Washington and Caesar (75 page)

“Finish him, Virgil!” Caesar shouted, and ran on, feeling the fatigue in his thighs. But Bludner was flagging too and Caesar got his round loaded and then began to sprint, catching up with every stride. Bludner looked back twice, and then, with a hundred paces between them, he stopped and began to load. Caesar leapt a low stone wall and dashed forward, watching Bludner’s loading warily. At fifty paces, Bludner was just putting the ball in the barrel, but he surprised Caesar by rapping the musket on the ground to get the ball down the barrel, taking aim and firing in one motion. Caesar barely had time to swerve, and even then he heard the sound of the bullet close, but the report sounded odd, and Bludner threw the musket down, the side of his face burned and black. Bludner drew a heavy sword, breathing like a bellows. Caesar slowed a little and ran past him, breathing easily. He ran until he was between
Bludner and Robinson, still a mile or more to the west, and then he stopped.

“You black bastard,” Bludner said, seeing Caesar clearly. “You’ve vexed me before.”

Caesar saw Virgil in the distance, just finishing the man he had knocked down. Although he had the fowler loaded, he placed it carefully on the ground, lock up, and smiled, a thin-lipped grin that showed no teeth. Then he stepped back and drew his hunting sword and began to circle Bludner to the left, drawing Jeremy’s little dagger with his left hand and keeping it close to his side. He relished the fear in Bludner’s eyes, and the way Bludner was edging toward the fowler on the ground. He had seldom felt so alive. He breathed deeply.

Bludner leapt at him with a roar and cut at his head, and Caesar parried easily. He stepped back. Bludner took several deep breaths and cut at him again, an overhand motion that left his side exposed. Caesar noted it and his smile grew. He stepped back again, drew the same attack, met it with the same parry.

“Try harder,” he said. Bludner stepped to his right and attacked, one-two, head cuts from opposing sides, and Caesar parried them both. Then his heel caught a branch and there was a rush of action, Bludner trying to bowl him over, his own total contortion as he fought his own body for balance and got a knee under him and his sword up to catch another of Bludner’s single-minded blows. Caesar stood up, feigned a little twinge, and made as if to stumble back. Bludner brought his wrist up and cut again, the same side, and Caesar parried, stepped in close and slammed Jeremy’s little ivory-handled dirk right up under Bludner’s right armpit.

Bludner stepped back and fell immediately, although he was on his feet in a second. Then he swayed.

“That’s for Jeremy,” said Caesar, and then, as if to himself, “You are
easy.”

Bludner waved his blade and said something, and Caesar killed him, a simple feint and a cut to the neck, his whole weight and all his anger, his whole life in one cut, and Bludner fell with a crash, head rolling in the dirt.

He cleaned his blade, took the man’s dispatch case and his rifle, and picked up his own fowler. He looked at Bludner’s body and shook his head.

Virgil came up, still in obvious pain from his arm.

“You killed him.” He smiled broadly through his own pain. “I knew you would.”

“He was easy,” Caesar said simply. “I thought he’d be something…”

Virgil just nodded. “Ain’t it always like that, though?”

They stood together, savoring the early autumn air and Bludner’s shocking corpse, and then they began to run back to the rest of the Guides.

Peace hath her victories

No less renowned than war.

MILTON, “TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL”

“Is it your opinion,” said Socrates, “that Liberty is a fair and valuable possession?”

“So valuable,” replied Euthydemus, “that I know of nothing more valuable.”

XENOPHON’S MEMOIRS OF SOCRATES,
AS TRANSLATED BY SARAH FIELDING, 1762

Near Dobb’s Ferry, May 6, 1783

Guy Carleton was dressed in the full uniform of a British major general, with a scarlet coat whose glare of color was accentuated by the dark blue of his cuffs and collar. The buttons were gold, as was the metallic lace that surrounded each buttonhole. The effect of the whole should have been stunning, but Carleton himself was a cold man at the best of times, and today, quietly enraged, he exuded a chill that could be felt by all the men at the table opposite him. Carleton was almost alone, accompanied only by his military secretary, who wrote quickly whenever either party spoke.

This is almost as pleasurable as Yorktown,
thought Washington with an inward smile that never passed out on to his calm face. Years of defeat and deprivation only served to make the years of victory all the sweeter. That Carleton deeply resented Washington’s insistence that he should sit here unaccompanied, unescorted, with none of the civilities of war that one general could pay another, was simply the reaping of a harvest of indignity that the British had heaped upon him over the last eight years. Washington was not alone. He was accompanied by his entire staff, and a number of senior officers and representatives of the Continental Congress, who had provided the list of new demands, ancillary to the signed treaty prepared in Paris.

Washington was aware that the forcing of demands after the signature of a treaty was an ungentlemanly business, but he chose, repeatedly, and in defiance of the advice of some of his closest officers, to function as the servant of the Congress and not its master. He looked down the list.

“General Carleton, the next two items deal with the repatriation of British prisoners of war, taken at Saratoga and Yorktown and other such actions.”

Carleton sat unflinching. His face might have been carved from wax. He gave a very slight nod.

Washington read through the first item again, disliking it. Hamilton and Lafayette had both advised him to ignore it, but Washington knew that it was important to the southern colonies and that it was a reprisal for Great Britain’s insistence that the Tories, or Loyalists, be reimbursed for property seized or destroyed during the war by servants of the Congress. A functionary from the Congress began to read.

“The Congress of the United States has come to understand that there are at present some thousands of blacks in New York City, who have served the king under arms or in various other capacities. These persons are the legal property of citizens of the United States, and must be returned.”

Off to his right, Hamilton was visibly shaking his head. Lafayette had turned his face away, and a member of the Continental Congress from South Carolina was smiling broadly.

Carleton looked stunned, but then he smiled slightly. Washington longed to wipe that cold smile right off his face. The man represented the sort of British officer he had always disliked. His arrogance seemed unbreachable.

“If the blacks are not returned with an accounting of their former stations and owners, a like number of British and German prisoners of war will be kept until such time as this requirement is met.”

Carleton shook his head and whispered to his secretary. His secretary laughed aloud.

“How do you answer this requirement?”

Carleton looked at his snowy white shirt cuffs for a moment and then spoke very quietly.

“Any arrangement outside of those guaranteed by the Treaty of Paris lies beyond my powers. I must communicate with my Government.”

“That could take months!” cried the member of Congress.

“I cannot help that,” said Carleton, coldly. “I am not the one, I think, who seeks to change the treaty.”

The rest of the issues drew even less response. Most of them were very minor, and Washington knew that most of them had been arranged as a pretext to force the British commander to come up the river to visit them and to vex him. The slaves were the main issue. He himself no longer took the same view of slavery with which he had started the war, and he saw in Lafayette’s indignation a certain reflection of his own feelings in using prisoners of war as negotiating tools for the return of slaves. Lafayette would call it a blot on the escutcheon of liberty, and half the staff would agree.

Washington nodded to himself, and paused near the door of the house in which they had met to put on his greatcoat and take up his hat and gloves. Carleton was quite close, only a few feet away, and Washington looked at him curiously.

Carleton had left America in 1776 with his reputation untarnished. He beat every Continental army to march into Canada, and he routed the army that Washington sent in ’76, chasing it all the way back into New York. Now he was back to oversee the turning over of British North America, less Canada, to the fledgling United States.

Carleton had his own greatcoat on and he turned, his eyes suddenly widening a fraction as he took in Washington’s proximity.

“I’ll endeavor to have my answers for your masters,” he said. Washington recoiled. Carleton smiled coldly.

“If you want them, though, don’t expect me to go through this process again. You can come and see me,” Carleton went on.

“May I remind you, sir, that you are the defeated party? And that I expect to summon you if I require your presence?” Washington didn’t believe such things, but he was stung by the taunt of “masters”.

“General Washington, you and I recognize that you have no more than three thousand men here. I still have fifteen thousand in New York.” The cold voice sank a little further, to a hiss. “Your French friends have all gone home. If you wish to reopen the dance, I will be
most happy
to oblige.” He put his hat on with an air, collected his secretary, and was gone, escorted only by some of Washington’s light horse.

“You intend to stay?” Caesar was incredulous. Jim Somerset was sitting at a table in the Moor’s Head with Sally at his side. “You are going to
marry?”

“With your permission, Sergeant,” said Jim, looking mild.

Many comments about their relative ages and Sally’s past life came to mind, but Jim had known Sally exactly as long as he had, and there seemed little enough to say. The war had grown Jim up smartly, and he was now almost as tall as Caesar, though still skinny as a rail. And Sally probably only had five or six years on him. It might be enough to harm, or to help, and it wasn’t his place to say.

Sally looked at him defiantly. “I have a good sum of money to start us with. We were going to buy a house.”

“You’ll be taken as slaves!”

Jim shook his head. “I don’ think so, Sergeant. Bludner owned Sally, an’ we
know
he’s dead. Ol’ Mr. Gordon owned me hisself, an’ I saw you kill him. So I reckon no slave-taker will show up with a claim on us.”

Caesar nodded slowly. “I expect you have a point there, although you’ll always have to worry.”

“That’s what it’s like to be African in this country, Caesar,” said Jim with a smile. “You worry. Lot of folks is stayin’, though. We won’ be the only folks of color.”

Caesar nodded, took a sheet of paper from his map case and began to write them a certificate showing his approval of their marriage.

“Captain Martin has to sign this,” he said.

They both nodded. Sally smiled slowly, and looked at him under her lashes.

“I thought you might get him to sign,” she said.

“Corporal Somerset, why don’t you fetch us some wine?” Jim sprang up to go to the little bar where spirits were served, and Caesar glared at Sally.

“What are you at?”

“I want to stay. They goin’ to build a whole new country here. An’ I want to stay with folks I don’ know so well, and start over. You and the Guides might go to Jamaica, or England, or Canada, but I don’t want to be with the Guides. They
think
they know me.”

“And Virgil?”

“Virgil is a good man, an’ he’ll find himself a woman that suits him. I don’t, an’ I ain’t.” She tossed her head.

Caesar just nodded. He had heard Virgil plan for Sally on many an evening. “He thinks he just has to get it right, you know. Just say the right thing, or know you better.”

“He thinks he knows me, but I’ll tell you, Jim knows me better than any of you.” She was more wistful than defiant.

“And you won’t go whoring on Jim?”

“You think whorin’ comes natural, Caesar? It don’t.” She glared at him. “I haven’t since the major left, now have I?”

They both sat in thought for a moment, remembering Major Stewart, now serving in Gibraltar and married to
Miss McLean. He had left Sally a wealthy woman. She had benefited from the change, but Caesar was still suspicious of her. And on another level, he knew he’d miss her and Jim. It was all of a piece; the world he had known since he left the swamp was falling apart. Jim came back with wine, and he looked away, his eyes suddenly filling with tears.

“I’ll get Captain Martin to sign.”

Jim sat and shook his head. “They say at the bar that the Congress is demanding that all the blacks in New York be returned.” He shook his head in disgust. “Them rebels really think they won. How come they never won when I was around?”

Caesar spread his hands on the table and shook his head.

“They took General Burgoyne, and they took Cornwallis at Yorktown, and the Government lost the will to fight. But they won’t give us all back.”

“They traded the Indians away fast enough.”

“Stow that talk, Corporal.” Caesar glared at Jim. But a finger of ice touched his spine, and he sat up.

“And what can General Carleton do?” asked Jim. “He’s got orders from London not to
make trouble.”

“Government has no money,” said Caesar, quietly.

“Neither does the rebel Congress, but they jus’ print it.” Jim propped his chin on a long bony hand. “I read them pamphlets, Sergeant. I do understand.”

Caesar changed the subject.

“Polly will miss ya, Sally,” said Caesar.

“Oh, we can write. An’ I’ll miss her, an’ your little one. But I want a life, Caesar. An’ not as Sally at Mother Abbott’s. Sally Somerset has a nice free ring to it.”

“You’ll tell her?”

“Course I will. Not till we know what Carleton’s doin’, though. If’n you all stay here, I may want to move, or marry someone else.” She looked over at Jim, who looked down a little and smiled, then chucked her with his elbow.

Caesar looked for Captain Martin at his house. He rarely stirred these days, except to stand his guard and parade the company. Captain Martin was a family man, and his two daughters and his wife took his time, the more so as he had cleared his house and sold most of his belongings. He was about to become a refugee, and he knew it. That didn’t make it any easier.

It was a fine house, with plasterwork and fireplaces and delicate tints on the walls, and he wondered when he’d be able to afford the like again. He had thought of staying, and then thought again. No matter how tolerant the new government was, he had commanded the notorious Black Guides, and his wife was a Hammond. He would have to go. There were rumors of land grants in Canada, and that intrigued him. He couldn’t farm, but he could survey. He thought that if the Canadian adventure became a reality, he’d probably accept, although many of his fellows were bound for England. He had a map of upper Canada open on the table. He liked the look of the ground around the Bay of Quinte.

He met Caesar in the foyer, answering his own door, because he’d let all the servants go weeks before. Money mattered now. Caesar entered with a lack of self-consciousness that still surprised Captain Martin, coming in the front door as if it was his right—which, of course, it was.

“How can I help you, Sergeant?”

“Need you to sign a wedding certificate, sir.”

“With pleasure.” Martin sat at his one remaining table and then searched a little lap desk for powdered ink. Caesar was looking at Martin’s uniform coat and gorget slung over a chair when Mrs. Martin, the former Miss Hammond, came in carrying a teacup.

“Why, Sergeant Caesar, as I live and breathe!” She put her teacup down and he bowed to her.

“How is Polly? The baby? Splendid. And Virgil? We never see the fellows any more.”

Caesar looked again at the uniform coat, and Martin shook his head ruefully.

“I doubt I’ll get to wear it again now. They only want to send the regulars into the lines, and it is all I can do to keep our lot from being used to sweep the streets.”

Martin was reading the certificate, which Caesar had hoped to avoid, but he signed it without a quibble. Mrs. Martin read over his shoulder and shook her head.

“That Sally…” she said, but went no further. A preemptive knock at the door interrupted her.

“I’ll see to it,” said Martin, and he walked into the front, his footsteps echoing in the empty house.

“He’s taking defeat very hard,” said Mrs. Martin.

“I think we all are, ma’am,” said Caesar.

Martin came back carrying an envelope with a military seal.

“Speak of the devil, and there he is,” said Martin. “We have orders, Sergeant. Best uniforms, full dress, polished and ready, at the top of Broadway tomorrow at the break of day.”

Caesar felt his heart rising with excitement.

“I’ll see to the men. Where bound?”

“The messenger couldn’t say, or wouldn’t.”

“They wouldn’t send you to fight in the Indies, now would they?” She sounded concerned. It was the last active theater of war, and indeed, they had seen no action around New York in eight months. The Guides had been in the very last fight, a stiff action fought in boats where Martin and Caesar had both been wounded. Martin shook his head. “Not with these notes about polished brass and whited belts. I think we are going somewhere to stand guard, but by God I’ll enjoy it if it’s to be our last parade.” He eyed his uniform coat.

Caesar smiled his big grin, the one that hid the scars over his eyes.

The gondola carrying General Washington and select members of his staff was crewed by sailors of the Continental Navy. There weren’t many of them left, as the end of the fighting and of active privateering launched a race to restore the trade between Great Britain and the Americas, and every sailor wanted a berth when the merchants’ bounties were being paid. But there were still enough men to make a creditable crew for a single vessel, and they pulled Washington down the Hudson in style.