Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  “I have to take you to my father.”

  “I expect so,” he said, still smiling at her. She colored a little and turned away.

  “I don’t see you as much as I used to,” she said.

  “This ain’t New York, Polly. And you and the Reverend aren’t always easy to find.”

  She nodded, looking down. She didn’t offer her hand again, but walked by his side until they reached the little carriage house where they lived.

  “I wish…” she said.

  “What do you wish, then?” he asked, trying to kiss her. She avoided him.

  “Never mind, you. Stop that.” She pushed him in the door and slammed it.

  Marcus White was seated at his own little desk by the window, writing quickly. He took off his spectacles as soon as he saw Caesar and rose. Caesar bowed and White waved him to a chair.

  “You got the message, I see.”

  “I did, sir.”

  “And you are puzzled?”

  “Not in the least, sir. Honored more than ever by your acquaintance, sir, and perhaps not even surprised by your role, now that I have it clear.”

  Reverend White nodded slowly.

  “Do you have any questions, then?”

  “Is Polly involved?”

  He saw White’s hands clasp hard behind his back and had his answer. He had questioned too many guilty soldiers to need any coaching on the subject.

  “Never mind, then.”

  “Do you love my daughter, sir?” Reverend White was very close to him, and perhaps a little angry. Suddenly, Caesar was on different ground than expected.

  “Perhaps…yes, I think I do. Which is to say that I haven’t given it much thought, lately.” Caesar raised his chin. “She’s a little above me, I think.”

  “Why? Because she can read? You can read. Because she’s modest? You’re no libertine.”

  “You are a man of real education, sir.” Marcus shook his head, but Caesar went on. “I decided when we left New York that it wasn’t right.”

  Marcus White nodded. “Yes, yes. You’re doing a fine job of speaking all my lines. I agree that you have no skill besides war. It worries me. Julius Caesar, so aptly named! But last night scared me more. I made a mistake and almost paid for it. I think she has a great deal of regard for you. If we all live to get back to New York…”

  “New York?” asked Caesar. Fascinated though he was by the subject, he was equally interested by the prospect of a move to New York.

  “Haven’t you heard? Lord Howe is to go back to England in the spring, and Sir Henry Clinton will take command. He intends to march the army back to New York.” This was uttered as if a commonplace. Caesar just shook his head.

  “Even barracks rumor has not gone so far.”

  “It’s fact, though, Caesar. The Government is going to retreat and try negotiation for a while. Saratoga has scared them deeply. I hope we have not already lost the war.”

  Caesar shook his head. “You know more than any officer I know, but I suspect I know why, and I won’t say. So tell me about New York?”

  “Eh?”

  “If we all get back there, I think you said?”

  “Ahh. Yes. If we do, and if you’d care to court her, and if she’s willing, I’d be content.”

  Caesar saw a marvelous vista opening before him. He smiled from ear to ear.

  “Not every day that the woman’s father asks you to court her, is it?”

  Caesar shook his head again, tongue-tied.

  “I told her you’d never ask. She told me you never stopped trying to take liberties.” Caesar was suddenly cast down. “I ask that if this comes to nothing, you not bring my daughter down.” Caesar raised his eyes and met the minister’s.

  “Yes. Yes, I promise.”

  “Good, then. I think we understand each other. Where is my Epictetus?”

  “In my pack.”

  “I have the Memoirs of Socrates to trade for it when you bring it. In your pack, you say? Is there anything left of it?”

  “I dried it well when it got wet, sir. The pages have warpled a little, but she’s fine.”

  “Perhaps I should save my books as well as my daughter, until New York.”

  He went out, and she was waiting.

  “You have my father’s permission.” She said it straight, and flat. His heart turned over.

  “You don’t seem too pleased.” Caesar thought that all his suspicions of Marcus White might come back, if it turned out that White was trading his daughter for Caesar’s silence about his activities.

  “I’d like to hear something from you.”

  Caesar met her eyes. They stood a long moment, looking at each other. “I want to marry you,” he said, straight.

  She nodded gravely.

  “But I’m a soldier. Polly, I don’t know just how to say this to you, ‘cept that I ain’t so sure we’ll win. And then what am I? A black freeman? A slave? Somebody’s property? You ain’t…you aren’t like me. I want to marry you, but I want to know that there’s something after all this.”

  Polly smiled for the first time in that conversation. “That’s the Caesar I want. The one that thinks. I don’t want it all to be snatched kisses and your hand on my thigh, Caesar. I want to be talked to. I learned that equality from my father, and I’ll expect it.” She started to walk, and made a motion that he should come along. “It’s cold. I’m cold. As to after the war, what of it? We’re black, Caesar. There isn’t ever a day we’ll rest easy, knowing that the next day will bring us ease. And I don’t see you ever being a slave again.”

  Caesar caught her to him and kissed her, a quick kiss on the lips, and then a longer kiss on her neck. “I’ll keep you warm, at least,” he said.

  She kissed him a moment and pulled free. “New York, then,” she said, and turned back to her father’s house.

  The sallow man in the bearskin coat had two more stops to make, but he thought of the black whore for the rest of the evening. She was the favorite of his post boxes, and the only one who didn’t make him cringe and feel inferior. Sometimes, when she vexed him, he hit her and liked it. She was terrified of him, and no one had ever been terrified of him before—much the reverse—and he took pleasure in that, too.

  He picked up two more packages and then traveled east, carefully avoiding the post at the first line of pickets and meeting a Quaker farmer and his wife exactly on time, just as the sun rose off toward Landsdowne. The little man in the bearskin coat was especially proud when he was just on time for these meetings. He rode up cautiously, because he was always cautious, and stopped a good few paces from the wagon.

  “Got any fodder to sell?” he asked. The old Quaker on the wagon frowned.

  “Got any fresh fodder to sell?” he corrected himself, annoyed that the man needed so much care, but pleased that he could remember the whole phrase. The old man nodded, and indicated the back of the wagon.

  The man in the bearskin coat rode back into the city when the transaction was finished, again avoiding the British post on the road, back to his dreary day-to-day life. He liked the nights when he was a courier, a secret messenger for the cause.

  The Quaker farmer took his wagon through the lines with a paper signed by several commanders on both sides, selling fodder as he went. Once he was outside the range of all but the most aggressive patrols of the King’s army, he turned down a side lane past some fields that had been fallow at least a year and drove his wagon right into a barn. He no sooner pulled in there than armed men surrounded him.

  “What you got for me?” asked Sergeant Bludner.

  Valley Forge, February 19, 1778

  Washington felt the cold right through his spirits. The capital was lost, and his army, a bare three thousand men, were camped in the hardest conditions they had yet endured. He felt that the war might now be lost through sheer neglect and a lack of basic logistics. His men might melt away, starve or die in the cold.

  Washington looked at the man standing before him, able, brave, anima
ted. The very picture of a good officer, and Washington disliked that he had to refuse the man a furlough, but the other generals had been writing passes as if they were free of threat, and with British patrols attacking his outposts every day he could not afford to have his officers absent. He feared desertion. He feared that the army would break up like an ice floe and be gone in a night.

  “General, I appeal to you. I’ve worn out all my smallclothes, and I promised I would wed her by the first of the year. She’ll be eating her heart our, sir! Please let me go.”

  Washington said nothing. The Massachusetts captain was dressed in the remnants of a British coat, and his boots were wrapped in rags. His hat was tied to his head with a piece of old sacking. When he gesticulated, his hand could be seen wrapped in bandages. Yet he stood straight as an arrow in front of his general.

  “If I don’t go, she’ll die.”

  Washington smiled thinly. “Oh, no sir. Women do not die for such trifles.”

  “But, General, what shall I do?” The man was not angry at being refused, just plaintive.

  “What will you do? Captain, I recommend you do as I do and write to her to add another leaf to the book of women’s sufferings.” He winced at his own tone, as he could imagine what Martha would say if she were present, but thankfully for his status as the “demigod” of the revolutionary cause, she was not.

  When the captain was dismissed, Washington notified Colonel Fitzgerald that he was done with petitions for the day, and set himself to correspondence. He read a dispatch from his spymaster stating that an agent in Philadelphia with a code he recognized was confirming the movement of British troops out of the city in the spring. It was not the first report Washington had received on the subject, and he looked out of the window for a moment and considered what it would mean to his army, starving in the snow, to retake their capital, even if it were retaken only because the enemy abandoned it.

  A knock at the door interrupted his reflection. Billy leaned in and indicated the marquis a little behind him. Washington beckoned.

  “The marquis has a man he wishes to introduce, General,” said Billy. “I think you might want to hear him.”

  Washington nodded. “Some warm punch?” he asked, and Billy vanished.

  The marquis bowed elegantly and made way for a far less graceful man behind him.

  “My General, may I have the pleasure of introducing Freiherr von Steuben, formerly a general in the service of the King of Prussia? Monsieur von Steuben, J’ai le plaisir d’introducer le Général des Etats Unis, Monsieur George Washington. General, Freiherr von Steuben has little English.”

  Rather than Lafayette’s courtly bow, von Steuben clicked his heels together and bowed stiffly from the waist.

  “Votre servant, Monsieur le Général,” he said. Washington’s French was not good at the best of times. Washington waved them to chairs.

  “Please thank the Freiherr for coming. I am flattered to receive an officer from the Prussian King. How may I be of service?”

  There was a brief conversation in French, and Lafayette smiled. “The Freiherr wishes that he may serve our army. He makes no demand for rank and says that rather than importune you for some task, it might be best if he simply joined your headquarters and watched to see if he could be of service.”

  Von Steuben spoke rapidly again. Then he smiled and rose from his chair, bowed from the waist again and seated himself.

  Lafayette nodded and waited until his protégé had finished. “The Freiherr says that he served on the staff of the great King Frederick and also has conducted largescale…” Lafayette paused. “How do you say it, games, on the Champs de Mars?” The two foreigners looked at each other.

  Washington smiled benevolently. “Military exercises?”

  “Exactement. My pardon, General. I speak nothing but English for months and it improves iteself, yes? And then I have someone to speak the langue of home, and…”

  “Please tell Freiherr von Steuben that I would be delighted to make a temporary place on my staff, and that he should feel free to ask me anything he likes. I will assign John Laurens to translate for him. Laurens might learn more soldiering, and you, my dear Marquis, are far too busy to be a translator, I think.”

  If it was a reproof, it was a gentle one. Lafayette’s adoration of his general was sometimes a burden, and it imposed on Washington a restraint he had never used with another person, except perhaps Martha, but it was cheering, all the same.

  Washington called for John Laurens and Billy served hot punch to all four men. Washington thought of the contrast between the Yankee captain to whom he had been forced to refuse a furlough and the elegant Lafayette in his new uniform and fur-lined waistcoat, and the contrast made him think of Lafayette’s unlikely friend.

  “How is Captain Lake, Marquis?”

  “He does very well. His arm has healed cleanly. The hospital was worse for him than the wound, I think. I will have him out on patrol in a few days.”

  “What? Doesn’t he want a furlough like every other officer?”

  “General, George Lake is the true believer, yes? He will not leave this army until the enemy is beaten.”

  John Laurens bowed from the door and came in, snatching his share of the punch. He was in some middle ground between the ragged soldiers outside and the near perfection of Lafayette, but when the situation had been explained to him, he was able to translate for von Steuben very well indeed. When the three men began to discuss military matters in French, Washington cleared his throat and stood to his dominating height, and the others rose immediately.

  “My pardon, General. I meant no rudeness.”

  Washington smiled, a thin smile that left his teeth hidden, but with some warmth. “I must go back to the army’s work, gentlemen. Colonel Laurens, may I leave the Freiherr in your capable hands? Marquis, I thank you for bringing him, although I must say that I would have thought you natural enemies.”

  “Perhaps in Europe, Mon Général. Here, we unite in the cause of liberty.” Lafayette bowed deeply and the men withdrew, leaving Washington to plan his campaigns. Somehow, between the Yankee captain, George Lake’s recovery and von Steuben, his mood had changed. He was pleased.

  Billy closed the door and smiled.

  Philadelphia, April 30, 1778

  The army reentered Philadelphia to muted celebrations. The people of the City of Brotherly Love had watched armies come and go for three seasons now, and were inured to the change. The Loyalists missed the British, and indeed, so great a revel had the Mischianza proved that some heads were still recovering from it.

  The return of the Continental Congress restored the city to the position of capital, and the government returned with a rush, eager to renew the business of politics and also to seize the property of avowed Loyalists. It was a difficult time, particularly as the enemy was just across the river in New Jersey, busy retreating on New York, and Washington was keen to get across and harry their retreat.

  George Lake had marched through the city before, but the last time he had been a corporal. Now he was a captain, and thanks to the generosity of the marquis, he almost looked the part, in a good blue coat with red facings, a smart leather helmet with a visor, and his fine sword hanging by his side. He even wore good top boots in emulation of his idol. Behind him, his company shared in his fortune. Every man had a good wool coat, brought as bounty from France. The coats had been shared through the army by lottery, but most of the light infantry had received theirs first, not least because Lafayette had many friends among the younger officers of that corps. So Lake’s company, one of the best in the army, led the parade that was also a pursuit: they were to march through the city and board a ferry the next day.

  Reclaiming his company had proved less of a hazard than recruiting it. By the time George was fully recovered, he found his company had shrunk to just twenty-five men under a sergeant he didn’t know. In his absence, the other officer hadn’t been replaced and no drafts had been procured. George had be
en forced to tour the other companies and importune Colonel Weedon for more men. In time he’d got them and a new officer, Lieutenant Isaac Ross, a Scotsman from Alexandria with a far better claim to the rank of officer than George Lake. Ross, however, first encountered his new commander having wine with the much revered Marquis de Lafayette and never thought to question his commander’s antecedents.

  Ross was better than adequate. He roamed the column and watched the sergeants and made George’s life very easy, so that as they neared a certain corner, close by the City Tavern, George was able to turn his attention to a certain house. It was still a block away when George saw men at the windows and someone smashing the front door with an axe. He knew that the Lovells were Loyalists, and he knew the temper of the times.

  “Mr. Ross? Indian files from the flanks of sections, if you please. At the double!”

  George waited until his men began to file off and then led them up the side of the column, trotting along smartly. The men in the companies ahead were studiously looking the other way, trying to ignore what was happening under their noses.

  George’s friend Caleb commanded the company just short of the house. “What’s your hurry, George?”

  George pointed at the Lovells’. “I’m intending to stop the looters.”

  “Folks inside are Tories.”

  “Folks looting them are scum, Caleb.”

  “Aye, then. True enough. I’ll back your play.”

  George turned away and motioned to his men. “Take them. I want them all as prisoners. Smartly now, and no shooting.”

  He drew his sword and led a few men into the Lovells’ central hall. A big man was carrying a sewing table and seemed surprised to see a Continental officer appear.

  “This ‘ere’s my place. Go get your own.”

  George jabbed him in the face with the hilt of his sword and broke the man’s nose. “Take him.”

  Ready hands grabbed the man and George took the sewing table before it got broken. Around the house, through the great casemented windows, George could see his own men and Caleb’s forming a cordon. His sergeant was arresting men in the library.