"May I offer you a pen?" Consul Newton took one from his pocket and held it out across the table.
"Got my own, thanks," Frederick said, not without pride. He pulled it out. It was at least as fine as the white man's, likely finer.
"Where did you steal it?" Stafford asked.
"I don't have to tell you that, and I don't aim to," Frederick said. "Take a look at Article Four here." His finger stabbed down onto it. "There's an amnesty for things that happened during the war. If it covers killin' folks, I reckon it covers gettin' my hands on an ink pen."
He waited to see if Stafford would call him a liar. By all the signs, the Consul from Cosquer wanted to. Since Article Four said exactly what Frederick maintained, Stafford couldn't. He fumed instead. Leland Newton kept his face studiously blank. Colonel Sinapis looked amused, but only for a couple of heartbeats. Then his features also went impassive again.
Newton slid a bottle of ink across the table. That Frederick did accept, opening it with a nod of thanks. He dipped his pen, then signed his name on the line waiting for it. His signature wasn't so fancy and florid as any of the white men's-Sinapis', in particular, was a production-but so what? You could tell it was his name, and nothing else mattered.
He pushed the paper over to Lorenzo and handed him the pen. "You sign it here." He pointed to the only remaining blank line.
"By God, I'll do it," Lorenzo said, and he did.
"We have an agreement. The Great Servile Insurrection has ended at last," Newton said.
"The Free Republic of Atlantis is no more." Consul Stafford took what comfort he could from that.
"We have an agreement," Frederick said. "But the Senate back in New Hastings still has to say everything's all right, doesn't it? Till then, it's just what we've done. It's not official, like."
"That's true. Consul Stafford and I will do all we can to make sure the Senate does approve what we've done here," Consul Newton said. "We don't want the fighting to flare up again. And our own prestige is on the line here, you know. If the Senate rejects this agreement, it's the same as rejecting our leadership."
Stafford made a wordless noise, down deep in his throat. Maybe his heart wouldn't break if the Senate did reject the agreement. It might be the same as rejecting his leadership, but it might also keep slavery alive-for a little longer, anyhow. That was part of the reason Frederick said, "Reckon I'll come back to New Hastings with you, me and my wife. Nobody's got more reason to try and make the Senate see things the right way than the two of us."
"Are you sure that would be wise?" Newton said slowly. "Your presence there might do more harm than good." Consul Stafford's face said-shouted-that he thought the same thing.
But Frederick answered, "I'll take the chance, your Excellency. Honest to God, sir, I will. Let the Senate see that a Negro can be a civilized fella, or pretty close. Let the Senate see that a Negro and his woman can love each other just like a white man and his wife. Ain't no proper reason our folks can't get married, same as yours."
"Copperskins, too," Lorenzo added.
"Copperskins, too," Frederick agreed. "An' let the Senate see one more thing. Let the Senate see a Negro can be named Radcliff. That's what happens when white men get to go tomcatting around with the slave women. And I'm here to tell you it ain't right."
"God bless my soul," Leland Newton murmured. For a moment, Consul Stafford looked as if someone had hit him in the face with a wet fish. For an even briefer moment, Colonel Sinapis looked amused again. Then, as before, he donned the mask of impassivity.
"You gonna tell me I can't come? What's this piece of paper worth if you say somethin' like that?" Frederick tapped the agreement Lorenzo had just signed.
"Come ahead. By all means, come ahead," Stafford said. "It will be something out of the ordinary, at any rate. But you must understand: there is no guarantee the Conscript Fathers, even the ones from the north, will love you."
"Like I said, chance I take." Frederick hoped he sounded calmer than he felt. "And why shouldn't they love me, or at least like me some? I bet I'm kin to half of 'em, maybe more."
For some reason, neither Stafford nor Newton seemed to want to answer that. Colonel Sinapis, by contrast, laughed out loud. If looks could have killed, the ones both Consuls sent him would have left the USA looking for a new army commander. But nobody tried any more to tell Frederick he shouldn't accompany the Consuls back to New Hastings.
Jeremiah Stafford had shared railway cars with Negroes before. Porters fetched food and drink and pipeweed to passengers who needed them. He'd always taken those porters as much for granted as seats or windows: they were part of the railroad's accouterments. It wasn't as if he had to treat them like human beings.
Sharing a railway car with Negro passengers was something else again. During the course of the fighting and the talks, he'd come to respect Frederick Radcliff. Maybe that respect grew not least because of Frederick's famous white grandfather. Regardless of the reason, it was real.
But Frederick's woman-Stafford didn't care to think of her as his wife-was nothing but a dumpy, rather frumpy, middle-aged nigger. Frederick might have reasons for loving her. Whatever they were, Stafford couldn't see them.
She didn't put on airs, anyhow. That was the one good thing he could find to say about her. But, as the train rattled and jounced east toward the Green Ridge Mountains, he became more and more certain he could smell her-and Frederick. What white man didn't know that niggers stank?
He wanted to say something. Had more southerners sat in the car with him, he would have. If either Leland Newton or Balthasar Sinapis had two working nostrils, though, neither man gave any sign of it. Sinapis smoked cigar after cigar, and the pipeweed he favored smelled worse than any Negro ever born. Stafford wanted to open a window, but didn't want wood smoke and soot flying in.
And so he stayed where he was and stayed quiet, sizzling inside. Neither Frederick Radcliff nor Helen-Stafford supposed he ought to think of her as Helen Radcliff, but the idea of real slave marriages was as repugnant to him as the idea of slaves with surnames-gave him any open cause to complain. All they did was look out the window and exclaim at the scenery every so often. A white couple on their first journey by train might have acted the same way.
"What kind of reception do you think we'll get when we come into settled country?" Newton asked as the train started into a pass that would take it through the mountains.
"The terms we made will have gone before us, eh?" Stafford said.
"Well, of course. We wired them to New Hastings, after all," the other Consul replied. "Wherever the wires reach, people will have heard about them."
Stafford nodded. He knew as much-who didn't? But he was trying to pretend ignorance. And he had his reasons: "In that case, your Excellency, we should count ourselves lucky if they don't drag us off the train and lynch us."
By Newton's gulp, he hadn't expected Stafford to be so blunt. "You are joking, I hope," he said.
"I only wish I were," Stafford said.
He hadn't intended that Frederick Radcliff should hear him, but the Negro did. "Welcome to the club, your Excellency," Radcliff said.
"Huh? What club?" Stafford asked.
"Any time a black goes out amongst whites, he knows he's a dead man if he gets out of line," said the leader of the insurrection. "Same goes for copperskins, too. Now you know how it feels."
"He's got you there," Newton said with a sly chuckle.
"Huzzah," Stafford answered sourly. He feared he'd feel like a hunted animal till the train got north of the Stour-if he lived that long. He didn't care whether slaves felt that way all the time-or had felt that way all the time-till his own signature on that damned sheet of paper acknowledged that they were slaves no more. You needed to keep such people in line. Keeping them afraid went a long way toward doing just that. But white men had always been the lords of creation in Atlantis. Stafford hated feeling any other way.