Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  But when he caught up with Reverend White at a single great oak tree that marked a slight turn in the road, White was making no attempt to escape. He was weeping silently, great tears flooding down his face, a look on him that made Caesar flinch, and Marcus White raised his arms and Caesar felt his heart stop and he looked into the last red shreds of the setting sun.

  There were two white caps in the distance, and one had a basket on her head and the other walked in just that way. They were black women, and Caesar’s heart beat once, thud, as if all the promises of the world had all come true and again, thud, and they were closer, the dark coming down like rain between them so that no matter how fast the two women moved they seemed to be getting no closer. He realized that Van Sluyt was still polishing his musket, unknowing that happiness awaited him, and he shouted, and the slighter of the two women looked up, and began to run.

  He covered her in kisses and her father hugged her and they tried to accomplish all of this as they hurried Mrs. Van Sluyt down the road to her own husband. All the while the two excited women poured forth their story, of lines closed, of messengers missing their appointments, of an endless tangle of mistakes and missing friends. And then Hester Van Sluyt was in her husband’s arms, and Caesar had Polly’s hand, and they were back within the post.

  Without a thought but his own heart, Caesar said, “Promise me you’ll never do it again.”

  Polly glared at him like an angry cat. “Pshaw!” she said. “It suits you! I feel it every time you go out. And worse as I like you more!”

  He fell back, astounded for a moment and then chagrined, and caught her hand again and she let him. Marcus regarded them tenderly. To make a change, Caesar turned to him. “How did you know?”

  White laughed. It was a shaky laugh at best.

  “I didn’t know, Caesar, but it was my place to offer comfort if I could. He was afraid for you, my honey,” White said to Polly, and she bowed her head.

  “That’s all?”

  “Their passes…”

  “He means to say our passes were for a Saturday, and he knew that if I thought we were in danger I’d wait and cross on a Saturday,” she said.

  Caesar nodded, as if he understood. “You are very brave,” he said.

  “Pshaw,” she said.

  Yorktown, Virginia, October 14, 1781

  Washington looked out over the lip of the trench into the dark and listened to a dog barking somewhere in the British lines. Lafayette stepped up close to him and cautiously placed a hand on his shoulder. They could see nothing, could hear nothing, but they stood in the cold darkness and waited for the verdict of the battle.

  It was less a battle than a siege. Cornwallis, hugely outnumbered, had built a fortress of earthworks around the Tidewater town of Yorktown and had gone to ground like a fox, waiting for the Royal Navy to come and take him off. But the Royal Navy, for the first and only time in the war, had been outguessed and outnumbered, and now it was a French fleet that lay at anchor out in the Chesapeake. Cornwallis had little chance of succor but, being an excellent general and a professional, he was determined to hold his ground as long as he could.

  Washington, the farmer, was now the commander of the largest joint Franco-American army of the war. He had dug his approach trenches, planted his guns and bombarded the star forts and redoubts of the British. He had the advice of the best French engineers and some gifted Americans. He had the support of professional officers from all of Europe. But he was the commander and this was the best chance the fledgling United States would ever have to win the game. He tasted fear tinged with anticipation. They were so close to victory.

  Tonight, the picked men of his light infantry and the best of the French grenadiers would assault the most exposed British forts at the point of bayonet, in the best tradition of European arms. It was all managed like a play. In Europe, Kings came to sieges to watch the show. In America, there were only the actors. And in a few moments the last act would open and his best men would fling themselves on Cornwallis’s veterans, and then…

  Somewhere in the darkness a dog was barking, but George Lake was somewhere else.

  He could read Betsy’s last letter in his head, even standing in a dark and muddy trench. She’d said “love”, which was a hard thing for a young girl to say to a man she hadn’t seen in two years and who served the enemy. She’d said it several times, and constant rereading had imprinted the letter on him to such an extent that he could close his eyes and see the shape of her writing and the color of the paper.

  Someone nudged him and he opened his eyes. Even in the dark he could recognize Hamilton, his commander for the night. Hamilton squeezed his arm. “You’ll be a major in the morning, George,” he whispered, and George just shook his head. He had volunteered to lead the first rush over the top of the trench. It wasn’t for the promotion, although it was natural enough for the ambitious Hamilton to think so. It was to get it over with. They were close to the end and George had a chase in view, as the Virginian hunters liked to say. He wanted his Betsy, and a farm somewhere or a shop. It was close. So close that he chose to feel it was just over the top of the rampart of the great British redoubt a few hundred yards distant, if he could only get there.

  He shook Hamilton’s hand. He pushed through the crowd at the head of the sap and found Caleb Cooke, with whom he had exchanged last letters, just in case. He and Caleb shook hands without words because they had nothing left to say. He passed through men he had known since before Green Springs, since Monmouth or Brandywine, and often they would simply lock eyes, although some shook hands. They were all around him, all the men who had stayed true from the first fights, and those who had come later, until the dark was fuller than it could really be. He had tears in his eyes. He wiped them on his cuff.

  He went back to the head of his own men and got his spontoon, a long weapon like a spear. Around him in the dark, other officers and sergeants gave speeches. He didn’t have one ready. He put a foot up on a step and looked back over six years, and spoke quietly.

  “If I fall, no one stops. Just take the redoubt. That’s all that matters.”

  There was a pause, and even the damn dog stopped barking. And then the first red rocket burned up into the night from the French lines and George was out in the open, running, silent as a shadow.

  He could hear the others coming behind him, and he ran through the mud, jumping shell holes where the mortars had dropped their rounds short. Then he was into the ditch at the foot of the big redoubt, and now the British were awake and firing down at them. He heard a scream behind him, and another, and there was a wall of firing over his head and he ran on, his boots throwing mud high in the air, heading for the rear of the redoubt as they had practiced, where the walls were lower. And the firing seemed sporadic and his heart began to rise. He risked a look back and saw that Desmond, the New York boy, had the colors and was close behind him. They were almost at the end of the ditch when Desmond went down and George was tangled in silk. He grabbed the flagstaff and pounded up the steep slope of the rampart, his new breeches black with mud. He slipped and jammed in a heel to keep his spot and lost his spontoon. Above him on the wall, a man lunged at him with a bayonet. George parried with the flagstaff, pushed its point into the man’s face and suddenly he was gone. Finally reaching the top of the earthen wall, George raised the flag.

  At the foot of the inner wall a British officer had a platoon formed and though they were about to be overrun from three sides his men were finishing their loading as calmly as on parade. George admired them even as he collected his own men at the top of the wall and led them down, silence forgotten as they bellowed a cheer, an unstoppable tide of blue coats. Then something punched him in the chest and he felt the British fire and he was down, the cold of the mud catching at his hands and his neck.

  New York, October 14, 1781

  Jason Knealey liked working in New York better than in Philadelphia, where the people were all suspicious. New York was full of alleys and bolt-
holes, and he had no need to do his real work any more. He was an important man, and spying paid.

  He walked up the black whore’s steps with a steady pace, trying to draw out the pleasure of the moments before she opened the door. His coat flapped a little behind him. He knocked at the door and heard her familiar movements, the hesitation as she came to the door, and he knocked softly in the code. It was supposed to change every visit, but such things couldn’t interest him, and he simply rapped out a little series, four, pause, two, pause, four. She was supposed to answer in code to tell him it was all clear, but he had never even taught her this nuance. She opened the door. She was smiling in a way she had never done for him and he wasn’t sure he liked it, but he pushed into the room boldly.

  “I hope you have something worth my ride,” he said, and then his riding whip was taken from his hands and he was on his back looking at her pale blue ceiling.

  “If ye do everything I say, just the way I say, I won’t open ye with ma’ wee knife and let a dog tear at yer guts,” said Sergeant McDonald.

  Polly kissed him quickly on the lips.

  “I’ll try to be braver than you were,” she said.

  “I’ll be back in the morning,” he said, and then realized that she had said the same. She shook her head, and her father came forward and took his hand.

  “I am not supposed to shed blood, and yet I almost envy you this. It’s open, compared to the other. Clean.”

  “Tell Sally I’ll kill him.”

  Marcus White turned his head away for a moment, and then back. He was struggling with himself. “I admit that is what I want. I console myself that he is an evil man.”

  “Reverend, this isn’t for you. But I’ll kill him.” He was calm, now. The wonderful clarity that going into action always brought, the way it simplified. He leaned past Marcus White and took Polly in his arms.

  “I’ve been scared enough for both of us,” he said. “Now I’ll be back.”

  “See that you are, then,” she said, and it was time to march.

  The little house on Cherry Street was already familiar to the men of Captain Stewart’s company who followed Sergeant McDonald. They’d had it pointed out for two weeks. But it was no part of the sergeant’s intention to let his captive know that his information was worthless. McDonald wanted him to betray, and betray again, until his betrayal became automatic and he gave them the thing they most desired, which was the location of the covering party commanded by Bludner. So McDonald walked along Cherry Street until the man blubbered that here was the first house, and that the man inside, Mr. Harris, was his contact. They took Harris in his nightgown, with his wife weeping by the door. He was small fry, and McDonald knew his role. He made sure to let Harris see the unhappy messenger, Jason Knealey. He had his orders, and his orders were that every man they took was to see Knealey. Anyone from the other side who examined the evidence would assume Knealey had betrayed the whole chain of agents. It was a constant danger of the spy trade, and Marcus White planned to exploit it.

  Lieutenant Martin had the Guides formed at the top of Broadway, ready to pass the inner post as soon as Sergeant McDonald joined them. There was a large column ahead of them: the whole of the Loyal Americans, as well as a company of Hesse Cassel Jaegers, and some dragoons at the head. It was a small army, and Colonel Robinson was its commander. He rode up and down the column, checking their last details, calling on individual officers and sergeants to describe their targets. The main part of the column was intended to surprise the New York militia post at the ferry, and each company had a particular assignment—this house or this barn, or crossroads—that they were to secure. Many of them glanced curiously at the Guides, because they knew, as soldiers know, that the Guides had some other mission, and might join them on their own in some way. There wasn’t much talking. The columns were allowed to lie on their arms and men went to sleep on their packs.

  Just after the moon set, Major Stewart appeared on horseback.

  “They have the spy. He’s on his way,” Stewart said. He looked very white in the moonlight, and Caesar thought it probably still hurt him to ride.

  Stewart had no need to come. He was going home to Scotland, had been mentioned in dispatches again for the action in New Jersey, and was buying his next rank in a regiment still stationed in England. Caesar knew he was there, sitting his horse in some pain, because of Jeremy, and Sally, and he nodded to himself and moved over to his little knot of corporals.

  “Get them up,” he said. Stewart was already gone, up the column, and men were getting to their feet like ghosts rising in a play, or an army summoned from the ground. The Loyal Americans were in a dark green that looked black in the dark, and most of the redcoats in the column had workshirts pulled over their coats to conceal them. His own men formed quietly, each man looking for his file partner and falling in until the whole company was there. Ahead of them, the rest of the column was marching with only a few whistles sounded, leaving the Guides alone on the dark road.

  Sergeant McDonald came up out of the dark on a small horse, leading another. McDonald was wearing a greatcoat, and the other regulars with him were wearing their workshirts over their coats, too. They fell in with the Guides and the party moved off, passing the inner post with a whispered password and the outer post in silence. Then they halted for a moment and Caesar looked to Stewart and Martin, caught their eyes, and ordered the men to prime and load.

  Martin kept walking up and down, a fund of nervous energy. He had passed his tests of fire, but this was a different kind of war and needed different nerves. Stewart sat in the starlight, a dark figure with an oddly shadowed face. Jason Knealey feared this silent figure even more than he feared McDonald, a deep-in-the-gut fear that made his flesh crawl, and he all but sobbed aloud when he saw the Guides clearly, row on row of black men.

  “Bludner talks about them,” he said trying to sound friendly through his terror.

  “Which, now?”

  “The black men. He talks about them, an’ how he’ll get them someday.”

  “Oh, aye. Weel, I dinna think he’s going to get this lot, but we’ll see.” McDonald was chewing tobacco and seemed lost in thought, and Knealey tried the bonds on his wrists. He felt the knife press his guts, just a pressure through his clothes, but firm and very steady, and he moaned.

  “You’ll live to see the dogs start on ye,” said McDonald. Knealey just shook.

  The last rammer rammed home the last cartridge while McDonald reviewed their destination with Knealey for the seventh time, and gave his captain the nod.

  “Time to march?” asked Lieutenant Martin.

  “Time to run,” said Sergeant Caesar, and Stewart nodded.

  “Just so.”

  “Van Sluyt, take two files ahead and don’t get beyond our sight. Stop and come back if you see anything. Virgil, four files to the left of our path. Stay fifty paces from the column and rejoin if you see anything or cannot pass a piece of ground otherwise. Jim, the same on the right. At the double then. March, march!”

  They left the road across the unplowed ground of a fallow field, and in a moment they were lost to the sight of the last outpost.

  “Where they goin’?” asked one of the soldiers on duty. The other shook his head.

  “Glad they’re on our side.”

  They moved for almost an hour without a pause, undiscovered through the night. The scouts reported nothing that could be construed as suspicious, and the column took its first rest halt in a gully at the base of a dark mass of hills. They were making a long arc to their destination to avoid intermixing with Colonel Robinson’s party. They had some hope that Bludner was expecting his messenger from the opposite direction.

  After five minutes’ rest and no pipes, they moved again, now at a quiet march across dark fields. Anything in among the trees was invisible in the black, and the sky was an endless field of stars that covered the heavens and seemed to have a clarity and a depth more suited to a winter night.

  They st
opped when Virgil called a halt by waving, but he had only flushed a deer, and the astonished column watched as the big doe and her fawn raced down the whole length of their little column. Sergeant Fowver slapped the doe as she ran by and laughed softly.

  “Bet she never been slapped befo’,” he said quietly, and Caesar glared at him. Then Caesar gave two soft pipes on his whistle, and they were moving again, through an apple orchard full of ripe fruit where Jim Somerset stopped them for reasons he couldn’t explain to Captain Stewart in a hurried conference. But Caesar respected Jim’s ways, and he sent Virgil forward with three old hands to feel out the last few hundred yards of the approach. Knealey sat and sweated, and the other men made their last checks of their equipment. No one spoke. Men filled their haversacks with apples.

  To some, it seemed that Virgil returned in a moment, but to Caesar and Stewart he seemed to be gone half the night.

  “Sentries out,” he said. “An’ more under cover, I reckon. Hard to tell in the dark.”

  “And you have a route?”

  “All the way to the last cover.”

  Stewart called for all the NCOs down to the lowliest corporal to attend him, and they moved well off from the column to be as quiet as they could. Virgil drew them a hasty sketch in the dirt.

  “A big barn heah, an’ the house. The yard is open an’ they ain’t no fence.” He was nervous, Caesar could see, almost shaking from what he had just done. Caesar thought of Polly and all the different ways that people were brave.

  “Then this is a little patch o’ wood, and this is a wall, jus’ so high,” and he indicated his thigh. “They’s men behin’ that wall.”