Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  Sally, the tall black woman, came cautiously closer. Stewart identified immediately both that she had something to say and her clear desire to avoid giving offence, as she had no business mixing with proper women. He looked at Jeremy, who read his glance and intercepted Sally, a prospect that he clearly enjoyed. They murmured together for a moment.

  Jeremy moved back to Stewart and whispered in his ear.

  “I think the tavern would be delighted to host a weekly subscription if it were to be by daylight, so no accusation of lewdness could be made,” said Stewart. Jeremy nodded imperceptibly, and Stewart wondered how he, a Scots Protestant who could not dance, had become the intermediary for the principals. He felt like the second in a duel.

  Miss Poppy laughed. “Faith, sister, it’s only by daylight we’d be allowed near this place.” She gestured at Sally. “You dance, I’ll warrant.”

  Sally nodded and dropped a very nice curtsy.

  Ensign Martin stepped forward. “I don’t think your mother would approve of any direct contact…”

  Miss Poppy looked at him, the vacant happy eyes suddenly sharp.

  He desisted immediately. He looked at Miss Hammond as if for support, got the same visual slap, and retired in some confusion.

  “Perhaps we could clear the floor and just…try it!” she said. “It wouldn’t really be right to go to the trouble of a subscription without having tried the floor. And,” she glared at the men, “I wish to dance.”

  Every male in the crowd immediately began to move the tables and chairs against the wall, while Miss Hammond extended her hand to Captain Stewart.

  “I expect Captain Simcoe will wish to dance with my sister,” she said, apparently ignoring Ensign Martin. Stewart knew the meaning all too well, but he affected not to understand, and bowed, withdrawing a pace, flushing a little from an old wound to his amour-propre. Miss Hammond glared at him a moment and then turned on her heel, only to find herself looking into the yellow eyes of Jeremy.

  “I’m sorry, miss, but the captain does not dance, and it mortifies him to be reminded.”

  Miss Hammond seemed to grow, and her smile returned.

  “Ah,” she said. “I thought…”

  “Yes.” Jeremy bowed and made as if to step away, but she kept him with a glance.

  “These women are…I…I would rather these were honest women.”

  Jeremy smiled a little cynically. “They are as attached to the army as I am, miss.”

  He left her coughing in her attempt not to give an unladylike snort of laughter.

  Jeremy saw a familiar cap and a pair of well-set shoulders in the gloom near the door to the private room and he made his way there, pushing past Caesar and Virgil as they watched the dancing.

  “Miss Polly,” he said gravely. She looked up, her arms full of a large and unhappy cat.

  “Sir!” She curtsied. “I lost my cat. Had I known you would be here, I would not have asked my father to escort me.”

  Jeremy had to look up to meet her father’s eye. He was one of the tallest men Jeremy had ever seen, and he wore his quiet black minister’s coat.

  Polly kept her eyes down and said, “Father, this is Mr. Jeremy Green, of London, who serves Captain Stewart over there. Mr. Green, may I introduce my father, Reverend Marcus White, a minister of the gospel.”

  Each bowed to the other. Reverend White had a magnificent smile that tended to overwhelm all comers. Jeremy had seen its child on Polly and had already been overwhelmed.

  “Your servant, sir.”

  “You serve Captain Stewart? I long to meet him. He commands the Black Guides, does he not?” Mr. White had a very slight Dutch accent.

  “Indeed, sir, and I’m sure that he would be honored to make your acquaintance.” Jeremy considered him for a moment. “Please accept my apologies if I seem impertinent, but do you have a parish?”

  Mr. White boomed out a laugh that carried clear across the room to the people forming for the dance. Heads turned.

  “I currently serve the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in America, those gentlemen who were kind enough to arrange my freedom and ordination. My parish is become New York, and there are thousands of black souls here. I try to care for them. I have the honor of the ear of Sir William on some matters.”

  Jeremy bowed again, impressed. So many blacks in America had angered him with their ignorance, and here was one in whom learning spoke with every word. Jeremy wondered if the Guides would warrant a chaplain.

  Three black men dressed in military smallclothes with colorful sashes pinned around them came in by the back with instruments. They arranged chairs for themselves and other men, and two maids came bearing music stands and instruments. Jeremy saw Caesar approach them and a spirited conversation occur.

  Suddenly Miss Poppy was with them. She exclaimed, “A kitten!” and reached out, gracefully and softly, to run her hand over the cat’s head. He didn’t appear to resent the familiarity. Miss Poppy looked into Polly’s eyes and smiled.

  “I cannot resist a kitten.”

  “He’s hardly a kitten, miss. He’s just a grumpy old cat.”

  “I’ve never met one I didn’t like,” she said. “Most like me, too. May I introduce myself, as this seems an informal kind of place? I’m Morag Hammond. Most people call me Poppy.”

  “Your servant, miss. I am Polly White.” Miss Poppy merely inclined her head instead of the full curtsy that Polly gave her, but her smile went beyond civility.

  Ensign Martin appeared at her shoulder. Jeremy noted his clothes with approval. Martin was the best-dressed Loyalist officer he had seen.

  “Is that the famous Sergeant Caesar?” Martin asked, looking at the group around the musicians.

  “It is, sir,” said Jeremy. He beckoned to Caesar and enjoyed the wariness of his approach. He was introduced. Jeremy was so busy watching the admiration shown by Ensign Martin that he did not spare a glance for the contact between Polly and Caesar. It might have caused him to dismiss his own prospects with Miss White, had he seen the almost palpable spark that flew between them.

  “Surely I have seen you before, Sergeant Caesar.” She sounded cool.

  Caesar nodded, mutely. Polly White was beyond his experience of black women, and the added burdens of the admiring Ensign Martin, the beautiful Miss Poppy, and the approach of Captain Simcoe combined to render him mute. Virgil, ever the bolder when it came to the fair sex, at least so long as Sally wasn’t involved, came up to his elbow.

  “You was at the battery when your daddy gave us church,” he said.

  She nodded, her slim back straight, and turned to face the music.

  The musicians, including a fifer Caesar had just engaged for the company—playing, however, an old fiddle—began to play. They played some piece of formal music through, and Caesar enjoyed it, but not as thoroughly as Miss Poppy and her sister, who were clearly enraptured.

  “What did we do for musicians before all the blacks came?” they asked each other, while Monsieur arranged the couples for country dancing.

  They danced a set and declared that another would be required before they could certify the floor. Then the tall thin woman, Miss Hight, came and partnered the dancing master in a complicated ballet that had them all rapt, though it was short. There was a great deal of laughter. Simcoe danced and teased Stewart about his ignorance. The black men and women, away from the fire but tacitly included in the coaching of the dancing master, danced separately. Caesar danced, his own steps hesitant but capable, as Sally led him along through the country dance. He didn’t trust her, knew that Virgil still longed for her, but she was somehow part of the company now, even as a prostitute. Her courage and bearing reminded him strongly of Queeny, and he realized with a guilty shrug that he hadn’t given that woman a thought in months. He danced with Sally and smiled, and she smiled back, a tiny hint of artifice visible in her face. She had a little velvet patch on the top of one breast that he wanted to admire, and she would raise her skirts to show her ankles. T
he music stopped as she pulled him through a last round.

  “Thank you for the dance,” she said. He bowed to her. There was always a hint of restraint between them, but he saw her eyes were elsewhere and he let her go.

  He found that she had left him standing with Polly White, and they both studied the floor in sudden confusion. Caesar had no memory of asking her to dance, nor she of accepting, but in a moment they were attempting a much more difficult dance that the white dancers were doing with vigor. She was the soul of grace and her very pretty dancing raised him above himself, so that Jeremy, resentful that both of his beauties were otherwise occupied, couldn’t help but applaud them. Indeed, when they ended, she rising prettily on her toes and then sinking in a curtsy, and he simply happy to have the right foot on the ground at the end, they had a little round of applause that included the white dancers. Caesar flushed and looked at Polly. She met his eye, hers half lidded with exertion and perhaps something else, and she flushed, but she didn’t turn away. Her smile was enigmatic. He bowed to her and then reached for her hand, but she slipped away through a doorway and vanished.

  Stewart was not precisely disconsolate, but he stood near the mantle of the fire, smoking and thinking some bitter thoughts. He found a glass of wine being put in his hand, and looked around to find the tall, handsome black woman looking him in the eye.

  “I could teach you to dance,” Sally said. It wasn’t done broadly, just a hint that there was more to it.

  “I imagine you could at that,” he said. He drank the wine.

  He had never lain with a woman that was naked, and he rested on an elbow, just admiring her, running his hand over her breasts and her waist down to the swell of her hips. She was black, and that was different, although he had known women in Smyrna and Algiers who were darker. The gleam of her skin was magnificent, rich like the best old furniture, a simile that made him smile because he didn’t think she’d be flattered. Then he thought of Mary, and frowned a little, because she wouldn’t approve and he was Protestant enough to regret the lapse, but Sally was too much in the bed to ignore or feel guilty about just then.

  “I could teach you to dance, Captain darlin’,” she said. He placed his hands around her waist and drew her to him, but she held him off easily and pouted.

  “I mean what I say. I saw how you looked there. Let me teach you some steps, and perhaps you’ll be less afraid.” Her manner was such that he couldn’t resent the word afraid. He moved his hand all the way down her back. The hand trembled a little.

  “Why do you take off all your clothes to do it?” he asked her. She shook her head.

  “I want to know!” he said, a little too loud, his hand still on her back. She shook her head again. She was looking somewhere else, but he wanted the woman back that had been there before, asking him to take the lessons. Sally had been there, not just the shell of her, and he kissed her neck, smelling the warm grass smell she carried with her. She shrugged him off, impatient now.

  “I like to dance. I thought…” She sounded curiously defeated, as if the prospect of dancing was the only thing that had held her interest, and in an unaccustomed moment of insight he saw that it probably was. The act itself was of little consequence to her, even naked and lewd. He stretched, his frizzed red hair around his head in the candlelight like a halo, or horns.

  “You can really teach me the steps?”

  She bounced back to him, her face alive again.

  “Only the simple ones. I shan’t lie. But then we can have Monsieur to teach us privately.” Her manner of speech was odd, and a little stilted. He thought perhaps Mother Abbott had been teaching her to speak.

  “You expect that I have money, Sally.”

  She nodded, still smiling. “Jeremy says you are a rich man. Surely you can afford a few lessons?”

  He pulled her on top of him, noting the goose bumps all along her arms and hips. It was cold in the room, now that he was cooling. November had more bite to it in the colonies.

  “Just so,” he murmured.

  Caesar kissed her again, holding her around the waist with one hand, the other roving her well-protected body. She was wearing layers of petticoats and a full set of stays with a jacket over all, a set of clothes more impenetrable than armor. He ran his hand under her skirts and up her bare leg, the feel of it overwhelming him as they kissed on and on, his hand higher, on her bare hip and then she bit his tongue and her hand slapped his ear and he stepped back. She sighed and shrugged, moving her stays and smoothing her skirts. They were in the little hallway that led from the kitchen to the woodshed. Caesar looked at her.

  She shook her head as if to clear it, and fled, and he stood there, alone and disconsolate, his lust still cresting but more concerned that its object was offended or worse. He called after her, walked through the whole of the tavern, and went back to his barracks, wanting to weep, or talk to someone. She was nowhere to be found, and the common room was empty of any acquaintance except Sergeant McDonald of Captain Stewart’s company. Caesar moved past him warily, not sure that their professional lives would stretch to the tavern. White men had proved uncommonly touchy about these things, and Caesar, possessed of a temper himself, tried to avoid placing himself in a position to give or receive offence. But McDonald hailed him as soon as he looked up from his tankard.

  “Julius Caesar, as I live and breathe. Come and have a glass, Caesar.”

  Caesar joined him, oddly grateful for the company.

  “You look hipped, lad,” said McDonald.

  “Nothing to it, sir.” Caesar looked around. “You came on your own, then?”

  “Nah, lad. I came with some others, but they had to be chasing the ladies and now there’ll be no finding them before morning parade.” Caesar motioned to a barman for wine, and McDonald called for cards and pipes.

  “Do you play, Caesar?”

  “I have played, sir.” McDonald lit a pipe and fanned the cards.

  “Gambling is a sin, clear as the devil. So’s killing, though, so I reckon I’m done on those lines. Care for a hand?” He was examining the cards, which seemed to depict the battles of the Duke of Marlborough, except for a few, which must have come from a different deck. They depicted engagements of a very different sort.

  Caesar played with him in a desultory manner for a few hands until two more men appeared, both soldiers from the Forty-second who seemed to recognize McDonald immediately. Then they wished to change the game to whist, which Caesar didn’t know.

  “It’s easy,” they all chorused.

  Virgil was snoring when he got to his bunk in the barracks. He hadn’t taken so much wine in his life, but he knew how to play whist, and just then that seemed a fine accomplishment.

  Jeremy drank steadily, knowing that his master had taken one of the women he fancied and that Caesar, as close to a friend as he had ever known, was well on his way to taking the other. He drank, but he was a man of the world, and he did not end the night alone, nor did he and his partner ever snore.

  Brunswick, New Jersey, November 30, 1776

  The outpost that spotted the two wagons couldn’t believe their luck. Their glee was passed back along the chain of command until George Lake wrapped a sergeant’s sash over his blanket coat, took his musket from the hastily built rack lashed between two saplings, and ran off into the hard bite of the early morning air. He was the senior man when he came up, and he was immediately relieved to discover that they weren’t under attack. He sent many of the alarmed men back to the camp, a good two hundred paces distant, and only then turned his attention to the cartmen.

  “Who are you?”

  “Free men, Sergeant. This is my uncle and my boy Sam.”

  “Where are you from?”

  The black man, hunched against the cold, glanced back at the river behind him. “Over Jersey way.”

  “Where’d you get the straw?”

  “We bought it, mister. It be ours. We bought it to sell to Mr. Washington’s Army.”

  One of the ot
her blacks with the wagon nodded. “We reckon you be needing straw. We know where to get it cheap, an’ we jus’ walk it across the Jerseys an’ bring it to you.”

  George looked at them. They were strong men, neither well dressed nor ill, wearing strong shoes and heavy coats of the shaggy material known as “bear fur”. They seemed a little nervous, but George put that down to the effect of approaching white men with guns.

  “How much?” he asked, poking at the straw. It was good and clean, and he needed it for thatching the little wigwam huts his men were building, and for bedding. There was no straw within a day’s march of the army.

  “Six shillings the load. We got two loads.” The older man smiled a little.

  The price was certainly fair.

  “They’re spies,” said Bludner, from behind him. The black men froze. The boy, Sam, raised his head.

  “This ain’t your post, Sergeant Bludner.” George had suddenly reached a point where he wasn’t going to deal with Bludner by avoiding him. The change was sudden.

  “Take the straw if you want,” said Bludner, paying him no mind. He motioned to a file of his own men he had brought. “Take them Nigras.”

  The older black met George’s eyes and shook his head. “We don’ want no trouble,” he said slowly. But he was reaching for something.

  When the shooting was over, George Lake was still standing there. He had never moved, not shocked but deeply sorry. Three of the blacks were dead and the older one was weeping quietly, gut-shot. Bludner walked over and kicked him, and he screamed. Then Bludner reloaded, slowly, savoring the old man’s fear, and George stood by, wrapped in conflicting hatreds until it was too late and Bludner suddenly reached out and shot the man dead. Only the youngest was left, cowering on top of the highest hay wagon. He was pale under the dark skin, gray with shock.