Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"Pigeon just in from Stuart, skipper," Mick repeated, and held out the message the bird had carried.

Red Rodney needed to squint to read it; the handwriting was precise but tiny, to cram as much as possible into a small space. As he read, he started to swear. "You've seen this?" he demanded.

"I have indeed," the Irishman answered.

"Well, keep your mouth shut about it till I decide what to do. Can you manage that?"

"Sure and I can."

"You'd better, by Christ. Dutchmen and Englishmen and my own cold-hearted cousin. If that's not a mix cooked up in hell, I don't know what would be. They aim to gut us, Mick, gut us like a honker after you knock it over the head. Are we going to let them get away with it?"

The pigeonkeeper muttered something in Erse. Rodney Radcliffe didn't know what it meant, but it didn't sound as if the man favored giving their enemies an easy time. No one in Avalon would. What the English did to pirates they caught could make the hardest man shiver of nights. And what the English did was a mercy next to what happened when the Spaniards got hold of you. The Spaniards liked whips, and they liked fire…

He read the scrap of parchment again. The Spaniards didn't seem to be part of the gang William Radcliff was putting together. Rodney assumed his cousin crouched at the center of the plot. Where else would a spider go?

Returning to English, Mick asked, "How do you aim to stop the spalpeens, now?"

"We'll have to fight 'em. We can't very well run away, now can we?" Red Rodney said. The other pirate shook his head. Rodney muttered under his breath. Could freebooters fight as a fleet? They would have to, wouldn't they? He could see the need. Would his fellow great captains be able to? How many of them were in Avalon right now? How many would get back soon?

"You'll need a grand parley, won't you?" Mick said.

"I was thinking that very thing," Rodney answered. "A grand parley. Been a while since we had one." The pirate chieftains of Avalon were independent princes. They parleyed to keep from fighting among themselves: rarely for any other reason. Would they hearken when Rodney summoned them?

They'd better hearken, by God, he thought. Otherwise, the first we'll know of the enemy is when he starts cannonading us.

Even figuring out where to hold a grand parley took more in the way of diplomacy than most corsairs had in them. He couldn't invite his fellow captains to Black Hand Fort. Oh, he could, if he aimed to start the squabble he wanted to head off. They would think he was trying to lure them all to one place at the same time so he could get rid of them at once. If he got an invitation like that, he would think the same thing himself. He had to find neutral ground.

Some unkind or possibly jealous soul had called Avalon the Sodom of Atlantis. A visitor from the other coast, the somber coast, had marveled that so many pirates were sick. Then he saw how the freebooters drank, and marveled even more that they weren't all dead.

Mary's Paradise would do if no other place sufficed. It was the biggest, bawdiest, grandest brothel and tavern in Avalon. Red Rodney knew he would have to pay Mary Carleton a goodly sum to take her establishment out of circulation long enough for the chieftains to meet there. No one in Avalon did things from the goodness of his-or her-heart. Maybe he could get some money back from his fellow captains. Or maybe not.

Jenny squawked when she heard that Red Rodney purposed talking with Mary Carleton. "You want some poxy trollop!" she shrilled. "You'll swive her, and then you'll fetch the foulness back to me!"

"I'd be poxed if I tried buggering Goldbeard or Cutpurse Charlie, that's certain sure," Red Rodney replied with a laugh, "but I want 'em there to do them a favor, not to try to take their favors."

"Oh, yes." Jenny didn't want to believe him. "And you won't even look at the doxies falling out of their dresses. They're as common as a barber's chair, they are-one's out and the next one's in. And who was the man who paid five hundred pieces of eight just to see some strumpet naked?"

"I've heard the story, but I don't know the sorry bastard's name," Radcliffe answered. "It wasn't me-I'll tell you that. If I'd laid down so much silver, I'd've got more than a look for it."

"Sure enough-likely you would have got the gleets," his lady love said.

However snide Jenny was, Rodney sent a man he trusted to dicker a price from Mary Carleton. She proved more reasonable than he'd expected. "I know which side my bread's buttered on," she told Radcliffe's emissary. "We'll get enough of the ordinary business now that the Black Hand's back in port."

That being settled, Red Rodney sent messages to the other chieftains of Avalon, to the men who would have to lead the fight against the Dutch and the English and the eastern settlers if there was going to be one. Some of them were, or had been, his foes. He sent to them anyhow, under flag of truce. He hoped curiosity would bring them to Mary's Paradise if nothing else did, for he was not in the habit of doing that. A captain of an earlier generation, when a priest asked him on his deathbed to forgive his enemies, answered, "I have none-I killed them all." Red Rodney wasn't quite so deadly, but not from lack of effort.

Some of the other pirate lords promised to come. Others said no at first. Patiently, Rodney sent to them again. You hurt only yourselves if you stay away, he wrote. If you want to go on doing what you're doing, you need to hear me.

When he went down to Mary's Paradise, he wore a ruffled shirt-not quite clean-and a jacket of velvet shot through with gold threads that was splendid even if it didn't fit him quite so well as the Spaniard for whom it was made. He carried a cutlass, a dagger, two pistols in his belt, and a tiny one in his boot. His guards dressed more plainly but carried just as many weapons.

"You can futter the wenches if you find any you fancy," he told them. "But God help your scurvied souls if you get drunk. You're here to fight if you have to, and not to fight if you don't need to. No brawling for the fun of it, not today."

And maybe that would do some good, and maybe it wouldn't. His crew was better ordered than most, but men who'd put up with Royal Navy discipline didn't turn pirate to begin with. And even Royal Navy sailors roistered ashore. Besides, if one of the other chieftains' men started trouble, or if his own followers could claim they did…

Well, he would worry about that if he had to, the same way he would worry about Jenny slipping hemlock into his beer. He tried not to think about how black her scowl was as he left Black Hand Fort.

He had a standard-bearer carrying his banner, and another carrying a white flag to show he didn't intend to fight unless he had to. Similar processions wound down from the other fortresses. No one pulled out a pistol or fired a matchlock. It wasn't quite a miracle, but Red Rodney took it for a good sign.

Mary Carleton greeted him under a red lantern. "Welcome," she said. "The room is waiting."

"Thank you, Mistress Mary," he said, more respectfully than he'd thought he would. She had to be at least thirty-five, but she was still a fine-looking woman.

Rum and roast meats sat on the table. A couple of captains had got there before him. They were already eating and drinking. One of them nodded to him, saying, "This is a good spread. What kind of nonsense are you going to spout?"

"I wouldn't throw away this kind of money to spout nonsense," Red Rodney answered. He poured himself some rum and waited to see who would come and who wouldn't.

To his surprise, all the captains he'd invited showed up. Some of them scowled at him. Some scowled at one another. But nobody grabbed for a sword or a gun. "Let's hear your lies, Radcliffe," said Bertrand Caradeuc in buzzing Breton accents. A gold hoop glittered in his right ear.