Liberating Atlantis Read Free Page B

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,”