Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  Virgil was clearly hurt, but he began to hobble toward the big man. Caesar knew they had to charge the rebels now, before they were shot down, helpless to resist. He never thought of dropping his weapon, but others did, more than a few.

  The new group he had seen coming were yelling from fifty yards away, but Caesar was beyond caring. He gripped his musket close in his right hand and flung himself at the big man.

  The big man saw him and took a musket from one of his men, who was standing open-mouthed as the two black men staggered toward them.

  The red skirmish line moved through the woods swiftly, like a disciplined herd of deer. Jeremy could hear the Scots and English voices calling to each other to Keep up, Jock, or Get that line straight. Discipline was different when battle was imminent.

  He was alive, and had fought, and now he was going to do it again.

  “There’s the open ground,” he said to Captain Stewart at his elbow.

  “And there are the rebels. Sound skirmish!” the last to his bugler, running at his heels like a good dog. As the notes sounded, the whole line stopped and muskets came down to aim, the file leader in every file pair picking a target and firing in their own time. The range was long, there was brush, and only two of the bluecoats fell, but it was enough to disperse the party that had tried to take Jeremy.

  “At them!” cried Stewart, the first order he had given directly, and he was off through the trees. Jeremy crouched down, clutched his broken sword and followed him, spurring his horse to catch up.

  Weymes didn’t see the redcoats until two of his men fell. Their red coats were the same color as the autumn leaves, and his whole focus had been on the resistance of the blacks. Before he could say a word, the rest of his party took to their heels, running back to the cover of the woods nearly a quarter of a mile away. He paused a moment and fired his musket at a horseman, but he was alone, and he ran.

  Bludner heard the shooting and instantly guessed the cause. It had all gone on too long and the redcoats were on them. He pointed the musket at the man who had shot Weymes back in Virginny and pulled the trigger, but the pan was full of water and there wasn’t even a spark. He threw it at the black man shuffling toward him.

  “Form your front! Fall in and rally,” he yelled. He wished he had a drummer. One boy was down, probably dead, and the other was too scared to beat, his sticks clenched uselessly in his fists, his eyes glazed.

  Rebels ran right past them to get back to the safety of their own ranks, and most just kept going. Caesar and Virgil were so spent that they weren’t able to pursue, although there was one more sharp fight as a small band of rebels tried to take them. Caesar felt a jolt as someone bumped him from behind and he saw a patch of muddy scarlet in his peripheral vision. Murray was behind him.

  Jeremy saw the group of rebels run for the woods off in the valley and determined that he would cut them off. He rode the last one down and saw it was the little man who had shouted orders. The man turned, but too late, and Jeremy hammered the broken tip of his sword into the man’s back and through the lung, and he fell, his weight dragging straight off the point. Little puffs of smoke came from the distant woods and something hit his horse a hammer blow, and she stumbled and reared. A bubbling red spot had appeared on her withers. She was difficult to control for a moment and then she settled, and he pulled her around and spurred her back up the hill.

  At the base of the half-constructed redoubt, he saw a big black man fighting. He was head and shoulders taller than his adversaries and the other two men fighting beside him, and every blow seemed to fell an enemy, and it struck Jeremy that he was watching something from the Iliad. Even as he watched, the man felled his last opponent with a vicious upthrust of a bayoneted musket held short, like a spear, and he turned his head, catching Jeremy’s eyes across the field.

  The rebel line was only half formed. Some had fled directly, running past their comrades to the apparent safety of the woods, while others either stood dumbly or fumbled to reload their muskets. Stewart’s company ghosted up to the edge of the redoubt even as Jeremy cantered in behind them.

  “Rifles in the wood,” he called to his master.

  Stewart looked at him and smiled a welcoming, friendly smile that Jeremy treasured.

  “Best keep your head down, then,” Stewart said with a smile. He was always good-humored in moments of danger. The rebels were melting away at the sight of his whole company moving up on their front. The knot of resistance by the black laborers almost at his feet blocked the fire of his left platoon. Several rebels fired and one of his men fell.

  “Right platoon! Make ready! Present! Fire!”

  The volley sounded like a single shot. There was smoke on the breeze for a moment, a deep smell of sulfur, and then screams from freshly wounded men, and the enemy were gone.

  “At them, Lights! At them. Sergeant McDonald, don’t let them rally! Stay on them into the woods. I want those woods cleared!”

  “Sir!” McDonald sprang off after his men, who were already pouring down the hill. Stewart waited a moment, looking to the left and right, checking his flanks. His glance passed over the blacks, many of whom were busy taking up muskets dropped by the rebels. He walked his horse over to Murray, the engineer officer. Murray looked stunned.

  “Thought I might have lost you there, Lieutenant Murray.”

  “Aye. Thought the same myself.”

  Stewart waved his riding whip at Murray and started down the hill. He saw one of his men spin and fall, hit by rifle fire from the deadly wood, and he leaned low over the neck of his horse, spurring it on down the hill. He quickly overtook the line of his men and plunged in among the fleeing rebels. Suddenly the air was full of the buzz of bullets, and he was hit, but he carried on. His men followed him, and now they were over the open ground and pressing into the brushy edge of the wood, screaming and shouting as they came. Most huzza’d; a few yelled older, darker things from the Borders or the clans of the north, and his junior lieutenant, Crawford, kept baying “George and England” over and over.

  “This way, sir!” Jeremy had stayed close by Stewart’s side down the hill, his horse still bleeding and moving erratically. He thought she was hit again. As they reached the base of the hill he had seen a small trail leading into the wood, a path well worn by generations of woodcutters.

  Stewart was on the trail in a breath. His sword flashed once as he found a target in the woods, and then Jeremy and his own men were all about him, and the woods were theirs. The rebel rifles could be seen in the distance, flying over the ridge, the last of them vanishing just as Jeremy jumped the last stumps into the open ground. They were too canny to be caught in the woods where the bayonets of the regulars were more dangerous to them than their rifles were to the enemy. The rebel infantry company was rallying on the Brooklyn Heights, their numbers sadly depleted, and many of the men had thrown away their muskets.

  Crawford came up with McDonald, flushed with triumph. McDonald was all business. A little spat like this was nothing to Sergeant McDonald.

  “The price, McDonald?”

  “Nixon lost the number of his mess on the hill, sir. Lyle and Somers wounded. I wouldn’t give much for Somers’s chances. Lyle looks all right. And Guibert burst his musket, the useless gowk. He overcharged it.”

  “We’ll hold this wood until I can get us some relief.”

  “Aye, sir. Ye should see to yoursel’ sir. You’re hit.”

  “Crawford, see to it that Sergeant McDonald instructs you on how to post men in a wood. You are in command. Don’t interfere with McDonald.”

  Crawford looked up at him with something bordering on adoration.

  Stewart picked his way out of the wood and cantered up the hill, a little light-headed. To every section of his own men that he passed he called out some praise, or a joke. Keeping his seat seemed to be harder, and he wondered absently where Jeremy had got to. He looked down and saw blood flowing easily over his right boot, and as his eyes traveled up his body he saw that
the river of blood went down his thigh and over his knee. His white breeches were redder than his scarlet coat. He swayed a little.

  The blacks had formed into a very passable line at the top of the hill in front of the redoubt. Most of them had muskets. As he rode up, the tall one ordered them to present arms, a surprising compliment given the situation, and he took off his cap.

  “Well fought, lads. Well fought.” His voice was weak. He shook his head to clear it and wondered where Murray was.

  “Who’s in charge here?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper, and started to slump from his saddle. Suddenly there were strong hands on him, and Jeremy’s voice in his ear. He was down in the mud, lying on his back, and someone was pulling a bandage tight on his thigh. He hadn’t lost consciousness. The big black man was leaning over him.

  “You’ll be fine, sir. Ball passed right through and into your saddle.”

  “And you are?”

  “Julius Caesar, sir.”

  Stewart leaned back in Jeremy’s arms, and smiled up at the familiar face as if at a joke.

  “Of course you are,” he said, and went away for a while.

  Caesar watched the black man on the horse with undisguised admiration as he rode off, following the handcart pulled by four of Caesar’s laborers. Impossible as it seemed, his first thought had been that the mounted black man was an officer, although his dark blue coat and feathered turban looked different from every other uniform he had seen.

  His muscles seemed to have seized up, as if he had worked too hard all day without rest. The fight had been short, but he had spent energy recklessly. Virgil looked old, his face pinched, and his shoulders stooped. Caesar hadn’t seen him so done in since the swamp. Jim looked as bad, although Tonny, who had fought like a tiger from the start, looked fresh as a new calf. Their men were spread out over the hillside, looking for any wounded and plundering the dead without a shadow of remorse.

  “Sergeant Peters be dead,” Virgil said, thrusting his chin toward the little redoubt they had all fought to save.

  “I’ll jus’ see to him, then. Go get us some good equipment.”

  Virgil nodded and moved away slowly, like an old man.

  Jim followed Caesar, with a mattock and a shovel. They didn’t say much for a while. Caesar picked the older man’s corpse up easily and carried him back to the edge of the broken ground, far from the redoubt and the little patch of woods where the rebels had hidden themselves. He thought that maybe the war would linger here, as it had at Great Bridge, and he didn’t want Peters to be dug up when some other unit put in trenches. Once he had a spot, he looked over his shoulder at the view, and it was a good one, right over the little redoubt and then over the valley to Brooklyn Heights. He broke the ground, his muscles protesting every stroke. He let the pick do most of the work. Then Jim stepped in with a shovel and started to dig. It was the shovel that Caesar had used in the fighting, but the blood on the blade was quickly scoured away by the damp earth. His wound hurt him. He wanted to smoke.

  One by one, other men came and dug, or used the pick. It reminded him of Tom’s grave in Virginia, and his eyes filled with tears unexpectedly. He walked a little apart so that the men wouldn’t see him, and almost ran over Tonny.

  “Virgil says you have to see this an’ come quick!” said Tonny. Caesar followed him down the hill, toward the wood where the regulars were. They were smoking. He could smell the smoke. Virgil was well down, on a little flat.

  “’Memba’ this man?” Virgil asked. A small white man, his face a mask of old scars, lay broken like an abandoned doll on a trash heap. Caesar shook his head.

  “One of they slave-takuhs came fo’ us when you was sick. I shot him back in the swamp, an’ now he daid.” Virgil laughed aloud. “He came all this way and he daid!”

  Caesar looked at the little knot of wool on the man’s shoulder marking him as a corporal. He knelt and cut it free with his clasp knife.

  “Now you’re the corporal, Virgil.”

  He looked down on the body and spat. So did Virgil, and then Tonny.

  “Reckon they was chasin’ us?” asked Virgil. “The other one was there. The big one. I saw him.”

  Caesar nodded. “They was after us fo’ slaves, Virgil. Nothin’ mo’. Nothing more.”

  Virgil frowned, and he and Tonny had a brief struggle to get the knot of white wool on to Virgil’s jacket.

  “Any orders?”

  “When the hole is dug, we form them up and fire the volleys, just like we used to.” Caesar was eyeing the bodies around them for equipment.

  “Reckon we can keep our arms?”

  Caesar knelt by a young man whose life was gurgling out of a hole in his chest the size of a dollar. He was squirming in pain, moaning, his eyes rolled back in his head. Caesar watched the boy writhe for a moment and then knelt, drew his clasp knife and used it under the boy’s ribs and the boy died, quietly, without even a kick. Then he took the boy’s accoutrements, including a nice bayonet and a leather hunting pouch with a priming horn. The priming horn was engraved with Isaac Stark, his horn. His musket was a fine one, too, and the pouch had a pipe and tobacco.

  Caesar nodded at the body, a little queasy from the killing. The boy had been in pain, gut shot. He hoped he’d done right. “Bury him, too,” he said, and Virgil agreed.

  Mr. Murray hobbled up to the ring of blacks, where they were watching the last scoops of earth removed from the graves. He watched as Virgil formed them into a line at the graveside. The old Ethiopians formed easily, almost like regulars. Other men had never held a musket before, and Virgil put them in the back rank.

  Caesar was smoking, his pipe upside down in the rain. Isaac Stark had made good char and kept his tinder dry, and Caesar thought he must have been a good soldier for all his youth. He was conscious that Virgil had the men in hand. He knocked his pipe out on the sole of his boot, careful not to snap the stem, and then walked to the front of the company. Murray stood off to the side with his sword drawn.

  “I take it you’re the sergeant, now,” Murray said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then get on with it, Sergeant.”

  One by one, the shots for the dead rang out over the hillside, and the smoke of their volleys hung in the damp air for a moment, covering the little mounds of wet earth until the wind came and blew the smoke away.

  2

  Long Island Ferry, New York, August 29, 1776

  The rain fell in broad sheets that soaked a man through his coat before he could walk half a mile. Washington sat on his horse and watched his men plod down the last turn in the road and on to the ferry dock where boats were waiting for them. The movement of thousands of men, their weapons and supplies across the narrows to New York was the product of careful planning and meticulous staff work, and his army was already saved. Only the sentries were left.

  He had held a council of war to discuss the abandonment of Long Island. Before this war, he had thought such councils to be the sign of a weak commander. He didn’t like to have to share momentous decisions with other men. And yet, in the new army, autocracy had no place except in direst need and immediate crisis, and the withdrawal from Long Island had been neither. The British had maneuvered them smartly from each strong position, enjoying all the advantages, from the superior training of their soldiers to the complete mobility of their enormous fleet. The council had helped to share the responsibility, and helped him master the rapid blows to his reputation.

  Only the commander of the local militia had argued against the abandonment, fearful of retribution against his militia who had already pillaged their Tory neighbors and could expect the same in return. Leaving Long Island had all the power of sense behind it, and now that his generals had faced the British in the field, they had a much healthier respect for the foe. Sullivan and Stirling were gone, taken as prisoners in the loss of Brooklyn Heights. Reports that the Royal Navy had penetrated into the waters east of Governor’s Island served to reinforce his point that their flanks
were open to British troops landed from the sea at any moment. The agreement of the council was, in the end, unanimous.

  And now he sat in the rain and watched his men march on to their boats, pausing from time to time to note a company that had served well, or badly, and occasionally to praise one of his subordinates for the efforts he had made to find the boats and rescue the army. He was conscious that they would live to fight another day, and that it would be easier to hold New York from the other shore. But his mind kept slipping away to the inevitable fact of defeat. He had lost his first field action, and lost it decisively, beaten twice in battles and then ejected from his positions by the maneuvers of the enemy navy. He worried that he had lost the confidence of his army, and he worried about the future.

  He had taken Boston. Now he looked likely to lose New York. And the army he had preserved by retreat had already begun to desert.

  New York, September 6, 1776

  Even inside the house, the sound of picks and shovels raising fortifications on the flats below competed with the movement of horses and carts. Most of the wealthy citizens of New York had already left, and now every citizen who had cause to distrust the return of royal government was moving off Manhattan Island. The pro-Congress faction of New York seemed to have little confidence that the city could be held. Their contempt for their own army was returned with interest.

  “Burn the city!” The voice belonged to Nathan Greene, still in pain from the wounds he had received at the Battle of Brooklyn, but every face at the table reflected his sentiments. “Two thirds of the property here belongs to Tories anyway. This town is a nest of traitors. Burn it.”

  “We have already spent so much in treasure and sweat to build these fortifications, General Washington. We must fight to hold them. If we abandon them so easily, the enemy will think we are beaten.” The speaker was General Heath, of the New York militia. He did not take kindly to his city being described as a nest of traitors, but he made allowances for Greene, who was in pain, and whose bravery was highly regarded all around the table. Already, some of the best young officers were called “Washington’s sons”. Nathan Greene was one of them.