Empire of Unreason (31 page)

Why shouldn’t they turn on us, given all the grief they’ve suffered

from the English?
Franklin wondered.

He hoped he had an answer for them.

Nairne opened the discussion, detailing the invasion of the English
colonies, taking pains to point out the known backing of the
Russians. He spoke with fair eloquence, but Franklin could read
absolutely nothing in the faces of those around him to hint at how
his words were received.

When Nairne finished, the room was still, save for various
translators finishing the job of making his words into other
tongues. Then, as if at some silent signal, everyone began shouting,
declaring, arguing at once.

Nairne waved for order, but it was Oglethorpe’s reedy, strident,
patrician voice that brought some measure of attention.

“It’s no secret,” Oglethorpe began, “that I support the Jacobite
king. He is, in my opinion, the true sovereign of all Englishmen.”

His face pinched with displeasure at the hubbub that followed that,
but he held out his hand for silence, and again—surprisingly—got it.

“If the choice were
mine”
he went on, “I might abandon my will to
his. My will, however, is no longer my own. I represent a nation;
and many—nay, most, in fact—are not English. They are Yamacraw
and German, French and Spanish—aye, and Englishmen of every
religion and stripe, not just Catholic. We of the margravate have
forged our own way for many years. England could not support us,
our sister English colonies
would
not aid us, and we were forced to
make our own policies and alliances. We have fought for our
existence, and won it, and I will not lightly give that up, nor would
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my people let me—most especially to a puppet king of the Muscovy
tsar, whatever name or title he is possessed of, whatever I might
personally think of his cause.”

Franklin realized he had been holding his breath. Now he slowly let
it out. If they had lost the Cherokee, it seemed they had gained
Azilia.

But Oglethorpe wasn’t finished. “That’s on one hand. On the other
is this alliance Mr. Nairne and Mr. Franklin would have us join. Not
only has the Commonwealth not been our friend in time of need,
they have been our active enemy. We have suffered at the hands of
the Carolinians most particularly. In the last war they took our port
at Savannah, and keep us cut off from the Venice trade to this day.

We must buy more expensive goods from Carolina traders and
from the much poorer Spanish trade. As well, our Spanish and
French allies are suspicious of this alliance, and I believe with
reason. This is an English war—and we are no longer English, in
any sense of the word. I therefore hold forth that it is in the right
best interest of my country to hold aloof.”

“They will not let you alone,” Nairne warned. “They will not see it
in that light.”

“On the contrary—I have had communication with the Pretender,
and he did, indeed, see it that way. He proposes that the
margravate remain independent.”

That blew around the room in murmurs for a moment, and it was
easy to see what direction that wind was taking.
Maybe all he

wants is the English colonies,
they were all thinking.

It was time Franklin said something. “He says so,” Franklin
shouted over the growing din, “and yet look at the treachery he
practiced on us in Charles Town. You cannot trust his word, I fear.

He is not his own man.”

“As to the matter of Savannah,” Nairne added, “it has been
discussed, and we will relinquish it to you, as a sign of good faith.”

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Oglethorpe laughed bitterly. “You return it to me, now that it is no
longer yours to give? Very nice. What when I asked for it scarcely a
year ago?”

“I could not bring the Assembly around to it,” Nairne admitted.

“There was much anger when you—an English colony by charter—

allied with the Spanish in their incursion against us.”

“We had no choice,” Oglethorpe snapped, “nor do I apologize for
it.”

“You were in a hard place, and, as I said, I tried to bring the
Assembly around to it. Now it is done.”

Oglethorpe made a face. “There are other matters.”

“Yes,” said a fellow with skin as dark and rich as teak.

“Stand and be recognized, sir.”

He did. “I am’t‘et one’t’ey call Unoka,” the fellow said, standing.

“I’t‘at one accounted leader ah’t’e free Maroons. T’e margrave is
afraid you’ll make him free our brot’ers in bondage, if you win. The
damn English hab promised not’t‘ intefere.”

“The internal affairs of the margravate are its own,” Nairne
explained.

“S’at so? Well, some of us has bret’rn in’t‘e margravate, wearin’

shackles and workin‘’t’e rice fields. If’n y‘ expect us to fight for you,
somet’in’ has to be done about’t‘at, don’ ya fink?”

“Impossible,” Oglethorpe stated flatly. “Absolutely impossible. Oh,
I sympathize—as you well may know, when I accepted the
margravate from Sir Thomas, I did indeed try to manumit the
slaves. The colony was chartered originally to
have
none, and I own
none myself. But many a landgrave fled Carolina to the margravate
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when Blackbeard ruled, and the law was changed. I am accountable
to those who own property. I do not have the authority to take it
from them. They would not have it.”

“An ne’er ll we hab it,” Unoka snapped, with some heat. Behind
him, his lieutenants and bodyguards, a fierce-looking bunch,
brandished fists in agreement.

“And we,” another voice said. Franklin looked to see Paris Nakaso
stand up.

“Sir?” Nairne asked.

“This seems as good a time as any to discuss several things,”

Nakaso said. “For one, we are in perfect agreement with Mr. Unoka

—”

“Who is
we,
Mr. Nakaso?” Nairne asked. “You are a member of the
Charles Town Assembly and a sworn member of the Junto.”

“Elected to speak for the Negroes of our colony,” he reminded
them. “And, as such, I have several things to say.”

Nairne, looking troubled, nodded reluctantly.

“If we fight, we must know what we are fighting for. We are free
men, Governor, but we are not equal men. We would have that
change. We want the same vote as white men get. We want the
same opportunity to hold property. Moreover, as Captain Unoka
says, we want our relatives who are still held in bondage in the
margravate, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania—all the colonies—

freed.”

Nairne was red in the face. He hadn’t expected this, despite Ben’s
mention of it to him on the overland march.

“Perhaps we should take this one step at a time,” Nairne said. “You
know that if James wins, you all will return to bondage—”

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“No damn chance ah’t‘at,” Unoka shouted.

Nairne sighed. “If you have to fight to retain your freedom, we are
your allies—”

“Your pardon,” Franklin interjected, “but they are right.”

That had the desired effect. It stopped the conversation in the room
as surely as death stops a heart. Nairne gave Franklin a warning
glance, but Franklin plunged on anyway.

“Margrave Oglethorpe put it very nicely,” Franklin said, “though I
think he did not mean it as I heard it. This is not a fight for Carolina
or for the liberty of Englishmen. This is a fight for the freedom and
liberty of us all. I say that if the Maroons and free black men of
Carolina fight for this cause, they must be rewarded for it, and any
among you with sense will wonder why they do not simply
take

what is due them. Margrave, I feel for your plight—and by God I
swear we need your help, for I have seen what the Pretender is
bringing against us. But if there is any man here who doubts that
what is at stake is every last one of us, and our very lives and
destinies, then I say the hell with you. Here we are, begging you to
take the inoculation that will spare you the plague, and yet all of
you fret fearfully at the vaccine. ”Let
them
fight,“ each says, ”let

them
die. It’s not
our
fight. We will reap the rewards later.“

Gentleman, there
is
no later. This is not a government we fight, nor
a tyrant, nor even the emperor of Russia. Russia is behind James,
true enough, but behind Russia there is a race of devils. And these
devils do not want our homes, our plantations, our lands, or our
goods. The single thing they want of us, gentlemen, is that we die.

That we die without heirs, without hope, leaving no future and nary
a footprint in the sand to ever say we were here. They do not prefer
white, black, or red skin. They think Protestant no fitter for life and
liberty than Catholic or Mussulman. What comes is not an army,
but death, and then silence, the end of all our days and of every
generation unborn.

“Many of you know this. Many of you have fought with the Junto
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against these devils—have hunted the warlocks they send to our
shores. What you have seen—the flying machine that deviled us
yesterday, the undersea ships in Charles Town harbor—these are
the smallest of breezes from the hurricane that is almost upon us.

And, damn me, but all any of
you
can do is make petty intrigues
and scheme to see which of you will be last exterminated!

“If we do not throw these back across the sea, now, while we can,
we will never do it, ever. And none of us shall enjoy freedom or
property or anything like it. We shall ail hang together, gentlemen,
or all hang separately. That is the way of it. It will be hard medicine
for some of you. That’s too bad. It’s just too bad. I’ve spent long
years of my life working to protect us from this enemy. Now I begin
to regret it. I wonder if any of you are worth it, worth the price of
the men and women who have paid with their lives so that you
might live another day, month, week. If there is no more greatness
in the human soul than you folks display, then more speed to our
foes, and may they end us all with merciful quickness. I, for one,
applaud the destruction of our race, if it be as petty and mean as
you all make it seem.”

He finished, feeling like a tower of fury, no longer in the least
afraid of anyone in the room. They suddenly looked like children to
him, every one.

Silent children. He had managed to shut them up.

The silence stretched close to half a minute, when one man began
chuckling. As everyone in the room turned to stare at him, his
humor migrated to his belly, and he fairly roared his laughter.

“Sir? Have I amused you?” Franklin snapped.

The fellow took the floor, sweeping an oversized tricorn of some
glossy fur from his head. In hue and features he looked an Indian,
his dress a curious mixture of Spanish and native. A weapon,
something between a smallsword and rapier in length, dangled at
his waist. Yet in his hand, he earned something like an Indian war
club, with what looked suspiciously like a human scalp depending
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from it.

“Amuse me?” the fellow said, in an English nearly drowned in Latin
accents. “No indeed, Senor. It is this roomful of women who amuse
me.
You
have heart!
You
look through all of the black-painted
words here and see the real enemy they cover up!” He straightened,
made a stiff Spanish bow. “I am Don Pedro de Salazar de
Ivitachuca, Nikowatka of the kingdom of the Apalachee. I and my
warriors are at your disposal, with no questions or remarks, no
feigned indifference, no mewling. You battle no less than the forces
of Satan himself, and it is not a fight that any warrior of the
Apalachee would ever shirk from. The heads and scalps of a
hundred demons shall adorn our council house, I swear it, and
perhaps the horned one himself, should he come within my grasp!”

The Apalachee thrust the scalp contemptuously at Oglethorpe and
then at the Maroons. “And you, you with your bare scalp poles, with
your guns hidden under your beds—and yourselves under there
with them—you may count yourselves poor in our eyes for a
hundred generations!” He brandished the war club and shouted in
a most un-Spanish way, a long ululating call that was taken up
within and without of the room by others of his tribe.

That was surprising enough, but the Cherokee suddenly took up the
shouting as well—which fact caused Priber to blush furiously.

Tomochichi and those with him joined next, and no less than half
the Maroons. Guns thudded and blew chips of wood from the
ceiling. The room went almost opaque with the smoke.