Washington and Caesar (36 page)

Caesar was still lost in thought about brown wool and the possibility of better equipment. He knew that in the long run his company had to find a way to be mustered and placed on a regular status, but he hadn’t expected the path to be made smooth so suddenly. He walked back to the lounging work party and squatted down next to Virgil, who took a draw on his pipe and passed it to Caesar.

“He wan’ us to drill, Caesar?”

“Mr. Murray says we might get on the rolls as a company.”

“That’d be fi-ine.” Virgil nodded, a slow smile spreading. “And paid?”

“If they’re goin’ to make us soldiers, I guess they’d have to pay us.”

Caesar watched the battery moving a gun, always interested. They used levers to move the wheels on the biggest guns. It was an education just watching them, but that wasn’t where his thoughts were.

“Ever think where we come from, Virgil?”

Virgil laughed. “Every day. Every single day. Every time I swing that pick, I think ‘It’s still bettuh than bein a slave.’ Every time I drill, I watch them runaways from Jersey look at me like I’m some big man. I know I ain’t, but I won’t nevuh forget what I was.”

“Long way from the swamp.” Caesar was still watching the guns. He couldn’t quite meet Virgil’s eye, because he
still felt the losses of the swamp. And Peters’s death at Long Island. “An’ we didn’t all make it.”

Virgil sat up, dusted his jacket. The new Virgil, the soldier, was a fastidious man. “I don’ wan’ to hear none of that talk from you, Caesar. You got us here. Some died. They died free. What I wan’ you to look on is whether we stay free.”

Caesar turned sharply to look at him.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that there’s plenty of Loyal folk that own slaves. I’m saying that if we win, there’ll be plenty looking to take our guns away, an’ if we lose…”

Caesar stood up. “I don’t want to hear any of that talk from you, Virgil. Come on. Mr. Murray wanted us for a church parade.”

“I could use some church,” said Virgil, and started calling for his section to fall in.

Caesar fell the men in and led them to the river, where they washed some of the sweat off. They had a number of recruits, men who had swum the river to freedom, wearing nothing but shirts and trousers, and he arranged them in the rear ranks so that, at least from a certain angle, the company looked like soldiers with muskets and brown jackets. Then he marched them to the base of the battery, Corporal Fowver berating the new men in his sing-song Yoruba accent to keep the step.

The minister was a tall man, his altar a table and a drum with a Union Jack spread over it, and he stood quietly as Caesar marched the men up and halted them in front of the table. He tried to remember what they had done in Williamsburg when they had church parades, and the only thing he could remember was to open the ranks, as if God was going to inspect them. When he was done, he thought of saluting the minister, but that seemed wrong, so he took his place on the right of the company and waited.

The minister was a tall man, thin and elegant in his
black suit. Closer up, Caesar could see that he had dirt under his nails and some mud on his breeches and stockings, probably from assembling the little table and putting up the little tent, but he still carried an air of dignity. Caesar still felt he should say something, and so he stood straight and reported.

“Company of Loyal Ethiopians assembled for church parade, sir!”

He was aware of movement to his right and turned his head, expecting Mr. Murray, but what he saw was a girl, very young, just backing out of the little canvas tent and then rising with considerable grace from the straw-covered ground. She caught his glance and looked down in amiable confusion, and her pale darkness flushed. Caesar tried to snap his attention back to the minister, but there was something in her glance that kept him pinned a moment longer, and so he saw her look at him again from under lowered lids.

If the minister gave any sign, he did not show it, but walked along the ranks like a general, greeting every man and complimenting them on the turnout of the company.

“You are the first armed blacks I’ve seen. It is a pleasure to meet all of you, and a sign of great things. A pleasure, sir.” This to Jim, who was shy, as usual. On and on, through forty men, greeting each individually. He came to Caesar last, as if he had planned it so.

“An admirer of yours said that I should come here and meet you. I am Marcus White, a minister of the gospel.”

Remembering Sergeant Peters, Caesar gave a civil bow, his musket inclined away from his body.

“Your servant, sir. I am Julius Caesar, and temporarily in command of the Company of Ethiopians.” Caesar was still trying to trace the idea of an “admirer”. He must mean Lieutenant Murray.

“Several officers have spoken to me of this body of men, sir. Perhaps I should say that I was trained by the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel?” Seeing Caesar’s confusion, he said, “It would not be correct of me to explain myself more fully this moment, except to say that we men of color do have friends in England, Christian men who abhor slavery, and they have some influence in this army. I hope we will soon speak more fully.” They both bowed.

“I look forward to it, sir,” he said. Marcus White beamed at him, and moved with imperial dignity to the head of the company, where he turned, and put a hand on the Bible that was the sole ornament of the table. Raising his right hand, he began the service of morning prayer.

“When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive,”
he said.

New York City, September 15, 1776

The cannonade was short, and by the time he was ahorse and riding to the sound of the fire, the battle was lost.

Washington began to pass running men well before he came to the flats, and nowhere could he find an officer or even a company making a stand. New York and Connecticut militia flew past him, some disoriented. One man even threatened him with his musket when Washington tried to slow his flight. General Parsons rode up and joined him as he and his staff tried to make them stand. Again and again the knot of officers found themselves alone against an onrushing tide of red and Hessian blue sweeping over the autumn fields, their bayonets gleaming like the white tops on the ocean on a clear day, and always moving closer. Again and again Washington rode to the rear, found a good stone wall or a copse of trees and tried to rally men there. They merely waited until he rode off for more men before they, too, melted away. Washington began to hate them.

Whole brigades broke as soon as they were formed. Washington watched with horror as Fellows’s brigade failed to fire even once, but simply dropped their packs and their
muskets and ran from the Hessian troops in front of them. A few were foolish enough to run
at
the Hessians, who promptly shot them down. The British didn’t misunderstand so easily, and began to reap a rich harvest of prisoners.

Again he tried to rally them at the edge of a cemetery, where the walls would have held the Germans for an hour. And his men melted away. Again, in a churchyard, where men he sent into the little stone church simply broke a window, jumped free and ran. On and on, a nightmare of failure and cowardice that stunned him, sapped his resolve and made him question the worth of his cause, that so many young men would refuse their duty.

At King’s Bridge Road his staff ran into a column in full flight. A captain, his uniform torn and muddy, was beating men into ranks when Washington rode up. One of the men the captain had just prodded into line waited until the captain had passed him and then swung his musket into the officer’s side, knocking him down. The rest fled.

The captain climbed to his feet right in front of Washington.

“It’s like herding cats,” he said, more in wonder than in anger, and ran off down the road after his men.

Washington watched the wreck of his army huddling on the road, and saw muskets lying everywhere in the muddy fields, with packs and blankets spread among the stubble. The wealth of his new nation had been spent to provide these men with arms, and they were throwing it away.

Just then a company of British light infantry appeared to his front, moving quickly toward him. He and his staff were badly outnumbered, and virtually unarmed except for the pistols in their saddle holsters. To his right, another group of men appeared from the trees, and Washington saw that they were black. For a moment, he hoped that they were some of his own Rhode Island troops, but they had black cockades and white rags on their arms.
They began to fire at the wreck of the Tenth Continental Regiment behind him on the road, which flinched and broke again, their colonel racing to the rear on his horse. The British had only two companies here, and a
Continental brigade
was fleeing from them. It sickened him.

Washington wheeled his horse and cantered back to the routed column. He was humiliated, his whole being suffused with rage at having to run in front of the British.

One of the blacks started to run with him. He was well away to the north, but he was moving quickly, and the other black men started to follow the man. He was
fast.
His gait was familiar, somehow.

He was going to try to cut Washington and his staff off from the column all by himself.

The man leapt a stone wall and Washington, fifty paces away, leapt it on horseback in the same moment. His staff was just behind him, riding hard and making their jumps as best they could.

The black man stopped, raised his musket, and fired, not at Washington but at someone behind him. There was a shout and they rode on, and the black man was not quite fast enough to catch the mounted party. Washington jumped another fence, his greatcoat flying off behind him, low on his horse’s neck as if he was hunting. He hadn’t buttoned his greatcoat, only wearing it loose on his shoulders. Now it was gone.

He galloped, his face red with anger, his back already cold in the bracing, damp air. To
fly
from the enemy like this, in the face of his own men, was not to be endured. He rode right through the column and turned his horse to look back. His staff was clear, but someone had been taken; a big horse was wandering and a group of the black men were surrounding a man in a blue coat on the ground. The tall black man waved his greatcoat and laughed.

It became the focus of all the day’s humiliations.

John Julius Stewart slumped a little in his saddle, the cool air biting through his clothes, now damp with sweat. He still wasn’t himself. He had lost a
great
deal of blood before the surgeon had closed the wound in his leg, and two weeks hadn’t healed everything. He saw spots when he rode too hard.

Jeremy reined in behind him.

“There he is!” he called, pointing at Caesar, the black sergeant. Stewart walked his horse over, too tired to trot.

Caesar was wiping the lock of his musket. His men had a prisoner, a wounded officer. None of Washington’s army had regular uniforms, and rank was often difficult to ascertain, but this one looked senior.

“Was that your Mr. Washington, Caesar?”

“Yes, it was, Captain Stewart.”

“We almost had him.”

Caesar finished wiping his lock, stuffed the linen rag into a leather hunting pouch and stood up. He turned his back and pointed at something rolled tight across his pack.

“That’s his cloak.”

“Who’s your prisoner?”

“Some officer from his staff. He’s not hurt bad, if you want to take him.” Caesar looked up at Stewart and saluted, raising his musket across his body and then up by his face, erect in the air in the correct position for an enlisted man to greet an officer. Stewart wondered wryly why he bothered at all. Caesar met his eye. He was clearly happy, his whole face suffused with warmth. Stewart could see that he had a hunting sword on his hip, a lovely sword not much bigger than a knife with silver fittings and a greendyed ivory grip.

He pointed at the sword. “Was that his?”

Caesar laughed. “Well, sir, he didn’t seem to need it.”

“Rest easy, Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Stewart thought that Caesar was like some of the great
craftsmen he had known. Men whose brilliance was wholly in the art of what they made, except that Caesar’s art was war. He was slow to salute because cleaning the lock of his musket was so much more important.

Stewart’s company came up quickly, their bayonets gleaming. The shattered rebel column was near, well within musket shot. Stewart raised his hand and closed his fist, and in response his bugler sounded a call.

Skirmish! Skirmish! Skirmish!

Caesar looked down the road and then back up at Stewart, still smiling like a man who has found paradise.

“We’re gon’ to be in a
whole
lot of trouble when they fin’ we only have a few men.”

Stewart nodded. “The harder we press them, the less likely that will be, Sergeant. If you will be kind enough to keep your lads nipping at their flank, and we stay on the rear of the column, we should move them along briskly enough.”

Beside him, Sergeant McDonald blew his whistle, and the first shots began to be fired by his company. They were tired, but happy. All day they had driven the rebels like cattle, without the loss of a man. File leaders aimed and took their shots, and across the field, a man in a brown woolen shirt fell, coughing out his life as his lungs filled with blood, the shock of the big bullet already taking him away. His mates broke again, pushing to the rear, crying out that there were cavalrymen behind them.

Caesar took his men and ran off to the left. He didn’t have a whistle or a bugle, and he wanted both. He wanted the quick communication with his men that Stewart had. Stewart was better than Mr. Robinson, better even than Captain Honey. Caesar wanted to know everything that Stewart knew.

He ran, his nostrils flared, breathing easy, his shot pouch riding high on his hip, his boots comfortable and easy. He
looked back over his shoulder and slowed his pace to stay with his men, none of whom was as fast or as easy in their gait as he. Virgil was laboring, and Jim looked done in, and there were other faces already gone. Not lost, or shot, just fallen by the wayside because the pace was too fast. But the best were still with him, about a platoon, all armed, and he circled a little woodlot with a stone wall, coming back to the wall when it ran out parallel to the road, and throwing his band behind it. Most of them lay down, panting, even though there was a whole army of rebel stragglers just a pistol shot away.