Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

They went inside. She poured water from a bucket into a kettle and set it on the fire to heat. Richard smiled. He'd be able to bathe soon. But the smile didn't last. "We're going to have to do something about him," he said.

"You do sound like your father," Bertha said. "He goes on and on about how he didn't come to Atlantis to bend the knee to any nobleman. One day he'll say it too loud, or to the wrong man, and it will get back to Warwick. And then the trouble will start."

"To the wrong man?" Richard frowned. He'd been away from human company too long; he needed a moment to realize what that had to mean. "Some of the settlers would betray him to this robber chief?"

"Watch what you say!" Bertha repeated. But she nodded, unhappily. "Some would. They want to get along any way they can. They don't want trouble. If I've heard that once, I've heard it a hundred times. 'I don't want trouble,' they say, and pull their heads into their shells like turtles."

"They'll have more trouble if they bend the knee to this dog of a Warwick than they will if they give him a good kick in the teeth," Richard said. His wife started to speak again, then closed her mouth instead. He suspected he'd just sounded like his father one more time. Well, his father knew a hawk from a heron when the wind was southerly, all right.

Bertha took the kettle off the fire. She mixed the hot water with a little cold-not too much, because it would cool fast enough on its own. Richard stripped off his filthy clothes and scrubbed at himself with a rag and some of the harsh, homemade soap she gave him. By the time he was done, his skin had gone from assorted shades of brown to pink. She trimmed his hair and beard with a pair of shears she'd brought from England.

"You look like the man I married again," she said when she finished, "and not the Old Man of the Woods any more."

"I feel like the man you married, too." He reached for her. They kissed. Laughing, he picked her up and carried her over to the bed.

Edward, these days, stayed close to home. He knew he had trouble keeping his mouth shut. If he hadn't known, Nell would have made a point of reminding him. He hadn't had to worry about saying what was on his mind, not for years. No one in Atlantis had. People needed to worry now. If you didn't watch your words, Richard Neville's bully boys would make you sorry.

The Earl of Warwick acted like a king, or at least like a prince. His bravos held New Hastings hostage. They lived off the fat of the land, taking what they wanted. One of the things Warwick took was Lucy Fenner, the late master salter's daughter. She was nineteen now, or maybe twenty. People said she was the fairest on this side of the Atlantic: a red-haired beauty with a figure to make a priest forget his vows. She could heat up a cold night-Edward had no doubt of that. He was getting old (no, Devil take it, he'd got old), but he wasn't dead.

He also wasn't a bandit chief, to take a woman whether she was willing or not. Warwick…was. Lucy, these days, went around with red-rimmed eyes and an expression beyond sorrowful. She'd never imagined beauty could be dangerous to her. Whether she'd imagined it or not, she was finding out the hard way.

"Mary, pity women," Nell said when Edward remarked on that.

"It's not Mary's doing that Lucy got snatched from her family," Edward said. "It's that dog of a Warwick."

"He's a dog with teeth," Nell warned.

"I know," Edward said grimly. Fear of what Warwick's troopers would do was the only thing that had kept New Hastings from rising against its new and unwelcome overlord. "Someone needs to give him a boot in the ribs, to remind him he's not supposed to do that kind of thing here."

His wife wagged a finger in his face. "Not you. You're not going to throw your life away over a chit of a girl."

"I wouldn't do that," Edward said with dignity. Nell only snorted. Still with dignity, he went on, "If I rise against Warwick, I won't throw my life away. I'll make him throw away his."

"Can you?" Nell asked-the right question, sure enough.

"If I don't think I can, I won't move," Edward said. "He has his bully boys, and he has the men he's scared into thinking he's a sure winner, and he has the handful of curs-I won't call them men, because they don't deserve the name-who lick the boots of anybody they think is strong. We have the rest of New Hastings."

"Is that enough?" Nell asked anxiously. "Against trained men with armor…I don't think there was a mailshirt in Atlantis before Warwick came, let alone that suit of plate he wears."

"You only need armor if you intend to kill your fellow man and you don't intend to let him kill you," Edward said. "Why would we have wanted it till now? But we have shields, and we have our bows, and"-his voice dropped to a whisper-"in Bredestown, where Warwick's hounds don't go so much, the smith is making swords."

"Warwick's hounds almost took Richard when he came out of the woods by the Brede," his wife reminded him.

"I didn't say they never went to Bredestown. I said they didn't go there so often, and they don't," Edward Radcliffe answered. "And Adam Higgins is no fool-there's always something else on the anvil, so no stinking bravo's likely to see him forging a blade."

"I'm not worried about soldiers seeing him so much as I am about some Judas selling him to Warwick," Nell said.

Edward put an arm around her. "Speaking of being no fool, my dear…"

"Oh, pooh!" Nell shook him off. "I'm an old gossip, is what I am. And one gossip knows how much trouble another one can cause. Is there anyone in Bredestown who doesn't like the smith? If there is, that's someone we have to watch."

"By Our Lady!" Edward said, and laughed at his own choice of oath. "By Our Lady, indeed! I wonder how men ever get anything done, with women keeping an eye on their every move before they make it." He paused, looking thoughtful. "I wonder whether men ever get anything done-anything their women don't want, I mean."

"I have no idea what you're talking about-none." Nell's voice was so demure and innocent, Edward started to nod. Then he caught himself and gave her a sharp look. Her face was demure and innocent, too-so very demure and innocent that he started laughing again. She poked him in the ribs. "You believed me. For a heartbeat or two, you believed me."

"You'll never prove it," he said.

"I don't need to prove it. I know you too well to doubt it." Now Nell sounded supremely confident. And with reason: "I'd better after all these years, don't you think? Who else would have put up with you for so long?"

"No one in her right mind-that's sure enough," Edward said. Nell made a face at him. He made one back. They both laughed this time. Edward wondered if he was slipping into his second childhood. If he was, he was having a good time doing it-or he would have been, if not for the Earl of Warwick.

Henry Radcliffe paced the Rose's deck. She lay not far offshore: far enough to keep a bad winter storm from flinging her up onto the beach and breaking her all to flinders. No storm now. The day was cold, but almost bitterly clear-a good match for the state of his mind at the moment.

Not quite by chance, one of his mittened hands came to rest on the wrought-iron barrel of a swivel gun. "I wonder if we could hit New Hastings from here," he said in musing tones. "I wonder if we could hit a particular house in New Hastings from here."

"Hit the town? I think the piece'd reach that far," Bartholomew Smith said. Henry nodded; he gauged the range, and the gun's power, about the same. The mate went on, "Hit one house in particular? That'd take the Devil's own luck, don't you think?"

Regretfully, Henry nodded again. "Afraid I do."

Smith eyed him. "Which house have you got in mind?"

"Oh, let's just say I was thinking of putting a ball through my father's door, to wake him up if he was sleeping."