Opening Atlantis

II

F rancois Kersauzon seemed as upset about Fenner's death as Edward Radcliffe was. "As God is my witness, friend Saoz, I've seen those eagles take honkers before, but I never dreamt they would take men," he said.

"We probably look like honkers-a good name-to them," Henry said.

"Except smaller and maybe easier to kill," Edward added, staring into the trees where the eagle had flown. That was a formidable bird, bigger and fiercer than any golden eagle or sea eagle he'd ever seen. And if its prey walked on two legs…

As Kersauzon had said, the honkers seemed to have no fear of man. But that one had disappeared into the woods as soon as the eagle struck Hugh Fenner. Men might be an unknown quantity, but the birds that struck from the sky were enemies. Honkers had no doubt of that.

"Poor Hugh. He died unshriven." Richard crossed himself. So did the other fishermen, English and Bretons. Edward's younger son went on, "We have to bury him here. We can't very well salt him down and take him home."

"I'll say the words over him," Edward said. His sons and the other Englishmen nodded. He'd had to do that before, more than once, when someone on the St. George took sick and died or perished by some mischance. He was no priest, but he could hope his prayers helped a soul win through at least to purgatory. "A little piece of Atlantis will be English forevermore."

He'd spoken his own language, but Kersauzon, as he'd seen, could follow English. "Atlantis?" the other skipper echoed. "We've just been calling it the Western Land, but that's better, by God-a name to stick in the mind. Atlantis!"

Edward tried to remember if they had a shovel aboard the St. George. He didn't think so. He scuffed at the dirt with the toe of his boot. It was soft. Whatever they had, they could manage. "Are there wolves here, or gluttons, or anything else that might dig up a grave?" he asked.

"Haven't seen anything of the kind," Kersauzon answered. "Haven't seen any four-footed creatures at all, or heard them howling in the night."

"Some uncommon big lizards," one of his fishermen put in.

When Edward Radcliffe thought of a lizard, he thought of a scurrying thing as long as his finger. An uncommon big one might be-what? As long as his forearm? Anything larger than that was beyond his ken.

This whole land was beyond his ken-except that he was standing on it. Off to the west, beyond the trees, he saw the distant saw-toothed outline of mountains against the skyline. What lay beyond them? He snorted. He had no idea what lay on this side of the mountains, except for peculiar plants, even stranger birds, and eagles ferocious as demons from hell. But Richard was looking out toward those far-off peaks, too.

No other men here, not settlers, not natives. No wolves, no bears. As he rowed out in the boat to see what digging tools the St. George had, he remarked, "If you fished in the sea and cleared some land for a crop, you could live here. You could live here pretty well, I think."

"If you're going to live here, you'd need to bring some women over," Henry said.

Edward nodded, and that thought pulled him back to the present, or at least to the near future. "When we get home, I'll have to tell poor Hugh's Meg what chanced here," he said, and grimaced. "I don't look forward to that. Even paying her his full share, I don't look forward to it. How many children have they got?"

"Five, I think it is," Richard answered, "and Meg's likely to have another by the time we see England again." Edward nodded once more; he thought he remembered the same thing, and wished his son had told him he was wrong.

"Are you thinking of settling on these shores, Father?" Richard asked.

"Aren't you?" Edward said; Henry might be older, but Richard was the sharper of his boys, no doubt about that. "No moneylenders, no lord to bend the knee to, no king to pay taxes to. We're free when we're at sea now, but on land we might as well be slaves. Wouldn't you like to be free all the time?"

"No church," Richard murmured. Did he want to be free of the priest, too, or was he complaining of the lack? Edward couldn't tell.

Henry was more resolutely practical: "No boatwrights. No net-makers. No blacksmiths. No horses, no sheep, no cattle…"

"Not unless we bring 'em with us." Edward glanced over to the Morzen. "If we don't settle here, how long do you think these Bretons will wait? If they're on the spot, they'll have these fishing banks all to themselves, the bastards."

"They're bad enough on the other side of the Channel," Richard said. "Would you want them living a long spit down the coast from you?"

"Well, if the other choice is spending the rest of my days jealous because they're here and I'm not, maybe I do." Edward Radcliffe weighed his words and nodded yet again. "Yes, son, maybe I do."

The crews of the St. George and the Morzen spent ten days on Atlantis. The longer Edward Radcliffe stayed, the more he wanted to come back, to settle and never to leave. He kept glancing at Francois Kersauzon out of the corner of his eye. Was the same thought in Kersauzon's mind? How could it not be?

Henry did knock a honker over the head. It was as easy as the Breton said it would be. The enormous bird stared at the man with a kind of dull curiosity as he walked up to it. It wasn't afraid of him; it had never learned to be afraid of things that looked like him. It died without ever knowing it should have learned to fear.

More than anything else, that made Edward sure Atlantis had no natives. If even savages lived here, the local beasts would have learned to run away from them.

And Edward found himself eyeing Francois Kersauzon in a new way. The other skipper was properly alert, but if he got knocked over the head… Half in regret and half in relief, Edward shelved the idea. He wasn't afraid of wearing the mark of Cain. He was afraid he would have to kill all the Bretons to make killing Kersauzon worthwhile. And he was afraid he would lose too many of his own fishermen in the fighting. Sometimes-not always, but sometimes-peace was smarter than war.

Perhaps three miles south of where he'd first come ashore, he found a river flowing strongly out into the sea. Henry was with him when they came to the mouth of the stream. The younger man pointed inland. "It's bound to come down from the mountains," he said.

"No doubt. It would have to, with so swift a current," Edward agreed. "It runs hard enough to power a great plenty of grinding mills."

"Aye, belike, if the mills have a great plenty to grind," his son said. "No grain growing here, not yet."

"No, not yet." Edward looked inland again. He was also looking into the future-through a glass, darkly, which is as much as it is given to a man to do. "But do you see any reason why grain shouldn't grow here?"

"I seen none," Henry replied, "which is not the same as saying there is none. We don't know."

"I want to find out!" Edward said. "I want to live here, where when I'm ashore I can do as I please. I can hunt deer without poaching on the lord's land-"

"I haven't seen any deer here, either," his son broke in. "No one has, that I know of."

"Fine. I can hunt these honkers, then," Edward said impatiently.

"Oh, yes-they make fine sport." Sarcasm dripped from Henry's words. "The excitement of the stalk, the thrill of the chase…" He mimed bringing his club down on a big, stupid bird's head.

"They make mighty good eating, though," Edward said, and his son couldn't very well argue with that-the one Henry had killed was smoking on the beach where they'd landed. Edward went on, "And if there are no deer here now, what's to keep us from bringing them across the sea like sheep or cattle or horses or-?"

Henry interrupted again: "Everything else we'd need to live."

"Well, what of it?" Edward said. "Are you telling me we can't do that? We can find this place again, or near enough-we know the latitude. And if we don't settle right here, any other stretch of the coast would do about as well. Will you tell me I'm wrong?"

"No, Father," Henry said. "But it's a big step, to uproot ourselves from England and cross the sea to try to make our homes on an unknown shore."

"It won't stay unknown long. By Our Lady, it's not unknown now-we're standing on it," Edward Radcliffe said. "And if we don't make homes here, the Bretons or the French or the Basques or the Galicians will. Then we won't even be able to fish here. They'll be in their own back fields, you might say, and we'll have to cross the Atlantic both ways. We'd never stay in business against them. Do you want that? We'd be second best forever. That's no fate for Englishmen. That's no fate for Radcliffes!"

Henry sighed. "Father, it sounds good when it comes from your lips. But when we get home, what's Lucy going to say to me?" He put his hands on his hips and raised his voice to sound like his wife, who'd always struck Edward as a bit of a shrew: "'You want me to leave my kin and cross the sea? You want me to put our babies into a fishing boat? You want to sail away from my mother?'"

"By God, yes to that!" Edward said-Lucy's mother was more than a bit of a shrew.

His son went right on imitating his daughter-in-law: "'You want me to carve a farm holding out of nothing while you fish the way you always did? You expect me to live without neighbors, without friends?'"

"We won't be the only ones going-tell her that. We'd better not be, or the venture fails," Edward said.

"True enough. What can you promise the others, except a dangerous voyage over more sea than anyone in Hastings cares to think about?"

"Besides the best place to fish they ever saw? Besides land that stretches to the horizon, there for the taking? Besides freedom from lords? How about freedom from peasant risings, too?" Edward said. Only a couple of years earlier, Jack Cade and his rebels had almost chased the King of England from his throne.

Henry nodded thoughtfully. "There is that. What do you suppose Mother will think?"

"She'll go along," Edward said, more confidently than he felt. Nell Radcliffe had a mind of her own and a tongue sharper than Lucy's. She would go along if she thought going along was a good idea. If she didn't, she wouldn't be shy about saying so.

"Well, we'll see," Henry said, which only proved he too knew his mother well.

Crossing the Atlantic from west to east was easier than sailing the other way, for they had the winds with them through most of the journey. They put in at Le Croisic, where Edward paid Francois Kersauzon the price to which they'd agreed. Seeing a Breton take so much salt cod from the hold of an Englishman's ship made the locals smirk.

Edward looked suitably chagrined as he piled fish in front of the Morzen. He didn't believe many Bretons knew of Atlantis yet. What did they think? That Kersauzon had won some enormous bet from him? He wouldn't have been surprised. Let them think what they wanted, though. He knew, and Kersauzon knew.

Two could hold a secret. Could Kersauzon keep the fishermen on the Morzen from blabbing? The odds were against it. The Bretons had brought back more smoked honker, and Radcliffe had a leg bone. They would have to explain where those came from. What would they say?

Whatever they said, it would make the other fishermen-and even the local lubbers-curious. They would want to sail west. That meant Edward needed to move fast if he wanted his countrymen to take their fair share of Atlantis.

He needed to move fast-and he couldn't. Contrary winds held him in Le Croisic day after day. He fumed and swore, but he couldn't do anything about it. His only consolation was that what held him in port held the Bretons, too. That wasn't quite true: they could go down the coast to the south. But he didn't think they would spill the secret to Frenchmen. They scorned the French even more than Englishmen did, which wasn't easy.

At last, the wind shifted. He took the St. George out of the harbor and sailed around Cap Finistere and into the Channel. The waves there, squeezed between Europe and England, grew taller and more menacing than they had been out in the open ocean. Even fishermen with strong stomachs stayed close to the leeward rail. The waves helped push the cog along, though. She made good time on the last leg of the voyage home.

Hastings was the westernmost of the Cinque Ports: in reality seven towns, though the name had room for only five. They pooled their resources against pirates. There Edward felt safe enough-corsairs were after silk and silver, not salt cod. What he brought home wasn't worth stealing, but a man could make a good living at it. What more could you want?

The old, deserted Norman castle still stood on West Hill, looking down on the town. William the Conqueror had based himself in Hastings, of course-everybody knew that. With Plantagenets still ruling England, no one said-out loud-that he wished the Saxons had won the fight not far away. What would the country be like today had Harold prevailed? Different, Edward thought, and he was bound to be right about that.

He brought the St. George into the Stade, the fishing boats' harbor. "You're back late," a dockside lounger called. "We'd almost given up looking for you."

"You're holy men, though," another man said. "With so many Masses going up for your souls, how can you be anything else? I wish I were so sure I had all my sins washed away."

"Not much room to sin in a fishing boat," Henry said with a grin. "We'll have to make up for it now that we're here."

A dealer hurried out onto the pier where the fishermen were tying up. "You'll want to sell your fish to me, won't you, Edward?" he said, his voice as greasy as cod-liver oil.

"If you give me a proper price for them, Paul," Radcliffe answered. "If you act like a Jew the way you do most of the time, I'd sooner sell them to an honest man instead."

"You wound me," Paul Finley said, but this was as much a dance with formal steps as the dicker with the Breton salt dealer had been. And when Finley saw the size of the cod and the slabs of cod that came from the St. George's hold, even his air of world-weary contempt for anything that had to do with salt fish cracked. "I don't know the last time I set eyes on the like," he admitted, which meant he'd never seen fish that came close to these. "Where did you catch 'em?"

"I planted them in the dark of the moon, the way you do with crops that grow below the surface," Edward Radcliffe answered gravely. His men sniggered. Sooner or later, one of them would get drunk and spill the word. With a little luck, it would be later.

Paul Finley gave him a very strange look. "I almost believe you."

"Fair enough, for I almost told the truth," Edward said.

The dealer's eye raked the fishing boat. "I don't see Hugh. Tell me nothing happened to him, please-he's a good man."

Edward's mouth tightened. "We lost him, I'm afraid. You'll keep that to yourself, by God, for I've not yet spoken to his wife and his father." He remembered the master salter's scream and the eagle tearing at his kidneys and flying off with his blood dripping from its beak and claws.

Finley crossed himself. "Lord have mercy on him. This was at sea?" Before anyone had to lie, he answered his own question: "Well, of course it was. Where else would it be?" He forced himself back to what lay before him. "You have the hold full of fish this size and quality?"

"Two-thirds full," Edward said, his voice flat: if Paul Finley wanted to make something of that, he would have to do it himself.

He raised an eyebrow. Before he spoke, though, he seemed to think better of it. "Mm, that's your business-or your misfortune, depending. If you'd come home earlier in the season, you would have got a better price for them."

"You'll take any way you can find to knock down what we did out there, won't you?" Radcliffe spoke without heat. He knew Finley was still following the steps of the dance.

"You do your job, I do mine," the dealer said easily. "You want to make money when you sell, and so do I." He named a price.

Edward Radcliffe's bellow of rage was a permitted step, but not a common one. You needed to feel some of that fury to show it, and he did. "Even you know that's thievery, Paul. I've heard what worse cod than this is bringing." He named a price close to three times as high as Finley's.

They went back and forth, back and forth. Edward knew his quality. He also knew his hold was one-third empty, which made him hold out for every farthing on the fish he did have. Finley came up ever so slowly, like a drowning man who didn't want to break the surface.

Both of them were sweating when they finally clasped hands. "If you're going to be that tough with a full load of fish…" Finley shook his head. "Lord Jesu! Maybe I ought to let some other dealer see how he likes matching wits with you." He counted out silver and gave it to Edward. "That's what we said, yes?"

Radcliffe counted the money. It wasn't that he thought Finley was trying to cheat him. But checking never hurt anything. He nodded. "Yes, that's what we said." Their hands joined again.

"One of these days, you'll tell me where you really came by cod of that size," Finley said.

"Yes, one of these days I will, and it may come sooner than you think," Edward agreed. "But not yet, Paul. Not yet."

Childbearing and hard work had coarsened Nell Radcliffe's figure. The years had lined her face and streaked her red-blond hair with gray. When Edward looked at her, he still saw the beauty he'd married more than half a lifetime earlier. He made love like a sailor newly home from the sea-in the daytime, which would have scandalized the neighbors had they known, and had so many of them not been fisherfolk themselves.

Then he told her why the St. George was so late coming home, and of the new land he'd trodden. "Atlantis?" she echoed, the fine lines at the corners of her eyes crinkling as they narrowed. "But Atlantis is a story, a fable, a make-believe, like the drowned city of Ys and the bells you hear under the water."

"Funny you should talk of Ys, when a Breton guided me west to Atlantis," Edward said. "But it's no dream. We still have the bone from a smoked honker leg-we ate the meat on the way home, when the fishing flagged. And Hugh Fenner died on the coast of Atlantis."

"How?" Nell asked.

"Bad. Hard." Edward left it there. He didn't intend to say more to Meg Fenner, either, or even that much. "But all the same, it's a true place, a good place, a place of great promise-you should have seen Paul's eyes when he got a look at the cod. Not Paradise, or Hugh would live yet, but a good place. A fine place."

"You sound like you want to go back," his wife said.

He nodded, there beside her in the bed so much wider and softer than his bunk aboard the St. George-and he was lucky to have a bunk on the cog, when his sailors slung hammocks instead. "I do," he said. "It's a broader land than this one, and a man could live there free of a lord. A man could be a lord there, by heaven, for who would say he could not?"

Nell stirred, so the leather lashings under the mattress creaked-not the way they had a little while before, but enough to make him smile. "You don't just want to visit," she said slowly. "You want to stay."

"I do," Edward repeated.

"What about me, then? What about your children? What about-everything?" Her wave took in not just the house, not just Hastings, but all of England.

"I'd want you to come along, that's what. We'd make a new life there, a new town-we could call it New Hastings, if you like."

"I like this Hastings well enough," Nell said.

"Talk to Richard and Henry. They're as wild for Atlantis as I am," Edward said, though he wasn't quite sure that was so about Henry. "Talk to Mary and Kate and Philippa"-his daughters, all of them married to fishermen. "Do you think they'd be sorry to have gardens as wide as they could grow them, and no noble landlord and no rent to pay?"

"I think they'd be sorry to sail to the edge of the world and maybe off it," Nell answered. "I think I would be, too. I thought I'd live my whole life in Hastings. I never wanted to do anything else."

Edward Radcliffe had to remind himself not to get angry. Nell wouldn't be the only one who'd want to stay right here. Most people were like limpets, clinging to one spot. If you went farther than a day's walk from where you were born, it was the journey of a lifetime, and you'd bore your neighbors with it the rest of your days. Fishermen and traders were different; it was easy to forget how different. Edward had seen far more of the world than his wife had. He was eager to see more. She wasn't eager to see any.

"If life is better there, why not go?" he asked, doing his best to keep his voice gentle.

"Who says it would be better? We'd have to start from the beginning, with nothing at all," Nell said.

"We'd have everything we could bring with us from England," Edward said. "Livestock and seeds and saplings and cuttings and tools…"

"And someone would steal them from us as soon as we set foot in this place. If you men spend all your time fishing, who would drive off our enemies? We couldn't call on a lord or the king for soldiers, the way we can here if those nasty French dogs cross the Channel."

Patiently, Edward answered, "There'd be no enemies. We would have the first settlement, the only settlement, on those shores."

"Would we? What about that Breton pirate who sold you the secret-a third of the catch, Christ have mercy!" Nell said. "Is he lying with his wife right now, filling her head with wind and air about the marvelous land on the other side of the sea? Will there be a town full of those rogues around the cape from ours? They don't even talk a language a regular person can understand!"

He almost reminded her he spoke Breton, but feared it would do more harm than good. And he didn't know Francois Kersauzon wasn't planning to settle down in Atlantis. He feared Kersauzon was. The Breton was nobody's fool; if Radcliffe could see the advantages, so could he.

"And what about the wild men who'll live there?" Nell said. "They won't even know our Lord's name, and they'll murder us in our beds first chance they get."

"No wild men." There Edward spoke with assurance.

"How can you know that, on the tiny visit you had?" his wife demanded.

"Because the beasts in Atlantis had no fear of us," he replied. "If they knew men at all, they would know to be afraid of them." Even wolves and bears feared men. They killed men sometimes, but they feared them, and fled when they could.

"Well…maybe," Nell said grudgingly. "Or maybe there just weren't any savages close by."

"If there are men anywhere in Atlantis, they'd be there. That land was too fine to stay empty." Edward squeezed his wife. "Don't say no right away. Think it through. You can't imagine what you're throwing away if you turn your back on this."

"I know what I've got now," she said. "I can imagine worse a lot easier than I can imagine better."

"It will be better there," Edward said. "For us, for our children, for their children, and for all who come after them, as long as there be Radcliffes." The fervor in his voice amazed him.

"Well, maybe," Nell said again.

Before long, Hastings bubbled with the name of Atlantis. If you wanted to go and settle someplace, you couldn't very well keep where you were going a secret. Word spread fastest among fishermen and merchants, who had the ships to get to the new land. But others heard, too: the smiths and potters and carpenters who sold them the things they would need on the distant shore, and after that those in authority.

Edward Radcliffe was dickering with a farmer named George Tree over several laying hens and a rooster when a black-robed priest strode up to him. "I would have speech with you, Master Radcliffe," he said importantly.

"What do you need, Father John?" Radcliffe asked.

"Step aside, if you please." The priest made it plain he wanted no one else to overhear.

"Whatever you like, holy Father." Edward nodded to the farmer. "I'll be with you in a bit, George."

"Them birds won't fly away while you're gone," Tree said.

Father John had the smooth pink complexion and double chin of a man who'd seldom known hunger. He also had a blade of a nose and shrewd black eyes. "Do I hear rightly?" he asked after leading Edward down the muddy street till they could talk in reasonable privacy. "Do you purpose sailing off to the edge of the world and leaving the holy mother church behind?"

"I do want to sail off, yes, Father," Radcliffe said, and the priest's mouth tightened. Quickly, the fisherman went on. "But I never dreamt of leaving the church behind. If a priest would come with us, we'd count it a blessing. There should be a chapel in Atlantis-why not?"

"I…see," Father John said slowly. Edward hoped he hid his own tension; he didn't want every clergyman in town preaching against his venture. If anything could ruin his plans, that could. If people decided God was against them, they wouldn't go. Father John tapped a forefinger against the side of his leg. "If a priest did come with you, you would give him proper support?"

"We'd be glad to have him, as I said. We'd give him what we could. I can't say he wouldn't have to work some on his own, though," Radcliffe answered. "It's a bare shore, you understand. We'll all be working hard, at first, hard as can be. How can we have a drone among us, meaning no offense?"

"Priests are not drones. Drones toil not, nor do they spin." Father John's voice was as stiff as his spine. Radcliffe thought priests fit the definition more than well enough, but saying so wouldn't do. Sure enough, Father John went on, "Who would intercede with God, but for priests? Who would baptize, who hear confession, who give unction at the end of life?"

"No one," Edward said, as he had to. He didn't want to go out of life without unction, the way luckless Hugh Fenner had. But he was a stubborn man in his own right. "A priest who is respected among men is better than one who is not," he insisted. "Anyone who pulls his own weight in this world will be better liked than a man who expects to be waited on hand and foot. Holy Father, you know there are priests like that. We both wish there weren't, but there are. We don't need one like that where everyone else is bending his back like a beast of burden."

Maybe his earnestness got through to Father John. "What sort of priest do you need then, eh, Radcliffe?"

Edward calculated for a heartbeat and part of another. As if he hadn't, he answered, "Why, one much like yourself, holy Father."

Had he read his man aright? "Me?" Father John rapped out. "Why would I want to sail to the back of beyond-beyond the back of beyond?"

"Where would you find a better chance to be your own man?" Edward asked. "You'd be…like a bishop, almost." He didn't wink at Father John. If the priest thought of himself the way Radcliffe hoped, he would rise to the bait on his own.

"If I am to be sent alone to a strange shore, I should become one," Father John said. "This is to enable me to ordain new priests so that the Church may continue in that far-off place."

"You will know such things better than I do, the same as I'm likely better at salting a cod," Edward said. "Do you think you can make the necessary arrangements?"

"Well, well," the priest said, and then again: "Well, well." He rubbed his smoothly shaven chin. "Do you know, sir, it is possible that I might."

"All right, then," Edward said, as if that were a complete sentence. By the way Father John smiled, it was.

Edward Radcliffe was a man of some consequence in Hastings. Any successful fishing captain was. All the same, he didn't expect a summons to the castle, and he didn't expect the summons to be delivered by four large, unsmiling men in chainmail. The largest and most somber of them growled, "You are to come with us at once, in the name of Sir Thomas and in the name of his Majesty, Henry VI, King of England!"

Henry VI, King of as much of England as he can persuade to obey his writ at any given moment. The thought ran through Edward's mind, but he kept it to himself. Sir Thomas Hoo, the local baron, was a loyal follower of the king's. "I am at your service, gentlemen, and at Sir Thomas', and of course at the king's," the fisherman said. If he tried telling them anything else, he had the bad feeling he would die as unpleasantly as Hugh Fenner.

Sir Thomas' men had horses waiting in the street. They even had one for Radcliffe. He took that as a good sign. If they were going to throw him in the dungeon, they would have made him walk, probably with a noose around his neck to advertise his disgrace to the town.

He was more accustomed to riding a pitching deck than even a sedate gelding. Two of Sir Thomas' retainers sniggered as he awkwardly swung up onto the horse's back. "You've got more practice at this than I do, friends," he said. "In the St. George, in a storm on the North Sea, you'd be the sorry ones, as I am here."

"Just ride," said the one who seemed to do their talking for them. Ride Radcliffe did, not well but well enough.

The wooden motte-and-bailey castle William the Conqueror built as soon as he landed in England and its stone successor had long since grown useless: the sea had chewed away most of the land that once stood between the old fort and the water's edge. Its replacement, a solid mass of gray stone, safely stood farther inland.

Their horses' hooves drumming on the lowered drawbridge, Edward and his escorts rode into the castle. Sir Thomas Hoo stood in the courtyard, watching some young soldiers hack at pells with swords. Sir Thomas was no youngster. He was five or ten years older than Radcliffe, and his strength, once massive, was beginning to fail. His stooped shoulders and wrinkled, jowly face warned of the storms of life's winter ahead.

He rolled his eyes at Edward's dismount, which was no more graceful than the way the fisherman had mounted. "What's this I hear about you wanting to put all of Hastings on board ship and sail off with it to some unknown shore?" he growled without preamble.

"By the holy Cross, Sir Thomas, if you heard any such thing, you heard lies!" Edward exclaimed.

"Oh, I did, did I?" Sir Thomas Hoo's eyes were red-tracked and rheumy, one of them clouded by the beginnings of a cataract. But they were very shrewd. "If it's all moonshine and hogwash, why do I hear it from so many folk? Eh? Answer me that!"

"If you believed everything you heard from a lot of people, sir, you'd be a sorry soul, sir, and that's the truth," Edward said. A couple of his escorts scowled; one of them dropped a hand to the hilt of his sword. Then Sir Thomas grunted laughter, and his retainers relaxed. Radcliffe went on, "Rumor always outruns fact. And any man who wishes me ill would work to make it outrun fact the more."

"It could be," the castellan said. "I don't say it is, but it could be. Well, then, what do you intend?"

"A small settlement on the new shore," Radcliffe answered. "The fishing grounds there are finer than any in the North Sea. That I saw for myself. Would we want to let the Bretons and Basques and other foreigners seize the advantage over Englishmen in using them?"

"Fish. Cod." Sir Thomas made them into words of scorn, if not into swear words. He glowered at Edward from under shaggy, gray-streaked eyebrows. "You want to get away from peasants in rebellion against their rightful lords and from French sea dogs."

I should say I do, Edward thought. The French had almost burnt Hastings to the ground not long before. But he couldn't admit what he wanted. Without the least hesitation, he shook his head. "How could we leave our homeland behind for good?" he said. "Where would we sell the fish we caught if we did?" That was a legitimate question; he couldn't imagine cutting all ties with England even if he and his kin spent most of their time in Atlantis and off its shores.

"How many folk would fare with you on this madcap venture?" Sir Thomas asked.

"A couple of dozen families, sir, and we'd need to bring the seed grain and livestock to let us make a go of it in the new land," Edward answered. "Does not the Good Book speak of casting your bread upon the waters? This is England's bread, and she shall find it again after many days."

"You've been talking with Father John." Sir Thomas turned that to an accusation.

"I have, sir. He will vouch for me." Edward Radcliffe hoped he would.

"He's ambitious, too." The castellan scowled once more. "Well, go, then, and I know not whether to wish you Godspeed or say be damned to you. Atlantis? Nonsense!" He hawked and spat and turned away.