Liberating Atlantis

BOOK I
I

If not for the floorboard that came up at one end, it might all have happened differently. Or it might never have happened at all. How do you measure might-have-beens? Frederick Radcliff never found an answer to that, and the question was in his mind much of the time. He'd never known a slave in whose mind that question had not taken root and flourished.

Frederick Radcliff was a slave himself: a house slave on Henry and Clotilde Barford's plantation, thirty miles outside of New Marseille. He was of middle height, but uncommonly broad through the shoulders. By his complexion, he was somewhere between griffe and mulatto-he had more than a quarter white blood in him, but less than half.

He never used his surname where the master and mistress could hear him do it. Legally, the surname didn't belong to him. Legally, nothing belonged to any black or copperskinned slave in the United States of Atlantis. Legally, the whites (and the occasional free blacks and copperskins) who owned them also owned everything that was theirs.

Regardless of what might be legally true, plenty of slaves claimed descent from Radcliffs or Radcliffes. The great white clan, descendants of the English fisherman who'd founded the first settlement in Atlantis, had flourished mightily in the four hundred years since. Henry Barford claimed a Radcliffe connection on his mother's side. (Clotilde, nee Delvoie, claimed a Kersauzon connection on her mother's side. The descendants of the Breton fisherman who'd led Edward Radcliffe to Atlantis, but who'd settled here after him, had also done well for themselves.) The Radcliffs and Radcliffes (and, indeed, the Kersauzons) had been fruitful and multiplied. And they hadn't been shy about lying down with slave women to do it.

After four centuries in Atlantis, some of Edward Radcliffe's descendants had flourished more mightily than others, of course. There were Radcliff and Radcliffe drunkards in the gutters of towns all over the USA. There were Radcliff and Radcliffe butchers and bakers and candlestick makers-and farmers, always farmers. There were Radcliff and Radcliffe doctors and lawyers and preachers. And there were Radcliff and Radcliffe leaders, as there had always been in Atlantis. More than a quarter of the Consuls who'd headed the United States of Atlantis since the War for Freedom were Radcliffs or Radcliffes, and quite a few others had the blood without the name.

Victor Radcliff had commanded the Atlantean Assembly's army in the war against England. After the war was won, he became one of the two First Consuls. (Isaac Fenner, the other, was descended from a crewman on Edward Radcliffe's fishing boat.) Every Atlantean schoolboy knew the First Consuls' names as well as he knew his own. So did Frederick Radcliff, although slaves, to put it mildly, were not encouraged to acquire an education.

And Frederick Radcliff had a stronger reason to remember the First Consuls' names, or at least one of them, than a schoolboy's fear of the master's switch.

Victor Radcliff was his grandfather.

So his mother had told him, over and over again. The story was that Victor Radcliff had come down into southern Atlantis to join up with the Marquis de la Fayette's French army, and that Frederick's grandmother's owner lent her to the general so he wouldn't have to sleep in a cold bed. Nine months later, his father was born.

Frederick didn't remember his father. Nicholas Radcliff had died when he was three years old. He'd stepped on a rusty nail outside, and lockjaw set in-so Frederick's mother said. She'd been a house slave, too, and taught Frederick what he needed to know so he wouldn't have to go out to the fields and work under the hot sun and the overseer's lash.

He knew he lived pretty soft… for a slave. He was friends with the cooks-also slaves-so he got plenty to eat. Maybe he didn't dine quite so well as the master and mistress and their children (now married and out on their own), but he knew how the field hands envied his rations. He slept in a bed one of the master's sons had used before him. His bedclothes were ones the white folks had almost but not quite worn out. All that use only made the linen softer. No, not bad at all… for a slave.

But if his grandmother had been white…

No wheedling cooks then. No hand-me-downs-no stuff other people didn't want any more, or didn't need. No swallowing his pride to keep from angering people who could do anything they wanted with him, including putting him up for sale like a horse or an anvil. If he were the white grandson of one of the First Consuls of the United States of Atlantis, he would be a rich man. He would be an educated man. People would respect him, admire him, because of who his grandfather was. He might be getting ready to stand for Consul himself. He might already have served a two-year term. Instead…

Instead, he had a meeting with that floorboard. He was never the same afterwards. Neither were the United States of Atlantis.

Henry Barford didn't have many friends. He would hunt with his sons or other neighboring planters every now and then. He would drink with them every now and then, too. Frederick had learned just how much brandy to pour into his coffee the morning after one of those drinking parties. A shot and a half was about right to take the edge off the pain in the master's hair.

Clotilde, now, was social butterfly, not social caterpillar. She was always clattering off in the carriage to visit the neighbor ladies. They gathered to sew or read books together, to stuff themselves with fried chicken or starberry pie, to pour down barrel-tree-rum punch (they didn't drink as hard as their husbands, but there weren't many teetotalers among them), and, always, to gossip.

And, when Clotilde wasn't clattering off to visit the neighbor ladies, they were clattering in to visit her. Frederick supposed she made a good guest. He knew she made a good hostess. She was as plump as a pillow and as friendly as a puppy-to her equals, anyhow. She wasn't especially hard on the house slaves… not so long as everything went well.

Sometimes only a few neighbor ladies visited the plantation. Three or four times a year, though, Clotilde would invite everybody from miles around. If you were doing well for yourself, you were expected to show off a bit, or more than a bit.

Whenever one of those grand convocations came along, Henry Barford would take a jug and either secrete himself away in an upstairs bedroom or go pay a call on the overseer. The next morning, Frederick would make a point of correcting his coffee.

It was a sultry, sticky summer's day. People who knew said the weather in the southeast, on the other side of the Green Ridge Mountains, was even worse. But this was bad enough for all ordinary use.

Frederick woke with the bedclothes sticking to him. In weather like this, he slept bare but for drawers. Helen, his woman, had on only a thin cotton shift. A slave preacher had made a marriage ceremony for the two of them-more than half a lifetime ago now-but it had no force of law. The Barfords could sell or give away either one of them any time they chose.

With a sigh, Frederick said, "Hate to climb into the monkey suit today. Gonna roast my bones for the sake of swank."

Helen looked at him. "You sooner go out and weed amongst the cotton plants? How'd you like to swing a hoe all day?"

"Oh, I'll wear the monkey suit," Frederick said, resignation in his voice. "But I don't have to like it."

"If the other choice is worse, you better like the one you got," Helen said. She was in no way an educated woman-she could barely read, and could not even sign her name-but she had her share of common sense and then some.

Frederick, stubborn and more hot-tempered, had just enough sense to realize Helen had more. He sighed again. "Reckon you're right," he said, and leaned over to give her a kiss.

She brought up a hand and rubbed first her cheek and then his. "Better shave, too-you're all scratchy. Miz Clotilde, she'll yell at you if she got to tell you that."

Once more, it wasn't as if she were wrong. "I shaved yesterday," Frederick protested feebly. Helen just looked at him. He let out another resigned sigh and scraped his cheeks and chin smooth with a straight razor. He had a heavier beard than most Negro men did, and as for copperskins… That probably came down from his white grandfather. Like the rest of his inheritance from Victor Radcliff, it did him no good at all.

He kissed Helen again after he finished. She smiled and nodded. That was worth a little something, anyway.

Then he put on the white shirt with the tight collar, the cravat, the black wool trousers, the black wool jacket, the black socks, and the tight black shoes that pinched his feet. "Don't you look fine!" Helen said.

Sweat was already running down his face. "Maybe I do," he said, "but I sure won't be sorry to take this stuff off again come the night." He left it there. His woman was right: wearing the monkey suit had to be an improvement on a field hand's shapeless, colorless homespun.

An early-rising woodpecker's drumming punctuated the dawn stillness. The cooks already had coffee boiling in the kitchen. Frederick and Helen gulped big, snarling cups only partly tamed by sugar. A cook gave them bowls of cornmeal mush and chopped salt pork. A couple of young colored maids were in there eating, too. Soon they'd be off on one last orgy of sweeping and dusting. Everything today had to be right.

Feathers flew in the kitchen-literally. Black hands plucked chickens, ducks, a Terranovan turkey, and a couple of oil thrushes the master had shot in the woods the day before. The worm-eating Atlantean birds made mighty fine eating. They couldn't fly, and they had no great fear of man. They were so tasty, and so stupid, they grew ever scarcer.

In a way, Frederick pitied them. How could a man who dared not run away not pity a flightless bird? Pity them as he would, though, he ate of them whenever he got the chance.

And if that doesn't suit me to be a slaveowner, may I be damned if I know what would, Frederick thought. He poured himself more coffee.

Outside, another rhythmic thunking noise joined the wood-pecker's percussive syncopation. One of the field hands was chopping firewood. As Frederick poured down the strong, brown brew-darker than he was, if not a great deal-he nodded to himself. No matter how warm the day, the kitchens would go through a great plenty of pine and cypress today.

He'd heard white men newly come from England complain about the lack of hardwoods. Oak and maple and hickory, they said, burned longer and hotter than Atlantean lumber. He hadn't noticed that the lack made them pack up and go back where they came from. All it did was give them something to complain about. He understood that. Everybody needed something of the sort.

A slave, by the nature of things, had plenty to complain about. The only trouble was, complaining didn't do him any good.

Clotilde Barford swept into the kitchen in a rustle of silk. The dress she wore was a pretty good copy of what had been almost the height of fashion in Paris eight or nine years earlier. She wasn't yet attired for receiving company. Before her guests arrived, she would put on a pretty good copy of what had been almost the height of fashion in Paris year before last. That would be plenty to let her keep up with the other women.

Now she was dressed for cracking the whip. "Get moving, you lazy niggers!" she snapped. Almost all the house slaves were Negroes; whites trusted them further than copperskins. That shamed Frederick more than it pleased him. The mistress didn't care one way or the other. "Sitting around lollygagging! The nerve of you people!"

Frederick glanced over at Helen. Helen's eyes had already swung his way. They carefully didn't smile. The mistress was in a state, all right. She got this way every time her friends and neighbors gathered here. The abuse mostly didn't mean anything. Mostly.

She pointed a pale, pudgy forefinger at Frederick, aiming it as Henry Barford must have aimed his shotgun at the oil thrushes. "Everything better be perfect when they get here. Perfect, you hear me?"

"Yes, ma'am." He scooped up his last few spoonfuls of mush double-quick so she could see he was hurrying. Like any sensible slave, he moved no faster than he had to. Why should he, when he was working for someone else's benefit rather than his own?

Sometimes, though, you had no choice. If the mistress or the master stood over you, you had to step lively. And Clotilde was liable to have her beady little blue eyes on him every livelong minute till her gathering proved the triumph she'd known all along it would be-known all along it had better be, anyhow. Frederick took a heroic swallow that drained the coffee mug and almost drowned him. He hurried out of the kitchen. Helen wasn't more than half a step behind him.

He wondered if the mistress would pursue them. Not yet. She stayed in there and laid down the law to the cooks as if she were Moses and they the children of Israel. Most of them had heard the speech before. Frederick certainly had. That didn't stop Clotilde Barford from coming out with it again. Stop her? It didn't even slow her down.

"She does go on," Helen said.

"And on, and on, and on," Frederick agreed, rolling his eyes. They both smiled. But they also both spoke in low voices, and neither one of them laughed. You never could tell who might be listening. You never could tell who might be tattling, either.

The house slaves had been scouring the big house-so called in contrast to the overseer's cottage and the slaves' shacks-for more than a week now. Wood glowed with oily, strong-smelling polish. The good china had been scrubbed and scrubbed again. Even the silver had been polished, and shone dazzlingly in the sun and more than well enough in the shade.

But, of course, everything had to be done one more time on the day itself. The housemaids bustled around, dusting and shining. They slowed down whenever they didn't think Frederick could see them. As he feared they might tell on him for saying unkind things about the mistress, so they worried he would tell on them if he caught them slacking. As coal and wood fed a steam engine, so fear and distrust fed the engine of slavery.

"Careful, there!" one maid warned another, who was swiping crystal goblets with a rag. "You drop one of them, it'll come out of your hide."

"Don't I know it?" the other one replied. "Now why don't you find somethin' for your own self to do, 'stead of standin' there playin' the white man over me?"

Playin' the white man over me. Frederick's mouth twisted. Overseers who were slaves themselves commonly failed, and often ended up hurt or dead. Negroes and copperskins didn't care to follow orders from their own kind. They thought their fellows who tried to give those orders were getting above their station.

They were right about that. What they didn't see was that whites who ordered them around were also above their station. Whites had more than looks on their side, of course. They had the weight of centuries of tradition behind them. And, if that weight turned out not to be enough, they also had whips and dogs and guns.

With such cheerful reflections spinning inside his head, Frederick nodded respectfully, as he had to nod, to Henry Barford as his owner came down the stairs. "Mornin', Master Henry," he said.

"Mornin', Fred," Barford replied. He was dressed in a shirt that had seen better days and trousers that had seen better years-they were out at both knees. He hadn't bothered putting on shoes or stockings. He often didn't. He seemed happy enough to let his hairy toes enjoy the fresh air. Maybe his wife would talk him into dressing up for her guests. More than likely, he'd stay comfortable and sit this one out with a jug, the way he did most of the time. He caught Frederick's eye again. "Clotilde's already in the kitchen checkin' up on things, is she?"

Even if he hadn't known her habits, anyone not deaf as a stump would have had no trouble figuring out where she was and what she was doing. Frederick nodded economically. "Yes, sir."

"Well, she'd better turn Davey loose long enough to sizzle me some bacon and fry up a couple of eggs in the grease, that's all I've got to tell you." Barford hurried past Frederick. The view from behind showed his pants were out at the seat, too. Frederick couldn't imagine how much trouble he'd get in for wearing such disreputable clothes. No, he could imagine it, much too well. But the master did as he pleased. That was what liberty was all about. Henry Barford took it for granted.

Back in Victor Radcliff's day, the Proclamation of Liberty had announced to the world that Atlantis was free from England. Had the Atlantean Assembly, convening in the little town of Honker's Mill, noticed how many people the Proclamation of Liberty left out? Not many of the laws the United States of Atlantis had passed since gave much sign of it.

There had been uprisings, here in the southern parts of Atlantis where slavery remained a legal and moneymaking operation (assuming there were differences between the two). Planters and farmers and white townsfolk put them down with as much brutality as they needed, and a little more besides to give the slaves second thoughts next time. Once or twice, the Atlantean army helped local militias smash revolts. What were the odds the army wouldn't do the same thing again?

Frederick sighed one more time. You couldn't win, not if you were colored. You couldn't even break even-not a chance. And they would hunt you with hounds if you tried to run off to the north, where Negroes and copperskins were free. They weren't sure to catch you, but they had a pretty good chance.

He'd never had the nerve to flee. Things weren't too bad where he was. He could tell himself they weren't, anyhow. The top circle of hell wasn't supposed to be too bad, either. Good pagans went there, didn't they? The only thing they were missing was the presence of God. Frederick nodded to himself. Yes, that about summed things up.

The first carriage rattled up to the big house before ten in the morning. A black man in clothes as fancy as Frederick's drove it. A frozen-faced Negro in an even more splendid getup-he looked ready to hunt foxes-rode behind. When the carriage stopped, he jumped down and opened the door so Veronique Barker could descend.

Like Clotilde Barford, she was from an old French family that had married into the now-dominant English-speaking wave of settlers who'd swarmed south after France lost its Atlantean holdings ninety years before. Henry Barford wasn't a bad fellow. By everything Frederick had ever heard, Benjamin Barker was a first-class son of a bitch.

Sure enough, Clotilde had changed into her new gown by the time Veronique arrived. The mistress swept down to greet her guest in blue tulle and a cloud of rosewater almost thick enough to see. "So good to have you here, dear!" she trilled. Then she switched to bad French to add, "You look lovely!"

"Oh, so do you, sweetheart," Veronique answered in the same language, spoken about as well. Frederick could follow them-his own French was on the same level. Here in the southern Atlantean states, most people had at least a smattering, though English gained year by year.

Arm in arm, chattering in the two languages, Clotilde and Veronique went into the big house. Veronique thought nothing of leaving her driver and footman standing there in the hot sun. Frederick's mistress probably would have been more considerate, but there were no guarantees.

Pointing, Frederick told the driver, "Why don't you put the carriage under those trees? Horses can graze there if they want, and they won't cook."

"I do that," the driver agreed. "Marcus and me, we won't cook in the shade, neither."

"That's a fact," said the footman-presumably Marcus.

"Before too long, we'll bring you out something to eat, something to drink," Frederick promised.

"Got me somethin' to drink." The driver pulled a flask from one of his jacket pockets, then quickly made it disappear before anyone white could see it. "Food'd be mighty good, though. When the white ladies gits together, all the niggers who takes 'em gits together, too."

"That's a fact," Marcus said again. When he reached into his pocket, he pulled out a pair of dice instead of a flask. "Me, I aim to head on back to Master Barker's with some of their money."

"Good luck," Frederick said, wondering how much luck would have to do with the dice games ahead. Maybe those were honest ivories. Then again, maybe the footman had reason for his confident smile. Frederick decided he wouldn't risk any of his small, precious hoard of coins against Marcus.

Odds were he'd be too busy to get the chance even if he wanted it. Here came two more carriages, almost bumping axles as they rolled up the narrow path side by side. They rode that way so the women inside them could talk together. A handkerchief fluttered from a carriage window as one of those women made some kind of point.

Out came Clotilde Barford again to greet the newcomers. The women went in talking a blue streak. They hadn't even begun on the punch yet-though the guests might have got a head start before leaving home.

One driver had another flask. The other produced a deck of cards. The practiced way he shuffled them made Frederick leery of getting into a game with him, too. Were there no honest men anywhere any more? Once upon a time, Frederick had read a story about a Greek who'd gone looking for one-and ended up with nothing but a lantern to light the way and a barrel to sleep in. That didn't much surprise him. The world would have been a different, and probably a better, place if it had.

Carriages kept coming. Before long, Clotilde got tired of going in and out to greet each new arrival. That happened every time she threw one of these affairs. She told Frederick, "You just send 'em on into the house, you hear? I'll say hello to 'em when they come in."

"Yes, ma'am," he answered. She said that at every gathering, too. As long as he could stay in the shade on the porch between arrivals, he didn't mind.

In their dresses of white and red, blue and green, purple and gold, the women might have been parts of a walking flower garden. Some of them were young and pretty. Frederick carefully schooled his face to woodenness. Helen would tease him about it tonight. He knew that, but it was all right. But if any of those young, pretty white women noticed a black man noticing them… that was anything but all right. An incautious Negro could end up without his family jewels if he showed what he was thinking. But when a well-built woman was about to explode out of the top of her gown, what was a man of any color supposed to think?

Whatever Frederick thought, it didn't show on his face.

One of the housemaids tried to sneak past him to join the colored men under the trees. He sent her back into the big house, saying, "Wait till the white ladies are eating. The mistress won't pay any mind to what you do then."

"Spoilsport," she said. Gatherings like this let slaves from different plantations get to know one another.

Frederick only shrugged. "Don't want you getting in trouble. Don't want to get into trouble myself, either." She made a face at him, but she went inside again.

He watched the sun climb to the zenith and then start its long slide down toward the western horizon. The broad Hesperian Gulf lay in that direction, but Frederick had never once glimpsed the sea. Dinner was set for two in the afternoon. He figured just about all of Mistress Clotilde's guests would be there by then. Chatter and punch were good enough in their way, but he didn't believe any of the local ladies wanted to miss a sit-down feast.

When the sun said it was about one, he went back into the house and sidled up to Clotilde Barford. "How we doin', ma'am?" he asked.

"Everything's going just the way it ought to," she answered. She didn't say things like that every day. The gathering had to be doing better than she'd ever dreamt it could. What juicy new tid bit had she just heard about some neighbor she couldn't stand?

"Good, ma'am. That's good." On the whole, Frederick meant it. If she was happy, everything at the plantation would run more smoothly for a while.

She glanced at the clock ticking on the mantel. It said the hour was half past one. Frederick didn't think it was really so late, but that clock, the only one on the plantation except for Henry Barford's pocket watch, kept the official time. The mistress said, "You'll start bringing in the food right at two."

"However you want it, that's what I'll do," Frederick said, which was the only right answer a slave could give. He didn't like playing the waiter; he thought it beneath his dignity. To a white woman, a slave's dignity was as invisible as air. She'd want to show off to her guests, and a well-dressed slave fetching and carrying was part of the luxury she was displaying.

As if to prove as much, she said, "They'll be so jealous of this place by the time I'm through, their eyes'll bug right out of their heads. So you make a fine old show when you lug in the big tray, you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Frederick said resignedly. She'd want him to load it extra full every time he brought it in, too, so he could show the ladies he was not only graceful but also a nice, strong buck. One arm and shoulder would hurt tomorrow, but would she care? Not likely! She wouldn't feel a thing.

In the kitchen, they were straining broth through cheesecloth. More swank. It would taste the same either way. But the mistress wanted it clear, so clear it would be. If that made extra work for the cooks, what were they there for but work?

"You watch those oil thrushes!" the head cook-Davey-called to a scullery maid who was turning the birds' spits over a fire. "Watch 'em, I tell you! Anything happens to 'em, I'll serve them fancy ladies a roast nigger with an apple in her mouth, you hear me?"

Eyes enormous, the maid nodded. She couldn't have been more than twelve. Frederick wouldn't have been surprised if she thought the cook would really do it. Frederick knew Davey might be tempted, at that. The kitchen was his domain. The mistress might intrude here, but only in the way storms or fires intruded on a bigger domain. Once the storm blew over or the fire went out, the place was his again.

"How soon you be ready?" Frederick asked Davey. "She wants me to start serving at two o'clock sharp-two by the clock."

The head cook looked outside to gauge the shadows. Then he looked up at the roughly plastered ceiling, adjusting between what the sun said and what the clock claimed. The whole business took no more than a few seconds. His gaze came back to Frederick. "We make it," he said.

"That's all right, then." Frederick asked no more questions. When Davey said the kitchen would do this or that, it would.

And it did. The cooks put chopped scallions and bits of spiced pork back into their marvelously clear broth. The tray Frederick used to carry the bounty into the dining room was at least three feet across. Grunting, he got it up on his left shoulder and steadied it with his right arm.

"Watch the doorway, now," Davey warned as he headed out. One of the undercooks held the door open for him.

"Oh, I'm watching!" Frederick assured the head cook. "Obliged," he added to the undercook as he eased by. He tried to imagine what would happen if he stumbled just then. His mind shied away from the notion-and why wouldn't it? He'd give the white women something new to talk about!

He was similarly careful easing into the dining room. He had no actual door to worry about there, but the doorway was just wide enough for him and the tray both. All the ladies broke off their talk and stared at him as he came in. "That's a fine-looking nigger," one said to her friend. The other woman nodded. Frederick felt proud, even though he knew she might have said the same kind of thing about an impressive horse or greyhound.

He went around to the head of the table so he could serve Mistress Clotilde first. He stood a couple of steps behind her for a moment. Did he want the assembled white ladies of the neighborhood to notice him, even to admire him? He supposed he did. He never would have admitted it out loud, though, not unless he wanted to hear about it from Helen for the next twenty years.

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Frederick often read the Bible. He knew that was the proper line, though even preachers often clipped it. He'd always thought the Good Book was full of good sense. Now he found out how very full it was, but in a way that made him wish he'd stayed ignorant forever.

After posing for the ladies-most of whom, sadly, paid him no more attention than the furniture-Frederick slid forward so he could start serving. And, as he slid, the toe of his left shoe unexpectedly came up against the end of that loose floorboard.

Had he stumbled in the course of his ordinary duties, that would have been bad enough. It would have humiliated him and infuriated his mistress-she would have lost face in front of all her neighbors. She would have found some way to make him pay for his clumsiness. She had her good points, but she'd never been one to suffer in silence. Henry Barford could testify to that.

Yes, an ordinary stumble would have been a mortification, a dreadful misfortune. What did happen was about a million times as bad. Everything seemed to move very slowly, as it does in some of the worst nightmares. Frederick's foot met the floorboard. He thought it would keep sliding ahead, but it suddenly couldn't. The rest of his body could… and did.

Of itself, his torso bent forward. He tried to straighten-too late. The heavy tray lurched forward on his shoulder. He tried to steady it with his left hand. He couldn't. He grabbed for it with his right hand. Too late. Instead of the edge of the tray, which might have saved things, his hand hit the bottom. That made matters worse, not better.

A back pillar on Mistress Clotilde's chair caught him in the pit of the stomach. "Oof!" he said as the breath hissed out of him. And he could only watch as the tray crowded with bowls of soup flew out of his hands and fell toward the fancy lace tablecloth that had been in Clotilde's family for generations-as she would tell people at any excuse or none.

It seemed to take a very long time.

It seemed to, but it didn't. Frederick hadn't even managed to grab at his own abused midsection before the tray crashed down. Bowls full of hot soup went every which way. A few of them flew truly amazing distances. Frederick was amazed, all right. Appalled, too. Some soup bowls smashed. Others landed upside down but intact in well-to-do ladies' laps-or, in one disastrous case, in a busty lady's bodice-thereby delivering their last full measure of savory liquid devotion.

Dripping women shrieked. They sprang to their feet. They ran here, there, and everywhere. Some of them ran into others, which sent fresh screams echoing off the ceiling. Others swore, at the world in general or at Frederick in particular. He'd heard angry slaves cuss. He'd heard white muleskinners and overseers, too. For sheer, concentrated vitriol, he'd never heard anything like Clotilde Barford's guests.

His mistress didn't jump up and start screaming. Slowly, ever so slowly, she turned on Frederick. Soup soaked her hair. Half her curls had given up the ghost and lay dead, plastered against the side of her head. A green slice of scallion garnished her left eyebrow. Another sat on the end of her nose. Imperiously, she brushed that one away. She couldn't see the other, so it stayed.

She pointed at Frederick. He noted with abstract horror that the soup had made the dye in her almost-up-to-date fashionable gown run; blue streaked the pale flesh of her arm. "You God-damned clumsy son of a bitch!" she snapped: a statement of the obvious, perhaps, but most sincere.

"Mistress, I-" Frederick gave it up. Even if he hadn't had most of the wind knocked out of him, what could he possibly say?

The crash and the screams made slaves from the Barford estate and those gathered under the trees rush into the dining room to see what had happened. One of them laughed on a high, shrill note. It cut off abruptly, but not abruptly enough. Whoever that was, he'd catch it.

And so would Frederick. Veronique Barker fixed him with a deadly glare. "You'll pay for this," she said. She wasn't his mistress, which didn't make her wrong.