Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  Washington opened the dispatch and spread it on the table, but he was smiling before the paper hit the desk.

  Gates had forced Burgoyne to surrender. As well he should, Washington thought. Gates had some of his best regiments and the whole support of the northern colonies. He had outnumbered Burgoyne five to one. Still. He stood up and faced the staff.

  “General Gates has won a signal victory over General Burgoyne. Burgoyne’s forces have surrendered.”

  Hamilton smiled broadly. “Then we’re still in the game, General.”

  Lafayette embraced him with one arm. “France will not be deaf to this.”

  Washington listened to their celebration and joined in as much as he could. It was the third great victory of the war, after Boston and Trenton. It eliminated one of the three British armies facing them. He cared deeply for the cause, but not so much for the man who had won it.

  Later, when they had moved their celebration to the camp and he was alone in his room, Washington allowed his head to sink to his hands for a moment. He rubbed his eyes, added a few words to his brother so that the original letter now forwarded news of General Gates’s signal victory, and leaned back. Billy put his head in the room.

  “You ready for bed, sir?”

  “I suppose.”

  He stood up and moved to the bed, where he sat. His shoulders, usually square, were slumped. Billy took the ribbon from his hair and began to brush it out.

  “You are hurting me,” Washington growled.

  No more than usual, thought Billy, but he said nothing.

  “Damn it,” said Washington. Billy stopped.

  “Something on your mind, sir?”

  “Sometimes the hardest thought to bear is that all the victories in this war will be won by other men.” Washington said the words evenly, without a trace of self-pity, but Billy shook his head.

  “That sounds more like General Lee than General Washington,” said Billy scathingly, and Washington whirled, almost carrying the brush from his hands.

  “Damn you!” Washington started to rise, but Billy pointed the brush at him.

  “Sit down, sir. Or your hair will be a sight.” Billy had been enduring Washington’s occasional flashes of temper for too long to be ruffled.

  Washington sat a moment. Then he leaned back. “Well struck, Billy.”

  Billy grunted and brushed harder. After a moment, though, he smiled to himself.

  Washington scratched his chin. “In ancient Rome, whenever a great man had won an important victory, he’d get a parade, Billy. It was called a triumph. And in the chariot with him, as he rode through the crowds, there would be a slave. All the slave did was whisper ‘You are just a man.’”

  “Sounds like a good job for the slave,” said Billy.

  Washington shook his head. “I’m trying to say…”

  “I understand what you are trying to say,” said Billy. He went on brushing hair.

  “You want me to call a doctor?” asked Caleb. He was a Massachusetts man who had been in the war since Concord Bridge, an officer in the Tenth Massachusetts. His left hand had been amputated after a musket ball smashed it. He lay next to George Lake in a tent outside the hospital with a third man, whom they knew to be called William. They were curled together for warmth in straw that was growing damp with blood from William’s seeping wound.

  Neither one of them knew his surname, because William hadn’t been conscious since he was brought in after the fight at Germantown. His uniform put him with one of the Pennsylvania line regiments. His seeping chest wound suggested he would probably be a dead man in hours.

  “No one would come, anyways,” said George, bitterly. His arm was healing, and he had strength in his hand for the first time in weeks. He knew inside that he was better off in the cold tent, where the air was clean, than in the hospital where disease killed more than wounds. But he was angry. The Quaker nurses treated them all like lepers. The doctors were too few, too busy and too hard. And George wanted to get back to work. He wanted to see if he still had a company, and he was lonely. Caleb Cooke was a good companion, an instant comrade of similar convictions, but Lake wanted one of his men to come by. Some link with the world before his wound. He wanted to write a letter to Betsy Lovell, but no one would give him paper. Philadelphia was lost, anyway. Her father would be happy. And she was marrying someone else. Her mother probably wouldn’t even let her read a letter from him.

  Someone was riding a horse down the next street of the hospital camp. George could smell the horse and hear the rider…French accent. Hope leapt in his breast and his heart beat suddenly so that his arm throbbed.

  “I am looking for one called George Lake, yes?” said the voice, just a few tents away. George wanted to leap out of the warmth of his shared blankets, except that to do so would have been to endanger Caleb’s precarious recovery.

  “Over here, sir.” His voice was clear enough. He heard the horse move, splashing through the puddles, and then he could lift the flap of his tent and see the horse itself, and the slim booted form of the rider.

  “Captain Lake!” exclaimed the marquis. He was down off the horse in a flash. There were other men behind him.

  “You won’t want to come in, sir.” Lake realized suddenly how he must look, unshaved, with all his clothes on, one shirt over another and his two coats on top, and the third man’s blood all over the straw. Lafayette was yelling, summoning, demanding from someone outside his view.

  “Want to introduce our guest?” asked Caleb, still curled up tight.

  George sat up and pulled his hair behind him, trying to comb it with his fingers. He looked like hell, and the marquis, spotless from head to slung arm to booted toe, was a moving reproof.

  “Lieutenant Caleb Cooke of the Massachusetts Line, this is Major General the Marquis de Lafayette.”

  Cooke laughed.

  “Damn, George, I do have the fever.”

  George shook his head. “I apologize for the conditions, Marquis. Caleb thinks he has fever.”

  “Pah! It is nothing. George, you need better than this. Myself, I was cosseted by the ladies while you lay here. Jus’ today I hear that you are still in hospital, yes? And I come as soon as I may.”

  “I’ll be all right in a day or so,” said George. He was elated. Just seeing the marquis made him feel better.

  “General Gates has beaten General Burgoyne. Do you know this?” Lafayette was crouching in the entrance to the tent, and the knees of his spotless white broadcloth breeches were slowly soaking up the blood in the straw.

  “We heard something.” George felt as if Lafayette was bringing him back to life.

  “Fetch a litter. I am taking this man with me.” Lafayette added something in French to the man behind him.

  George shook his head. “I can’t leave Caleb,” he said. “He’s just starting to get better. He’s lost a lot of blood, Marquis. He needs warmth.”

  “Fetch two litters. No, three. Empty this tent.”

  In a moment, George was being carried by two men of Lafayette’s guard. Caleb was laughing. And the third man was in a litter behind them. Gates had beaten Burgoyne. Maybe William would live.

  Anything was possible.

  A heavy rain lay over the city of Philadelphia, from the outposts on the Germantown Road to the comfortable lodgings around the new theatre in Southwark. The city’s conquest had turned out to be an action of little moment, and although the Continentals fought a second battle for their capital at Germantown, the Congress had to scuttle out the back as quickly as Howe’s marching army came in the front.

  In the first heady days after the victories at Brandywine and Germantown, Loyalists had rejoiced, sure that the fall of the capital and repeated defeats of the Continental Army spelled the end of the war. But Congress relocated without a sign of surrender, and word of General Burgoyne’s “convention” in the distant north suggested that any possibility of victory must now be placed on a far horizon. Burgoyne had surrendered an entire British arm
y, whatever he called the act. Doubts that victory would ever be secured by the king’s forces were creeping in. To everyone the occupation of the city seemed temporary.

  The British wounded were well housed, even the black ones, but Caesar fretted at his inactivity. The ball that had ruined his pouch had glanced off his hip, plowing a deep furrow in his flesh, but that had healed quickly. Far worse was his rematch with the fever from the swamp. It was weeks before he could hold a conversation with Virgil or ask how Polly came to be in Philadelphia.

  He wasn’t sure he liked what he heard. Marcus White had come after the army arrived, and seemed to cross the lines without a pass, or so Virgil said. And Polly did the same. Virgil had seen her himself when he was on duty on the Germantown Road, coming into their lines with a basket on her head. It worried Caesar, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her about it when she came to visit, often bringing fresh apples and once an orange from the south. He was weak, so weak that all he could do was eat and watch the world outside the barracks as the fall became winter.

  Stewart visited him with the news of Burgoyne’s surrender and delivered it in a monotone, so that Caesar knew it was serious.

  “Have we lost the war, then?” he asked.

  Stewart shook his head. “Not yet. But it’s not good. They say the French will enter the war now.”

  Jeremy leaned past Stewart and fed him an apple slice. “I’m not sure this is calculated to cheer our patient up,” he said. Stewart looked shamefaced.

  Caesar considered asking Stewart about the ease with which Reverend White crossed the lines, but he decided it was something he had to look into himself.

  3

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 14, 1778

  The black troops missed their excellent barracks and their taverns in New York. Philadelphia was a very different city, more sober, perhaps more supportive of the king in material ways but more spiritually restrained. It was a city founded by Quakers, and it resented the new theater and the “loose” ways of the British soldiers and their amiable friends. The army retaliated by fetching their baggage and still more of their friends from New York, and the early days of winter saw most of Mother Abbott’s and a number of other followers make their way south. Sally arrived in a neat traveling dress and moved into a smart set of rooms over a milliner’s. The Guides knew that Captain Stewart, not Mother Abbott, now furnished her lodgings. The Reverend Marcus White and his daughter Polly took rooms in a small Southwark church in the late fall, and Polly began to serve the “ladies” of the theater. But the ladies of Philadelphia lacked the happy candor of Miss Poppy and Miss Hammond, and there were no mixed taverns, much less subscription dances. Philadelphia society valued itself far too much for such displays. Indeed, twice in the winter, the Guides were called out with some other black troops to clean the streets of the city, or shovel snow, duties they had never been expected to undertake in New York.

  Lieutenant George Martin was transferred to them while Caesar was recovering, and placed on their establishment. He was their first permanent officer, and as such they were prepared to dislike him or find him wanting. Caesar, in particular, worried that Lieutenant Martin might somehow change the company in his absence, but no such changes were manifest when he returned. Lieutenant Martin was conscientious in that he inspected quarters every few days, he made the rounds with Caesar and he stood his posts while they stood theirs. He was still learning the complexities of the manual, and soon after he returned to duty Caesar took him out to a big barn south of the city with Virgil and Fowver and a few steady men to teach him the methods that the company had developed and the drills that were practiced by Captain Stewart’s company and others in the Second light infantry Battalion. Lieutenant Martin seemed comfortable learning from them, which endeared him as fast as any amount of his work. And they found that he liked to sleep late and was pining for Miss Hammond, in far-off New York. They were mostly pining for New York themselves, and it gave them all sympathy together.

  George Martin had larger ambitions. He aspired to be an officer in the most prestigious of Loyalist corps, the Queen’s Rangers, now commanded by their old friend Captain, now Major, Simcoe. Major Simcoe had recovered from his wounds at Brandywine and had received the Queen’s Rangers as a reward for his participation in the critical closing moments of the battle. He made some very obliging remarks to the men of the Black Guides about their help in his reaching this object of his desire, and they were still drinking his health on a regular basis. Major Simcoe had told Mr. Martin that there were no positions open in his corps, but had allowed him to know that a year or two of distinguished service in another provincial corps, especially with the Guides, might win him the honor he desired. So Martin worked harder than he might have, and made a better impression.

  Christmas had passed with some celebration, and the New Year had been marked by a party given by the Scots with a barbaric name that Caesar couldn’t pronounce. And then he had entered the round of duties. The winter was hard, and the lines around Philadelphia seemed endless. The rebel army was never far away.

  A steady winter of drill had made them a better, sharper company. They had inherited some worn but serviceable red jackets from the grenadier company of the Sixty-fourth Regiment, which, with help from Virgil and a local tailor, allowed them to look considerably more like British soldiers when they were on duty in the city. For service on the lines, they continued in their warm brown coats and trousers, improved as individuals saw fit with woolen leggings, gaiters, leather breeches and boots, or any other provision against the snow that a man could devise.

  The younger generation, in the persons of Jim Somerset, Willy Smith, and Isaac Vernon, were now corporals. Neither Caesar nor Virgil fully credited Willy’s conversion from troublemaker to leader, but he seemed to have made it, and his squad was the best turned out in his platoon. He and Jim had developed a near-permanent rivalry between their men that they never seemed to allow to interfere with their own hard-won friendship. Caesar couldn’t bring himself to like Willy, but he tried to keep this from his day-to-day management of the company. And Isaac Vernon still seemed like a new boy, despite having served more than a year and fought like a small tiger in four actions. Sam the bugler and sometime drummer was useful, although he shook like a leaf under fire and cried at night. He was often away, running errands for Polly or Reverend White. He obviously knew the area very well, and Caesar thought the boy might have come from Philadelphia.

  The snow was not kind to men on the outer picket line. Caesar and the Guides had done a double share of duty, providing both a woodcutting party yesterday and pickets tonight, and there was some grumbling. Once they had watch fires roaring—the size of them a tribute to yesterday’s woodcutting—and food on the boil, resentment settled into a steady undercurrent of conversation.

  Caesar was sitting on a clean stump, using a handful of tow in the firelight to clear the snow from his fowler. He never slept in the field until his lock was clean, dry, and bright. The continuing hilarity at the next fire annoyed him, as he could hear Willy bragging about his rush into the Continental battery at Brandywine. He slipped a cover over his lock, pulled General Washington’s greatcoat closer around him, and walked along the beaten path to the next fire.

  “Willy, you going to take that patrol out to replace Sergeant Fowver, or just shout at the rebels?”

  Willy fell silent immediately.

  “Sorry, Sergeant,” he said without resentment. His men already had their greatcoats on, and packs, as Caesar never let men go out without all their equipment. The fire was throwing a wall of heat and he basked in it for a moment before he walked over to the knot of men preparing to depart and started looking at their muskets. They were all clean and dry. He gave Willy a smile.

  “Tell Sergeant Fowver to come see me if he has any news,” he said. Willy saluted.

  Caesar walked back to his own fire and burrowed into a little pile of hay with Virgil, who grunted. It was too cold for idle chatte
r, and anyone who managed to get to sleep resented any interruption.

  Nonetheless, it seemed he had only been asleep for a moment when Sergeant Fowver was prodding him awake.

  “You wanted my report?”

  Caesar did not come fully awake at once. He had been in a pleasant dream that had Polly White and a sort of misty future, and it had seemed both warm and pleasant. Virgil grunted. Caesar sat up, noting how cold his feet were as the big fire burned down.

  Caesar grabbed some wood from the pile and threw it on, and then kicked the sentry, who was asleep.

  “Laddy, if you can’t stop us from being attacked, at least keep the fire going.”

  The boy, a recent recruit from a farm in Maryland, just nodded. He expected to be beaten. Hocken? Haxen? Caesar couldn’t recall his name for a moment, and then it came. Horton. Tom Horton.

  “Tom, the army is a hard place. You have to pull your weight. Every man here has stayed awake long hours and then stayed awake on guard. In one of those English regiments, they’d have the skin off your back, do you hear? So put yourself on report to your corporal in the morning, and we’ll see. Don’t fall asleep again.”

  Horton cringed a little, awake but terrified, and Caesar grunted. He filled a little kettle with snow and put it on the fire.

  “What’d you see, Ben?” he said to Fowver. Fowver looked greedily at the kettle and settled on his haunches.

  “Never saw a one of their patrols. We went right down to the river and right across toward the Paoli Road and never saw a thing. Found a root cellar with some turnips. I put them on the pile at the head of camp. But the best thing is I found that Marcus White.”

  “What!” Caesar sat right up.

  “Sure as God made us sinful men. I brought him back. He says he has a pass, but he was out beyond our pickets and that ain’t right.”