Not quite idle curiosity prompted Victor to ask, "Have any of those ways got to do with a foul-mouthed little head louse of an English lieutenant?"
The courier's mouth fell open, displaying discolored teeth and a cud of pipeweed. The man spat brown before asking, "How in blazes did you know that?"
"Blazes or not, there's ways," Victor answered blandly.
"Well, he's been bragging to all and sundry in Bredestown how he slaughtered ten thousand Frenchies single-handed out in the wilderness-something like that, anyways," the courier said. "Figures there'd be some Frenchies left over, don't it? Figures you'd be with 'em if there was, don't it? Tracked them down, tracked you down." He let fly with another brown stream.
Had he seemed even a little more impressed with himself, Victor Radcliff would have felt the urge to take him down a peg. As things were, Victor only said, "Tell me at once-do we yet hold Hanover?"
"That we do. I've got letters telling you this and that, but there's the nub: that we do." The courier shifted his quid from one cheek to the other. As if reminded of something, he added,
"Oh, and I've got letters for you from Honker's Mill, too."
"Do you, now?" Victor could hear how toneless his voice went. "And what's the latest from the Atlantean Assembly?" He
wondered whether he really wanted to know.
"Some old Jew gave 'em a nice stack of coin, so they aren't quite so flat as they have been lately," the man said.
"Would that be Master Benveniste? He has always been generous in supporting the cause of freedom," Victor said.
"Some old Jew," the courier repeated. His voice reflected absolute indifference to the Jew's identity. "They're all a stack of Christ-killers anyways. Ought to chase 'em out of Atlantis for good once we win."
"But take their money in the meantime?" Victor enquired dryly.
"Well, sure. Got to squeeze some use out of 'em."
"Your charity does you credit." Radcliff hadn't thought he could get drier yet, but he managed.
"Much obliged, General." The courier recognized no irony. He handed Victor the letters, gave him a smarter salute than he had on first coming up, and then rode away.
"What is one to do with such a fellow!" Victor cried, throwing his hands in the air. "The United States of Atlantis shall have freedom for those who confess any religion-even for those who confess none, by God!"
"So long as their skins be not too dark," Blaise remarked.
"It is not the same thing," Victor said.
"I am not surprised a white man would say it was not," the Negro answered. "If copperskins ruled the seas and held your folk in bondage to grow their sugar and dyestuffs, you would sing a different tune. And if black men did-! Well, you would not fancy that very much, either, I think."
"Settlements make those arrangements for themselves-states, I should say," Victor replied. "If you tell me you are one whit less free than I, I shall call you a liar to your face."
"But you did not have to run away to make yourself free, whilst I did. You did not have to abscond with yourself, so to speak," Blaise said. "Down in the French settlements, I am still a wanted man-for stealing me."
"We are both wanted men all over Atlantis, and for a crime worse than theft." Victor knew he was deliberately trying to turn the subject. He'd gone round the barn with Blaise a great many times on this, but he'd seldom felt the Negro chasing him quite so closely.
Blaise, unfortunately, also knew he was turning the subject. "So the United States of Atlantis can decide that anyone gets to pray to God any which way, but each settlement gets to pick who is free and who gets sold. Well, well."
Slaveowners from the settlements in southern Atlantis might be persuaded to put up with Papists (for those who were Protestant) or Protestants (for those who followed Rome) or possibly even Jews (and some Jews owned slaves, too). They might even tolerate freethinkers, so long as the men who thought freely didn't publish in the same way (and maybe sending Thomas Paine to Terranova would end up helping him stay safe). That slaveowners who made money from their two-legged chattels would ever tolerate equality with Negroes or copperskins struck Victor as most unlikely.
Blaise tried a different gibe: "You don't hate Negroes enough to keep from lying down with a slave wench. Suppose you got her with child. Would you sell your son for profit? Some men who own slaves do that, you know."
"It isn't likely," Victor said uneasily. "But the issue of my issue does not arise. Louise is not my slave. I have no slaves. You know that, too."
He thought Blaise would yield that point, but his factotum did not. "Is it not so that every white Atlantean has slaves if any white
Atlantean has slaves? You go along with it____________________
" He shook his head. "There is a better word."
After a moment's thought, Victor suggested, "Condone?"
"Yes. Thank you. That is what I wanted. You condone it."
"Why do you say 'every white Atlantean'? I did not see you too proud to lie down with a slave, either. Maybe you made her belly bulge."
"I hope not. I shot my seed on it whenever I could." But Blaise looked embarrassed. "Not 'every white Atlantean,' then. 'Every free Atlantean.' Every free Atlantean condones having slaves if any free Atlantean has slaves. And this for the Proclamation of Liberty." He snapped his fingers.
"We do what we can. We are not perfect. I did not say we were, nor would I ever," Victor said. "But we are, or we try to be, on the side of the angels."
"We have a ways to go."
"We are men. I don't shit ambrosia, as I have reason to know." Victor wrinkled his nose. "Let us first get free of England-"
"And we can start to see how to get free of one another," Blaise finished for him.
"That is not what I was going to say."
"Well, it had better be true anyhow. If we do not get free of one another, what point to it that we got free of England? King George should not be my master, maybe. But I do not see that any other man should be, either."
Victor Radcliff laughed. Blaise glared at him till he explained: "Tan my hide for shoe leather if you do not sound like every other free Atlantean ever born, be he white or black or coppery-or green, come to that."
"Mm… It could be." But, after a moment, Blaise shook his head. "No-say I sound like every other man ever born. Do you think ever a man came into the world looking for a master?"
"I do not know the answer to that, nor do you," Victor said. "Had you no slaves in your African jungles across the sea?"
"We had them," Blaise admitted. "But what we call slavery and what you call slavery are not the same thing, even if they carry the same name. In our land, all the slaves are like what you call house slaves here. No field hands-no work out there under the lash if you slack off. And the other difference is, here you can mostly tell a slave by looking at him. Not so in my land."
Victor thought about that. He found himself nodding. South of the Stour, a black man or a copperskin was far more likely than not to belong to a white man. In a country where all the faces were black… "That must make runaways harder to catch," he remarked.
"Not so many of them there," Blaise said. "Maybe it is harder for a man who is a master to be rough on a slave who looks like him. Even your Jesus looks like you. He does not look like me."
When you got right down to it, Jesus probably looked like some modem Mahometan. He came from Palestine, after all, and He was a Jew. But European painters portrayed Him as looking like themselves. They passed that image on to the Negro slaves they converted to Christianity. Victor hadn't thought about what a potent spiritual weapon a white Christ might be.