Liberating Atlantis

He soon found out why: Matthew was blowing the horn, and he had no more idea how to do it than Frederick knew how to paint portraits. "What happened to Jonas?" Frederick asked. Several other slaves said the same thing as they came out of their cabins.

"Down sick," Matthew answered economically. He looked toward the newly sprouted tents. "Those miserable, stupid soldiers…" Then he sighed, shifted the chaw in his cheek, and spat a brown stream of pipeweed juice. "They're paying for it. But so are we. Mistress Clotilde…"

There was no sign of Master Henry, either. Frederick supposed he was tending to his wife. But he might have come down with the yellow jack himself. And Lieutenant Torrance didn't come out of his tent. Only a couple of soldiers did emerge. They cared for the horses with the air of the stu

Worse, there was no guarantee yet that they had lived through things, and they were bound to know it.

They went through the day without anyone falling over in the fields. To Frederick, that seemed something worth celebrating. And he might have celebrated if he weren't so stiff and sore and tired, and if he thought the overseer would let him get away with it.

Later, he realized Matthew might have. The white man also seemed delighted to have got through a day's work with no new catastrophes. "Wonder what things'll be like when we get back to the big house," he muttered as the gang shouldered tools and started back for supper.

Things were… not so good. Soldiers and house slaves had dug a grave for another of the troopers who'd been sick when the cavalry detachment arrived at the plantation. Had Lieutenant Torrance read the Bible over this dead man, too? Frederick had his doubts. The lieutenant was likely to be too sick to get off his cot or blanket or whatever he was lying on.

Henry Barford came out to watch the slaves return. He hadn't combed his hair or shaved. Frederick thought he had done some drinking, or more than some. "Clotilde's mighty poorly," he a

Frederick didn't know whether to be sorry or not. He'd spent a lot of years with the Barfords. Most of the time, he'd got along well enough with the mistress of the plantation. But she was the one who'd had him whipped and degraded. She was the one who'd wanted to give him more lashes than he'd got. Why should he sympathize with her now?

Because anything that can happen can happen to you, he answered himself. Because you could be moaning in a sickbed just like her a day from now. Or, God forbid, so could Helen.

He ate more supper than usual-not better, but more. Quantity had a quality of its own. No one had thought to tell the cooks to make any less than they would have without sickness tearing through the plantation. They hadn't made any changes on their own. If you waited for slaves to show initiative, you'd spend a long time waiting. So the same amount of food was shared among fewer people. Frederick's belly appreciated the difference.

Another cavalry trooper came down sick not long after supper. The men still on their feet had all kinds of worries. "We got enough men to post a guard on the wagons?" one of them asked.

"Hell with the wagons. Hell with everything in 'em," another soldier replied. "Any of us still go

The first soldier didn't say anything to that. Frederick wouldn't have, either. It was much too good a question.

He glanced over toward the wagons. Sure enough, there they sat-they wouldn't go on to New Marseille any time soon. But so what? The United States of Atlantis were at peace with the world. For the most part, they'd stayed at peace since the war that set them free. No invader was likely to descend on them now. What would the rifle muskets do but gather dust in some armory?

Frederick had been a boy when Atlantis got into a brief second scrape with England. Redcoats had suppressed the Terranovan risings that accompanied Atlantis' revolt against the mother country. The Terranovan settlements rebelled again a generation later when England was distracted by the great war she fought against France. Atlantis covertly aided the Terranovans-but not covertly enough. And so England declared war on her former possession.

Atlantean frigates won their share of glory in what people these days called the War of 1809. But England had the greatest navy the world had ever known, a navy that spa

No, New Marseille had no urgent need of those rifle muskets. Frederick had trouble seeing why the soldiers even bothered mounting guard over them.

Were he still a house slave, he probably would have gone on having trouble seeing why. As a field hand-as a field hand with the marks of the overseer's lash still no better than half healed on his back-he suddenly understood. They didn't want the weapons to fall into slaves' hands.

And he understood why, too. Slaves with fancy new rifle muskets could rise against the whites who put stripes on their backs, who lay down with their women whenever they pleased, and who could sell them like so many sacks of beans. No slave rising yet had succeeded. But the chance was always there.

"You awake?" he whispered to Helen when they lay down in the muggy little cabin that night.

"Not me," she answered. "I done went to sleep an hour ago."

Frederick laughed softly. "I been thinkin'," he said.

"You should've gone to sleep an hour ago, too," Helen said, and he couldn't very well tell her she didn't have a point. But she relented enough to ask, "What was you wastin' your time thinkin' about?"

His voice dropped lower still. "Them guns," he said. If those two words reached Henry Barford's ears, it wasn't a lashing matter any more. Frederick would die, quickly if he was lucky but more likely with as much pain and cruelty as his master could mete out. Even talking about uprisings was a capital crime.

Helen's sharp intake of breath said she understood as much. "You out of your mind?" she said. "You pick one of them up, you can't never put it down no more."

"I know," Frederick said. "But do you reckon Victor Radcliff wanted his grandson to be a field nigger?"

"I reckon Victor Radcliff wanted his grandson to be a live nigger," Helen said. "Lord Jesus, Frederick, first one of those other field hands you talk to, he's liable to sell you down the river for whatever Master Henry give him. Thirty pieces of silver, I reckon-that's the goin' rate."

"If we're go

"Says who?" Helen retorted. "Way the yellow jack's goin' around, half your army may be dead week after next."

"If it gets us like that, it'll get the white folks we're fighting the same way," Frederick said, which was true-or he hoped it was, anyhow. He went on, "That's not what I was talkin' about, anyways."

"Well, what was you talkin' about, then?" Helen asked pointedly.

"You know that lieutenant, the one who's down sick? He's a Croydon man, from way up north. They don't have slaves up there. He just about told me I had to free myself if I ever wanted to be free," Frederick said.

"Fever must've scrambled his brains," Helen said. "I wish to heaven you would've just dozed off like you should have."

"Most folks from Croydon hate slavery," Frederick went on as if she hadn't spoken. "I hear tell there's even niggers and mudfaces who can vote in the state of Croydon. And Consul Newton, he's from Croydon, too. Everybody knows he can't stand the notion of one man buying and selling another one."