. There weren't that many of them, and they didn't fire fast, but they caused trouble all out of proportion to their numbers.

Red Rodney sprang like a wolf. He beat a bayoneted musket aside with his sword, then struck the marine holding the piece. His stroke clove the bullock from crown to chin. The man toppled, dead before he hit the ground.

But another marine lunged at Rodney Radcliffe, forcing him to jump back or be spitted. The pirate chief managed to escape. The marine in the second rank stepped up to the first, and the line rolled ahead as it had before. One dead marine? So what?

Radcliffe had always scorned such regimentation. A man, he thought, should fight for himself, for his hope of glory or gold or women, willing or otherwise. To fight because it was your job, as if you were a chandler or a cordwainer? Where was the glory in that?

Nowhere at all, which didn't mean it didn't work. The marines, job or no job, advanced. The corsairs, glory or no glory, fell back-or else they just fell, and did not rise again. The marines systematically finished them off, one after another. For all Red Rodney's cries and exhortations, he couldn't stop the foe. Fear began fighting fury in his heart.

William Radcliff stood with a pair of marines on the roof of a three-story building in southern Avalon. "Hoist the red flag," he told them.

"Right you are, sir," they chorused. They probably would have said the same thing if he'd told them to jump off the roof. (The building was a house of ill fame. To the bullocks' undisguised disappointment, the girls had fled.)

One of the marines had a big square of red cloth. The other carried a long pole that would do for a flagstaff. William had some tacks with which to fasten the cloth to the pole. Once that was done, they waved the makeshift flag. You could see it a long way. With luck, even the sailors in the fleet would be able to spy it.

Radcliff hoped they could. They were supposed to be looking for the signal. It ordered them to put sailors into boats and attack the sea wall. The marines had drawn a lot of defenders from it. The cannonading had killed more-and should have breached the wall as well. If the sailors could gain lodgements…If they could do that, then Avalon, assailed from flank and rear at the same time, was bound to fall.

Wasn't it?

Thwock! A bullet tore through the red cloth. The corsairs might not know what the signal flag meant, but they knew they didn't like it. As if I care, William thought.

He walked to the edge of the roof for a crow's-nest view of the fighting. Another bullet snapped past his head. He ducked. That wasn't cowardice-even the nerveless marines did it. But then he stepped back-no point giving the freebooters an easy shot at him.

Besides, he had a pretty good idea of how things were going. His ears could tell him almost as much as his eyes. The pirates hadn't given up. All the same, the marines were steadily driving them back. If the sailors could break into Avalon by way of the sea wall, he wouldn't have wanted to wear his cousin's shoes.

"You men keep on," he told the bullocks with the signal flag. "I'm going down to fight some more."

As he started down the stairs, he heard one marine tell the other, "I didn't think the old bugger had so much fire in his belly."

I'm not old, Radcliff thought indignantly. Next to the marines, he was. He hurried down. He almost tripped on the stairs and broke his neck; that would have been a humiliating way to show he really was the antiquity the bullocks thought him. But he caught himself and went outside without further damage.

Smoke filled the air. A lot of it was brimstone-stinking gunpowder smoke-a lot, but not all. Several fires blazed in Avalon now. Fire was always the great fear, ashore and at sea; once it caught hold, it was hard, terribly hard, to fight. Even if the pirates somehow threw back the forces that harried them, their haven would never be the same.

Their haven will never be their haven again, William thought, determination filling him. He didn't think he could end all piracy in the Hesperian Gulf by seizing Avalon. He did hope he could break its back. That would be enough to satisfy him. It might even be enough to make him go down in history. He laughed at himself when that occurred to him. As long as his ships could get where they were going without let or hindrance, history didn't count.

Two marines came out of a grogshop. Blood dripped from one man's bayonet; blood and brains fouled the stock of the other's musket. They both nodded respectfully. "Couple of bastards in there who won't bother their betters any more, sir," said the man with the nasty musket.

"Good riddance to them," William said. "May we comb out the rest of the lice in Avalon the same way."

Nodding, the marines hurried forward, toward the struggle. Radcliff followed more sedately. As befits my years, he thought with a wry grin.

He didn't want only pirates picked at random dead. He wanted to know their chieftains were gone-Goldbeard and Cutpurse Charlie and the other flamboyant leaders who could gather a good-sized fighting tail behind them with a snap of the fingers. And, most of all, he wanted Red Rodney Radcliffe swept from the face of the earth. Even if they spelled the name differently, Red Rodney blackened it with every breath he took. Only fitting, then, that he shouldn't take many more.

William's hand tightened on the basket hilt of his sword. If he could dispose of his cousin himself…it would be something out of a romance. William shrugged. He was willing to forgo the glory-and the risk of getting killed instead of killing-if he knew someone had put paid to Rodney Radcliffe.

A great clamor of musketry broke out to the northwest. William almost forgot his cousin. The landing from the sea was starting. If the sailors could break in…"Avalon is ours," he muttered.

When Red Rodney Radcliffe heard the commotion behind him and to his right-the commotion from the sea wall-he stopped dead in the middle of a narrow, unpaved street. Had a marine with a charged musket or a bayonet stood close by, he would have died in truth, his guts spilling over the mud and slops. His hopes had been low. They sank further now.

Ben Jackson knew that clamor for what it was, too. "Are they in?" the mate asked hoarsely. "Can they get in there?"

"I…don't know," Radcliffe answered. Under the circumstances, it was about the worst thing he could have said.

"What do we do?" Jackson demanded. "Go back to Black Hand Fort and stand siege?"

Red Rodney only grunted. It wasn't a hopeful grunt. The great captains' forts weren't provisioned for long sieges. They were strongholds where crews lived, from which they sallied, and to which they retreated in time of crisis. They were made to hold out other pirate bands, not determined soldiers. No one who built them had imagined soldiers could break into Avalon.

All that flashed through Radcliffe's mind in a heartbeat. He shook his head. "Not unless we have to. We've got to drive them out, not let them drive us in."

Jackson nodded; he could see that, too. But he listened to what was going on at the sea wall. "I think they are in, damn them," he said.

"I think so, too," Radcliffe said. "That doesn't mean we can't drive them out again, though…does it?" He wished, too late, he hadn't added the last couple of words.

Ben Jackson shook his head like a hunted animal-which, at the moment, he was. Red Rodney was another one, and he knew it. Well, some hunted animals had teeth and fangs of their own, and could turn the tables on their pursuers. Not many beasts in Atlantis did, but that wasn't true through most of the world. The pirate chief aimed to fight back as long as he could.

A bullet cracked past him. He saw a marine down at the end of the street. He pulled a holdout pistol from his boot top and fired at the bullock. The marine let out a horrible howl and clutched at his shoulder. Rodney stared at the pistol in delighted surprise. He'd hoped to scare the man in the red coat. Hitting him was an unexpected bonus.

He wanted to recharge both his guns. He wanted to, but he had no chance. Jackson was shouting for freebooters to come up and join them. The wounded marine's roar of pain brought his comrades at the double. They did look after one another, no doubt about it.

Marines and pirates smashed together in bloody collision. Red Rodney hacked and slashed. He threw one pistol in a bullock's face. The marine went down, clutching at his nose. Radcliffe kicked him. Not far away, beset by three men at once, Ben Jackson fell, blood spurting from a belly wound and from his throat. Rodney feared he would never get up again.

Pirates and marines fell, clawing and biting at one another till they could fight no more. Red Rodney's band had more men in it than did his foes' party, but one marine was worth more than one corsair in this kind of brawl.

A bayonet had pinked Radcliffe's leg. A sword had scored a bleeding line down his right arm. He wasn't quite the last man standing, but the marines who still lived were hurt worse than he was, and drew back out of range of his cutlass.

Backed by three hale marines, a middle-aged man with a rapier came around the corner. When he said, "You are Rodney Radcliffe," each individual word might have been chiseled from stone.

"Damn right I am," Red Rodney snarled. "Who the bloody hell are you?"

The stranger bowed. "I have the honor-if that be the proper term-of being your cousin. William Radcliff, at your service." He bobbed up and down again.

Rage ripped through Rodney. "You filthy bugger! You've ruined me!"

"Good," William said coolly, "for that was my purpose. If you yield now, I promise you a quick end. I regret-though not very much-I have nothing better to offer."

"I'll give you something to regret!" Red Rodney shouted. "You'll regret coming up against me face-to-face, by God! You won't gloat over my carcass, that's for sure." He swung up his sword for a limping charge.

William Radcliff appeared unwounded. He also knew how to handle that long, thin, straight sword-a stop thrust almost skewered Rodney. Well, there were ways. Red Rodney smashed at the rapier. If he could break the blade, the other man was his meat.

But William proved a better man of his hands than the pirate had dreamt he could be. He took the slashes and turned them without batting an eye. He ran the point of his blade into Rodney's left shoulder. And Rodney could not reach him, no matter how he tried.

Then one of the marines fired at point-blank range. The bullet slammed into Red Rodney's chest. Blood filled his mouth. He knew it was a bad wound. Then he took another one, this time in the belly. He slumped to his knees.

"You don't fight fair," he choked out.

Through growing darkness, he saw William Radcliff nod. "Indeed not," the merchant admiral replied. "I fight to win. Nothing less is worth fighting for." A third musket bellowed, and Rodney knew no more.

William Radcliff eyed Ethel Radcliffe like a man eyeing a beautiful but poisonous snake. She'd already tried to knife him once. Now she was-he devoutly hoped-disarmed. "What am I to do with you?" he asked.

"You'd better kill me," she answered matter-of-factly. "Christ knows I'll kill you first chance I get."

"I have no stomach for slaying children," he said, "and we are kin, of sorts."

"My shame, not yours," Ethel said.

"If I send you to Stuart-"

"I will hunt you down," the pirate's daughter broke in.

She meant it. Whether she would mean it a few years from now was a different question. For the time being, though, she was as dangerous as a hogshead of gunpowder in a fire. "I have no quarrel with you," William said. "Mine was with your father."

"Well, I have one with you, for my father's sake," Ethel said. "Look to your life-more warning than a scorpion like you would give, Radcliff." She somehow contrived to make him hear the missing e that separated his name, and his kind, from hers.

William thought he would laugh at a death threat from a child. At such a threat from most children, he would have. From Red Rodney Radcliffe's daughter? No. She'd called him a scorpion. To him, she seemed to have all her father's venom in a small, innocent-looking exterior. A strawberry-blond coral snake, he thought uneasily.

Trying to calm her, he said, "We've been merciful where we could. Ordinary pirates, men of no rank, who yielded to us may go free. Many of them will make good enough honest sailors. Nothing will happen to you, nor to… Is that your mother?"

"Who? Jenny?" Ethel Radcliffe laughed in his face. "Jesus, no! Just one of my father's doxies. He had enough of 'em." She sounded as proud of Red Rodney as one of his men might have.

"Indeed," William said stiffly. Where Ethel spat defiance, Jenny had offered anything she had to give to keep from meeting the gibbet. And she had a lot, as he'd found out to his pleasure and perhaps even to hers. He'd never intended hanging her, but she didn't need to know that. What Tamsin, back in Stuart, didn't know wouldn't hurt her a bit. William made himself return to the business at hand. "What shall I do with you?" he asked Ethel again.

"I told you once what I aim to do. If you don't care to listen, it's your funeral." She punned with vicious relish. She would probably kill the same way. It had to run in the blood.

He made up his mind. "I will send you to New Hastings," he said. The old town was far enough from Stuart to leave him feeling safe. "You may learn a trade there, or pursue such education as fits your pleasure and abilities. And I will dower you, richly enough to let you marry and enjoy the blessings of domestic felicity." Or as many of them as a hellcat can enjoy, at any rate.

Ethel Radcliffe looked him in the eye. She didn't spit in his face, but he thought she wanted to. "Salve your conscience all you please, old man. I'll kill you anyhow."

He had her taken away then. She went peaceably enough. He wasn't going to worry about her any more. He told himself he wasn't, anyhow.

It wasn't as if he didn't have other things to worry about. Elijah Walton wanted to place all of Avalon-indeed, the whole west coast of Atlantis from Avalon northwards-under the direct rule of the King of England. "He provided the wherewithal by which it was won," he said.

"Piet Kieft will be surprised to hear it," William remarked. "So will the House of Orange. And so am I. Did my armed merchantmen do nothing here? Did my backwoodsmen not take this town with the Royal Marines?"

"They made their contributions," Walton said with a grace both easy and, Radcliff reckoned, false. "But truly, what difference does it make unless you are a damned Dutchman? His Majesty already rules the Atlantean settlements. This would but extend that rule."

"It would not, for we have our longstanding rights and privileges to guard against tyranny and misrule," William said. "Land ruled straight from London would not."

"Say you that his Majesty is a tyrant?" Walton no doubt thought he sounded dangerous, but he'd had little to do with Ethel Radcliffe.

"I said nothing of the sort, sir, and will style you liar and knave should you publish it abroad that I did," William replied. "But king follows king as autumn follows summer. Who knows what the next reign may bring, or the one after that?"

Elijah Walton waved his words away. "You quarrel over the shadow of an ass."

"I think not," William Radcliff said. "Nor will the English settlements here. As for the French and the Spaniards here in this western land…"

"One more reason for the Crown to rule here: to protect you from them," Walton said.

William laughed in the Englishman's face, as Ethel had laughed in his. "As the Crown warded off the corsairs?" he inquired.

Walton reddened. "You mistrust the spirit in which this proposal is offered."

"By God, sir, I do indeed," Radcliff said. "And I tell you again, I am not the only one who will. If you wish to see insurrection against the Crown flare all through English Atlantis, you have but to persist in your mad policy."

"You jest," Walton said. "You bluff."

"I am willing-I am even glad-to have the king rule me…from a safe distance, both in travel and in law," William said. "Were his rule more intimate, it would prove less congenial. I am not alone in this sentiment, nor anywhere close to it. Heed me or not, as you like. I have told you the truth." His warning was at least as determined as Ethel's had been.

"His Majesty will not be pleased," Elijah Walton warned. Radcliff only shrugged. And he carried the day. No one can stop the Radcliffs when they set their mind to something, he thought, and then, remembering Red Rodney's daughter, he rather wished he hadn't.