Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  “No, ma’am. Pardon this question, which might seem a tad brash, but do you know a Captain George Lake of the Continental Army?”

  Both of them gasped, although Miss Betsy appeared the more moved.

  “Captain Lake is getting missives from the enemy,” said Caleb Cooke, handing George a thick canvas wrapper. “This came through the lines for you from New York, and the whole staff wants to know why you’re so popular.”

  Lake was sitting in the main room of his host’s farmhouse, trying to get his charcloth to cook right by tapping his tinderbox to make it heat more evenly.

  “Have a pipe for your messenger boy?” asked Cooke when George continued with his task. George pointed to the mantelpiece, where two long white pipes lay alongside a brass tobacco box. When he had the tinder going the way he wanted it, George took the heavy canvas package and opened it with a clasp knife from his waistcoat pocket.

  “Would the gen’lemen like coffee?” asked the farmer’s wife. Caleb smiled broadly.

  “Damn, you have better quarters than I do. My proprietress speaks only Dutch.”

  George grunted, still wrestling with the wrapper. When he had it free, he could read the inner envelope.

  “It’s from Captain Stewart!”

  “That fellow you had as a prisoner?”

  “He’s the one. Fine fellow. I liked him. If the British were all like him, I reckon we wouldn’t have a war.”

  He opened the envelope and the size of the parcel was explained. Twenty envelopes fell out, and a small package.

  “I guess you two had a lot to talk about,” said Caleb, around his pipe.

  George gave a shout and bounced out of his chair.

  “Bless that man!” he said, pounding his fist in the air. “God bless John Julius Stewart and his family forever.”

  Caleb watched his usually dour friend in amazement. George had tears in his eyes and he was laughing and then he kissed one of the envelopes. Caleb had to look away, it was so peculiar.

  “Don’t you get it, Caleb? Stewart’s found my Betsy. In New York!”

  Caleb sighed and puffed his pipe.

  New Jersey, April 15, 1780

  Sam had shot up over the winter. He was too big to be Polly’s boy anymore and almost too big to use as a child. Food and affection had changed him, too. He had a hard time playing at being a slave and he resented the slights he met with in the role.

  Since she had married Caesar, Polly hadn’t wanted to spy much, either. Her own nerves were worn and now she watched his as she waited to leave. He began to quarrel with her father. He never told her that she had to stop spying, although she sensed he wanted to. Perhaps he knew she had her arguments ready, or perhaps he understood the game and the cost too well.

  In April, she discovered she was pregnant, but she kept it to herself because she had miscarried in the fall and she didn’t want Caesar and her father to treat her as if she was made of porcelain. She took the mission when it came because she thought this baby was going to stick and she might not be able to go again. She wanted to do her duty one more time.

  Caesar led the patrol intended to get her through the rebel lines. She had never done this with him before, but this time he insisted and his men treated her like a queen. They landed by boat from Staten Island and made camp. Caesar and his men were going to attack a mill the next day. She would return to New York through the landward side in a week.

  They sat around a tiny fire, huddling close and holding hands until long after the other men were snoring. Only the sentry was awake, off in the dark in a hide made of fallen boughs. Their breath steamed in the cold.

  “You know I’m going to worry about you every day,” said Caesar.

  Polly pressed his hand tighter. “Don’t talk about it,” she said. “I’ll be back soon enough. Don’t you go and get shot.”

  He laughed. “Not likely.” He pressed her hand back. “Ever wonder what we’ll do when this is over?”

  She snuggled in closer. “We’ll be warmer.”

  “Sometimes I think that there is a joy in this I might not find in peace.”

  “Julius Caesar, you talk a lot of nonsense.”

  Polly had no trouble on her rounds. She dropped three documents in three different places, all dead drops so that she wouldn’t know the recipient if she were caught. She had to meet one man in person, and he was dismissive of her as a messenger because she was black. He ordered her to send someone of higher rank the next time. She shook her head as she left him. Higher rank? As a spy?

  Sam was more of a liability than a help. He made some of her drops and watched for her but twice he got into fights with white boys his own age. He wasn’t used to being called names anymore.

  Their rendezvous for going back was in New Jersey, which meant she had to cross the Hudson. The ferry proved to be far more dangerous than it had ever been before, with guards who checked papers and were deeply suspicious of her, slave or no. She and Sam made it across, but she feared that the sergeant had sent a description of her ahead. She decided to keep to back roads and stayed with some Dutch negroes she had met before the war, hiding for a few days and missing her first rendezvous. Caesar would worry, and she wanted to go to him, but that was sloppy thinking, the kind that got spies killed.

  She passed the rebel camp on the river, thinking that this was the home of Captain Stewart’s friend who was sweet on Betsy Lovell. So easy for her to stop and reassure him. So foolish to think that way. She passed well south of the big rebel post at West Point and cleared a drop there. She had no idea who the post was for but she thought he must be very important as his was the one post she was to clear regardless of her other circumstances. Her mission complete, she started downriver, looking for roads south and east into New Jersey, and began to use Sam the old way, sending him well ahead on roads she didn’t know to look for guardposts.

  They walked for a day and then lay up in a burned-out house, sleeping in the cellar. She was a day early for her second rendezvous and she was a little lost. Her careful walking on back roads had taken an unfamiliar turn and she thought she might be near the old Day House in Bergen County, but the ground was steeper than she imagined. There were patrols out, soldiers moving in the cold before dawn, and she didn’t know which side they were on, so she and Sam huddled close. They had no sleep.

  Finally they got up and started forward. Polly knew she looked poorly, and that might hurt her if she had to pass a post. She tried to straighten her clothes but her petticoats were soaking wet. She worried that she looked like a runaway. With his wild hair, Sam sure did.

  It started to rain. That had benefits, and she determined to go as far as she could while it lasted. They trudged on, heads down, her straw hat pasted to her head. They were both soaked through. Polly’s stays began to bite her sides and waist and she thought she might be bleeding.

  The morning passed and still the rain fell. Soon it was all they could do to put one foot in front of another. Sam hadn’t talked for hours, and she stopped sending him ahead because she couldn’t bear to stop walking. She knew they had to find shelter or they’d die in the open.

  Just after noon her heart rose a little when she passed a big red clapboard house she recognized. They were less than a mile short of their rendezvous and although the road rose steeply, she started to walk faster.

  “I don’ think mah legs will go any bettah,” said Sam.

  “Better, Sam. Less than a mile to go.”

  “You jus’ sayin’ that.”

  Polly pointed into the wind and panted. “No, I ain’t. Over the crest of this hill…”

  “What’s over the crest of this hill, honey?” asked a voice behind her.

  She turned and saw four white men, two on horses, and more men behind them. They had guns, three of them rifles.

  “Where you run from, honey?” said the voice. “Take ’em, boys. That’s cash on the hoof.”

  Polly had never met Bludner but she had heard about him often enough from Sally to
know the face and the manner. There would be no brazening this out. She picked up her sodden petticoats, summoned her tiny reserve of energy and ran, long white-stockinged legs flashing in the wet as she dashed up the road. She was past Sam before he had even turned.

  “Slave-takers,” she said. At least it didn’t give away their real errand.

  Sam didn’t hesitate either, but he didn’t run. As the horseman came up on him, Sam leaped on to the horse’s back, tugging at the rider.

  Bludner lost a stirrup and got a fist in his mouth before he mastered his opponent with two brutal moves and threw Sam down in the road.

  “Take him, you fools. Carter, you’re with me.” Bludner whipped his horse and it sprang forward.

  Polly had no idea what Sam had done, or what the result was. She ran over the crest of the hill and started down the other side, where the road turned steeply. After the first turn there was a boulder, and she left the road and ran into the brambles beyond, tearing her stockings and her bare thighs and carrying on regardless. She heard the horses come over the crest behind her and she broke through the brambles and into some trees.

  “Where’d she go?”

  “She must be in them woods,” said another voice, and she heard horses’ hooves on the road. Then she ran again, spurred by pain and fear like a wounded animal, and she ran down the hill, making leaps from wet rocks that would have terrified her on any normal day. She landed badly at the bottom, turned her ankle and hobbled on, too scared to stop. But surely no man on a horse could come down a hill like that.

  She smelled smoke. Not wood smoke, but smoke from a pipe, and she hoped it might be a party out for her rendezvous. The slave-takers’ horses were on the road, coming down the hill the long way, and all she could do now was hobble. She was sweating, warm for the first time in two days. She stopped behind a huge oak and looked for a place to hide.

  She saw the Loyalist sentry at the same moment he saw her.

  “Rebels on the road. They’re after me. They have my brother,” she panted. “Where’s the officer?”

  It wasn’t Caesar. She’d asked her father not to let Caesar come out for her because he’d fret too much, but now she wanted him because he’d know how to save Sam. And then something snapped inside her and she sat down on a rock and watched the blood coming down her legs.

  The patrol was from the Loyal Americans, with some Jaegers along for the fun, and they were on the road in a flash, but all their priming was wet and Bludner rode away.

  Polly sat on her rock and wept.

  “We lost that girl,” said Carter. “Sergeant at the ferry thought she was a spy.”

  “She is. Why the British use niggers for spies beats me, but she is. We’ll have her the next time she crosses the lines, and then we’ll see some fun.”

  “We got the boy, though.”

  Bludner laughed and looked at Sam, who he’d already beaten so badly that Sam’s face was lumpy, as if made of clay. Bludner spat. “I don’t think he knows much.”

  “You gon’ ta kill him, sir?”

  “Kill him?” Bludner laughed. “Kill him? Carter, that’s why I’m a captain and you’re a corporal. I ain’t gon’ to kill him.”

  Bludner looked at Sam and smiled, showing all his stained teeth, and spoke carefully, so Sam would understand.

  “I’m going to sell him.”

  Boston, April 28, 1780

  The wharves of Boston stretched out into the distance so that the harbor seemed like a winter forest of bare trees. The British blockade was neither close nor thorough and trade was flourishing, although nearby Newburyport had as much or more because there was no British frigate to watch the entrance to the Ipswich River there. Most of the vessels in the harbor were local, although there were Dutch and Spanish ships, and a French warship just arriving, the Hermione, toward which George Lake hurried with horses and several soldiers.

  George was no sailor, but he watched the great frigate come in with fascination. She had some way on her from a fuller press of sails she had worn in the outer roads, and now she ghosted along under just a headsail through a riot of small boats and other ships. It seemed a miracle that she hit nothing. As he watched, she passed the pier where he stood and turned suddenly up into the wind, so that the last of her way came off her and she stopped, the latest in a long row of merchants and privateers anchored just off the Long Pier. He saw her anchor come down with a splash.

  There was quite a crowd gathering as George waited. When a boat pulled away from the Hermione, the crowd began to cheer. George cheered with them and then used his men to keep the head of the ladder clear as the Boston crowd pressed closer.

  Lafayette came up the ladder with his usual energy and, despite the presence of several dignitaries from the local assembly and the sovereign commonwealth of Massachusetts, caught George in a hug and kissed both cheeks, to George’s intense pleasure and embarrassment.

  It was hours before they could talk. Lafayette made several fine speeches and visited a number of homes. He gave another officer dispatches from the French Court at Versailles for the Continental Congress and he watched the landing of his new camp equipage personally. Finally, at the house of one of his many friends, he slouched down in a chair, watching a servant pull off his boots.

  “Tell me everything,” he said.

  George did his best—from the actions of the Congress to the successes of the British. Lafayette nodded along and drank wine. When George began to slow, Lafayette waved his hand.

  “But how is he? The Generalissimo? How is he?”

  George smiled. “He’s different, Marquis. Better with the men. He’s, well, more open, I think I’d say. And eager to see you, Marquis.”

  “As I long to see him. I thought of him every day, my friend, while I watched the posturing of the Court. Ah, if you could see Monsieur de Maurepas, you would understand the intensity of my frustration. No ships, too few troops, no muskets unless I paid cash. Nonetheless, George, on my ship I have enough uniforms, helmets and muskets for a division. They are mine, you understand? I purchased them. And I will see to it your company is among the first to be uniformed.”

  George laughed. “I can’t imagine how much money that would cost.”

  Lafayette made a dismissing motion with his hand. “Nothing. Nothing that I will worry about. I wish to take these muskets and place them before the General. Has he met Rochambeau? But of course he must have done. Is all well between them?”

  “I think they got along like good friends, Marquis. And I gather you have a son? May I congratulate you, sir?”

  “Ah, you may. Very nicely put, George. Three years as an officer and you sound the gentleman, eh? My little Adrienne has given me a son and I have called him after the general, as George Washington, yes?” Lafayette had a light in his eye and his whole face beamed with pleasure. “And you? You are still a captain? That is because I have not been here to press your claim, my hero. And have you married? What happened to Miss Bessy of Philadelphia?”

  “Miss Betsy, Marquis. And now she’s ‘of New York.’ We write, and I dare say we’re affianced, except no banns have been called. But I doubt we’ll wed before the war is over.”

  “That is romantic, George. I hope it makes you concentrate on the matter at hand, so you desire victory above all things. But I wrong you. You were always a true believer, and you have already put the cause first.”

  Lafayette looked at the earnest George, no longer quite so young. He had lines on his face and frost in his hair from five years of constant campaigning, and if he had more of the air of a gentleman than he had the last time Lafayette saw him, he had purchased it in blood. Lafayette thought George might be the archetype of the knight, the warrior who earned his name and escutcheon in the field and founded a great name.

  A servant brought the marquis a lit pipe, which he savoured. “You know, I have not smoked since I left the field in America. And now I come back to it. Very pleasant.” He pulled his feet under him in the wingback chair and c
urled sideways so that he faced George, a silk brocade dressing gown pulled loosely around him. No one would have mistaken him for American. He was too small, his features too open and soft. A pretty female servant came in with a pan of warm water, which she placed by the marquis, who watched her with interest. He continued as she built up the fire, and she caught his eye, then lowered hers and smiled. She curtsied and was gone.

  Lafayette smiled to himself. Then he looked back at George.

  “I have missed this country.” He waved his pipe. “And not just the pleasures of it. Do you know if I am to have a command?”

  George leaned forward. “I only know the rumor, but it is said you are to have a division of all the light troops in the army.”

  Lafayette punched the air with his pipe and gave a little shout.

  “It’s true, then. That is what I was promised in France. And, George, I will see to it that I have your company as well. We shall be the elite of the army, and we shall lead the way to victory.”

  Tatawa, New Jersey, October 13, 1780

  George sat in his tent, a fine small marquee he had inherited from Lafayette, and wrote his second letter of the day to Betsy, briefly describing his patrol and then transcribing a poem from a book provided by the marquis. George’s preoccupation with writing to Betsy and reading her letters had improved his literacy to the extent that he had been acting as Lafayette’s adjutant when Colonel Laurens wasn’t available.

  His French was also improving. Throughout the summer he had moved between the American camps and the French camps, carrying letters for the marquis and answers from the French staff, all of whom he now knew with some degree of intimacy. He could conduct a conversation with Lafayette’s father-in-law the Comte de Noailles, although the content of such conversations usually made him blush. Indeed, Laurens often joked to George that he’d had to learn a whole new vocabulary to deal with the aristocrats. They wanted to fight, and sometimes fought each other, but when no fighting was available their every thought turned to women.