Harry Turtledove - United States of Atlantis

Croydon didn't have a permanent gallows. Carpenters who would have been building furniture or houses or ships gleefully took time off to knock one together not far from the whipping post. The sheep were probably offended, but no one cared. Long enough to hang all the convicted traitors at once, the gallows dominated Croydon Meadow.

Ravens tumbled in the air overhead as guards with bayoneted muskets brought Biddiscombe and his confederates from the jail to the execution site. Victor Radcliff wondered how the birds knew. Biddiscombe had not appealed his sentence; he must have known it was hopeless. Two of the men from the Horsed Legion

had. Victor turned them down. Men who took up arms against the United States of Atlantis had to understand what they could look forward to.

Habakkuk Biddiscombe climbed the thirteen steps to the platform as if his beloved awaited him at the top. He took his place on the trap and looked out at the crowd howling for his death. "Deviltake you all!" he shouted. The Croydonites howled louder. The hangman put a hood over Biddiscombe's head.

There was a brief delay while a parson and a Catholic priest consoled some of the condemned men. The parson approached Biddiscombe. He shook his head. Even though he was hooded, the motion was unmistakable to Victor-and to the parson. Clicking his tongue between his teeth, the man withdrew.

The hangmen positioned the victims, then looked at one another. Some signal must have passed between them, for all the traps dropped at the same time. Most of the hanged men, Biddiscombe among them, died quickly. One jerked for a few minutes before stilling forever. The crowd applauded. The hangmen bowed. People left the meadow in a happy mood. Some stayed to bid for pieces of the rope. A raven perched on the gallows, waiting.

Nothing held Victor in Croydon any longer. He could go home. He could, and he would. He'd never dreaded going into battle more.

Meg hugged and kissed Victor. Stella hugged and kissed Blaise. So did their children. It was the happiest homecoming anyone-any two-coming back from the wars could have wanted. Victor and Meg, Blaise and Stella, drank rum. The Negroes' children drank sugared and spiced beer. Joy reigned unconstrained.

Blaise told stories in which Victor was a hero. Not to be outdone, Victor told stories in which Blaise saved the day. They both stretched the stories a little. Victor knew he didn't stretch his too much. He didn't think Blaise stretched his too much, but nobody could properly judge stories about himself.

They ate ham and fried chicken and potatoes and pickled cabbage and cinnamon-spicy baked apples till they could hardly walk. After supper, Blaise and Stella and their children went off to their smaller cottage next to the Radcliff's' farmhouse.

And Meg Radcliff looked Victor in the eye and said, "You son of a bitch."

He opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. After that opening, how was he supposed to answer? Helplessly, he spread his hands. "You know." He'd thought those were the two worst words that could possibly come out of his mouth. And he'd been right, too.

"Don't I just!" his wife answered bitterly. "You were supposed to ride a horse while you were on campaign, Victor, not some damned colored wench. And how many other trollops were there

that I don't know anything about?"

"None. Not a one." Victor lied without hesitation or compunction.

Meg laughed at him-not the sort of laugh she'd given him before they were alone. "Do you suppose I hatched out of a honker's egg? You just happened to lie down with this one bitch, and she just happened to get up with child."

"That is what happened." Having begun to lie, Victor had to go on. Except for what had happened with Louise, Meg couldn't prove anything, anyhow. What she suspected… she had a right to suspect. But she couldn't prove it.

"Ha!" It wasn't a laugh-it was a sound she threw in his face.

"Meg…"

She wasn't going to listen to him yet. Maybe eventually- maybe not, too. Certainly not yet. "So tell me," she said, "have you got yourself a nigger son now, or a daughter?" She wouldn't have used that word if Blaise or Stella might have heard it. But she seized any weapon she could get her hands on to hurl at her husband.

"A son," Victor answered dully. "How is it you don't know that?"

"Because I had only one letter from dear Monsieur Freycinet," she snapped. "It was addressed to you, of course, but I opened it because I thought it might be important. And so it was, but not the way I looked for. He had to inform you that sweet Louise was having your baby."

Damn Monsieur Freycinet, Victor thought. The planter had been much too thorough. He'd sent one letter to where he guessed Victor was, and another to the place where Victor was bound to get it sooner or later. And Victor was indeed getting it, though not in the way Marcel Freycinet would have had in mind.

"A son." Meg breathed out hard through her nose.

"Yes, a son. A son who is dear Monsieur Freycinef's property. A son who is a slave, and likely will be all his days," Victor said. "If you think I haven't flayed myself about this, you are much mistaken."

"You fool, you're flaying yourself because you made her belly swell," Meg snarled. "I want to flay you because you bedded her in the first place. The hero of the Atlantean War for Liberty! Huzzah!"

Victor hung his head. "I deserve all your reproaches."

"And more besides," Meg agreed. "Why, Victor? Why?" But before he could answer she held up a hand. "Spare me any more falsehoods. I know why. I know too well-because you are a man, and she was there, and I was not. Heaven help me, though, I did not think you were that kind of man. Which only goes to show how little I knew, eh?"

"What can I say?" Victor asked miserably.

"I know not. What can you say? What would you have done if you could? Not just leave Louise in her present situation, I gather?"

"No," Victor said. "I offered to buy her and set her free here north of the Stour, where slavery is as near dead as makes no difference. I offered a price for… for the boy, as well. Freycinet declined to sell her or the boy."

"God is merciful!" his wife exclaimed. "That would have blown a hole in our accounts, not so? Did you Think I would not notice?"

"No. I thought you would," Victor said.

"And…?" The word hung in the air.

"What difference does it make now? I might have been able to explain it. Or if not, that would have been no worse than this."

"There!" his wife said in something like triumph. "That's the first truth you've told since you came home, unless I'm much mistaken."

She wasn't, and Victor didn't have the nerve to claim she was. "I'm sorry," he muttered under his breath.

"You're sorry you got caught. You're sorry your hussy caught. Are you sorry you went in unto her, as the Good Book says? Not likely!"

"What would you have me do?" Victor asked.

He thought she would say something like Cut it off and throw it in the fire. By the look in her eye, she wasn't far from that But what she did answer was, "I never dreamt in all my born days that I would say such a thing as this, but right now I wish with all my heart you were more like Blaise. He would never mistreat Stella so-never!"

Victor didn't remember Blaise declining to swive Roxane, the slave girl who was so nearly white. The only difference between general and factotum-between one man and another-was that the factotum's companion hadn't conceived.

The general had no intention of betraying the factotum. One man, one friend, did not do that to another. But Meg's words caught him by surprise. Some of what went through his mind must have shown on his face.

Blood drained from Meg's cheeks. "No," she whispered. "He didn't! He couldn't! He wouldn't have!" Victor didn't claim that Blaise did or could or would have. He also didn't leap to his factotum's defense-not that Meg would have believed him if he had. He just stood there. That was bad enough, or worse than bad enough, all by itself. If Cornwallis had been able to blast holes in his defenses so easily, the Atlantean cause would have foundered in short order. Meg shook her head in what had to be horror. "God save me! You truly are all alike!"