So did Lorenzo, who heard about it as soon as he did, or maybe even sooner. “Looks like you know what you were talking about,” the copperskin said.
“I’m as happy about it as you are—you’d best believe I am,” Frederick said.
“How long you aim to give ’em?” Lorenzo asked.
“Till it feels right. Don’t know what else to tell you,” Frederick answered.
To his surprise, that got a smile from the marshal. “We’re all makin’ this up as we go along,” Lorenzo said.
“Ain’t it the truth!” Frederick never would have admitted it if the other man hadn’t come out with it first, but he wasn’t about to deny it once Lorenzo pointed it out.
After a while, fighters started slipping out of camp. They thought they’d already got what they wanted. And they didn’t think the Free Republic of Atlantis had any business telling them what to do any more. They were free, weren’t they?
Lorenzo and Frederick took a different view of things. With Frederick’s approval, Lorenzo posted guards around the encampment to catch deserters and bring them back. The United States of Atlantis didn’t let their soldiers walk away whenever the men happened to feel like it. As far as Frederick was concerned, the Free Republic of Atlantis shouldn’t, either.
That highly offended some of the men who wanted to go home. “Who you think you are, playing the white man over me?” a black fighter demanded when he was hauled before Frederick. “You ain’t nothin’ but a nigger, same as me. You got no business tellin’ me what to do!”
“If I had me ten cents for every time I heard that, I’d be the richest nigger in Atlantis,” Frederick said.
“It’s the truth, damn it,” the other Negro said. “If I’m a free man, ain’t nobody can make me do nothin’ I don’t want to.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Frederick answered. “Nobody can buy you or sell you. That’s what bein’ free means. But you’re in the army now. Nobody made you join up. You did it your own self.”
“That’s right. And that means I can leave whenever I please, too,” the prisoner said.
“Means no such thing. If people left whenever they wanted to, pretty soon we wouldn’t have an army any more. You go in, you got to stay in till the job is done unless you made a deal beforehand to get out sooner,” Frederick said.
“Nobody told me I could make a deal like that!” the other Negro exclaimed.
Frederick smiled sweetly. “Then it looks like you’re in till the job is done, doesn’t it? That’s how my granddad did things, and that’s how I’m gonna do ’em, too.”
“Your granddad was nothin’ but a white man, and he didn’t set no niggers free,” the other man retorted. “Look where you was at ’fore we rose up. House nigger, that’s all you was, an’ I bet you felt all jumped-up about it, too.”
How right he was! Frederick was embarrassed to remember the way he’d looked down on field hands before he got stripes on his back and became one himself. He was also damned if he’d admit any such thing. Instead, he answered, “You’ve got to start somewhere. Everybody’s got to start somewhere. Before Victor Radcliff done what he done, nobody in Atlantis was free. White folks had to do what the King of England and his people said—”
“An’ black folks an’ copperskins had to do what the white folks said,” the other Negro broke in.
“That’s right.” Frederick nodded. “My granddad made it so white folks were free, anyways. My grandma used to say he wished he could do more—”
“He done plenty with her, didn’t he?”
“Shut up!” Frederick said fiercely. “If I was a white man an’ you talked to me like that, I’d make you regret it—bet your sorry ass I would. But he figured out you can’t have an army ’less you got people who have to stay in. He was right. All the white folks’ countries do it that way. We’re gonna win, we got to do it that way, too.”
“I’ll run off again. You wait an’ see if I don’t,” the prisoner declared.
“I know who you are, Humphrey,” Frederick said. He hadn’t till one of the guards whispered the man’s name in his ear, but he sure did now. “This time, you don’t get anything but a talking-to, on account of you didn’t know no better. We catch you again, you’ll be sorry for sure.”
The prisoner—Humphrey—stripped off his shirt and turned his back. His scars made Frederick’s look like a beginner’s. “What you gonna do to me that the white folks ain’t already done?” he asked as he faced Frederick once more.
And what do I say to that? Frederick wondered. To his surprise, he found something: “White folks whipped you ’cause you did stuff they didn’t like. You run off from us, they’d thank you for it. Chances are they’d pay you for it, same as the Romans paid Judas. You want their thirty pieces of silver, go ahead an’ run, you bastard.”
That shut Humphrey up, anyhow. Maybe he’d stick around. Maybe he’d try to desert again. If he succeeded . . . Frederick couldn’t do anything about that. If Humphrey failed, he couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned. Freedom had limits. It had to have limits, or it turned into chaos.
Frederick hadn’t understood that before tasting freedom himself. But there was nothing like running a revolution to drive the lesson home. His grandfather could have told him the same thing—if Victor Radcliff wasn’t fighting on the other side.
Colonel Sinapis emptied New Marseille’s arsenal to equip most of his regulars with rifle muskets—and with some ancient flintlock smoothbores that had gathered cobwebs there for God only knew how long. There weren’t enough weapons for all the regulars. There weren’t enough for any militiamen. They were loudly unhappy about that.
Sinapis stuck by his guns, and by the way he handed them out. Leland Newton backed him. “It’s not a state arsenal—it’s an arsenal of the United States of Atlantis,” Newton told a self-appointed militia colonel. “It’s only right that the guns go to troops from the national government first. If we had more, you’d get your share.”
“Or maybe we wouldn’t.” The colonel—who decked himself out in a uniform far fancier than Sinapis’—had a pointy nose, a whiny voice, and a suspicious mind. “Reckon you’re afraid we’d do us some real fightin’ against them damned niggers.”
Newton was afraid they’d try, and would shatter the fragile tacit truce that still held. Since he didn’t care to admit that, he answered, “I haven’t seen your men win any more laurels than the regulars.”
“We never got the chance!” the militiaman complained. “That damnfool foreigner you’ve got in charge of your soldiers wouldn’t turn us loose and let us fight the way we wanted to.”
What did that mean? Newton feared he knew. The colonel wanted to rape and loot and burn and slaughter. He would have made a fine freebooter from western Atlantis’ piratical past. A soldier? That looked to be a different story.
“Your private war against the men and women who were your slaves is not the only thing at stake here,” the Consul said coldly. “The fate of the United States of Atlantis rides on this, too.”
“You reckon they don’t go together?” The militia colonel made as if to spit, then—barely—thought better of it. “If you do, you’re even dumber’n I give you credit for, and that’s saying something.” He clumped away, disgust plain in every line of his body.
Staring after him, Newton sighed. Then he swore under his breath. The militiamen didn’t have to stay under Colonel Sinapis’ command. If they grew desperate enough, and if they got their hands on some muskets (which they could probably manage if they grew desperate enough), they could storm off against the insurrectionists on their own. Newton didn’t think they would cover themselves in glory. He knew he might be wrong, though. And even if he was right, that might not stop them.
He started to go warn Sinapis. But what would that accomplish? The most the regular officer could do would be to put the militiamen under guard. That would only complete the breach Newton wanted to prevent. The militiamen wouldn’t listen to reason from Sinapis, a
ny more than that damned colonel had wanted to listen to Newton.
What then? Reluctantly, Newton hunted up Jeremiah Stafford instead of the regular colonel. He feared the other Consul wouldn’t listen to him, either. Still, if Stafford didn’t, how were they worse off?
Stafford did hear him out. Then he asked a reasonable enough question: “What do you want me to do about it, your Excellency?”
“We aren’t fighting Frederick Radcliff’s men right now,” Newton answered. “I’d like to keep it that way if we can.”
“Right this minute, the militiamen have damn-all to fight with,” Stafford said. “That’s the biggest part of what’s eating them.”
“Not the biggest part,” Newton said. The other Consul looked a question at him. He went on, “What’s bothering them is the same thing that’s bothering you. They don’t want the Negroes and copperskins to get their freedom.”
“Yes, that’s about the size of it,” Stafford said. “Why do you think I’d want to slow them down, then?”
“Because they’ll only spill sand in the gears, and you know it as well as I do. God knows the two of us don’t agree, but you’re not a stupid man. That militia colonel . . .” Newton shook his head. “He couldn’t cut his way out of a gunnysack if you gave him a pair of scissors. Your Excellency, we have a chance to end this peacefully. We—”
Stafford interrupted: “Peacefully, maybe, but not the way I’d want it.”
“To end this the way you want it, we’d have to soak Atlantis in blood. Even that might not do it, because killing all the Negroes and copperskins leaves the country without slaves, which isn’t what you have in mind, either. Or it might not end at all—there might be murders and burnings and bushwhackings a hundred years from now. You can have peace, or you can have slavery. I don’t think you can have both any more. It’s not just cooking and sewing and barbering these days. Will an overseer ever be able to turn his back on a slave with a shovel in his hands again?”
“You . . . God . . . damned . . . son . . . of . . . a . . . bitch.” The words dragged from Stafford one by one, as if dredged up from somewhere deep inside him.
“Your servant, sir.” Newton made as if to bow.
The other Consul started to say something else, then broke off with an expression of almost physical pain—or maybe of true hatred. Now Stafford was the one who shook his head, like a horse bedeviled with flies. He tried again: “You are a son of a bitch. You know how to rub my nose in it, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry.” Newton lied without hesitation. “The thing is there. You know it’s there, even if you don’t like it. That’s the difference between you and the colonel of militia. If I make you see it or smell it or whatever you please, you won’t go on telling me it’s not.”
“I wish I could,” Stafford said bitterly.
“I’m sure you do. But it’s too late for that, isn’t it? The Senate wants to get this over with. By the way the wires sound, it doesn’t care how we do it. People south of the Stour—white people, I mean—will get used to the idea of freeing slaves faster if someone they respect tells them they don’t have much choice any more.”
“Some of them may. The rest will stand in line to shoot me. It’ll be a long line, too.” Stafford didn’t sound like a man who was joking.
“What will things be like if they go on the way they have? Better? Or worse?” Newton asked. If anything would keep Stafford thinking about what needed doing—whether he liked it or not—that was it.
By the way he screwed up his face, he might have been passing a kidney stone. “This is not the way I wanted things to turn out when we left New Hastings,” he said. “But you’re happy now, aren’t you?”
“ ‘ Happy’ probably goes too far,” Newton replied. “I’ve always thought the slaves deserve to be free. I hoped we wouldn’t need bloodshed to free them.”
“It may not be over yet, or even close to over,” Stafford said. “Do you remember what I told you before? No matter how happy”—he used the word again, with malice aforethought—“you are that niggers and mudfaces get to ape white men, plenty of people south of the Stour won’t be. A lot of them will be like the militia colonel you don’t care for—they’ll want to keep fighting no matter what.”
“I do remember. We’ve been over this ground before. What’s the most they can hope for? I can think of two things.” Newton held up two fingers. He touched one with the index finger of his other hand. “Maybe they’ll kill off all the blacks and copperskins down here. Then they won’t have any slaves left, whatever they were fighting for will be pointless, and their grandchildren will ask them, ‘How could you do such a horrible thing?’ ” He touched the other finger. “Or maybe they’ll win. I don’t think it’s likely, but you never can tell. But even if they do, will they trust slaves around anything sharp from then on out? I asked you that a couple of minutes ago, and you swore at me.”
“You deserved it, too,” Stafford said.
“Which still doesn’t answer my question, your Excellency.” What Stafford called him then made everything the other Consul had said before sound like an endearment. It would have made a hard-bitten regular sergeant, a twenty-year veteran, blush like a maiden aunt. Even on the receiving end, Newton admired it. When his colleague finally ran down, he inclined his head. “Your mother would be proud of you,” he said.
“If she knew what you had in mind, she’d call you worse than that,” Stafford said.
“The worst of it is, I believe you—which also doesn’t answer my question,” Newton said. “For God’s sake, Jeremiah, if you think that hero from the militia will get you what you want, turn him loose. But if you think he’s the biggest jackass this side of a stud farm, you ought to slow him down before he makes a bad spot worse.”
He wondered whether Stafford would ream him out yet again. The other Consul didn’t. He just gestured wearily, as if to say he wanted nothing more to do with Leland Newton and his impertinent questions. Knowing when not to push any more could be even more important than knowing when to keep pushing no matter what. Newton touched a finger to the brim of his tall beaver hat and left Stafford alone with his conscience—assuming he had one.
And the militiamen did not march off against Frederick Radcliff’s fighters on their own. Newton didn’t know whether Stafford had anything to do with that. Nor did he try to find out. What difference did it make, anyhow? In politics as in sausage-stuffing, the result often proved more appetizing than what went into producing it.
Frederick Radcliff had never dreamt his word would be as good as law in much of the state of New Marseille, as well as being heard in states east of the Green Ridge Mountains. People all over Atlantis had paid attention to his grandfather, but what did that have to do with anything? Victor Radcliff had enjoyed the enormous advantage of a white skin. For a man who had to do without one, Frederick had come further than he’d ever imagined he could.
“I hope to Jesus you have!” Helen exclaimed when he remarked on that. He could always count on his wife to keep him from getting a big head. With a sly smile, she went on, “Beats the daylights out of being Master Barford’s house nigger, don’t it?”
“Oh, you might say so,” Frederick answered—she didn’t know Humphrey had mocked him for his former post. “Yeah, you just might. And I was all puffed up about that when it was what I had. I sure was. Seems like a thousand years ago.”
His cheeks heated. For once, he was glad his skin was too dark to show much of a flush. Humphrey had known the difference between house slaves and field hands, all right. So far, Humphrey hadn’t tried to run off again. Or, if he had, the word hadn’t got to Frederick.
Those weren’t the same—not even close. One of the things Frederick had learned was that being a leader didn’t mean knowing everything that was going on. You could be pretty sure of what you saw with your own eyes. Past that, you had to rely on what other people told you.
That sounded better than it really was. As any slave knew, people lied wh
enever they thought it would do them some good—or sometimes whenever they felt like it. They kept quiet about things that made them look bad. If nobody found out about things like that, they won the game.
Or they thought so, anyhow. Trouble was, the things people lied about or swept under the rug were often the things a leader most needed to learn. Frederick didn’t like using side channels to find out about things his lieutenants should have told him. That didn’t mean he didn’t do it. Back on the plantation, Henry Barford had done the same kind of thing. In the end, it didn’t save him—the uprising was too sudden, too swift, to be sidetracked. But it had helped him run things for years. And it helped Frederick now.
“A thousand years ago,” his wife echoed. “It does, but it seems like day before yesterday, too. I reckoned I’d die a slave—I really did.”
“So did I,” Frederick said. Considering who his grandfather was, he thought that fate seemed even more bitter to him than it did to Helen. He’d never had the nerve to tell her that, though. His best guess was that she’d call him a stupid, uppity nigger if he dared do such a thing. Sometimes you didn’t want to find out how good your best guess was.
“Ain’t gonna happen now,” Helen said in wondering tones.
“No. It won’t. We’ll die free,” Frederick agreed, adding, “And it’s startin’ to look like that won’t happen in the next ten minutes, neither.”
“Wouldn’t have believed that when you clouted Matthew,” Helen said. “I reckoned you was dead. I reckoned I was, too. And not just the two of us—the whole work gang.”
“Things turn out right, fifty years from now old niggers’ll go on about how tough things were in the work gangs, and young niggers listenin’ to ’em won’t have any notion of what they’re talkin’ about. That’s what I’m aimin’ for,” Frederick said.
While he was a house slave, he hadn’t understood what a hard life field hands led. He’d known, but he hadn’t understood, not till he lived it himself for a little while. It was even harder for him, because they got used to it from childhood while he was dropped into it as a middle-aged man with soft hands and with welts from the lash on his back.
Liberating Atlantis Page 36
