Washington and Caesar (48 page)

He trotted his horse along the verge of the road, careful to keep clear of the column. The men seemed afire with enthusiasm suddenly, every one of them racing forward, faster and faster, the column beginning to resemble a giant race, at least in the vanguard. Back in the main body, Washington could see that the companies were moving well, better closed up, which would be vital if the plan was to work. Greene’s entire column would have to form line to the right, a complex maneuver. He watched them for a moment, and then heard the welcome sound of musketry
from the direction of Sullivan’s column. The alarm was sounded. Any surprise was over. Now it would be a battle, and in truth, the die was cast.

George Lake had plenty of time to watch the last moment of the preparation, as a flaw in the wind cleared the snow for a moment. Off to the south, Sullivan’s column was a dark mass on the low road, and his own column lay ahead and behind him. And then in an instant, all the order was chaos as they reached the outlying buildings. Mercer’s men began to hurl themselves at the stone houses, and there were scattered shots. He had no idea who was firing or at what. He could hear the head of the column cheering, cheering like madmen, and his own men began to press forward. He hadn’t heard such cheering in all his time in the army. He pressed them back with his musket.

“Keep your intervals!” he bellowed.

A scattering of shots came their way, and he heard one whicker past. It made little impression on him. The head of the column was trying to form in the narrow streets, and Captain Lawrence was shouting for them to “form front by company”, but George could see that the guns which the army had moved with so much labor from across the river were trying hard to reach the front.

“Stand fast!” Lake bellowed. He pointed at the guns. Lawrence froze for a moment with a look of pure hatred on his face and then it cleared as he saw the guns moving, and he nodded sharply. The Fifth Virginia detached men to move the guns faster, and suddenly there were heavy
bangs
and the heady smell of sulfur. The column shuffled forward again. The guns were commanding one street, but it seemed that the Germans were forming on another and suddenly, unexpectedly, George Lake was in the front rank facing them. The rest of the column must have suddenly gone down the other road. An arm’s length away, a four-pounder fired, the canister of little metal balls cutting men
down in tens. The noise made his ears ring. Captain Lawrence sprang to the front.

“Follow me!” he yelled. Instantly he took a ball and went down. The men, most of whom had taken a step forward, shuffled. It was a moment of hesitation, and Lake wouldn’t have it.

“At them, Virginians!” he yelled, and his company followed him forward. Behind the little screen of German infantry were two of their battalion guns, three-pounders that could shred their company in a heartbeat. Screaming their
huzzas,
the Virginians raced down the street as the German gunners struggled with the high wind to get the touch holes of their guns primed. George Lake watched it all, his whole being focused on the man placing a quill of powder in the touch hole and then stepping back. The Germans were afraid, caught unprepared in the street, and the man with the linstock that could fire the piece was slow, he fumbled his movement a little and George was there, atop him, sweeping him off his feet. He rolled off the man and hit him in the breast with his musket butt and before he could move to another enemy, the guns were taken.

He picked himself up slowly, covered in the nasty slush and mud of the street, to find that he was standing at the feet of General Washington’s horse.

“Well done, Virginians,” Washington said, and rode off.

“What’s your name, Sergeant?” asked an aide, riding up.

“I’m George Lake, an’ it please you, sir.” Lake suddenly felt old and tired. The officer looked calm, comfortable, and elegant, all things that were beyond George Lake this morning. The officer saluted him, raising his hat, a gesture that he never expected, and rode off. Lake turned on his men, busy looting every German in sight.

“Form on me!” he yelled.

Victory. Not since Boston had he had this feeling, this gentle elation of spirit that held him above the earth as
if floating along in a gallop. They had taken nearly the whole garrison of Trenton, three regiments, and more driven off in the snow without their guns. He had a further gamble in mind, a quick lunge against the British concentration at Princeton a few miles away to break up their timing and disrupt their attempts to attack him. It was a technique that every fencing master taught, to attack into your enemy’s preparation. He thought now that he had timed it well, that he was across and into the enemy with something like total surprise. He felt his confidence return, and he could see on every face around him that they were confident as well. Indeed, Mercer’s men looked like they were drunk, so great was their flow of spirit. But they were under control soon enough, and he would have his attempt on Princeton. More men would come across the ferry today. The word of the victory would spread, and the sunshine soldiers and summer patriots who fought at convenience would suddenly appear to bulk his forces.

There in the snow, surrounded by the adulation of his staff and the cheers of his men, he saw that it would only take a few such victories to put the chance of defeat behind him. The British had to defeat him. He had only to survive.

General Greene, flushed with the success, took his hand in Quaker directness.

“Give you the joy of your glorious victory, General,” he said. Washington smiled broadly, his rare bad-tooth smile that he hid from all but Martha.

“Their enlistments still run out in four days, Nathan,” he said. Greene shook his head, and Sullivan sneered.

“Let the faint hearts go home. After this, men will flock to us.”

And Washington rose in his stirrups, looked at the men about him, and waved to his escort commander to start down the road.

“Perhaps, General Sullivan. But in any case, they will
need to be trained, and fed, and clothed, and we will spend another winter building the army.”

Greene touched his arm, a contact Washington had used to resent.

“You sound tired, sir.”

“Tired?” Washington held in his horse. The big stallion was unwinded by the morning, restless, his ears pricking for new adventure. “Perhaps I am tired, Nathan. But I now see why they chose a farmer to lead this army. Farmers are used to having to start anew every spring. And farmers know that before you begin a job of work, you have to build your tools.” He looked at his staff, his generals, his army. The tools were there. He had trusted them, and they, him. And they had won.

…If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were:

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

JOHN DONNE, 1623

Morristown, Pennsylvania, April 5, 1777

George Lake was on his last days with the company. Spring was bringing changes throughout the army, as had the victories at Trenton and Princeton. Princeton was a confused memory, hazier than the brief fight in the streets of Trenton. It had not felt like a victory until the last moments, when the British line wavered and fell back, leaving the Continentals the field and a clear route back to their own side of the river. But the victories were a tonic, and when the enlistments ran out more men stayed than George had ever hoped. Most of the men who stayed now felt that they would win the war, and the veterans had something that they had lacked before, a steady confidence in their movements and their drill.

One of the changes was that George was being promoted. He was leaving the rank of sergeant and moving up to be an officer in another company, the new light infantry company, supposedly composed of the best men in his regiment. He had watched the men being chosen and was aware that the new company had more than its share of awkward men, new recruits, and lazy men the other companies didn’t want, but he also noted that it would have the highest proportion of true believers, young men from trades and farms who had a stake in the new nation, and that meant something.

He had two days left until his promotion became official, and in those days he was the odd man out, with a new tent all to himself and new equipment to find, and he sat on the fresh straw over boards that made the floor of his tent and mended his ragged uniform. In the street outside, Bludner was preaching to his platoon.

Bludner sounded a little too pleased with himself. George Lake told himself not to care—he was on his last days in the company and Bludner’s opinion of him no longer mattered. But old habits die hard, they say, and he waited his time as the man went on with his bombast to his cronies, pulling on an old coat that wouldn’t mind the April mud. The rain had stopped for the first time in days.

“…found some of my property, gone missing on its legs, as it were. I hope you
gentlemen
take mah meanin’.”

George couldn’t help but hear him. Now that they had proper tents, everyone could hear everything that was said in their company street. He opened the hooks and eyes on his own and stooped out, passing his sword belt over his shoulder as he did so.

It pained George to see the eagerness with which some of Bludner’s men received his words. The divide between the true believers and the backwoodsmen was, if anything, deeper in the new drafts. Too many of the recruits were landless men, or laborers, serving for the land grants promised. Too few were young men from families or from trades.
The war is using up our patriotism,
he thought. It is going on too long. He felt it himself. He limped a little as he made his way over to the circle of men around Bludner.

“…nice piece, a
black
piece I mean to recover when this is over. An’ she can tell us a thing or two about what them lobsters is up to in New York. She’ll be scare’t of me from here!” He laughed at the thought, an ugly sound.

George Lake stopped by the edge of the group and stood silent with his hand on his hip.

“Why, lookee here, boys. It’s the new
officer
of the light company.” Bludner’s sneer was all too obvious. George thought the man looked a little drunk.

“Sergeant Bludner?” George spoke quietly. His voice was steady.

“Frien’ o’ mine jus’ got free from New York. He saw one o’ mah slaves there. An’ he says that the Jerseys is full o’ free blacks jus’ waitin’ for us to take them. Now that don’ interest Mr. Lake, here. He wants to protect them niggers, don’ you,
Mister
Lake?”

Bludner was looking for a fight, spoiling for it as he had been since the news of George’s promotion came down from the regiment. George was ready to give it to him, but wanted the man to make the fight himself. George could watch Bludner looking for a means to be offensive.

“Did you ever own a slave, Sergeant Bludner?” George knew that Bludner always claimed he had, but as he had never owned any land, George couldn’t see why.

“I owned a couple, yes. More ’an you,
boy.”

George stepped toward him. “How did you come to own slaves when you didn’t own any land?” George was getting angry. He wasn’t even sure why he was angry, but the anger was growing in him. Perhaps it was the term
boy.
Perhaps it was just two years of steady abuse. “Was you a pimp, Bludner?” he asked, stepping in close.

Sometimes a chance remark touches a nerve. Perhaps someone else had once made the comparison, some time in the past, but Bludner was all rage, a blur of fists coming at George. Except that George had been ready since he left his tent.

He took the first blows on his arms and retaliated, hitting Bludner twice in the face, snapping his head back. Bludner was relentless, pounding away at his arms, slipping blows through into his chest and belly through perseverance and rage, but George hung on, punishing his man with punches to the head. Bludner tried to close and
George leapt back, bent low and lunged like a fencer, smashing his left fist into Bludner’s throat and putting him down. As Bludner started to rise, George smashed him in the crotch with a kick, and then another to his head. He was breathing as if he had run a race. Bludner lay in the mud, spasming like a slaughtered lamb, his eyes open and blind.

George stumbled back and looked at the ring of men, some frightened and some deeply inimical. He stood straight, covering his panting, trying to be like the gentlemen officers he had seen. His voice was remarkably like Washington’s when he spoke, steady, commanding. “Clean him up and see he’s on parade,” he said, and walked through the circle. He felt cleaner.

George needed to get clear of the camp, clear of Bludner and the divided loyalties of the men. He decided to take his few shillings and his loot from Trenton into the city of Philadelphia and get himself some new shirts and a decent set of clothes, so that he could start life as an officer looking like one. He had no horse and no friend who owned one, so he walked out through the camp, got the password for the day at the adjutant’s tent, and made his way past the quarterguard and up to the head of the camp and the sentry line, where he showed his pass and started for Philadelphia, three miles away.

It was fast becoming a beautiful spring day, crisp enough to take the sting out of his knuckles and warm enough that he was never uncomfortable, although his right foot was nearly naked in a split shoe. What he wanted more than anything was a good pair of boots. He went over his loot in his mind: two big silver watches, ten silver thalers with Marie-Therese’s bust on the front, a silver mounted pistol and a telescope. He coveted the telescope, because it was so useful, but he had no place to stow or carry it comfortably, and knew that it would fetch too good a price to allow him to keep it.

Deciding to sell his loot was easier than finding a place to do so. After he had visited several small shops where he was treated as a tramp or possibly a deserter, he found that he was in the middle of town near the City Tavern with no idea where he should go. He looked up the broad street, angry at being made a pariah in the capital he was fighting to protect.

“That’s how my cat looks when he’s planning to bite me,” said a woman.

George turned and found himself looking at the girl who had brought the milk so many months before at this very corner. Her mother was standing beside her, smiling.

“Is that the best General Washington can do to keep you poor boys?” asked the older woman. “You didn’t look like such a scarecrow in the summer.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” He was sorry. He was standing on a prosperous corner in the center of the city, bringing the army into disrepute by his very presence. He looked too poor to be a private, much less…

“You’ve been promoted!” The girl actually hopped, despite her petticoats and her fur-lined Brunswick. George thought the girl’s jacket was worth more than everything he owned. It looked warm. He wanted to hang his head, but he didn’t.

“I have, too,” he said modestly.

“What brings you here…Lieutenant?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He indicated his sash. “I am a lieutenant. I’m here to buy some clothes. And to sell a few things, too. But I can’t seem to find a place to do that.” He smiled at the girl.
Betsy.
Not that he dared use her name.

Her mother smiled. “I don’t think we introduced ourselves. I’m Mrs. Lovell. This is our daughter. We live just there, in the house with the roses.”

“I am Lieutenant Lake, ma’am.” George wondered at the power of his new rank. The word
lieutenant
had visibly changed the woman’s demeanor. “Miss,” he continued,
bobbing his head at Miss Lovell. “Of the light company of the Third Virginia.”

“Our pleasure, sir.” Mrs. Lovell gave him a level stare. “I won’t pretend to hold with Congress or Mr. Washington’s war, though such views aren’t popular here. My family is Scots. But you seem a decent young man, Lieutenant. It is a sad civil war that would keep us from being civil.”

George bowed. In a year, he had learned that answering was not always the thing. Tempted as he was to defend his patriotism, Mrs. Lovell’s steady gaze made him feel that this was not a conflict he would win.

“As to selling things, I don’t think I’ve been to such an establishment in some time.” She didn’t sniff, as George had thought she might. Instead she gave a smile, as if she knew a secret. “But I might go to Dodd’s, on the Lancaster Road, if I wanted to sell a few things at a good price. You may say that Esther Ogilvy sent you.”

She smiled in secret satisfaction and Miss Lovell looked at him in a way he found very pleasing. He made his bows to both of them and hoped he might renew his acquaintance on a later visit, a turn of phrase he had learned from watching the officers in his regiment. Mrs. Lovell hesitated, and then smiled.

“Of course, Lieutenant,” she said, and they parted.

Miss Lovell’s face remained before his eyes as he walked the muddy mile of the Lancaster Road to Dodd’s. The clerk behind the counter barely spared him a glance.

“I was told to say that Esther Ogilvy sent me,” he said, eyeing the beautiful fabrics behind the counter and wondering if his walk had been for nothing.

An older man with lank gray hair pushed past the clerk and came out into the store. “Did she now?” he asked, grimly. “What’s she called, lad?”

“Mrs. Lovell.”

“Well, that’s true enough, soldier. An’ you’ve a few things to sell?”

George didn’t need a second invitation. He laid the watches, the pistol and the telescope on the counter. The clerk reached for the telescope and Mr. Dodd (if it was indeed he) rapped the younger man sharply on the knuckles.

“That’s a Dollond,” Dodd said after he’d tried it. “And it works. May I ask how you came by it?”

“The German officer who owned it gave it to me,” said George easily. “I confess that I didn’t offer him a great deal of choice, but such affairs are accepted in war.”

“Oh, yes. She’s a beauty, though. I shouldn’t say that, but ’tis true. I’d go to ten guineas real money for the telescope.”

George gasped. He’d expected less than that for everything.

“Two guineas for the pistol. It’s good work, but guns are easy here. The watches? Well, they’re Dutch, not as good as English either way. I’ll let you have a guinea apiece.”

George nodded. He suspected he should bargain, but it wasn’t in him. He’d have boots and good breeches and even a coat. He might visit Mrs. Lovell and her Loyalist house yet.

“I’ll keep a watch for myself, then,” he said, and picked up the smaller of the two.

Dodd shook his head. “I’d like you to try to bargain, at least, for the form of the thing. Otherwise, I’ll know I offered too much and I’ll kick myself all day.”

George rubbed his chin, eager to get the money.

“Throw in a watch fob, then.”

Dodd nodded. “That will have to do. Stillwell, count out the money. I take it you want it in hard money? I’d offer more in Continental.”

“Thanks,” said George with a broad grin. “But we get paid in paper, an’ we know just what it’s worth.”

New York, April 12, 1777

John Julius Stewart had learned to dance. He couldn’t dance well, or gracefully, but it scarcely mattered. He could
stand up with a woman at a subscription ball or a small set in a private house, and although the act might not give her great pleasure, it was an improvement on a lifetime of mumbled apologies. He danced regularly with Miss Hammond, whom he could now look in the eye, and who tended to tell him the truth of his shortcomings as a dancer; and he could dance with her sister, Miss Poppy, who would prattle about cats and paintings and had he seen the new house being put up on Queen Street? And he could dance with whatever offered on afternoons in the black taverns. He could watch Sally smile with delight every time they completed a set together. It didn’t happen often, as there were few places he would go with her, but late at the tavern he would sometimes fight his way through an easy country dance while the musicians played on and on to please her.

And then, as spring came, something happened to change her. She became morose and easily angered, listless in a wooden way, and was drunk nearly every time he came to her. Stewart was sufficiently taken with her to care, but he had never fancied himself her sole supporter.

He found himself making excuses to shun her. He told himself that he shouldn’t see her anyway. He spent more time drilling the Black Guides. He was busy enough with shaping the new draft of recruits from England for his own company and seeing that every man in his company had their new equipment and all their clothes that he didn’t have time to see her every day. It was the busiest time of year for a company commander. Every spring the army issued new clothes, new equipment to bring the army back up to the mark. The work took him out to the lines north of the city and kept him from Sally anyway.

But when business sent him back to headquarters for the day, as it did when he had to complain to the regimental agent about the quality of shoes he had received, he still preferred to come to the Moor’s Head. Many of the
officers in New York did. The music was better, and louder, and the food the best on the island. Jeremy made it plain to him that he preferred to visit the place. It had a rare air to it, with soldiers and sailors and officers, blacks and whites and the occasional Indian all intermingled in the same rooms.