Liberating Atlantis (60 page)

Marquard’s expressive nostrils flared. “I would never make an arrangement with a Negro—except the kind his grandfather made with his grandmother. How could I renege on an arrangement I did not make?”

“What if he claims you did?” asked Newton, who knew better than to take everything the slippery Senator said at face value.

“What if he does?” Senator Marquard answered easily. “People claim all kinds of things they can’t prove.”

“He may not need to prove it. He’ll be a very popular man when he comes back from St. Augustine,” Newton said. “If he tells the papers you said this, that, or the other thing, don’t you think most people who read that will believe it?”

“People not of our profession may, but who worries about what people not of our profession believe? Only other people not of our profession.” Marquard snapped his fingers to show what he thought of such people.

“They elect the burgesses who’ll vote on whether to reelect you,” Newton said. Senator Marquard snapped his fingers again. He seemed bound and determined to stay unimpressed.

And, on the Senate floor, he seemed bound and determined to keep the Slug Hollow agreement from ever reaching a vote. He had friends, too, friends Newton hadn’t expected him to have. “Can’t you do anything about those people?” Newton asked Jeremiah Stafford. “Most of them come from your state.”

“I’m trying,” Stafford said.

“So are they,” Newton answered. “Exceedingly trying.”

“Heh,” the other Consul said. “Let me put that another way: I am doing everything I know how to do.”

“Well, then, you’d better come up with something new, because what you know how to do isn’t working,” Newton said.

Stafford glared. “I don’t see that I’m getting much help from you.”

“From me? Any Senator from south of the Stour would just as soon cut me as look at me.” Newton exaggerated, but not by much. “Maybe we really do need to wait and see if the Negro can bring them to their senses.”

“Maybe we do.” But Stafford didn’t seem convinced, for he went on, “Have you any idea—any idea at all—how strange relying on a Negro for anything at all seems to me?”

“Perhaps not. In Croydon, though, Negroes—and copperskins—have been citizens for longer than I’ve been alive. They’ve been citizens longer than Atlantis has been free of England. We—whites, I mean—don’t always love them, but we’re used to treating them like men, not like children or farm animals,” Newton said.

“And how often do they leave you sorry you’ve treated them that way?” the other Consul asked.

“Well, I don’t have statistics at my fingertips, the way the Minister of the Fisc does with his accounts. My impression is that they’re about as reliable as white men—not much worse, not much better,” Newton replied.

“Fair enough,” Stafford said. “Is it any wonder I’m worried, then?”

“When you put it that way . . . no.” Consul Newton wished he could give a different answer, but any politico learned early in the game not to count on other people too much, regardless of their color. If he didn’t learn that, he didn’t stay in the game long enough to learn much else.

 

When Frederick Radcliff came back to New Hastings, he got a parade through the town’s old, old streets. People cheered him—whites, blacks, and copperskins. He waved to the crowd. As a brass band thumped behind him, he took off his tall hat and waved it, too. Sitting beside him in the open carriage, Helen seemed ready to burst with pride.

The next day, Frederick called on Senator Marquard at Marquard’s offices in the Senate House. Marquard’s white secretary gravely told him the politico was indisposed and could not see him. Frederick said, “Oh, too bad,” and went away. But when Abel Marquard was also “indisposed” the following day and the day after that, the Negro began to suspect a trend.

He went to the house Marquard rented in New Hastings, only a couple of blocks from the Senate House. The Senator’s Negro butler received him there. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Radcliff,” said the other black man, whose name was Clarence. “Everybody’s proud of you—you’d best believe that.”

“Thank you kindly,” Frederick said. By
everybody
, Clarence doubtless meant
everybody our color
. He had to be a highly trusted man, or the Senator wouldn’t have brought him to a state where he could run off if he chose. Frederick went on, “Can I see himself?” He hadn’t had such a prominent master, but he’d done Clarence’s job for Henry Barford.

“He’s here. I’m sure he’d be glad to see you. Wait just a minute,” the butler answered.

“Obliged.” Frederick wasn’t so sure of that, but he didn’t say so.

Clarence came back almost as fast as he’d promised. His smile had disappeared, though. “Well, he
will
see you,” he said, and took it no further than that.

Senator Marquard’s study would have made Master Barford jealous. The Senator did shake hands with Frederick, but didn’t look happy doing it. “I kept my half of the bargain, sir,” Frederick said without preamble. “Now it’s time for you to keep yours.”

“Bargain? What bargain?” By the way Marquard said the word, it might have come from Russian or Chinese. “We made no bargain that I recollect.”

Frederick stared at him. He’d known some pretty fancy liars in his time, but for straight-faced gall the Senator from Cosquer took the prize. “You know damned well what bargain . . . sir,” Frederick said, and proceeded to spell it out in words of one syllable.

By Abel Marquard’s manner, he might have been hearing of it for the very first time. “My dear fellow!” he exclaimed when Frederick finished. “When you were down in Gernika, you must have eaten some of the mystic mushrooms that grow there—you know, the ones that can make men think they see God or the Devil sitting in front of them till they get better. You are imagining things.”

“Oh, I am, am I?” Frederick said grimly. “If I think I see the Devil sitting in front of me now, it’s on account of I’m looking right at you.” He stormed out of the Senator’s study.

“Something wrong?” Clarence asked him.

“Oh, you might say so. Yeah, you just might.” The story poured out of Frederick.

“Is that what happened?” Clarence said when he finished.

“That’s
just
what happened. So help me God, it is.” Frederick raised his right hand, as if to swear it.

“I believe you. He’s an old serpent, the master is—a sly old serpent, but a serpent even so.” Senator Marquard’s butler spoke with a certain somber pride. After shaking his head, Clarence went on, “He ain’t gonna get away with it, though, not this time. Slug Hollow’s too important to let him.”

“Well, I think so, too,” Frederick Radcliff said. “But what can you do about it?” He paused, grinning. “That kind of stuff?”

Clarence laid a finger by the side of his broad, flat nose and winked. “Yeah, that kind of stuff. You leave it to me, friend.”

Frederick nodded and left Senator Marquard’s residence. He’d warned the Senator that Marquard’s own slaves wouldn’t let him get away with such double-dealing. Now he had to hope he was right. He intended to give Clarence a week before going to the newspapers himself. He feared that would put the Senator’s back up instead of bringing him around, but it was the only weapon he had.

He turned out not to need it. Four days after Abel Marquard had denied making any agreement to back the Slug Hollow accord if Frederick quelled the uprising in Gernika, the Senator publicly announced his support for the accord. “It may not be a perfect bargain,” Marquard declared in ringing tones on the Senate floor, “but it is the best one we are likely to get.”

Marquard was an influential man. When he lined up behind Slug Hollow, he brought a good many other Senators with him. Frederick had hoped he would do exactly that. The Negro almost sought out the Senator to ask him why he’d changed his mind. But Frederick didn’t need long to decide not to do that. He sought out Clarence instead.

They didn’t meet at Marquard’s house. That might have proved embarrassing to all concerned. A tavern and eatery that catered to Negroes, copperskins, and poor whites served better than well enough. Over fried fish and mugs of beer, Frederick asked, “What did you do?”

“Who, me?” Clarence might have borrowed that blank look from his master. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything at all, even the things I was supposed to do. You ever listen to a white man who has to find his own cravat and black his own shoes?”

A slow grin spread across Frederick Radcliff’s face. “I like that!”

“Oh, it gets better, too,” Clarence said. “It sure does. He had to give his own washing to the laundry gal, too. An’ she made a mess of it—just by accident, of course.”

“Of course,” Frederick agreed. They both chuckled.

“Socks and drawers got starched. Shirts an’ trousers didn’t. A jacket got washed in hot water, so it shrank like you wouldn’t believe. Such a shame!” Clarence rolled his eyes. “And I ain’t even started on what the cook’s been up to.”

“No?” Frederick asked eagerly.

“No, sir.” Clarence shook his head. “The bread was scorched one day. The next day, it didn’t rise. The shrimp in the stew were a little off—just a little, but enough.” He held his nose. “The master’s were, anyhow. What we got was first-rate. Something in the salad gave the Senator the runs. After that, he got word things weren’t goin’ real well down on his plantation, neither. Soon as he heard
that
, he started wondering if something funny was goin’ on.”

“Now why would he think anything like that?” Butter wouldn’t have melted in Frederick’s mouth.

“Beats me. I haven’t got the slightest idea.” Anybody listening to Clarence would have been convinced he too was one of God’s natural-born innocents. “But then he had a little talk with me. You hear him talk, he figures niggers and mudfaces, they never heard of Slug Hollow or what led up to it.”

“Likely tell!” Frederick burst out.

“Uh-huh.” Clarence nodded. “You can’t believe how surprised he acted when I turned out to know as much about it as he did. ‘Clarence,’ he says, ‘Clarence, you really want to be free and have all that trouble taking care of your own self?’ And he looks surprised all over again when I go, ‘I sure do, Master Marquard. An’ I don’t know me one single slave who don’t. There may be some, but I don’t know none.’ ”

“What did he say then?” Frederick asked eagerly.

“He says, ‘If I want to live long enough to go home again once I’m done in the Senate, reckon I better go along with Slug Hollow, huh?’ An’ I say, ‘Senator Marquard, sir, I hope you live a real long time. But if you want black folks an’ copper folks to stay happy with you, you got to know we is all for Slug Hollow.’ We had to get his attention, like, but we finally went an’ done it.”

“Good for you,” Frederick said. “When he made out like I was a liar, looked to me like the only way to . . . to wake him up, like, was to hope his own people could getting him thinkin’ ’bout things.”

“We did that, all right. Don’t reckon a white man would’ve thought of it, but you ain’t no white man, even if your granddaddy was,” Clarence said. “Takes a fella who was a slave hisself to know how things really work with a planter and his niggers. He votes for Slug Hollow, he gets his friends to do the same, we gonna be free for true?”

“For true,” Frederick said firmly. “Don’t know what happens after that. Don’t know if there’s any happy endings.”

“You know what? Me, I don’t care,” Clarence said. “Long as there’s a happy beginning, long as I got a chance, I’ll make it some kind of way.”

“You ain’t the first fella who told me that kind of thing,” Frederick said. “Lots of us’re figurin’ we can make it some kind of way.”

“Some of us won’t,” Clarence predicted.

“Expect you’re right. But some white folks don’t make it, either, even with everything goin’ for them,” Frederick answered. “You said it—long as we’ve got the chance, that’s what really counts.”

“Yeah.” Abel Marquard’s butler nodded. His eyes went dreamy and far away. “A chance. Just a God-damned chance . . .”

“Honest to God, Clarence, I think it’ll happen now,” Frederick said. “And you’ve helped make it happen. You know that, an’ I know that, an’ the Senator, he sure knows that, too, but I bet you anything it never shows up in the history books.”

“I ain’t gonna touch that bet. I may be dumb, but not
so
dumb,” Clarence said. “When did anything a nigger did
ever
show up in the history books?”

“One of these day, that may happen, too,” Frederick Radcliff said. “One of these days—but not quite yet.”

 

Leland Newton glanced over at Jeremiah Stafford, who nodded. Newton brought his gavel down smartly on the desk in front of him: once, twice, three times. “The Clerk of the Senate will call the roll,” he said.

“Yes, your Excellency,” the Clerk of the Senate replied. How often had the functionary called the roll? Hundreds—more likely thousands—of times. He’d held his post longer than Newton had been in New Hastings. Newton couldn’t remember his ever acknowledging that command from a Consul before. But now poorly suppressed excitement filled his voice, as it filled Newton’s.

New Hastings hadn’t known a moment like this since . . . when? Since the Atlantean Assembly reconvened here after the redcoats went home, reconvened and hammered out the system of government the USA had used ever since? No doubt that was an important time, but Newton thought this one topped it. Wouldn’t you have to reach all the way back to the fifteenth century, when the Battle of the Strand ensured that no local kings, no local nobility, would lord it over the populace? Newton thought so.

The Clerk of the Senate did his best to return to his usual emotionless tone: “The question before the Conscript Fathers is, Shall the Senate ratify the agreement made by the two Consuls with one Frederick Radcliff and his supporters in the village of Slug Hollow, state of New Marseille?” No matter how hard he tried to sound dull, he didn’t quite succeed.