Washington and Caesar (61 page)

Washington looked at Lee with thinly disguised misgiving.

“Very well, General Lee.”

“But I will not guarantee the outcome.” Lee was sarcastic. Washington wondered if he had allowed this behavior before or if captivity had changed Lee.

“I seem to remember you feeling that I lacked decision on a former occasion, General Lee.” Lee grew pale. Washington seemed an extra few inches tall. “Don’t let me find you the same, General.”

Washington held his gaze until Charles Lee turned away.

Near Monmouth Court House, May 28, 1778

Marcus and Polly had always been sure they would return to New York, but Caesar had hoped that the war was going
better than that. Early spring proved them right. Once the orders to move back to New York came to them, he hoped that they would sail home, as they had come, but they were ordered to march. The women were ordered into boats along with the heavy baggage and most of the stores, but the army stepped off from Philadelphia, leaving it to the rebels, and headed for New York. In the dark of the first morning’s march, Caesar felt that the war was lost. They had taken the rebel capital and the victory had not had any real effect. There were rumors that the French would now declare war on England and they would all be on the defensive. Caesar saw his chances of a life of freedom marching away into the dark like Clinton’s retreating army.

The march was orderly, but they were attacked every night in New Jersey and many of the days, as well. Militia rose up out of the ground to contend the flanks, and every patch of woods had its garrison of local men. They took casualties, enough to make the men angry, and they were in action or worried about it every day.

Soon enough, they began to encounter more than just militia. Twice they found ambuscades laid by regular troops, and one whole day they skirmished with mounted dragoons who dogged their patrols just out of musket range, looking for an opening. During those days, Caesar began to rely on the green-coated men of Simcoe’s new regiment, the Queen’s Rangers. They had their own cavalry and their own riflemen, and twice his patrols were saved by their timely appearance. There were black men in the ranks of the Rangers, and in several other units, now.

The pressure on the Guides mounted every day. They lost two men in a day, killed by rifles at a distance, and the next day a new boy, Dick Lantern, who had been an ostler in Philadelphia, was captured when he strayed too far out of the pickets in the evening. They all knew he would be sold as a slave. It added to their fatigue and their frustration.

Caesar felt that Washington was following them like the hunter he was. He wondered when Washington would pounce.

The day started hot. The night before had been warm and so damp that Caesar’s men lay on their muskets to keep them dry. The rebels had driven some cattle herds right through the outposts, scattering sentries and luring them to fire, which alarmed the camps and kept the men awake.

It was the last alarm, just as the false dawn started in a dark morning already too hot for comfort, when the sentries nearest the light infantry began to fire. Caesar sprang up, more in anger than in fear. He’d suspected for an hour that the soldiers of the regiment on duty were inexperienced ninnies, and this confirmed it. No one around his fires seemed to be asleep anyway and he roused them and got them into their equipment while he sent Jim Somerset to find an officer. As the first light appeared in the sky, Jim came back with Jeremy, who was wide awake, dressed, and leading a horse.

“I want to take a patrol out and make ’em pay for keeping me awake,” said Caesar. “Apparently these heroes,” he pointed to a soldier of a line regiment slouching in a filthy red coat, “don’t have the spirit to do the job.”

Jeremy nodded and rode off, returning shortly with a German officer and Lieutenant Crawford. Caesar was surprised to find that the German officer spoke perfect English.

“We was troubled all night. We’d be delighted to sweep the ground in front of us now that there is light to shoot.” The German officer waved over the low ground to their front. He looked at Caesar and inclined his head in measured civility.

“Captain George Hangar of the Jaegers.”

“Sergeant Julius Caesar of the Black Guides. Your English is very good, sir.”

“Damn! I might say the same, sir. But I’m English myself. Just happen to serve in the Jaegers. Love the rifles, you see.”

Lieutenant Crawford was looking through his glass at the ground. A ball came past them, announced by a hiss. A second ball struck a stump and sent up splinters. Hangar knelt by the stump eagerly and dug at it with his clasp knife before extracting a ball.

“Rifles, of course. You know how long the barrel is compared to the weight of the ball? All that metal means that they can load more powder, eh? That barrel must weigh a full six pound, and that will allow them to shoot more than half the weight of the ball in powder. Even a small ball like this will carry three hundred yards. And the long barrel means all the powder is burned.”

Caesar looked at Jeremy with an eyebrow raised, and Hangar caught it. He smiled and rose to his feet, his command aiguillette bouncing as he dusted his knees.

“Rifles are my passion, Sergeant. I can’t help but prose away about them.”

Another ball passed between them and made its little musical note.

“That’s just seven or eight men firing to amuse us. I’ll see to that immediately with my lads. You’ll sweep the ground? I think you’ll find they have a force in those woods, but I doubt it will prove considerable.” Hangar took Crawford’s glass, looked for a moment, and handed it back. “A pleasure, gentlemen. Damn me, I hate the heat. Let’s get this done.”

Lieutenant Martin came up to them and was immediately touched by a ball fired from the gloom to their front. It was a slight wound but he seemed proud of it. Caesar wrapped it with his handkerchief as they scrambled back from their exposed position.

“Good practice,” said Crawford. “They can shoot.”

“They shoot best when there ain’t anybody shooting back,” Jeremy quipped.

A moment later they could hear the heavy barks of the Jaegers’ rifles returning fire off to their left. Caesar looked at Martin. “It was my intention to take the company out and cover the ground as quickly as possible.”

Martin nodded. “I expect you know the business, Sergeant. I just want to see it done.” Martin was jealous of Lieutenant Crawford, who was shouting orders rapidfire at Captain Stewart’s company, already formed off to the right. A further company, the Forty-second lights, was moving cautiously down into the low ground farther off to the right. Captain Stewart could be seen riding that way.

Caesar hated the oppressive heat, which made both uniform and equipment uncomfortable. He used a cloth to wipe his face, shifted his belts to allow a little more of the fetid air to reach his skin, and blew his whistle twice. The company moved forward.

The rifles fired again, off at the woodline in the distance, and their smoke hung in an ugly cloud just over the position of the shooters. Because there was no breeze to move the smoke away, it provided a screen that kept them safe. Caesar could just see the shine of the new sun on a ramrod or a barrel as the man loaded. Caesar raised both his arms and waved them forward and started to trot. Captain Stewart came up behind him on horseback.

“Right to the woods!” Stewart shouted. Caesar just raised a hand in acknowledgment. He could see the riflemen scrambling now, one pausing to take a last shot, another leaping over a log. The last shot vanished into the morning, doing no immediate harm that Caesar could see, and then they were at the woodline. He blew a long blast on his whistle and heard the corporals shouting “Skirmish” just as Stewart’s bugles began to send the same signal. He aimed at a retreating figure and fired to no effect. The range was already too long for muskets.

Caesar waved Fowver’s platoon forward. Willy Smith passed him, yelling “Moses, get it loaded, there.” From his
vantage point commanding the stationary platoon, Caesar watched Fowver’s men with pride as they picked their way forward, the files staying together and the men covering both the front and flanks with their eyes. Off to the left, Stewart’s company was moving forward more aggressively, and Caesar could hear McDonald pushing them with his voice. Caesar started his own platoon forward.

It seemed only a moment later that Stewart and Jeremy appeared by him at the far edge of the wood.

“No point in it,” said Jeremy, looking through his master’s glass. Stewart held out his hand for the instrument and shook his head. They had come three-quarters of a mile from their camp and Caesar was soaked in sweat from the little run. Jeremy looked as if he had a private store of ice in his coat, but Captain Stewart’s hair was every which way, as if he had come to battle straight from his pillow. Caesar wondered if Sally were with the army baggage back in the center of camp, or whether she had gone to New York by ship, like the Guides’ women.

Stewart shook his head, cocked his leg over the cantle of his saddle to steady himself, and looked into the gloom again.

“Damn the heat,” he said, snappishly.

Jeremy shrugged. “Drink some water, sir.”

“I don’t want water.”

“You should drink some water, sir.”

Stewart turned and glared at them both for a moment, and then smiled.

“Well, gentlemen, we missed them.”

Caesar nodded. Lieutenant Martin approached and Caesar gave him a description of what they had hoped to accomplish. Stewart handed Martin the glass and he looked into the haze for a moment before giving an exclamation.

“Isn’t that the gleam of bayonets?” he said, pushing the glass at Stewart. Stewart finished a long pull at the canteen
that Jeremy had held out to him and looked guilty for a moment before seizing the telescope and taking a look.

“Look at that,” he said. “Jeremy, get back immediately. Find Colonel Musgrave and tell him that the Continentals are forming to attack our right.” He looked for a moment. “Well spotted, young Martin. Look at them all. Tell the colonel that I have no idea of a count in this haze but that they appear to be formidable.”

Caesar shook his head. “I don’t want to fight in this heat,” he said.

“Just so.” Stewart motioned at their companies. “I had thought to leave a detachment here, but there is no purpose if they are coming to contest these woods.”

“We could give them a little harassing fire as they came up,” said Martin eagerly.

Stewart nodded, motioning to his bugler to sound the retreat.

“Good thought. Keep the Guides here for a bit. Be ready to move, though—if the army marches, we won’t keep this ground.”

Martin looked at Caesar. “Did I do right, Sergeant?”

Caesar smiled. “We’ll see, sir. But I’d rather be doing the harassing fire than taking it all morning.”

George Lake led his company at the head of the column, and he saluted General Lee as he passed him, turning his head to the right and bringing his sword up in a smart salute. Lee waved with his whip.

All the light companies of the army had been concentrated in a single division with several crack regiments. They were all veterans and all tried troops, and George gathered that they were actually going to attack the British, a thing that hadn’t really been done since he was at Trenton. He was excited, but under the excitement he worried about the heat, which was already affecting his older men, and he worried about the dissension. He knew officers who said
that General Lee thought this plan to be fatally flawed, and he knew officers who thought that there was no plan. George knew that Lee had not ridden out to view the enemy or the ground in any detail, and this negligence worried him. But Lee was popular, and he looked every inch a soldier, sitting on his horse and watching the columns march forward. Lake could only hope.

In three years of fighting, Caesar had never been a spectator in a major action. They occupied the fringe of woods facing west and waited. Twice in the morning, they drove off parties of the enemy, but although these actions helped steady the new men, they were minor affairs. The enemy only came in small patrols and were happy to be seen off with a burst of fire. They took one prisoner from the second patrol, an elderly private in the Second Virginia.

To the south, they could just make out the enemy columns forming in the dust and haze. After they repulsed the second patrol, Caesar went to the edge of the woods at Virgil’s urging and watched both of the grenadier battalions forming front from columns to attack a steep hill over a mile away. Caesar nodded.

“I wondered last night why we didn’t occupy that hill, and today we have to take it back.”

Virgil pointed with his chin at the main camp, where the long lines of wagons were moving out to the north. Caesar nodded again.

“I see them.”

“So it won’t be no big battle. The line regiments is already movin’.” Virgil, a great respecter of the British line, thought it unfair that the British generals seemed to fight their battles in America with only their lights and grenadiers.

“If’n they never use them boys for ought but replacements, they’ll be sorry soldiers when the day comes.”

Caesar looked at Virgil, a little surprised, as it wasn’t Virgil’s usual line of thought.

“What day, Virgil?”

“The day when them Continentals is ready for a proper battle.”

They marched and countermarched in the heat, and the British artillery played on them like a deadly cloud of insects, the big balls emitting a deadly whine as they flew, or rolling and bouncing ominously over the hard-packed ground. Despite the moisture in the air, the ground seemed as hard as rock, and it reflected the heat like a great brown mirror. George had already lost two men to the cannon, but he had lost five to the heat.

And they hadn’t come to grips yet.

He saw the distant columns of red come together and shake out into a line and he watched with professional admiration as the British came on, rounding a little bend in the road with their columns behind. Two of their sixpounders set up at the head of the near column and fired a round of grape into the battalion next to George, and it gave ground. It didn’t run, like in the old days, but just fell back a little, giving the British the crest of the hill.