Washington and Caesar (32 page)

“Who writes. Yes, sir. My pardon, I don’t know where my head was at. Miss Burney, who writes.”

“Just so. Her first is on the bed, called
Evelina.
A novel of very deep sensibility.”

“Are you finished, then?”

“Oh, yes. I had it off Waters. He recommended it, and I dare say I devoured it.”

Jeremy found the little brown volume, still only paperbound, with the covers curled and many pages bent. He sniffed at it—horse sweat. Most things smelled of horse, lately. Horses had a handsome aroma anyway.

“Did you get us any mail while I was off, Jems?”

“Yes, sir. Two from Miss McLean.”

“Give, you criminal!”

Jeremy walked to the little door between the tent’s two rooms and poked his head around.

“They’re on your hat.”

The hat, a small and fashionable bicorn trimmed in the regimental manner and boasting a spray of cock’s feathers, was the sole ornament of the tent’s central piece of furniture, a camp table. Tucked upright in the stiff Nirvenois back of the hat were two letters in travel-smeared outer envelopes.

“Ahh!”

Jeremy smiled and muttered “just so” as he went back to tidying the bedroom.

“I’d like to get a piece of Turkey carpet to put in here, sir.” Requests put during one of Miss McLean’s letters were apt to be granted.

“Jeremy, when this army moves, we have to move all this, you know.”

“We have bhat horses and baggage allotment.”

“Jeremy, trust a man who’s at least chased the odd smuggler in Ireland. When we move, half this stuff will vanish never to be seen again, and by the time we see action we’ll be sleeping in greatcoats and drinking soldiers’ tea.”

“I can get one for a shilling or two, sir.” Patiently, because
John Julius did not always know what was in his own best interest.

Jeremy had not expected to like his employer. He would have left a man he detested or who misused him. When he applied to be valet to a merchant’s son with manners to match, he had not expected humor, or tolerance, or a master willing to be a student in the arcane arts of the culture of the upper class. If John Julius Stewart had any flaws, they were the flaws of idleness. He seemed to have no temper at all, he didn’t fight duels, and his taste in women seemed entirely limited to just one, Miss McLean, a daughter of property and gentility in the wilds of Scotland. And Stewart had much to teach: he was a superb horseman, a crack shot, and had other skills that seemed, like the blades of a folding knife, to appear when wanted and then vanish, never to be hinted at. On board the naval ship that had carried them to America, he had endeared himself to the officers by knowing the names of every line and spar, a rare feat for a passenger and rarer for a redcoat.

When the regiment was ordered for American service and he had secured command of the light company, they had located cloth and tailors, and had every man in a dark blue watch cloak before the ship sailed, a little miracle wrought by hard guineas and Stewart’s merchant knowledge. These were the things at which Mr. Stewart excelled.

“Don’t start the book until my hair’s done, Jems.”

“Sorry, sir.” He had been looking out of the little window formed by dropping the wall of the tent a fraction, watching the dragoons at drill on the hillside above the camp. He picked up the leather sack that held his hair tools and pushed through the canvas drapes to the other room.

John Julius was sitting in the tent’s most comfortable chair, reading from a leather-bound book. His unruly red hair was unbound and unbrushed, all over his face and somewhere down his back. It gave him the comic air of a threepenny-opera pirate. His
robe de chambre
was pulled
over his regimentals; he had risen early to ride the rounds as he had been duty officer the night before. Jeremy rubbed his hands together, hard; they were cold, although it was just July. America was cold.

He brushed the hair with quick, practiced flicks of his wrist, working the eternally tangled ends apart.

“You were riding in the wind without even tying it back.”

“Don’t be a shrew,” said Stewart with a little show of temper.

“Just reach the ribbon round and tie it back! It can’t be that hard.”

“It was dark.” It was a terrible excuse, and they both knew it. A tiny skirmish in a long war that had started with his sisters and mother and would, Jeremy thought, eventually be continued by Miss McLean.

When the strands were well separate, he began to pull the brush through to stretch the hair. Every so often, he would use hot tongs to straighten it, although that was a major labor.

“I have to take the company out past the lines today. Bit of a probe this afternoon. I’ll expect you along.”

“Most pleased, sir.”

“We didn’t beat them as badly as I thought, the other day. Their marksmen are quite active.”

“Yes?”

“Phillips, from the Forty-third? You remember him?”

“I don’t believe I’ve had the honor of his acquaintance, sir.”

“Horseman. Tall fellow…never mind. But he caught a ball. They hold a little wood in front of their lines, and post their infernal marksmen there. I’m going to wait for the afternoon sun and drive them out.”

“I look forward to it. Honored, most pleased.”

“Yes, I expect you are. Horse, pistols with new flints.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I say, no powder, I think.”

Jeremy nodded, which was Jeremy’s way of conveying that he had never, at any time, considered using hair powder on a day of active duty. Then his lips curled a little, a very slight smile. A servant’s smile.

“Right, sir. New flints and no powder in the pistols.”

“Damn you, sir, you know what I mean.”

“Please don’t move, sir. It makes all this even harder.”

Jeremy whipped most of his master’s hair together in a queue and tied it off with a strip of leather.

“Which hat, sir?”

“Hmmm. The good hat, I think.” John Julius Stewart wanted to fight in his best, a habit shared by most of his compatriots.

Jeremy reached into the brazier and tried the heat of his crimping irons. Then he rolled a side curl with a practiced finger, placing it low enough that John could wear his hat in comfort, and set it, the smell of burning hair filling the tent. He set the other to match and dodged around to the front to check that they were even. When he was satisfied, one of the curls had slipped a touch and had to be redone, but its position was established and the rest was easy enough. Then he went back to the queue, releasing it from its little leather tie and brushing it out again, the tie held in his mouth. When it satisfied him that it looked something like fashionable hair, he spat out the tie, wrapped it as tight as he could and tied it off, then covered the leather with good black silk, bound the queue all the way down as the regiment required, and tied it off. The result was very good indeed, although it took quite a while. John Julius simply continued to read, with the obligatory grunts and cries of pain whenever his hair was pulled.

Jeremy picked up the hand mirror and held it so that his master could see most of the result.

“Splendid! Doesn’t look like my hair at all.”

“Sir.”

“Right. I’m off to see the adjutant about next year’s coat issue. I left you some money in the drawer; see that the bhat-man has new forage for the horses and so on, and meet me in the horse lines at one.” He pulled out his silver watch, glanced at it, and looked up. “Pass me the time?”

Jeremy pulled his watch out by the fob, opened the case and listened, then took a silver key and wound it several turns.

“I have a quarter past eight.”

“And I the same. Thank you, Jeremy.”

He took his best hat off the table, waved farewell, and pushed through the front flap.

Jeremy went back to his bed, picked up his master’s greatcoat, and returned to the sitting room in time to hand it over as John shoved back through the flap.

“Horse lines at one, sir.”

“Just so.”

Brooklyn Heights, New York, August 28, 1776

“Dig, you bastards!” Captain Lawrence stood in the open and bellowed at his men.

George Lake was too tired to resent the insult. The shovel twisted in his grasp, his hands were so numb they could barely close on the wooden grip, and the cold rain kept on falling. Out in the long green fields below them, the British skirmishers could just be seen, moving casually as if they expected no resistance.

No resistance was about what they had received, at least from George’s standpoint. His company had been hurried across the river to Long Island when it became clear that a major action was brewing. But they hadn’t seen any action; they had simply marched back and forth for two days and then become part of the broken army streaming back into the trench lines on the Brooklyn Heights. Perhaps General Washington knew why they had lost the battle
without any of them ever firing a shot, but it was a mystery to Lake.

Someone had been shooting, though. They had seen the casualties when they came across the river, piled in boats. Some men had turned white; some had feigned nonchalance. George had just been sorry—sorry that so many had been lost, and later, sorry that they had been lost for so little. There was a rumor that Washington had had to sacrifice his best regiment, Smallwood’s Marylanders, and that they had all been killed. Other men said that the German mercenaries killed every man they caught, and took no prisoners. Rumor was rife, and their company was digging alongside men from New England and Pennsylvania who had lost their regiments, lost their way, and been rallied by whatever officer caught them first.

George plunged the shovel into the mud again and scooped it full, then threw his cast on to the low rampart that was being formed by the upcast of the ditch. The ditch was spotty, shallow, and wouldn’t hide a man, and the upcast didn’t help much. George knew men were slipping away whenever Lawrence wasn’t looking. Most of those leaving were from other regiments, but a handful were their own comrades from Virginia, and their treason made George’s heart burn.

Bludner dug next to George. He was better at it, and tougher; George had to admit that. Weymes, his partner, wielded a pick, breaking the ground so that Bludner’s shovel could bite deeper. George watched them for a moment, watched their detachment and their competence. He hated Bludner, was sure the man had sold the drummer as a slave or killed him, despised his backwoods arrogance. But there was a great deal about the man to admire. He tended to get the job done.

“Here, then, Mr. Lake,” said Bludner, swinging another scoop of mud over his shoulder. “Get a mate to break the ground for you, like Weymes.” He didn’t sound exhausted,
just conversational, as if digging in the rain was an everyday part of life.

Lake turned to one of his men. “Get a pick. In fact, get five picks. Form teams. Watch Bludner and Weymes.”

“Where the hell have they been, they don’t know how to dig?” asked Weymes, contemptuously.

“Town boys, Weymes. They never had to dig no cellars. Don’t mind them, Weymes. They want to learn, mostly.” Bludner spat, wiped his hands to get a better grip, and dug again. His hands were hard as rock, even in a downpour; Lake, that leader of the “town boys”, would probably be bleeding in a few hours. That didn’t bother Bludner, especially, although now that it looked to come to a fight, he worried that he would have to depend on the likes of Lake to cover his flank.

“Will you look at that?” asked Weymes, and pointed away over the fields to the south.

The British skirmishers were firing into a wood to the left of their front. The wood seemed to be held by their own Continentals; a sharp fire came back. But it wasn’t the deadly little skirmish that occupied Weymes; it was the column of black men moving up the track, well to the rear of the British skirmishers. Even in the rain, Weymes could spot a black man at a great distance.

The black men walked up to a spot where several enemy officers were standing. They wore various coats, one red, one blue, another green, and Bludner had no idea what that meant, but soon enough, the black men spread out and started digging.

“Sergeant Bludner, shall I send you down a hammock?” Lawrence’s voice carried very well.

“Sir, there’s movement on our front, I think. See that clump o’ officers? An’ then the blackies? That’s new.”

There was a stir behind Lawrence, and then a whole party of mounted men came over the ridge and right among them, all in a rush. Some of the digging men were alarmed,
thinking for a moment they were under attack. Lake couldn’t see for a moment and a sense of panic was communicated to him by the men around him, but when he wiped his eyes he could see that it was a group of officers. The leader had to be General Washington: he was tall, and his horse was white.

Captain Lawrence didn’t lose a minute in communicating his own name, or that his men were the general’s fellow Virginians. Washington looked at them, digging in the rain, which was slacking off.

“Were you in action yesterday, Captain?”

“No, General.”

Washington didn’t dismount; he just sat on his horse and watched the British for a few moments.

“Just as I thought. Colonel Reed, send to General Mercer and the Flying Column at once.”

“Sir?”

“I believe that the British intend to take our defenses on Brooklyn Heights by regular approaches, by digging. Look at the arrogance of that work! It’s being constructed in our faces.”

Another officer shrugged.

“They know we have just lost our guns, General.”

Sergeant Bludner tugged at Lawrence’s sleeve. “I’d wager we could bust up their digging some, if you gave me a free hand.”

Lawrence nodded at him, and then stepped in closer to stand at the general’s stirrup. “They just started work, sir. We still have men in that wood to the left. I don’t know whose they are.”

“Riflemen, from Pennsylvania,” said the tall man who looked like Washington except his horsemanship was not of the same order. “I’m Joseph Reed, the general’s adjutant.”

“George Lawrence, of the Virginia Regiment.”

Washington didn’t appear to be paying them any
attention. He had a telescope out now, and was watching the black men dig. They were digging fast. They were digging a great deal faster than these Virginians, and that annoyed him.