United States of Atlantis

Chapter 20

Listening to gunfire while hungover wasn't something Victor would have recommended. However much he wished it would, his head didn't fall off. He disguised what the Spaniards called a pain in the hair with a stoic expression and a few surreptitious nips from a flask of barrel-tree rum.

Maybe those nips weren't surreptitious enough. Both Blaise and the Marquis de la Fayette sent him thoughtful glances. Neither presumed to ask him anything about his sore head, though. That was the only thing that really mattered.

No-that and the advance of the Atlantean and French armies. If not for their advance, musketry and cannon fire wouldn't have lacerated his tender ears. The things I endure for my country, he thought. But the rum, even if it did make his factotum and the French commander wonder, also took the edge off his headache By evening, he was more or less himself again.

"Anything I can do for whatever's troubling you, General?" Blaise asked, adding, "I know something is, but damned if I know what."

"It's my own worry, Blaise," Victor said, and not another word. He couldn't very well claim it had nothing to do with the Negro. Knowing what it was, Blaise would have called him a liar-and he

would have had a point, too. He didn't know, though. Victor hadn't been too drunk to burn Marcel Freycinet's latest letter the night before. He supposed things would come out sooner or later, things had an unfortunate way of doing that. As far as he was concerned, later was ever so much better than sooner.

By Blaise's expression, he had a different opinion. "If I knew what it was, maybe I could give you a hand with it," he said.

"I don't think so." Victor heard the slammed door in his own voice.

Blaise must have, too. "Well, I bet you'll change your mind one of these days," he said. "Won't be this one, though." And he stopped probing at Victor. Even Meg might have kept at it

So might the Marquis de la Fayette, but another brisk skirmish with the redcoats the next morning gave him something else to think about. He sent some of the French regulars on a looping march to the north to try to drive in the enemy's right wing. Cornwallis' soldiers, or the loyalists serving beside them, must have sniffed out the maneuver: the enemy fell back half a mile or so rather than waiting to withstand an attack in a disadvantageous position.

Half a mile closer to Croydon, then. If the Atlanteans and the French kept moving forward at that rate, they'd get to the northeastern city… some time toward the end of next winter. Victor repented of making such calculations. Then he repented of repenting, for he knew he couldn't help making them.

"I wish the English would stay to be netted," de la Fayette said. "It would make the whole undertaking so much easier."

"Well, yes," Victor agreed, deadpan. "And if a beefsteak cut itself up and hopped into your mouth bite by bite after you cooked it, that would make eating easier, too."

The French noble raised an eyebrow. "It could be that you take me less seriously than you might."

From a man of a certain temper, such a statement could be the first step on the path that led to a duel. Did de la Fayette have that kind of temper? Victor Radcliff didn't care to find out. He'd never fought a duel, nor did he want to fight his first one now. "Iwas trying to make a joke," he said. "If I offended you, I did not mean to, and I am sorry for it."

"Then I shall say no more about it," de la Fayette replied. And, to his credit, he didn't.

North of Hanover, more fields were planted in rye and oats and barley than in wheat. That was partly because the folk of Croydon brewed a lot of beer. Oh, some Germans brewed beer from wheat, but most folk preferred barley. Victor knew he did. But the main reason the other grains gradually supplanted wheat was that the growing season got short up here. When the weather stayed good, or even reasonable, wheat ripened well enough. But, if you were going to lose your crop about one year in four, you had to own a certain boldness of character to put it in the ground in the first place. Farmers of the more stolid sort chose grains that grew faster.

"Barley and rye, in France, are for peasants," the Marquis de la Fayette said. "And oats… Oats are for horses."

"Englishmen say the same thing about Scots and their oatmeal," Victor answered. "But more than one Scot has seen that English farmers eat oats, too."

"Do you?" the nobleman asked.

"If I eat katydids, I'm not likely to stick at oats, Monsieur. And I don't-I like oatmeal myself. Nor should you. I've already seen that your French soldiers don't turn up their noses at horsemeat. If you eat the beasts that eat the oats, you may as well eat the oats, too."

"It could be. But then again, it could also be otherwise," de la Fayette replied. "The delicate woodcock feasts on earthworms, while I should be less eager to do the same."

"A point." As Victor Radcliff thought about it, a slow smile spread across his face. "As a matter of fact, the same thing occurred to me not so very long ago, although in aid of our native oil thrushes rather than woodcocks."

"There you are, then." The marquis looked around. "And here we are. If we keep pressing forward, very soon we shall force General Cornwallis and his Englishmen back into Croydon."

"Let's hope we do," Victor said. If de la Fayette had made the same calculation he had himself, the Frenchman would have realized they wouldn't make the redcoats hole up in Croydon all that soon. Plainly, de la Fayette hadn't. Which meant… what? Most likely that de la Fayette was of a more optimistic, less calculating temperament. Victor laughed at himself. As if I didn't already know that.

Most of the people who lived north of Hanover sprang from one

or another of the sterner Protestant sects that had sprung up in England and Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their descendants still looked as if they disapproved of everything under the sun. If soldiers in the Atlantean army argued about God's nature or will, chances were at least one of them came from the state of Croydon.

Fortunately, the locals' grim disapproval extended to Cornwallis and his followers. "That man is assuredly hellhound," one farmer told Victor, sounding as certain as if he'd checked St. Peter's registry and discovered the English general's name wasn't there. (A joke Victor refrained from making: the Croydonite would have discovered Papist pretensions in him if he had, regardless of whether they were really there.)

Instead of joking, Victor asked, "How do you know that… ah…?"

"My name is Eubanks, General-Barnabas Eubanks," the local said. "As for how I know, did I not see him with my own eyes take a drink of spirituous liquor? 'Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging,' the Good Book says, which makes it true. And did I not hear him most profanely take the name of the Lord in vain, that also being prohibited by Holy Scripture?"

He could as easily have seen Victor drink rum or heard him blaspheme. The profession of arms lent itself to such pastimes, perhaps more than any other. If this Barnabas Eubanks didn't understand that… But a glance at Eubanks' stern, pinched features told Victor he did understand. He simply wasn't prepared to make any allowances. Yes, he was a Croydon man, all right.

"While I should be glad to see General Cornwallis in the infernal regions, I find myself more immediately concerned with his earthly whereabouts," Victor said. "What did you hear from him besides his blasphemy?"

"He and one of his lackeys were speaking of how they purposed making a stand in Pomphret Landing." Eubanks' mouth tightened further; Victor hadn't believed it could. "The place suits them, being a den of iniquity," Eubanks added.

All Victor knew about Pomphret Landing was that it lay between Hanover and Croydon. Until this moment, he'd never heard that it was as one with Sodom and Gomorrah. "How is it so wicked?" he inquired.

"I am surprised you do not know. I am surprised its vileness is not a stench in the nostrils of all Atlantis," Barnabas Eubanks replied. "Learn, then, that Pomphret Landing supports no fewer than three horrid taverns, that it has a theater presenting so-called dramas, and"-he lowered his voice in pious horror-"there is within its bounds a house of assignation in which women sell their bodies for silver!"

You silly twit! What do you expect sailors coming off the sea to do but drink and screw? No, Victor didn't shout it, which only proved he was learning restraint as he grew older. He also wondered where the wanton women's partners came by silver in these hard times. He didn't ask that, either. All he said was, "The theater doesn't sound so bad."

"Oh, but it is," Eubanks said earnestly. "The plays presented encourage adultery, freethinking, and all manner of other such sinful pastimes."

"I see," Victor murmured. If we can drive the redcoats out of Pomphret Landing without smashing the theater or burning it down, I may watch a play there myself One more thing he didn't tell his narrow-minded, if patriotic, informant.

Forcing Cornwallis to pull back from Pomphret Landing wouldn't be so simple. The town sat on the east bank of the Pomphret. Cornwallis' engineers had burnt or blown up the bridges over the river. Locals told Victor there was no ford for some mile inland. English artillerists fired their field guns across the Pomphret at his mounted scouts. Most of those shots missed, as such harassing fire commonly did. But de la Fayette's Frenchmen butchered two horses that met cannon balls. And the Atlanteans buried a man who also made one's sudden and intimate acquaintance.

French engineers assured Victor they could bridge the Pomphret. "Fast enough to keep the redcoats from gathering while you do it?" he asked them.

They didn't answer right away. The way they eyed him said he'd passed a test, one he hadn't even known he was taking. At last, cautiously, the most senior man replied, "That could be, Monsieur. It is one of the hazards of the trade, you might say."

"No doubt," Victor said. "That doesn't mean we should invite it if we don't have to, n'est-ce pas?"

The engineers put their heads together. When they broke apart, their grizzled spokesman said, "Perhaps if we began at night…"

"You would be working by torchlight then, is it not so?"

"We are not owls. We cannot see in pitch blackness, you know," the senior engineer said regretfully.

"Do you not believe the Englishmen might notice what you are about?" Victor asked.

"This too is a hazard of the trade, I fear," the engineer answered. "Having commanded for some little while, Monsieur le General, I daresay you will have observed it yourself by now."

Shut up and quit bothering us, he meant. An Atlantean would have come right out and said so. The Frenchman knew how to get his meaning across without being ostentatiously rude. Either way, the result was frustrating. Victor looked up into the heavens. The moon rode low in the east. It would be full soon; against the daylight sky, it looked like a silver shilling with one edge chewed away. The pale-faced man in the moon didn't wink at him-that had to be his imagination.

And if his imagination was working hard enough to see such things… If it was, maybe he could make it work hard other ways as well. "Do you think you could bridge the Pomphret by the light of the full moon?"

He made the engineers huddle again, anyhow. That was as much as he'd hoped for-he'd feared they would kill his scheme with genteel scorn. The graying senior man replied, "That is possible, Monsieur. Possible, I repeat. It is by no means assured."

"I understand," Victor said. "Here is what I have in mind____________________

"

He spoke for some little while.

This time, the French engineers didn't need to confer. Almost identical, slightly bemused, smiles spread across all their faces as near simultaneously as made no difference. "You have come up with something out of the ordinary, Monsieur le General. No one could deny it for a moment," their grizzled spokesman said. "Truly, I admire your original tenor of thought."

"And here I believed myself a baritone," Victor said. The engineers flinched, as if at musket fire. Ignoring that, Victor went on, "Do you think the plan is worth trying, then?"

"Why not?" the engineer said gaily. "After all, what is the worst that can happen?" He answered his own question: "We can get shot, fall into the river, and feed the fish and turtles and crayfish. Not so very much, eh?"

"One hopes not," Victor said dryly.

"One always hopes," the engineer agreed. "The fish, the turtles, the crayfish-they get fat regardless."

Against the dark blue velvet of the night, the moon glowed like a new-minted sovereign. Torches and bonfires blazed, turning night into day on this stretch of the Pomphret. Engineers shouted orders. Atlantean and French soldiers, most of them stripped to the waist, fetched and carried at the direction of the technically trained officers.

Bridging a river was not quiet work. Bridging a river by firelight at night was not inconspicuous work. It drew English scouts the way those soldiers' bare torsos drew mosquitoes. Some of the scouts fired horse pistols and carbines at the Frenchmen and Atlanteans out of the night. Others galloped away to bring back reinforcements. Victor heard their horses' hoofbeats fade in the distance despite the din of axes and saws and hammers and despite the Pomphret's gentler murmuring. He thought he heard those hoofbeats, anyhow. Maybe that was only his imagination

again. He could hope so.

Hope or not, though, he placed some field guns near the

Pomphret's west bank. If those reinforcements got here; no, dammit: when they did-they would have cannon with them. He wanted to be able to respond in kind.

But Cornwallis' artillerists would have every advantage in the world. His own guns had to try to wreck the carriages and limbers of enemy cannon hiding in the dark. The English gunners wouldn't even care about his, not unless his men got very lucky. A growing bridge, all lit up by flames and by the brilliant moon, made the easiest target any fool could think of. Sometimes there was just no help for a situation, worse luck.

Crash! A cannon ball tumbled six feet of bridge into the Pomphret. "Good thing nobody was standing on that stretch," Blaise said.

"So it was," Victor agreed. "But I'm afraid we can't play these games without losses." Hardly had he spoken before another cannon ball jellied a French engineer's leg. The man was carried off shrieking and bleeding to the surgeons. One quick, dismayed glance at the wound-even that was too much, because it made anyone who saw it want to look away-told Victor they would have to amputate to have any chance of saving the fellow's life. A couple of minutes later, the engineer screamed again, even louder.

"Poor devil," Blaise muttered.

Victor nodded; he was thinking the same thing himself. Then he rode out into the firelight to let the redcoats know he was there. It was important that they should understand he was personally supervising this operation.

They didn't need long to realize as much. Bullets cracked past his head. His horse sidestepped nervously. He didn't draw back into the darkness till after a roundshot skipped past, much too