Washington and Caesar (49 page)

He often tried to meet Simcoe at the Moor’s Head. Simcoe had grown to be his particular friend since the fall. They planned the future of the war together, bemoaned the defeats at Trenton and Princeton together, and wrote letters to each other. Simcoe’s company was in the Jerseys, too far for daily conversation, but they corresponded as often as practicable. Soldiers of the Black Guides, who watched over the frequent convoys, often carried their letters.

Stewart was dancing with Mrs. Innes, the handsome sharp-faced woman whose husband was something in the commissary. He was conscious that he had a letter from Miss McLean in his pocket, and that his attention was focused on Sally, who was drunk, and Jeremy, who was attempting to restrain her. He could tell that he was not amusing Mrs. Innes, who clearly expected better of him. He was frustrated, and angry, and felt the weight of layers of his own sins in a way that seems to be the exclusive preserve of the Scots. He saw Simcoe in the doorway and sighed with something like relief, a sound that did not escape his partner.

“Somehow, Captain, I don’t think I have your full attention.” Mrs. Innes giggled and tapped him lightly with her fan. She was unsure herself how much raillery was acceptable with a man so much older. He bowed to her.

“Pray, madam, will you excuse me for a few moments?”

“I cannot promise I will not have gone elsewhere for my dance, Captain,” she said. Stewart walked her over to Simcoe, who was just in the process of handing off his dripping cloak to a maid.

“Captain Simcoe?”

“Your servant, Captain Stewart.”

“And yours, sir. Have you met the lovely Mrs. Innes?” Stewart said, turning to introduce his partner. Captain Simcoe bowed over her hand. She giggled again, her least engaging habit. Simcoe didn’t come in any further, as he was still wearing boots caked in mud, and spurs.

“I have, too. She giggles. Otherwise, quite engaging. Your servant, ma’am.” Simcoe was wearing a green velvet coat and a double-breasted waistcoat, fine clothes for riding or for an evening in town. He got his gloves off and was still fumbling with his heavy riding boots when Jeremy appeared as if by magic with a bowl of water and a small boy who flung himself on the boots with gusto, pulling them off and carrying them away. Simcoe washed his hands.

“That boy is smaller than the boots,” said Mrs. Innes.

“Do you have a dry shirt, Captain Stewart?” Simcoe was embarrassed. “I lost my portmanteau somewhere on the road. Never saw it go. The buckle must have slipped.”

Jeremy nodded to Stewart. Stewart smiled at his friend. “I do. I have a room upstairs, if you’d like to change.”

“Your
humble
servant. Do you ever think, when you are out in the wet on a night like this, how close the comforts of New York are?”

“I do.”

“It’s a wonder every officer and man doesn’t desert the lines and come here, especially with such loveliness as these.” Simcoe waved at Mrs. Innes and her friend Miss Amanda Chew. Mrs. Innes giggled. Miss Chew made a face.

Jeremy led Simcoe upstairs. Stewart talked to Miss Chew for a moment, earning a glare from Mrs. Innes for deserting her. He spoke idly, trying to find Sally in the crowd on the other side of the room. It complicated their lives, that he couldn’t cross to her side of the room any more than
she could seek him on his side. He told himself that he only wanted to know how she was.

Jeremy reappeared with Simcoe, who looked better for Jeremy’s attentions. Mrs. Innes made a motion to indicate that another dance was ready to start and she was impatient with her abandonment.

Stewart nodded, his attention on Jeremy, who was trying to communicate something.

“Perhaps Mrs. Innes would be kind enough to accept Captain Simcoe as a replacement while I am gone?” Stewart asked.

“And I suppose you expect me to relinquish this paragon the instant you reappear? Be warned, Captain. I am not an easy man to displace.” Simcoe, so often grave, was in high spirits.

Mrs. Innes giggled again, clearly delighted by his attention. Jeremy pulled lightly on Stewart’s arm.

“I’ll return to see which of us has the better claim, then, ma’am,” Stewart said, and followed Jeremy down a passage.

“What’s the hurry?”

“Sally is in a heap in your room. I managed to steer Captain Simcoe to another. I think she means herself a mischief.” Jeremy stopped and leaned in close to him, a hand up on the wall beside him. They were very much of a size, and their eyes were inches apart.

“You have more power over her than the rest of us, sir. Don’t tell me she means nothing to you.”

Stewart almost hit his head on the passage wall, he was so taken aback by the look of Jeremy, and his tone. He thought to resent it, but he couldn’t. He knew he had some sort of power over her, and he knew she liked him. The letter in his pocket made it all the worse. He suspected himself of the worst of motivations. He wondered if he had taken a black mistress because somehow that wouldn’t
count
so much with Mary as a white one. He hung his head a moment.

“She’s drunk and angry, sir. None of us knows why she’s
this way. Caesar says he’s never seen her like this, and Caesar’s man Virgil is beside himself.”

Stewart suspected that his treatment of Sally would reflect in his relations with all of them. He shook his head, feeling as if he had just taken a series of blows. Then he straightened up.

“I’ll see what can be done, Jeremy. But she’s more a force of nature than a woman.”

Jeremy nodded. “I apologize for my tone, sir. I wanted you to see the gravity of the situation.” Stewart noted that Jeremy didn’t look particularly apologetic, and he wondered if his man had a
tendresse
of his own for Sally.

“Never mind, Jeremy. If a man can’t bear a reprimand from his manservant, he’s pretty far gone, I guess.” He walked down the passage to the room that Jeremy indicated, and went in.

It wasn’t the scene from hell he had expected. There were no visible signs of carnage, and Polly White was sitting quietly on the bed. She was reading in the firelight.

“I came to see her.” Stewart didn’t fully open the door.

“I’m glad, sir. If you allow, I’ll come for you when she wakes.”

“Polly, you’re a dear thing. Why is she so bad, of a sudden?”

Polly looked down at her book, as if it could answer his question. She took so long to answer that he thought perhaps she didn’t intend to speak.

“I don’ think it’s so sudden, sir. I think that she’s had a hard life, and sometimes it comes home to her. And I think that sometimes she wants a different life, and she can’t see how to get to it from where she is. My father says that great beauty in a woman can be a curse. I think it was, for her.” She looked at the woman on the bed.

Stewart thought she was going to say more, but she didn’t. He looked at the woman lying on the bed, and the woman sitting on the end of it, and shook his head.

“There’s truth in what you say, Miss White,” he said, somewhat moved. “Please send for me instantly when she wakes.”

“We’ll be off across New Jersey in a few weeks,” Simcoe said, rubbing his hands in front of the fire. “I expect the lights will be in the vanguard. We’re to clear the ground back down to the Delaware and reclaim some of the support we’ve lost since Washington’s victories in the winter.”

“And then on to Philadelphia?”

Simcoe looked around the tavern as if expecting to spot a spy. He lowered his voice.

“I wouldn’t expect it. There is a great deal going on at headquarters that is not what we might expect, if you take my meaning.”

Simcoe so seldom spoke in this manner that Stewart was puzzled to understand him.

“I can’t say that I do take your meaning, John.”

Simcoe actually pulled his chair closer.

“There was supposed to be a grand campaign, with Lord Howe marching north from New York and John Burgoyne, or perhaps Guy Carleton, taking an army south from Quebec, with the objective of taking Albany.”

“Albany!” Stewart rose to his feet and looked over the map until he found it, up the Hudson. “What the devil do we want with Albany?”

“The plan was that we would meet there, and split the northern colonies from the southern.”

Stewart grimaced. “That’s an armchair general’s plan. Something that
Gentleman’s Magazine
might suggest.”

“I believe Lord Howe is very much of your mind, John Julius. He has decided to let the northern army take Albany on their own, or perhaps with a little
divertissement
from General Clinton. He himself intends us for Philadelphia.”

“Just so.”

“By sea.”

Stewart sat back in his chair, struck dumb. All the way south to Virginia, into the mouth of the Chesapeake, up the Chesapeake to the Delaware.

“One pounce and we’re in his capital,” said Simcoe.

“That would be a bold stroke.”

“You see why the march through the Jerseys is nothing but a raid in force.”

“And I see the necessity. A bold feint that way will pin Washington in place while we go round by sea.”

Stewart raised his glass. “A glass of wine with you, then. Here’s to a long campaign and many promotions.”

Simcoe raised his and drank.

“You were supposed to have it for Christmas, but it wasn’t ready,” Polly said quietly, so as not to awake the sleeper. She handed Caesar a tiny bag of silk, tied off with a fine red ribbon.

“You gave me a silk roller at Christmas,” he said.

“I had to give you something, goose!” She rolled her eyes at the eternal blindness of men. He leaned in and kissed her quickly, before she could make an objection, but she didn’t resist in the least. They’d had a talk on the subject, and Caesar now knew where the boundaries that might lead to his ears being boxed lay. He did continue to test them, but warily, like a good soldier on patrol. The enemy sentries remained alert, however.

He motioned at Sally. Experience with Polly had taught him that he needed to honor her concern for the woman, although Sally was all one to Caesar—she drank, she made trouble, she was a memento from the swamp and had to be tolerated.

“She’s in a bad way, Julius,” she said.

“She
will
drink,” said Caesar, dubiously. Neither Polly nor her father was easily practiced upon, but Caesar rather
thought that in this case the soldiers, not the priest, should keep Sally. He had wondered several times why Marcus White continued to help Sally when the relations brought him only gossip and trouble.

“No, it’s not just that, Julius. She was happy. I think Captain Stewart keeps her happy, though it’s wrong, of course.”

Caesar tried to hide a smile. “Does she love Mr. Stewart, do you think?”

“Don’t be a goose, Julius Caesar. She don’t love nobody. But she likes him. She taught him to dance. And then the other day this man came to her…”

“What man is that, then?” asked Caesar.

“An ill-looking thin white man. You know the sort, that look mean and pinched whether they will or no?”

Caesar nodded, staring at the rich red of the ribbon on his present.

“The man made her afraid. She won’t tell me why, but she hasn’t been the same since. She was shocking to my father, too.”

Caesar thought that Sally might be shocking to Marcus White in many different ways, but he kept his views to himself.

“Jeremy blames Captain Stewart,” Caesar said, feeling disloyal to both.

“Sally thought that Captain Stewart would take her in keeping, and not leave her at Mother Abbott’s,” said Polly, instantly destroying Caesar’s cherished notion that Polly didn’t really know what Sally did to earn her fine clothes and daily bread, or at least needed to be protected from the details. His surprise showed on his face.

“Oh, Julius Caesar, you can be so blind. Open your present, then.”

He pulled the bow apart teasingly, enjoying the feel of the satin ribbon and then rubbed it against her cheek.

“That’s all the present I need,” he said.

“If I wanted to listen to Jeremy’s compliments, I’d ask for them myself.”

He wanted to flare with anger, but the truth was that the line did belong to Jeremy. He looked at her, unsure how to react, but she kissed his hand and then the ribbon.

“Open it, then,” she said.

He opened the piece of silk and there was a ball of jeweler’s cotton. When he opened it out, there was a gleaming silver whistle on a plaited cord. He gave a startled sound, wordless.

“That’s beautiful,” he said, wishing to blow it immediately.

“It’s the shape of Captain Stewart’s, but it has a different note. Sally took his for a few days to get it right. And Virgil plaited the cord.”

Polly looked down demurely. Caesar kissed her and she responded vigorously. Her eyes half closed, which moved him. Then she ended the kiss, gently but firmly.

“Listen, will you? I need a favor.” She placed the bed and its sleeping occupant between them. Caesar laughed at her and she smiled back.

“What do you want, Polly?” She never asked him for anything, but made him shirts and gave him silver whistles.

“I need to borrow your drummer, Sam. I need him to run some errands for me.” Something about the manner of her asking made him a trifle suspicious, but he could hardly refuse. Sam ran everyone’s errands. His cherubic looks made him seem even younger than he really was, if you ignored his eyes.

“Thank you, Caesar,” she said, coming back around the bed.

Caesar thought that it might be time to test her boundaries again, but Sally picked that awkward moment to wake up, and the chance was gone.

New Jersey, May 19, 1777

A month’s military activity made Polly a memory, left in New York when the light troops of the army moved suddenly into the Jerseys. Caesar relished the memory, though, pulling out her whistle and feeling its smoothness with his thumb for a moment, a habit he had developed from the day he got it.

He blew it, and his pickets went loping out to the little hilltop where he had ordered them. Lieutenant Crawford watched him avidly.

“Virgil, take the right platoon around through the outbuildings and cover the back. Sergeant Fowver, straight over the hill through the woodlot. Tonny, with me. Leave a file on that little copse by the road to guide the advance guard. If they come before I get back, tell them those woods on the little ridge ain’t cleared yet.”