Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  “Regulars is retreating!” shouted one of the young men, hysteria plain in his voice. Caesar kicked him, hard, so that the man doubled over.

  “Ethiopians!” bellowed a voice out of the smoke. “Two more rounds and we will retire. Make your shots count!” It was Mr. Robinson. He sounded old.

  King was trying to form his own company. Caesar had no idea why, but the familiar voice in the smoke was giving orders that he could obey. Tom and Virgil were still with him, and he found young Jim and then Peters and then there were more men. Other men were firing sporadically.

  “Everybody loaded?” A ragged volley of assent.

  “Make ready!” Caesar knelt and his back foot kicked Virgil, who hadn’t moved fast enough. All around Caesar, men were moving slowly.

  “Present!” Caesar tried to snap his musket down, but he could see that some of the front rank were out of place, and other muskets late.

  “FIRE!”

  It was not a crisp volley, but it had a sound that seemed to lift some of the soldiers out of their fear. It was easier to be shoulder to shoulder in the smoke than strung out in a skirmish line, intentional or not. Closer, they seemed invulnerable, and they could hear the voices of their leaders.

  “Prime and load!” Caesar rotated sharply and reached for a cartridge, his eyes trying to pierce the gloom in front of him. He dreaded a charge by the militia, now that the regulars were gone. He sensed that the men from the other companies were slipping away as well. He could see King, standing just beyond Jim in the smoke. Then he had cast his musket about and was ramming the cartridge down the barrel. The barrel was red hot and it burned his hands, and the smoke burned his throat. He had bitten the cartridge badly and had the foul stuff on his tongue. He raised his musket to the position that showed he was loaded. As he was one of the fastest to load, he had a moment to look around him. The smoke had cleared, just a little, in a flaw of the breeze, and they were alone, the redcoats drawn up in good order on the far side and a good deal of Robinson’s company spread across the bridge in retreat.

  “Make ready!” King’s voice sounded louder in the sudden sunlight. The company functioned more smoothly, the men kneeling together in the front.

  “Present!” Every musket seemed to come down together. It was an amazing feeling, like being part of a great beast of war. Smoke appeared from the enemy entrenchments, and men fell. King went down with a small shriek. He lay silent, but his arms were moving. The seconds stretched on unbearably, and Caesar breathed deeply and yelled.

  “FIRE!”

  They fired very much as one, a crisp volley that roared their defiance.

  “Mr. Peters! Sergeant is down!” Caesar yelled. He slung his musket and, with Tom and Virgil, moved to King. The man was clearly alive, although a rifle ball had gone through his cheek and there was blood everywhere. Peters began to order the men to reload, but Mr. Robinson, hatless, appeared beside him.

  “Back across the bridge, boys!”

  The company melted away from the center in seconds, as men fled at the best speed their legs could make. They had permission. It didn’t seem necessary to wait for orders.

  The little group carrying King were almost the last, although a few men stayed to cover them with sporadic fire, and one of them died. Mr. Robinson ran ahead, and then returned to urge them on. The bridge seemed shorter going back, even with the bulk of King, and soon enough they were placing him in the line of bodies that stretched away along the dry ground above the bridge.

  And then they went back to where the remnants of the company waited and simply lay down. Later that day, they marched away with their wounded and left the bridge to the victorious militia. They didn’t talk much.

  Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 11, 1775

  “I think we’ll keep most of those who are left,” said Lee, adjusting his sword belt and watching General Gates with a lifted eyebrow. “Does that man consciously seek to imitate a clown?”

  Gates was struggling with the collar of his greatcoat, and one of its capes continued to fly up in the wind and disarrange his hat. No such thing had ever been seen to happen to General Lee. He looked up, took note of Lee’s regard, and flushed. There was little love lost between them.

  Washington ignored Lee’s pettiness about Gates. “I understand that the Connecticut men are ill-received on the road.”

  “I imagine their own sweethearts may spurn their charms when they arrive,” said Lee with a certain sparkle in his eye.

  Washington caught the look, considered carefully if he wanted to know the means by which the Connecticut regiments had suddenly become so unpopular, and decided that he did not need to know after all. Gates had his coat under control and was striving to sit his horse in the wind like a portly hero. Most of the officers of the staff were in their finest, although much labor on powder and hair was coming to naught in the wet wind.

  The Connecticut men had signed on to serve the army and the siege of Boston until December. Washington had held them a few extra days until the Massachusetts and New Hampshire militias had come in to fill his lines, but for a moment, the entire structure of the army had tottered. Now he had “long-faced” militia in the lines; but instead of leading a mutiny against the new Continental Army, the Connecticut troops were being treated like lepers by all New England. It was a satisfying reversal of fortune. Washington looked at Lee again, a man of elegant dignity, yet some subterfuge against the men of Connecticut left him with an ugly look of smug satisfaction, like a cat who has played with a mouse until it died.

  “They were actually hissed when they passed Bridge’s regiment. That’s a good man, Ebenezer Bridge.”

  Washington hated that look, and he spoke up. “General Lee, I would point out that these men served loyally and that it is the British, not the men of Connecticut, who constitute the enemy.”

  Lee bowed his head, as he always did on being rebuked. Washington disliked the habit, and would have preferred if the man held his eye. He sometimes suspected Lee did it to hide anger.

  “With all respect, sir, I will maintain that two days ago you offered to hang the lot of them as mutineers.”

  Washington sat straighter in his saddle, unused to such direct rebuke, but it was, alas, true. He had been away from other men too long, was too used to the ultimate authority on his own farms. Here in the world, even as the military “master”, his staff felt free to question him. He stifled the start of anger and barked a laugh.

  “So I did, Charles Lee.” He held Lee’s eye, and Lee smiled, his whole face illuminated for a moment. When the man smiled, it was like a clear day—enough to make anyone like him. But he rarely smiled.

  The perfect distraction was just turning from the Mansfield road. It was a coach pulled by six matched horses and surrounded by a company of gentlemen led by the staff’s own Colonel Baylor. They all looked splendid as the coach and escort dashed up the last of the green and rolled to a stop opposite the gathered staff.

  Washington smiled thinly, then made a comment to Lee over the confusion.

  “If Knox’s guns were to arrive, I think my day would be perfect.”

  His wife, Mrs. Horatio Gates, and a seemingly endless stream of Virginia travelers emerged from the coach. Lee bowed in the saddle to each lady as she emerged. None of them was likely to be Mrs. Lee, and Washington thought inconsequentially how difficult it would be if Mrs. Lee were to arrive, as her place was so clearly occupied by a local woman General Lee took no care to hide. But then Martha was there, and he dismounted to smile down at her and bow. She curtsied as if to open a dance, the essence of good breeding, and her eyes sparkled.

  “Did I just hear myself compared to Colonel Knox’s guns?”

  Washington always forgot what she was like, and he bowed again to hide his usual confusion.

  “I am so happy to hear myself ranked with an event that must be important to our whole continent.” But she smiled, and began to introduce him to the other ladies, and in moments, they had the making of the f
irst celebration most of them had known since they joined the army.

  On board HMS Amazon, Chesapeake Bay, December 21, 1775

  “I nevuh thought we’d get beat so bad.”

  “I never thought.”

  “I never thought. Right enough. I’d wager we didn’t kill a one.”

  “Nor did we. Slave came in last night, into Edgerton’s company. Said the same.”

  Caesar looked at the older man, his hands still moving through the process of reassembling his lock. It was perfectly clean, and he had stripped it twice. It was as if the action of seeing to his musket had acquired a religious purpose to Caesar.

  Peters looked out over the flat water that stank with the filth of three hundred seamen and two hundred soldiers. The cold winter weather was probably all that kept them alive, cramped as they were. The ship remained at her moorings just off the land, and every item that went over the side stayed there, a trash heap and a dunghill combined into a great wet midden just at the surface of the water, getting fouler every day they spent on board. Ten days had passed since the “battle”.

  “We lost a mort of men.”

  “Yes. So did the Fourteenth. More than we.”

  “For nothing!”

  “Caesar, nothing is for nothing.”

  The younger man glared out, thinking of Sergeant King falling wounded, of the twenty men left dead or carried away only to die later.

  “Watch yer ‘ead, mate.” A sailor swung by on the ratlines, walking the top of the taffrail above them rather than along the crowded deck. He was blacking the rigging as he went, touching up spots where birds and salt had ruined the perfect black of the tarred lines. Caesar nodded, always pleased when offered courtesy, but the man was gone to his next spot of gull white. The Amazon was not a hard ship, but she was smart, and her captain didn’t leave a lot of leeway because his decks were full of soldiers. The sailors’ relative cleanliness and security was contrasted all too often with the soldiers’ filth.

  Caesar dreaded asking the question, but Peters was likely to move off now. He often did when Caesar complained about the battle or about the conditions; he didn’t care to listen to matters he could not change. Caesar had his measure, and it was high. He was not the natural leader that King had been, but his education and the power of his words, his air of manners and quiet confidence were more than enough to fill the sergeant’s shoes. Other companies had done worse, losing leaders and having no one to fill their gap. Caesar knew he had been suggested for sergeant’s rank in Mr. Robinson’s company. He knew that Peters had turned it down.

  “Why’d you tell them I wasn’ ready to be sergeant?”

  “You are not.” Peters smiled. “No more am I, Caesar. But you cannot read or write, and the duties do require that you keep accounts, figure, and write returns.”

  Writing. It hadn’t occurred to him; he had built an ugly structure of his own failings, but never thought it might be something as simple.

  “Can you teach me to write, sir?”

  “I’m quite certain I can, if you place the same emphasis on’t that you do on that musket. Would you care to begin this evening?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Excellent. Do you know the Bible at all, Caesar?”

  “I can’t say that I do, sir. I’ve heard it read, oft enough. It be a fine book an’ all. But I don’ know it like some.”

  “Pity, as knowing it by heart can speed a man’s learning. Still, I reckon you’ve heard enough for it, once you start. Know your letters?”

  “No.”

  Peters nodded. “Well, you are in for a long and difficult experience, my friend. Well worth the effort.”

  “When I can read, will you recommend me for sergeant?”

  “When you can read, you’ll be a better soldier than I. Which is to say, yes.”

  Peters moved away, off to his other corporal to see how he fared.

  Virgil sat on the hatch cover sewing himself a jacket. None of them had uniforms, but Tom and Jim had returned to the ship after foraging ashore with the regulars with a good piece of brown woolen cloth. Virgil considered himself a fair hand with a needle as he had tailored a little on his plantation. Winter was cold on men in shirts and linen jackets made from sails past their prime; Caesar longed for a woolen jacket. He nodded at Virgil to get his attention, then at his own equipment in a neat pile under the bulwark by a gun. Virgil nodded. There were light-fingered men aboard; it didn’t do to leave your belongings alone.

  Caesar went up toward the bow where the white soldiers were. They had better equipment and more of everything, so that he always looked at them jealously, but they were either amused or tolerant of a black soldier who sought to emulate their standards. Most were friendly; a few were bad. Tommy Steele, a big red-headed man, called the bad ones “awkward sods” in a voice that Caesar couldn’t emulate. Steele was friendly. Caesar sought him out, waited patiently at his elbow while the man finished talking to another. Caesar couldn’t bring himself to interrupt a white man’s conversation—a slave habit that he recognized but had yet to overcome.

  “Good day, there.”

  “Mr. Steele, sir. May I use your black ball?”

  “Och, Caesar, don’t you call me Mr. Steele or ma mates’ll think I’m comin’ it a bit high. Of course you can use ma black ball. Why don’t I jus’ get you one? Have a penny?”

  Caesar thought about it for a moment and produced a penny. He wasn’t sure of the man, and a penny was a penny, but it seemed worth the risk.

  “Back in a flash, mate.” The soldier slipped off down a companionway into the bowels of the ship. He was gone so long that Caesar, who didn’t want to doubt him, began to, and figured his penny lost and his fledgling friendship as well. He had seen worse on board. Some men couldn’t stand the black soldiers and made that all too clear. But then Steele appeared at his elbow.

  “Done me a favor, really. Here you go. Mind the wax. No, really, I paid the sergeant a penny for it an’ told him I lost mine. Now I’m the diligent soldier of the world, he says, paying good drink money for a new black ball.”

  Caesar took the hard wax ball gingerly. If the stuff came off on your hands, it was like to spoil white leather or good linen. He already had an embarrassing tar stain on his jacket.

  “Thank you, Mr. Steele.”

  “Think nothin’ of it, mate. Now, seeing as how you’ve done me a good turn here, I have a little tobacco I might share with a needy man.”

  Caesar looked at him, trying not to appear suspicious.

  “Go on, then. I don’t want nothin’ for it. Do you have a tin?”

  Caesar shook his head, but he reached into his hat and took out the stub of a clay pipe, broken so often that the bowl had less than an inch of stem. Steele pulled some tobacco off a hank, rubbed it between his hands and pushed it into Caesar’s pipe.

  Someone behind him among the men of the Fourteenth made a comment about black balls and black boys. It was the sort of thing that Caesar had expected for some time. He hunched his shoulders and ignored it. Steele looked up, made a face over Caesar’s shoulder, and finished packing the pipe.

  “Must be hard as sin being a blackamoor,” he said quietly. “I’m a Borderer in an English regiment, an’ that’s nae walk in a country lane.”

  Caesar was embarrassed by such talk. He didn’t know what a Borderer was, didn’t want to be a blackamoor. But he decided to push a little. The pipe was packed, and he could escape quickly enough if he had to.

  “What’s a Borderer, then?”

  “A Borderer is a natural thief, a lazy man who lies in wait to steal and kill and never does an honest day’s work as long as he lives.” The man who spoke had an educated voice, like Peters, but he was white, and an officer in the blue coat of the navy.

  Steele’s face was expressionless. It was unusual for an officer to intrude on any conversation of the men; usually the officers seemed as if they were on a different vessel. Steele was standing straighter, almost at attention. The offi
cer looked at both of them and the look on his face was at odds with the harshness of his opinion.

  “What’s your name, soldier?”

  “Steele, sir.”

  The man nodded. “I’m a Nixon,” he said as he turned and climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck. Caesar watched him go uneasily, aware that Steele had thought himself in very great danger for a moment and now was fairly sighing with relief.

  “What’s a Nixon, then?”

  “He’s from the Borders himself, the gentleman. Not that my da’ would have been strong on Nixons, mind. But here, they seem like brothers.”

  Caesar gathered, then, that Borderers were a tribe of the British, which pleased him, as making them all seem a little more familiar. He nodded and waved his pipe.

  “My thanks, Mr. Steele.”

  “Just Tom. I forget yours…Pompey?”

  “Caesar.” Mortified.

  “Sorry. Your lot sound like a play—Virgil this and Caesar that. Along wi’ ya then, an’ have your wee smoke.”

  “Thanks, Tom.”

  He walked back down the deck to his spot, still empty through the power of Virgil’s glare, and settled his back against Tom’s.

  “I’ve a full pipe,” he said.

  Heads turned all around. Since they had been on the ships, tobacco had become a rarity among the men, especially the blacks. Caesar scarcely missed it, but Tom did, and some of the other men in his section. Mr. Edgerton’s man Tonny was one, a regular smoker. They gathered round, and Tom took out his tinder kit and, crouching by a gun, got a spark into his char and lit the pipe. The sweet smoke fought the stench over the side, and even the cold, for a few minutes.

  “Next time, pack it in my pipe.”

  “I didn’t have it handy.” Caesar, getting better at these exchanges, smiled broadly. “If’n you don’ like it, don’ be smokin’ it!”

  Virgil’s coat was beginning to take shape; he pulled it on over his shirt, the left sleeve on and the right at his feet. It fit snugly. He hopped down off his grating and reached out for the pipe and took a long drag, rolling the smoke slowly out of his nostrils. Several of the sailors admired the jacket, but they kept their distance. Virgil nodded at them; one smiled and one frowned.