Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  Lee felt doubly ambushed in that Washington himself rarely spoke in the House, and was firmly a friend of liberty. It seemed astonishing that he should allow his wife to make such statements. He turned and looked at the tall colonel, who nodded gravely at him. He was actually expected to debate with her. Very well, then.

  “Are you familiar, ma’am, with the Gaspee incident?”

  “Perhaps you will help me understand it, Mr. Lee.”

  If he heard the warning in her voice, he ignored it.

  “In June of last year, a British armed cutter of that name, engaged in the suppression of the smuggling trade, ran herself aground in Narragansett Bay. A group of men boarded the cutter and burned her. An Admiralty court of inquiry was given jurisdiction over the case, and is understood to believe it has the right to send Americans to England for trial.”

  “And this would be harmful because…” She drawled the last word as she had drawled his name, a deliberate provocation.

  “They would never receive a fair trial in England! And an attack on the rights and privileges of any one colony are an attack on them all!” His voice was powerful, and declaimed well. The words were Jefferson’s, but he said them with complete conviction.

  “But…” She smiled again, that happy smile that seemed to deny any possibility of open conflict. “But Mr. Lee, those men actually did burn that ship, did they not?”

  The laughter was pained. Lee had the sympathy of the entire audience, many of whom had also labored under delusions about Martha’s native intelligence at one time or another. Washington simply looked absent, as if he refused to be a witness at another execution.

  “The burning of the ship is not the issue,” he began, but she closed her fan with a snap that distracted him, and she stepped up close for the final assault.

  “No, sir, it is not the issue, and you do the friends of liberty no service to pretend it is. The issue is that we smuggle because Great Britain chokes our own trade and won’t let us carry our own cargoes. That is the issue. And that they try to tax us beyond our ability to bear in prosperity, to pay her debts and ours from the Great War. That too is the issue. These are the issues, in trade, that will drive us to separate—that and the arrogance of our motherland, whose representative said at my own table that we are a race of cowards who could not stop five hundred of them from marching across our whole continent. That is the other issue. It is on these—trade, taxation, and the force of arms—that our arguments will rest. But not on the actions of law, or Dunmore’s taking of a counterfeiter.”

  There was, quite spontaneously, a small round of applause, and Lee’s training as a gentleman triumphed over his adolescence. He not only avoided showing resentment, but smiled and bowed deeply.

  “I hope you are always as passionately devoted to our cause as you are now, ma’am. You would be a devilish opponent in the House, and we’re lucky your husband does not speak more often, if he has trained you to this pitch of argument.”

  Washington laughed aloud, a single bark that was completely different from his usual closed-mouthed laugh.

  “Trained her? Trained her?” He barked again. “Perhaps, Mr. Lee, you now have a taste of why I’m so often silent.”

  2

  Mount Vernon, Virginia, November 1773

  Queeny watched the new men come ashore from the plantation’s brig; West Indians didn’t hold much interest for her. They were usually so cowed by the comparative brutalities of Jamaica that Virginia seemed like paradise, and the Master bought only skilled men, tradesmen who were too old for her tastes. His field hands came only from America, as they were less apt to run.

  She patted the sides of her cap of crisp white linen that she had made from one of Mistress’s cast-off shifts. The breeze was hard on caps, and Queeny was too vain to wear a straw bonnet like a field worker. She was tall and strong, but she had always been pretty enough to draw white eyes and clever enough to satisfy white mistresses. She had never done field work.

  One of the new men was clearly young; he seemed to bounce with anticipation as the longboat came up to the plantation dock. He leapt from the thwart and helped moor the craft with a lithe agility that made her smile. The other blacks shuffled ashore, one kneeling to kiss the ground, one staring around him at the alien vegetation and neat brick buildings as if he had been delivered to another planet. The youngster looked left and right like a bird, his glance never stopping.

  “You stick by me, Queeny, and we’ll have this lot sorted in no time.”

  “As y’ say, Mista Bailey.”

  A senior tenant farmer for the Washington and Custis farms, Bailey was in charge of the plantations while the Master was away in Williamsburg on business. Bailey was not a hard man, and had never offered her the least trouble, unlike the other senior tenant, whose hands never stopped. She often translated for Mr. Bailey.

  Queeny was American born, but she had grown up on a plantation where most of the slaves spoke only African tongues. Her father and mother were upcountry Ebo, and she spoke almost all the coastal languages. It was a skill that made her valuable, and like her looks and easy manner, it kept her from the fields. Queeny followed him down the gravel path to the dock, a demure three paces behind.

  “Captain Gibson.”

  “Mr. Bailey.”

  “A prosperous voyage?”

  “Well enough, sir, well enough. I lost a spar in the roads of the Chesapeake, and the new customs officer in Jamaica led me a merry dance on our bills of lading, but all told, why, here we are.”

  “I’m sure the colonel will be pleased. I see you got the slaves he asked for.”

  “That I did. Jones here can tell you their trades, although this one, Red Scarf, is a gunsmith. He touched up the flints on my pistols, took the locks apart and put them together neat as neat. I wanted to try him.”

  “An’ he put right the cock o’ King’s barker what he bent,” put in a sailor.

  “So he did. And they all worked with a will to get a new spar up for me, so I’ve given them a penny a piece and two for the smith.”

  “Colonel likes his people to have a little cash. No harm in it, nor do I think. What do you have for me besides a smith? Did Colonel Washington order a smith?”

  “I don’t think that he did, sir, at that. But the whole lot were going off an estate sold for debt, all skilled men, an’ we took the lot.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “This one’s a bricklayer, answers to Jemmy.” The man nodded obsequiously.

  Bailey didn’t like the look of the man, but the good lord knew they needed bricklayers. “Welcome to Mount Vernon, Jemmy.”

  Jemmy bowed his head and smiled at the tone. Queeny fixed him with a stare. He was second or third generation, she could tell, and like as not had some white in him. She couldn’t see his tribe in anything obvious. Nothing for her to do here—he understood Bailey, was already seeking his approval.

  “Smith, answers to Tom.”

  “I hope he’s an improvement over the last Tom, eh, Queeny?” She shook her head and smiled. The last Tom had been a man. He was gone, sold to the Indies, and she missed him in her bed and in her thoughts.

  “Welcome to Mount Vernon, Tom.”

  “Yes, suh.” Tom was short and swarthy, with a red flush on top of pale brown skin, and curly, lank hair. He was eyeing Queeny appreciatively. She gave him no encouragement.

  “Huntsman, answers to Caesar.” The young one. He, too, was looking at her and he smiled, a young man’s smile.

  “Huntsman? We asked for a man good with animals.”

  “Yessir. That’s your man. He got the boat’s pigs and goats here in fine fettle. They say he’s good with dogs.”

  Bailey looked at Caesar, as this was the slave the colonel had ordered himself and the dogs boy would be close to the colonel many days in the field.

  “Can you run, boy?”

  He looked blank. It was an intelligent blankness; he didn’t squirm or babble.

  “What is your name,
boy?” she asked in the lingua franca of the Ivory Coast. He looked at her, concentrating hard, squinting his eyes slightly, then smiled.

  “Cese, madam.”

  The honorific expressed age and successful child rearing, and if it was meant to flatter her, it failed completely. Old indeed.

  “Cese, the white man wants to know if you can run.”

  “I speak Benin. Please, ma’am, I do not understand this talk you make.” The last phrase rolled off his tongue smoothly, the product of frequent repetition.

  “My Benin not good.”

  “I understand you.”

  “White man ask you. Can run?”

  “Like the wind in the desert. Like an antelope with the lion behind.”

  Queeny rolled her eyes at the difficult words, the poetic suggestion.

  “Mista Bailey, this boy say he run plenty fast. He from Africa, though. Masta don’t like African boys, Mista Bailey.”

  “Right. Well, tell him he’s welcome to Mount Vernon.”

  “You from Benin, then?”

  “Yes. Obikoke. I am Yoruba!”

  “White man says you welcome here.”

  The boy looked surprised. “Why is he talking to us at all?”

  “They like to be polite, boy. It don’t mean you aren’t a slave.”

  Bailey looked interested. “What’s he saying?”

  “He jus’ on about how he run.”

  “The others seem to speak well enough, Queeny. You take the boy and teach him some English, and make sure he knows the rules before the colonel comes home.”

  “Yes, Mista Bailey.”

  “You others, come with me and I’ll show you your quarters. Captain Gibson, perhaps you could join me in a quarter hour for a glass.”

  “I’d be that pleased, Mr. Bailey. I’ll just see that this lot get the unloading started.”

  The two white men bowed slightly, and parted.

  Cese followed the Ebo woman up the long gravel path from the dock toward her hut. The slave quarters were like nothing he had ever seen: a long elegant brick building on one side, with dormitories for the unmarried house slaves, and a neat row of cabins on the other, larger and more open than he expected, set farther apart, the whole having more the air of a village than a prison. In Jamaica, his quarters, the “barracoon”, had been fenced and locked every night. At Mount Vernon, there wasn’t even a wall.

  Some of the blacks smiled when they saw him and his escort. None were chained. Most of the men had shirts and trousers, most of the women had a shift and petticoats, and several, like Queeny, sported jackets or gowns. She had a jacket of India cotton, far better than anything he had seen on a Negro in the Indies, but she was probably the queen, mistress to the master. She was old to be a queen, he thought, but her shape was fine and her face good.

  The woman neither looked at him nor spoke to him, but simply walked along, nodding to other slaves, and once dropping a curtsy to a white woman, who smiled at her as they passed.

  “Queeny, dear. Is this a new boy?”

  “Yeas, Miz Bailey.”

  The white woman examined Cese with a careful eye. She noted the narrow rows of scars over his eyes.

  “He looks African, Queeny.”

  “I says the same to yo husban, Miz Bailey.”

  “The colonel may not like it. Still, the boy’s pretty enough. Run over to the well and back, boy.”

  Cese was aware that he had been addressed, but the words were too fast, the accent too different. He smiled to show willing, and looked at Queeny.

  “You run. Go to the well and come back.”

  He set his bundle down and took a deep breath before hurling himself forward. The two women watched as his long legs flashed faster, as he leaned his weight into a curve around the well and pulled himself straight with the grace of a cat. Then he dashed past them, slowed, and came back, making a small bow to Mrs. Bailey as he did so. When he took up his bundle, there was a faint line of sweat on his upper lip, but his breathing was deep and even.

  Mrs. Bailey laughed aloud.

  “He is splendid, is he not? He runs like a god. Oh Queeny, teach him quickly. The Colonel will make a fortune on those legs.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Queeny curtsied again and moved off toward her hut. Her position allowed her half of a hut that typically housed a family of six, or up to eight men. She shared it with another woman, the house seamstress, Nelly. Nelly would be up at the big house at this hour, sewing her tiny meticulous stitches under the eyes of the colonel’s wife and treating her disorders.

  “You the master’s queen? Is that why you are called Queeny?”

  She smiled at the thought that the colonel would have a queen at all, although most plantations did. Some owners used their women as a harem; others took a preference for one woman and that made her queen, often hated by the master’s wife but powerful in her own way. The colonel didn’t seem to care for dark women.

  “No queen here, boy. Master don’t chase us. Mr. Bailey, neither.”

  Cese nodded, thoughtfully. One of the older men was sitting on the step of his hut, smoking a black pipe. Children, naked or in shifts according to their age, dashed along the central street of the slave quarter. Queeny ducked to enter the one room of her hut, but he stayed in the doorway, looking around him. None of the slaves he could see were Yoruba, like him. Most were southerners or pagan BaKongo from the interior, or mixes from different tribes. It had been the same in the Indies.

  “Where are the gates?”

  “No gates.”

  “You get locked in at night, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Why don’t you run, sister? Are you all cowardly BaKongo, too stupid to escape?”

  She glared at him from the darkness of her hut.

  “You’ll learn, African boy. Shut your mouth now, and listen to me. It is my job to teach you the talk, and I will. I’ll teach you more than that, if you let me. There are dogs, there’s militia, there’s the hunt, all out for any Negro that thinks to run. There is ways to run, hear me? But you don’ know them and you better learn. Now get in here this instant. I want to teach you to speak and to stay alive.”

  He ducked his head and entered, his thoughts still outside. Most of the slaves he could see were Ebo and Luo, ignorant southern BaKongo from the interior who were prey to superstition, carried inferior weapons—pliant. Luo women were notoriously loose. This one spoke to him as no woman should speak to a man, although he had grown used to it in Jamaica. She didn’t have the look of the Luo, though, and she knew more than a few words of the Benin language, which made her something. And the old sailor, King, had said to learn the language.

  She was probably Ebo, it struck him. He had the urge to laugh at the irony: at home his father had kept Ebo slaves, and here, the Ebo always seemed to be above him. Of course, at home, slavery was never so permanent.

  The urge to laugh never lasted. The urge to violence was always there. As he did dozens of times a day, he resisted the urge to lash out. When all his training told him to fight, or resist a blow or an insult, he would think one phrase to himself.

  Today, I am a slave.

  He sat on a stool, murmuring “Yes, ma’am.”

  Blain’s Store, Virginia, November 1773

  “And Ben Carter has taken a schoolmaster from Princeton!” Henry Lee, well dressed to the point of foppery, was holding forth.

  “I don’t think that will cause the collapse of civilization, gentlemen.” Washington was busy with accounts and tired of Lee’s youth.

  Dr. Thompson reached across the table to take a small basket of English gunflints.

  “Colonel, I think Mr. Lee means to suggest that Mr. Carter is avoiding the import of English lessons as well as English goods.”

  “Well put, sir. My meaning exactly.”

  Colonel Washington idly turned the rowel of a neat silver spur on his boot, his attention more under the table than above it. “I dare say Princeton produces some very educated m
en.”

  This was as close to a witticism as Washington ever came, as Henry Lee had just graduated from that very academy.

  “I knew him there. A bit of a prig, to be sure, but he seems to know his lessons well enough. Can’t dance, though.” Henry Lee was suddenly contemptuous.

  “Neither does Grigg, and we still pay him to carry our tobacco to England,” commented Dr. Thompson, a slight man in quiet clothes.

  “I can’t see that it signifies much whether a man can dance a minuet, whether he’s captain of a ship or a schoolteacher, Mr. Lee,” Washington said quietly.

  “I’d like my children to grow up to be as good as their peers in London or Jamaica. Can you imagine going out in London and not dancing?” Lee seemed unaware of the internal hypocrisy of his argument. Washington decided it was too much to correct him, and let his attention wander back under the table. Alone of the seated men, he had missed education in the home country, and the slight smile that touched his mouth suggested that it was not a matter that interested him overmuch. “Are you gentlemen supporting the embargo on English goods?”

  Dr. Thompson seemed rather caught out, as he had five carefully selected gunflints in one hand and a good hard English shilling in the other.

  “In the main,” he said, shifting in his seat.

  “Tea for certain,” said Lee. “Otherwise it depends on circumstances. What are we to do for cloth?”

  “I’ve seen decent wool cloth from this country.” Washington looked at them. “I’m raising a company of select militia, gentlemen, and I’ll see them all uniformed in good American cloth.”

  “Select militia?” asked Lee with a young man’s interest. He leaned forward attentively, then paused, aware that he was revealing too much enthusiasm for an aristocratic Lee.