Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  Caesar nodded to Tonny and pointed back to where they’d come. He pointed at his chest and made a little gorget with his finger, then patted his shoulder as if he had an epaulet. He saw Tonny brighten as if he understood, and begin to move away slowly until he had a few trees between him and the sentries, and then, with a wave, he was gone.

  Caesar was alone.

  He lay flat and stripped his equipment off until he was wearing only his jacket. He took the hunting sword out of its scabbard carefully and then began to creep forward alone. The post was on a little knoll, shaded by a big chestnut tree and guarded by a loose abatis of fallen branches piled around like an open fence.

  There was only one man in the post. The other had gone off with the boy. He hadn’t gone far, because his musket was propped against the great chestnut tree that provided the post with its cover of branches. Caesar crept closer, urged to move faster by the knowledge that the boy was getting farther away with every moment, but he relied on caution to take him close, and he crawled.

  Time passed. The sun beat down on his back and he sweated rivers through his coat. He was up to the little abatis of downed branches that the pickets had made, and he prepared himself. Far off, carried on the wind, he heard the slight rattle and clank of a well-ordered company on the move, and he knew that the Guides were down on the road and moving fast. They would still be over a mile away. He rolled up and caught his foot in a branch. He saw the sentry flinch in surprise, then reach for his musket, which was a few feet away. He wrenched his foot clear and threw himself forward, but the man bent to his musket, took it, and aimed. The seconds slid by as Caesar ran, already doomed, at the man. He saw the cock fall on the hammer, the sparks, the ignition of the powder in the priming pan, all as if they were separate acts, and he threw himself down.

  Damp or ill-maintained, the gun hung its fire for some fraction of time that saved him. He felt the heat from it, and the ball scored his shoulder and down his back. He rose in a leap, the sound of the shot still in his ears. The man had his mouth open to shout when Caesar cut with the sword and hacked him down, but he could already hear shouts of alarm in the distance and he cursed his own eagerness.

  The man at his feet gurgled. He was cut badly in the neck and Caesar killed him, squeamish about cutting a man who couldn’t fight back but too aware that the man was all but dead already and in pain, like an animal. His blood was everywhere and couldn’t be hidden.

  The shouts of alarm grew and Caesar moved a little forward into the shadow of more of the big trees. He was in an old woodlot, he could now see, and there was the farmhouse below him in a little vale. He could see the coats of the Virginians as they moved about, probably forming up. They looked confused.

  One man was running back toward the post that Caesar had just taken. Caesar thought the man was probably the file partner of the dead man. Before he could reach the post a shot rang out and the man went down, hit somewhere low. He gave a sudden sharp scream of pain and then lay still for a moment. Caesar tried to follow the line of the shot and saw Van Sluyt reloading on his back on the next knoll. Caesar broke from cover and ran for his equipment, only forty paces to the rear but now seeming like a mile, and there were shots. None came near him, and he had no way of knowing if the shots were even meant for him. He reached the log where he had left his kit and rolled behind it. His fowler was loaded and ready and he scooped his bag and horn over his shoulder, cleaned the blade of the little sword as well as he could on the grass while lying flat, and put it in the scabbard, and then buckled on his pack. The whole process seemed to take forever. He worried about Van Sluyt, left alone on the hilltop. Van Sluyt had seen action, but not like this, not alone, and Caesar feared to have the man’s blood on his conscience.

  But he was an old soldier, and he hated being far from his equipment. He had feared that if they were driven off he’d never see his carefully gathered kit again. He heard another flurry of shots and rose to his feet, and ran back up the far knoll toward Van Sluyt. He heard Van Sluyt fire, felt relief that the man was still fighting and alive, and then saw the Virginians right in front of him, ten men coming up the knoll.

  Caesar fired into them with no apparent effect. The sound of the second shot gave them pause, though. A big man at their head looked to the left and right and Caesar blew his whistle three times, as loud as he could. In the distance, his whistle was answered. He watched the big man as he reloaded, knowing him as the slave-taker who had nearly killed Jim and Virgil in the swamp. He had fought the man on Long Island and he didn’t think his presence in an ambush laid for them in New Jersey was happenstance. He watched a man aiming at him and he rolled back behind a tree. His back hurt like hell.

  Van Sluyt fired into them and missed. They were spreading out now and moving back toward their main body, which was just visible through the trees in the farmyard. Caesar leaned well out and took his time with his shot. He couldn’t get a line on the big man, so he shot another, who went down. He blew his whistle again. The answer was closer.

  “Keep them amused,” he said to Van Sluyt. It was one of Simcoe’s sayings, and he liked it. Silas nodded happily. Caesar ran off down the knoll and back along the path they had run up until he found the Guides moving at the double over the open fields. Lieutenant Crawford was running well, right in the center of the front as if they were running on parade.

  “Just over the little ridge, sir. About a company. They’ve called in their ambush and it looks like they’re leaving.”

  Out of breath, Crawford merely nodded and panted. He turned and trotted back a few paces, looking at the men, and put his whistle in his mouth, then spread his arms wide and blew twice. They began to pound up the hill, the line extending itself as they went, and again Caesar felt that burst of pride in them. Moses and Abraham, green as grass, were following Paget and Virgil. The line extended out and out, seventy strong, and they came to the knoll almost together, as pretty as any company Caesar had ever seen. Van Sluyt was smiling like a loon, nodding his head, and Caesar grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “Where are they?”

  Van Sluyt pointed past the house to the road beyond it, where they could just see a little rearguard forming on the road.

  “Well done, Silas.”

  Van Sluyt continued to smile.

  By the time they swept through the farm, no one was smiling. There was an old black man in the yard, hanging from a tree, and a black woman was dead on the ground, her throat slit. Otherwise, the farm was empty.

  They chased hard for over an hour, firing at various ranges and trying to provoke the rebels to stand, but they weren’t raw anymore. They ran well, kept together, and both Crawford and Caesar feared they might be led into a second ambush. They had to break the pursuit when the Virginians entered a narrow defile covered in thick woods. None of them wanted to risk that there weren’t a hundred enemy sheltered just inside. The rebels jeered at them when they halted. They halted immediately, over half a mile away, and fired a volley that hurt no one.

  Caesar and Van Sluyt together had knocked three of them down, and they had one prisoner, an older man who had not been able to keep up the pace. It wasn’t much to show for a day spent running, and they were weary men when they marched back to the farmstead where the Virginians had prepared to ambush them.

  “We didn’t lose a man, though,” said Crawford, scraping the pork stew out of his little china bowl. The farmhouse had been deserted, and Crawford had not complained as the Guides pillaged it and the surrounding barns. The owners had decamped, indicating where their allegiance lay.

  “Last fall, all these farms declared they was loyal,” said Caesar. He looked out over the little hills in the failing spring light. “I remember when we came through here in November.”

  “Trenton changed that,” said Crawford. He looked guilty, as if just saying the words was disloyal.

  Caesar nodded and ate.

  “We’ll win them back when we take Philadelphia and end the war,” said Crawford. Caes
ar kept eating.

  He was watching the smooth conduct of his mess groups. Women didn’t cook in the British Army. The men cooked for themselves, usually in the same groups that shared a tent and fought together. One man carried the tin kettle for cooking, and another carried the shovel or the ax. Mess groups were usually little families within the company, although the newer ones could be more like little wars, as men struggled for dominance or fought to resist tyranny and avoid the worst chores. The new man always cleaned the pot and carried it and most of the rations.

  When he looked at them, he saw them as individuals and then as mess groups and platoons. He thought about the surprising calm and courage of Van Sluyt, considered the change in Paget and the steady virtue of Virgil, the quick wit of Tonny, the solidity of Fowver. He watched Moses and Abraham struggle with sand and straw to clean a pot. He watched Jim directing his mess group with unlooked-for authority. Jim was ready to be a corporal.

  He thought of how many blacks he’d liberated in the last few days, either into his own ranks or back to New York City, and he wondered a moment why he no longer saw them as BaKongo or Yoruba or Ashanti, but only as black. Perhaps the change had been gradual, but he couldn’t remember it. He could remember how important it had seemed on the plantation. The war had changed it all.

  “Do you think we’ll win the war, Lieutenant Crawford?” he asked.

  Crawford looked at him as if he had blasphemed.

  “Can we fail? We’ve been beaten a handful of times. We beat them whenever we find them. They’ll never build an army that can defeat us.”

  Caesar ate a little more and watched twilight fall, already concerned for his outposts. Something was nagging at him.

  “If we don’t win, every man in this company is a slave again, sir.”

  Crawford looked at him with sudden comprehension.

  “If you lose, you get to go home to England.”

  “Scotland, Sergeant.”

  Caesar was suddenly impatient with Crawford. “Scotland, then. You go home. The white Loyalists will go to Jamaica, or Florida, or Canada. But we’ll be slaves. Forever. Or they’ll hang us.”

  Crawford looked at him strangely, like a man who has discovered a friend has a terrible disease.

  “We’d better win, then,” Crawford whispered.

  “Aye. Aye, but it isn’t looking that way.” Caesar realized he had bottled the thought up since the first defeats at Great Bridge in Virginia. He shook his head. “My apologies, Mr. Crawford.”

  “None needed. This war…this war is ugly.”

  Caesar didn’t like the look of the future, so he contented himself with the outposts.

  “I think we ought to move before we sleep. We made fires here.” Caesar pointed at the little smudge of smoke in the sky.

  Crawford looked as if he wanted to protest, but the silent Fowver nodded and he was quick enough to nod as well.

  “Just so,” he said, imitating his hero.

  “These people sure hate us,” Caesar said, thinking of the family they had questioned and the old man hanged. He stooped to grab a handful of the sandy soil and used it to wipe his little wooden bowl clean. Then he pushed the bowl into his pack and motioned to his mess group to douse the fire and get their packs on. They grumbled, but they moved. He stood up, admiring the quick way that Crawford cleaned his little knife and fork and readied himself without fuss. Crawford was green, but he learned fast, and he never slowed them down.

  “What of it? They have betrayed their king, and they will pay the price.”

  Caesar shrugged, pulling the straps of his pack over his shoulders. He thought he knew a little more about hate than Lieutenant Crawford did, and there was something at the edge of his mind, about hate, and fear, and how it could serve to bring men together the way the Guides were together.

  And he wondered how the Virginians had known where to wait for them.

  “They do hate us, though,” he said, and went to form the company.

  Philadelphia, August 1, 1777

  Washington squirmed a little in the big chair while Billy dusted his boots. Washington had not grown up rich and had never become accustomed to having other men fuss at him, and he couldn’t abide having anyone put on his boots. Lee put the pulls into his hand and he set the right boot on his foot and pulled it smoothly up his calf to the knee before attacking the left, which never seemed to fit quite as well.

  “Here’s another report that the British fleet has left Sandy Hook, General,” said Colonel Hamilton. Hamilton, despite his West Indian origins, was probably the wittiest, most sensible and genteel of the permanent staff. Washington grunted slightly as his left heel finally slid home in his boot, and then sat back so that Lee could set about his hair.

  “By all accounts they sailed on the twenty-fourth,” Washington said quietly.

  “Where bound, is the question,” said his Irish aide, Fitzgerald, with a stretch and a yawn that drew a grave look from the general.

  “They can land anywhere they like,” said Hamilton. “Up the Hudson, the Jersey shore, or around Cape May and into the Chesapeake.”

  “It certainly explains the withdrawal of their forces from the Jerseys,” said Washington. “I have long feared that Lord Howe, as I believe he is now styled, would decide to use the full mobility that his brother’s fleet allows him. I believe that our fears are now upon us. With Ticonderoga fallen to Burgoyne, it must seem to Howe that he needn’t cooperate with Burgoyne, and can launch some scheme of his own. How I wish for better intelligence.”

  “How I pray we may yet have it,” said Hamilton, arranging the military letters that Washington would have to read for himself.

  Lee put a curl on each side of Washington’s head with economy and then stood back to measure the effect, smiled, and handed his master a plain buff wool waistcoat. Washington pushed it away.

  “Give me a double-breasted one, Billy. I’m always chilled in the morning.”

  Lee took another from a trunk and brushed it.

  “Any other business today, gentlemen?”

  “Can you bear another foreign officer, General?” asked Johnson. Fitzgerald made antic motions as if he were an ape. Hamilton rose and took snuff with theatrical gestures that were clearly meant to be French. Even Billy Lee, the slave, felt free to join the laughter.

  “What has Mr. Deane sent us this time?” Silas Deane, the Continental Congress’s appointed diplomat in Paris, had developed the annoying tendency of granting Continental Army commissions to foreigners on the spot. Some of his appointments outranked existing American veterans, who were angry to find themselves outranked by foreign aristocrats. Most of the aristocrats seemed to feel their time in America could best be spent educating ignorant Americans about their own superior martial virtues. It could be quite wearing, witness Colonel Hamilton’s continuing charade.

  “A marquis,” said Hamilton, desisting from his antics instantly.

  “Come,” said Johnson. “That’s handsome in Deane, I must say. We’ve had our fill of chevaliers and barons, so a marquis will make a nice change.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell.

  All Washington’s aides were young. They had to be, as he led them a rough and hard life, but sometimes the general’s rather staid sense of humor oppressed the young men. They knew he was tired of the foreign officers, but each was suddenly aware that they had offended him, or rather, taken their humor beyond some definite line of his approval.

  Johnson stood up.

  “My apologies, sir. I let my tongue get the better of me.”

  “Not for the first time,” muttered Hamilton, quietly, and Johnson rounded on him like a cat annoyed by another, but Washington was quicker than either.

  “Very well, gentlemen. Let’s see this marquis. I do hope we can all master our humor in his presence, as I’m sure that his good opinion of us will carry heavy weight with His Catholic Majesty, the King of France, on whom we are very dependent. Do I make myself clear?” Every Frenchman had claimed t
hat their opinions carried great weight with the King of France, and apparently a few of them were telling the truth.

  “Colonel Hamilton, who is the officer of the day?”

  Hamilton opened his orderly book and ran through a list of names.

  “Our officer of the day is Lieutenant Lake of the light company, Third Virginia.”

  Washington looked at him.

  “Recall him to me.”

  “Intelligent, fit, soldierly. Up from the ranks—began the war as an apprentice to a hat maker, I believe. Led the charge on the Hessian guns at Trenton.” Hamilton knew these facts by heart. He had been the one to notice Lake at Trenton. Hamilton liked to see the self-made men rise.

  Washington nodded as Billy began to help him into his coat.

  “Very well, then. Send for him a little after the marquis arrives.”

  Hamilton nodded and made a note.

  The man who presented himself in the front parlor was of average height or a little less and well dressed, in a dark blue velvet coat and with a beautiful sword that had already excited the admiration of every soldier who beheld it. It was a hunting sword, short and broad, with a heavy blade and a black horn hilt worked in silver. The coat and the sword went together and spoke of wealth, which made today’s Frenchman a distinct entity, in that most of the men Deane had sent were clearly poor, if not destitute.

  He was young, too—perhaps only twenty-one or twenty-two—and he stood before them with so much selfpossession that his bearing was like a lesson in genteel behaviour. Indeed, Hamilton said later that he liked the man before he ever opened his mouth.