"If you are crazy enough to let me go, I will say what you want me to say," the prisoner said. He was eyeing the dead Spaniard, too. "But I promise nothing. If the fighting keeps on, no tengo la culpa."
"Yes, I know it won't be your fault," Victor said. "Go on, though. You won't be the only one we turn loose to spread the word."
Something shrewd glinted in the captive's dark, liquid eyes. "If we go, you don't have to feed us. You don't have to doctor us. You don't have to bring us along…or kill us if we get in the way or make trouble."
He was right on every count. Victor Radcliff smiled. "Yes? And so?" he said blandly.
"You are an Englishman. But you are not a stupid Englishman, are you?" the Spaniard said.
"I hope not," Victor replied. With a thoughtful nod, the prisoner got to his feet and left the field. An English settler looked back toward Victor, who nodded and waved for him to let the Spaniard go. With a shrug that might have matched the prisoner's earlier one for fatalism, the sentry did.
Radcliff preached the doctrine of nonresistance to other Spaniards and sent them off to the east, too. That done, he went back to see how Blaise fared. The Negro stood there opening and closing his fist, making sure all the tendons still worked the way they were supposed to.
"Not too bad," Radcliff ventured.
"No, not too. But nobody ever shooted me before." Blaise's grammar still sometimes left a bit to be desired. He looked down at the bandage the surgeon had given him. "It will make a brave scar, though." Was that more of his eccentric English, or did he mean exactly what he'd said? Victor wasn't sure.
"Did you pay back the man who did it?" Victor asked.
The Negro nodded. "Oh, yes, sir. That him there." He pointed to the gutted Spaniard. "I am a blooded warrior again."
"He won't argue with you-that's certain sure," Victor agreed. So Blaise won his warrior stripes whenever he killed somebody? Victor knew of white men-English, French, and Spanish-who shared the same attitude.
His little army couldn't stay in one place very long. It soon started eating the countryside bare. It moved on, plundering small farms and plantations the way it had all through French and Spanish Atlantis. Some of the hidalgos tried to fight back, others didn't. Maybe the released prisoners hadn't spread the word. Maybe the men defending their property just didn't want to listen. Spaniards could be as stubborn as Englishmen.
Two days later, Radcliff got a new surprise. His vanguard ran into Spaniards coming their way. The new arrivals weren't soldiers, but men, women, and children with no more than the clothes on their backs and whatever they could carry. "Save us!" they shouted when they saw the English soldiers.
They spoke Spanish, of course. "Hold fire!" Victor yelled, for the benefit of his men who didn't understand the language. "They're friendly!"
"Devil you say!" an unconvinced settler declared.
Ignoring him, Victor asked the nearest Spaniards, "Why do you need us to save you?"
"Because the slaves have risen up!" one of them cried. "The copperskins and the blacks, they want to kill us all!"
"What's that bugger going on about?" At least half a dozen men who spoke only English asked the same question in almost identical words. Instead of answering them right away, Victor Radcliff glanced over toward Blaise. The Negro knew some Spanish. By the predatory smile on his face, he knew plenty to understand that.
Heading up through French Atlantis toward the northern border and the war against the English settlements, Roland Kersauzon was not a happy man. He would gladly have sent Don Jose to hell or to London, whichever was worse. He'd known about Spanish arrogance before, but the refusal to let him enter Spanish Atlantis proved he hadn't known all about it.
He was more than halfway back to the war he'd left behind when a courier coming up from the south caught him from behind. The man looked to have ridden hard for a long time. He thrust a letter into Roland's hand. Roland stared at the fancy seals and ribbons bedizening it. "Don't tell me this is from-?"
"Oui, Monsieur," the courier replied. "From his Excellency, the governor of Spanish Atlantis. I don't know what he says."
"I don't care what he says," Kersauzon growled. "I might like to meet him with seconds, but any other way? I think not."
"Do you want that, then?" The other horseman pointed to the letter at the same time as he used his other hand to pat his blowing mount's neck.
"Want it? Dear God, no!" Roland said. "But I suppose-I suppose-I'd better read it anyway." He took a certain satisfaction in ripping off the ribbons and breaking the seals. If he tore the paper a little, too-well, so what?
The first thing he saw when he opened the letter was that the secretary hadn't written it. It was in Don Jose's own cramped script, and began, General Kersauzon, please believe that I abase myself before you. With all my heart, I beg you to return to the land that previously rejected the helping hand you put forward.
"Well, well!" Roland said, and then again: "Well, well! Here we do have something out of the ordinary!"
"What is it?" The courier was no less eager for news than any other mortal.
But Roland waved him to silence. He was still reading. Not only do the English afflict us yet, Don Jose wrote, but we are also tormented by a servile insurrection their invasion has touched off. We are in danger of being murdered in our beds by those who should aid and comfort us. And you must know this is a sickness which, if not nipped in the bud, may soon infect French Atlantis as well.
"Nom d'un nom!" Kersauzon muttered, and then a couple of Breton obscenities he only half understood.
"What's going on, Monsieur?" the courier asked once more.
"The slaves in Spanish Atlantis have risen up," Roland replied, which made the other man swear in turn. Roland went on, "Now the Spaniards want us to pull their fat from the fire."
"Are we going to do it?" the courier demanded, and did his best to answer his own question: "Lord knows they don't deserve it."
"No, they don't." Roland Kersauzon sighed. "Which doesn't mean they won't get it anyhow. Don Jose is right about one thing, damn him: an uprising could easily spread from his land to ours."
"If we kill enough slaves, the rest will remember their manners pretty quick," said the man who'd brought the letter. "Or if they don't, we can bloody well kill them all."
They couldn't. Roland knew that perfectly well, even if the courier didn't. Without slaves, French Atlantis-and Spanish Atlantis, too-would grind to a halt. But they would also grind to a halt from an uprising. You couldn't let slaves get away with rebellion, or with thinking they were as good as their masters. The whole system would fall apart if you did, even once.
And so, reluctantly, Kersauzon called to a bugler and said, "Blow halt."
Obedient but puzzled-the French settlers had been pushing hard toward the northeast-the man obeyed. The soldiers weren't sorry to stop. Soldiers were never sorry to stop, from everything Roland had seen. Some went off to take a leak. Others lit up pipes or cigars.
Roland rode out in front of them. "My friends, I am sorry to have to tell you that we must reverse our course again," he said.
The men muttered among themselves. "Who spilled the chamber pot into the soup this time?" one of them asked.
In spite of his own fury, Roland smiled. "That sums it up only too well, mon vieux," he said. "I learn that the slaves in Spanish Atlantis have risen." He held up the letter to show how he'd learned it. "The governor wants our help against them-and, I suppose, against the English settlers who inspired the revolt. And if we would rather not see an uprising in our own settlements, we would do well to give him what help we can."
They weighed that with grave attention. Not many of them came from plantation families, but even ordinary farmers who were doing well for themselves had a couple of Negroes or copperskins to give them a hand. Like plantation owners, they had to worry about their property absconding with itself.
One by one, they started to nod. Somebody said, "It's a damned nuisance, but we'd be
tter do it."
"Once we get down there again, we ought to kick that damned Spaniard around the block," another soldier added, which brought more nods.
"Damned slaves are jumping on the Spaniards when they're down," yet another man said. "We need to teach 'em they can't get away with that kind of crap with us." That too produced a growing chorus of agreement.
"You are gentlemen-and it hasn't turned you into blockheads, the way it has with the Spaniards," Roland said. His soldiers grinned and nudged one another-they liked that. Roland wasn't lying, either. He pointed back the way they'd come. "About-turn, mes amis. We have two jobs of work to do, and with luck we can do both of them at the same time."
Had Montcalm-Gozon or the French regulars watched the settlers reverse their course, they probably would have laughed. Kersauzon's army wasn't long on spit and polish. It didn't drill constantly, the way a European army did. But it could fight when it had to. It had already proved that. As far as Roland was concerned, an army that could fight didn't have to look pretty…and an army that looked pretty was worthless anyhow if it couldn't fight.
He rode past the marching men to take his place at the head of the army once more. The soldiers seemed profanely determined to punish the slaves, the English settlers, and the Spaniards for making them march and countermarch. Roland smiled to himself. If that wasn't the right attitude for an army to have, he couldn't imagine what would be.
Victor Radcliff knew less about copperskins than he wished he did. Far fewer had been brought to the English settlements in Atlantis than to those of the French and Spanish farther south. Meeting with the leaders of the slave revolt in Spanish Atlantis taught him how proud the copperskins were.
"Why shouldn't we kill all the whites?" one of them demanded. His Spanish name was Martin. He had another one, the one he'd used in the broader lands of Terranova, but Victor couldn't begin to pronounce it. Martin would have to do. Black eyes blazing, he went on, "They don't care if they kill us."
"He is right. Even if he is a Blackfoot, he is right," another copperskin said. Not all of them came from the same tribe. They were as different as Portuguese and Germans and Poles…if you were a Terranovan yourself. Europeans tended to lump them all together, just as the Terranovans spoke of whites without separating Spaniards from Frenchmen from Englishmen. The fellow who wasn't a Blackfoot went by the name of Ramon. He continued, "Give us weapons, and we will make the masters howl."
"We have not many weapons to spare." Victor's Spanish was imperfect. So was the Spanish the copperskins spoke-and they were imperfect in different ways. Everybody had to back and fill and try again every so often.
Martin scowled at him. "You don't want to give them to us, you mean," he growled. His right hand folded into a fist. "How are you any better than these Spanish putos?"
"?Como?" Victor returned his blandest smile. "Simple-we're on your side. What would happen if you asked the Spaniards for arms?"
Reluctantly, Martin nodded. He didn't like the point, but he saw it. But Ramon said, "We don't ask no Spaniards for nothing. What he want from the Spaniards, we take, por Dios."
"Bueno," Victor said. "But you make them all join together against you."
"Why do you care?" Martin's grammar was better than Ramon's. "Then they don't fight you so hard."
"They still fight us." Victor wondered what his superiors would want him to do here. His orders were to start no slave insurrections-not directly. And he hadn't-not directly. But the enemy of England's enemy…was a handy fellow to have around. "We can help you some-just not so much as you probably want."
"Anything is better than nothing," Martin said.
"But more are better-am better-than less," Ramon said.
"Well, the ones who do fight us don't fight you," Victor pointed out. "And, meaning you no disrespect, we are better fighters than you are."
"You think so, do you?" Martin was as affronted as Victor would have been if-no, as Victor had been when-General Braddock told him the redcoats made better soldiers than his settlers.
"I do think so." Victor Radcliff gave back the same kind of answer Braddock might have: "We have better discipline and more experience." He didn't talk about weapons, not when they were a sore spot.
And he didn't impress the copperskins. "We has something you will never has," Ramon said, again without much grammar but with great sincerity.
"What's that?" Radcliff stayed polite, almost disinterested.
"Hate." Ramon needed no grammar to get his point across.
"Hate sends you into battle," Victor agreed. "Hate without experience and discipline sends you into battle…and gets you killed."
That also didn't have the effect he wanted. "So what?" Martin said. "Do you know what we do, Senor? Do you know what they make us do? With what we do, dying in battle is a relief, an easier ending than most of us would find any other way."
It is if you lose, that's certain sure, Victor thought. Spanish vengeance was proverbial up and down Atlantis. Before he could say anything along those lines, Ramon added, "We may die, but we kill, too." He got things right there.
"Help us kill," Martin said urgently. "That's all we want."
"Let's see what we can do," Victor said.
He gave the slaves a few muskets. He gave them some bar lead and some bullet molds. He got his men to cough up some of the swords and bayonets and dirks they'd taken from Frenchmen and Spaniards. And he found that the copperskins were easily pleased. What didn't look like much help to him seemed a great deal more to them. They were so used to getting nothing, anything at all might have been a miracle.
"Now we make the Spaniards to pay," Ramon exulted, brandishing a rapier he plainly had no idea how to use.
Victor stepped away from him. "Have a care with that. You can hurt your friends with it, not just your foes."
Ramon's gaze was measuring. "And which is you?"
"I don't want to be your enemy," Victor answered evenly. "If you make me your enemy, you won't want that, either. Do you understand me?"
"Understand." The copperskin's voice was grudging, but he did nod. He might not like what he heard. Victor didn't care about that. But Ramon and Martin needed to see that they would be fools to antagonize the Englishmen who were their only friends in this sweltering land.
Blaise had a different question for them: "Do you lead blacks as well as Terranovans? Or do the blacks have their own leaders?"
Ramon and Martin looked at each other. "We have blacks in our bands," Martin said slowly. "Bands with black leaders have Terranovans in them, too. We both hate the Spaniards worse than we hate each other."
Blaise grunted. Victor might have done the same thing if the Negro hadn't beaten him to it. That was an…interesting response. Blacks and copperskins could work together. Blaise had escaped with a couple of Terranovans, after all. But they knew they were different from each other as well as from the whites who exploited them.
Guiding pack horses loaded down with weapons and lead, the Terranovans headed back to their own folk. Blaise muttered something in his native language. Victor looked a question at him. The Negro seemed faintly embarrassed. "Means something like, damned hardhead copperskins," he said.
This time, Victor did grunt. "What do they say about you?"
"Damned lazy mallates," Blaise answered without hesitation. "Mallate is like you say nigger."
"I've heard it before," Radcliff replied. "I wasn't sure you had."
"Oh, yes. I hear mallate. I hear nigger," Blaise said. "Can't help it if I black. Doesn't wash off." He made as if to scrub at one arm with the palm of the other hand. "Good when I run away-I am hard to see in woods. Other times?" He shrugged. "I all right where I from. You all right where you from. Terranovans all right where they from. Nobody from Atlantis, right? Everybody should be all right here."
That sounded good. Atlantis might have been a place where everyone could come together in equality. It might have been…but it wasn't. Not yet, anyhow. Victor Radcliff wondered if it eve
r would be. Let's smash up the Spaniards first, he thought. We can worry about everything else later.
XXII
E veryone in French Atlantis called the stuff that hung from the branches of cypresses and from the round trunks and outswept leaves of barrel trees Spanish moss. Roland Kersauzon had always taken the name for granted. Now, approaching the frontier with Spanish Atlantis for the second time in a fortnight, he really noticed how Spanish moss grew more common the farther south he went.
He also noticed how deferential the Spanish frontier guards were when he returned to the border. They bowed. They scraped. As Don Jose had said, they abased themselves before him.
"If you had let me cross when I came here last time, things would be better now," Roland pointed out in his deliberate Spanish.
"Oh, but, Senor, things were different then," said the teniente in charge of the frontier post. "We had orders to prevent you from entering Spanish Atlantis, and we were honor-bound to obey them."
"No matter how idiotic they were," Roland said acidly.
"Yes. I mean, no." The young teniente frowned. "You are doing your best to confuse things, Senor." He sent Kersauzon a reproachful stare. He had a long, thin Spanish face, a drooping mouth, dark eyes, and heavy black eyebrows: a face God might have made expressly for reproachful stares, in other words.
Roland gave back a bland, polite smile. "I always do my best," he said, which left the Spaniard scratching his head.
But neither the teniente nor his tiny garrison did anything to hinder the French settlers who followed Roland into Spanish Atlantis. That was the point. Given the inefficiency with which the Spaniards ran their settlements, Kersauzon had feared that the frontier guards wouldn't know their governor had begged him for help. Spaniards were indeed the kind of people who would open fire for the sake of honor, regardless of whether honor and sense lay within screaming distance of each other.
The first copperskin the French settlers saw in Spanish Atlantis took one look at them, then spun around and ran like a rabbit. (In the early days of settling Atlantis, there had been no rabbits, any more than there'd been sheep or cattle or horses. There were plenty of them now: maybe more than in France, for they had fewer natural enemies here. Of course, like a lot of Frenchmen, Kersauzon was fond of lapin aux pruneaux-or lapin prepared any number of other ways, too.)
Opening Atlantis a-1 Page 37