Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

New Hastings

E dward Radcliffe steered the St. George toward Le Croisic. Soon he would take the fishing boat out into the Atlantic after cod. Before he did, though, he needed salt, or his cargo would spoil before he brought it back to England. The marshes of Guerande, in southern Brittany, yielded the best salt in this part of the world. That was what he wanted. Edward Radcliffe, though far from rich, had never been one to settle for anything less than the best.

He was nearly fifty, a big bull of a man, with broad shoulders, weathered red skin, and a thick shock of hair going from yellow toward white because of the sun at least as much as because of the years. Two of his sons, Richard and Henry, were part of the little cog's crew. They showed what Edward had looked like before the years began to challenge him.

Le Croisic stood on a spit of land that stuck out three miles into the sea from the marshes. As always, ships from every land in the western part of the world crowded the waters around the port. They all had different lines and rigging. A lubber couldn't have told one from another-but then, Edward Radcliffe neither knew nor cared about the various breeds of sheep.

He was, however, no lubber. When he saw a Basque boat, he didn't think it came from Ireland. The French built different from the Dutch, and the English different from either. Endless variations on each theme…"You know what?" he called from his place at the tiller. "Ships are no more alike than women are."

A couple of the fishermen nodded. More of the crew laughed at him. "We've got to take you into town and get you drunk, Father," Henry said. "You're thinking too much. You need to salt down your brain."

Everybody laughed at that, even Edward. "Sharper than a viper's fang to have a snot-nosed brat," he said. With a chilly wind driving them on from the northwest, everybody's nose-including his own-was dripping snot. Henry stuck out his tongue. Like Richard, he was even bigger than their father, and at the high spring of his strength rather than at the beginning of its autumn.

"We need to go into town," Richard said, more than half to himself. He would have been a lubber if he could. He didn't love the sea the way Edward and Henry did. But he was a fisherman's son, and so he sailed with them.

The St. George squeezed into a place at the quays just ahead of a Basque boat. The Basques, dark, blocky fellows with eyebrows that ran straight across their foreheads with no break above the nose, shouted what sounded like abuse in their peculiar language. People said the Devil himself couldn't learn it. Edward didn't know about that, but he knew he couldn't-and, besides English, he could get along in Dutch and French and, not quite so well, Breton.

"First things first," he declared. "We get the salt. We bring it back to the boat. Then we worry about everything else."

Nobody told him no, which only showed how much the crew respected him. The fishermen were men-they wanted to gamble and drink and whore before they sailed off into the wild wet wasteland of the Atlantic. They'd already had a rough passage around Cap Finistere-Land's End, the same name as the westernmost tip of Cornwall-to get here. They'd earned relief. And they would get it…once they did what needed doing.

Master Jean Abrgall sold the best salt in Le Croisic. The flower of salt, he called it-none of the gray, ordinary stuff mixed in. "Hello, you old thief," Radcliffe greeted him in Breton when the fishermen came up to him. Abrgall spoke perfect French, too, but he preferred the tongue he'd spoken since he was a baby.

"Yer mat, gast Saoz," he replied in that tongue. Cheers, whore of an Englishman, it meant-something like that, anyhow. Radcliffe bowed, as if at a compliment. Abrgall gave him a thin smile: the equivalent of another man's guffaw. He went on, "So the sea serpents didn't bite you and the mermaids didn't drag you under, eh?"

"Not yet," Radcliffe said. "What have you got for me, and how much will you gouge me for it?"

"Not so much, and it'll cost you more than you want," the salt merchant answered. "Come have a glass of wine with me, and we'll talk about it."

"You want to get me drunk so you can cheat me easier," Edward Radcliffe said. Unperturbed, Abrgall nodded. Radcliffe went on, "Well, seems only fair to give you a chance. How's your family?"

"They are well, God be praised." Abrgall crossed himself. So did the fisherman.

They drank. They ate a little salt cod-maybe some of Radcliffe's, but more likely from a Breton fisherman. Both men knew about what the Englishman would end up paying, but how you got there was part of the game. They swore at each other in several languages. Abrgall called Radcliffe something in what had to be Basque. "What does that mean?" Radcliffe asked.

"Beats me," Abrgall admitted. "I never could make sense of that God-cursed tongue. But it sounds good, doesn't it?"

Once the bargain was sealed with a handclasp, Radcliffe paid the salt merchant. He and his men lugged crates of shining white crystals back to the St. George. Dealing with Jean, you knew the quality would be there all the way to the bottom of each crate. Some dealers would put the cheap gray salt below, hiding it with a layer of the pure flowers. You learned the hard way not to spend your coin with people like that. Some fishermen never learned, and so the bastards stayed in business.

"All right," Edward said when the hauling job was done. He was hot and sweaty, as they were. Every little cut and scrape all over his body stung; if you worked around salt, that would happen to you. "Now we've done the work. Now we can have a day of fun. Go back into town and drink and wench as you please. I'll stay with the boat-she's mine, after all."

"No, you go, Father," Henry said. "You're entitled to enjoy yourself once in a while. I'll stay. I don't mind."

On such chances, worlds turn.

Edward and Richard Radcliffe walked into a dive called the Salicornes. Along with a grape vine, the place had a bunch of the stuff hanging above the door. In English, it was called samphire or glasswort; in springtime, its burgeoning growth turned the salt marshes purple. The locals ate boiled fresh samphire in season, and pickled it to eat when it wasn't fresh. As far as Edward was concerned, the locals were welcome to it.

When he and his son went in, the most ridiculous argument he'd ever heard had almost reached the knife-drawing stage. Some Breton fishermen and some Basques were quarreling over what year it was. They were doing it in French, which neither side spoke well-but neither spoke the other side's birthspeech at all.

"It's 1451!" the Basques shouted.

"No, by the Virgin-1452!" the Bretons yelled back. "Were you at sea so long, your wits got soaked in salt and you lost a year?"

Picking his way through the chaos, Edward asked the tapman, "Can I get myself a mug of red wine? And what are you having, son?"

"Red wine will do for me, too," Richard replied.

"Here you go, friends," said the fellow behind the counter, dipping two mugs full. He wanted nothing to do with the shouting fishermen.

But the Radcliffes couldn't stay out of the quarrel so easily. "Here are strangers who care nothing for any of us," one of the Basques said. "They will tell the truth and shame the Devil. It's 1451, not so?"

Edward's hand dropped to near his gutting knife, too: not on it, but near. "Well, now, friend, I don't mean to give offense, but I do believe it's a year later than you think."

The square-jawed Basque looked as if that knife had gone into his guts. The Bretons whooped and cheered. "Come drink with us, truthful man!" they cried. "Come eat with us, too!"