Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"We did it!" someone called from the sea. Richard looked up. His brother was coming ashore in the Rose's boat.

"We did, by Our Lady," Richard agreed. Henry jumped out of the boat and looked down at Warwick's corpse. He stirred it with his foot, then stepped away. Richard said, "This sort of thing mustn't happen again. Not ever." He looked at his hands, which were red with Tim's blood. Shaking his head, he washed them in the ocean. "We shouldn't fight ourselves. There's room here for all of us."

"Well, when word of this gets back to England, the king will know better than to foist worthless nobles off on us," Henry said. "He didn't even mean to give us Warwick-that bloody skipper couldn't find Freetown."

Richard shrugged. "Freetown, New Hastings-what difference does it make? He would have plagued them the same way he plagued us. Atlantis shouldn't be England's dumping ground, dammit."

"No, eh?" His brother's grin was crooked. "Then what are we doing here?"

"Making our own lives, with nobody to tell us what to do or how to do it," Richard said. "I like that fine, thank you kindly. Once we get all this nonsense settled, I'll go back into the woods-it'll be good to get away."

"You're welcome to them. A few nights under the trees were plenty to last me a lifetime." Henry looked down at dead Warwick again, and then over at Tim. "I'm surprised you didn't do for him, too."

"Part of me wanted to," Richard answered. "But with Warwick gone, he won't be any trouble. It's done. Better to let it go."

"I thought so," Henry said. "I wasn't sure you would."

"Well, I do," Richard said. "Enough is enough, or it had better be. If we don't let it go, Tim's great-grandson will be stealing my great-grandson's sheep and burning his barn. We'll have feuds here like a pack of damned Frenchmen. That's not what Father wanted."

"Father was no meek, mild man," Henry said. "He stood up to Warwick when he could have bowed down before him. He was ready to fight if he had to."

"If he had to." Richard bore down hard on the words. "But he wouldn't have troubled Warwick if Warwick didn't trouble him. He never told anybody here what to do, not unless someone asked him for advice. That's how I want things to go from here on out. Nobody should be able to order anyone else about."

"When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?" Henry quoted the peasants' cry in Wat Tyler's rebellion ninety years before.

"Sounds fair to me," Richard said. "Warwick didn't want to work. He wanted to take what other people worked for. Well, he could get by with that in England till he made the king angry at him, but why should we put up with it here? He didn't deserve what he stole. He deserved what he got."

"I'm not quarreling with you, Richard," his brother said.

"Good," Richard Radcliffe replied. "You'd better not, not about this."

The only building in New Hastings large enough to hold most of the crowd that gathered was the church. Bishop John had built big on purpose, as if planning a church for a town the size of the old Hastings from which they'd sailed.

But Bishop John (how had he got so gray and stooped?) wasn't in the pulpit on this bright Wednesday morning. Henry Radcliffe was. Richard hadn't wanted the job, and wouldn't have done it well had he wanted it. Speaking to lots of people made him shy. Henry tried to imagine a shy man skippering a fishing boat. The picture wouldn't form. He had his flaws, but that wasn't one of them.

"We are one folk again," he said, and his voice, which was big enough to reach from bow to stern through a gale, was big enough to fill the church, too. "One folk," he repeated. "We fell out for a while, but that's over. My father is dead. Warwick is dead, too. Men who backed both of them have died. Isn't that enough? Isn't the Battle of the Strand enough? Do we need to go on hating each other, go on killing each other, any more?"

He looked out to the people of New Hastings. He wasn't altogether sure what they would say to that. Some of the men on his side had wanted to see everyone who'd chosen the Earl of Warwick dead. They were shaking their heads with everybody else, though. Maybe it was harder to stay bloodthirsty in a house of God. He could hope so.

"Let's remember what we did here these past few weeks," he went on. That got everyone's notice. People must have thought he would say, Let's forget. "Let's not remember to keep old feuds alive. Let's remember to make sure new feuds don't start. The one we had cost us too much. We need no more like it."

Standing beside him, Bishop John smiled and nodded. "This is the voice of Christianity speaking," he said. "This is the voice of God speaking. Let it be so." He made the sign of the cross.

Henry crossed himself, too. He didn't know whether God was speaking through him. He only knew he never wanted to have to try to kill his neighbors again. He didn't want them trying to kill him, either.

He nodded to his brother. One by one, Richard carried up the mailshirts of Warwick's last soldiers, the ones who'd yielded themselves after the Battle of the Strand. They stood in the church, too. Henry could see a couple of them, and could see their apprehensive faces. The ironmongery next to the pulpit made quite a pile. A couple of other men brought up helmets and swords and laid them by the stack.

"We don't need these things," Henry said earnestly. "By God and all the saints, we don't, not among ourselves. Oh, we ought to have them so we can make a better fight if more robbers from across the sea try to take away what isn't theirs to take, but we should never use them to lord it over each other. Never!" He slammed his fist down on the pulpit.

He thought Richard first began to clap. That didn't surprise Henry Radcliffe; his brother had never wanted anyone lording it over him. What did surprise Henry was the way everyone else in the church joined Richard, till the applause came back in waves from the vaulted ceiling and till a bat, sleeping up there in the rafters, was frightened awake and fled squeaking out into the unaccustomed day.

Slowly, like a storm at sea, the clapping ebbed. Hearing it let Henry feel more confident continuing, "The men who gave up their armor and weapons have taken oath that they will not trouble us again. As long as they hold to their promise, let them be treated like any other men of New Hastings. They loyally served their master, the Earl of Warwick. Now that he is gone, they will loyally serve the settlement."

He got more applause-not so much as he had before, but enough to show that the settlers agreed with him…and enough to show the surviving soldiers that they wouldn't be killed out of hand. Relief wreathed their features when they realized that. Henry thought they were safe enough, as long as they didn't stir up trouble. That would have to do.

"Times will change," he said. "We saw that when Warwick came. We'll see it again-we will, and our children, and our children's children, and down through the generations to the end of days. As long as we try, though, and as long as God helps, we can ride out all the storms the way we rode out this one."

This time, Bishop John led the clapping. As applause filled the church once more, the bishop spoke to Henry in a low voice: "A good thing you're a secular man, or you'd steal my see from me."

"I don't want it, your Grace," Henry answered. "I just want to be able to get on with my life." I sound like Richard, he thought.

"For now, you have that. You could have Atlantis, I think, if you wanted it," John said.

"I don't," Henry said again. "Atlantis can go on however it pleases, and that will suit me fine. I wonder what sort of town New Hastings will be in a couple of hundred years." He looked to the west. "I wonder what sort of town Avalon will be by then…"