Liberating Atlantis (56 page)

Sighing, he said, “I got to see the Senator. Where I go from there . . . Well, we’ll find out.”

Senator Abel Marquard was ready to see Frederick. Frederick would have been astonished if he weren’t. Marquard looked both debauched and clever. His eyes were red-tracked and pouchy; he combed a few strands of coal-black hair across a vast expanse of scalp. But he had the air of a man who calculated and who remembered—favors, yes, but also slights.

He shook hands with Frederick with no visible qualms: a courtesy not all southern Senators seemed willing to extend to a black man. When he said, “I am pleased to make the acquaintance of the man of the hour,” Frederick could hear no sarcasm—which, with a customer as smooth as Marquard, didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

“Please to meet you, too, sir,” Frederick said, wondering if he meant it. “What can I do for you?”

“Not what you can do for me—what you can do for Atlantis,” Senator Marquard answered.

Frederick decided to stop beating around the bush. “Why should I do anything for Atlantis? What the devil has Atlantis ever done for me? Plenty to me, I will say that, but not much for me.”

“Not yet, maybe,” Marquard agreed blandly. “But how would you expect the Senate to approve the Slug Hollow agreement”—he named it with obvious amusement—“when slaves are still in arms against the country in spite of the truce you promised?”

“Oh, come on . . . sir,” Frederick said with a snort. “I’ve never been to Gernika. I’ve never been anywhere near it. If you think I’m in charge of slaves down there the way a colonel in New Hastings is in charge of soldiers in New Marseille, you better think again.”

“I see. Well, let me ask you another question, then: if you are not in charge of these people, if they pay you no heed, why should anyone here take the Slug Hollow agreement seriously?” Marquard said. “Does it not promise more than you can deliver?”

“Mmp.” Frederick made an unhappy noise. He parried the question as best he could: “If you go along with it, the slaves won’t have any reason to rise up, on account of they won’t be slaves any more.”

“It could be.” Marquard didn’t call him a liar to his face, but he might as well have. “On the other hand, we are entitled to proof that you are a leader who can get your people to follow you wherever they happen to be.”

By
your people
, he couldn’t mean anything but
Negroes and copperskins
. Frederick wanted to argue with him about that. He thought the Slug Hollow accord was good for everyone in Atlantis, regardless of color. But that would sidetrack the argument. Instead, he stayed direct: “Suppose I do that for you, then? What will you do for me in exchange?”

Senator Marquard looked pained. Such straightforwardness held little appeal for him. “You would not find me ungrateful,” he murmured, pasting a delicate smile onto his thin lips.

Frederick’s lips were far from thin, his smile far from delicate. “If I do this, and I come back alive—or even if I don’t—will you back the Slug Hollow agreement? Will you do everything you can to get your friends to back it, too?”

The Senator looked pained. “You ask me to put my political future in your hands.”

“Well, you’re askin’ me to risk my neck,” Frederick retorted. “You think I’m gonna do that for nothin’, you better think twice.”

“I could tell you yes and then do exactly as I please,” Marquard said. “You are no Senator yourself. You have no power to enforce a bargain.”

“No, huh?” Frederick smiled again, as unpleasantly as he could. “How many slaves have you got, sir? If you renege on me, how long do you reckon you can go before you have an accident? Or you can turn your slaves loose, I guess—but if you do that, you may as well go along with Slug Hollow, right?”

Senator Marquard opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. After a long silence, he said, “It is not to be doubted that you favor your grandfather. The Radcliffs have always been famous for their stubbornness.”

“I don’t know anything about that. I never got to meet him. He never came to see my grandma again, or my pa.” Frederick didn’t try to hide his bitterness. “All I know is, you want me to do this, and I want something from you. If I play your game, will you play mine?”

Another silence followed the question. Abel Marquard made a steeple of his fingertips. Over his hands, he stared across his desk at Frederick. “Had you been born white, you would assuredly have been chosen Consul by now—more than once, unless I miss my guess.”

“Who can say?” That thought had also occurred to Frederick. “But I never had the chance, on account of I’m black instead. Maybe some other Negro or copperskin will get it one of these days—if you go along with what I worked out with the Consuls Atlantis has got now.”

By Marquard’s expression, he wasn’t convinced that would be good for the country. His chuckle wasn’t enthusiastic, either. But he said, “All right. If you go and pour oil on the troubled waters of Gernika, I will do what I can to have the Senate ratify the Slug Hollow agreement. Does that suit you?”

Frederick thought about asking him to put it in writing. Before he did, he realized Marquard would refuse. Frederick tried a different question: “Your word as a gentleman, sir?”

He knew the southern planter’s code. Other than a southern planter, who knew it better than a house slave? If Marquard gave his word as a gentleman, even to a Negro, he would keep it. A man who broke his word showed he was no gentleman, and a southern planter who showed he was no gentleman had no reason to go on living.

Those same thoughts had to be passing through Abel Marquard’s mind. If they were, his much-lived-in face gave no sign of it. His answering nod held no trace of hesitation. “My word as a gentleman,” he said, and held out his right hand. Frederick took it again. One man risked his life; the other, his influence. Each probably would have said he chanced too much.

 

Jeremiah Stafford had been on the point of demanding an army to put down the new spark of insurrection in Gernika when Frederick Radcliff said he would go down there and try to do the job himself. That took the Consul by surprise. He wondered if the rebellious slaves in Gernika had even heard of Frederick Radcliff. They’d heard there was trouble, and they’d decided to start some more. That was how things looked to him, anyhow.

Part of him wanted the Negro to go down there, fail miserably, and prove to the world that the Slug Hollow agreement wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. What surprised him was that part of him didn’t. The world had changed, and Stafford had changed with it. Frederick Radcliff’s slave army could have carried out a massacre worse than any in Atlantean history. It could have, but it hadn’t. Stafford remained among the living because of the Negro leader’s restraint. And so . . .

A life for a life
, Stafford thought when he summoned Frederick to his office. Things weren’t so simple, of course. Atlantis owed the black man far more than one life. But Stafford was doing what he could.

Dressed in white shirt, black trousers and jacket, and black cravat—dressed like a prominent white man, in other words—Frederick Radcliff cut an imposing figure. Amazing what wearing a jacket with black buttons rather than a butler’s brass ones could do: the Negro no longer seemed the least bit servile.

The figure he cut made it easier for Stafford to treat with him as an equal. “If you go down to Gernika, you lay your life on the line,” the Consul warned.

He hadn’t expected Frederick to look amused. “You aren’t the first one to say so,” the Negro answered dryly. “Even if I couldn’t cipher it out for myself, my wife made it real clear.” He paused, chuckled, and repeated himself: “
Real
clear.”

“Why are you going, then?” Stafford asked.

“On account of it needs doing,” Frederick said. “If you send in soldiers, you’re liable to stir up everything south of the Stour. But if I can calm things down, like, that goes a long way toward showing things can work out the way we hoped when we talked in Slug Hollow.”

Stafford hadn’t hoped things would work out when they talked in Slug Hollow—just the opposite, in fact. But, having signed the agreement, he had to support it. All the abuse heaped on him because of it only put his back up. He was a stubborn man himself . . . and he had Radcliff blood of his own, on his mother’s side.

“If you don’t calm things down—” he began.

“Chance I take,” Frederick Radcliff broke in. “If I deliver, the Senate’s liable to look at the Slug Hollow agreement a whole different way.”

If I deliver, I’m the man of the hour
. Stafford understood what the black man meant but didn’t say. If Frederick delivered, he would be more powerful than any Senator: arguably more powerful than either Consul. And who would have chosen him to hold such power? Not the people. Only himself.

Yes, the kind of power the Negro would have lay altogether outside the Charter. Somehow, that worried Consul Stafford less than it might have were Frederick a different man. Back around the turn of the century, the slaves on one of the islands south of Atlantis had risen up and overthrown their French overlords. They hadn’t just overthrown them, either—they’d slaughtered them. Since then, they’d had a dizzying series of generals and kings and untitled strongmen, all grabbing for power for its own sake. Stafford didn’t think that was what Frederick Radcliff had in mind.

Of course, if he was wrong . . .

“It’ll work out, your Excellency,” Frederick said. “Or I hope it will. My biggest worry isn’t the Negroes and copperskins. My biggest worry is some angry white man with a rifle musket. But he’s the kind of fella I’ve got to worry about here in New Hastings, too.”

“You’re well protected here,” Stafford said. “Staying safe in Gernika will be harder, I’m afraid.”

“Chance I take,” the Negro repeated. “It should be all right . . . unless some Senator is hiring those fellas with the rifle muskets.”

What am I supposed to say to that?
Consul Stafford wondered. “Do you want me to tell you they’d never do anything like that?” he asked aloud. “Do you want me to tell you they’re too honorable to get those ideas?”

“Nah.” Frederick shook his head. “You’d be lying, and we’d both know it. Hell and breakfast, your Excellency, some of ’em’d shoot a white man who said anything about slavery. Most of ’em’d shoot an uppity nigger, or fix it up so somebody else did the shooting for ’em.”

Stafford didn’t argue the point. How could he? He did say, “Don’t you think that’s a good argument for staying right where you are?”

“I won’t lie—I’d like to,” Frederick Radcliff answered. “But if I do, what do you think the chances are the Slug Hollow agreement’ll go through?”

“It would still have some chance, I think,” Stafford said judiciously.

“Uh-huh. That’s about what I think. It’d have some—not too much,” Frederick said. “If I do go, if I can calm things down, odds get a lot better. You white folks have already had plenty of chances to kill me. What’s one more?” His laughter was not filled with mirth.

Neither was the chuckle Stafford returned. “It’s not as if copperskins and Negroes never took a shot at me.”

“No, huh?” This time, Frederick Radcliff did sound amused. “If you didn’t sign that paper, there’d be plenty of ’em who’d still want to let the air out of you.”

“You mean there aren’t any now?” Stafford asked.

“Oh, maybe some,” Frederick allowed. “But there would be more.” He cocked his head to one side. “Nobody here but us chickens right now, your Excellency. How come you didn’t back away from Slug Hollow soon as you had the chance? I would’ve bet my shirt you would—an’ I would’ve lost it, too.”

“I thought about it,” Stafford said—that wouldn’t surprise the black man. The Consul went on, “But what good would it have done me if I had? The fighting would just have started up again. Maybe we would have won it. I think we would, once you provoked us enough to make us push back hard. What would winning mean, though? It wouldn’t turn the clock back to where it was before the insurrection started. I think we would have had to kill most of the blacks and copperskins in the country to make the rest quit. The new rising in Gernika says the same thing.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” Frederick Radcliff agreed quietly.

“All right, then.” Consul Stafford spread his hands. “If we killed most of our slaves, we couldn’t go on living the way we could when we had them all. And going on the old way would be the only point to repudiating Slug Hollow.”

“You can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again,” Frederick said.

“No, you sure can’t.” Stafford nodded. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men . . . and since the old way won’t work any more, we’d better try to make the new ones work as well as they can.”

“That’s how it looks to me, all right. I didn’t reckon it’d look that way to
you
,” Frederick said.

“No, eh?” This time, Stafford’s chuckle was distinctly wry. “The other thing that happened was, as soon as the terms we agreed to in Slug Hollow got out, every idiot in New Hastings started telling me what kind of idiot I was. When a damned fool starts screaming at you, you know he’s got to be wrong. And if he’s wrong, what does that mean? It means you’re right. You follow me?”

“Oh, yes.
Ohhh
, yes,” Frederick answered. The canniest Senator could have sounded no more convincing. “One of the sweetest things in the world is rubbing some dumb son of a bitch’s nose in just what a dumb son of a bitch he really is.”

“Now that you mention it—yes,” the Consul said. Drunk, he’d seen that Lorenzo was a man not so very different from him. Now, sober, he realized the same thing about Frederick Radcliff. Which meant he and his ancestors, back to the earliest days of slaveholding in Atlantis, had been wrongheaded through and through. Which meant the Slug Hollow accord was probably the least the USA should be doing, not the most. But that was a worry for another day. Today had plenty of worries of its own. Among them . . . “I
do
wish you the best of luck coming back safe from St. Augustine.”