Washington and Caesar

3

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 14, 1778

The black troops missed their excellent barracks and their taverns in New York. Philadelphia was a very different city, more sober, perhaps more supportive of the king in material ways but more spiritually restrained. It was a city founded by Quakers, and it resented the new theater and the “loose” ways of the British soldiers and their amiable friends. The army retaliated by fetching their baggage and still more of their friends from New York, and the early days of winter saw most of Mother Abbott’s and a number of other followers make their way south. Sally arrived in a neat traveling dress and moved into a smart set of rooms over a milliner’s. The Guides knew that Captain Stewart, not Mother Abbott, now furnished her lodgings. The Reverend Marcus White and his daughter Polly took rooms in a small Southwark church in the late fall, and Polly began to serve the “ladies” of the theater. But the ladies of Philadelphia lacked the happy candor of Miss Poppy and Miss Hammond, and there were no mixed taverns, much less subscription dances. Philadelphia society valued itself far too much for such displays. Indeed, twice in the winter, the Guides were called out with some other black troops to clean the streets of the city, or shovel snow, duties they had never been expected to undertake in New York.

Lieutenant George Martin was transferred to them while Caesar was recovering, and placed on their establishment. He was their first permanent officer, and as such they were prepared to dislike him or find him wanting. Caesar, in particular, worried that Lieutenant Martin might somehow change the company in his absence, but no such changes were manifest when he returned. Lieutenant Martin was conscientious in that he inspected quarters every few days, he made the rounds with Caesar and he stood his posts while they stood theirs. He was still learning the complexities of the manual, and soon after he returned to duty Caesar took him out to a big barn south of the city with Virgil and Fowver and a few steady men to teach him the methods that the company had developed and the drills that were practiced by Captain Stewart’s company and others in the Second light infantry Battalion. Lieutenant Martin seemed comfortable learning from them, which endeared him as fast as any amount of his work. And they found that he liked to sleep late and was pining for Miss Hammond, in far-off New York. They were mostly pining for New York themselves, and it gave them all sympathy together.

George Martin had larger ambitions. He aspired to be an officer in the most prestigious of Loyalist corps, the Queen’s Rangers, now commanded by their old friend Captain, now Major, Simcoe. Major Simcoe had recovered from his wounds at Brandywine and had received the Queen’s Rangers as a reward for his participation in the critical closing moments of the battle. He made some very obliging remarks to the men of the Black Guides about their help in his reaching this object of his desire, and they were still drinking his health on a regular basis. Major Simcoe had told Mr. Martin that there were no positions open in his corps, but had allowed him to know that a year or two of distinguished service in another provincial corps, especially with the Guides, might win him the honor he desired. So Martin worked harder than he might have, and made a better impression.

Christmas had passed with some celebration, and the New Year had been marked by a party given by the Scots with a barbaric name that Caesar couldn’t pronounce. And then he had entered the round of duties. The winter was hard, and the lines around Philadelphia seemed endless. The rebel army was never far away.

A steady winter of drill had made them a better, sharper company. They had inherited some worn but serviceable red jackets from the grenadier company of the Sixty-fourth Regiment, which, with help from Virgil and a local tailor, allowed them to look considerably more like British soldiers when they were on duty in the city. For service on the lines, they continued in their warm brown coats and trousers, improved as individuals saw fit with woolen leggings, gaiters, leather breeches and boots, or any other provision against the snow that a man could devise.

The younger generation, in the persons of Jim Somerset, Willy Smith, and Isaac Vernon, were now corporals. Neither Caesar nor Virgil fully credited Willy’s conversion from troublemaker to leader, but he seemed to have made it, and his squad was the best turned out in his platoon. He and Jim had developed a near-permanent rivalry between their men that they never seemed to allow to interfere with their own hard-won friendship. Caesar couldn’t bring himself to like Willy, but he tried to keep this from his day-to-day management of the company. And Isaac Vernon still seemed like a new boy, despite having served more than a year and fought like a small tiger in four actions. Sam the bugler and sometime drummer was useful, although he shook like a leaf under fire and cried at night. He was often away, running errands for Polly or Reverend White. He obviously knew the area very well, and Caesar thought the boy might have come from Philadelphia.

The snow was not kind to men on the outer picket line. Caesar and the Guides had done a double share of duty, providing both a woodcutting party yesterday and pickets tonight, and there was some grumbling. Once they had watch fires roaring-the size of them a tribute to yesterday’s woodcutting-and food on the boil, resentment settled into a steady undercurrent of conversation.

Caesar was sitting on a clean stump, using a handful of tow in the firelight to clear the snow from his fowler. He never slept in the field until his lock was clean, dry, and bright. The continuing hilarity at the next fire annoyed him, as he could hear Willy bragging about his rush into the Continental battery at Brandywine. He slipped a cover over his lock, pulled General Washington’s greatcoat closer around him, and walked along the beaten path to the next fire.

“Willy, you going to take that patrol out to replace Sergeant Fowver, or just shout at the rebels?”

Willy fell silent immediately.

“Sorry, Sergeant,” he said without resentment. His men already had their greatcoats on, and packs, as Caesar never let men go out without all their equipment. The fire was throwing a wall of heat and he basked in it for a moment before he walked over to the knot of men preparing to depart and started looking at their muskets. They were all clean and dry. He gave Willy a smile.

“Tell Sergeant Fowver to come see me if he has any news,” he said. Willy saluted.

Caesar walked back to his own fire and burrowed into a little pile of hay with Virgil, who grunted. It was too cold for idle chatter, and anyone who managed to get to sleep resented any interruption.

Nonetheless, it seemed he had only been asleep for a moment when Sergeant Fowver was prodding him awake.

“You wanted my report?”

Caesar did not come fully awake at once. He had been in a pleasant dream that had Polly White and a sort of misty future, and it had seemed both warm and pleasant. Virgil grunted. Caesar sat up, noting how cold his feet were as the big fire burned down.

Caesar grabbed some wood from the pile and threw it on, and then kicked the sentry, who was asleep.

“Laddy, if you can’t stop us from being attacked, at least keep the fire going.”

The boy, a recent recruit from a farm in Maryland, just nodded. He expected to be beaten. Hocken? Haxen? Caesar couldn’t recall his name for a moment, and then it came. Horton. Tom Horton.

“Tom, the army is a hard place. You have to pull your weight. Every man here has stayed awake long hours and then stayed awake on guard. In one of those English regiments, they’d have the skin off your back, do you hear? So put yourself on report to your corporal in the morning, and we’ll see. Don’t fall asleep again.”

Horton cringed a little, awake but terrified, and Caesar grunted. He filled a little kettle with snow and put it on the fire.

“What’d you see, Ben?” he said to Fowver. Fowver looked greedily at the kettle and settled on his haunches.

“Never saw a one of their patrols. We went right down to the river and right across toward the Paoli Road and never saw a thing. Found a root cellar with some turnips. I put them on the pile at the head of camp. But the best thing is I found that Marcus White.”

“What!” Caesar sat right up.

“Sure as God made us sinful men. I brought him back. He says he has a pass, but he was out beyond our pickets and that ain’t right.”

Caesar felt like he had seen a ghost, or worse.

“Where is he?”

“I have him with my lads at our fire. I didn’t want him to talk. He asked to see you.”

Caesar nodded grimly. The implications were obvious, because the rebels spent so much effort moving spies and messengers in and out of Philadelphia. He could see that Fowver was as disturbed as he was himself. He had the added complication of being in love with the man’s daughter, and he tried to imagine White, either White, spying for the enemy. It made him sick.

“I’ll come. Hey, Horton,” Caesar called to the sentry. The boy came at the run.

“You boil this water and make tea, and come get me when it’s ready, and I might forget I caught you asleep.”

“Yes, sir!”

Caesar followed Fowver along the line of fires, thinking dark thoughts.

If he expected Reverend White to show fear at his approach, he was very mistaken.

“Good evening, Sergeant Caesar,” he said gravely.

“Good evening, Reverend.” Caesar bowed a little. “You understand that we have to question you, Reverend?”

“I do.”

“Can you explain what you were doing in the wastes between the armies?” Caesar began to examine him. Marcus White was not dressed in the threadbare garments of a preacher of the gospel, but in a filthy red waistcoat and leather breeches that had seen a great many farmyards, tucked into heavy boots. It was the costume of a poor laborer. It didn’t look like anything that Marcus White should own.

“I cannot, sir, except to say that I have many souls to minister to, and not all of them can be visited in a black coat or by the full light of day.”

Caesar bowed again.

“Reverend, I understand that, and yet I am charged with taking any man I find between the lines.” He turned to Fowver. “Anyone with him or around him? Did he have anything on him?”

Fowver shifted his eyes a little, uncomfortable.

“I didn’t search him,” he said.

Marcus White stared into his eyes for a moment. It was a look of mingled reproach and question. Caesar succumbed.

“Leave us alone for a moment, Ben,” he said, and Fowver moved away.

“Take me direct to Lord Howe,” Marcus said. “Don’t make a fuss of it, but take me yourself. If a fuss is made, it might ruin everything.”

“And you will not tell me what it might ruin.”

White shook his head.

“These are not my secrets, Julius Caesar.”

“Now?”

“Better than the whole camp knowing I was here.”

Caesar shook his head.

“This is not the city, Reverend. I have to take men with me if I go back. I’m not risking capture out here by going alone, and you know what happens to our kind if they are taken. Do you still want to go if I take a party?”

“I understand your concern. I’m more worried about too many knowing my secrets than I am about capture.”

Caesar nodded. White seemed very cool. He motioned to Fowver, who brought him the steaming kettle of tea.

He drank a cup gratefully, then handed the little wooden cup, filled to the brim, to White, who drank greedily in his turn.

“Sergeant Fowver,” he said formally, “I am handing the command of the company to you until Mr. Martin rejoins in the morning. I am taking this gentleman back to the city immediately.”

Fowver nodded.

“I’ll need two files of men, and as yours are still dressed, I’ll take them.” He motioned to four privates and saw from their weary resignation that they understood. He examined their muskets and then checked their haversacks for food.

“Bad news is, you get to walk all night. Good news is, you get to sleep warm tomorrow.”

He sensed he was in for a lot of grumbling, but he wanted to do some of his own.

They had to cross seven miles of snowy roads and pass two lines of pickets to get back into the city. It was a dark night, and the going was slow, as every farm corner seemed like a turn in the road, and there were no signs to help them on their way. For a while they followed the tracks of a party of mounted dragoons who had visited them during the day, but then other horses joined and left the track and they could no longer rely on the clear horse trail. The moon came out from behind clouds and the night grew colder, but the men were warm as long as they kept moving. White was silent, and Caesar tried to read his soul and felt bad for it. He wanted White to prove himself good, but he couldn’t help but feel that the man had wanted him to take him to Philadelphia alone, or that he was still hoping for a lucky rescue. He couldn’t imagine what was behind that stoical face. Reverend White just kept walking, his head always up, glancing about him with interest even in the dark.

They took a wrong turn at some point and walked a mile before Caesar realized they were going east, straight into the rebel lines, and he turned them around and walked them back until he could see their old tracks and the little drift of new snow that had put them off the main road. They climbed the drift, tired and deeply cold now, and walked north. There was no more grumbling. The four men who had been out all day with Fowver were deeply tired, and Caesar, who had walked posts and watched woodcutters for two straight days, was catching himself asleep from time to time even as he walked. Marcus White just kept walking, silent, careful, and watching all that they did with what appeared as a happy curiosity.

The challenge of the Fortieth Regiment sentry was a welcome, and they thawed at the fire for a few moments before starting the home stretch into the city. Caesar watched White more attentively, afraid that the man might bolt or attempt an attack, but his demeanor never changed. It didn’t change at the second sentry line, where the sergeant of the guard showed some suspicion about the lot of them, or in the streets of the city, just waking as the first carts of the day rolled to the market. Caesar almost led the man home, and his heart was rising in unease as they approached the army headquarters, but he marched his charge to the headquarters guard and passed him into their care. He was not encouraged to wait, or give his version of the story, and he explained himself to Lieutenant Crawford at the barracks and went to sleep, exhausted and quite concerned.

John Julius Stewart sat in Sally’s parlor and read his latest letter from Miss McLean with mingled senses of guilt and unreality. She belonged to another world from this, one where the war did not drag on, where he did not have a black mistress and a group of hard-living libertine friends and a growing mountain of debts to affront his father. It almost didn’t seem to matter that she missed him, or rather, he so doubted that he would ever see her again that it seemed unfair to worry about such trivialities. He was introspective enough to dislike these excuses he heard in his mind, and he turned her letter in his hands and tried to see her.

Sally was standing in the doorway of her chamber, a fire filling the grate of her fireplace and warming her as she combed out her carefully straightened hair. She was modestly dressed in a good print jacket and and warm quilted petticoat, and her face had no hint of the makeup she might have worn in New York. Philadelphia was a different place, and although the British officers might play libertines in its Quaker streets, a woman who didn’t want her clothes spoiled or worse took care. Sally took care.

She watched Stewart with tolerance and amusement. He was dressed to go out, in a long civilian coat of plush and a fancy waistcoat. Jeremy said he’d be at the theater half the night, which he often was. She wished she could go, the more so because Polly was sometimes there and other girls who had followed the army used it as a place to make their little rendezvous. She missed Polly, who came from time to time with a message from her father. She wanted company, and Stewart seldom offered it.

Jeremy always told her when the letter came, and she didn’t feel any jealousy for an absent rival an ocean away. Stewart wouldn’t keep her forever, but he’d already done fairer by her than any of her previous boys, and while she missed the company of other girls from Mother Abbott’s, she didn’t miss the men or the obligations.

Stewart rose and she helped him put a greatcoat over his elegant coat, then straightened him and tugged at his ribbons and his watch fob to make sure he was solidly accoutered. She lacked Jeremy’s expertise with his hair, but she helped him as best she could, patting the stray wisps down and touching up his curls, knowing it was all a waste as the first breeze in the street would set it all awry.

“Enjoy yourself, sir,” she said demurely. He bowed to her, something none of her customers had ever done before she met Stewart.

“Your servant, madam. I doubt I’ll meet any company tonight that I will enjoy as much as this.”

She shook her head and laughed.

“We have a dance lesson tomorrow with Miss Hallam.”

“Just so,” he said with a smile, meaning that he would get up for it even if he had a thick head. She was glad he remembered, as it was her favorite day of the week. He bowed again and kissed her a little, and then went down the stairs, cursing as his sword caught in the narrow entranceway. She heard the bang of the front door and felt the gust of cold air under her own door, and he was gone.

Jeremy arrived at the milliner’s shop later than he intended and he bounded to the door, stopped to check his watch, and saw that a man was just coming down from her rooms. He made a gesture of his mouth in distaste and stood aside, well into the shadows of the little hall where firewood and old furniture was stored at the base of the stairs. The man came down slowly, almost as if he was limping, and as he passed, Jeremy could see that he was a slight man in a bearskin coat, with gray in his hair and a hard face, and white. Not Captain Stewart, at any rate. Silently, he made his moue of distaste again and waited for the interloper to close the outer door before he moved up the stairs.

He had to knock several times before she opened, and then it was not any version of the Sally he knew, neither the bold one nor the saucy one, but a woman beside herself with fear and something darker. She was visibly relieved as soon as she recognized him.

“What is it, Sally?” he asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Nothin’,” she said. “Nothin’. I had a fall.”

“Nonsense, Sally. Who was that man on the stairs?”

She looked away.

“He hit you, didn’t he? Look at me, Sally.”

“Won’t you jus’ give me a minute, honey?” She smiled a little, although her lip trembled. She was making a great effort to master herself. Their evenings together were rare, and she wanted to cry to see it ruined. She liked Jeremy above all men she had ever met, and he was looking at her in a horrible way.

“Sally? Who was he?”

“Does it matter, honey? I ain’t your sister.” She smiled bravely at him. “One man more or less can’t really hurt me.”

He glared at her, and then was suddenly calm.

“Sure, Sally, and I have no right to take you to task for spreading your favors, except that I don’t think the captain would be so understanding.” She nodded. “You don’t need money?” He couldn’t believe it. He wrote his master’s accounts, and he knew what she received.

She bit her lip and tasted a little blood where the man had hit her. She had forgotten that Jeremy would come. She couldn’t think what to tell him. She ached to tell him the truth, and see him look at her with something like admiration, but she couldn’t.

“Take me out?” she asked, making the smile and the half-lidded eyes that led men along so easily.

Jeremy shrugged. “Just as you like, but we’re going where I want to go. Perhaps you’ll learn something by it.” He waited while she cleaned herself up, helped her into a cloak, and they went out into the snow. They walked quite a distance in silence, and her elegant shoes began to hurt her feet. She had walked the roads of the south for too long barefoot to be able to get her feet into pretty shoes comfortably, and that irked her, but frozen, painful feet irked her more.

“Where are you taking us?”

“A tavern,” he said sharply, and kept walking. He took her all the way down to the port, near the river, where merchantmen and a few Royal Navy vessels filled the wharves. The ice on the river was already breaking. They passed several taverns before he led her to one whose appointments suggested that it was for the better class of sailors, with a gilt anchor cut like an officer’s button as its sign.

Sally stopped. “I don’t like taverns,” she said, in bitter memory.

“I won’t sell you, you foolish girl. Just come inside.”

“Black folk ain’t welcome in this sort of place.”

“I drink here often, Sally.” Jeremy looked at her with appraising eyes, and she sensed that he had wanted to bring her here for some time. He led her into the warmth of the place and in a moment she felt her legs flush under her petticoats. She was cold.

The seats by the fire were filled with gentlemen in navy uniforms, or in civilian clothes that failed to hide their true profession. A few army officers were there as well, and some merchant sailors. Jeremy was greeted once, by an officer, and he bowed in return and got them to a table near the door to the kitchen. Sally grew warmer by the moment.

“Do you see?” he said eagerly, once they had been served warm wine.

She shook her head. “They treat you nice,” she agreed. “You speak like a gent and have nice manners, and they don’ know who you might be.”

“Not that, Sally. You are a ninny. Look over there.”

She looked off into the candlelight beyond the fireplace on the other side of the common room. A black man sitting with a big blond man, or perhaps overgrown boy. They were arguing loudly about something.

“Know him?” Jeremy asked.

“The black one? Is he another servant? He sounds like he’s from the Indies.”

Jeremy laughed aloud. At the sound of the laughter, the two men turned and looked at him. The blond boy waved at Jeremy, but the other man rose and bowed to Sally before sitting again. Sally looked into her wine for a moment, thinking that men were all exactly the same, but pleased by the bow nonetheless.

“Sally, he’s an officer. A Lieutenant in the Royal Navy.”

“A black man?”

“The same. Lieutenant James Crease, born a slave in Santo Domingo.”

She drank off her wine.

“Still a man like other men.”

“Don’t be coarse, there’s a good girl. Sally, he’s an officer. Maybe just the first. There’s nothing we can’t do. That’s what I brought you here to see.”

Sally leaned back in her seat and put her face very prettily in one hand.

“Honey, you was never a slave. I was. I was born one.”

He nodded.

“It don’ jus’ pass out of you, honey.” She smiled at him, beautiful in the candlelight even with a growing bruise. She thought to say more, but the black man from the table was suddenly standing by Jeremy and bowing.

“Your servant, sir. Crease, of HMS Apollo.”

Jeremy rose and bowed more deeply.

“Jeremy Green, sir, in service to Captain Stewart.”

“I hope you won’t think me a libertine if I say I stopped here to say that your lady is very beautiful,” Crease said, with another bow. The big blond fellow called something out and waved again. Sally smiled at him, and Jeremy bowed.

“Thank you, sir.”

“My pleasure. Time to shove off, Jack,” he called, and went out.

“Sergeant!”

Caesar awoke to find that it was mid-afternoon and one of the men from the Black Pioneers, another black company, was trying to shake him awake.

“Sergeant!”

Leaden with lack of sleep, he opened an eye. The whole of his straw mattress was warm, gathered around him like the thickest comforter in the world.

“An officer for you, Sergeant. And a young lady.”

He forced himself up.

In ten minutes he was as clean and neat as his backpack could make him. Most of his good shirts were still locked in a trunk at the Moor’s Head in New York, but with what he had to hand and a cup of hot water, he was clean and shaved when he came down the stairs to the guardroom at the front of the barracks house. Lieutenant Crawford was sitting primly with Miss Polly White. They made something of an odd couple, but they fell silent as he entered.

“Sir?”

“I’m to escort you to Colonel Musgrave, Sergeant.” Caesar looked around a little wildly.

“Am I under arrest?”

“Not that I know of. Now get a coat and come along.”

The walk wasn’t far, and Colonel Musgrave was brisk. He had a mountain of correspondence in front of him and was busy signing off items for his regimental agent, all on documents with which Caesar was intimately familiar. Caesar took off his hat and bowed, and Musgrave remained as he was, head down and writing steadily for some time. When he looked up, he seemed surprised to find anyone there. Then he smiled.

“Ah, Sergeant Julius Caesar of the Guides. A pleasure, Sergeant. A word about last night, if I may? Your patrol encountered only a member of this army in distress, and rescued him, then brought him back to headquarters. Nothing more. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Caesar had only addressed Colonel Musgrave once in his military career and was daunted by the second attempt.

“You did very well. Glad you showed some spirit in the thing, and glad no harm was done, eh? Here’s a guinea for the men of the patrol, and another for you and the other sergeant. Right? Right, then. Well done. Dismissed.”

Caesar bowed and was shepherded out again by Lieutenant Crawford.

“That mean anything to you, Caesar?” asked Crawford.

Caesar nodded, looking at two guineas in his hand.

“Any idea why I was told to bring Miss White, then?”

She smiled at him and held out a hand.

“I can only hope, sir,” he said. Crawford shook his head. When they were outside, she tugged her hand away.

“I have to take you to my father.”

“I expect so,” he said, still smiling at her. She colored a little and turned away.

“I don’t see you as much as I used to,” she said.

“This ain’t New York, Polly. And you and the Reverend aren’t always easy to find.”

She nodded, looking down. She didn’t offer her hand again, but walked by his side until they reached the little carriage house where they lived.

“I wish…” she said.

“What do you wish, then?” he asked, trying to kiss her. She avoided him.

“Never mind, you. Stop that.” She pushed him in the door and slammed it.

Marcus White was seated at his own little desk by the window, writing quickly. He took off his spectacles as soon as he saw Caesar and rose. Caesar bowed and White waved him to a chair.

“You got the message, I see.”

“I did, sir.”

“And you are puzzled?”

“Not in the least, sir. Honored more than ever by your acquaintance, sir, and perhaps not even surprised by your role, now that I have it clear.”

Reverend White nodded slowly.

“Do you have any questions, then?”

“Is Polly involved?”

He saw White’s hands clasp hard behind his back and had his answer. He had questioned too many guilty soldiers to need any coaching on the subject.

“Never mind, then.”

“Do you love my daughter, sir?” Reverend White was very close to him, and perhaps a little angry. Suddenly, Caesar was on different ground than expected.

“Perhaps…yes, I think I do. Which is to say that I haven’t given it much thought, lately.” Caesar raised his chin. “She’s a little above me, I think.”

“Why? Because she can read? You can read. Because she’s modest? You’re no libertine.”

“You are a man of real education, sir.” Marcus shook his head, but Caesar went on. “I decided when we left New York that it wasn’t right.”

Marcus White nodded. “Yes, yes. You’re doing a fine job of speaking all my lines. I agree that you have no skill besides war. It worries me. Julius Caesar, so aptly named! But last night scared me more. I made a mistake and almost paid for it. I think she has a great deal of regard for you. If we all live to get back to New York…”

“New York?” asked Caesar. Fascinated though he was by the subject, he was equally interested by the prospect of a move to New York.

“Haven’t you heard? Lord Howe is to go back to England in the spring, and Sir Henry Clinton will take command. He intends to march the army back to New York.” This was uttered as if a commonplace. Caesar just shook his head.

“Even barracks rumor has not gone so far.”

“It’s fact, though, Caesar. The Government is going to retreat and try negotiation for a while. Saratoga has scared them deeply. I hope we have not already lost the war.”

Caesar shook his head. “You know more than any officer I know, but I suspect I know why, and I won’t say. So tell me about New York?”

“Eh?”

“If we all get back there, I think you said?”

“Ahh. Yes. If we do, and if you’d care to court her, and if she’s willing, I’d be content.”

Caesar saw a marvelous vista opening before him. He smiled from ear to ear.

“Not every day that the woman’s father asks you to court her, is it?”

Caesar shook his head again, tongue-tied.

“I told her you’d never ask. She told me you never stopped trying to take liberties.” Caesar was suddenly cast down. “I ask that if this comes to nothing, you not bring my daughter down.” Caesar raised his eyes and met the minister’s.

“Yes. Yes, I promise.”

“Good, then. I think we understand each other. Where is my Epictetus?”

“In my pack.”

“I have the Memoirs of Socrates to trade for it when you bring it. In your pack, you say? Is there anything left of it?”

“I dried it well when it got wet, sir. The pages have warpled a little, but she’s fine.”

“Perhaps I should save my books as well as my daughter, until New York.”

He went out, and she was waiting.

“You have my father’s permission.” She said it straight, and flat. His heart turned over.

“You don’t seem too pleased.” Caesar thought that all his suspicions of Marcus White might come back, if it turned out that White was trading his daughter for Caesar’s silence about his activities.

“I’d like to hear something from you.”

Caesar met her eyes. They stood a long moment, looking at each other. “I want to marry you,” he said, straight.

She nodded gravely.

“But I’m a soldier. Polly, I don’t know just how to say this to you, ‘cept that I ain’t so sure we’ll win. And then what am I? A black freeman? A slave? Somebody’s property? You ain’t…you aren’t like me. I want to marry you, but I want to know that there’s something after all this.”

Polly smiled for the first time in that conversation. “That’s the Caesar I want. The one that thinks. I don’t want it all to be snatched kisses and your hand on my thigh, Caesar. I want to be talked to. I learned that equality from my father, and I’ll expect it.” She started to walk, and made a motion that he should come along. “It’s cold. I’m cold. As to after the war, what of it? We’re black, Caesar. There isn’t ever a day we’ll rest easy, knowing that the next day will bring us ease. And I don’t see you ever being a slave again.”

Caesar caught her to him and kissed her, a quick kiss on the lips, and then a longer kiss on her neck. “I’ll keep you warm, at least,” he said.

She kissed him a moment and pulled free. “New York, then,” she said, and turned back to her father’s house.

The sallow man in the bearskin coat had two more stops to make, but he thought of the black whore for the rest of the evening. She was the favorite of his post boxes, and the only one who didn’t make him cringe and feel inferior. Sometimes, when she vexed him, he hit her and liked it. She was terrified of him, and no one had ever been terrified of him before-much the reverse-and he took pleasure in that, too.

He picked up two more packages and then traveled east, carefully avoiding the post at the first line of pickets and meeting a Quaker farmer and his wife exactly on time, just as the sun rose off toward Landsdowne. The little man in the bearskin coat was especially proud when he was just on time for these meetings. He rode up cautiously, because he was always cautious, and stopped a good few paces from the wagon.

“Got any fodder to sell?” he asked. The old Quaker on the wagon frowned.

“Got any fresh fodder to sell?” he corrected himself, annoyed that the man needed so much care, but pleased that he could remember the whole phrase. The old man nodded, and indicated the back of the wagon.

The man in the bearskin coat rode back into the city when the transaction was finished, again avoiding the British post on the road, back to his dreary day-to-day life. He liked the nights when he was a courier, a secret messenger for the cause.

The Quaker farmer took his wagon through the lines with a paper signed by several commanders on both sides, selling fodder as he went. Once he was outside the range of all but the most aggressive patrols of the King’s army, he turned down a side lane past some fields that had been fallow at least a year and drove his wagon right into a barn. He no sooner pulled in there than armed men surrounded him.

“What you got for me?” asked Sergeant Bludner.

Valley Forge, February 19, 1778

Washington felt the cold right through his spirits. The capital was lost, and his army, a bare three thousand men, were camped in the hardest conditions they had yet endured. He felt that the war might now be lost through sheer neglect and a lack of basic logistics. His men might melt away, starve or die in the cold.

Washington looked at the man standing before him, able, brave, animated. The very picture of a good officer, and Washington disliked that he had to refuse the man a furlough, but the other generals had been writing passes as if they were free of threat, and with British patrols attacking his outposts every day he could not afford to have his officers absent. He feared desertion. He feared that the army would break up like an ice floe and be gone in a night.

“General, I appeal to you. I’ve worn out all my smallclothes, and I promised I would wed her by the first of the year. She’ll be eating her heart our, sir! Please let me go.”

Washington said nothing. The Massachusetts captain was dressed in the remnants of a British coat, and his boots were wrapped in rags. His hat was tied to his head with a piece of old sacking. When he gesticulated, his hand could be seen wrapped in bandages. Yet he stood straight as an arrow in front of his general.

“If I don’t go, she’ll die.”

Washington smiled thinly. “Oh, no sir. Women do not die for such trifles.”

“But, General, what shall I do?” The man was not angry at being refused, just plaintive.

“What will you do? Captain, I recommend you do as I do and write to her to add another leaf to the book of women’s sufferings.” He winced at his own tone, as he could imagine what Martha would say if she were present, but thankfully for his status as the “demigod” of the revolutionary cause, she was not.

When the captain was dismissed, Washington notified Colonel Fitzgerald that he was done with petitions for the day, and set himself to correspondence. He read a dispatch from his spymaster stating that an agent in Philadelphia with a code he recognized was confirming the movement of British troops out of the city in the spring. It was not the first report Washington had received on the subject, and he looked out of the window for a moment and considered what it would mean to his army, starving in the snow, to retake their capital, even if it were retaken only because the enemy abandoned it.

A knock at the door interrupted his reflection. Billy leaned in and indicated the marquis a little behind him. Washington beckoned.

“The marquis has a man he wishes to introduce, General,” said Billy. “I think you might want to hear him.”

Washington nodded. “Some warm punch?” he asked, and Billy vanished.

The marquis bowed elegantly and made way for a far less graceful man behind him.

“My General, may I have the pleasure of introducing Freiherr von Steuben, formerly a general in the service of the King of Prussia? Monsieur von Steuben, J’ai le plaisir d’introducer le General des Etats Unis, Monsieur George Washington. General, Freiherr von Steuben has little English.”

Rather than Lafayette’s courtly bow, von Steuben clicked his heels together and bowed stiffly from the waist.

“Votre servant, Monsieur le General,” he said. Washington’s French was not good at the best of times. Washington waved them to chairs.

“Please thank the Freiherr for coming. I am flattered to receive an officer from the Prussian King. How may I be of service?”

There was a brief conversation in French, and Lafayette smiled. “The Freiherr wishes that he may serve our army. He makes no demand for rank and says that rather than importune you for some task, it might be best if he simply joined your headquarters and watched to see if he could be of service.”

Von Steuben spoke rapidly again. Then he smiled and rose from his chair, bowed from the waist again and seated himself.

Lafayette nodded and waited until his protege had finished. “The Freiherr says that he served on the staff of the great King Frederick and also has conducted largescale…” Lafayette paused. “How do you say it, games, on the Champs de Mars?” The two foreigners looked at each other.

Washington smiled benevolently. “Military exercises?”

“Exactement. My pardon, General. I speak nothing but English for months and it improves iteself, yes? And then I have someone to speak the langue of home, and…”

“Please tell Freiherr von Steuben that I would be delighted to make a temporary place on my staff, and that he should feel free to ask me anything he likes. I will assign John Laurens to translate for him. Laurens might learn more soldiering, and you, my dear Marquis, are far too busy to be a translator, I think.”

If it was a reproof, it was a gentle one. Lafayette’s adoration of his general was sometimes a burden, and it imposed on Washington a restraint he had never used with another person, except perhaps Martha, but it was cheering, all the same.

Washington called for John Laurens and Billy served hot punch to all four men. Washington thought of the contrast between the Yankee captain to whom he had been forced to refuse a furlough and the elegant Lafayette in his new uniform and fur-lined waistcoat, and the contrast made him think of Lafayette’s unlikely friend.

“How is Captain Lake, Marquis?”

“He does very well. His arm has healed cleanly. The hospital was worse for him than the wound, I think. I will have him out on patrol in a few days.”

“What? Doesn’t he want a furlough like every other officer?”

“General, George Lake is the true believer, yes? He will not leave this army until the enemy is beaten.”

John Laurens bowed from the door and came in, snatching his share of the punch. He was in some middle ground between the ragged soldiers outside and the near perfection of Lafayette, but when the situation had been explained to him, he was able to translate for von Steuben very well indeed. When the three men began to discuss military matters in French, Washington cleared his throat and stood to his dominating height, and the others rose immediately.

“My pardon, General. I meant no rudeness.”

Washington smiled, a thin smile that left his teeth hidden, but with some warmth. “I must go back to the army’s work, gentlemen. Colonel Laurens, may I leave the Freiherr in your capable hands? Marquis, I thank you for bringing him, although I must say that I would have thought you natural enemies.”

“Perhaps in Europe, Mon General. Here, we unite in the cause of liberty.” Lafayette bowed deeply and the men withdrew, leaving Washington to plan his campaigns. Somehow, between the Yankee captain, George Lake’s recovery and von Steuben, his mood had changed. He was pleased.

Billy closed the door and smiled.

Philadelphia, April 30, 1778

The army reentered Philadelphia to muted celebrations. The people of the City of Brotherly Love had watched armies come and go for three seasons now, and were inured to the change. The Loyalists missed the British, and indeed, so great a revel had the Mischianza proved that some heads were still recovering from it.

The return of the Continental Congress restored the city to the position of capital, and the government returned with a rush, eager to renew the business of politics and also to seize the property of avowed Loyalists. It was a difficult time, particularly as the enemy was just across the river in New Jersey, busy retreating on New York, and Washington was keen to get across and harry their retreat.

George Lake had marched through the city before, but the last time he had been a corporal. Now he was a captain, and thanks to the generosity of the marquis, he almost looked the part, in a good blue coat with red facings, a smart leather helmet with a visor, and his fine sword hanging by his side. He even wore good top boots in emulation of his idol. Behind him, his company shared in his fortune. Every man had a good wool coat, brought as bounty from France. The coats had been shared through the army by lottery, but most of the light infantry had received theirs first, not least because Lafayette had many friends among the younger officers of that corps. So Lake’s company, one of the best in the army, led the parade that was also a pursuit: they were to march through the city and board a ferry the next day.

Reclaiming his company had proved less of a hazard than recruiting it. By the time George was fully recovered, he found his company had shrunk to just twenty-five men under a sergeant he didn’t know. In his absence, the other officer hadn’t been replaced and no drafts had been procured. George had been forced to tour the other companies and importune Colonel Weedon for more men. In time he’d got them and a new officer, Lieutenant Isaac Ross, a Scotsman from Alexandria with a far better claim to the rank of officer than George Lake. Ross, however, first encountered his new commander having wine with the much revered Marquis de Lafayette and never thought to question his commander’s antecedents.

Ross was better than adequate. He roamed the column and watched the sergeants and made George’s life very easy, so that as they neared a certain corner, close by the City Tavern, George was able to turn his attention to a certain house. It was still a block away when George saw men at the windows and someone smashing the front door with an axe. He knew that the Lovells were Loyalists, and he knew the temper of the times.

“Mr. Ross? Indian files from the flanks of sections, if you please. At the double!”

George waited until his men began to file off and then led them up the side of the column, trotting along smartly. The men in the companies ahead were studiously looking the other way, trying to ignore what was happening under their noses.

George’s friend Caleb commanded the company just short of the house. “What’s your hurry, George?”

George pointed at the Lovells’. “I’m intending to stop the looters.”

“Folks inside are Tories.”

“Folks looting them are scum, Caleb.”

“Aye, then. True enough. I’ll back your play.”

George turned away and motioned to his men. “Take them. I want them all as prisoners. Smartly now, and no shooting.”

He drew his sword and led a few men into the Lovells’ central hall. A big man was carrying a sewing table and seemed surprised to see a Continental officer appear.

“This ‘ere’s my place. Go get your own.”

George jabbed him in the face with the hilt of his sword and broke the man’s nose. “Take him.”

Ready hands grabbed the man and George took the sewing table before it got broken. Around the house, through the great casemented windows, George could see his own men and Caleb’s forming a cordon. His sergeant was arresting men in the library.

George called out: “Mrs. Lovell? Mr. Lovell?”

He heard voices from upstairs and ran to the top, where he found a huddle of men, none in uniform. The best dressed stepped in front of George and raised his hand. His voice was shaking, whether with emotion or fear George cared little.

“Halt! Soldier, you are interfering with the orders of the Congress.”

“Take him,” said George, grabbing the man’s outstretched arm and pulling him down the steps.

“Damn you, sir! I am an officer of Congress…”

“Are you now? Where were you at Valley Forge, then? Take him, boys.”

The man disappeared into a welter of soldiers. When it had been a matter of helping Tories, the men had been hesitant, but as soon as George made it a matter of taking men who claimed to be patriots but declined to serve in the army the soldiers were suddenly very active.

The rest of the looters at the head of the stairs stood warily. One man had drawn a pistol.

George pointed. “Is that loaded? Put it down this instant or you’re a dead man.”

The man hesitated. The barrel swung slowly, as if the man couldn’t decide where to direct it.

“Down, I say,” said George, quietly. Behind him, one of his corporals took careful aim from the steps. The pistol was placed on the floor.

“Take them all outside. Mrs. Lovell!”

More cries, this time from farther up in the house, perhaps the servants’ quarters. George pushed through the men, sullen now, and snatched up the pistol. Then he turned a corner and went up some narrower steps to a door. The door was shut and there were two men with a crowbar outside.

“Drop the bar and clear the door, lads.”

They saw the pistol and cowered away.

“Straight past me and down the hall. Don’t make a fuss or you’ll be killed. Good lads.” They were younger than the rest, perhaps less spoilt, and they did as he said.

“Mrs. Lovell?” he shouted.

“Who’s that?”

“George Lake of the Continental Army, ma’am. Your house is clear. You can come out.”

He heard a shriek from inside the door. He was thinking of knocking it down himself when it was opened from inside. Mrs. Lovell’s face was bright red, and her shawl was wrapped around one hand, which was bleeding. Betsy was behind her.

“Are you all right, ma’am?”

“Mr. Lake? Thanks to God, sir, for your timely arrival. I think they meant more than pillage, and my husband hasn’t been home in two days and I fear for him, and one of the dogs was killed by a band, and, sir…”

This was not the Mrs. Lovell who had been so calm in ladling milk to his men. She was badly shaken, like men he’d seen on the battlefield. George moved her downstairs and exchanged a glance with Betsy, who was dressed in mourning and threw her arms around his neck in a manner he found…very pleasing. But duty called. He looked deep in her eyes and she gave a nervous smile, as if now embarrassed by her own boldness.

He was afraid to ask her anything, so he left her looking after her mother and went outside. The column was moving on, and his men were hopelessly out of line already, as were Caleb’s.

Colonel Weedon rode over, accompanied by the marquis.

“Captain Lake? I do hope you have an explanation, sir.”

“Colonel, this is a Loyalist house. But the people here have been good to the army, gave us milk the last time we was here, and I’m partial to them. The house was being broken by scum. I took care of it.”

Weedon nodded, looking at the group of toughs on the lawn.

“They mean to make trouble for you, then.”

Lake nodded, and the marquis looked thoughtful. Then he rode over to the group and pointed at them. “I believe every one of these men is a deserter from the Second Pennsylvania Regiment,” he said aloud. The soldiers hooted at them. The men looked angry or terrified.

“I ain’t no deserter. I ain’t stupid enough to be in your army!” shouted the biggest to a chorus of jeers.

The marquis came back: “My friend the Freiherr von Steuben will so enjoy making these men into soldiers. They, themselves, will someday acknowledge the favor we have done them in allowing them to serve the cause of liberty.”

Weedon laughed and slapped his holsters. “Damn me, Marquis. You have a way with you. That’s that, then, George. Get your men together and bring your ‘deserters’ along.”

George saluted and went back into the Lovells’ house. On the steps he put a hand on Caleb’s arm. “Can you do me another favor, Caleb?”

“I suppose.” Caleb was laconic at the best of times.

“Have a man you trust wait for the baggage and have William brought here. They’re going to leave the wounded in the City anyway, Caleb. William’ll be better off with the Lovells, and he’ll give them some element of protection, as well.”

“An’ if he ever recovers his wits, he’ll be home, like.”

“Thankee, Caleb!” George passed back into the parlor, where Mrs. Lovell was sitting in the big chair with her daughter close by. Soldiers were moving furniture back in.

“Mr. Lake; Captain Lake, I think. How can I thank you enough?”

“It was nothing, ma’am. But you could perhaps do me a favor, if you feel I’ve done you a service. A man I know is badly wounded. Our army hasn’t a real hospital…”

Mrs. Lovell sprang to her feet. “I’d be happy, Captain. Take me to him.”

“I’ve taken the liberty of sending for him. He’s from Pennsylvania, and his name is William. He’s been awake a few times in the last month, but he’s bad. An’ that’s all we know. But we shared a tent when I was wounded…”

Betsy looked at him and turned white. She looked down suddenly and sat. Mrs. Lovell nodded. “When were you wounded?”

“I was hit at Brandywine, ma’am. But I was most of the winter recovering. I thought to write, an’ then I thought…” In fact, he realized that his thoughts were neither here nor there, and that his company was forming outside and Private Locke was hanging on his every word in the doorway. Oh, lovely gossip about the captain. He bowed to cover his confusion, but Mrs. Lovell was still too close to her own troubles to notice.

“I have to march, ma’am. May I write for news of my friend?” He looked directly at Betsy when he spoke, greatly daring, hoping she could read his code. She kept her eyes down, but a tiny smile played at her mouth.

“Of course, sir. You are a benefactor of this house, and your letters will always be welcome here.” Mrs. Lovell already sounded more herself.

George bowed. “I must go. My apologies for the rush. Mrs. Lovell, your servant, Miss Lovell.”

“See the captain to the door, Betsy. Let’s look like civil people despite the events of this morning.” Betsy blushed and followed George to the door. He paused, as close to alone with her as he’d ever been and unable to speak a word.

Caleb, out in the street, caught sight of his coat and called out, “Come on, George!”

George looked at Betsy and his feet actually moved, so great was his pull to the street. He shuffled, and cursed inwardly.

“My fiancee fell through the ice and drowned,” Betsy said, and she kissed him. It was just a touch, but it lit his face like fire. He caught one of her hands and kissed it, afraid to touch her.

“I’ll write.”

“You had better, Mr. Lake.”

“I want…” He was tongue-tied, and he kissed her hand again. She smiled as if she knew and vanished in the door.

Out in the street, his face red as an enemy coat, George trotted to the head of his company.

“Well done, our George!” yelled one of his men. He glared.

“A beauty and no mistake,” said his sergeant. Someone gave a cheer.

“March!” growled George.

A few streets away, Washington sat in the City Tavern and looked at the treaty Silas Deane had laid in front of him. It held the seals of Europe’s most powerful monarch. Lafayette beamed with pride.

“France has recognized the United States.” John Laurens was reading, alternating with Deane. “And will become our ally. They will send us soldiers and materiel.”

Washington nodded. They had heard the rumor for weeks, but there was a happy babble of congratulation from those gathered in the great common. Fitzgerald laughed with Hamilton, and Lafayette translated something to von Steuben. Outside, their army, a new army, marched through the streets with a steady pace that von Steuben had spent the spring beating into them. They looked like regulars. Some of them had done before, but now the whole army looked the part.

Washington moved off to one of the windows at the north end of the room and looked out at the city. After a moment, he realized that his inner staff had gathered around him silently while the rest kept up a fine run of comment in the background. Washington nodded to Hamilton.

“I have to thank you, gentlemen.”

Hamilton bowed. He couldn’t remember being thanked by Washington for anything. Lafayette beamed and Fitzgerald looked puzzled.

“What for, sir? It’s Silas Deane as got the treaty.”

“You gentlemen taught me to use a staff, and to trust…other men.” He paused. “So now you will need to teach me to trust an ally far more powerful than we are. Am I wrong to doubt the purity of France’s motives?”

They all looked suddenly grim. And Lafayette nodded. “You are right, General. And yet I think they wish the English defeated.”

Washington rubbed the bridge of his nose; he could see a new crowd of congressional dignitaries coming toward the staff.

“I would prefer to defeat the British before the French arrive. But for that, we must make Clinton stand and fight.”

Hart’s Farm, New Jersey, May 24, 1778

“They will stand, and they will fight.” Washington was speaking not of the British, but of his own men. He could not believe what he was hearing from the men in the room. Charles Lee, exchanged from captivity and now no friend to his commander, was gathering around him a party of discontent. That Washington knew, but until this moment he had no idea of the power their discontent had in his officer corps. The thought struck him that Lee had always been like this, searching for the boundaries of authority. Something crystallized in Washington, even as Lee moved to the map.

Lee pointed. “Clinton is marching back to New York. The British can call it anything they like, sir, but it is a retreat. With all due respect, we gain nothing by attacking him and little by interrupting his retreat. The risk to us is great, however. Right now, every man in New Jersey is ours. Since Saratoga, the tide of Congress is running high. We cannot afford a defeat. If we attack his rearguard, we will be defeated. Our troops cannot stand the fire.”

Washington looked around the room. Lee seemed to have polarized the officers of the army, recently so united, and Washington vowed silently that this would not happen again. He looked at the marquis. Lafayette, recovered from his wound and entirely unchanged, uncrossed his legs and popped out of his seat like a marionette.

“I would be delighted to take our advance guard and have a passage a l’outrance, General. I do not agree with the General Lee. I believe that my men will stand the fire.”

Lee looked at him disgustedly.

“When have they yet, sir?”

“You were not at Trenton or Princeton, sir, nor Brandywine.”

“I wasn’t at Saratoga, either, sir! But by God, even the veterans of those actions admit that they couldn’t stop the British when they came on with the bayonet! Right up until he surrendered, Burgoyne was still winning his victories! We cannot afford one of those defeats. We have a good new army and a great deal of public support and a treaty with France. We’ve won! Let’s keep it. Let’s shadow Clinton all the way out of New Jersey and claim victory.” He turned a look of repugnance on Lafayette. “And let’s leave him in the nursery where he belongs.”

“Contain yourself and apologize!” Washington spoke in a voice of thunder. Lee recoiled. Washington stood to his full height, towering over Lee.

“I beg pardon, sir. The hurry of the moment…”

“Ce n’est rien, General Lee.” Lafayette was always magnanimous. It was one of the reasons so many of the officers hated him.

“General Lafayette, you may take the advance guard under your command. Give me a plan to attack the rearguard of General Clinton’s army and make an attempt on his baggage.”

General Lee took a deep breath and swept his head around the room. There were a number that looked to him for leadership. He had gathered a small crowd on his side, distinct from the crowd around Washington. After the victory at Saratoga, there had been a conspiracy to place Gates at the head of the army, but it had failed in part because so few officers knew Gates, or liked him. The same was not true of Charles Lee. A great many officers in the army admired him.

“Very well, sir. If you insist on this mission, I will undertake it rather than entrust it to an officer so inexperienced, no matter how good his heart.”

Washington looked at Lee with thinly disguised misgiving.

“Very well, General Lee.”

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

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

Washington held his gaze until Charles Lee turned away.

Near Monmouth Court House, May 28, 1778

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Captain George Hangar of the Jaegers.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Damn the heat,” he said, snappishly.

Jeremy shrugged. “Drink some water, sir.”

“I don’t want water.”

“You should drink some water, sir.”

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

“Well, gentlemen, we missed them.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I see them.”

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

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

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

“What day, Virgil?”

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

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

And they hadn’t come to grips yet.

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

George ran to his commander, Colonel Weedon. “Are there any orders, sir?” he asked, pointing at the British grenadiers.

“None since we marched this morning, Captain.” He looked at his watch and then down at the British. “Last I heard, we were attacking.”

“Guess no one told them,” said George. He turned and found Caleb Cooke at his side.

“I’m holding this position until General Lee should choose to honor me with his commands,” said the Yankee captain. His bitterness was obvious.

George ran back to his company in time to see the head of the British column start forward up the hill aimed at the space to his left. He marched his company forward a few paces until they had a clear shot down the hill and ordered his sergeant to open fire. Companies to his right were doing the same. Colonel Weedon was pushing two companies a little down the slope to fire into the flank of the attack when the woods in front of them erupted with more grenadiers. George had never seen an attack like it. The British were in no sort of line, and he watched a group of their officers run into the little patch of swamp at the base of the hill to his right and wade through, a dozen grenadiers pushing along strongly in their wake until the whole group was across. The two companies that had gone forward to flank the first column were now caught in the flank by this second group. Despite outnumbering them heavily, they were so caught by the initial surprise that they ran, with fewer than twenty grenadiers pursuing them to the top of the ridge. In a moment, both his flanks were lost and the hilltop was a sea of red jackets.

He wanted to stand and gape unbelievingly. This wasn’t some superior performance by the British, but massive incompetence by his own.

“Get them back!” he yelled to his sergeants, and then pointed at his new bugler, a little black boy of twelve or so that he had found in a cottage. “Sound retreat.”

Washington rode forward, listening to the sounds of musketry in the heavy air and concerned at its volume and direction.

“Surely that sounds closer than the last,” he said to Lafayette.

He began to gallop and his staff followed him forward. They began to pass panicked men and deserters, and the junior officers of the staff set themselves to round these up. Then they passed a trickle of wounded men moving to the rear.

“Damn the man,” Washington said aloud. These were his very best troops, the light companies of the old Continental regiments and the rangers and riflemen, as well as whole battalions of crack veterans. Off to the left he could see a column of Massachusetts men standing to, drooping in the heat. He turned to Fitzgerald.

“Tell whoever commands that column to get those men out of the sun. What is he thinking of?” He rode forward, his horse lathered in sweat but still full of spirit. Washington didn’t seem in the least fazed by the oppressive heat. Lafayette was invigorated by his burst of energy, and the little flow of breeze generated by the gallop had helped.

He rode into the middle of a rout. The whole of the road was choked with disorganized units trying to force past each other, with officers striving to rally their men, and men too panicked to be rallied. A battery of guns had cut their traces and left their pieces sitting on the hard-packed road to get away on the horses. Washington fumed. He rode back and forth, suddenly everywhere, cautioning a colonel, soothing a jittery captain, praising the efforts of the men who suddenly found themselves in the rearguard. All his staff flew about like demons, riding from unit to unit, bringing up clumps of men who seemed willing to return to their duty, in some cases simply giving men heart who had lost it, or telling commanders to make their men drink water. It all helped, and little by little they turned the shambles back into the cream of the army.

Through it all, Washington looked for Charles Lee. He found him sitting quietly on his horse amidst his small staff, gazing at a distant hilltop where a battalion of British grenadiers were putting themselves in a state of defense.

“What are you about, sir?” asked Washington, as soon as he rode up. Lee looked as if he had been struck.

“I told you they wouldn’t stand,” Lee said bitterly. “Those grenadiers rolled the so-called elite of our army off that hill like so many children. They won’t stand.”

Washington looked at him with something pretty near loathing.

“Sir, they are able, and by God they shall do it! Your retreat is a disgrace. Do me the favor of accepting responsibility for your own errors and not blaming the men who sought to serve you.”

Lee rounded on him. “There’s irony for you, sir. You are going to criticize my command?”

“I am. I can see that the scale of this operation was beyond your grasp.” Washington turned aside as a trooper of the light horse cantered up and saluted, presenting a message. Washington read it. Lee made no attempt to see it, but sat fuming.

“Was it your intention to attack the enemy rearguard from both flanks?” Washington asked.

“Once I had lured them with a feigned retreat.”

Washington looked at the reforming army.

He turned his horse so that he was nose to tail with the messenger, scanning the distant hill where the grenadiers could be seen. He beckoned to Hamilton and looked at a map for a moment.

“I’m taking command,” he said. Lee was clearly stunned. He rode off a distance and sat quietly. Perhaps he had mistaken his man.

Washington finished his map study, lining up features visible in the endless heat shimmer with marks on the map. He turned back to the messenger.

“Attack!” he said.

George Lake’s men were not beaten. They made that clear by cheering Washington as he rode up to them in the full heat of the afternoon, despite their parched throats, and the cheer was taken up along the line, even by men who had run from a handful of grenadiers an hour before. They cheered and cheered. Washington smiled a little, hiding his teeth but visibly pleased. Lake stepped out of his spot at the head of his company and caught at Lafayette’s bridle. The young general smiled down at him.

“What happened?” Lake pleaded.

“I don’t think we will ever know. I am not experienced, eh? But it seems to me that Lee had no plan.”

Lake shook his head in angry negation. “We marched out there smartly enough and then there were no orders.”

“Perhaps he had a plan. And the British attack surprised him. I think perhaps General Lee does not like being surprised.”

Lake nodded, agreeing now.

“But war is nothing but a series of surprises and disappointments. That is why this one is so very good,” and Lafayette pointed at Washington. “He is never ruined by a surprise, eh?”

Lake smiled up at Lafayette.

“Now we attack? General?” Lake was never quite sure if Lafayette really was a general as he was twenty years younger than the others.

“It is hot,” Lafayette responded warily. “And many of these troops have already fought, whether well or badly. I think that I have learned that most soldiers will only fight once in a day.”

The men behind Lake cheered again, as if to prove the young general wrong.

Lake went back to where his company was waiting in the shade and told them to be ready. Then he took out his horn inkwell, suddenly his most precious possesion, and started to add to his endless letter to Betsy.

Caesar watched the grenadiers attack in the distance and then settled down to a long exchange of fire with some militia to their flank. As the morning wore on, the militia began to come closer and there were some rifle balls among the shots coming at their woodline. Mr. Martin moved up and down the line quite boldly and set a good example, and Caesar developed a new liking for the man. Several of the soldiers of the Guides who had been down on him noted that he did not hesitate to share his canteen with a black soldier-a sin that had been imputed to him at spring drill.

Jeremy visited them from time to time, checking on their position and a similar one occupied by some men from the Queen’s Rangers just to the south. In late morning his horse took a ball, and he had to walk back to the light infantry camp. It was quite a feat of bravery, unnoticed on that busy day, but Caesar watched him go the whole distance, under fire much of the way, with deep misgiving, because Jeremy seemed to be above such notions as using the available cover, or running.

He was back on a new horse by early afternoon. He rode up to Mr. Martin, and Caesar trotted over through the heavy air. There were guns firing to the north, or perhaps low summer thunder-it was difficult to be sure. Caesar had soaked his jacket with sweat, and his hatband and even his leather equipment was damp.

“Men are low on powder and we’re all out of water,” Caesar said without preamble.

“I just said the same,” added Martin, a little defensively.

“What’s in front of you?” asked Jeremy, scribbling on a little pad.

“Militia and some rifles. Perhaps more rifles now than there were.” Caesar looked at Martin, who nodded.

“I think they are just waiting for us to leave so they can get in these woods and start firing on the camp,” said Martin.

“Rotate another company out here so we can get powder and water,” said Caesar. Martin was proving to have a head on his shoulders. He nodded at Caesar’s pronouncement. Jeremy handed them his canteen, which was full, and another.

“All I could bring. Lieutenant Martin, Captain Stewart says that this is not going well, and that the column has been very slow to leave camp.”

Martin nodded slowly.

“I think the attacks by the grenadiers are an attempt to force the enemy to break contact so that the rest of us can withdraw in something like safety. Captain Stewart thinks the grenadiers have gone too far, and so does Major Simcoe.” He paused as if he feared he was saying too much. “The Jaegers are right there behind you, where we started this morning. If you have to pull back, at least they can fire over you once you are in the low ground.”

Martin looked up at him.

“I take it that means the light infantry are going forward. To rescue the grenadiers?”

“It could mean that, sir. I’m sorry to be obtuse, but it could mean that.”

Caesar leaned in. “But Jeremy doesn’t feel he can say, because it wasn’t in the message he was given, but rather in something he overheard, am I right?”

Jeremy smiled. “Just so, Julius.”

Martin shook his head. “We need water and powder.” He sounded worried. As Jeremy rode off, Caesar touched his arm and smiled. Martin brightened up immediately.

“You just remind me if I forget, Sergeant,” he said in his official voice, immediately cheerful and businesslike.

“You’re doing very well, if I may say, sir.”

“Why thankee, Julius Caesar. Thank you for that.”

Because they weren’t running, they could make their water last, and the shade of the trees was a relief that many soldiers on that field would have killed for, but the heat grew until it seemed the principal enemy. Men stopped firing because they lacked the energy to load, and everyone was wet with sweat. Caesar and Martin moved constantly and were the most tired because of it, but the action was never anything but an exchange of shots at extreme range. Jeremy’s first horse was their only casualty except for a graze to Angus’s head that ruined his hat and made him proud as Lucifer.

But it went on and on. The smoke simply sat on them and seemed to do nothing to drive off the incessant whine of the mosquitoes. They lay in their sweat and the stink of their powder, coughing at the heavy air and eaten by the bugs, worse than any day Caesar could remember in the swamp.

The firing began to rise again to the south, but the smoke and haze of the day now hid the hill where the grenadiers were all together. Moments later, though, Major Simcoe came riding up on his big gray charger almost white with lather and dust. He had a bugler behind him and two junior officers, all in the dark green jackets and blue facings of the Queen’s Rangers.

“Damn, it’s hot,” he said when he met Martin. He waved to Caesar, and this time Caesar brought Fowver so that they would all have the same story. He waited until they were near him and then unrolled a little map drawn on the back of a letter.

“I think they are trying to pin the rearguard here,” he pointed at the hill, “and then get around to attack us here and here,” he pointed at the woods they were in and another opposite, where the Highlanders were, “to cut us all off and force our surrender. I think that General Clinton decided this morning to attack here,” he pointed back to the hill that the grenadiers had taken, “to break up the attack and give us time to get free.”

Caesar followed it all. It was the most spread-out battle he had been part of, and it seemed to move at a glacial pace, perhaps because of the heat. And even with a map and Simcoe’s explanation, it was too confused a battle for him. They seemed to be defending in two directions and attacking in a third.

“It seemed to work, and then something has spurred the rebels to another effort, and I think they are building to an attack right here.”

“Where are the light infantry?”

“Gone off to support the grenadiers.”

Caesar looked at the camp they had left that morning, now nearly deserted. Simcoe pointed him off to the right, where a column of green-coated men was approaching.

“I want you to launch an attack here and try and get a prisoner. I’ll move into these positions behind you. Then you fall back through me, get some water and powder and join the lights of Colonel Robinson’s Loyal Americans as a reserve with the Jaegers and my rifle company.” He pointed to the rear, where green-coated men from the Loyalist regiments were moving into the shade.

Martin nodded to Caesar and he had his whistle to his lips in an instant. Fowver ran for the head of his platoon.

It was like a repeat of the early morning. The enemy fired sporadically but wouldn’t stand, and the Guides moved forward to a patch of brushy ground by a little stream just a few hundred paces away. The move took them five minutes. Their reward was a trickle of cold water in the stream, and Caesar ignored Simcoe’s wave that they should return immediately while he had Willy and Jim filling canteens at a basin in the little stream. The canteens had narrow necks and they didn’t fill fast, and their situation in the patch of brush was too precarious to allow them all to fill at the same time, so the corporals moved up and down, risking their lives in the new volume of fire from across the hazy flats. As soon as the last canteen was filled, Caesar gave the signal and they all fired together, not to hit anything but to make a solid screen of smoke that hung, concealing them for a minute or more, and then they ran back as quickly as a day’s fierce heat and too little water allowed.

Their wood was full of green-coated men in tall helmets. Caesar knew a few of the men in the Queen’s Rangers and he accepted a little cigar from a corporal who had just taken a long pull at his canteen. Mr. Martin was explaining the frustrating nature of their attack to one of Colonel Robinson’s men, a black.

“There’s no cover to approach them,” he said, and Simcoe just nodded.

“Go on back to camp and rest. I’ll send for you if I need you.”

They crossed the long field to the camp area, deserted except for the other soldiers in reserve. The Highlanders looked fierce, still capable, but they were so red in the face that Caesar worried for them. The handful of mounted troops were watering their horses all the time, and the Jaegers lay in the sun and burned, their pale complexions betraying them. Caesar kept looking up the ridge to the place where the grenadiers and now the lights had gone. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone into action without Captain Stewart, and he didn’t like the sound of firing to the south.

As soon as they started up the hill, Crawford knew that they were too late. It was obvious that the grenadiers had been clawed cruelly by the artillery fire they had heard during the whole miserable march to the hill. As they started the climb in the full heat of the mid-afternoon sun, the grenadiers were retiring. They were magnificent soldiers, and not one of them ran, but their companies were the size of platoons and they were withdrawing off the hill steadily. Stewart could see that he had already lost men to the heat and expected that the grenadiers, in action all morning, would be worse.

Crawford couldn’t see what pressure they were taking from his spot at the left end of the company. And then he looked to the front in time to see the whole woods fill with Continentals like a bucket filling under a pump. In a moment there were hundreds of them forming just above him on the hill.

“Halt!” cried Captain Stewart, racing down the line. The company next to theirs kept marching and was instantly exposed to a storm of fire. Stewart yelled to McDonald and then rode up to Crawford. McDonald was leading the firing.

“Hold here for as long as you can, but for God’s sake give the ground if you must. I’m going to see what the grenadiers intend. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Crawford saluted and turned to face the front. The rebels, who had been a mob a moment before, were forming like soldiers. Crawford’s company fired into them and they took the volley at close range and continued to form their line. A company off to the left was already firing. Crawford stepped out of the line and walked back to the center, where Captain Stewart usually stood to fight the company. The first platoon was almost loaded and, never taking his eyes from the enemy, he nodded to McDonald, who was preparing to fire. His men were outnumbered badly, and he doubted that these well-drilled enemy troops would fire any worse than they formed. He spared a glance for Captain Stewart riding low in his saddle off to the right and well up the hill, and Jeremy following him, and he saw Stewart’s horse go down as if all its legs had been cut at once. Stewart did not rise.

Jeremy leapt his horse over his downed master and fired a pistol at the first rebel to appear in the distance. He looked around desperately, but the grenadiers were just too far off to the right and the rebels were pouring down this part of the hill. He dismounted.

A ball had killed the horse dead. Its whole weight lay on Stewart, and Stewart was barely conscious.

“Get ye gone, Jeremy!” he muttered.

“Nonsense, sir.” Jeremy tried to give him a little water but the movement caused Stewart to faint from the pain. Jeremy cushioned his head with his saddlebags and took a moment to do those things he had heard veterans recommend you do when you are about to be captured. He took his watch and put it next to his skin, concealed his ivory-handled dagger in his boot, and put several golden guineas inside his shirt. He saw the rebels forming their company just forty yards away and he worried that they might fire on him, so he tied his white stock to his sword and waved it. The enemy company marched right by him, their officer simply waving at him.

“Come, that’s gentlemanly,” he said aloud, hoping his words would comfort Stewart, and turned to find another party of rebels with a tall man in an old blue coat at their head. They were moving carefully, formed in open order, and a number of them had weapons pointed at Jeremy. He held out his sword to the leader, who looked faintly familiar.

The leader grinned. “You killed Weymes,” he said.

Bludner raised his pistol and shot Jeremy dead.

Forty minutes later, Sir Henry Clinton’s counterattack with all the grenadiers and lights and all the reserves cleared the hill to the crest, and Caesar ran to the fallen horse. Stewart was gone, but Jeremy lay there, his hands out on the ground and his legs a little apart, lying face down. He had been plundered thoroughly, his watch and guineas taken and all Stewart’s saddle gear ripped clear of his horse. Caesar picked Jeremy up and threw him over his shoulder. Jeremy was still wearing his breeches, covered in blood, and his boots-apparently the tight fit was more than casual plunderers were prepared to face. He carried the body down the hill as the sun pounded on them and the order was given that finally allowed them to start an orderly withdrawal from the field. He carried Jeremy for over an hour, until the first halt, not speaking to the men around him.

When he gathered the men of the Guides and told them to prepare for a burial party, some men from Stewart’s company appeared with a cart. The cart had some wounded grenadiers in it, but the grenadiers were quickly convinced that their cart could carry a dead man as well. They stepped off into the heat, and marched all night with the cart in their midst, and the moans of the wounded grenadiers were like a lament for Jeremy, and defeat.

To the south, George Lake’s men stood on the crest of the hill and watched the last of the British light companies march away from them. They were too tired to pursue, and they had taken casualties themselves, although more from the heat than the enemy.

“I think we won,” croaked a man in George’s company. It was said quietly, as if the saying would break the spell.

George stretched the fingers of his right hand where he had clutched a musket all day.

“Well, boys, they were trying to retreat when the day started, and at the end of it, they retreated.” He looked at the ranks of his men and smiled. “On the other hand, we’re here, and they ain’t, which is a sight better than we’re used to.”

They gave a weak cheer, and another as they saw Washington and his staff ride out of the stuffy gloom again. Lake saw Lafayette peering down the hill at the backs of the last British light troops, and listened to them as they tried to count the casualties, and then, in the boldest moment of his life, George Lake stepped in front of Washington’s horse.

“Give you the joy of your victory, sir,” he said, amazed at his own voice. Washington looked up from a map and peered at him for a moment, and then smiled, the thin-lipped smile that never showed his teeth.

“Not much of a victory,” he said, but his men began to cheer again, and the cheer spread in waves. And then Washington’s grin split his face, and his eyes kindled and the cheers went on. Lafayette shook his hand, and then George’s, and then they were all around him, a wave of noise that spread from the center until the British could hear it two miles away.

Caesar was keeping the men together with physical threats by the time they halted, and Mr. Martin was bringing up the rear with the stragglers. But when they had rested for a few minutes and their legs stopped shaking, they took a little water and some hard tack and felt human enough to bury Jeremy.

They took turns digging as they always did, although he was just one man, and the contributions from Stewart’s company made it go fast. Some of Stewart’s men had stripped Jeremy’s boots and bloody breeches and then put on clean from his baggage, and they wrapped him in a clean linen sheet. Virgil carved him a cross from a downed branch as quick as he could, and Mr. Crawford paid the farmer in whose field they were going to plant him to get a stone. They were close to areas that their patrols would operate when they came out from New York, and Caesar thought they might get this way again. He didn’t seem able to think of much else, except that Jeremy had become a friend of a sort he had never had before. Jeremy had taught him so much. And that-like Sergeant Peters-he was dead.

McDonald came up to him and just nodded a few times, and then put Jeremy’s ivory-handled button dagger in his hand.

“He had it in his boot. We thought you ought to have it.” Some other men from Stewart’s company nodded behind him.

When Jeremy was in the ground and they had fired a volley over him, some officers came up to protest the firing, but Mr. Martin and Mr. Crawford sent them packing. Virgil, Willy and McDonald lit pipes, and they passed the tobacco around as they had for their dead since Virginia.

Caesar found that he couldn’t get the pipe into his mouth and it struck him that he was crying, great choking sobs that wracked him until Virgil put his arms around Caesar and hugged him close a moment. He hadn’t cried for Tonny, or Tom, or Peters or any of the others, but he cried for Jeremy, and Virgil sat beside him with his arm around him, as the night suddenly cooled with the passing of that awful heat.