Washington and Caesar (35 page)

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.

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.

Rufus Putnam, acting as the army’s chief engineer, shook his head and spread one of his hands meaningfully over the map on the table before them.

“There are simply too many routes on to the island. They control the river. They can reduce any one of our forts given time and inclination. They can land almost anywhere, and worst of all, they can bypass us and trap our men on this island.”

Washington pushed his chair back with his long legs and stood carefully to avoid entangling his sword with the table. He still smarted from defeat on Long Island, and he already sensed that New York was lost.

“We have lost the best part of three thousand men in the last week. We will lose more. Till of late I had no doubt in my mind of defending this place, nor should I have yet, if the men would do their duty.” He looked them over, and most of the brigadiers couldn’t meet his eye. The men were melting away, and the militia coming to fill their places were very poor soldiers, anxious already, made fearful by
the rumor of a defeat they hadn’t suffered. Greene, the firebrand, met his eye but shook his head.

“This is not the place, General. And this is not the army.”

“I agree. I despair of these men doing their duty. If I were called upon to declare on oath whether the militia had been most serviceable or hurtful upon the whole, I should subscribe to the latter. The army we had at Boston was better. We had a winter to train it, and now it has gone home and we must start anew.” He walked up and down the room, pausing twice to look out of the window at Virginia troops, most newly arrived. They looked healthy and willing, and their drill was good, but the Long Island veterans were shy, and had shown it. He could barely hold his temper.

“Send a letter to the Congress and inform them that I must consider the destruction of this city to deny it as a base of operations and winter quarters to the enemy.”

His military secretary began writing immediately.

Within two days, he had his answer.

“Resolved, that General Washington be acquainted, that the Congress would have especial care taken, in case he should find it necessary to quit New York, that no damage be done to said city by his troops, on their leaving it: The Congress having no doubt of being able to recover the same, though the enemy should, for a time, obtain possession of it.”

“They have lost command of their senses.”

“Congress is driven by money, and that, the New Yorkers have in plenty.”

“Not ours to speculate, gentlemen.” Just two days later, and Washington was looking down the same table. His defenses were no better, and indeed might be thought worse. There were Royal Navy frigates on the rivers, and his desertions had just reached a new high. “I suspect that the gentlemen of Congress have made a serious error here, but it is they that command us.”

“If Charles Lee were here, I dare say he’d have something to say,” commented one of the aides. He meant to be heard, but kept his voice low. Lee was not known for his patience with their political masters.

Washington had accepted Lee’s jibes, even approved them. Congress knew nothing of the conduct of war and insisted on tying his hands and appointing generals of little use and withholding rank from the best men. Congress had lost Canada and was now making a fair bid for losing New York. He wondered at himself, because just a year ago he would have bridled at allowing any man authority over his own decisions, but with every day he thought that such authoritarian ways led to the abuses of Great Britain, and he tried to submit meekly to his Congress because they represented a greater will than his own, even when they were wrong. And now they were ordering him to hold miles of coastline with untrained militia and a handful of regulars, against the finest navy in the world and their equally fine army. He could only make his dispositions and bow his head.

“Send to Congress again,” he said. He began to describe the defenses of the city, and the limited troops he had to defend it.

“How the event will be, God only knows,” he closed. His secretary dipped his quill one more time and it began to scratch again. “Circumstanced as I am, be assured that nothing in my power will be wanting to effect a favorable and happy issue.”

No one at the table met his eye, not even General Greene.

New York City, September 13, 1776

The Virginia Continentals were drawn up under Captain Lawrence to greet Colonel Weedon and his men as they marched into the flying camp. Lawrence was still parchment white, and he moved very carefully, but it seemed
he would survive his wound. George Lake was now a sergeant. He and Bludner were the only noncommissioned officers to survive the fight at the little redoubt. During the Battle of Brooklyn, they had been thrown in twice with the Marylanders and again on the darkened road back to the ferry they had tried to keep the British light infantry off the army’s heels, while their mocking horns sounded foxhunting calls all through the long retreat.

View Halloo.

His friend Isaac was dead, left behind in the mud at the little redoubt on Long Island. So many other men were gone, either dead, deserted or sick, that there were no longer any lines between the “true believers” and the “backwoodsmen”. The new line was between the men who had survived Long Island and the new drafts up from Philadelphia. They were still fired with enthusiasm. They also believed everything they had read in the papers there, and insisted that they knew more about Long Island than George did.

George Lake still held Bludner responsible for the wreck of the company in its first fight, but he kept a tight rein on his resentment. Bludner was an arrogant clod, but he was also a good sergeant with an eye for detail. He had led the survivors out of three traps and an ambush in that wet retreat.

Colonel Weedon made a joke to Captain Lawrence out on the parade and his horse fidgeted a little. George kept his hands clasped on his musket and stared straight ahead. Parades no longer interested him much. Colonel Weedon had missed Long Island. He was a tavernkeeper from Fredericksburg, a known social climber and an acquaintance of General Washington. That last stood in his favor with some.

The Third Virginia had also missed Long Island. They were the regiment to which Captain Lawrence’s company would now be attached. They would have a great deal to learn.

Down the Hudson River, the British battery on Montresor’s Island opened fire again.

Montresor’s Island, September 14, 1776

The artillerymen worked like no team Caesar had ever seen. There were dozens of them on each gun, yet every man had an exact place to stand, a path to follow as he performed his tasks. And every man’s task was different. Some fed the brass guns, taking paper cartridges of powder from stores well to the rear of the gun line and carrying them forward. Others loaded the powder charge down the barrel, or brought the iron balls from another store, or moved the gun to aim it. Each gun fired in its own time, and yet the impression Caesar received was rather like that of watching a perfectly tuned flintlock, or the innards of a watch at work.

He and most of the other Ethiopians were leaning on their tools well back from the guns. Caesar never tired of watching them fire, but the other men smoked or played cards. Their work had been finished when the gun platform had been dug, leveled and completed, but the engineers had expected the enemy to dig a counterbattery and return the fire, and had wanted them handy to repair any damage.

Instead, they had had three days of inaction due to what Mr. Murray described as ‘Mr. Washington’s incompetence’. Caesar kept them at their drill, and Mr. Murray, the engineer, had become their honorary officer. He had drilled them several times, marching in front and using his sword to indicate wheels and turns. He knew the drill much better than either Mr. Edgerton or Mr. Robinson had, although as an engineer he had never commanded troops. Caesar was learning about how the army worked. The red-coated officers were often well trained, but some were not. The engineers and artillerymen were all professionals, middle-class men who attended schools and knew
the business. Caesar thought they were lucky to have Murray’s interest.

Virgil was back to scrounging wool and sewing jackets. No one had come to take their arms, and so, unlike all the other work parties digging around New York, Caesar’s men had good muskets and all the accoutrements that went with them.

Bang.

The sound of the gunfire no longer made any of them jump. Virgil was making a jacket for a new boy called Isaac Vernon, a very thin runaway from the Jerseys, just across the water. He had swum to them during the night, and said that there was a rumor among the blacks over the water that the British Army was offering freedom. Willy and Romeo and Paget were dealing cards. Tonny and Fowver were working on a captured musket with a lock that wouldn’t make a spark.

Murray came over to Caesar, who stood up and removed his hat smartly, and bowed his head.

“Carry on, Caesar.”

Caesar relaxed a little.

“We’ll be taking New York in a few days.”

“So I figure, sir.”

“Captain Stewart wants to put your company on the provincial rolls, Caesar. That will get you paid, and some money for equipment.”

Caesar just smiled, suffused with happiness. To be regular soldiers, with pay and standing, would be a fine thing.

“When the army takes a city, things happen. There is usually some looting. Some men get rich. Others get hanged. Do you take my meaning, Caesar?”

“No, sir. I can’t say that I do.”

“You’re going to want cloth for uniforms, and more muskets. You’ll want barracks space. There are a host of things you’ll want. I guarantee that whatever officer you get will be poor. I’m poor myself, so I know. So there’s a
chance to pick up some cash, or maybe a few bolts of cloth.”

Caesar nodded along before Murray was finished.

“Now I understand you, sir.”

Bang.

“Church is being rigged in the rear of the battery, if any of you are of a mind to attend,” said Murray. “I don’t wish to be indelicate, Sergeant Caesar, but as the minister is both Anglican and a gentleman of color, I thought your men might feel comfortable in attending.”