map, one that had gone up only a few days before. On it, the Confederacy, especially from South Carolina through Louisiana, seemed to have broken out in a bad case of the measles, or maybe even smallpox.
He pointed to the indications of insurrection. “The Rebs will have a jolly time fighting their own Negroes and us, too,” he said.
“That’s the idea,” John Abell said. Both men smiled, well pleased with the world.
Scipio was not used to wearing the coarse, colorless homespun shirt and trousers of a Negro laborer. As butler at the Marshlands mansion, he’d put on formal wear suitable for a Confederate senator in Richmond, save only that his vest was striped and his buttons made of brass. He wasn’t used to sleeping in a blanket on the ground, either, or to eating whatever happened to come into his hands, or to going hungry a lot of the time.
But he would never be butler at Marshlands again. The mansion had gone up in flames at the start of the Marxist revolt-the mostly black revolt-against the Confederate States. If the Congaree Socialist Republic failed, Scipio would never be anything again, except a stinking corpse and then whitening bones hanging from a tree branch.
The headquarters of the Congaree Socialist Republic kept moving, as the Confederates brought pressure to bear against now one, now another of its fluid borders. At the moment, the red flags with the broken chains in black flew over a nameless crossroads not far north of Holly Hill, South Carolina.
Cassius came up to Scipio. Cassius had worn homespun all his life, and a shapeless floppy hat to go with it. He had been the chief hunter at Marshlands, and also-though Scipio hadn’t known of it till after the war with the USA began, and had learned only by accident then-the chief Red. Now he styled himself the chairman of the Republic.
“How you is, Kip?” he asked, the dialect of the Congaree thick as jambalaya in his mouth. But he did not think the way white folks thought their Negroes thought: “Got we anudder one fo’ revolutionary justice. You is one o’ de judges.”
“Where he is?” Scipio asked. When talking with his fellows, he used the Congaree dialect, too. When talking with whites, he spoke standard English better than almost any of them. That had already proved useful to the Congaree Socialist Republic, and likely would again.
“Here he come,” Cassius answered, and, sure enough, two young, stalwart black men were hustling along a short, plump white. His white linen suit was stained with smoke and grass; several days of stubble blurred the outlines of what had been a neat white goatee. In formal tones, Cassius declared, “De peasants an’ workers o’ de Congaree Socialist Republic charges Jubal Marberry here wid ownin’ a plantation an’ wid ’sploitin an’ ’pressin’ he workers on it-an’ wid bein’ a fat man livin’ off what dey does.”
Two others came up beside Scipio to hear the case, not that there was much case to hear at one of these revolutionary tri-bunals. One was a woman named Cherry, from Marshlands, whose screams had helped touch off the rebellion there. The other was a big man named Agamemnon, who had labored at Marberry’s plantation.
He spoke to his former boss-probably his former owner, too, since, like Scipio, he was past thirty: “You got anything to say befo’ the co’t pass sentence on you?”
Marberry was old and more than a little deaf; Agamemnon had to repeat the question. When he did, the white man showed he had spirit left: “Whatever you do to me, they’ll hang you higher than Haman, and better than you deserve, too.”
“What is de verdict?” Cassius asked.
No one bothered with witnesses for the defense, or for the prosecution, either. The three judges walked off a few feet and spoke in low voices. “Ain’t no reason to waste no time on he,” Agamemnon said. “He guilty, the old bastard.”
“We give he what he deserve,” Cherry said with venomous relish.
Scipio didn’t say anything. He’d been in several of these trials, and hadn’t said much at any of them. He’d never intended to be a revolutionary-it was either that, though, or die for knowing too much. He had no love for white folks, but he had no love for savagery, either.
His silence didn’t matter. Had he voted for acquittal, the other two would have outvoted him-and odds were he soon would have faced revolutionary justice himself after such an unreliable act. He’d survived so far by keeping quiet. He hoped he could keep right on surviving.
Agamemnon and Cherry turned back toward Cassius. They both nodded. So did Scipio, a moment later. Cassius said, “Jubal Marberry, you is guilty of the crime of ’pression ’gainst the proletariat of the Congaree Socialist Republic. De punishment is death.”
Marberry cursed at him and tried to kick one of the men who held him. They dragged the planter off behind some trees. A pistol shout sounded, and then a moment later another one. The two Negroes came out. Jubal Marberry didn’t.
With considerable satisfaction, Cassius nodded to the impromptu court. “You done fine,” he told them. Agamemnon and Cherry headed off, both of them obviously well-pleased with themselves. Scipio started to leave, too. One of these days, he was going to let his feelings show on his face despite the butler’s mask of imperturbability he cultivated. That would be the end of him. Even as he turned, though, Cassius said, “You wait, Kip.”
“What you want?” Scipio did his best to sound easy and relaxed. The Congaree Socialist Republic went after enemies of the revolution within its own ranks as aggressively as it pursued them among the whites who had for so long oppressed and battened on the Negro laborers of the area.
But Cassius said, “Gwine have we a parley wid de white folks officer. We trade de wounded white folks sojers we catches fo’de niggers dey gives we. You gwine talk wid de officer.” His long, weathered face stretched into lines of anticipatory glee.
Scipio didn’t need long to figure out why. With a deliberate effort of will, he abandoned the Congaree dialect: “I suppose you will expect me to speak in this fashion, thereby disconcerting them.”
Cassius laughed and slapped his knee. “Do Jesus, yes!” he exclaimed. “You set your mind to it, you talk fancier’n any o’ they white folks. An’ you don’ git angried up in a hurry, neither. We wants a cool head, an’ you got dat.”
“When we do dis parley?” Scipio asked.
“Right now. I take you up to de front.” Cassius reached into his pocket, pulled out a red bandanna, and tied it around Scipio’s left upper arm. “Dere. Now you
The front was just that, a series of trenches and firing pits. Both the black soldiers of the Socialist Republic and their Confederate foes were in large measure amateurs, but both sides were doing their best to imitate what the professionals from the CSA and USA had been doing.
Cassius took Scipio to a tent where the white officer waited. “Ain’t gwine let you cross out of de country we holds,” he said. “Cain’t trust white folks not to keep you an’ give you a rope necktie.”
Considering what had just happened to Jubal Marberry and to many others, Scipio reckoned the barbarism equally distributed. Saying so, however, struck him as inexpedient. And he knew he should have been grateful that Cassius worried about his safety rather than planning to liquidate him.
The tent was butternut canvas, captured Confederate Army issue. Scipio pulled the flap open, ducked his head, and went inside. A man in Confederate uniform sat behind a folding table. He did not stand up for Scipio, as he would have on meeting a U.S. officer during a parley.
“Good day,” Scipio said, as if greeting a guest at Marshlands. “Shall we discuss this matter in a civilized fashion, as it involves the well-being of brave men from both sides?”
Sure enough, the Confederate major’s eyebrows rose. He wasn’t a gray-bearded relic like a lot of the men the CSA was using to try to suppress the revolution; Scipio judged he would have been fighting the Yankees if he hadn’t lost a hand. “Don’t you talk pretty?” he said, and then, as if making a great concession, “All right, I’m Jerome Hotchkiss. I can treat for Confederate forces along this front. You can do the same for your people?”
“That is correct, Major,” Scipio answered. “For the purposes of this meeting, you may address me as Spartacus.”
Hotchkiss let out a bark of laughter. “All you damn Red niggers use that for an alias. Best guess I can give about why is that maybe you reckon we won’t know who to hang once we’ve put you down. If that’s what you think, you’re dreaming.”
