Liberating Atlantis Read Free

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