Washington and Caesar

2

Near Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, September 10, 1777

The summer seemed to pass away on transports. After their raid into the Jerseys, they were back in New York for a month, and then they marched to Sandy Hook and loaded on to boats to be carried out to the waiting ships. Caesar was struck by how few of the Guides had been in boats. It seemed so little time since they had gone ashore in Virginia, but they had been Ethiopians then and there were only a handful left from last year.

The transports left Sandy Hook and New York and sailed down the coast, then into the Chesapeake Bay. The long, low headlands and the long strips of beach reminded Caesar of his first arrival here. He wondered what might have happened to King, or Queeny, or any of the other blacks he had met in his first life as a slave. The time before the swamp had a dreamlike quality to it, so that he almost doubted whether it had happened. He stayed on deck for hours, watching the low coast go by. No one joined him but Jim, who kept him silent company. He didn’t share his thoughts, but they were gloomy, ruminations on his life as a slave. The longer the war went on, the more he dreaded a return to that condition.

The fleet was the largest company of ships Caesar had ever seen, and they filled the bay from horizon to horizon. On calm days, they were like an extension of the forest from the land, bare poles like dead trees as far as he could see. When the breeze served, though, it was a sight to lift the heart, with shining white sails set in graceful curves all around him. That sight seemed to be the physical expression of the power of the British Empire, her navy and transports of soldiers all laid out for his view. Surrounded by such power, Caesar couldn’t believe that his freedom was imperiled. They would win the war and be free. He hid his doubts from his men, all except Virgil, whose doubts were deeper and more like fears.

The voyage seemed to last forever, so that the men grew used to naval rations and endless free time. They sewed and played cards, used up their tobacco and gambled for more from the sailors. Their uniforms improved from the sewing, and Caesar used the time and the cramped space on the brig to best effect, drilling the men in the repetitious line drills that were too often ignored in the hurry of campaign and daily labor. He had to drill them a squad at a time because of the small deck, but this had one benefit, that he got to know every man and watch the performance of every corporal. By the time the fleet finally moved all the way up to Head of Elk, the anchorage at the entrance to the Susquehanna River, his men were the best drilled they had ever been. Even the new recruits were passable soldiers.

The landing was difficult. According to the first reports, the enemy had not wholly fallen for the ruse of an attack in the Jerseys and was waiting with considerable troops to face the landing in their rear. The Guides were among the first troops to be sent ashore, and Caesar was directed to send two men, Jim Somerset and another of his choice, to scout to the north and east and discover the location of the enemy. Jim took Moses, three days’ rations, and moved off too quickly for goodbyes.

They moved the camp twice in the next two days, the advance guard feeling its way along small roads, just one cart track wide, that wound between rail fences over the rolling hills. The towns were small but prosperous, and the farms were larger than those in New Jersey, with solid stone houses and silent farmers. There were few blacks here and almost no slaves. The Quakers and Mennonites who made up the bulk of the countryside population didn’t hold with slavery. They didn’t hold much with the British Army, either.

The third day, Caesar’s men were well out in advance of the army. Shortly after noon, Caesar found himself in the yard of a small farm with less than half of one platoon. The rest were scattered. His company was spread along several miles of roads, providing guides for the light infantry behind them while exploring the country. They had no contact with enemy troops beyond a handful of militia whom they sighted just after first light and chased across a field of tobacco. Caesar broke off the pursuit rather than lose what little organization his company still had.

A party of dragoons came up in late afternoon and told him that Captain Stewart’s company was coming along behind them, collecting his guides as they came, and that his post would be relieved shortly. The officer of the dragoons wanted to press forward to look at the road north to Kennett’s Square, on the main road to Philadelphia.

“We chased some militia going that way,” Caesar said.

The dragoon sergeant looked at his officer. “How many were they?”

“Just half a dozen, but they came from the north, too. I wouldn’t want to go past those woods with horse. Not at dusk, when we can’t see to support you.” Caesar tried to indicate the small size of his force in the yard without appearing to shirk his duties.

The officer sneered. “I can’t imagine we’d need your support anyway,” he said. He meant it to be an insult. He was the kind of officer Caesar liked least.

“I think we should be looking for a place to camp,” said the sergeant. “We just passed an empty farm, sir. We can press on in the morning.”

The officer beat his crop impatiently against his boot. He wanted to make trouble. Caesar willed himself to remain still. The officer represented the type of man who reminded Caesar every day that he was a different color and a different kind.

“Without decent infantry, I suppose it would be an error to go forward,” he said, the insult plain. His sergeant shook his head, just one little negative nod, as if denying any responsibility for his superior. They turned their horses and left the yard without a goodbye, and Caesar breathed out slowly. It was a beautiful evening, with an autumn sun turning the tobacco red and the wheat gold, but the evening was blighted for Caesar.

Lieutenant Crawford marched his platoon of the lights into the farm an hour before dark. He found Caesar taciturn, but he took no note of it. He was more concerned with getting his men into the dry barn and the carriage house of the farm, and hearing Caesar’s report. Most of the rest of the Guides were with him. Caesar found Sergeant McDonald, and together they found billets for the other men who would straggle in later. They saw to it that fires were going and food was started, and they set pickets well out in the fields.

Just as dusk was fading into full dark, they heard one of the pickets challenge and the guard stood to arms in an instant. Before Caesar could lead his quarterguard out, though, Jim and Moses came into the farmyard, both smiling broadly and covered in dust from head to toe.

Caesar smiled in return. Their return lightened a burden he hadn’t been aware he was carrying, washed away the stain of the dragoon’s insults. Jim saluted smartly, bringing his musket up to the recover and then across his chest. “Sir. Corporal Somerset reporting from a scout.”

Crawford motioned for him to take his ease. “What do you have, Corporal?”

“Rebels all over the place on the other side of the Brandywine. Big camp, and a lot of patrols. I can show you better in the light.”

“How far off is the Brandywine?”

“Just a few miles. Maybe six. There’s a good crossing on this road, called Chad’s Ford. That’s where their outposts are. There’s a crossing every mile up the creek. The stream is too deep for artillery, but we crossed it three or four times in different spots. Gets deeper as you go south. Ain’t nothing a few miles north of Chad’s Ford.”

Caesar, Crawford, McDonald and a crowd of other NCOs listened to Somerset’s report with growing apprehension.

“They ain’t far off,” said Virgil. Most of the men felt they could speak freely around Crawford.

“That must have been one of their patrols we brushed today,” said Caesar. “I hoped they were just militia going to a muster.”

Crawford motioned to Sergeant McDonald. “Better get Corporal Somerset back to headquarters as fast as you can,” he said.

“We need to double our pickets and get these fires hidden as quick as we can,” said Caesar. As the group broke up, Caesar could see that Jim wanted to say something to him. They walked out of the firelight and around behind the barn. The wind was cold.

“Something else?” Caesar was worried about his pickets.

“I don’ know, Caesar. It’s for you to say.”

“Tell me, then.”

“I saw Marcus White on the Lancaster Road.”

Caesar tried to digest that. “What did he say?”

“I didn’t speak to him. Moses an’ me were hid in some trees, watching the road and having a bite. Lancaster Road’s north of the rebels, maybe ten miles north o’ here.”

“Sure it was him, Jim?”

“Sure as death, sir.”

“Keep that to yourself.”

“Somebody sold us to them rebels in New Jersey. We all knows it.”

“Jim, just keep it to yourself.” Caesar felt like he had been hit in the head. He sent Jim off to get a hot meal while he tried to digest this bit of news. He couldn’t see a way it could be good. When last he had seen Marcus White, the man had been in a church in New York. He had no business, at least no honest business, so close to the rebel lines. But the pickets had to be set, and the army was clearly going to fight in the morning. It would have to wait.

In an hour, Somerset was off to the rear with a pass and Sergeant Shaw of the lights to keep him safe from their own patrols. Caesar made the rounds with Lieutenant Crawford, who was taking more direct interest in the running of the company, and Sergeant McDonald, who was still teaching Caesar the details of a really well-run company. They looked into mess kettles and inspected the fires of every section. Most sections were gorging themselves on three days’ rations in a single day. Improvident as this might seem, it gave the advance troops less to carry when they actually made contact with the enemy.

Virgil was taking his ease and smoking while his mess group cooked their second meal. They all showed signs of the consumption of a half-pound each of peas and about the same in salt pork, and none of their overshirts would have borne even the most cursory inspection for cleanliness. They were grumbling happily in the cool evening air despite the lack of tents. The army’s baggage was far away, near Head of Elk, and the light troops in the vanguard had to build hasty shelters from fences and brush. In fact, there was no longer a decent split rail fence within a mile of the British lines. Everyone used them to construct shelters, and veterans saw them as a ready-made source of dry firewood, as well. Fires were springing up across the fields to the south, as the army came up behind them. Before the darkness was very old, the wheat and tobacco were trampled for a mile around them.

He sat for a moment on a stump, making entries in his daybook by the light of a lantern. Constant attendance on his reading, first with Sergeant Peters and later with Marcus White, had ensured that he could read quickly and accurately. His writing still lagged a bit behind, and sums were nearly alien.

McDonald came up behind him and read his report over his shoulder.

“Very pretty, Julius,” he said, kneeling next to Caesar.

“Writing’s getting better, anyway.” Caesar didn’t look up, trying to reckon the value of Private Paget’s lost neck stock and trying to remember what last name he had assigned the man. Edgerton? That sounded likely. Naming was a dangerous thing, and sometimes men resented the names he gave them. Sometimes it was better coming from Reverend White, or even from Mr. Crawford or Captain Stewart. Yes, he had it in the book. Paget was Paget Edgerton. It seemed like a good, loyal name.

McDonald took out his daily report and began to run down it, looking at Caesar’s as he went.

“Does anyone actually read these?” asked Caesar, trying to work out the “off reckoning” due his soldiers for “lying without fodder” a second night in a row.

“For certain sure, young Caesar. And it should comfort you to know that when your namesake was a pup, centurions were scratching away with their pencils to try and list every item missing and get every man his pay.”

“Can I borrow that little book?”

McDonald looked at him with mock indignation.

“I presume you mean my little bible on pay and provision?” He took a slim volume from his pocket, worn and stained, entitled Treatise on Military Finance, and Caesar skipped directly to the tables at the back of the book and began to reckon the pay due each private. Sometimes he excused men lost gear just to save the trouble of the additional math of deducting lost items from their pay.

“That’s a shilling, Julius, not a penny.” Jeremy was standing at his shoulder as he added.

“You don’t all have to watch me.” A little flare of temper, because he thought that they were waiting for him to fail.

Crawford, who had been listening to a tale told by a fire, wandered up and looked over Caesar’s shoulder.

“Heavens, Sergeant! Time for that after we fight.”

“No, sir,” said Caesar with a hint of sullenness. “If we lose men dead, then it’ll be harder to get their pay for their relatives if I don’t do this tonight.” He looked at McDonald. McDonald nodded and turned to Crawford.

“Always get the pay straight before an action, that was my first sergeant major’s advice, sir, an’ I have taught Julius Caesar the same way.”

Crawford looked around at them and shrugged. McDonald and Caesar exchanged a glance. He’d learn.

Most of the men went to sleep as soon as their bellies were filled, but, as they all expected a major action the next day, more than a few found themselves unable to sleep and began to talk. Every fire in the army had its share of men, nervous or quiet or shrill, telling tales of battles past. There were veterans in that army who could remember great days in the field, and disasters, at famous places like Minden and Quebec, or smaller actions across Europe, along the shores of the Mediterranean or on the soil of America. Older men, sergeants and officers, could remember battles as far back as the frigid dawn at Culloden, and some camps featured men who had served on both sides of that battle. Wherever men abandoned sleep for talk, the fires coaxed out the stories until the camp was awash in remembered blood and terror and glory.

When his accounts were cast and sealed ready for inspection, Caesar lay down at the fire his own squad had, with Virgil and Paget and their section. The old veterans from Virginia were spread thin, now. With Jim’s promotion to corporal, all the survivors of the swamp were in positions of leadership.

Virgil was whistling softly, sharpening a knife that didn’t need any more sharpening. He had already patched shirts for every man in the squad and resewn several other items. He never slept before an action. Caesar knew that Virgil hated actions as much as he himself enjoyed them, and he wondered why. Virgil was no coward, but there was something to the thought of action he dreaded, dreaded so much that he never told war stories or relived their battles, although he had survived every one since they killed the overseer together. Caesar rubbed the scars over his eyes, remembering. He smiled a little, and went to sleep. Virgil looked at him as he started to snore, kicked him lightly, and went back to his knife.

“Keep us safe, Caesar,” Virgil said softly.

Chad’s Ford, Pennsylvania, September 11, 1777

For George Lake, it was a frustrating day. The Third Virginia stood in neat ranks, or lay in the shade, depending on the emotional state of General Greene’s staff. Riders crossed in front of them again and again on their way to General Greene or General Washington. Rumor after rumor came down the ranks to the light company-they were to fight at Chad’s Ford; the enemy was marching to flank them up the river; the enemy was concentrating in front of them; they were to attack; they were to patrol across the stream. The last had proven true, and George had followed Captain Heller across the stream, where they immediately encountered strong enemy patrols supporting the big guns that were exchanging rounds with the Continental artillery posted on the opposite bank. They made it across in relative safety, and moved up a small creek only to find that green-coated Loyalists covered the approach. A skirmish developed that George felt they couldn’t win; the enemy fire became brisker as more and more of the green-coated men came up, and their fire slackened as their men sought cover. It was vicious, with men hunting each other from tree to tree and bush to bush all along the little creek, with no quarter asked or given. George had lost sight of his captain in the first moments and now took several chances that would have given his mother great unease as he sought the man along the creek bed, moving from one knot of his men to another. He wanted them to withdraw but lacked the authority to say it.

He lost his helmet to an enemy shot that took it clean off his head and landed it in the middle of the creek. He left it there. While he would expose himself for the cause, he wouldn’t do it just to retrieve the damn helmet.

Sergeant Creese was at the outlet of the stream with a party of wounded he was shuttling back to the regiment. He hadn’t seen the captain either but concurred that they were outnumbered and in a bad case.

“Shall I go ask Colonel Weedon, sir?” he said, clearly eager to get free of the creek.

“If we wait for you to go to the colonel and get back, we’ll all be dead, Sergeant.” George raised his head and looked up the creek bed. It was hot, and his coat was soaked with sweat. He was glad his hat was gone, although the deer flies were dogging him. He wished he didn’t have to make this decision. He liked being junior and invisible, and he could see that every man around Creese was now depending on him to do the right thing, to save them all, or whatever they pleased. He wished he knew just what the captain’s orders had been. He felt overcome with worry, and then he saw some bluecoats a hundred paces or more away, hauling a four-pounder.

“Sergeant Lilly!” he called, as loud as he could. He heard an answering shout.

“Withdraw! Bring your platoon back through Sergeant Creese’s! Second Platoon, stand fast and cover them!”

Lord, his voice was hoarse. When had he done all the shouting? He watched the enemy bullets skip along the water of the creek and thought how nice it might be to just lie down in the cold clear water. There might be trout in such a cold stream. He’d eaten trout on Long Island and liked them. He thought about Betsy Lovell, and her secret glances at dinner, and he smiled despite his current situation. He had developed the habit of thinking of Betsy when things were low.

He shook his head clear of such notions and splashed some water on his face and then grabbed one of Creese’s corporals.

“Get over the Brandywine, find that battery commander right there and get him to fire grape! Right away. Tell him where we are and that we’re hard pressed by these greencoats. He’ll understand.”

The man looked intelligent and calm, which was better than he could have expected. He saluted smartly and threw himself across the stream, and Lake watched him until he was up the bank and clear.

The presentiment of disaster had been greater than the reality. Lilly’s platoon was pretty healthy as it fell back, and the whole company was still game, although there were men missing in several files. He held them at the edge of the west bank, willing the corporal to get the message across, and his dreams were answered by two loud bangs almost over his head. He heard one of the Tories yelling at his men to lie down, and he waved his men back to the Continental bank of the ford. As soon as they were across, he got them up the bank and fell them in again behind the first good cover so he could count heads. They had lost five men, including the captain and the trumpeter. No one seemed to know where they had gone.

Lake took his men back to the regiment, and then left them under Sergeant Lilly while he went to make his report. It was two o’clock.

After a day of slow marches and an age while they waited for other units to cross the Brandywine, and after mistakes of their own as guides that raised tempers all along the column, they were now marching back to the sound of the firing. They had made the long march and they were around the enemy’s flank, but the question remained as to whether they would arrive in time to do any good. However, they had begun to move faster and faster, and now Caesar had to keep his men from trotting.

They could hear the guns all day, but they were off to the south and Caesar wasn’t sure how they could be part of the same battle. He knew the general plan of movement, because he had been privileged to hear it explained by Colonel Musgrave in the pre-dawn chill by the embers of their last fire. He knew their column was intended to pass the northern posts of the rebel army and swing well into their rear before coming down on them, a crushing blow, as described.

What he did understand was that it was all taking longer than the generals had expected, and that most of the officers and sergeants who had been around him in the dark, listening to the plan, had suspected this very problem. They would be late, and for all they knew, Lord Howe was trying to defend Chad’s Ford with a handful of men while they picked their way through the maze of tracks and minor roads north of the rebel positions.

Jeremy and Stewart came up on horseback as they came to a bend in the road. Just beyond, he could see a vista of open ground, farmland, and a plowed hill with some woods in front of it. There were Continental regulars all along the line in front of them.

Stewart watched the line in disgust. Jeremy threw his hat on the ground and then had to dismount to fetch it, which made him angrier.

Caesar grabbed their bridles and pulled them back before Stewart’s bright red coat could be seen.

“Go back and tell the column to halt,” said Stewart, taking his glass from Jeremy and dismounting. He handed his horse to Caesar, who handed it directly to one of his men and followed him into a stand of trees that shaded the corner of a stone-walled field.

Stewart lay down behind the wall, worked a stone loose and pushed his glass through. Caesar crouched behind him.

“It appears we are too late,” he said. Behind them, Virgil was all but physically restraining a party of red-coated officers who wanted to go ahead into the field. Sergeant McDonald and Lieutenant Crawford came up, and then several other officers from their battalion. The staff officers were kept back.

Caesar could see the Continental troops start to move. Every one of them lying in the corner of the field took a breath together as the long blue and brown lines suddenly began to form columns on their center or rightmost companies and march away. It wasn’t well done; every battalion seemed to have its own manner of forming a column, and the enemy brigades were slow to move.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” Stewart announced, closing his glass with a snap. “Apparently our country cousins are determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.” He ran back to the knot of mounted officers around the bend and reported what he had seen, and the general ordered them forward. It was just past three o’clock by Jeremy’s repeater. And the enemy, perfectly positioned to stop their thrust, was marching away.

Lafayette reined in his horse by George Lake and looked over George’s company. He had an air about him that made other men want to follow him, although he was as young as their youngest man. He looked like an officer, and he was well equipped and so well uniformed that he made most of the other officers look shabby. Certainly George Lake, whose only claim to elegance was the superb sword that hung from a double frog at his waist, had no business standing next to the marquis’s horse.

“Monsieur,” said the young marquis companionably. “Can you direct me to the General Greene?”

“Yes, sir. General Greene is just there at the head of the road. What’s happening?” George had seen the fine marquis often enough since their first meeting to qualify as an acquaintance. Lafayette shook his head.

“Our General Sullivan has allowed himself to be flanked again. I gather he does this with some regularity?”

George nodded, remembering Long Island and the painful, rainy retreat. His mouth set bitterly.

“Do not worry, George. General Washington has all General Greene’s division in reserve. Sullivan need only hold until we arrive, and we shall win a victory that will end the war.” He laughed. Everyone knew that he was ambitious to command a division himself, and that he could be a demanding companion. But Lafayette was already well loved, not least because he always referred to the Continental cause as “ours” and “we”, where so many of his French and German compatriots referred to it as “yours” and “you”.

He reared his horse a little, showing away, and waved his hat.

“Get ready to advance, George!” he called, and galloped off.

Down the ranks in the old company, Bludner said something coarse, and the men around him laughed. But they did it nervously, like schoolboys.

The whole battalion of lights raced across the open fields toward the copse at the foot of the little plowed hill in front of them. It was a disciplined run, but they had all dropped their packs at the stone wall and none of them expected to cross so much open ground without a great many casualties. Caesar’s men started a little in front, because he had put them there where their brown coats would lie unnoticed in the autumn fields. And they ran a little faster.

They were a quarter of the way there and not a shot had been fired at them. It didn’t seem possible and Caesar had to force himself to look up at the woods, rather than down at his feet. If he was about to take a volley, it seemed better that he not know it was coming.

That was not proper thinking for a soldier. He looked up, and almost stopped in astonishment. He was watching the better part of a battalion leaving the woods and falling back. He couldn’t reckon why, and feared a trap, one so cunning that its purpose would be hidden from him or Captain Stewart or even Lord Howe.

More than halfway now. Some of the newer men were panting with exertion. The veterans were running easily. One or two held their weapons high, ready to take a shot the moment a target was offered. Most ran with their muskets across their bodies. Stewart’s company was close behind, and the other lights were almost up with them on both sides. Well off to the left, he could see Captain Simcoe and the Fortieth grenadiers moving along. Simcoe stood out because of his heavy gray horse.

Caesar knew he had slowed unconsciously when he had seen movement in the wood, and the whole company had slowed with him.

Captain Stewart rode up to him. Jeremy was nowhere to be seen.

“I…think…they’re…leaving…the wood,” said Caesar in time to his pounding feet.

“Get into it and start shooting. Make as much noise as you can. Make them watch us and not what’s coming behind us.” Caesar raised his musket in salute and Stewart took off his cap for a moment, and then rode off.

Now he was close enough to start looking for a route in. Usually a wood was densest at the outside edge, where the sun had full play and the brush could grow thickly. Most woodlots had little paths and this one was no exception. Caesar still expected to be met by a volley any second, and he looked at the company. They were well spaced out in extended order, each file pair two paces separate from the next, across sixty paces, or almost a third of the front of the wood.

He knew they were all loaded. He knew that speed was all that mattered. He blew his whistle twice and yelled, “Charge!” And they gave another spurt of speed, and were into the trees with a crash.

George began to think that they were going to run the whole way to wherever the British might be. The column moved too fast, so that the men got spread out and some had to fall out or fall behind, where the stragglers got mixed into unfamiliar units and wrecked their order of march. Despite all that, they were marching faster than George had ever marched, and they were moving toward the musketry.

Despite their desperate skirmish in the early afternoon, the men were acting as if they had plenty of heart. George had stopped wondering where his captain was. The man was plainly dead, or captured. Now George wondered if he could command the company in action by himself. He was about to find out.

The woods were empty of all but a terrified picket who fired once and fled without causing a casualty. Caesar leapt over some fallen trees and hurried to the side of the wood facing the enemy, who were formed a little over one hundred paces away.

“Keep your order, then!” he yelled. “Come up to me and To Tree!” To Tree was the British Army’s innovative manner of getting soldiers who were trained to linear warfare to take cover in a wood. The Company of Black Guides had something of the opposite problem, as they generally had a tendency to take cover if cover were offered, whether ordered to or not. They all but vanished into the treeline.

Caesar blew one long note on his whistle. He shouted “Skirmish” at the full reach of his lungs, and all along the line, the file leaders picked targets and began to fire at the Continentals. Stewart’s company was already taking the ground to their right, and the light company of the Fortieth had just appeared on their left and was moving into the treeline. Caesar waved at Virgil and Fowver, standing together at the left end of the line. Fowver nodded, saw that Caesar was going for new orders, and moved to take command.

Caesar ran back to the rear of the wood and then along behind it, looking for Captain Stewart or their battalion officer, Major Manley. He saw two horses grazing, but neither was familiar. He ran along the edge of the wood until he reached its southern boundary and there he found all the officers, gathered in a clump and watching the great spectacle of battle laid out by the wood’s height.

Caesar was a veteran now and he had never seen a battle laid out so clearly. The British columns were coming up from the rear and just starting to form their front, first companies forming battalions, and then battalions forming brigades even as he watched.

Across the field and up the low hill, the rebel lines were formed but constantly twitching, or so it appeared at this distance. Caesar knew that the twitches meant they were moving, making little corrections to best occupy their ground. Such maneuvers were common on parade, but most armies in the field depended on the NCOs knowing the axis of attack and keeping a couple of natural objects, say a flower and a fence post, aligned in front of them to keep the line marching in the right direction. Most commanders left gaps in their lines so that miscalculations in marching by battalions didn’t throw off the whole line. The Continental line was clearly in disarray, packed too tight and trying to maneuver in the face of the enemy. And now the Guides and all the other troops in the wood were starting to get hits, causing more confusion.

Far distant, back toward the direction of Chad’s Ford, he could see a column of marching men, and in the foreground he saw one Continental brigade intermixed with another and trying to sort itself out. Almost opposite the wood, a battery of Continental guns, masked from the wood by a little hill and sited in a dip, had begun to fire into the forming British line.

Simcoe was closest to him, and he pointed his riding crop along the distant road from which the enemy column was coming.

“That’s their reserve, Caesar. We must break General Sullivan in front of us before Mr. Washington can bring all that,” he waved his crop at the marching column, “into the fight and stop us.”

“Very kind, sir,” said Caesar, and he meant it. Officers seldom took the time to explain anything.

Stewart rounded on him.

“Seen Jeremy?”

“No, sir.”

“Keep shooting. As soon as they start to break, get at them. Wait for Major Manley’s call, though. He’ll be behind the wood. I’ll be there in a moment.”

The Continental battery fired, almost together, and an entire company of the Seventeenth Regiment seemed to disappear. Caesar was appalled by the carnage a single battery of guns could wreak. None of the men in that company would ever have had a chance to stop it.

A British battery moved ponderously forward, its hired drivers unwilling to get too close to the action. When at extreme range, the gunners had to drag their guns forward on ropes, and they did it with elan. Caesar didn’t have time to watch, and when the Continental battery fired again, he wasn’t there to see the execution it wrought.

Washington was well ahead of Greene’s column now. Too late, he fully understood the confusing welter of messages that had reached him all day. He should have attacked across the ford when he felt that Lord Howe lacked the men to stop him. He could have ended the war in an afternoon, and even now he felt that victory was close. If only Sullivan could hold the hill and the woods to their front, Greene’s men would arrive and even have time to breathe a few times before Washington sent them into the teeth of the British advance.

He looked at his watch. It was half past five, and before his unbelieving eyes, the troops in the wood began to leave it and march back. In moments, the whole edge of the wood erupted in a flame as the British, advancing along an axis that allowed them to use the woods to cover their entire force, took the woods and used them.

He rode forward to Sullivan, who was shaking his head in weary disbelief.

“I’m sorry, General.”

“Nonsense, General Sullivan. You’ve held together nicely. But tell me why we’ve just given the British that little wood to your front.”

“No help for it, sir. I had to make my line straight or the whole of the British attack would have fallen on the kink and broken me. Marshall and Woodford misunderstood and gave up the wood and by the time I tried to fix it…” He shook his head wearily. “I’ve just ordered them to take it back,” he said, all too aware of what that meant.

Greene’s men were twenty minutes away. Washington watched as the British fire began to decimate the regiments moving over the open ground to the wood that, only a few moments before, they had left.

The Continentals came up the hill at them again, firing quickly like regular soldiers and then pushing forward, but this time some hint in their movement, the carriage of their heads or some little flaw in their firing, suggested to Caesar that their hearts weren’t in it. Their first counterattack had almost swept the hill, and indeed, over to the right, the Continentals had gotten right in among the trees and only the reserve under Major Manley and a lightning response by McDonald and Crawford had kept them in possession. The second attack had come to a halt just in front of the Guides, so that they had exchanged three volleys with a Pennsylvania regiment at a range so close that men were hit by burning wads of tow, or felt the blast of heat from every round. But the Pennsylvanians lost their colonel when he tried to lead them forward for a last charge. The Guides and their friends from the Fortieth kept their heads and kept up a steady fire, although Caesar was already finding a place for his men to run to when they broke-only to find that they were going to hold. He loved them for it, every one. It was the hardest fighting he had ever known, and the bluntest. The two forces simply bludgeoned each other at point-blank range. The Guides had the advantage of a little cover in the wood edge, although it scarcely mattered when the range was so close, and Caesar couldn’t imagine how regular soldiers kept their nerve in the open under such an exchange.

The third attack died away before it ever became a serious threat, and all the sergeants in the woods were bellowing for their men to “Cease fire, damn your eyes.” It was merciful to the men retreating from their third brave attempt to take the woods, and soldiers like to give each other mercy, when they can, but it wasn’t mercy that kept them yelling to “Cease fire, there.”

The men in the woods were almost out of ammunition.

Washington sat at the top of the little plowed hill and watched Sullivan’s wing begin to break up. It went down fighting, outnumbered and outfought, but not by much, and it didn’t break like the militia of those early disasters. The enemy was more cautious, and the Continental artillery continued to wreak havoc on the British advance, actually stopping it once when the troops were all broken and swept away. The guns kept firing, and here and there a well-led battalion, or a company that trusted its officers more than it feared the British, held its ground and kept firing. Washington was shaking his head sadly, because Weedon’s brigade, his very best troops, were just too far away to save the day. They weren’t so far that he would lose his army. Darkness was coming, and darkness combined with Weedon’s men would save him from a defeat like some of those around New York, but it was so close to a victory that he could almost say the word aloud in his frustration. Lafayette watched him with something like adoration.

“Let us see if we can rally Sullivan’s men,” said Washington. If he could buy five minutes, he could save a great deal of honor from the day. He rode down toward the Meeting House with Lafayette and his staff.

Caesar watched as the line in front of him came apart, and he listened for Major Manley behind him. Most of the men were drinking water, and a few were lighting pipes. He told them not to.

“We have to be ready to advance,” he said. Down the line, Crawford waved to him. He waved back.

Jeremy rode up behind him, somehow silent on a horse.

“Forward!” he yelled as if he was the officer in command. No one doubted him. They were all used to getting Stewart’s orders through Jeremy and the long skirmish line began to move out of the woods and up the hill at last.

“We have less than three rounds a man. Where’s Captain Stewart?” asked Caesar, running to keep up with Jeremy’s horse. Jeremy reined in, despite being the only mounted man in the skirmish line and the clear target for any sharpshooter on the hill.

“He’s arguing with some ill-born fool from the staff. Manley took a ball over at the angle and now they are all uncertain about what to do.”

Caesar was struck dumb.

“Captain Stewart couldn’t do it, you see?” Jeremy asked. “I had to.”

The British attack, first sudden, and then cautious, turned sudden again. Just as Washington had a company rallied to send back to the hilltop, he saw red coats and brown appear. The men in brown coats were black, a sight that always moved him strangely. He’d seen the same men before.

The final loss of the hilltop, so suddenly, was decisive. Before he could change the orders of the men he had just rallied, they melted away under his hand. Lafayette was doing no better, and it seemed that his English was deserting him. He had a sword in his hand, and he kept shouting “For liberty!”

George Lake was at the head of the column of Weedon’s brigade. He could see Washington, Lafayette, and Colonel Fitzgerald on the little road at the foot of the plowed hill. Weedon was riding right next to him, urging him on, but suddenly Lake needed no coaching, and his jitters fell away.

“Form front on me!” he yelled, and the men came panting forward. His company was seventy yards ahead of the column. Washington was alone, except for his staff. Weedon was yelling something about the road, but George didn’t care just then, and he yelled “At the double!” and ran the line forward.

The lights and the Guides reached the crest of the hill almost together, and saw the whole of Sullivan’s broken division laid out before them, with the powerful battery of Continental guns that had been masked by the hill now almost at their feet. And just in front of them, Caesar saw Washington as clear as if they had been hunting together. He waved his hat without thinking.

Washington saw a tall man, one of the blacks, wave his hat. The man almost looked familiar and the insolence of the gesture sparked him to anger, so that he drew his pistol and fired it, barely pausing to aim. Generals do not take direct part in major actions, unless directly threatened. Lafayette was surprised, and he took Washington’s arm.

“We’d best be away, General,” he said, keeping Washington from drawing his second pistol. Washington nodded, as if recovering from a blow, and turned his horse.

Caesar saw the familiar arm come up with a pistol and he dropped to one knee, smoothly aimed his fowler and fired. The second he fired he wondered a little. Washington was too much to be simply a target on the field. Caesar was confused just thinking about it. But he held his arms out and blew his whistle, running along the company and reforming them in close order.

“Don’t fire on the generals. Kill the horses by those guns!” he yelled, pointing down the hill where the teams were waiting to pull the deadly Continental guns clear of the British attack. They had already performed this service several times. They had three rounds. He didn’t expect his company to last long. But the guns had to go.

Lafayette gave one brief scream of pain as the ball struck his arm and then stiffened in the saddle. He began to slump off, and Fitzgerald and Johnson each got an arm around him to support him. Every one of the staff saw he had just pushed his horse in front of Washington, and every one of them saw him take a ball that might have hit their General. Washington watched it unbelieving, and took shelter for a moment behind Lake’s company, which was just coming up.

“Fire!” yelled George Lake, and his volley fell on the Guides like a hammer, killing Tonny where he stood on the right of the company and spraying Tonny’s blood over Sam the bugler. Tonny had been standing in Caesar’s place. Caesar had just stepped out of the ranks to hear Captain Stewart, coming up in the twilight. Moses Shaw, proud as Lucifer of being a front-rank man on so little service, took a ball in his gut and went down with a scream that shook the whole company. A late ball, or a spent round from another volley, caught Caesar just at the edge of the hip and went on to strike his leather hunting bag, spinning him around. For a moment he thought he was gone, the blow was so hard, but then he saw the hole in the bag. He didn’t have time to feel relieved. He waved Stewart away and looked at his company.

They held firm despite the casualties. There were men in brown coats on the ground all the way back to the woods, and more here. Caesar rued that he had reformed them in close order, but only their closed ranks gave them, or any troops, the confidence to stand the weight of fire. Their efforts had already shot down most of the horses on the guns and some of the gunners. He stepped over Tonny, and held up his fowler to get their attention.

“Make ready!” he yelled, and he felt them move, the rear rank stepping over to occupy the spaces between the rank in front. Their last bullets. “Present!” And the muskets came down, steady or trembling a little, but every muzzle pointed at the enemy. He had his back to the Continentals, and he could feel that they were halfway through their loading. He was prouder than ever that his men had stood a volley in the open, like regulars, and now they were going to give it back.

“FIRE.”

He turned as he gave the order and watched as their fire smashed into the men in the front rank. The uniform was the familiar one of the Virginia Regiment they had faced so often, but their leather caps marked them as light infantry. Probably the best men of their regiment.

The volley snatched four or five men down, and another stayed standing for some reason but screamed, moving along the front of the company and throwing off their carefully trained motions of loading. Just to his right, the grenadiers of the Fortieth Regiment fired into them, and more men fell.

George Lake took a musket ball through his biceps and was knocked flat by the impact. The whole hillside was full of enemy and he had no business taking them all on, but Washington was just behind him and he couldn’t withdraw. He couldn’t lie flat on his back and think it over, either.

“Make ready,” he called, trying to use his good arm to rise. He ignored the temptation to stay down. On his feet, he could see that Weedon was forming the Third Virginia to his flank, so that he was the anchor next to the guns, using his company as a shield to get his line formed. The buff facings on the grenadiers just to his front were all too familiar, as he had faced them again and again, and the company of blacks were almost like old friends. He saw the tall man, the one with the scars over his eyes, just to his left despite the gathering murk and he was tempted to bow. Lafayette had said they did such things in battles in Europe.

“Present,” he yelled, wobbling a little on his feet. There was blood everywhere around him on the ground, down his side, all through the right leg of his worst breeches.

“Fire!”

Not everyone was loaded, and the volley was ragged, although game.

The second volley was not aimed at them. It struck the grenadiers of the Fortieth just to their flank, and Caesar saw Captain Simcoe fall and he ran to him, forgetting his place in the line for a moment. Then he stopped himself and took a breath and looked over his shoulder for McDonald or Stewart. He saw Crawford running toward him.

“We have to get the guns!” Caesar yelled. Behind him, Fowver was giving the orders. Beyond Fowver, the Fortieth grenadiers were preparing to avenge Simcoe.

“You get them! Get the guns! We’ll cover you!” Crawford pointed at the Continentals in front of them.

Caesar thought of how brave the Guides had been, how well they had stood the fire. They were out of ammunition, tired. Caesar ran to the right of his men.

“One more time! Files from the right!” he bellowed, his ragged voice rising easily above the din of volleys and the great pounding of the big guns. “Follow me!” He saw Jeremy behind him, silhouetted against the darkening sky, and heard Stewart’s voice, reassuring in the shadow, getting the regulars up and into the line. And the Guides came.

They raced the Seventeenth Lights into the battery. All the horses were gone, and though the gunners were determined, they hadn’t the numbers to stop a determined plunge from the hill on their flank. Caesar fenced for a moment with the officer and then knocked him down with his musket. He yelled for his men to rally. They were on the flank of the company that had clawed them so cruelly just a moment before. He wanted to form, but the men were herding the prisoners from the battery or pursuing those who ran toward the Continental brigade forming to the rear of the position. Some were just stopped in the battery, looking blank. They were done. Taking the battery used the last of their spirit.

The light was fading fast.

Washington watched the speed with which the British overran the battery and nodded. The loss of the battery sealed the day. He needed it and Weedon to turn the tide, and he had just lost one while gaining the other. He rode over to Sullivan, Greene, and Weedon, who were waiting behind the force that had become the rearguard of the army.

“In another minute we’d have had them,” said Greene.

“Or they, us,” said Washington. The muskets were falling silent all along the line and the light company of the Third Virginia withdrew from the fast-forming British line without taking another volley. Somewhere in the regiment, someone jeered at the retreat, but the cry wasn’t taken up.

George Lake was the last man to come from that deadly field, dragging himself by force of will. As soon as they saw how badly he was hit, dozens strove to help him.

The Continental army withdrew into the growing darkness without their guns. They had lost the battle, and with it their capital.

In the corps of Black Guides, Caesar gathered his men, and buried the dead at the edge of the woods. They stood in their ranks, and took their turns to open the graves in the damp autumn ground. The loss of Tonny hit hard, as the old crew from the first days of the Ethiopians grew smaller. Sam cried, on and on, a lament of sobs that played against the rain and darkness. Tonny had been good to the boy.

Virgil smoked, and dug, and sat with Caesar in the darkness.

“Them Doodles gettin’ better ever’ time we meet them.” He smiled, a barely visible motion around the coal of his pipe. Caesar felt numb over his whole body, from his toes to his brain. He watched Silas Van Sluyt having his turn with the pick, taking slow measured strokes that broke the earth swiftly.

“You tired of war, Virgil?” Caesar felt light-headed.

“I was tired of war when you killed Mr. Gordon, an’ that was a long time ago.” He handed Caesar the lit pipe, wiping the stem companionably, and stood up, brushing the wet from his trousers. “We ain’t gon’a win this thing, Cese.”

Caesar was silent.

“I won’t be no slave again, Cese. Rather die quick, like Tonny. Most o’ the t’othuh boys feel the same.”

Caesar nodded. “Amen.”

Jeremy rode up on a tired horse and Caesar could feel the heat coming off the horse’s flanks. It felt good. He held the horse’s head while Jeremy dismounted.

“What’d captain say?” Virgil asked, extending the pipe to Jeremy. “Was he mad?”

“Captain Stewart said I might be a general yet. Some of his comments were more colorful. But taking the hill was right, and we did it right.” Jeremy put his hands on his hips and looked at the burial party. He seemed on edge.

“Is that Tonny?”

Jeremy handed the pipe back, his hand shaking.

“Yep.” Virgil took it. “An’ he has plenty o’ company.”

Caesar put his hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. Jeremy was looking at the corpses laid out in rows, and beyond them, where the corpses of the Continental soldiers lay. Other burial parties were at work, from all the regiments engaged. Those not digging were mostly silent, and out beyond the area that had been cleared, men moaned or shrieked hoarsely from wounds that had not yet finished them.

“I killed them,” Jeremy said suddenly. His voice ended on a broken note, but he still stood straight. Caesar squeezed his shoulder. He thought of saying yes, because that was the truth of command. And he thought of saying no because that was what Jeremy needed. But in the end he simply stood with his arm around Jeremy, thinking that Washington had fired a pistol at him, and he had fired his fusil at Washington, and somehow that made them even.

Virgil smoked until the clay was done, and then went back to have another turn at digging. Jeremy stayed awhile, and then he stepped away and smiled a hard, forced smile.

“I guess we’ll take Philadelphia now,” he said.

“No way Washington can hold it.” Caesar didn’t watch Jeremy wipe away tears. He turned to look at the fires appearing in the dark, and winced. Jeremy was on him in a second, pulling at his coat.

“You’re hit,” he said.

Caesar shook his head. “Nothing. Just my bag ruined,” he said, but his hand brushed the tail of his coat and it was dripping wet. Other men were coming up, all around him, and he found it hard to breathe. He reached for Jeremy, and then the ground slipped away.

Schuykill River, Pennsylvania, September 12, 1777

The British hadn’t mounted a pursuit. Washington’s army, tired and beaten, ill-shod and cold, had managed to escape from the field with no further losses. He kept the army moving, as the loss at Chad’s Ford meant he had to get well back before the British cut him off from his supply. Philadelphia and his nation’s capital were lost.

He rode up and down the column, stopping at the wagons full of wounded to look at the men who would survive. He was hoping for news of Lafayette. The wound appeared to be slight, but until infection had passed or taken hold, any wound could be a killer.

Long after dark, past midnight and straight into the first light of morning, the exhausted army marched, until at last they crossed the ford of the Schuykill and Washington felt them to be safe. His own light horse had already posted guides and marked the road to a new camp. He let his subordinates take command and rode off to camp.

Billy had his tent up and furnished, despite the immense labor that must have meant. He even had a small fire on a brazier and hot rum punch. Washington gave Billy his greatcoat and slumped into the biggest chair, his muddy boots still on and his spurs leaving a trail of wet leaves.

Billy put the rum in his hand and went out with the greatcoat, and didn’t reappear for some time. Washington drank and thought. He savoured being alone. All night, he had maintained his facade of stern discipline, a facade not so different from the real man, but in this instance, far from the emotions boiling within him. He wanted Billy to come back so that he could talk to someone.

“You fired your pistol,” said Billy from the door. Washington could smell the distinctive odour of black powder being cleaned with hot water. Sulfur and rotten eggs.

“A man fired at me.” Washington chose not to say that the man had been black. “He hit the marquis.”

“I hope you hit him back, then. The marquis will be all right, sir. It’s just a wound in the flesh of the arm, and the surgeon says it’s clean.”

Washington breathed deeply. “And we lost again. I lost again. Damn it, we were this close.”

Billy had a wad of tow wound on the end of a double spiral of iron and affixed to a wooden stick: a cleaning rod. He was using this to swab the inside of the pistol. He didn’t raise his head.

“The army fought well, though, sir?”

“They did, Billy.”

“They think they did, too. They don’t sound beat.”

Washington stretched his legs. “I’m not going to win the war by losing all the battles.”

“You told the marquis different.”

“What’s that, Billy?”

Billy looked up from cleaning the gun. “You tol’ the marquis that all we needed to do was keep an army in the field and we’d win the war.”

“So I did, Billy.” He looked at the black man fondly. “You’ll make a general yet.”

“No, sir.” Billy went back to polishing, but he had a smile on his face. And Washington went to sleep.

Caesar lay on the creaking, jolting cart and watched the cloudy sky. He didn’t have the strength to move his head. He wondered how long he had to live. He was alone in the cart. Every time it hit a hole in the road, his hip hurt like fire. The voices around him were strange, not men from any company he knew.

He dreamed of the swamp, where the pain and heat went on for hours and there was nothing a body could do. He woke to find the sun bright above him, his mouth parched and his throat painful. He fought vertigo and pain to raise his head. The man next to the cart had a high brass helmet with something worked on to the front. It was too bright to look at. Hessians.

“Water,” Caesar croaked. His lips hurt. Everything hurt.

“Wasser?” asked the man. He reached behind him and suddenly was gone. Caesar had to lower his head as the effort became too much, but in a moment the man was on the wagon and was pouring water from an enormous canteen into a cup. Caesar drank it, and another. Then another. He knew he was drinking the poor man’s ration, a sorry return on the man’s good nature. He drank again. Then he lay back. The man had mustaches, but he smiled through them.

“Sehr gut,” he said, and hopped off the cart.

Caesar went back to the swamp, except now he was swimming, and even asleep he realized he had the fever again. Later, he thought that the cart stopped for a while, and the Hessian, or another like him, gave him more water. Somebody sang a hymn, except all the words were foreign. And then he was back in the swamp. The flies were terrible, and Virgil was trying to get him to move.

And then it was Virgil, and Polly was with him, and they were both smiling and crying. And Caesar was awake.

Pennsylvania, October 18, 1777

Washington was writing in his study at the back of the stone farmhouse his staff had appropriated for the campaign. The late afternoon light was fading and Billy was lighting candles and keeping the fire going. Writing to his family and considering the business of his plantations was Washington’s greatest relaxation, and Billy defended it zealously. Washington had just finished a letter to his brother John and was considering an addition to a letter to Martha when the house echoed with the clatter of booted feet. Something was happening at the front of the house. Washington reached for his greatcoat, fearing the worst: that in the aftermath of the loss at Germantown, Howe was on him in a surprise attack like the one at Paoli.

He was rising from his chair when Billy came in.

“Messenger from General Clinton, sir.”

Washington reached for the dispatch. He threw his greatcoat back on to its peg before Billy opened the door. No need for his staff to see his apprehensions. There they were, though, crowded in the doorway, Lafayette with his arm in a sling, and Hamilton and the others, their faces troubled. They knew the rumors: that General Burgoyne had beaten Gates north of Albany, and that Putnam was losing the Hudson Forts one and two at a time. General Clinton would have the latest.

Washington opened the dispatch and spread it on the table, but he was smiling before the paper hit the desk.

Gates had forced Burgoyne to surrender. As well he should, Washington thought. Gates had some of his best regiments and the whole support of the northern colonies. He had outnumbered Burgoyne five to one. Still. He stood up and faced the staff.

“General Gates has won a signal victory over General Burgoyne. Burgoyne’s forces have surrendered.”

Hamilton smiled broadly. “Then we’re still in the game, General.”

Lafayette embraced him with one arm. “France will not be deaf to this.”

Washington listened to their celebration and joined in as much as he could. It was the third great victory of the war, after Boston and Trenton. It eliminated one of the three British armies facing them. He cared deeply for the cause, but not so much for the man who had won it.

Later, when they had moved their celebration to the camp and he was alone in his room, Washington allowed his head to sink to his hands for a moment. He rubbed his eyes, added a few words to his brother so that the original letter now forwarded news of General Gates’s signal victory, and leaned back. Billy put his head in the room.

“You ready for bed, sir?”

“I suppose.”

He stood up and moved to the bed, where he sat. His shoulders, usually square, were slumped. Billy took the ribbon from his hair and began to brush it out.

“You are hurting me,” Washington growled.

No more than usual, thought Billy, but he said nothing.

“Damn it,” said Washington. Billy stopped.

“Something on your mind, sir?”

“Sometimes the hardest thought to bear is that all the victories in this war will be won by other men.” Washington said the words evenly, without a trace of self-pity, but Billy shook his head.

“That sounds more like General Lee than General Washington,” said Billy scathingly, and Washington whirled, almost carrying the brush from his hands.

“Damn you!” Washington started to rise, but Billy pointed the brush at him.

“Sit down, sir. Or your hair will be a sight.” Billy had been enduring Washington’s occasional flashes of temper for too long to be ruffled.

Washington sat a moment. Then he leaned back. “Well struck, Billy.”

Billy grunted and brushed harder. After a moment, though, he smiled to himself.

Washington scratched his chin. “In ancient Rome, whenever a great man had won an important victory, he’d get a parade, Billy. It was called a triumph. And in the chariot with him, as he rode through the crowds, there would be a slave. All the slave did was whisper ‘You are just a man.’”

“Sounds like a good job for the slave,” said Billy.

Washington shook his head. “I’m trying to say…”

“I understand what you are trying to say,” said Billy. He went on brushing hair.

“You want me to call a doctor?” asked Caleb. He was a Massachusetts man who had been in the war since Concord Bridge, an officer in the Tenth Massachusetts. His left hand had been amputated after a musket ball smashed it. He lay next to George Lake in a tent outside the hospital with a third man, whom they knew to be called William. They were curled together for warmth in straw that was growing damp with blood from William’s seeping wound.

Neither one of them knew his surname, because William hadn’t been conscious since he was brought in after the fight at Germantown. His uniform put him with one of the Pennsylvania line regiments. His seeping chest wound suggested he would probably be a dead man in hours.

“No one would come, anyways,” said George, bitterly. His arm was healing, and he had strength in his hand for the first time in weeks. He knew inside that he was better off in the cold tent, where the air was clean, than in the hospital where disease killed more than wounds. But he was angry. The Quaker nurses treated them all like lepers. The doctors were too few, too busy and too hard. And George wanted to get back to work. He wanted to see if he still had a company, and he was lonely. Caleb Cooke was a good companion, an instant comrade of similar convictions, but Lake wanted one of his men to come by. Some link with the world before his wound. He wanted to write a letter to Betsy Lovell, but no one would give him paper. Philadelphia was lost, anyway. Her father would be happy. And she was marrying someone else. Her mother probably wouldn’t even let her read a letter from him.

Someone was riding a horse down the next street of the hospital camp. George could smell the horse and hear the rider…French accent. Hope leapt in his breast and his heart beat suddenly so that his arm throbbed.

“I am looking for one called George Lake, yes?” said the voice, just a few tents away. George wanted to leap out of the warmth of his shared blankets, except that to do so would have been to endanger Caleb’s precarious recovery.

“Over here, sir.” His voice was clear enough. He heard the horse move, splashing through the puddles, and then he could lift the flap of his tent and see the horse itself, and the slim booted form of the rider.

“Captain Lake!” exclaimed the marquis. He was down off the horse in a flash. There were other men behind him.

“You won’t want to come in, sir.” Lake realized suddenly how he must look, unshaved, with all his clothes on, one shirt over another and his two coats on top, and the third man’s blood all over the straw. Lafayette was yelling, summoning, demanding from someone outside his view.

“Want to introduce our guest?” asked Caleb, still curled up tight.

George sat up and pulled his hair behind him, trying to comb it with his fingers. He looked like hell, and the marquis, spotless from head to slung arm to booted toe, was a moving reproof.

“Lieutenant Caleb Cooke of the Massachusetts Line, this is Major General the Marquis de Lafayette.”

Cooke laughed.

“Damn, George, I do have the fever.”

George shook his head. “I apologize for the conditions, Marquis. Caleb thinks he has fever.”

“Pah! It is nothing. George, you need better than this. Myself, I was cosseted by the ladies while you lay here. Jus’ today I hear that you are still in hospital, yes? And I come as soon as I may.”

“I’ll be all right in a day or so,” said George. He was elated. Just seeing the marquis made him feel better.

“General Gates has beaten General Burgoyne. Do you know this?” Lafayette was crouching in the entrance to the tent, and the knees of his spotless white broadcloth breeches were slowly soaking up the blood in the straw.

“We heard something.” George felt as if Lafayette was bringing him back to life.

“Fetch a litter. I am taking this man with me.” Lafayette added something in French to the man behind him.

George shook his head. “I can’t leave Caleb,” he said. “He’s just starting to get better. He’s lost a lot of blood, Marquis. He needs warmth.”

“Fetch two litters. No, three. Empty this tent.”

In a moment, George was being carried by two men of Lafayette’s guard. Caleb was laughing. And the third man was in a litter behind them. Gates had beaten Burgoyne. Maybe William would live.

Anything was possible.

A heavy rain lay over the city of Philadelphia, from the outposts on the Germantown Road to the comfortable lodgings around the new theatre in Southwark. The city’s conquest had turned out to be an action of little moment, and although the Continentals fought a second battle for their capital at Germantown, the Congress had to scuttle out the back as quickly as Howe’s marching army came in the front.

In the first heady days after the victories at Brandywine and Germantown, Loyalists had rejoiced, sure that the fall of the capital and repeated defeats of the Continental Army spelled the end of the war. But Congress relocated without a sign of surrender, and word of General Burgoyne’s “convention” in the distant north suggested that any possibility of victory must now be placed on a far horizon. Burgoyne had surrendered an entire British army, whatever he called the act. Doubts that victory would ever be secured by the king’s forces were creeping in. To everyone the occupation of the city seemed temporary.

The British wounded were well housed, even the black ones, but Caesar fretted at his inactivity. The ball that had ruined his pouch had glanced off his hip, plowing a deep furrow in his flesh, but that had healed quickly. Far worse was his rematch with the fever from the swamp. It was weeks before he could hold a conversation with Virgil or ask how Polly came to be in Philadelphia.

He wasn’t sure he liked what he heard. Marcus White had come after the army arrived, and seemed to cross the lines without a pass, or so Virgil said. And Polly did the same. Virgil had seen her himself when he was on duty on the Germantown Road, coming into their lines with a basket on her head. It worried Caesar, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her about it when she came to visit, often bringing fresh apples and once an orange from the south. He was weak, so weak that all he could do was eat and watch the world outside the barracks as the fall became winter.

Stewart visited him with the news of Burgoyne’s surrender and delivered it in a monotone, so that Caesar knew it was serious.

“Have we lost the war, then?” he asked.

Stewart shook his head. “Not yet. But it’s not good. They say the French will enter the war now.”

Jeremy leaned past Stewart and fed him an apple slice. “I’m not sure this is calculated to cheer our patient up,” he said. Stewart looked shamefaced.

Caesar considered asking Stewart about the ease with which Reverend White crossed the lines, but he decided it was something he had to look into himself.