Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

Avalon

T here was a day when Avalon was the wildest, wickedest, wan-tonest city in all of Atlantis and all of Terranova, too. It wasn't a long day, not even so long as the prime of a man's life, but there was never another one like it, not before or since, not anywhere. And when it ended, it ended in a way worthy of what had gone before.

Red Rodney Radcliffe brought the Black Hand into Avalon Bay after a profitable summer raiding the towns and shipping of the Terranovan coast. The Dutchmen and the Spaniards beyond the broad Hesperian Gulf cursed his name. The Spaniards called him a heretic. The Dutchmen, who were Protestants themselves, called him worse than that. Rodney Radcliffe only laughed. They could call him whatever they pleased, as long as they couldn't catch him-and they couldn't.

Nothing could catch the Black Hand-so Red Rodney swore. He wasn't far wrong, either. The brigantine, made of fine Atlantean redwood and pine, scudded over the waves. With the wind astern, she could make twelve knots. She'd come from Terranova to Atlantis in just over three and a half days, and left whatever might be chasing her far behind.

"Land ho!" came the cry from the crow's nest atop the mainmast, and then, a moment later, "Damned if that's not the Gateway, dead ahead!"

The mate, a one-eyed bruiser named Ben Jackson, lifted a three-cornered hat from his head: the closest to a salute Red Rodney was likely to get. "Nicely steered, skipper," he said.

"I thank you." If Radcliffe sounded smug, who could blame him? He'd brought his ship across a thousand miles of open ocean and put her exactly where she needed to go.

"Better than Moses, by God," Jackson said with a gap-toothed grin.

"I should hope so!" Red Rodney grinned back. He took blasphemy for granted-as who on the Black Hand did not? "Moses wandered forty years before he led his people to the Promised Land, and he died before he got in. We're here again-not for the first time, nor even for the twenty-first. And I'm not ready to turn up my toes just yet."

"Better not be. Think how many pretty ladies'd be sorry if you did." The mate tipped him a wink. "Or even the ones who aren't so bloody pretty, if you've been at sea long enough."

"If you want to waste your time with ugly women, that's your affair," Radcliffe said. "Nothing but the best for me. The best ship, the best crew, the best loot-"

"We've got plenty of that," Jackson broke in.

"We do," Red Rodney agreed. Furs and prime pipeweed lay in the holds, along with a mayor's silver plate and a governor's gold. He'd seized two fat merchants to ransom, and upwards of a dozen copperskinned Terranovan natives. The men would be hewers of wood and drawers of water; one brothelkeeper or another in Avalon would be glad to buy the wenches.

The copperskins' moans floated up from below. The Dutch merchants kept their big mouths shut. They would be fine even if they had to say farewell to some of their fortunes. They would, that is, unless their kinsfolk preferred the loot to the merchants, in which case they would cook over a slow fire. But the natives knew a short life, and not a merry one, awaited them. Why not mourn?

A pinnace and two light galleys patrolled the Gateway. The freebooters of Avalon might have to fight to hold what was theirs. Forts on the northern and southern spits that closed Avalon Bay so well mounted heavier guns than any ship of the line would carry.

"Run up our flag," Red Rodney called. The black hand on white flew from bowsprit and stern, and from atop the mainmast. The brigantine carried a fine set of flags in her locker. She could show England's St. George's cross, either alone or differenced with the red-crested eagle of the eastern Atlantean settlements. She could show the red and white stripes of a Portuguese merchantman, Sweden's gold cross on blue, Spain's red and white and gold, Holland's red and white and blue, the crown and fleurs-de-lys of France, or even the Corsican Moor's head.

Or she could show her true colors, as she was doing now.

One of the galleys rowed out to meet her. It stayed off her bow, where its gun could strike without fear of reply. Galleys were nimble, galleys were quick-but galleys weren't seaworthy enough for long cruises, and carried too many men and not enough supplies to go far. They did make first-rate guard dogs, though.

Thin across the water, a challenge came: "Show yourself, Red Rodney!"

"I'll do it!" Radcliffe shouted back as he strode to the bow. "Is that you, Stephen? How are Meg and the brats?"

"Good enough, good enough," the captain of the galley answered. "And how was the hunting out west?"

Rodney struck a pose. "Better than good enough, by Christ!"

"Then pass in!" Stephen said. The galley slipped out of the brigantine's way. Graceful as a dancer, the Black Hand glided into Avalon Bay.

There were days when William Radcliff wished his name were Jones or Bostwick or even Kersauzon. By all the signs, this was going to be one of them. No matter that the trading firm he ran from the growing town of Stuart-a trading firm whose ships sent salt fish and timber and other goods from Terranova all the way to Arkhangelsk-was as honest and reliable as the phases of the moon. No, much too often no matter at all.

The gentleman come to do business with Radcliff today was a stout Londoner named Elijah Walton. He wore a fancy powdered wig and badly wrinkled velvet that must have stayed folded in its trunk all the way across the Atlantic. "A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Radcliff," he said, extending his right hand.

"And you, Mr. Walton." When William took the master merchant's hand, he was surprised at the strength of his grip. More to Walton than met the eye, then.

He surely had all the fashionable vices. He took from his pocket a small enamelware box, took out a pinch of the powdered Terranovan herb it contained, and then inhaled it. After an explosive sneeze, he held out the box. "Care for some snuff yourself, sir?"

"No, thanks. I don't use pipeweed in any form, I fear. I trade in it, but it's not to my personal taste." In wool and linen, the only hair on his head that which he was born with, Radcliff knew he seemed a crude settler to the sophisticate from the mother country. Well, so what? he told himself. He is what he is, and I am what I am.

With a shrug, Elijah Walton made the enameled snuffbox disappear. "May I ask you a question, Mr. Radcliff, without fear of offending?"

More to him than met the eye…and also less. William was as sure he knew what the question would be as he was of, well, the phases of the moon. "Go ahead," he said, no doubt sounding as resigned as he felt.

"Ah, you will have heard it before, then." Nothing wrong with Walton's ear. "I shall ask it nonetheless. The similarity of the surname, but for one character, the prominence of men of that surname, however spelled, in Atlantis these past two centuries…Have you a family connection with Red Rodney Radcliffe of Avalon?"

"To my shame, Mr. Walton, I do. We both descend from Edward Radcliffe through Henry. Rodney's grandfather and mine were brothers, so we are second cousins. Knowing this does not delight me-nor, I daresay, him. But I would not dissemble."

"That no doubt speaks well for your integrity, which I have already heard highly praised," Elijah Walton said.

William shrugged. "You are too kind, sir. I might also remark that my lying here would serve little purpose, since you can inquire of almost anyone in Stuart and learn the truth in short order, did I try to conceal it."

Something in the way the master merchant's rather protuberant gray eyes glinted told Radcliff that he had already made those inquiries, and knew the answer before asking the question. A test, then. Well, I passed it, by Christ, William thought. Walton did not admit to any such thing aloud, however. Instead, he asked, "Why the curtailed spelling on your branch of the tree?"