Washington and Caesar

1

Great Dismal Swamp, February 1775

Even as their tools ate at the swamp, the swamp ate away at the men. As the weeks blurred into months, the toll mounted, until Caesar’s hands were numb most of the night. He couldn’t always grip the tools he had to use during the day, and sometimes they would slip. One day, with his hands wet from the blood of cracked calluses, he had swung his sharp mattock into the roots of an old stump. He’d missed, hit the top of the stump a glancing blow, and the tool turned on him like a live thing. The blade had gouged his leg deep, right into the muscle, and he had dropped like a cleared tree on to the wet ground and watched the blood flow. The wound didn’t hurt like a cut, at least at first, but ached like an enormous bruise.

It bled fitfully for days, and then began to ooze a noxious pus. He couldn’t stop working, although he was certain he had some kind of fever from it. The blood drew flies, and the flies were like one of the plagues of Egypt that the preacher at Mount Vernon had spoken of. He seldom thought of Mount Vernon anymore. It seemed almost like a paradise compared to this hell-a hell of flies and eternal work, of slaves who had recently become too afraid even to break their tools or protest the abuse.

Other men died. Not every day, by any means, but the fever took some, and the pistol took others. A broken bone was as likely a death warrant as a bullet to the head; neither Gordon nor the other whites seemed particular about nursing the injured. Caesar worked on with the hole in his leg, and limped, and knew that he would never be as fast as he had been, even if he lived, but the wound never got the smell of death to it, though it oozed an oily white pus for weeks, and in time it left a deep dent and a scar and an ache every time the sky threatened rain, which was most mornings in the winter.

The wound changed him-as a man, and as a slave. At first, he was so certain he was going to die that he began to work less, and to devise ways of cheating the overseer that would have seemed petty to him once. He rested longer, took slower swings, made simple mistakes. He never broke a tool-that was worth a beating-but he stopped leading the others in his party. He let them return to drifting and asking Gordon for every bit of direction. That was his greatest protest, although he didn’t know it at first.

Caesar hadn’t appreciated that he had become the leader in his work party until he stopped. It had seemed natural to him to console, prod and help his mates, no matter how dull they were. But he lost interest in them when he hurt himself, and his crew returned, almost without thought, to being a band of lost individuals. None of the other men was interested in leading the work party. Most had been broken before they came; the rest were certainly broken now. If Gordon noticed, he didn’t say anything; perhaps he preferred their puzzled docility to unified work. Perhaps he was himself too stupid even to see the change; Caesar had known his type before, in Africa and Jamaica, and doubted there was much behind those close-set eyes but hatred.

Caesar had expected a pack of rebels, but almost all the men were broken, except those who had been sent there for being too stupid to work on the big farms of their owners. The smart ones had already run, sometime in the misty past before the overseers were given guns. Mr. Gordon, their overseer, was a brutal man with a terrible fund of energy. Even in the worst of the heat, he continued to hate every black man and woman ever born, and muttered endlessly under his breath. Each time he walked up to a group of men, he made a show of checking the prime in the pistol at his belt. He carried a fancy little flask and reprimed with it often. Caesar noticed these details because he still thought of killing Gordon, but the chance never came.

Twice they received drafts of new slaves from other plantations, but none came from Mount Vernon or any of the other Washington farms, and Caesar had no news. He rarely even saw Virgil, though he had taken to the man immediately. Virgil had been moved to another crew after a week, and Caesar suspected that Gordon had seen them talking and was wary of allowing them to be partners.

Sometimes his rebellion hurt him. When he stared down Old Ben because the man wanted his help; when the boy who came and cooked their corn hurt his hand and Caesar simply let him run off injured; a thousand other cuts, tiny abandonings of responsibility. But they were men, and they were not his men; they were slaves. He thought about these things in a distant, unconnected way, as if they were events going on in a fireside story. He couldn’t concentrate on himself.

After weeks of petty rebellion and hoarded rest, Caesar finally re-emerged from the hell of flies and pain and expected death. As it closed, he began to believe that this wound, at least, would not be his death; and he began to fear from his own action, his carefully developed habit of flinching at the sound of Gordon’s voice, that he had allowed himself to break inside.

Long afterwards, he thought that the wound must have fevered him, because one afternoon he found himself leaning on his mattock, ankle-deep in ooze but well apart from the others, and he was listening to a voice trailing away:

“…you jes slow down, boy,” he heard. It was his own voice. He had been engaged in a spirited argument with himself, although the sides and the arguments were slipping away like a dream to a man awakening. But the other voice had sounded more like the preacher’s, he was sure, and it scared him to the bone that he was possessed, or that the whites had broken him at last.

He shook his head, to clear it, and looked back to where he could see other men working in a line stretching for a hundred yards, with the ancient trees hanging over them and birds in the high canopy. The men seemed to have as much consequence as the birds and again he thought of the preacher, and that he had said that the Lord saw even the fall of a sparrow. Why a sparrow? He thought. Why that bird in particular? Those tiny hummingbirds, now they was small. Smaller than a sparrow.

And again, he realized that he had been speaking the words aloud, and again he was afraid, both that he was broken like the other broken men, and that he would stand and talk to himself about sparrows until Gordon put a pistol ball in his head.

Later, he caught himself weeping, and he didn’t know why, but if that was a fever, it broke then, because he didn’t talk to himself again.

Virginia Convention, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775

“The establishment of such a militia, composed of Gentlemen and Yeomen, is at this time particularly necessary, by the state of our laws for the protection and defense of the country, some of which have expired, and others shortly will do so; and that known remissness of government, in calling us together in a legislative capacity, renders it too insecure, in this time of danger and distress, to reply that opportunity will be given of renewing them in General Assembly-”

“Make your point, Mr. Henry.”

“I will, sir.”

“Rather, Mr. Henry, you have done. You want us to vote an extraordinary militia act because it is unlikely that Lord Dunmore will call the Burgesses?”

“Yes, sir. May I continue?”

“If you must.”

“Sir, I must.” Patrick Henry, the prime orator of the House of Burgesses, raised his papers for a moment, recalling his place, and his voice continued in a deliberately humdrum manner.

“Ahem…General Assembly, or making any other provision to secure our inestimable rights and liberties from those farther violations…” The rumble from the Convention seat was not all royalist; and Henry’s tempo began to change as he added emotion to his voice. “Violations with which they are threatened. RESOLVED, therefore…”

Washington’s neighbor leaned over to him. “This isn’t about defending ourselves from the Delaware, is it?”

Washington smiled carefully, hiding the remnants of his teeth.

“I think not.” He thought back to his review of the Dumfries Independent Company a few days before. They had their new colors, a company standard with a motto, and a dark blue color with the union in the canton. It was a gesture toward the king’s men in the county, but a far cry from the king’s color that had traditionally graced every regiment of militia, a union flag two fathoms across. They were uniformed in blue and buff, his favorite colors and the traditional colors of the liberal Whig party in England.

Washington’s other neighbor leaned across him to George Mason, two down on his right.

“It’s rhetoric like this that costs us support in England. Let this man go on and we’ll lose every friend we made with the Congress.”

Down on the floor, Patrick Henry raised his face to the men in the benches and drew himself to his full height. He looked around him like a man entering a ball and searching for friends.

“We must fight.” Uttered with regret, but uttered. A silence fell over the hall; the royalists sat thunderstruck. It had been whispered. Now it had been said. A murmur from the back benches.

“You do not care for the sentiment? But it is being forced upon us by unprecedented tyranny. It is not our property that is threatened, but our liberties, not the pennies of taxation, but the pounds of chains that this government would load upon us. Did I say we must fight? Perhaps what I should have said is, we must fight. We must fight! There, ’tis said.”

Mason and Andrew Stephen were talking so fast that Washington had to crane forward past them to hear Henry on the floor; indeed, the only thing he heard clearly was the reiteration that he must fight. He nodded. It was obvious that it was now to come to blows; every thinking Whig saw it. Many men looked shocked, or angry, even at this late date; Washington could see Benjamin Harrison, red in the face; and Pendleton, Bland, and Nicholas looked as if close friends had been murdered before their eyes. Behind them, one of Washington’s grooms gestured to him from the doorway; forbidden in the church, he could only try to catch his master’s attention, but it was now riveted to the floor before him.

“…and so retain our liberty, regardless of the cost. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

The groom’s head rose with every word, but no one paid him any mind.

It was a brilliant piece of rhetoric; it stifled opposition, though the royalists tried valiantly to change the course of debate and delay the call to arms. None could match the heights of eloquence that Henry had reached; none could banish the fear of “chains and slavery”. And so, with many a beating heart, the Virginia Convention voted to put the colony of Virginia into a “posture of defense” and named a committee of twelve men to be responsible to the colony for embodying, arming, and disciplining such a number of men as might be sufficient for the purpose. Patrick Henry was the first man named to the committee. The second was George Washington.

Great Dismal Swamp, March 26, 1775

“They arming the militia. All ovah the country they be gettin’ guns and men togethuh. I seed ’em down by our place, men marchin’ and trainin’.” The new man was from the Lee plantation on the Chesapeake, and he was a fund of information. He was not a broken spirit, either, but had been sent to the Dismal for insubordination.

“I jus’ don’ think the time to run is when ever’ white boy in Virginny has got his gun to hand.” Virgil had come in with his crew the night before. The rising sun barely slanted through the canopy yet, and they were all enjoying the only cool breeze they would have for the day while a young boy with a torn foot stirred a battered copper pot of corn meal. It contained several frogs; both Caesar and the new man, Lark, had developed some skill in catching frogs, and they were plentiful. Virgil had set himself to learn the art.

“Maybe the governor will arm the slaves.”

“That’s foolishness, Lark.” Caesar was surprised to hear his own voice. “Who’s gon’ arm slaves?”

“I heard it happen’ befo’. Not just one time, neithuh.”

Old Ben spoke from the gloom of his blanket. “They done it before this, boys. They armed us in Carolina once. We was to fight Cherokees.”

The little group fell silent. Caesar gave the boy by the fire a little slap and pointed him off to another fire. The boy looked at him, pleased somehow, even at being sent away, and Caesar wondered what he had been like these last weeks.

“You run ‘long.” He tried to sound kindly. Perhaps he smiled. It didn’t come easily. The boy showed his teeth and hobbled off. He waited till the boy was out of earshot. “We have to kill Gordon.”

Only Virgil met his eye and nodded, but the others made noises, softly.

“Any o’ us could die, any day,” Caesar continued. “He don’t give a damn whether he shoot us or we die o’ fever.”

“‘Bout time you come back to yo’ senses, boy!” Old Ben spoke out of the darkness and then leaned in to the firelight.

“Where do we go?” asked Virgil.

Old Ben threw off the blanket. “Run to John Canno!”

“John Canno’s a myth, old man.” Caesar had heard of John Canno from Queeny, from Old Ben. He sounded too good to be true, a black bandit in the deep woods to the south. No one ever seemed to be able to say just where he was from, though.

“If he be, then where all the slaves that run? Who steal the cattle? Who take the folk to Florida?”

Caesar looked at them with a little impatience.

“It ain’t time for talk. You run to Florida if you wan’. I say we kill the overseer and go into the swamp. We steal what we need. Wi’ his pistol and another gun, we can hunt, if we have powder. I was a warrior, and I could be again, and I’ll start here. I’d rathuh die killing this Gordon man than live fat, whether here or at Mount Vernon. I’m tired of being a slave. And if I stay here and talk, I’ll be a dead slave. Better die free.”

“You have a plan?”

“Yeah, Virgil, and it ain’t fancy. When he come to the barracoon, he take us to the tools, every morning, wait while we hoist what we need. Yeah?”

“Yeah.” They all nodded.

“So when I get my pick, I raise it and throw it, grab the nearest tool and charge him. I’ll go first, but every man of you better be behind me. He get one shot. He hit me, I die. You kill him, you run. Or he won’ hit me. Then we fin’ the other man, the one we never see. We kill him too. After that, we have some o’ their food, make a plan.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all I have, man.”

Virgil smiled. “I got one thing bettuh, then. Listen. I carry the corn meal with me. When he stand to watch us get the tools I throw it at him. It burning hot, wet his gun, too, I hope.”

Caesar nodded. “Wet gun might not fire.”

Lark smiled at both of them. “When do we go, boys?”

Caesar looked at both of them, and past them.

“We’ll go when I give the word. First morning everything is right.”

“I wan’ do it now,” said Virgil. Lark gave him an odd look; Caesar saw it but couldn’t interpret it.

“Wait, Virgil. Jes’ a little while.”

Virginia Convention, Richmond, Virginia, March 27, 1775

“It all comes down to logistics, gentlemen. We lack arms, we lack wool, we lack powder and lead to make ball; we have precious few cannon, and those of smallest caliber; and we have no magazines to assemble these items even if they were to fall on us from the heavens.”

Patrick Henry looked at Washington, usually silent and taciturn, as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt.

“Surely every gentleman in Virginia has private arms. Many have fine fowlers, even rifles.”

Washington smiled, although the smile didn’t touch the skin on his cheeks. He waved a hand to a slave by the tavern’s counter and pointed to top his tankard.

“I’m not sure how many gentlemen want their fine Durs Egg fowlers being handed out to the yeomanry to repel invaders, at ten pounds and more each.”

“If their liberty requires it!”

“Mr. Henry, you are a warm friend to liberty, but not, I think, a soldier. Those fine fowlers have fine parts; the cocks and hammers are slim as a pistol. You’ll have noticed this, I think?”

“I have, sir. I have handled arms and need no lesson.”

“I mean no insult, sir, but you do. Those fine, slim cocks will break when a scared boy pulls them back too hard; the springs will burst when overused, or let to wet and rust. A Queen Anne musket like this here is a heavy thing and built to be used by scared boys. The springs are such that it takes a heavy pull to cock, but see how much metal there is throughout? You can drop it and it won’t break. And your fowler has a smaller bore-perhaps sixty or sixtyfive caliber, some as small as twenty or twenty-five balls to the pound. A military musket is bigger in the bore, faster to load and uses a heavier ball that carries farther in the flat or in the brush.”

Henry nodded. He had not become a great debater by failing to note when other men knew more than he. And Washington knew the tools of his former trade like no one else on the committee.

“Your rifles can be pitiful things, sir, because the balls they fire are even slighter, but mostly because they are fragile, and take a man trained in their use, of which we will have too few. Neither they nor the fowlers will take a bayonet, either. A soldier needs a bayonet, either to try conclusions with an enemy at close quarters or to keep the enemy’s horse at bay. Without bayonets, you’ll never get a man to stand when he is charged. We need muskets, and proper ones-made careful and with bayonets to fit-and cartridge boxes, slings, and bayonet carriages. And we’ll need our powder and ball rolled up in cartridges-faster to load, as the men have only to bite off the ball and pour the powder down the barrel. Loading from the horn is too slow.”

His old allies from the militia acts of 1757 knew all this; they’d heard it all too often before. But it was news to the new firebrands, and if it didn’t cool their ardor, it certainly caused them to start counting their shillings. But Henry never relished defeat in any debate; he deemed his opponent knew the subject better than he, but couldn’t let the opportunity to speechify pass.

“You seem to have little confidence in the yeomanry of Virginia. Scared boys and men who won’t stand, to hear you.”

“Well, sir, I’ve seen ’em run a few times. Never been a man born not scared when the first balls fly. No gentleman asks too much of his soldiers. General Braddock said that. He may have lost Monongahela, but he was no fool.”

“Our men will have the courage of true patriots!”

Washington shook his head. To him, the issue of true patriotism was not germane; no one could recruit or feed an army on it.

“Virginia will need three thousand stand of arms for the foot alone. And where the furniture for the mounted companies will come from is beyond me. Muskets will be hard enough, but musketoons and carbines and sabers…”

“New York has been making muskets.” Mr. Lewis had sat quiet up until now.

“We don’t need New York goods to fight Virginia’s wars.” Patrick Henry seemed divided as to whether the colonies would rise together or as discrete entities.

“Oh, but we do, and we will, sir, if we propose to fight the mother country. To raise an army, and face British regulars, we will need an army of the whole continent, trained and mustered. And we will need the support and equipment of every colony to face them.”

Henry turned to Peyton Randolph, who had entered a moment before and sat quietly against the wall. “Colonel Washington becomes the orator at last.”

Randolph, who had a longer experience of Washington, smiled grimly. “Washington only speaks when he knows his subject and his passions are moved. When you speak of war, you meet both those conditions.”

Randolph stood when Washington ceased. “Gentlemen, I have to ask your committee to rejoin us in the church as we are to vote the members for the Continental Congress.”

As the chairs scraped back and the men began to move, Henry leaned past him. He was a man who always separated the battle of wills in debate from the true demands of politics. “Make sure we take the soldier,” he muttered, and cast a significant glance at Washington. “I think we shall need him.”

Great Dismal Swamp, April 1775

The next two days, they were sent to plant tobacco instead of going into the swamp. It rested them all, and gave them a chance to exchange news with the slaves from the other gangs. They got a little more to eat each night, too. Caesar assumed it had to do with newly delivered supplies that had come with Lark, another slave who never spoke named Tom, and several new white men.

Days passed, and still the circumstances they needed for the plan didn’t arise.

The third and fourth mornings, Gordon sent one of the new whites, Keller, to unlock the barracoon, and himself stood well back with a long fowler across his arm; the next morning he did not appear at all. Keller was unarmed, except for a large knife. He was surly, and Caesar could feel his fear of the blacks, which put him on his guard. The other men ignored his curses, took their tools, and went to work, tensions easing only when they were at the heads of their trenches into the swamp, hacking their ditches a little deeper. But something was different; Gordon hadn’t watched them go out, and on a spur of impulse, Caesar stayed with Virgil’s party rather than going out with his own. The sullen boy said nothing; he didn’t even know the slaves apart yet.

Caesar cut at the roots of a large tree for almost an hour, working his hands into steadiness, cracking the knuckles where he had to force them to respond. The knuckles were getting more swollen every day; they had never looked like this before, even early in his service in the Indies. The black blood around the edges of his calluses made him queasy. He was not a weak man, but his hands looked as if they would never again be adept at anything. Even swinging the pick had become a matter of fine judgment. He tried not to look, then looked again, with the vanity of a handsome man who sees his body being ruined.

He wondered if the plan to kill the overseer had been betrayed. He was sure of Virgil, less sure of Lark. Lark was new. Old Ben would never; he was too old to care one way or the other. The cook boy, perhaps. He stayed all day at the barracoon, cleaning and cooking; perhaps his loyalty was with the whites. But if Gordon knew the plan, what was he waiting for?

Suddenly, Caesar decided it was time to act. The decision came suddenly; it didn’t seem to result from conscious thought. It was there. Time to go. He had assumed that the attack should come at the morning or perhaps at the evening, because they were all together; but what entered his mind now was the idea that there was little to be gained from involving the other slaves.

He sank the head of the pick into a root on purpose, tested it to be sure that it wouldn’t come out easily, and crept off into the swamp. If discovered, he could say he was looking for another man with an ax or mattock to help him cut the pick free. He climbed a short ridge to his left and followed a game trail along it, then moved as quietly as he could through the undergrowth, parallel to the line of workers. He had to know where Gordon was. He was not going to lie sleepless another night and be disappointed. Freedom was no longer something he wanted in the future; his hands and his maimed leg demanded it immediately.

He came abreast of Virgil, who was working silently. All the singing had stopped; they had figured that it could be used to track the location of their work, and that if it stopped on the day they went for the overseers, it might warn them. No one questioned the end of the songs. Very few of the men knew why they stopped. Virgil hefted his ax and slipped a fascine knife from behind a tuft of brush. He handed it to Caesar.

“Now?”

“I’m goin’ to fin’ him. Find him.”

“And?”

“And then we take him, you an’ me.”

“What about Lark?”

“Just you and me, Virgil.”

“I’m with you.” Virgil didn’t sound calm, but he was clearly resolved. It lifted Caesar’s spirits.

If Virgil wanted to question why Lark had ceased to enjoy Caesar’s confidence, he didn’t. Caesar slipped back into the brush, the heavy fascine knife held in his left hand. It had a vicious hook and an ax blade on the back, meant for cutting brush. This one was painted bright red, to make it easier to find when a careless man left it on the ground.

Caesar’s heart began to beat faster. He moved easily now, the sun having warmed his aching bones but not yet sapped his strength. Virgil made considerably more noise. Caesar stopped and pointed. They were past their own gang, back toward the barracoon, the cabins, and the tilled fields. Keller was relieving himself into their ditch. He had the large knife at his belt and no other weapon. Caesar looked at Virgil, whose lips were a little pale, and he nodded. Caesar moved warily into the open to a patch of cat-tails, making the dry winter grass rustle, but Keller didn’t move, still splashing the ditch with his urine and grunting a little, as if pleased with himself. Caesar made it to the reeds. He stood very still, hidden only by the man’s position and the merest fringe of green, and breathed slowly through his mouth, spreading his hands wide for balance. He had practiced with his brothers, but his one experience of combat had not prepared him for this. His hands ached as if maimed. He took one long delicate step into the reeds that stood between him and his prey, placing his weight gradually down on a rotting stump that supported the little patch of dry ground. Keller began to button the flap of his breeches, his little grunts odd and faintly disgusting.

Caesar could smell his urine and his fetid breath. He waited until he heard the boy exhale and he leaned out carefully and pounced, his hand gripping Keller’s throat like a band of iron. The boy’s eyes were huge. Only now did Caesar really see how young he was, but he ripped the big knife free and stabbed, upwards as he had been taught, through the vitals and into the heart, pressing the boy back against his own chest and twisting the knife while his other hand kept the wind from the boy’s lungs. Virgil appeared in front of him and his ax shattered the boy’s skull.

There was no end to the blood from the head and from the heart. It stained all the water in the ditch in a moment. The boy was dead; he hadn’t made a noise, and already the flies were coming. Caesar took a deep breath and stripped the boy’s shirt, slave cotton, as poorly made as his own, over the corpse’s head. It was soaked with blood, but he used the back to mop his hands and face. He threw it to Virgil, who was still standing, shocked, by the corpse, staring at the ruin he had made of the boy’s head. Caesar ripped some ferns from the ground and used them to wipe the blade of the knife. It was a better knife than he had expected, a heavy blade with fine decoration on the backbone and a riveted wood grip. It reminded him of trade knives in Africa, a little heavier, but much the same.

“Come on, Virgil.”

Virgil just stood. He wasn’t whimpering, but his breath was loud and the sharp edges of his face were pale.

“Come on, if you’re comin’.” Caesar grabbed his arm. At first the ax came up, but the mad gleam in Virgil’s eyes faded in a heartbeat and the big man nodded dully and followed him.

They headed back toward the cabins. It was almost a mile to the clearing, and they moved along steadily, Virgil starting at every forest noise. Caesar had started to breathe freely. The killing had shocked him. He regretted the age of the boy, but he was old enough to be a warrior anywhere Caesar had been, and he carried a weapon. Virgil had it worse. Somehow, Virgil’s continued reaction helped to steady Caesar. He put his hand on the older man’s shoulder.

“Halfway home.”

“Never killed nobody.”

“Just stay with me.”

There was a horse in the paddock with the saddle still on, and a man in a greatcoat talking to Gordon in the yard of the cabin. Chickens clucked around their feet. The man in the greatcoat wasn’t large, but he looked fit, and his complexion was burned red even this early in the year. He and Gordon seemed to be arguing, though they were sharing a jug of corn liquor. His greatcoat had a velvet collar and silver buttons, and his fine hat and top boots, even covered in spring swamp mud, made Gordon’s work smock look drab and poor.

A few drops of rain began to fall, although the sun still cast a pale light over the dooryard. Caesar slipped closer to the cabin, aiming to use it as cover. He could hear their voices but not what they were saying. Virgil was still behind him. Caesar sank to his knees at the edge of the clearing and waited, as rain could only help them. It came, harder and harder, and Caesar waited patiently.

“What you doin? I can’ jes’ wait here!” Virgil was quiet, but urgent. He had the need for action on him, something that Caesar had seen before in men, a reaction to danger.

“We just wait a while, Virgil. Be still.”

Before long the April rain fell in sheets, the watery sun was gone, and so too were the men’s voices. The horse walked about the paddock, dejected and puzzled that her saddle was still on. The men were in the one-room cabin. Caesar could hear them through the thin walls of the mud-and-stick chimney. He had helped lay the chimney; he knew how flimsy it was.

“We nevah take that cabin with they inside,” Virgil said, his voice rising.

“Don’t you move, Virgil. You stay right heah. Here.” He slipped out of the mire, up the bank to the high ground, and along the rail fence of the paddock to the horse. The cabin had no windows. Unless one of the men put an eye to one of the many chinks he was safe. He put a hand in front of the horse’s nose and breathed on it. The horse made a soft noise. He ran his other hand back along the neck to the top of the saddle and felt in the holster. A pistol. Rather than drag it into the rain he felt for the buckle to the holsters and found it, unbuckled the pair of pistols, and moved back to the edge of the swamp.

“Ever shoot a gun before, Virgil?”

“Nevah.”

“This ain’t your day to learn, then.” The pistols weren’t fine, like some he had seen; these were local made and had heavy locks. The priming was sound in one, damp in the other. He recharged it from the flask in the holster. Something didn’t look right, but his experience with firearms was entirely through observing other men with them. He knew he would have to pull the cocks back to full before he pulled the trigger, and he carefully did so now. The cock came back and there was a soft click, almost pleasant. It made the piece look more dangerous. He examined it for a moment, then opened the pan and let out the priming and held the cock as he pulled the trigger. It forced forward a little against his thumb, and he lowered it into the pan and then pulled it back one click, then the other. Half cock, full cock. He had heard both terms. Now he knew the feel. He did it over and over again until he was sure of the feeling, and then he replaced the priming and put both pistols on half cock. An unlucky drip from the trees hit the lock of the second before he had it stowed away in its fur-covered horse-holster, and he had to open the pan, clear it of the black mud that formed there, and refill the pan with powder. He didn’t trust the piece, though; he had heard masters say that once a gun was wet, it stayed wet.

Virgil was silent through the whole performance, and he looked miserable.

“Soon, man, soon,” Caesar reassured him, quietly, but the words seemed to go right past him.

Caesar felt more alive than he had in months, indeed, since Mount Vernon. He felt sure of himself; he was balanced pleasurably on the edge of danger. He smiled at Virgil, a smile that shocked him because of its sheer happiness, and moved across the edge of the paddock to the back of the cabin, his steps covered by the sound of rain. Virgil set his jaw and followed, clearly terrified but determined. His face was a mask of tension, and Caesar became apprehensive that Virgil would do something rash.

Caesar stood under the eaves of the cabin and put the fascine knife under the rope that held his trousers at the back. He drew the wet pistol with his left hand and the dry one with his right. The men inside were making a bargain; Caesar could hear them huckstering. It struck Caesar that Gordon was selling some of the slaves, perhaps in preference to killing them, although he didn’t care. He moved to the long porch, where the roof protruded forward beyond the front of the cabin, and made it there with both pistols dry, cocking them with his thumbs as he crossed the step. The door was open a crack.

“Who’s there?” Gordon’s voice. Caesar didn’t hesitate, although he’d hoped to wait and ambush them when they emerged. He shouldered the door, which swung inward. The stranger in the greatcoat rose and turned and Caesar raised his left hand and pulled the trigger. The cock fell and there wasn’t even a spark. Caesar pointed the second pistol and it fired into the man’s face. The man catapulted back across the crude table, dead.

Gordon pulled a pistol from his belt and snapped it in one motion, but his prime was wet from the rain as well. He flung the big gun at Virgil and stunned him, then dove off his seat for the fowler in a corner. The cabin was full of smoke from the bad fire and the one shot, but Caesar stayed on the man, hurdling the table without thought, drawing the big fascine knife so fast that it cut his back. Gordon raised the fowler, his thumb on the cock, and Caesar cut his right hand off at the wrist with one hatefilled blow. The blood from the arm sprayed him, and the painted handle slipped in his hand and dropped to the floor. He pushed Gordon with his numb hand, as hard as he could, and the wounded man fell back across the fireplace, his back bursting through the mud and sticks even as his legs began to burn. He screamed, clearly past fighting, and Virgil’s ax finished him.

Caesar wanted to rest, even to sleep; but the shot had been loud, even in the cabin.

“Not done yet,” he said. He was almost unhurt and had killed three men. They had killed Gordon.

He smiled, and though his hands shook, he set about loading the pistol that had fired. Virgil was sick.

“You done?” he asked, when the noises stopped.

Virgil muttered something. Caesar found a leather pail of water and drank half of it, surprised that his mouth was so dry. He passed the rest to Virgil, who finished it.

“They other white boys be coming,” Virgil said, looking over the rim of the bucket.

“If they heard the shots, I expec’ they would.”

“We gon’ kill them too?”

Caesar recognized that Virgil was done. It was something he knew instinctively, that the man could not handle further violence just then. Caesar considered their position. He moved through the cabin, collecting a side of bacon and a bag of meal, a hunting pouch with a horn for the fowler, the blankets. He searched both the dead men’s bodies. The wealthy one had a fancy clasp knife, a watch, and two English guineas; Caesar kept them all, and a little pocket glass that the man had. Gordon had less, some shillings, another clasp knife, and a pocket tinder kit. Virgil leaned in the doorframe, watching the yard. He was still trembling at the knees.

“Search the horse, Virgil. We need any food she got, and the man’s blanket.”

Virgil nodded and stumbled out. As soon as he was gone, Caesar began to strip the dead men. It was miserable, gruesome work: the bodies were clumsy and flaccid; Gordon had soiled himself as he died. For that reason, Caesar left him his breeches. But he needed their shoes. The slender man’s boots fit him near enough, and he took the man’s stockings, as well. He had no illusions about walking barefoot any great distance in the Great Dismal.

When he was done, he took the piles of useful goods out to the yard and added them to the spoil from the horse. He expected it to be late afternoon in the yard, somehow; he walked out into mid-morning and realized that little time had passed since the rain.

“Go get the others.”

Virgil looked at him.

“What if they don’ wan’ come?”

“Then they can stay and get hung.”

Virgil frowned.

“I don’ like this. Too many killing. It won’ lead to no good.”

Caesar smiled, a hard smile with no humor in it that hid his teeth-Washington’s smile.

“I doubt this will be the last of the killing, my friend. But let’s run. We’ll have a long start.”

It took an hour-an hour that frayed Caesar’s nerves and made him lash out several times at the other men. He had to explain what had happened over and over; many did not like the sharing of equipment; and some simply stood slack and looked at the blood in the cabin. If the white men had returned, they could have taken the lot, Caesar suspected, but they didn’t. Caesar didn’t know how distant they were or what they were doing, but if they heard the shots, they either hid in fear or fled. At the end of the hour, Caesar’s party was finally ready to move: Caesar at the head, followed by Old Ben; three men he barely knew, carrying an iron pot and most of the food; the cook boy; Tom and Virgil closing the file. Lark was nowhere to be seen. The other slaves were huddled in groups, some eating their share of the cabin’s provisions, others already drunk on the corn liquor. Caesar had tried talk and he balked at force, but it angered him to leave them to face the wrath of the whites. He looked around the clearing; then, moved by an impulse, he walked back into the cabin, drew the little tinderbox, got a spark on charred linen, and blew it to light on some tow. He lit a tallow candle and some fatwood with the tow, and made it a bundle. Then he kicked a hole in the wattle and mud chimney and set the sticks of it on fire with his fatwood. He threw another stick into the marsh straw of the roof for good measure, and in a moment it went up with a rush. He took the bundle of tallow and wood out and threw it on the straw in the barracoon. Then he took the long sharp knife he had gained from the first boy and killed the horse. The others watched him, stunned, as he moved purposefully through the clearing, destroying the corn crib and every other structure.

“Stay if you want, you Ebo fools.” The cabin was starting to burn in earnest. “Stay and be slaves, or hang!”

They watched him; a few actually ran from him. He thought a few might follow his group when they went. He was too inexperienced to realize that, just then, most of them were more scared of him than of the hazy and uncertain future.

“You gonna die!” shouted one man, backlit by the fires.

Caesar shrugged wearily, too tired to argue, and he led his group into the swamp. Behind him, the cabin roof and the barracoon both caught, and a pillar of smoke rose slowly into the sky. But he thought, as they left the line of drains and plunged into the real wilderness, that today, at last, he was not a slave.