Washington and Caesar

4

New York City, November 28, 1776

Taverns in the city of New York were, by and large, cramped affairs, with a snug and a few small tables close around a central fireplace, and perhaps a private room. They didn’t have dance floors, and rarely had music beyond that offered by a vagabond fiddler.

The Moor’s Head across from the barracks at 10 Broadway was a different animal altogether. Perhaps because the building had started life as a warehouse with a comfortable front shop for clients, it had the space for dancing that the other taverns lacked. The tavern was larger, better furnished, and better served than any of the sailors’ dives or public houses along the waterfront on Burnett’s Key or Water Street, and infinitely better in air and spaciousness than the narrow drinking shops between Stone Street and Marketfield where the soldiers tended to congregate. Perhaps it was better because the consortium of owners were black men, to whom a tavern license had been forbidden for all the years until the conquest of the city by the British Army.

The Black House, as it came to be known, was the regular off-duty home for the Company of Black Guides who had their winter quarters across the street. Many of their women worked in the kitchen or did the house’s laundry, augmenting their army rations with the hard currency paid by the house’s many well-born white patrons. Almost as soon as its blue door opened, a peculiar military demimonde sprang into being at its tables. The male patrons were often members of the best families, and if the same could not be said for the majority of the female patrons, it was not that their manners, or indeed their costume, seemed in the least beneath the quality of their “friends”.

The central fireplace, a behemoth of brick and mortar that cast its heat well back into the cavernous common room, saw gatherings of red-coated officers and their Loyalist compatriots as soon as the weather stalled their advance through New Jersey. Before November was very old, a map of the northern colonies taken from the Gentleman’s Magazine was framed and mounted in the good light by the fire, where campaigns could be the more easily planned by ambitious subalterns and armchair brigadiers. The claret was passable and cheap, the landlord had a number of cubbyholes to hide the shy, and Mother Abbott’s, the most genteel brothel in the city, was an easy walk away.

If any of the regular patrons were surprised by the familiarity of the black patrons, they were never allowed to forget that this was a black tavern, the first such to be licensed in the city, and that it owed its existence to its black clientele. The white officers came for the space, and after a time for the fashion of the place, but for the blacks it was the only tavern where they were welcome.

The black woman pulled at the heavy petticoats around her hips and drew them up above her ankles, showing the dark slimness of her legs under white silk stockings. She had her tongue clenched in her teeth in a most engaging manner, and James Julius Stewart thought her the handsomest woman in the room, and possibly in New York.

She moved her legs again.

“Pas de bourree,” she said, concentrating on her feet. She seemed to curtsy, then rise and float. Stewart and the three other officers-and a crowd of delighted onlookers-watched her slippered feet as she rose on to the points of her toes to walk straight-legged for three steps before gliding back down into the curtsy, or plie.

Monsieur, the French-Canadian dancing maitre who had attached himself to the Moor’s Head, was giving another officer a private lesson and he came back across the room to the thick crowd around Mother Abbott’s girls where they were attempting to repeat the steps he had just demonstrated.

He glanced at Stewart with mock venom.

“If Monsieur le Capitaine wishes to learn to dance, he would do better learning from me,” and he rolled his eyes at the women, “even if I lack some of their obvious attractions.”

Jeremy, silent until now but admiring the women from a safe distance, prodded Stewart gently with one finger.

“Do it,” he said in a whisper.

While Stewart stood, indecisive, Monsieur stood in front of the women and paused, beautifully at rest in his plie position.

“Pas coupe,” he said, and performed one. None of the women was as good as he, but the black woman with the magnificent legs was graceful even in her hesitant approach to his steps, and he fixed on her. Mother Abbott shook her head from a settee near the fire and called out.

“Sally, you behave yourself, child. This is not our house.”

The men laughed, but she continued to keep her eyes down and her tongue clenched between her teeth.

Jeremy led his master to one side. They made a handsome pair, Jeremy resplendent in gold-buttoned scarlet and his master in a plain frock coat of plaid.

“You’ve always wanted to dance, sir. And I’ll say respectfully, there is no better place. Consider, if you will, returning to London as an able, or even accomplished, dancer. Consider how it marks you in any society, that you lack this accomplishment, so necessary among the gentry. No one here can tell tales about you. It is not at all the same as going to some public dancing master in London who may ridicule your efforts and your age. And if I may speak from some experience, this man knows his art.”

The bitter truth was that without dancing, Stewart was marked even in America as a man whose origins could not be the best. The ability to dance a minuet, or even open a ball with a small ballet, denoted a childhood of affluence with dancing masters and tutors.

“I’m sure Miss Mary would prefer you to return to Edinburgh with this accomplishment.”

He regretted the statement as soon as he made it. Miss Mary, the object of years of Captain Stewart’s devotion, was not a subject that he could find suitable in a tavern. He looked dourly at Jeremy, who stared woodenly back, hoping he had not spoiled his entire attack. Jeremy was an able dancer himself, and had looked forward to spending afternoons here, watching the lessons and impressing the ladies with his own accomplishments.

A group of women, accompanied by two officers of newly raised Loyalist corps, came in a rush, interrupting them and filling the space with a fine sparkle of femininity.

“The flowers of the field,” commented Stewart, a little wry.

Miss Poppy, who was well known to all the gentlemen present, was a blond, and wore her golden-yellow gown with more humor than dignity. She smiled on all, as if she expected life to be a constant delight, and a circle of admirers surrounded her. The girls from Mother Abbott’s shrank instantly against the wall, eclipsed by “proper” women from the city’s better families.

Behind Miss Poppy was her older sister, Miss Hammond, who managed in a single glance at the huddle near the far wall to convey that there would be no conflict.

“I told you that this was the sort of place a woman could go,” she said graciously, as if recognizing one of the sisters from Mother Abbott’s as an acquaintance. Her escort, a thin elegant man of middle height in a fine green coat, raised his glass a moment and turned a trifle pale.

“Surely, miss, you don’t mean that…”

“I think, sir, that you should consider your ground a little, before you tell me what I should mean.” The archness of her reply was ameliorated a little by her touching his sleeve with her fan. The other women with her laughed and hid their faces, and one giggled noticeably. The other man turned from a side conversation to reveal himself as John Graves Simcoe in a fine velvet coat. Stewart had seldom seen him out of regimentals, and he hurried forward to make his bow.

“Captain Simcoe,” he said, smiling broadly.

“Captain Stewart,” returned Simcoe. “May I present Ensign Martin of the Loyal Militia, and Mr. Chew, currently without a regiment but desirous of serving His Majesty?”

Stewart bowed to each in turn. They were young men, both clearly in awe of Simcoe, and now Stewart.

Miss Hammond paused by Simcoe, and he presented her as well.

“Captain Stewart, Miss Hammond, a local family, and her sister, Miss Poppy.” They curtsied. “And Ensign Martin’s sister, Miss Martin, and her friends, Miss Amanda Chew and Miss Jennifer. Mrs. Innes, whose husband is in the commissary line. And Miss Hight.”

Miss Poppy was clearly the prize, with a freckled English face and golden hair, but neither the Chew nor the Martin was anything but pretty, and Miss Hammond had more presence than all the other women together. She wore a fine modern traveling gown that showed off her waist. Stewart thought privately that the tall black girl, Sally, was her equal for dignity of carriage, but it was an odd comparison to make, and he didn’t pursue it. The two younger women, almost girls, wore dresses a year out of fashion and in materials not calculated to endear them to Englishmen, but Stewart gave them his best smile. They were all children, to him. Mrs. Innes was handsome in spite of her giggle, and Miss Hight so became her name that Stewart thought she looked more like an officer of grenadiers than Simcoe.

“Captain Simcoe, I understand that there is to be dancing here, with a dancing master,” said Miss Hammond, more in an answer than a question. Simcoe nodded gravely to her.

“Stewart as much as lives here, Miss Hammond. I think you would better address him.”

She looked at him gravely. “Is there to be dancing, Captain Stewart?”

Stewart looked toward Monsieur for help.

“I give lessons here for a fee, to any who wish them,” Monsieur said. “I also put on the occasional ballet. It remains to be seen if I will ever have the quality of student to perform a proper dance here.”

“There isn’t anyone in the town who wouldn’t benefit from a lesson, sir. Excepting Miss Hight, who is the best of us. But I had hoped we might have dancing, perhaps by subscription. The Moor’s Head is the only common room of a size.”

Sally, the tall black woman, came cautiously closer. Stewart identified immediately both that she had something to say and her clear desire to avoid giving offence, as she had no business mixing with proper women. He looked at Jeremy, who read his glance and intercepted Sally, a prospect that he clearly enjoyed. They murmured together for a moment.

Jeremy moved back to Stewart and whispered in his ear.

“I think the tavern would be delighted to host a weekly subscription if it were to be by daylight, so no accusation of lewdness could be made,” said Stewart. Jeremy nodded imperceptibly, and Stewart wondered how he, a Scots Protestant who could not dance, had become the intermediary for the principals. He felt like the second in a duel.

Miss Poppy laughed. “Faith, sister, it’s only by daylight we’d be allowed near this place.” She gestured at Sally. “You dance, I’ll warrant.”

Sally nodded and dropped a very nice curtsy.

Ensign Martin stepped forward. “I don’t think your mother would approve of any direct contact…”

Miss Poppy looked at him, the vacant happy eyes suddenly sharp.

He desisted immediately. He looked at Miss Hammond as if for support, got the same visual slap, and retired in some confusion.

“Perhaps we could clear the floor and just…try it!” she said. “It wouldn’t really be right to go to the trouble of a subscription without having tried the floor. And,” she glared at the men, “I wish to dance.”

Every male in the crowd immediately began to move the tables and chairs against the wall, while Miss Hammond extended her hand to Captain Stewart.

“I expect Captain Simcoe will wish to dance with my sister,” she said, apparently ignoring Ensign Martin. Stewart knew the meaning all too well, but he affected not to understand, and bowed, withdrawing a pace, flushing a little from an old wound to his amour-propre. Miss Hammond glared at him a moment and then turned on her heel, only to find herself looking into the yellow eyes of Jeremy.

“I’m sorry, miss, but the captain does not dance, and it mortifies him to be reminded.”

Miss Hammond seemed to grow, and her smile returned.

“Ah,” she said. “I thought…”

“Yes.” Jeremy bowed and made as if to step away, but she kept him with a glance.

“These women are…I…I would rather these were honest women.”

Jeremy smiled a little cynically. “They are as attached to the army as I am, miss.”

He left her coughing in her attempt not to give an unladylike snort of laughter.

Jeremy saw a familiar cap and a pair of well-set shoulders in the gloom near the door to the private room and he made his way there, pushing past Caesar and Virgil as they watched the dancing.

“Miss Polly,” he said gravely. She looked up, her arms full of a large and unhappy cat.

“Sir!” She curtsied. “I lost my cat. Had I known you would be here, I would not have asked my father to escort me.”

Jeremy had to look up to meet her father’s eye. He was one of the tallest men Jeremy had ever seen, and he wore his quiet black minister’s coat.

Polly kept her eyes down and said, “Father, this is Mr. Jeremy Green, of London, who serves Captain Stewart over there. Mr. Green, may I introduce my father, Reverend Marcus White, a minister of the gospel.”

Each bowed to the other. Reverend White had a magnificent smile that tended to overwhelm all comers. Jeremy had seen its child on Polly and had already been overwhelmed.

“Your servant, sir.”

“You serve Captain Stewart? I long to meet him. He commands the Black Guides, does he not?” Mr. White had a very slight Dutch accent.

“Indeed, sir, and I’m sure that he would be honored to make your acquaintance.” Jeremy considered him for a moment. “Please accept my apologies if I seem impertinent, but do you have a parish?”

Mr. White boomed out a laugh that carried clear across the room to the people forming for the dance. Heads turned.

“I currently serve the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in America, those gentlemen who were kind enough to arrange my freedom and ordination. My parish is become New York, and there are thousands of black souls here. I try to care for them. I have the honor of the ear of Sir William on some matters.”

Jeremy bowed again, impressed. So many blacks in America had angered him with their ignorance, and here was one in whom learning spoke with every word. Jeremy wondered if the Guides would warrant a chaplain.

Three black men dressed in military smallclothes with colorful sashes pinned around them came in by the back with instruments. They arranged chairs for themselves and other men, and two maids came bearing music stands and instruments. Jeremy saw Caesar approach them and a spirited conversation occur.

Suddenly Miss Poppy was with them. She exclaimed, “A kitten!” and reached out, gracefully and softly, to run her hand over the cat’s head. He didn’t appear to resent the familiarity. Miss Poppy looked into Polly’s eyes and smiled.

“I cannot resist a kitten.”

“He’s hardly a kitten, miss. He’s just a grumpy old cat.”

“I’ve never met one I didn’t like,” she said. “Most like me, too. May I introduce myself, as this seems an informal kind of place? I’m Morag Hammond. Most people call me Poppy.”

“Your servant, miss. I am Polly White.” Miss Poppy merely inclined her head instead of the full curtsy that Polly gave her, but her smile went beyond civility.

Ensign Martin appeared at her shoulder. Jeremy noted his clothes with approval. Martin was the best-dressed Loyalist officer he had seen.

“Is that the famous Sergeant Caesar?” Martin asked, looking at the group around the musicians.

“It is, sir,” said Jeremy. He beckoned to Caesar and enjoyed the wariness of his approach. He was introduced. Jeremy was so busy watching the admiration shown by Ensign Martin that he did not spare a glance for the contact between Polly and Caesar. It might have caused him to dismiss his own prospects with Miss White, had he seen the almost palpable spark that flew between them.

“Surely I have seen you before, Sergeant Caesar.” She sounded cool.

Caesar nodded, mutely. Polly White was beyond his experience of black women, and the added burdens of the admiring Ensign Martin, the beautiful Miss Poppy, and the approach of Captain Simcoe combined to render him mute. Virgil, ever the bolder when it came to the fair sex, at least so long as Sally wasn’t involved, came up to his elbow.

“You was at the battery when your daddy gave us church,” he said.

She nodded, her slim back straight, and turned to face the music.

The musicians, including a fifer Caesar had just engaged for the company-playing, however, an old fiddle-began to play. They played some piece of formal music through, and Caesar enjoyed it, but not as thoroughly as Miss Poppy and her sister, who were clearly enraptured.

“What did we do for musicians before all the blacks came?” they asked each other, while Monsieur arranged the couples for country dancing.

They danced a set and declared that another would be required before they could certify the floor. Then the tall thin woman, Miss Hight, came and partnered the dancing master in a complicated ballet that had them all rapt, though it was short. There was a great deal of laughter. Simcoe danced and teased Stewart about his ignorance. The black men and women, away from the fire but tacitly included in the coaching of the dancing master, danced separately. Caesar danced, his own steps hesitant but capable, as Sally led him along through the country dance. He didn’t trust her, knew that Virgil still longed for her, but she was somehow part of the company now, even as a prostitute. Her courage and bearing reminded him strongly of Queeny, and he realized with a guilty shrug that he hadn’t given that woman a thought in months. He danced with Sally and smiled, and she smiled back, a tiny hint of artifice visible in her face. She had a little velvet patch on the top of one breast that he wanted to admire, and she would raise her skirts to show her ankles. The music stopped as she pulled him through a last round.

“Thank you for the dance,” she said. He bowed to her. There was always a hint of restraint between them, but he saw her eyes were elsewhere and he let her go.

He found that she had left him standing with Polly White, and they both studied the floor in sudden confusion. Caesar had no memory of asking her to dance, nor she of accepting, but in a moment they were attempting a much more difficult dance that the white dancers were doing with vigor. She was the soul of grace and her very pretty dancing raised him above himself, so that Jeremy, resentful that both of his beauties were otherwise occupied, couldn’t help but applaud them. Indeed, when they ended, she rising prettily on her toes and then sinking in a curtsy, and he simply happy to have the right foot on the ground at the end, they had a little round of applause that included the white dancers. Caesar flushed and looked at Polly. She met his eye, hers half lidded with exertion and perhaps something else, and she flushed, but she didn’t turn away. Her smile was enigmatic. He bowed to her and then reached for her hand, but she slipped away through a doorway and vanished.

Stewart was not precisely disconsolate, but he stood near the mantle of the fire, smoking and thinking some bitter thoughts. He found a glass of wine being put in his hand, and looked around to find the tall, handsome black woman looking him in the eye.

“I could teach you to dance,” Sally said. It wasn’t done broadly, just a hint that there was more to it.

“I imagine you could at that,” he said. He drank the wine.

He had never lain with a woman that was naked, and he rested on an elbow, just admiring her, running his hand over her breasts and her waist down to the swell of her hips. She was black, and that was different, although he had known women in Smyrna and Algiers who were darker. The gleam of her skin was magnificent, rich like the best old furniture, a simile that made him smile because he didn’t think she’d be flattered. Then he thought of Mary, and frowned a little, because she wouldn’t approve and he was Protestant enough to regret the lapse, but Sally was too much in the bed to ignore or feel guilty about just then.

“I could teach you to dance, Captain darlin’,” she said. He placed his hands around her waist and drew her to him, but she held him off easily and pouted.

“I mean what I say. I saw how you looked there. Let me teach you some steps, and perhaps you’ll be less afraid.” Her manner was such that he couldn’t resent the word afraid. He moved his hand all the way down her back. The hand trembled a little.

“Why do you take off all your clothes to do it?” he asked her. She shook her head.

“I want to know!” he said, a little too loud, his hand still on her back. She shook her head again. She was looking somewhere else, but he wanted the woman back that had been there before, asking him to take the lessons. Sally had been there, not just the shell of her, and he kissed her neck, smelling the warm grass smell she carried with her. She shrugged him off, impatient now.

“I like to dance. I thought…” She sounded curiously defeated, as if the prospect of dancing was the only thing that had held her interest, and in an unaccustomed moment of insight he saw that it probably was. The act itself was of little consequence to her, even naked and lewd. He stretched, his frizzed red hair around his head in the candlelight like a halo, or horns.

“You can really teach me the steps?”

She bounced back to him, her face alive again.

“Only the simple ones. I shan’t lie. But then we can have Monsieur to teach us privately.” Her manner of speech was odd, and a little stilted. He thought perhaps Mother Abbott had been teaching her to speak.

“You expect that I have money, Sally.”

She nodded, still smiling. “Jeremy says you are a rich man. Surely you can afford a few lessons?”

He pulled her on top of him, noting the goose bumps all along her arms and hips. It was cold in the room, now that he was cooling. November had more bite to it in the colonies.

“Just so,” he murmured.

Caesar kissed her again, holding her around the waist with one hand, the other roving her well-protected body. She was wearing layers of petticoats and a full set of stays with a jacket over all, a set of clothes more impenetrable than armor. He ran his hand under her skirts and up her bare leg, the feel of it overwhelming him as they kissed on and on, his hand higher, on her bare hip and then she bit his tongue and her hand slapped his ear and he stepped back. She sighed and shrugged, moving her stays and smoothing her skirts. They were in the little hallway that led from the kitchen to the woodshed. Caesar looked at her.

She shook her head as if to clear it, and fled, and he stood there, alone and disconsolate, his lust still cresting but more concerned that its object was offended or worse. He called after her, walked through the whole of the tavern, and went back to his barracks, wanting to weep, or talk to someone. She was nowhere to be found, and the common room was empty of any acquaintance except Sergeant McDonald of Captain Stewart’s company. Caesar moved past him warily, not sure that their professional lives would stretch to the tavern. White men had proved uncommonly touchy about these things, and Caesar, possessed of a temper himself, tried to avoid placing himself in a position to give or receive offence. But McDonald hailed him as soon as he looked up from his tankard.

“Julius Caesar, as I live and breathe. Come and have a glass, Caesar.”

Caesar joined him, oddly grateful for the company.

“You look hipped, lad,” said McDonald.

“Nothing to it, sir.” Caesar looked around. “You came on your own, then?”

“Nah, lad. I came with some others, but they had to be chasing the ladies and now there’ll be no finding them before morning parade.” Caesar motioned to a barman for wine, and McDonald called for cards and pipes.

“Do you play, Caesar?”

“I have played, sir.” McDonald lit a pipe and fanned the cards.

“Gambling is a sin, clear as the devil. So’s killing, though, so I reckon I’m done on those lines. Care for a hand?” He was examining the cards, which seemed to depict the battles of the Duke of Marlborough, except for a few, which must have come from a different deck. They depicted engagements of a very different sort.

Caesar played with him in a desultory manner for a few hands until two more men appeared, both soldiers from the Forty-second who seemed to recognize McDonald immediately. Then they wished to change the game to whist, which Caesar didn’t know.

“It’s easy,” they all chorused.

Virgil was snoring when he got to his bunk in the barracks. He hadn’t taken so much wine in his life, but he knew how to play whist, and just then that seemed a fine accomplishment.

Jeremy drank steadily, knowing that his master had taken one of the women he fancied and that Caesar, as close to a friend as he had ever known, was well on his way to taking the other. He drank, but he was a man of the world, and he did not end the night alone, nor did he and his partner ever snore.

Brunswick, New Jersey, November 30, 1776

The outpost that spotted the two wagons couldn’t believe their luck. Their glee was passed back along the chain of command until George Lake wrapped a sergeant’s sash over his blanket coat, took his musket from the hastily built rack lashed between two saplings, and ran off into the hard bite of the early morning air. He was the senior man when he came up, and he was immediately relieved to discover that they weren’t under attack. He sent many of the alarmed men back to the camp, a good two hundred paces distant, and only then turned his attention to the cartmen.

“Who are you?”

“Free men, Sergeant. This is my uncle and my boy Sam.”

“Where are you from?”

The black man, hunched against the cold, glanced back at the river behind him. “Over Jersey way.”

“Where’d you get the straw?”

“We bought it, mister. It be ours. We bought it to sell to Mr. Washington’s Army.”

One of the other blacks with the wagon nodded. “We reckon you be needing straw. We know where to get it cheap, an’ we jus’ walk it across the Jerseys an’ bring it to you.”

George looked at them. They were strong men, neither well dressed nor ill, wearing strong shoes and heavy coats of the shaggy material known as “bear fur”. They seemed a little nervous, but George put that down to the effect of approaching white men with guns.

“How much?” he asked, poking at the straw. It was good and clean, and he needed it for thatching the little wigwam huts his men were building, and for bedding. There was no straw within a day’s march of the army.

“Six shillings the load. We got two loads.” The older man smiled a little.

The price was certainly fair.

“They’re spies,” said Bludner, from behind him. The black men froze. The boy, Sam, raised his head.

“This ain’t your post, Sergeant Bludner.” George had suddenly reached a point where he wasn’t going to deal with Bludner by avoiding him. The change was sudden.

“Take the straw if you want,” said Bludner, paying him no mind. He motioned to a file of his own men he had brought. “Take them Nigras.”

The older black met George’s eyes and shook his head. “We don’ want no trouble,” he said slowly. But he was reaching for something.

When the shooting was over, George Lake was still standing there. He had never moved, not shocked but deeply sorry. Three of the blacks were dead and the older one was weeping quietly, gut-shot. Bludner walked over and kicked him, and he screamed. Then Bludner reloaded, slowly, savoring the old man’s fear, and George stood by, wrapped in conflicting hatreds until it was too late and Bludner suddenly reached out and shot the man dead. Only the youngest was left, cowering on top of the highest hay wagon. He was pale under the dark skin, gray with shock.

Bludner pulled him down easily and showed him to Lake.

“He’s the only one that ‘ud fetch a price, any road,” he said.

The black boy suddenly hit Bludner in the ear and Bludner dropped him, and then hit the boy as hard as he could, a great crashing blow with his fist. The boy went down as if hit by an ax.

Then the man closest to Bludner fell, and the snow under him was suddenly a vivid red. Somewhere far distant, a shot rang out.

Bludner reached for the boy, who was struggling to his feet, and George pushed him down flat in the road and crouched behind one of the carts. He looked at his priming. Something whispered through the straw of the cart and he heard another crack.

Bludner was flat on his back where George had pushed him down. The black boy was weaving and sobbing, but heading away, for the most part.

“Hessians,” George hissed. “Jaegers.” The short, heavy rifles that the Jaegers carried could kill at three hundred yards, and the best of the men who carried them were professional huntsmen at home. They could shoot.

The shots had drawn the attention of an enemy post. Or perhaps, the little party of blacks and their straw had been a ruse to draw them out. The Germans were already famous for it, attacking foragers, using deserters as spies. They had a cunning that the British seemed to lack. Most men feared them, but George Lake’s mother was a Palatine, and he thought he knew them better.

They simply had different notions of war. Given his mother’s stories, perhaps it was because all they did was fight.

Bludner lay still, but he spoke quite clearly.

“I want that boy.”

“Go get him, then.”

“See them Hessians ain’t shootin’ of that boy? They was spies. I know that kind.”

“I see that they are shooting the men with guns, Bludner. Lie still.” He marveled that he had been afraid of Bludner so long. The man had no thought beyond making money and causing evil.

The exchange of shots was drawing attention from the camp, and more men came out. There were more shots from the distance, and another man went down. The Jaegers hit about one man every four shots, which George thought was very good practice for the range.

“Bludner, we’ve lost four men, now,” he said. “All a’cause of your greed.”

“You’re a dead man, Lake.”

“I jus’ saved your life, Sergeant Bludner. Most o’ the company watched me.” He leaned out and fired at the distant stand of trees where puffs of smoke located the enemy. He didn’t have a prayer of hitting, but he thought that someone should fire back. “You come for me, I’ll be ready. I could kill you now, for that matter, but I ain’t like you, Bludner.” He felt that he had just drawn an important line.

“I’ll have you for-”

“You ain’t worth a turd, Bludner. You jus’ shot an ol’ man for fun, you ignorant bastard. Now lie still or I’ll laugh when the Jaegers kill you. Maybe I’ll kick you when you’re gut-shot.”

“You’re a dead man.”

George shook his head, a calm in him that he thought might never go away.

“No, but you talk big if it suits.” He had another round loaded, and he fired into the trees.

Another man went down, somewhere on the road behind him. George lacked the interest and the will to lead a charge across the open snow-clogged fields to clear the Jaegers. They’d lose more men that way. He wished they had some of the rifles on their side; there were some riflemen with several regiments, but none of them close by. He wished that Bludner had not killed the blacks. It all made him tired, and it made him wonder if he would ever go back to a shop and polish boots or make hats. It didn’t seem likely.

But the black boy, probably crippled, wandered across the field toward the distant wood, and eventually disappeared.

Despite desertions and expiring enlistments, the want of provisions, the litany of defeat, Washington could listen to the young men of his staff exchange their jibes and mannerly quips with something like real pleasure. He missed his best counselor, Adjutant General Reed, who could be counted on to hear a quip or an aside and keep it to himself. Washington had just thought of the very line he wanted to describe what he saw happening on his staff, and in the best remaining regiments of his army.

“A crucible,” he said to himself. “A crucible for forming Americans from the disparate colonies.” That was what he had wanted to express to Lee as they descended from Chatterton’s Hill. Lee was not American born, but surely he felt the change?

Washington looked down the main table in his lodging with something like benevolence, and sent his cup back for another fill of the landlord’s coffee. Outside he heard the stamp of feet that indicated a sentry saluting, and he raised his eyes from the report from an outpost of the Third Virginia about an encounter with German Jaegers to see a messenger in a greatcoat.

“I have an express for Colonel Reed?” asked the man, holding up a twist of paper as if to prove his errand. One of Washington’s young men took it from him, sat him at the table and gave him his own cup. They were a well-bred set of men, and Washington was proud of them.

“You are from General Lee, I gather?” said Washington, looking at the express. The man nodded, his mouth full of bread. The letter was sealed and addressed to Colonel Reed, but as it was official from General Lee, Washington broke the seal and read it without any hesitation. He always read Reed’s official correspondence when the man was absent.

Camp, Nov’r the 24^th, 1776

My Dear Reed,

I received your most obliging, flattering letter-lament with you that fatal indecision of mind which in war is a much greater disqualification than stupidity or even want of personal courage. Accident may put a decisive blunderer in the right, but eternal defeat and miscarriage must attend the man of the best parts if cursed with indecision…

…I only wait for this business of Rogers and Co. Being over-shall then fly to you-for to confess a truth I really think my Chief will do better with me than without me.

It was signed by General Charles Lee, with a flourish.

Washington sat quietly, the buzz of the table lost to him, his morning contentment smashed and replaced by an awful hollow of personal betrayal and a darker fear that it was true. He sank and sank, whirling into alien depths of self-examination and despair. Only the total silence of the room brought him to his senses, or at least back close to the surface. Every officer in the room was looking at him, and he realized that he had crushed the note in his great hand and he thought he might have cried aloud. Their looks of shock were too eloquent.

He made his way to the door and out. His man, Billy Lee-curse the name-brought him his greatcoat and he shrugged it on and went for his horse, blind to salutes and courtesies on all sides. He was so seldom angry that the soldiers didn’t know what to make of this mood. They watched him go in wonder.

He rode off, alone as he was never alone, blind to direction and purpose, anxious to get away from those eager young men and their accusing faces. Was he indecisive? He held councils of war, and asked advice. Was that not the way of liberty that he had learned since Boston? Was he to rule alone over the army?

Washington had never much fancied any role but that of command, and whether on his estates or in the Virginia Regiment, he had always given the orders or avoided situations where other men could order him. He had served under Braddock willingly enough, but so great was Braddock’s authority that serving him rendered the server all the greater. The hard lesson Washington had learned in this war was that the inclination of liberty demanded constant subordination, and that he, the commander, was little more than the servant of the men who fought for their liberty. It was that acceptance that moved him to accept counsel, that and some modest hesitancy on his own part to exercise sole authority even when offered it.

…that fatal indecision of mind which in war is a much greater disqualification than stupidity or even want of personal courage…

Or perhaps he was an indecisive blunderer who could not win a battle, and was best out of the way. Unaccustomed to self-examination, he rode and thought, compared his accusers and his own inner voice as if he were casting the accounts of his plantation, and calmed himself. His horse, wiser than he in some things, brought him back to the inn before the cold and wind made his internal debate moot, and he dismounted, already weary. There, in the babble of his officers in the yard, he discovered that the routine crises of the day, the movements of Howe and Cornwallis and the defection of his militia could sweep his personal discontent aside.

Later, when the routine was dealt with and the staff had gone to their beds, he climbed the stairs to his room on the second floor and stopped in front of the door. It all came back like a kick from a horse and he turned and slammed his fist into the wall. The house shook.

Billy flung open the door to his room, clearly startled. “I’m sorry, sir. Did you need me?”

“No, Billy.” It was said with desperation, a hint of emotion in the throat that Billy sensed immediately. He looked closer and saw tears flowing down his master’s face and he flinched, afraid of something nameless, the end of the world, perhaps.

“I’m losing the war, Billy. And I’m losing the good will of my generals.”

Billy let a breath escape him in a rush, and he realized he hadn’t breathed since he saw the tears. He almost laughed for relief. Something understandable. He pulled Washington into the room and closed the door. Then he took Washington’s greatcoat and sat him on a chair. He pulled off his boots.

Washington recovered his composure under the constant attentions.

Billy took the silk ribbon out of Washington’s hair and laid it aside to be pressed. At Mount Vernon, he’d have cut a fresh one for tomorrow, but silk wasn’t so available here.

“I am indecisive, it appears,” Washington said, gone from tears to anger.

“If you are going to move about, I’ll brush you’ hair later,” said Billy.

“Damn it! First they think I’m a tyrant! And then, when I open my counsels and my heart to ’em, they think me indecisive!”

Billy poured out a glass of Madeira and handed it to Washington. He picked up the brush from the camp table and walked around behind him, where he was invisible. He looked out of the window for a moment and gathered his courage, and when he spoke, his voice was very quiet.

“I don’t think you can ever do harm, opening your heart to men worth your trust. General Lee ain’t worth it. Never was, though he claims the same name as me.”

Billy was a little shocked that he’d spoken aloud, but Washington nodded.

“It shook me.” The admission was flat, spoken without timbre. Washington might have been commenting on the weather.

Billy just nodded.

Washington returned to the yoke.

It became obvious that he must retreat again, and that General Charles Lee would be late in meeting him with the part of the army that Washington had assigned him. In a day’s work, he dealt with the wholesale defection of the militia in the flying camp and the instant need for hard money to pay bounties and keep the regulars who were willing. When he returned from hours ahorse, visiting his colonels and trying to keep a tired and dispirited army together, he finally sat back at the head of his table. He actually had the strength to laugh, because his “young men” of the staff looked gray with fatigue, and he was not yet tired. And when he had laughed, he took a fresh-cut pen and paper, and wrote to Colonel Reed. Whatever Reed’s failings or feelings, he was invaluable as the adjutant general.

Dear Sir,

The enclosed was put into my hands by an express from the White Plains. Having no idea of its being a private letter, much less suspecting the tendency of the correspondence, I opened it, as I have done all other letters to you, from the same place and Peekskill, upon the business of your office, as I conceived them and found them to be.

This, as it is the truth, must be my excuse for seeing the contents of a letter, which neither inclination nor intention would have prompted me to.

Personal issues decided, he then changed to a separate sheet and addressed General Lee. He didn’t mince words, as he had on three prior occasions. He directly ordered him to bring his part of the army to Washington, by forced marches if necessary. He made the order as plain as day, lest Lee think he could flout it.

Washington had the glimmer of a plan whose execution would require every man in the failing army. A plan that was bold to the extreme, and would not, he thought, leave him open to any accusation of indecisiveness ever again. And it would require him to trust his subordinates to execute independently.

He was learning.